The Last Dragon Chronicles #4: The Fire Eternal (6 page)

Good answer,
thought Tam.
Cleverly evasive.
He smiled, accepted it, and opened his messenger bag. “And you, Zanna? Have you …?”

“Yes,” she said, trying not to look away. “It’s a brilliant
book. Naively written in places, but refreshing. It sends out a clear environmental message to the world and I think everyone who cares about this planet and the welfare of its wildlife should read it. Now, I’m sorry, but we really must go.”

“Yes, of course,” he said, standing aside to let her go past. “Oh, about my consultation?”

She came to an imperial halt.

“Would next Wednesday at eleven
be okay?”

She thought a moment. “Twelve-thirty would be better.”

“Okay, twelve-thirty it is. Oh, and Zanna?”

“What?” she said, turning, crunching the word.

“Thank you for coming.”

He meant it, she could tell. She stared at him a second, then noticed Cassandra smiling in the background and hurriedly escaped before her cheeks lit up.

That evening, Tam Farrell drove home to his riverside apartment,
thinking endlessly about Suzanna
Martindale. His mind should have been fixed on the article he planned to write for
The National Endeavor.
Instead, his thoughts danced in the rain and the headlights, lingering on her dark-haired beauty, her calf-length Indian cotton dresses, the braids in her hair, the bangles on her arms. So much passion. So many secrets. So much he still wanted to know about
her.

The rain beat down. Tam tapped his head.
Come on, it’s a job,
he told himself.
Just another feature. Stay professional. Not too close.

He glanced at the cover of
White Fire
where it lay on the passenger seat beside him. It was the original version, a polar bear in close-up at the edge of the ice cap, its head low, its brown eyes angled upward as though it was aware of something in the distance.
Suddenly, the exterior street lighting changed and on the head of the bear Tam thought he saw a mark. He walloped his brakes, slowing to a stop just a bumper kiss away from the car in front. The driver remonstrated and drove off angrily. Tam gestured in surrender and pulled into the curb. The mark on the
polar bear’s head had gone away. Thinking at first it was a holographic projection cast in
the foil effects on the jacket, he held the book up to the light from the windshield. No amount of tilting could reproduce the mark. And yet he was certain he hadn’t imagined it. He scrambled in his messenger bag, pulling out a sheet of paper. An image, downloaded from the Internet that morning. A three-pronged symbol. The mark of Oomara. The subject of several Inuit legends. The same mark that was
gouged into Zanna’s arm. The symbol he’d seen on the cover of the book.

A spray of rain lashed into his driver’s window. For the first time since he’d begun this feature, a thread of fear wormed its way around the intrigue. “What
are
you?” he whispered, clenching his teeth. He picked up the book and stared at it again. He stroked the bear’s face and thought, ironically, about the doors of perception.
When they didn’t open, he pushed the book and the image deep into his bag, unaware that as he did so he was covering up something that had stowed away there. It was an artifact, patterned with Inuit etchings,
fashioned long ago from the tusk of a narwhal, a creature thought to have magical properties — which might have explained, had Tam been aware of it, how he came to be carrying a shape-shifting
dragon called Groyne into the heart of the city that night.

W
hen Zanna arrived home, the only person still up was Lucy. She was in the front room, sitting cross-legged on the sofa, watching TV. Zanna poked her head around the door and said, “Hi.”

“Um,”
Lucy grunted, without once taking her eyes off the screen.

Just in front of her, Bonnington was sitting on the hearth rug. He was in his favored “panther” mode. His ferocious yellow
eyes were glued to the broadcast. Zanna always found this a little unnerving. It was easy to see how a domestic cat might be fascinated, in passing, by this animated glowing box (her parents’ cat, Pippa, used to like watching golf balls being putted across a green) but Bonnington, or rather the hybrid
he’d become, watched it with critical intensity. No one would have been at all surprised if he’d
donned a pair of glasses or set the DVD player. He was that kind of cat now.

“News 24?” she queried, reading the corner of the screen. A music program or a soap opera, maybe; it was unlike Lucy to be watching the news.

“It’s about Patagonia.”

Patagonia. Right. Zanna perched on the arm of the sofa. “Homework?”

Lucy lowered the sound. Bonnington’s ears immediately pricked up. “They have these
ice fields in the Andes mountains. They’re melting too fast because of global warming. While you were out listening to poetry, the southern ice sheet probably lost an area equivalent to the size of a football field.”

Right,
thought Zanna.
And I’m to blame for that, am I?
She laid her hands on her knees and pushed herself up again. “Sorry, I’ll try not to be out so long in the future.”

“Sea levels
are rising,” Lucy added casually. “About
a millimeter a year — on average. Doesn’t sound enough to cause major flooding, does it?”

“Lucy, it’s not my fault, OK? I’m just as concerned about climate change as you are.”

“No, you’re not.”

And there it is,
Zanna told herself.
Shut down before I can make a case.
She shook herself together with a clatter of bangles. “I’m going to bed. Good night.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me what the poetry was like?”

Zanna opened her bag and threw the pamphlet toward her. “Pretty good. Check for yourself.”

“Is this
his?”
Lucy said, making no attempt at all to disguise her shock.

“He’s a fine writer,” Zanna said a little pompously. “His poetry’s very moving. Why don’t you read it? He’s coming to the shop for a consultation next Wednesday. I’d appreciate
it if you could stop in during your lunch hour and cover for me.”

Lucy read the inscription and put the book down. “Did he ask about David?”

“No, why would he?”

Lucy gave her a questioning glare.

Sighing heavily, Zanna replied, “He seemed relieved that Henry and I weren’t an item, if that’s what you mean? And bizarrely, he took a copy of
White Fire
home to read.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“He’s a client, Lucy. I don’t discuss my personal life with clients.”

“Not even if you’re into them?”

Raar,
meowed Bonnington, and trotted out the door.

“Okay, forget it. I’ll ask your mom if she’s free next week —”

“Oh, talk about ‘sensitive.’” Lucy made a face. “Relax, will you? I’ll cover. I always do, don’t I? Might as well see if he’s ‘worthy,’ I suppose.”

“Thank you,” Zanna said, performing
a minor curtsy. “Now, if Her Majesty approves, I’m going to retire to my bedchamber and check that my daughter’s asleep.”

“She is,” Lucy said with an aggravated drawl. But as Zanna turned away she sparked up again, saying, “Oh, by the way, she drew a picture.”

Zanna jiggled her house keys, a measure of her annoyance. “Lexie’s always drawing pictures. What of it?”

Lucy aimed the remote, making
the television channels flash like a zoetrope. “It’s an ancient dragon. Not like one of ours.”

On the mantelpiece, Gwillan rattled his scales.

Zanna hunched her shoulders. “And your point is?”

“Nothing … ‘cept she’s never drawn one like it before — and it’s got blue eyes.”

Blue eyes. Zanna turned the thought aside. She couldn’t face that path. Not tonight. Not after Tam Farrell’s heartbreaking
poetry. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she said and walked away. But as she entered what used to be David’s room, the words were still with her, doing their best to conjure up ghosts in the way that poems make worlds between their lines.

She slid her bag off her shoulder, sat on the bed, and stared at Alexa. The child was at peace, sleeping
soundly, her pretty face catching the light of the moon.
One small fist was resting on the pillow. Inside it was a fan of drawing paper. Zanna leaned forward and teased it out. From the corner of her eye, she saw Gadzooks twitch.

“Have you seen this?” she whispered, using soft dragontongue.

He sent her a quiet
hrrr
of acknowledgement, but his gaze was clearly taken by something in the garden, making Zanna ask, “What is it? What’s the matter?”

Beyond
the glass there came the faintest tinkle of a wind chime. Gadzooks immediately peered at Alexa. Her eyelids twitched as though she were dreaming and from her lips came a gentle murmur of dragonsong.

“Oh, baby,” Zanna whispered, cooing inside. She touched her hand to Alexa’s cheek. “Are the fairies talking to you?”

Alexa fell back into sleep once more. Gadzooks blew a thoughtful smoke ring and
frowned.

“Has she been doing that all night?”

Gadzooks hurred again.

“Has it woken her?”

His tail flicked sideways, but he shook his head.

Zanna nodded and opened the piece of paper. As Lucy had said, it was a drawing of a dragon. A child’s effort. More of a sketch than a picture. In outline, it had the classic dragon shape: small head, umbrella wings, sinewy body. None of this came as any
real surprise, for any talented child might reproduce that. But the eyes made Zanna catch her breath. In the pale light, she could not see their color properly, but the detail around them was quite astounding. Scales. Dozens of tiny scales, small below the eye, larger above. And she had tried to draw something in the pupil as well. Something reflected in the dragon’s vision. Some kind of star, perhaps?

Just then, Alexa gurgled in her sleep and squeezed her empty fist against the pillow. Zanna folded up the drawing and reinserted it between the soft pink fingers. “Dream it,” she whispered, using one of Liz’s favorite expressions. She stroked a lock of hair off Alexa’s temple and was about to turn away when a pair of yellow eyes in the darkness made her jump.

“Oh, Bonnington!” she chided. “What
are you doing there? You gave me such a fright!”

The cat was sitting on the dressing table, looking like something from a pharaoh’s tomb.

“Turn back into something less spooky,” Zanna said. “I can’t see you in black. You’re not allowed up there anyway. Come on,
shoo.”

She chased him to the floor and headed for the bathroom.

But no sooner had she gone than Bonnington jumped onto the table again.
He briefly exchanged a look with Gadzooks, but the dragon made no attempt to criticize the move, and Bonnington settled to his pose again, this time angling toward the mirror, looking not at himself, but at the moonlit reflection of the sleeping Alexa….

The next morning, during the hubbub of breakfast, Zanna showed Alexa’s drawing to Liz.

“Mmm,
” she mumbled, through a mouthful of toast. “Gosh,
she
is
growing up. That’s amazing. How did it go last night, by the way?”

Looking fragile in her Japanese nightgown, with her hair tied back and pale of makeup, Zanna said, “Fine.”

Liz raised an inviting eyebrow.

“Fine,” repeated Zanna, slapping Liz’s arm. “Stop it, you’re making me blush. He read some poetry and he was charming. Period.”

“Mom, look harder at the drawing,” said Lucy.

I’ll
tell you later,
Zanna mouthed.

Liz smiled and cast a glance at the dragon again. “Yes. It’s very good. Those eyes are fantastic.”

“They’re blue,” said Lucy, scooping up cereal.

“That’s not what I meant,” Liz murmured in reply. “She’s always liked to blob colors around, but I’ve never seen her add so much detail before. That’s really impressive. Look at how she’s used this stunning shade of
green for the outlines of his body. So lifelike.”

“But the eyes are
blue,”
Lucy repeated.

“All right, we know where you’re going,” Zanna tutted, taking a yogurt out of the fridge. She ripped off the lid as if she’d like to do the same to Lucy’s head. “Blue’s her favorite color. We’re not reading anything
into it, OK? Anyway, she’s probably just modeled it on Groyne.”

On the countertop, Gretel
was picking the nuts and seeds out of a piece of whole grain bread. At the mention of Groyne, she coughed a huge smoke bubble and spilled her entire harvest onto the head of a very bemused Bonnington.

Zanna frowned at her but didn’t pursue it. “What gets me is, she hasn’t had that much exposure to dragon imagery, yet here she is producing realistic-looking eyes. I mean, what’s made her draw that
triangular-shaped socket?”

“It’s called a scalene,” said Lucy, and when Zanna and Liz both stared at her she added, “a triangle with no equal sides. We did it at school once. What’s your problem?”

Liz glanced at the drawing again. The eye was wedge-shaped, slanted forward with a tented lid. From the back of it, Alexa had drawn three jagged extensions which helped to exaggerate the intensity
of the stare. “That
is
remarkable,” Liz confessed. “Is it looking at
something, do you think? What’s this shape she’s tried to draw inside it?”

“I don’t know. I wondered about that,” said Zanna.

“I think it’s a fire star,” Lucy said.

Which made Zanna catch her breath and sigh again.

“Well, what do
you
think it is, then?” Lucy said huffily.

“Why don’t you just ask her?” said Arthur, coming
in. He touched Lucy’s shoulder, which mollified her feisty attitude a little. “I heard your description. Very accurate. Very apt. Grockle had characteristic scalene eyes.”

Zanna waved a plastic spoon, midair. The listening dragon on top of the fridge leaned back, wary of flying spots of yogurt. “But she’s never seen Grockle, or any dragon like him.”

“Perhaps she doesn’t need to,” Arthur said,
“now that she’s been given the opportunity to dream one.” He reached for a chair. The ever-helpful Gwillan guided his hand through the extra space.

Zanna put her yogurt aside. “You think she’s drawing G’lant?”

“G’lant?” said Lucy, on it in a flash. (Gretel and the listening dragon peered intently at each other.) “How does she know about G’lant?”

“I told her,” Zanna said.

“What? And she can
see
him?”

“Lucy, that’s enough now,” Liz cut in, calming a potentially explosive situation. “We all know Alexa is a bright little girl. She’s stretching her imagination like children do, that’s all.”

“Alexa is sending her thoughts into the universe and the universe is sending her a dragon back,” said Arthur.

“An ancient dragon?” Lucy pressed. “One with the right
scalene
eyes?”

“He was her father’s
thought form; he’s real to her,” said Arthur.

But for Zanna, that was a line too much. “Please,” she said, clamping her hands to her head. “Can we please stop bringing everything around to David and blue eyes and fire stars and —?”

“Yes, we can,” said Liz, interrupting again, warning
Lucy off with a violet-eyed flare. “If nothing else, I’m tired of this continual bickering. Where is Alexa anyway?”

“Garden,” said Lucy.

“Garden?” Liz repeated, sounding shocked. “But it’s freezing today! Why have you let her go out there?”

“Oh, what? So I’m her nanny now, am I? Thanks!” Pushing her breakfast bowl aside in a huff, Lucy stormed out, making dents in the carpeted stairs.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Liz said. She put the drawing on the table and bracketed her hands as if she’d like to strangle
the girl. “Someone tell me I was never like that when I was her age … please.” She stepped outside to call Alexa.

Zanna laid a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like I was blowing up at you.”

He covered her hand and pressured it slightly. “Alexa has dragons in her soul, you know that.”

“I know,” Zanna said, glancing through the
window. Liz and Alexa were up by
the rockery, hunkering beside the fairy door. “It’s just …”

“What is the dragon doing?” asked Arthur, letting his fingers flutter over the drawing.

Zanna studied it again. “Nothing. It’s just … looking. There’s something in its eye, like a distant reflection.”

“
Is
it a fire star?”

She gave an incredulous laugh. “Arthur? Come on.”

His expression didn’t waver. “Every light is visible somewhere,
remember?”

“She can’t know about such things. Please don’t do this.”

“Alexa has a gift,” he said with authority. “A gift all children possess: the pure, uncluttered ability to create reality in their dreams. What we don’t know yet is how far Alexa can take that ability. When her father used that same talent he was able to distort time and bring probable realities into being.”

“Arthur, stop
it. You’re scaring me now. She’s just a creative little girl, OK?”

“David’s little girl,” he reminded her, “and yours. A seer and a sibyl. Interesting combination, don’t you think?”

On the countertop, Gretel tapped her paws in thought.

Just then the door opened and Alexa ran in to collide with her mother.

“Oh,
look
at your dirty feet,” Zanna scolded her. “What were you doing in the garden
in your slippers?”

“There was a bongle,” said Alexa, gripping Zanna’s skirt and swaying on it. Zanna smiled as she figured out the meaning of the word: Her daughter was strangely clever at inventing onomatopoeic descriptions, in this case the tinkle of a wind chime. “The fairies almost came,” Alexa went on. “But it was too cold for them to play outside today.”