Fire Star (7 page)

W
ith a quick
snap-snap,
Albert cocked the rifle and opened the door of the trading post. A cloud of snowflakes billowed in, blowing across the stained wet boards.

“Wait!” cried David, grabbing his arm. “You’re not going to shoot it?”

“Son, that’s a polar bear denting your truck. He’s not here to trade, he steals for a living. I don’t want him near my store. Now take your hand off my arm and stay outta the way.” He stepped onto the landing of the outer stairs shouting, “Hey! Vamoose!” A bullet cracked the air. David, watching from the safety of the window, saw the bear leap back unharmed.

“What’s happening?” asked Zanna, rushing to his side.

“There’s a bear,” he whispered.

“Oh my God. Where?”

“Behind the pickup.”

Zanna skipped sideways to the next window along. “Where? I can’t see him.”

“Come on out!” Albert called. Another shot ripped out of the rifle. Across the windswept road, a group of people had gathered, pointing, shouting, training a light. But there was still no movement behind the truck.

“Did he hit him?” shouted Zanna, moving to another section of the window.

“No, he fired over him,” David replied.

Albert, toting his gun at waist height, began to make his way down the outer stairs.

A moment later, a white-haired woman dressed, like Albert, in heavyweight jeans and a red check shirt, came hurrying through from the back of the store. She put an arm around Zanna’s shoulder. “Aw jeez, is it a bear?”

“Apparently,” said Zanna, not shifting her gaze.

The woman hurried to the counter and picked up a phone. Within seconds, she had a connection. “Oh, hiya, Andy. It’s Margie, at the store. Yar, I’m doin’ fine. Yar, I think so. Sounds like we got ourselves a bear sniffing ‘round. Haven’t seen it, no. Albert’s out shootin’. O-kaay, I will. Come soon, now. Gotcha.”

She put the phone down. “You see him yet, honey?”

Zanna wiped the window clean. The arms of the people shouting warnings to Albert seemed to indicate the bear was lying low. But the wind was up, almost blanking them out. “It’s hard to tell,” she shouted. “You see anything, David?”

“David? Who’s David?” Margie asked.

Zanna’s blood froze. She jerked her head back and saw the door swinging free. “DAVID!” she screamed, and burst through the door and onto the landing. Through the swirling snowstorm, the body of the pickup was still half-visible. But not the men. Zanna took a step down, slightly losing her footing on the gathering snow.

“Hey, get back here!” Margie called from the safe warm amber glow of the store.

“David!” Zanna pleaded, and reversed onto the landing. She ran to the far end. Clinging to the rail, she shouted again. It was then, just ahead, she saw a faint yellow light, drilling a well through the drifting flakes. It pooled like a spotlight in the middle of the road. At its center, sitting calmly, paws tight together, staring deep into her eyes, was a bear.

“David! I see it! It’s there!” she hollered.

“Honey, get inside!” Margie shouted again.

“It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s up the road,” Zanna said, plucking snowladen hair from her mouth. Hearing garbled voices on the far side of the truck, she turned to direct them to the bear’s location. But her eye was taken by a movement hard below: a fluid white shape, squeezing out from underneath the near side of the pickup.

Speechless with terror, she watched another bear raise its head toward the light. “Oh my God, there are two! One of them is here, right by the stairs!” The bear
reared and pounded the fascia by her feet. The boards snapped and splintered like matchwood. With a sickly creak, the nearest support pillar broke in two and the landing dropped with a sudden jolt. Zanna pitched forward over the rail and fell eight feet to the earth below.

The bear swept around, snowflakes gyrating on its breath like moths circling an outdoor lamp.

Zanna, forgetting everything she’d been taught, turned onto her back and began to scramble for the jeep, hoping she might slide under it.

But as the bear padded forward, snorting at her, she suddenly stopped moving and looked into its eyes. The bear stopped also, angling its head to squint at the ripped sleeve of her parka. For half a second, there seemed to be a kind of recognition. Then the animal raised a paw.

At that moment, several things happened. From the far side of the pickup came a squeal of brakes. Doors opened and slammed. Bright white searchlights flooded the road.

David appeared at Zanna’s back crying, “Don’t let him touch you! He mustn’t touch you!” He bent down
to hook his hands into her armpits, intending to drag her away to safety. The bear hissed and coiled back, readying to strike, when —
whap!
— it was struck in the shoulder by a plank of wood, wielded by the Inuit guide, Tootega.

The bear howled in agony and crashed onto his side.

Albert skidded forward, aiming his rifle between the bear’s eyes.

“No!” David screamed, and pushed him into the broken staircase.

A shot pinged off the cold gray tarmac.

“All of you! Get back NOW!” yelled a voice.

Another gunman had appeared, ten feet from the stricken bear’s rump. He was dressed in a black badged jacket and hat.

“Don’t kill him,” panted David.

“Move, boy, or I’ll shoot you first!”

“No!” he pleaded, as Tootega’s rough hand took him by the collar and pulled him clear.

The gun cracked.

“His shoulder! Look at his shoulder!” David cried. He broke free and stood over the bear again.

Blood from an earlier wound was pouring down the ice bear’s foreleg.

And his great brown eyes were closed.

I
t’s no use trying to run, child.”

Even as Lucy turned to flee, she felt her muscles lock and her legs turn stiff. Rocking helplessly, she fell onto Henry’s leather sofa, all the while trying to scream for her mother.

“Foolish girl,” Gwilanna chided. With a twist of her hand, she sent a spell which turned Lucy’s words to feathers.

Lucy coughed them away and tried again. This time bubbles of soap left her mouth.

“Once more and I’ll make you speak nettles,” said Gwilanna.

Lucy, defeated, pulled her lips inward.

“Good. Now speak quietly and above all
politely.
I am your aunt, after all.”

“What do you want?” Lucy hissed, not at all polite.

Gwilanna brushed some dust off her skirt. “All in good time, child. All in good time. First, have you heard from the boy?”

“David’s in Canada.”

“I know that, girl. Don’t test my patience. Has he spoken to you recently?”

“He wrote a letter. Why?”

“Hmm,” went Gwilanna, stroking her chin. “Did he mention his story?”

Lucy shook her head.

“Pity. Then you won’t know what’s about to happen.”

“What do you mean?” asked Lucy, wriggling her legs.

“Oh, stop fidgeting,” Gwilanna chided, and turned the girl’s lower half into a fish tail.

Lucy’s heart nearly leaped from her chest. She whined
so much that Gwilanna was forced to restore the girl’s shape lest her ancient eardrums should implode. “There. Now, behave yourself and listen. Your tenant is a nuisance, but an interesting nuisance. He has no bloodline to the olden ways, yet he and that peculiar dragon of his have abilities well beyond human expectation.”

“Gadzooks just helps him write stories,” said Lucy.

“Oh, he does more than that,” said her aunt. “Between them, they can shape the future.”

Lucy put her head back, looking puzzled.

“Remember this?” Gwilanna asked. From the shadows beside her chair, she brought forth a square-shaped wicker basket. A small lithe figure was darting around inside it.

“Snigger!” gasped Lucy.

Gwilanna raised a frown. “Is that what he called it? How dreadfully quaint.”

Chuk,
went the squirrel, standing on its hind legs and clinging to the wicker, doing its best to gnaw through the weave.

Lucy balled her fists. “What are you doing with him?!”

“He’s a hostage,” smirked the sibyl, and her face grew dark, “to make sure you do exactly as you’re told. If you even
think
about squealing for your mother I’ll turn this rodent into a pair of flea-bitten socks.” She poked a finger at the cage, then reeled back sharply as Snigger tried to sink his teeth into her flesh. “I discovered — during my ‘stay’ with you — that when the boy wrote his story about this tree rat, he was ahead of time.”

Lucy pulled a face. “What do you mean?”

“He could predict things, child; what he wrote came true, though the gap between the two only covered a few seconds.”

Lucy puzzled over this but didn’t reply.

“He, of course, was bewildered by it, just as you are now. His minute brain did not possess the intellect to understand that time does not truly exist.”

Lucy glanced at the carriage clock on Henry’s mantelpiece. “Why do we have clocks, then?”

The sibyl gave out an irritated sigh. “So we can glimpse different aspects of the present. Oh, never mind. Just take it from me, your tenant can do it. What’s more, his ability is growing stronger.”

Lucy pushed her hands between her thighs and shuddered. She didn’t like the sound of this. “How do you know?”

Gwilanna stood up and paced the room. She dropped the basket onto the fireside rug, causing Snigger to tumble like a hamster on its wheel. “I decided to watch him. I left a calling card on that silly little contract he made with his publishers.”

“I saw it,” said Lucy, lurching forward. “Three squiggles — like on Zanna’s arm.”

“Squiggles!” Gwilanna’s screech rattled the windows. “Don’t be so insolent, girl. That sign is feared throughout the far north.”

“Sorry,” said Lucy, though she wasn’t at all. Her mind was working fast. It had just occurred to her how to attract her mother’s attention — if not that of a listening dragon. Gwilanna’s last shrill burst would have
been heard in every corner of the living room next door. If she could be made to shriek upstairs, it would easily be detected in the Dragon’s Den.

“Where was I?” snapped the sibyl.

“I can’t remember. Can I go to the toilet, please?”

“No, you may not. We were talking about the boy. Through magics, I have followed his latest saga. Did you know I feature in it?”

Lucy shook her head very slowly indeed. Gwilanna, in David’s Arctic story? What could he be
thinking
of?

“Yes, child, I was astonished as well. But then the boy is a strange enigma. When he writes, it seems his auma is driven by the need to engineer his fate. He is creating the circumstances for — well, you will discover that in time. Look out of the window. What do you see?”

“Nothing.” It was pitch-black outside.

“Stars, girl. Can’t you see the stars?”

Not really,
thought Lucy. One or two were winking gently, but … wait, here was her chance: “They’ll be easier to see from Mr. Bacon’s study window … upstairs.”

“No doubt,” said Gwilanna, not taking the bait.

Lucy clamped her fingers around her thumb and sighed.

“What do you
know
about stars?” Gwilanna pressed.

Lucy folded her arms. This was all she needed: a science lesson. “They’re a long way off. Our sun is a star and the Earth revolves around it.”

Gwilanna raised a half-impressed eyebrow. “Elementary, but correct. Now, let me teach you something else. Every object you see in the sky, every twinkling celestial body, exerts an influence on our lives. You and I, this house, this idiot squirrel,” she kicked the basket, making Snigger squeak, “were created from stardust.”

“How?” asked Lucy.

“Never mind, girl. Be quiet and pay attention. There is a significant alignment forming in the heavens, the same pattern that was present when dragons were first introduced to this Earth. As above, so below. Do you understand?”

Lucy was still a sentence back.
“Dragons?”
she queried, beginning to sound interested.

Gwilanna’s gaze shifted back to the window. “There is a fire star coming, signaling a time of new beginnings. A time for dragons to rise again.”

Lucy leaned forward, her mouth popping like a pea-pod trying to shed its seed. “You mean, proper
big
dragons?”

“Yes,” said the sibyl. “And one in particular.”

Lucy’s skin turned cold. For she knew, without knowing, that her aunt was referring to the last true dragon the world had ever known.

Gawain.

D
o you know how powerful a polar bear is?”

Anders Bergstrom folded his arms and sat back in his office chair surveying the two students standing in front of him. Neither ventured to answer his question.

“From the report I’ve been given by the Chamberlain Bear Patrol, the male you encountered is as big as anything I have ever seen. That means he weighs close to six hundred kilos, over half a ton. On its hind legs, such an animal would stand almost sixteen feet high and have an attack speed of approximately twenty-five miles per hour. It has the strength to lift an adult seal out of water, throw it onto level ice, and rip a hole in its belly as easily as you or I would tear open an envelope. It could take a man’s head off with one swift blow, using
roughly the same amount of energy that the man would exert to nip a flower off its stem. It is universally acknowledged as the most formidable predator on this planet. Am I beginning to frighten you yet?”

David looked down at his shuffling feet. “I didn’t want to see it killed, that’s all.”

“Jeez,” said a voice from across the room. Russ thumped his fist against the filing cabinet and pushed his hat way back off his forehead. “One person mauled in Chamberlain in the past thirty years. You two are here for less than a month and you almost triple the stats. Why didn’t you just stay in the trading post? You didn’t even get the supplies!”

“Ask him about his story,” muttered Zanna.

“Story?” said Russ, his freckled brow concentrating into lines.

From a chair in the corner, Tootega glared at the girl and muttered something darkly under his breath.

“Don’t worry, you’re probably in it, too,” she said.

David clenched his teeth. “Zanna, shut up.”

“Don’t you tell me to zip it!” she growled, whacking
a hand across his chest. She stared doggedly at Bergstrom. “Ask him about Gwilanna and the tooth.”

Russ pointed a finger at his temple. “This a private conversation or can anyone join in?”

“It’s on the laptop,” she said, holding Dr. Bergstrom’s gaze.

The scientist ran his knuckles down the blond hairs of his beard and swung his chair toward the pilot and the guide. He tilted his head in the direction of the door.

“You’re the boss.” Russ sighed, and both men started to leave.

Tootega paused briefly at David’s back. “That bear. He remember you — her as well. Next time, you won’t have chance to play dead.”

The door closed. “What did he mean, ‘next time’?” Zanna snapped.

Bergstrom’s deep blue eyes pooled into her. “The bear was shot with a fast-acting tranquilizer. A new development we’ve made in the past year or two. It was taken immediately to a steel holding pen, commonly
referred to as the polar bear jail. It will be operated on for a bullet wound to the shoulder.”

Zanna winced and looked away.

“So he’ll survive,” said David, staring into the misted windows and whatever, in his mind’s eye, lay beyond.

“He was lucky,” Bergstrom said, smoothing his palms. “The bullet had touched his lung but the injury was more impediment than fatal. It will heal quickly. When it does, we’ll fly him north and let him go.”

“This is just too spooky,” said Zanna. “Read the story, Dr. Bergstrom.
Now.”

Bergstrom glanced at the open laptop, weaving colored pipework on its flat gray screen.

“No, I’m destroying it,” David said. He stepped forward and moved the mouse. Bergstrom immediately clamped his arm.

“You have a contract, remember?”

David looked into the scientist’s eyes. It wasn’t clear whether Bergstrom was referring to Apple Tree Publishing or the personal promise David had made him to
keep on writing about the Arctic. Even so, David said, “I’m wiping it.” And he dragged the file into the computer’s trash can and emptied it.

This was still not enough for Zanna. “Defrag the disk.”

“What?”

“I don’t want it in memory, even in bits. Run a defrag over it. Now.”

“But —?”

“Just
do it,
David.”

“Be my guest,” said Bergstrom, wheeling his chair away.

Silently furious, David ran the program that would rearrange the disk so all the files were contiguous and any scraps of deleted files were eliminated. “There. Happy now?”

“No, not really,” she said. “First you keep secrets about Gwilanna, then you won’t tell me
why
I’m not supposed to touch that bear, and now you’re trying to act like you’re some kind of hero. Well, you’re not.

You could have died out there! Oh, and do you want the
really
bad news?”

“What?”

“We’re finished.”

And then she was gone, leaving David and the door frame shuddering in her wake.