Fire Star

  “That’s going to please Dilys Whutton when she calls.”

  “You can still write, David, just maybe not as animatedly without him. It sounds like your novel is taking shape anyway.”

  “It was — or would have been — had I not destroyed it.”

  “Destroyed it? Whatever for?”

  “Gwilanna was in it. You might as well know that Zanna and I argued about it and she made me erase it from Bergstrom’s laptop — just before she ended our relationship.”

  “Oh, David.”

  “It gets worse,” he said. “Remember my polar bear tooth? The charm I was given to protect me against Gwilanna’s magics?”

  “Yes.”

  “I lost it during the skirmish in Chamberlain. I don’t know what happened, but it somehow came loose. In my story, I wrote that Zanna would somehow be involved in its theft and that Gwilanna was sending a bear to kill me, to make sure of it.”

  “Then I’m very glad you’re here in Scrubbley,” Liz said.

  David put Gadzooks into her hands. “I’m going to bed. I’ll talk to Henry about stars and stuff in the morning, see if it throws up any new leads. Don’t look so frightened. I ditched the story, honestly. It can’t come true.”

  “No,” she said, and brushed his arm lightly as he left the room.

  She waited for his door to close, then raised her gaze to the listener on the fridge. “When he goes to Henry’s, call a meeting. I want to see all the special dragons in the den.”

  Hrrr? asked Gadzooks, meaning “why?”

  A slight tear ran down Elizabeth’s cheek, making Gadzooks rattle every scale he had. The auma of a human burned brightly in their tears, just as much as it ever did in a dragon. “We have to protect him,” she whispered closely. “His writing, once created, can’t be destroyed. You remember it, don’t you, every word?”

  Gadzooks gulped. Sometimes a special dragon’s role was hard.

  “I want you and the others to get together and do anything you can to keep him safe,” said Liz.

  “Anything?” hurred Gretel, flying onto Liz’s shoulder.

  “Anything,” said Liz. And she took a pair of scissors from the table drawer and cut off a lock of her wavy red hair. She gave it to Gretel. “Absolutely anything.”

  24 INGAVAR WAKES

  TEGA! ZANNA! GET BACK HERE! NOW!” Russ was calling out a warning from the helicopter cabin, pointing urgently toward the oncoming bears. He fired the engines, rupturing the stillness. As the blades began to whirr and shred the air once more, the raven took off and circled low. Zanna laughed and opened her arms, welcoming the spiraling mist of snowflakes the bird was magically creating with its flight.

  “Aye-yee,” wailed Tootega, who could take no more. He threw the tooth at her (it bounced onto the ice), then ran for the safety of the waiting aircraft.

  “ZANNA!” Russ called out again.

  But the girl ignored him, or possibly couldn’t hear him, for she was kneeling down now, removing her glove. She picked up the tooth and squeezed it tightly in the center of her palm. Instantly, her head jerked back and she cried out to the shifting sky. The auma of countless generations of bears spread through her clenched fist and up along her veins. In her ears a man was shouting and a raven was screeching and somewhere on the none-too-distant horizon, paws were thudding against frozen water. But all that Zanna saw were pictures in her mind, of a time when bears and men had warred, when the Inuk, Oomara, and the pack leader, Ragnar, had both been consumed in a blaze of white fire, until … “David,” she whispered, falling forward. “David, I know what has to happen. Forgive me.” And though her conscious mind queried the wisdom of her actions, she could not seem to prevent herself from placing Ragnar’s long-lost tooth under the tongue of his latter-day descendant.

  Immediately, the tooth found a life of its own and rooted itself in Ingavar’s jaw.

  With a surge of power, he woke and rose.

  “God in heaven,” breathed Russ, skidding to a halt. He had come to haul Zanna away. Now he found himself unarmed, within ten yards of a bear, and caught in the midst of a freak snowstorm.

  The bear, still groggy, steadied himself and focused his gaze into a menacing squint. A long low hiss issued out of his throat, drowned by the irritating hum of machinery. He shook his head freely and stamped both forepaws, blowing the heat from his freshly worked lungs in wisps of fast-disappearing steam.

  “Zanna, can you hear me?” Russ said evenly. No response. She was on her side, curled up, not moving, just behind the ice bear’s massive bulk. He took a pace back, praying that the girl was simply playing dead.

  With a yap more akin to a dog than a bear, Ingavar dashed his paw against the ice, tilling the surface with strands of his fur. Taking heed of the warning, Russ backed off farther, slowly removing his cowboy hat. He waved it like a stick, raising glints of curiosity in the bear’s eyes, then growled the word “fetch” as he tossed it aside.

  Ingavar looked disdainfully at it.

  “That hat cost me sixty bucks,” Russ said. “You could at least trample it. Move or die, you crazy lump.”

  Ingavar stood his ground and scented. The north wind spoke of bears approaching. They were close. Very close. One of them he recognized. An old male. Thoran.

  A shot rang out. Ingavar yowled and swayed his head in anger. He had not been hit, but the sound of the bullet had scorched his eardrum, sharply reminding him of all that he had been through. He roared and swung a paw at the man in front of him, but he still did not move away from Zanna.

  Russ was jumping back before the paw came out and was never in danger of being mauled. He could not believe Tootega had missed, and this irked him for a moment till the second shot exploded by the ice bear’s paw, spraying its chest with dirt and snow. Then he saw Tootega’s logic. Killing the animal outright might mean it falling across Zanna’s body. And even if the half-ton weight didn’t crush her, she would be badly pinned down. One man could not move a large bear alone, especially when three others were fast approaching.

  So in desperation Russ retaliated in kind, leaping forward, screaming, gesturing rage. He’d heard stories of hunters throwing punches at bears, and he was drawing back his fist to do just that when his reach was shortened by a squealing tangle of feathers and claws. The raven was in his face. The bird squawked and rained down a multitude of wingbeats, its talons seeking flesh, its beak tugging hair. Russ crossed his forearms to protect his eyes, and never did know what happened next. But he felt the ground shudder and the north wind blow and he fell back helpless, praying for a miracle.

  It came, but not in the way he had hoped.

  Suddenly, all the clamor died down and the raven, for reasons only it knew, flew away to become a shrinking thunder cloud in the sky. Russ scrambled to his feet and hurried through the whiteout toward the droning helicopter.

  There he found Tootega, seated, in shock, staring back at the place where the bear had been. The rifle had slipped through his trembling hands and was lying inert on the floor of the cabin. Russ shook the Inuk’s knee but he did not move. Around the seat was a strong smell of urine.

  “I’ll be back,” Russ panted, and grabbed the gun. “Zanna!” he called out. “Zanna! Zanna!”

  He went on like that for the next five minutes, sweeping back and forth across the tundra, searching for any sign of the girl.

  All he found was a favorite item of her clothing: a rainbow-colored bobble hat. It was wet with snow and trodden hard into a paw print amongst the sedge.

  One soggy woolen hat.

  Zanna, and the bears that had come for her, were gone.

  25 THE PICTURE ON THE WALL

  Bears!” squawked Gwilanna as she landed with a flap inside the mouth of the cave, scattering snow and loose earth ahead of her.

  Lucy, her knees drawn up to her chin, gave a little start as the large black raven clattered in, crashing through the mouth-shaped window of light which looked out onto the frozen ocean. Her hand closed around a small, s
harp rock. It felt warm against her skin. The whole cave did. She had never stopped thanking Gawain for that. His body, though petrified in this island and robbed of its rightful dragon fire, nevertheless radiated something of his warmth. She gritted her teeth, playing the rock through her fragile fingers. How many times had she prayed to the dragon to give her the courage to draw warm blood from Gwilanna’s head? One good throw or blow might do it. But how would she cope in the aftermath? Alone. Lost. Starving. A killer. And, of course, she might well miss….

  “I hate bears!” Gwilanna squawked again, preferring to strut around in circles for a moment rather than change into her sibyl form. “Interfering, paddle-pawed lumps. They’re beginning to make me just a little bit peeved.”

  “Well, I like them,” Lucy snapped defiantly, scratching a line into the smoke-charred wall to remind herself of how many days she’d been here. Three so far. Three too many. She threw a twig onto the small fire guttering by her feet, her best source of light this deep into the cave. “What have they done to you?”

  “He came, with his Teller,” said Gwilanna, treading her claws in a pathetic little gesture of birdbrained fury.

  “Who?” asked Lucy, sensing a possible glimmer of hope. Every day, she prayed for a rescuer to come. Her mother. Her dragons. Her hero, David.

  “Thoran,” said her aunt, at last growing into her human features. “That irritating lump of shaggy gristle they deign to call a shaman.”

  Lucy sighed and gripped the rock hard, tempted to throw it out of sheer frustration. Thoran? Who was Thoran? And why did Gwilanna always have to speak as if people were supposed to read her mind? “I don’t care what happened,” she said in a huff. Though of course she did. For in this lonely hermitagelike existence the only comforts she received were the warmth from Gawain, the glistening beauty of the Arctic ice (and at night, the iridescent lights in the sky), and these useless, if irritating, dialogues with the sibyl. At least they carried news of the world outside, and reminded her she still had a tongue to exercise. One day, she might need to scream for help.

  “Be silent,” said Gwilanna, “I need to think.” She ripped up a handful of the mossy black weeds that grew limply out of the cracks in the rockface, pushed the stalks roughly into her mouth, and chewed them till saliva was trickling down her chin. Lucy sank her head between her knees in disgust. Weeds, berries, all manner of wild-growing mushrooms (peeled), stale birds’ eggs, and saltless fish formed her daily diet now. What she wouldn’t give for a chicken drumstick or one of her mother’s custard tarts.

  “They are trying to take the tooth back,” said Gwilanna, still muttering at Lucy as if she were a mirror.

  This did cause Lucy to raise her head. “You mean the island?” she asked, pointing upward.

  The sibyl’s response was unusually calm. Instead of the raging fizzle of anger that typically surfaced when Lucy asked a question, Gwilanna spoke in a measured hiss. “In a way, yes. The girl has fallen under their spell and that conniving Ingavar has tried to double-cross me. I had to save his woolly-haired bones again to keep him from taking the tooth to his grave. They think by planting it in his jaw that I will not be able to have it. Arrogant, squinty-eyed, waddling fools. When the fire star comes, he will carry the charm here and then he will die. The dragon will swat him like the insect that he is. It will spare me the need to do it myself.”

  Lucy gave out another aggravated sigh. She was, by now, lost as to which tooth was which and would have given up her questions entirely had it not been for the mention of a “girl.” “Do you mean Zanna?”

  Gwilanna gave a snort of deep contempt.

  Lucy knew then she had guessed this correctly. She sat up, shouting, “What have you done to her?”

  “Nothing, you fool. The bears took her.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Don’t screech, child. Your squeaky little voice is enough to make the dragon shed every scale he’s got!”

  On cue, there came a rumble from deep within the mountain and Lucy felt the bedrock beneath her shudder. A silt of dust and very fine grit sieved its way through the fissures in the cave roof, most of it falling into her hair. “What happened?” she insisted, shaking it out.

  Gwilanna waved an idle hand. “She picked up the tooth your tenant was given to protect him against … well, against me — and seemed to have a reaction to it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She fell over!”

  “Is she —?” Lucy was shaking so much she could not bring herself to say it.

  “Dead?” said her aunt. “It wouldn’t be much of a loss, but I doubt it. No, they carried her away, under cover of my storm!”

  “B-but,” Lucy spluttered, “that doesn’t happen. Bears don’t take humans away.”

  “Hmph,” went Gwilanna and rubbed her fingers over the aged wall of the cave. The surface cleared as if a window had been wiped. There, etched out, in what appeared to be charcoal, or the burnt end of a stick, was a tableau of primitive drawings.

  Lucy picked up a firestick and went to look. “That’s a bear,” she said, pointing to a reasonable attempt at one. Faced by the flickering orange flame, the figures appeared to be almost dancing.

  “Yes,” said Gwilanna, with her usual intolerance. “And the erect figures are people, Inuit people, and this is the sun, and this is the moon, and this is your great, great next of kin.”

  Lucy looked at the picture of a human figure, a woman (she could tell by the shape of her body and the long flowing hair) being hailed as some sort of goddess or spirit. “Who is she?” she asked.

  Gwilanna sighed. “Has your mother taught you nothing?”

  Lucy looked again. “Is it Guinevere?” she gulped.

  “NO!” screeched Gwilanna, her voice echoing through the intestines of the mountain. More silt fell. The rocks grumbled again. The small fire flickered brightly and the flames fell flat. “Of course it’s not Guinevere. She disappeared with the first white bear.”

  This was news to Lucy, but she didn’t interrupt.

  “She was my daughter,” Gwilanna said bitterly, stabbing her finger at the drawings again. And Lucy was shocked to witness what appeared to be a pang of bereavement in her aunt. “I created her,” the sibyl rattled on, “from Guinevere’s hair and the scale of Gawain and the clay of the Earth and the blood of my womb. I delivered her into this world and she …”

  But she would not say any more than that. She swept her hand across the wall again, returning it to its dark, damp state. “Eat,” she said. “You need to stay strong and your hair must continue to change and grow.” And taking another handful of weeds, she stalked away to the furs in the corner, rolled herself into them, and closed her eyes.

  Lucy pulled at the knot at the back of her head and let her hair fall loosely about her shoulders. In the short time she had been here it had grown half the length of her ear and wasn’t stopping. It was nowhere near as long as the woman’s in the picture, but by February, when the fire star came, she was sure it would be. “I know who she is now,” she said in a whisper. “She ran away, didn’t she? To live with the bears.” And Lucy finally understood why she felt such affinity for their kind, and why a bear had come to speak to her in person during the heavy snowfall in Scrubbley. They revered her distant ancestor. The redhaired child of legend: Gwendolen.

  26 A CURIOUS VOID

  Dust,” said Henry Bacon, flicking some off his dining room table, then spraying the wood liberally with furniture polish and buffing it up with a soft yellow cloth.

  “Dust?” David repeated doubtfully.

  “That’s where we came from. Cosmic stardust. All a bit beyond your simple brain. Takes more than the tumbleweed and windmills in your head to understand the origins of the universe, boy. Stand up, need to polish that chair.”

  David pushed himself out of his seat and moved to another on the far side of the table. “Henry,” he asked rather tentatively, “do you have to wear an apron and disposable plastic gloves while you’
re cleaning? You’re doing household duties, not forensic science.”

  Henry gave him a baleful look. “Paid sixty dollars for these pants, boy. Don’t want them ruined by a lacquered finish.” He gave the spray can a truculent squeeze. “If you took a bit more pride in your appearance you’d be half the man that I am, and that’s saying something.”

  David glanced down at his pale blue jeans. Dare he confess that either leg of the factory-ripped denim was probably worth more than Henry’s casual slacks? Maybe not. “OK, where did the stars themselves come from? What was there before we had stars?”

  “A rather curious void,” said Henry. “A vacuum containing no light or sound or time or space or matter. Have you spilled tomato soup on this chairback?”

  “No,” David pouted. “I put food in my mouth, not over my shoulder. Besides, I haven’t eaten here for weeks.”

  This only made Henry wince with suspicion, as though the culprit could not possibly be him and therefore the stain had been in place for weeks. He exchanged his duster for a dampened cloth and cleaned the chair thoroughly, legs as well.

  “A void,” David repeated thoughtfully. “An emptiness. A nothing. How can all this grow from nothing?” He waved his hands to indicate the “this.” “When you open a vacuum flask you don’t see stars coming tumbling out. It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Henry gave an impatient sigh. “It’s creation, boy. A miracle of design. It takes vast amounts of energy to make something out of nothing.”

  David wiggled his nose at that. “At school, in physics, they taught us you can’t make something out of nothing.”

  “Quite. And therein lies the cosmic riddle. Only the creator knows how it happened.”

  “God, you mean?”

  “Of course I mean God! It wasn’t a caveman rubbing two sticks together, was it?”

  “You believe in him, then?”

  “I suppose you don’t?”

  David held his tongue. He didn’t care to enter a religious debate, not with a stuffy old stick like Henry. But to tease him lightly he tried another angle: “Liz says a dragon called Godith made the world.”