Fire Star (5 page)

M
eanwhile, back in Wayward Crescent, something odd was happening in the Dragon’s Den. The stained-glass ornament which hung in the window behind Liz’s workbench suddenly twirled on its string, and this was followed by a gentle fall of soot down the chimney. Gruffen, who was over by the door as always, sitting on his book of dragon procedures and dozing (because Lucy had forgotten to alert him), shook himself awake and went to investigate. The fireplace seemed to be largely undisturbed. Even so, he flew up it a ways, straining his violet eyes into the gloom. There was nothing to see. And when the atmosphere of filth began to irritate his nostrils, he went back to his perch and fell soundly asleep.

But unbeknownst to him and every other dragon
present, something solid had landed in the grate. When it was sure it would not be detected, it flew silently across the room, invisible except for the flecks of soot that were tracing its outline and flicking off its wings. It landed on the workbench. On tiptoes it approached the stone dragon, Grockle. It tilted its head in a sympathetic manner, placing a paw on the edge of the basket as if it would like to rock Grockle in his sleep. It did not touch the cold gray scales, but waved its paw in a circular movement over Grockle’s head as though it was trying to break the cruel spell that had seen the poor creature born without fire. Grockle did not respond and the visiting dragon showed no sign of expectation that he would. Instead, it now walked across the table, leaving nothing but the faintest black prints on the wood. Then it carefully and cleverly opened David’s letter. Now it faced a more difficult task, for its mission was to tear out Zanna’s blood spot. But this it did, making barely a sound. Then it flew across the room and landed next to Gretel’s cage. Sensing a presence, she drew toward the bars.

The invisible dragon stretched out its paw and dropped the blood spot and a small white flower inside the cage.

Gretel, no stranger to magics and spells, having once been a cohort of the sibyl, Gwilanna, showed admirable composure when these objects mysteriously appeared at her feet. She glanced at the sleeping Gruffen, then secreted the items away. On silent lips, she asked the dragon its name.

On the quietest of whispers it told her: Groyne.

Then it was gone, back to the chimney.

And no one, especially not Gruffen, had seen it.

For a short time after this strange encounter, Gretel did nothing but sit and think. Then she picked up the blood spot and warmed it in her paw, until the paper was crumbling in on itself and the tiniest prick of her mistress Zanna’s blood had liquefied, ready to evaporate. With expert timing, she let it drip into the center of the flower. Its petals turned from white to a stormy shade of purple.

Then she began to cough.

Gruffen was awake in an instant. He saw Gretel tottering, holding her throat, a dark flower clasped between her stout front paws. The potions dragon. With a flower! How?

He zipped to her cage and peered warily in. Gretel, spluttering smoke from her nostrils and ears, seemed for all the world to be choking. Gruffen gripped the bars, completely taken in. As he put his snout close and asked what he could do, Gretel said, “sleep,” and wafted the flower. The guard dragon jolted. His sparkling eyes stilled. He turned nine-tenths of a circle and fell.

Password,
hurred Gretel.

In his flower-giddy state, poor Gruffen was helpless to resist.
Hrr-rr-aar-re-rurrr,
he murmured. The door clicked open and Gretel walked free.

Dragons around the room began to clamor with alarm, but Gretel, completely unmoved by the fuss, flew, posthaste, to Grockle’s basket. By now, Liz and Lucy were hurrying up the stairs, with Gadzooks flying on and G’reth just behind him. Calmly, Gretel made her move. She placed the newly
darkened flower in the straw by Grockle’s snout, stroked his head, and breathed in deep, making fire in the back of her throat. And with one quick jet of blue-white flame, she set the straw and the basket alight…

T
his is
awesome,”
said Zanna, clinging hard to the pickup’s steering wheel as they swept through clouds of onrushing snow. “If the weather on the pack ice is anything like this, I’d tell your bears to build a nice warm den and park their furry butts for a while.” She smudged a gloved hand across the misting windshield and cranked up the speed of the wiper blades. A fan-shaped view of the road appeared, gray and straight, rolling with white spray blown off the surface of the neighboring tundra. “How’re you getting them across the water, then? Come on, you know you want to tell me, really.”

David, hunched inside a bottle green parka, pulled on the earflaps of his moose-fur hat. “When they
wake, it will still be dark and the star will be reflecting across the ocean. Everywhere its light falls, an ice floe will form.”

“To make stepping stones?”

“Yep.”

“Neat. I like it. So this star is kind of magical, then?”

David glanced through the window at the ice-pocked wasteland, punctured here and there by tufts of grass. “Not sure yet. The story’s still developing. All I know is, the star is what holds it all together. This place is phenomenal. Look at the trees.”

“What trees?” said Zanna. As far as she could tell the ground was flat for miles around.

David pointed to some stunted firs. “See how they only branch on one side? The wind must have stripped them clean. Amazing.”

“On the whole, I prefer the library gardens,” she said, dipping her lights as a battered old Chevy came cruising past.

David broke open a packet of gum and folded a
clean stick against his tongue. “When we first arrived, I asked Bergstrom how I could describe the tundra. ‘The unshaved face of God,’ he called it.”

The truck took a slight uneven bounce. “Well, next time you see Our Lord in Heaven, tell him to shave more often,” said Zanna. “Hey, there’s a thought.”

“What? God shaving?”

“No, just God. There’s a capital
G
if ever there was.”

David flicked his gaze sideways at her. “God? A dragon?”

“Could be,” she said.

The wind buffeted the side of the truck. David placed his feet against the dash for support. “I was joking.”

“Naturally. You’d have to be.”

“Why?”

“God’s a woman. Any sensible person — and sensitive guy — knows that. Interesting, though. There are loads of creation myths involving dragons.”

“Hmm,” David grunted, trying to sound as though he wasn’t really paying attention. Inside his sweater, he
touched the tooth on its thin leather strip, letting his fingers run over its curves till his thumb was caressing the sharpened tip. The temptation to reveal what he knew about Gawain and his connection with the Arctic ice cap was immense. But Bergstrom had warned him if he spoke of these things in the presence of the tooth, the spirit of Ragnar would be unleashed. Although he wasn’t fully certain what that meant, David sure as heck didn’t want to find out here. “Woman?” he said, as a gender-challenged afterthought.

“Actually, in Inuit folklore, the world was made by a raven.”

“What?” David almost lurched from his seat.

“You OK?” said Zanna, glancing across.

“Lost my footing. Raven, you said?”

“Mmm. Can’t remember exactly how it goes. It creates the Earth, then night and day. It can do all the usual stuff: turn itself into things; animals; humans.”

“Man or a woman?”

“Both, I guess.”

David chewed his lip.

“Why?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Come on,” she said, “spill.”

He interlocked his fingers. How much dare he tell her? “There’s a raven in my story. It sends Ingavar into Chamberlain.”

“To the vet’s?” she joked.

“No, to steal this.” He dangled the tooth on its leather strip.

Now Zanna’s dark eyes narrowed to a point. “I thought he was coming to have his shoulder healed?” “Yeah, that’s the deal. If he succeeds, she’ll —” “She?” Zanna said. She brought the truck to a halt beside a tall wooden sign which read:

WELCOME TO CHAMBERLAIN
POLAR BEAR CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

Farther ahead lay a cluster of single-story cabins, dressed overhead by telephone cables. David pulled on his gloves. “Slip of the tongue. Come on, drive in. Let’s find the store.”

Zanna thought for a moment, then yanked on the hand brake. “What ‘deal’? She who?”

Me and my big mouth,
David thought. He steepled his fingers around his nose. “Gwilanna,” he confessed. “She’s in the story.”

M
om!” squealed Lucy. “Hurry up! Quick! Gretel’s escaped and she’s trying to kill Grockle!”

Liz burst breathlessly into the den. She glanced at the cage and Gruffen’s dizzied body, then placed a staying hand on Lucy’s arm. G’reth and Gadzooks both landed on the bench, one on either side of the hissing Gretel.

“The fire,” Lucy wailed as the flames began to lick around Grockle’s ears.

“It’s all right,” Liz whispered. “Fire can’t hurt him.”

“But what if the house burns down!”

Gadzooks seemed to take this view as well. Hooking up his ridges to protect his eyes, he dipped forward to fight the flames. Gretel spiked her tail and forced him back. A shred of crackling, burning wicker broke off
from the basket in which Grockle lay. Nearby stood a jam jar full of brushes, their hairs soaking in methylated spirits.

“Gretel.” Liz spoke to her in soothing dragontongue.

The potions dragon flexed her claws.

“We have to put the fire out,” Liz said calmly. “I promise you, no harm will come to you. But if we don’t stop this, we’ll have nowhere to live.”

Gretel mantled her wings and stared keenly at the flames. One or two more seconds was all she needed. The petals of the flower were almost consumed. Once they went up, then —

Hrraaarr!
Gadzooks dived forward again.

Instantly, he and Gretel locked jaws, wings whipping, tails thrashing, claws fully out.

Lucy squealed and covered her face. In all the eleven or so years of her life she had never seen her mother’s dragons fighting before. The noise, the aggression, the
smoke
was terrifying. “Mom, make it stop,” she cried.

That was also G’reth’s intention. If he quenched the fire, there would be nothing to fight about. With Gretel
distracted, he quickly swept in. In one deep breath he sucked at the blaze and took every last flicker of flame into his throat.

Gretel, hearing the deep inbreath, threw Gadzooks aside and turned to look. Charred straw. Rising smoke. Purple flower gone.

She roared and went for G’reth.

But by now Liz was there and clamping her wings. “Gretel, it’s over. Don’t struggle. Calm down. I don’t want to have to use dragonsong on you.”

Stupid Pennykettle dragons!
Gretel hurred, catching G’reth with a spark of hot spittle. He staggered away, into the shadows beneath the wooden turntable where Liz modeled most of her dragons.

“You’re
a Pennykettle,” Liz reminded Gretel. “Made by my hand. Cooled by it, if necessary.” She took a chance and let her loose.

Lucy’s eyes grew round with terror.

But Gretel did no more than slump by Grockle’s snout, stroking the ashes off his blackened nose and singing dragon lullabies into his ear.

Gadzooks, by now recovered from the brawl (a sore foot where she’d spiked him; a chipped scale where she’d bitten) approached with caution.
Hrrr?
he said. A simple question: Why?

“How did she get out in the first place?” said Lucy. She went and got Gruffen. He was shaking all over and his eyes were swimming.

“Well?” asked Liz, crouching down beside the bench.

There was a dragon,
said Gretel with a spiteful hurr.

Dozens of scaly ears pricked up. Gretel told them faithfully what had happened.

“Invisible?” gasped Lucy, running to the fireplace and peering up the stack.

Liz made a guttural sound in dragontongue to calm the nerves of the onlooking dragons. “Why was it here, Gretel? What did it want?”

Gretel shrugged. Truthfully, she did not know.

“Who sent it?” asked Lucy.

Gretel snorted in frustration and stomped her feet.
I was just about to find that out! she hurred. When the foolish wishing dragon stuck his fat snout in!

“So … you weren’t trying to give Grockle fire?” asked Lucy.

The potions dragon looked away, sullenly.

“Why set fire to his basket?” asked Liz.

A spark or two flew from Gretel’s nostrils as she tossed her head like a petulant puppy.
Because the straw burned fast and the potion was fading. Breathing it in fire was the way to know its source.

Liz lengthened her gaze to seek out G’reth. He was still under the table, whimpering slightly. “What effect would it have on a wishing dragon?”

Almost at once, G’reth let out a bone-chilling whine and fell back, writhing, tossing his head.

“What’s happening?” Lucy gasped, rushing to the bench.

Her mother moved her quickly aside and cradled the wishing dragon close to her breast. Supporting his wings in the cup of her hands, she tried urgently to calm him with dragonsong. G’reth’s eyes were fixed on a point in space, and it didn’t look as though they were about to return. Liz lifted his spiky head, making the
dragon splutter and cough. “He’s having some kind of fit,” she said. “Go to the bathroom and bring me a towel. I want to wrap him up to protect him.”

Lucy ran from the room as if she’d chartered a jet.

She was halfway along the landing, when she heard her mother give a startled yell. She paused at once, unsure of what to do. “Mom, what’s the matter?”

“Come quickly,” cried Liz. Lucy pounded back, in time to see G’reth hovering in midair, held by a force that had cloaked his body in a blaze of blue light.

On the shelves, the dragons shuddered in fear. Gadzooks tried to fly to his brother dragon’s aid, but Liz cried, “No!” and pulled him back.

It was just as well she did. Suddenly, the den was flooded with light. Violet eyes fast became ultraviolet, blinded by the sheer intensity of the beam. Then it was done. The light returned to its source in the heavens, and barring the stained glass clinking at the window, the room returned to normal.

With one exception.

The wishing dragon had completely disappeared.