The Last Dragon Chronicles #4: The Fire Eternal (8 page)

O
n the face of it, it should have been a simple mission. Groyne’s orders from Gretel were specific and clear: impersonate a Gudrun, spy on the Tam, report back via the listening dragon, stay in place until ordered home. It did seem (and Groyne could have been forgiven for thinking this) that the two most dangerous aspects were done: the risk of discovery in Zanna’s bag and the
invisible flight across the bookshop to the messenger bag. Neither step had been perfectly executed, but all the same here he was, on his way. For the dragons of Wayward Crescent, however, nothing was ever truly simple. But it wasn’t until Tam unlocked his door and threw his bag onto his white leather sofa that Groyne met his first real problem: a cat.

It was no Bonnington (it had the vocal meows
of a kitten), which in fighting terms made it relatively harmless. No match for the fire of a dragon, to be sure. Yet from the moment Tam put his bag down it seemed to know something
other
was in the room. Even in the shape of the narwhal’s tusk, Groyne seemed to be a sitting enticement for it. It came scratching at the buckles and pawing at the straps. When it tried to push its furry head under
the flap, Groyne weighed the risks of singeing its nose and flying away while the human was still confused. Luckily, Tam came back and scooped the cat up, saying, “Hey, little monster, leave that be. You won’t find any Chunky Chunks in there. Come on. Kitchen. Let’s get you fed.”

As soon as they were gone, Groyne was out and flying to the curtain valance.

But almost immediately, the doorbell
rang and Tam let a young woman into the apartment. She was slim with fair hair and very stylishly dressed. Tam hugged her insecurely and kissed her on the cheek, then accompanied her back into the kitchen, chatting.

Groyne lifted his paw and took a sniff of the flower band Gretel had tied around his wrist. It was supposed to help him to translate human-speak, particularly those with accents,
but from a distance the words were still a little vague. So for now he ignored the two humans and just looked around. The room, though large, was sparsely furnished. There seemed to be a lot of white and black. Only two things really caught his eye: the spread of books and papers on the desk by the windows that overlooked the waterfront, and the green of Gudrun on the floor-standing speaker beside
it.

Using his visual ability to zoom, he studied Gudrun hard. She was not an animated dragon, blessed with the icefire, so in a sense that made her more difficult to mimic. All her curves and points and scales were unnatural, but to anything other than a Pennykettle eye a fair approximation of her shape would surely do. Groyne focused his mind, pictured her — and stretched. With a remarkable
all-over kind of
dissolve,
he got her more or less right first time. She was a pretty dragon and there was something disconcerting about having to
hold his tail in that she-dragon way, but for the sake of the mission he supposed it was necessary. Then there was her color. She was green, like most of the Pennykettle dragons, and he was practically white. Thankfully, there was enough common ancestry
in his lineage to flush out his scales with her deep, dark shades. It felt odd once he’d done it, but he was proud of his efforts. He was a better Gudrun than a Gudrun, he thought. All that mattered now was to be able to complete the transformation quickly.

He was still working on that when the door that led to the kitchen swung open and the girl came in again, cuddling the kitten. “Who’s a lovely
Jazzie?” she tooted, almost trying to dance with it. The cat struggled from her arms and went straight for the bag.
“Tch,
what’s with
her
tonight?” To Groyne’s ears the girl sounded rather petulant.

Tam, following in behind her, said, “I had some fresh salmon sandwiches for lunch. I think she must be picking up the scent of them.” He scooped up the bag and draped it on a coat hook.

Jazz gave
a faintly disgruntled
meow
and ambled off around the back of an armchair.

The girl by now had changed direction and was walking her fingers over the desk. “So what’s this you’re working on? Eskimo mythology? Bit hokey for
The National Endeavor,
isn’t it?”

Tam kicked off his shoes and relaxed onto the sofa. The cushions gave way with a breathy
whumph.
“I’m doing a piece on a local author.”

“David Rain,” she read aloud, picking up his notes.

“He’s pretty popular. You must have heard of him?”

The girl fingered her lip. “Is this the guy who disappeared in the Arctic?”

“That’s him. Cult figure. Man of mystery. The ‘Elvis’ of Scrubbley is our Mr. Rain.”

“You don’t think he’s dead?”

“Not sure,” Tam said. He pointed a remote at a plasma TV, mounted on the wall above an old marble fireplace.
It came to life showing some faraway news
footage of a huge ice sheet in western Siberia. In the background, behind a parka-clad reporter, was what looked like the skull and tusk of a mammoth. He muted the sound, but continued watching. “‘Missing, presumed dead’ is the official line, but there’s something not quite right about it. I’ve been trying to gather background info on him, but he’s not
exactly easy to track. He was a student at Scrubbley College before it gained university status. There are records of him there, but beyond that, nothing. Everything about the guy leads to dead ends. Yet here he is with a bestselling book.”

“Two words: publishing hype,” she said, as though the mere act of saying it proved her correct.

“Maybe,” he said, but with a hum that suggested he didn’t
agree. He flipped open his glasses and put them on, staring at the TV more intently now.

The girl stretched a long leg out of a short black pleated skirt. “So how did
you
get on the case?”

“The book,” he said, nodding at an open copy of
White Fire.

She picked it up and studied the cover. “Polar bears?” She gave a disinterested smile.

“There’s a buzz about it, a kind of underground vibe.”

She let it go limp in her hand. “It’s a kids’ book, Tam.”

“Not entirely.”

“Well, the blurb says —”

“I know what it says, Jodie. Adventure story. Gripping tale. Arctic fable. But there’s something else riding between the lines. I’ve read it a couple of times and it does have a strange kind of aftereffect. The whole book is a sort of spiritual metaphor. It seems to be a subtle but powerful plea
calling for people to come together to do something to save the polar ice cap.”

“Hurrah,” she said and snapped the book shut.

“Fair enough, I was cynical, too, before I read it. But whatever you believe, it doesn’t take away from the fact that there is a real phenomenon happening here. There are Web sites springing up about this guy. His star is rising in extraordinary proportions. And this
is just the kind of stuff that’s fueling it.” He pressed a button on the remote, in time to hear a TV reporter saying, “This huge expanse of permafrost was formed in western Siberia over eleven thousand years ago at the end of the last great ice age. Beneath it is a frozen peat bog containing thousands of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more damaging to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
The ice is melting, slowly turning this sub-Arctic wilderness into a boggy terrain of mud flats and lakes, which are throwing up all kinds of prehistoric artifacts. Scientists have described what’s happening here as a ‘tipping point’ — an indicator of an environmental ‘seesaw,’ in which a small regional rise in the Earth’s temperature could be the catalyst for a dramatic and widespread global
effect …”

Tam muted it and set a DVD recording.

“I don’t get this greenhouse
gig,”
said the girl. “I read an article once that said the temperature of the Earth has always fluctuated. It goes through natural cycles. This is just one of them. The end. Hel-lo?”

“It’s the rate of acceleration that matters,” said Tam. “Since the early eighties, global warming has increased by —” Jodie’s sudden
sideways movement made him pause.

“What is
that?”
she said.

From his high point on the valance, Groyne watched her put the book down and pick up Gudrun. At the same time, he felt the fabric underneath him ripple. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jazz at the bottom, climbing it.

Tam flapped a hand at Gudrun and said, “Oh, that’s just something I bought for Millie.”

“Millie? Millie hates dragons,”
said the girl. She turned the label. “The Healing Touch?”

“It’s a gift shop in Scrubbley.”

Her eyebrows invited further explanation.

“David Rain’s partner runs the place. I’m interviewing her there next Wednesday afternoon.”

“And how many more of these do you have to buy before she admits it’s all a big scam?”

“One clay dragon is enough,” he said. “I needed to convince her I was an ordinary
customer.”

“She doesn’t know you’re a journalist?”

“Jodie, you know how I have to work sometimes. I — heck, what was that?”

A cat’s shriek turned both of them toward the far window.

“Jazz?!” Jodie gasped.

The kitten was vertical, clinging for dear life to the top of the curtain.

Tam moved a footstool over and stood on it to reach her. “She’s terrified,” he said, holding her steady while
he unpicked her claws. “Look at her. Her fur’s on end and her eyes are like saucers.” He handed her down and stared at the pelmet. “That’s weird, the paint looks scorched.” He stretched his fingers up and felt around.

Groyne, quickly using his power to turn invisible, leaned back. It was one thing to frazzle a silly cat’s whiskers, quite another to burn a human’s fingers. He
willed Tam away;
but it was Jodie who managed it — with a sigh of impatience.

“Anyway, come on. You’re supposed to be taking me to a late-night movie, remember?”

He glanced at the clock.

“Tam-m? Don’t be mean. I drove over specially.” She stroked Jazz before she said, “I’m going to freshen up,” carefully weighting the sentence to suggest he do the same.

Moments later, the TV was dimmed and the room was empty,
lit only by diffuse reflected hues from riverside apartments across the water.

Groyne hurred in relief and came back to visibility. Too long in the unseen state was a strain. At least now he had the freedom to move around — and spy.

The first thing he did was to fly down to Gudrun and attempt to pick her up. But this was no easy task. She was heavy and slightly awkward to hold. He thought again
about the wisdom of substituting himself. It was an effort, but the logic was reasonably sound. He could stand, unnoticed, in his solid form for
days. To flit about, hiding, might be dangerous — especially with that pesky kitten around.

He lifted Gudrun and staggered to the edge of the speaker. It wasn’t far to the shining wooden floor below, but the boards looked hard and he couldn’t risk breaking
her. There was a cat bed near the sofa that seemed to offer him a safer (and softer) option. Tensing his wings, he flew all-out for it, but tired halfway and only just reached the nearest edge. He fell forward on landing, tipping Gudrun out of his arms, making her clink against the cat’s toy bell. The sound wasn’t loud, but it was distinct. Any dragon would have heard it. Perhaps a cat would,
too. Every scale on Groyne’s spine suddenly stood proud. He glanced at the crack of light beneath the door of the room that Jodie had gone into and clearly heard the sound of kitten claws, scratching.

With some haste, he jumped right out of the basket and pushed it across the floor, turning it to face a shelving unit made of cane. It had space underneath to hide Gudrun completely. Carefully,
he rolled her out and
nudged her under, wincing as her sharp points scraped the boards. Then he tugged the cat bed back into place and flew onto the speaker.
Hrrr!
Safe as clay could be.

But as it happened, all his urgency proved needless. As he posed there, tuning in to every little sound, he heard Jodie say, “Jazz, will you please stop that?” The scratching ceased and there was quiet again.
A few minutes passed. A boat strung with lanterns drifted up the river. The hands of a clock ticked around. Groyne flicked his tail and rolled his eyes sideways. Silence.

Time to spy again.

He softened quickly and flew to Tam’s desk to study the mess of papers there. Although close-together writing, such as that found in books, was hard for most dragons to understand, pictures were not. He saw
examples of the mark of Oomara in textbooks, and a photograph of David Rain he’d never seen before. His eye ridges came together in a frown and he thought about everything he’d heard that night. Tam seemed
a good enough human to him, but he was clearly snooping and trying to fool Zanna. Gretel wasn’t going to like that at all. It was time to report to the listening dragon.

He brought his paws
together and defocused his gaze. The Pennykettle dragons were not telepaths as such, but they could communicate messages back and forth through a listener. The procedure, over such a long distance, required intense concentration. Groyne stared into the rippling waters of the river and opened his mind to picture the kitchen at Wayward Crescent. But just as the images began to flow in, something buzzed
loudly right by his feet and a voice said, “
A message from the dark side there is …
” Panicked, he jumped up and sent a small object skittering off the desk. It skittered again as it hit the floor. Groyne realized to his horror it was a cell phone; he’d watched Lucy use one many times, but had no real idea how they were operated. (Where was Golly when he needed him?!) He flew to it and hurred on
it, hoping his warm
breath would stop its buzzing. It didn’t. He tried punching it. That only made the thing flip open, introducing a square of blue light into the room.

A door creaked. In a flash Groyne was back on the speaker, being Gudrun.

Jodie walked in, putting on a pair of earrings. She picked up the phone and pressed a few buttons. From the corner of his eye, Groyne watched her face.
She didn’t look happy. She turned away, clutching the phone to her chest. Groyne sniffed at his flower band, hoping to hear better the words she was mumbling. What he did pick up made his ear peaks twitch.
Hrrrpenny.