Icefire

  21

  WELCOME TO THE FAMILY

  It was nearly eight o’clock before David arrived back in Wayward Crescent. By then, the seemingly unstoppable rain — that had delayed his return and kept him at the college playing endless games of pinball; and eating a tray of half-cooked french fries in the corner of a dismal, sweltering café; and sheltering in the upstairs half of the library, staring out over the library gardens, beautiful under their phosphorescent lamps — had slowed to light but fickle outbursts, and he was able to dodge the worst of the showers and walk home with only his feet getting soaked.

  On the way, he thought about Zanna and the egg, but mostly he thought about the ice bear, Ragnar. Among the many questions he had not asked Bergstrom was why was Ragnar so upset? What kind of tragedy could drive a bear to pound the ice with such tremendous force that the earth had literally broken and moved? And if Gawain was set in stone on that place, did that mean he had risen again, waiting, perhaps, to be called or awakened? A dragon, alive and flying in the Arctic. The thought made a hollow in David’s chest. But was it excitement he was feeling — or fear?

  With a shake of his shoulders he erased those thoughts and turned his mind to his mission at home. There were lights in every window at number forty-two, but he stopped off first at Mr. Bacon’s, where he left Gadzooks on the bedside table of the neat guest room, then steadied his nerves for the trip next door.

  As he slipped discreetly into the house, he became aware of Liz’s voice. She was upstairs somewhere, reading from his squirrel story, Snigger and the Nutbeast. Lucy had gone to bed early by the sound of it. This was not uncommon on stormy nights. Lucy, like Zanna, was not fond of lightning. Bonnington was also up the stairs, sitting rather glumly at the point where the steps fanned around to the landing. He opened his mouth and made a gentle meow. “Shush,” David whispered, having a peek at the door to his room. A sliver of yellow light told him it was open. He took two fairy-footed steps toward it, but retreated sharply when he heard the light clicking off in the kitchen. Silent as a ghost he was up the stairs again, just in time to avoid being seen by Aunty Gwyneth. Aunty Gwyneth. He must keep calling her that. One slip of the tongue and —

  “Mom, what does witless mean?”

  Lucy’s voice broke into his thoughts, and also into Liz’s reading of the story.

  “It means foolish or ridiculous,” Liz replied quietly. “Why? What made you ask?”

  “Aunty Gwyneth said that Guinevere was witless to love Gawain.”

  In a voice that suggested she was stroking Lucy’s brow, Liz replied, “Then she’s wrong. I think what Aunty Gwyneth fails to understand is that Guinevere admired Gawain for his majesty, but loved him for what he truly stood for. Dragons were defenders of the natural world — just like someone not a million miles from here.”

  “Me, you mean?”

  “Mmm. Every squirrel you save or hedgehog you protect shows how close you are to Gawain. No matter what Aunty Gwyneth says, you keep on believing that. Now, where were we?”

  “Snigger was in the watering can. Mom, did Guinevere really drown?”

  Drown? thought David, sitting down next to Bonnington. He’d never heard this before.

  “It’s a long, long story,” Liz replied. “Aunty Gwyneth has only given you the scraps.”

  “But why haven’t you ever told it to me?”

  Liz paused, then said in a hesitant voice, “I’ve been waiting — for a special time.”

  “Christmas?”

  “No, more special than Christmas. For … the right time of the moon.”

  She’s going to tell her about the baby, thought David. He rested his hand between Bonnington’s ears and the cat gave an appreciative purr.

  “You remember, the moon goes in phases?” said Liz. “Well, in four days’ time, when it’s bright and full, I’ll tell you about Guinevere … and Gwendolen.”

  “And the bear as well?”

  Bear? David raised his head. What had made Lucy mention bears? This reminded him of something he’d meant to ask Bergstrom: How had bears become guardians of the tear in the first place? In all the drama at Rutherford House, it was one of those questions that had somehow escaped.

  “Everything,” said Liz. “It’s the best story ever.”

  “Better than Snigger?”

  “Yes — but don’t tell David I said that.”

  Lucy laughed — and in the same breath, sighed. “I wish David would write another story.”

  “So do I,” muttered Liz. “This must be the fifth time I’ve read this to you. Are we done for the night?”

  “No! The watering can is a good bit.”

  Suddenly David heard a noise in the hall. Peering carefully over the banister, he spied Aunty Gwyneth coming out of his room. She paused a moment and cocked her head, then carried on quietly into the living room.

  David seized his chance. Telling Bonnington to stay well put, he trod the stairs softly and hurried along the hall and into his room. The suitcase was on the bed, on the mattress to be precise. Someone had removed the sheets and blankets and dumped them into a vacant corner. That in itself was weird enough, but it wasn’t the only odd sight to see. The light shade was missing; it lay crumpled on a chair. The resulting glare from the clear, bare bulb was stark and blinding and frighteningly cold. The carpet had been pulled up and the curtains torn down. They lay ripped and scattered across the desk. There was dirt on the floorboards, too, and what looked at first to be a few small stones. David knelt down and rubbed them in his fingers. They crumbled to powder. Building plaster. Where had that come from? He looked around. On the bedside wall, a long strip of wallpaper had been half peeled away and left lolling like a dog’s tongue over the headboard. The plaster underneath had been gouged right out to reveal the rough red brickwork below. David’s senses shuddered and crawled. There was something primal going on here. Something cavelike. He snatched up the case.

  His first thought was to run with it. Get out of there. Skedaddle. But there was little point in handing the case to Liz. She knew about the case; it was the contents that mattered. So David tried again to find the right means to open it. He turned it, banged it with the heel of his fist, twisted the handle, pressed the seams. Nothing. “Got to be a way in,” he muttered, and closed his eyes as he often did to concentrate. Straight away, an image of Gadzooks appeared. And, as usual, he had a message:

  Grace

  David glanced at the wardrobe. “Not now,” he hissed. “I’ll fetch her tomorrow.”

  Gadzooks tried again, this time scratching a zigzagged line beneath the word. He even drew a pair of makeshift ears.

  “I know she’s a listening dragon,” said David. “What’s your point?”

  Gadzooks snorted in frustration and tore the page away, ready to try a different approach. He was just about to write another quick note when something floated over his shoulder and skated to a rest by the tip of his pencil.

  A flower petal.

  David whipped around.

  “Well, well,” said Aunty Gwyneth, “the tenant returns.”

  She was standing in the doorway with her arms loosely folded.

  David dropped the suitcase and stumbled back. “I just came in for some things,” he gabbled. He pulled the desk drawer open. “Floppy disk. Bye.”

  “You will stay,” said Aunty Gwyneth, and her cold eyes froze him into position. Yet somewhere in his mind, as if his brain had split in two, he could still form a picture of Gadzooks. He, too, had turned around, to stare into the eyes of the dragon, Gretel.

  “You and I need to talk,” said Aunty Gwyneth, as if she was inside David’s head, having a walk around, blowing out the cobwebs. “Elizabeth is due to have a baby.”

  There it was, right up front. David somehow managed to feign surprise. “Baby? Good grief. I — who’s the father?”

  “A dragon called Gawain. I think you may have heard of him.”

  “Nmph,” went David, still unable to move and grimacing wildly a
s he struggled to concentrate on Gadzooks. Gretel was wafting her posy of flowers seductively under his twitching snout.

  “In four days’ time, the process will be done. The egg your girl so charitably quickened will hatch, and from it will come … a child. You will not speak of this to anyone. You will keep the secret as the family always have.”

  Through tightly gritted teeth David managed to say, “I’m not one of the family, Gwilanna.”

  Gwilanna smiled and looked at herself in the mirror. A corner cracked. It seemed to amuse her. “You will call me Aunty Gwyneth,” she said. “I like it. It has a quaint ring, don’t you think?” She let out a short but guttural hrrr.

  In that portion of his mind where Gadzooks held sway, David watched Gretel put her posy to her snout. With a waxing of her nostrils, she snorted on the petals. A cloud of what looked like pollen dust wafted through the air toward Gadzooks.

  “Don’t sniff!” David managed to shout.

  Too late. The dragon took a gulp of air and the dust cloud disappeared up his snout. His oval-shaped eyes took a dreadful spin. David, likewise, saw half a dozen lightbulbs swinging for an instant. He shuddered and blinked, then found he was free to move again.

  “Wh-what happened?” he gasped, stepping sideways to steady himself.

  “You came in for something called a disk,” said Aunty Gwyneth.

  David looked at the disk as if it had landed from another planet.

  “Your bag is in the hall. Now you may leave.”

  Confused, David headed for the door.

  “You will return when I call you,” Aunty Gwyneth said, speaking again as he moved behind her. “There will be work to be done around the house.”

  David nodded. “Yes, of course. If there’s anything I can do for Liz, I will.”

  “Good. Welcome to the family, David.”

  “Thank you,” he muttered and stepped into the hall.

  Straightaway, a dragon flew past. It zipped up the hall and landed on the rim of a plant pot. David watched it dig the tip of its tail into the soil, then examine it to see if the plant needed watering. Smiling, he turned away, into the kitchen. “Evening,” he said, to the listening dragon on top of the fridge. The dragon nearly keeled over in shock. The tenant, speaking in broken dragontongue? It took off its spectacles and polished them hard. “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” David said, “can you hear the soccer results on those?” He pinched his earlobes and pulled them out, mimicking the shape of the listener’s ears. The dragon narrowed its violet eyes. It did not appear to welcome this silly remark. “Just wondered,” David said. He picked up an apple and bobbed it in the air. “I’ll be around at Henry’s if anyone wants me.”

  The listening dragon blew a short sharp smoke ring.

  David grinned and blew it a kiss. Dragons. No sense of humor whatsoever. Sometimes they were worse than kids.

  22

  CROSSED WORDS WITH HENRY

  David spent the next few days mostly in the company of Henry Bacon, managing to break nearly all of Henry’s rules. These included using the butter knife in the marmalade, leaving unwashed cups on the drainboard, sitting on the sofa in his outdoor coat, tapping the glass of Henry’s aquarium (causing his guppies to hide inside their wreck), spraying globs of toothpaste on the bathroom mirror … the list went on and on.

  On Thursday morning, David came downstairs and discovered he had broken yet another regulation. As he flopped onto the sofa (definitely not in his outdoor coat), Henry gathered his newspaper across to one side and said, “Have you shaved this morning?”

  “Uh?” David grunted.

  Mr. Bacon clucked like a farmyard hen. “The shadow, boy. Rule number one: Tenant will be smart and presentable at all times. You look like something out of the Stone Age.”

  David ran a hand across his stubble. “It’s Wednesday, day of rest — for chins.”

  Mr. Bacon folded his paper and supported the crossword page on his thigh. “It’s Thursday, you dolt.” He tapped the date. “Been in bed so long you’ve missed the best part of it.”

  David checked his watch. Ten-forty. Early by student standards. He looked around for Gadzooks and spotted the dragon on the occasional table just behind Mr. Bacon’s chair. He was pacing about, looking restless again. He’d been doing this ever since they’d moved out of Liz’s: huffing and puffing and pacing a lot. David waved a hand and wished him good morning.

  Henry immediately slapped his paper. “Will you please stop doing that?”

  “What?” David looked to Gadzooks for guidance. The dragon blew a smoke ring and shrugged.

  “Clearing your throat,” Mr. Bacon complained. “You’ve been glugging like a drain ever since you got here. Suck a lozenge if your throat’s sore. Pack in the bathroom. Cabinet. Top shelf.”

  “I haven’t got a sore throat.”

  “Then stop going uh-hrrr!”

  David was, frankly, peeved about this. He knew his grasp of dragontongue wasn’t that good — even Gadzooks still preferred to communicate via his pad — but to compare him to a drain was a bit unfair. “ ‘Uh-hrrr’ doesn’t sound like a blocked drain, Henry, more like a car on a frosty morning.”

  Mr. Bacon drilled his pen into the arm of his chair. “This is my day off, boy. I trust you’re not going to spend it lounging about my living room? You must have assignments? Or a college to visit? Go and save a squirrel; I’m trying to do the crossword.”

  David yawned and stretched out a leg. “Want any help?”

  Henry gave a contemptuous snort and tapped his pen against his teeth. “Oh, very well. You might try this. Eight down. Rather tricky. Two-word answer. First word nine letters, second word three. GEG.”

  “What?”

  “GEG. That’s the clue.”

  “Sounds like a misprint.”

  “This is The Times, you twerp. Of course it’s not a misprint. It’s a cryptic puzzle to test your faculties. If you possess any faculties, that is — other than a primitive instinct for grunting.”

  David turned to Gadzooks. “Eight down; what do you reckon?”

  Mildly annoyed to have his pondering interrupted, Gadzooks puttered to the end of the table and studied the clue over Henry’s shoulder. With a huff, he produced his pencil and pad and quickly scribbled something down. He showed the result to David.

  “Scrambled egg,” said David.

  Gadzooks allowed himself a hrrr on his claws, crumpled the page, and threw it away (it twinkled briefly and dissolved to dust). He went back to his pacing.

  “Egg?” said Henry, looking confused. “No, boy. You eat next door. That’s the arrangement. Meals confined to the making of drinks and the occasional round of toast, at breakfast.”

  “No, it’s the answer to your clue, Mr. Bacon. GEG. The letters of egg, scrambled up.”

  Mr. Bacon squinted at the puzzle. “Good Lord,” he exclaimed. “You’re right. It fits. Have a congratulatory cough for your trouble.”

  David winked at Gadzooks instead. As he did, the dragon grew very excited. He clapped his paws to keep David’s attention, then whipped out his trusty notepad again. When he turned it, there was a drawing of an egg.

  “Yes, egg. We’ve just ‘cracked’ that,” David joked.

  Gadzooks shook his head, then began rushing back and forth with his drawing. He skidded to a halt and showed the egg again.

  “Fast food?” David guessed, a little confused. Why was Zookie doing this? Over the past few days he’d shown a marked indulgence for dragon charades. Each time it had ended as this was doing now, with David shrugging and Gadzooks slapping a paw to his scaly forehead.

  David let it be. He felt a sneeze coming on and pulled a tissue from his pocket, dislodging a small card onto the carpet. Gadzooks caught the movement and hooded his eyes. He glanced at Henry, who was filling in his puzzle, then fluttered down under the sofa to investigate. A second later he was up in David’s lap, tapping the card and making telephoning gestures.

  “Call Zanna?”

/>   Gadzooks nodded and paddled his feet. “That’s the third time you’ve asked me to do that. Why?”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Mr. Bacon removed his glasses and swung his chair to point at David. In a flash, Gadzooks assumed solid form. “If you don’t cough up that blasted phlegm I shall call out the fire department and have them pump it off your chest! What are you cradling that thing for?”

  “Zookie? He’s my special dragon, Mr. Bacon.”

  The doorbell rang. Muttering something about the “looniness of youth,” Henry threw down his paper and went into the hall.

  Gadzooks resumed his animated form and flagged Zanna’s card under David’s nose.

  “For the last time, no,” David told him firmly.

  Gadzooks discharged a frustrated grizzle and ripped the card into confetti-sized pieces. He flew to the coffee table and kicked a loose grape into a bowl of fruit.

  Meanwhile, in the hall, Henry was talking to Lucy Pennykettle. “Yes, child, what is it?”

  “Can David come out to play?”

  “Gladly. You’ve got a visitor, boy.”

  David jumped up. “Are you coming or staying?”

  Gadzooks emitted a grumbling hrrr and turned away, tapping a petulant foot.

  “Please yourself,” said David and exited the room.

  Gadzooks blew a smoke ring and spiked it with his tail. He was about to adopt his solid pose again when he spotted something wedged between the cushions of the sofa.

  David’s cell phone.

  He twiddled his toes and rolled his eyes to the hall. David had just gone out to meet Lucy, and Henry Bacon was climbing the stairs.

  Gadzooks the dragon saw his chance. He fluttered to the floor, gathered up the bits of Zanna’s card, and flew them over to the cell phone. He turned each one till the writing was uppermost, then carefully started to piece them together.

  23

  A DASH OF HONESTY