Fire Star

by Chris D'Lacey

  Lucy finished off by writing, Gadzooks is missing you lots, but not enough to shed his fire tear, don’t worry!! He’s making drawings of stars, Gwillan says. Isn’t that funny, you talking about stars and him drawing them? I will go and have a look at his pad when I have done this. I will tickle his scales until he goes tee hee hee like you do when you laugh. Have you told Zanna you do that? He does, Zanna, honest! It’s very embarrassing. He snores, too. I have to run now or I will miss the mail. Oh, I nearly forgot. Your money hasn’t come, and Mom says Gretel is … She paused to chew her pen and think. What could she say, truthfully, about Gretel? Bending her head again, she wrote …pining for Zanna, but we are keeping an eye on her. I think it will be good when you both come home. Please send another letter if you have time. Lots of love from Lucy xxx

  “Now, I need his address,” she said to Gwillan. “Fly upstairs and get the letter, will you?”

  Hrrr, went Gwillan, shaking his head. The letter, he reminded her, was put into a drawer. G’reth or Gruffen might be able to open it, but not a little puffler dragon like him.

  Lucy tapped his snout. “OK, I’ll go.”

  In the Dragon’s Den, she picked up two letters her mother had left by the pottery turntable, then opened the workbench drawer. At first she didn’t notice the large brown envelope underneath the white one, franked with a picture of Apple Tree’s famous award-winning character Kevin the Karaoke Kangaroo. But as she grabbed David’s letter and went to close the drawer, a dragon’s voice rumbled and she hesitated and turned.

  It was Gretel, holding tight to the bars of her cage.

  Lucy went over and crouched beside it. “You know I can’t let you out.”

  Gretel shook her head. Hrrr, she said.

  Lucy frowned. “What do you mean, you know why Gadzooks is unhappy?”

  Gretel rolled her eyes toward the drawer.

  The guard dragon, Gruffen, fluttered back there to investigate. Scotch tape, scissors, and some envelopes, he hurred.

  “I know, I’ve just seen them,” Lucy said.

  Hrrr, said Gretel, meaning she hadn’t seen everything.

  So Lucy went back and had a proper look. And that was how she discovered the stamped and sealed envelope addressed to Dilys Whutton, Apple Tree Publishing. “That’s David’s contract,” she muttered. “Mom’s forgotten to mail it. That’s why he hasn’t got his money yet.”

  Hrr-rrr, Gretel said, crossing her paws behind her back as if she had done the house a great service.

  Lucy said, “Does Zookie know?”

  Gretel raised her shoulders.

  Lucy hummed and dented her chin with a finger. “Perhaps he sensed it and that’s why he can’t properly write things for David?”

  Gretel gave her a wide-eyed look.

  “I still can’t let you out,” said Lucy, feeling an awful pang of guilt as Gretel dropped her wings and shuffled out of sight.

  “I’ve got to hurry,” Lucy told herself, glancing at the clock. And without ever thinking that her mother might have had a very good reason for keeping the contract hidden from the world, she put on her hat and coat and gloves, and hurried to the post office to have her letter weighed. Then she put all the letters in the mailbox.

  And that was when the trouble began.

  5 A SIGN IN THE SKY

  When Ingavar woke, the moon was out and he was coated with a shallow crust of ice. Thoran had already risen and was sitting not far away, staring fast into the dome of the night.

  “It is time,” he said, without turning his head.

  “For what?” said Ingavar. He raised himself clumsily and shook away the snow.

  Thoran began to walk.

  “Hey, hey, where are you going? Come back.” Ingavar’s voice was suddenly taut with a mixture of anxiety and irritation. Thoran had moved off along the route he claimed would lead to Chamberlain, the dump town.

  “Ragnar was never one for stars,” he said. “He was guided by impulse, and that was his downfall. I pray that you and I will be more fortunate.”

  Ingavar ran on ahead and turned. He walloped the ice, forcing the old bear to stop and sit. “Go back, Thoran. We are not together.”

  Thoran looked deep into the younger bear’s eyes. “I am following a sign,” he said. “It seems it may take me into those territories overrun with men. If that is your intention, too, son of Ragnar, you may do well to keep me at your side. Men fear bears. That you know. And what they fear, they sometimes kill. In the dump town, they will be tolerant of us. I am old and easily pitied. But any men with knowledge of the ancient legends might not be so generous to a bear with the mark of Oomara in his head.”

  At this, Ingavar started wildly. He swept away, looking for a mirror, for water. The lying, sniveling, cheating raven had said that none but the girl would see the mark!

  Thoran continued on his way. “Do not vex yourself,” he called. “The scars are only clear to those, like me, who can read them in your auma.”

  Auma? Ingavar had heard this word, but knew nothing whatsoever of its meaning. Once again he loped on ahead, shuffling backward to make sure Thoran had to face him. “You talk in many riddles, old bear.”

  “The path to wisdom is not always straight,” said Thoran.

  Ingavar blew a cloud of vapor. “What is auma?”

  “Your spirit; the fire inside you.”

  Ingavar narrowed his eyes in confusion. He had never been one for talk of spirits. What he couldn’t hit, he was wary of. “You said you were following a sign. What did you mean by that?”

  Without breaking the rhythm of his stride Thoran said, “Look up, Nanuk, what do you see?”

  Ingavar glanced at the widely spaced dots. “Stars,” he grunted.

  “Can you read them? Do you use them to find your way?”

  Ingavar snorted low between his paws.

  “No. A true son of Ragnar, then?”

  “And what are you? A Teller’s cub? A dainty son of Lorel?”

  Thoran, if he was angered by this, did not growl or stoop to show it. Instead he said chillingly, “One day, Ingavar, you will know. Look between the three stars that point down like a snout and the cluster just to the right of them. What do you see?”

  Frustrated, Ingavar turned and squinted. Had no one ever told this waddling fool that bears used their noses, not their eyes, for distance? Nonetheless, he singled out a pulsing, yellow star.

  “Good,” said Thoran. “That is the sign. Watch it carefully. Let its auma join with yours.”

  “It has fire?” asked Ingavar, who had never thought that stars were anything more than the eyes of his ancestors watching over him.

  “It is fire,” Thoran replied. “All of them are. But the one that I am following is special. It has not appeared for many, many turns of the ice.”

  Curious now, Ingavar walked a few paces ahead as if he would like to put out his tongue and swallow the star up whole, like a snowflake. “How do you know this? Are you a Teller?”

  “Of a kind,” said Thoran.

  More riddles. Ingavar shook his fur. “Then what does this fire star mean for us?”

  Thoran slowed down and padded to a halt, raising his gaze in reverence to the sky. “You and I and all that we are, came from the center of these lights, Nanuk.” And while Ingavar continued to stare and wonder, Thoran let his auma join with the fire star. His claws reached deep into the pure white ice as if he was searching for a long-forgotten memory. Into his mind came thoughts of an island. An island far away where a giant creature lay sleeping in stone. “Gawain,” he whispered alone to the sky. And it may have been a trick of the changing moonlight, but his forehead was suddenly ablaze with fire, and three deep scars that men and bears called the mark of Oomara were alive, then gone, in the blink of the night.

  6 JOINING DOTS

  You did what?” Liz lowered her shopping bags and threw her daughter such a look of deep shock that Lucy felt compelled to pull a tissue from her sleeve and blow her nose to avoid eye contact.
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br />   “It was in your drawer — with a stamp on and everything.”

  “Yes, and that’s where it should have stayed.”

  “But you promised you would mail it and I thought you had. Instead, you hid it and you didn’t even tell me. That’s sneaky, Mom. David will go mad.”

  Liz sank into a kitchen chair, rubbing her brow. “Something wasn’t right about that contract, Lucy. It was tainted with Gwilanna’s magics, I’m sure of it.”

  Lucy settled nervously against the workbench. She thought back to the day that David had signed the agreement with his publisher, then left to go to the Arctic. The ink in his signature had run down the page, which was odd because the pen he’d used had not been “globby.” The ink had run to form a strange kind of sign. This was what Lucy queried now: “Just because of that dribbly pen mark?”

  Bonnington leaped onto Liz’s lap. She stroked him idly and quietly said, “Yes.”

  On the fridge top, the listening dragon stirred. Within seconds, it had transmitted the information around the house. Dragon scales everywhere nervously rattled.

  “I did intend to mail it, but I changed my mind. I was planning to talk it through with David when he came home. It would have been easy for his publishers to draw up a copy contract. Now, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  “It’s just a piece of paper,” Lucy protested.

  Liz set her gaze into the middle distance and shook her head slowly, deep in thought. “No, I think that mark’s significant. Gwilanna’s using it to set something evil in motion, something to do with David’s writing, perhaps. Mailing the contract probably represented the final commitment she needed for her spell.”

  “But …?”

  “Shush, it’s all right.” Liz clutched her hand. “Whatever it is, we’ll deal with it. But we should be on our guard. And David needs to be alerted now.”

  Lucy pushed the cordless phone across the table.

  “Not just yet. Go and call Gadzooks. I want to talk to him. He seemed ruffled this morning. I want to know why.”

  Lucy turned on her heels, then back again. “What about Zanna? She’s got that mark. Is she going to turn into an evil sibyl?”

  “I don’t know,” said Liz, hugging Bonnington to her. “Go and bring Gadzooks — and tell Gruffen to keep a close eye on Gretel.”

  Meanwhile, on the windowsill in David’s room, G’reth and Gadzooks were engaged in another important conversation — about the origins of the universe. G’reth, by virtue of his gift of granting wishes, had vast experience in the workings of the universe — but as to its origins, there he was stumped. He felt sure that the universe had not always been in being and therefore something had created it. But what?

  Gadzooks tapped his pencil against his pad. In his opinion, he said, the answer to the mystery was in the stars.

  G’reth raised an eye ridge and glanced into the garden. The sky was barely gray. No stars were visible yet. Why did Gadzooks want to know this, he queried?

  The writing dragon chewed on his pencil, making another score in its end. The David was thinking about it, he said.

  At that moment, Lucy walked in and asked Gadzooks to come to the kitchen.

  Seeming grateful for the chance to cease his pondering, Gadzooks laid his pad and pencil on the sill and flew straightaway to Lucy’s shoulder.

  G’reth blew a smoke ring and rattled his scales. He’d been hoping to assess his brother dragon’s thoughts on this worrying business concerning Gwilanna, but for now the moment was gone. He drummed his claws and looked along the sill. His gaze alighted on the pencil and pad. He had always been entranced by this simple device of writing things down and having them happen. Curious to know just how it worked, he pottered over and peered at the pad. He picked it up and let it fall open. The pages fluttered and came to rest at a relatively simple pattern of stars. G’reth couldn’t help it; he picked up the pencil. He turned the pad left. He turned it right. He looked at its reflection in the windowpane. Then he did something rather odd. He put the pencil onto the pad and began to join the dots in their mirror image. And who knows what force was guiding his paw, but as a shape began to emerge, so G’reth came to have the sudden understanding that the universe was born from the very same place that Gadzooks received his inspiration. In other words, the force which created words and matter was one and the same.

  What’s more, as he continued to draw, he realized with some degree of surprise that his work was not done. Before the David had traveled north, he, G’reth, had granted a wish that his master should learn the secret of the fire tear of Gawain, the last true dragon to inhabit the Earth. David had made a great discovery — about the relationship of ice to fire. But it was not the whole story, just a fragment of it. G’reth could see that now. For the David to understand the secret in full, he needed to step back further in time and learn where the dragon’s fire had come from. In essence, that was simply answered: Gawain’s fire had originated at the center of the Earth. But where had the Earth itself come from? And how had the fire been born at its center? That was the real mystery.

  Snap! G’reth gave a startled hurr and looked down anxiously at the pad. His concentration had been so deep that the pencil tip had broken beneath the weight of the pressure he’d applied to it. Yet to his surprise, the joined up star dots had formed a message. Not much of a message, it had to be said. But an interesting one. Just a single letter:

  G

  7 AT THE WATER’S EDGE

  Lights. Not high in the sky, but lower down, twinkling on the far horizon. Thoran slowed to a halt and tipped his glistening nose toward them. “That is the dump town, the place that men call Chamberlain,” he said.

  Ingavar drew up close alongside, testing the strength of the ice underfoot. Since dawn, their pursuit of the pulsing yellow star — which Thoran claimed he could sense in daylight — had been hampered by stretches of open water, steadily increasing in number and size. Several times they had had to change course, so that Ingavar would not need to swim between floes. Now, even that was not an option. The ice was fragile here. With one stout lunge this loose foundation would splinter and crack and they would sink to their necks in ice-cold water. Ingavar’s shoulder could not take that.

  “What do we do?” he asked, his voice tarred deep with pain and frustration.

  “We wait for the sea to sleep,” said Thoran.

  Ingavar pushed his face into the wind. It was bitterly cold, so cold that his snorts of vaporizing breath were turning to frost as they blew back against his thinning snout. The description of the forthcoming freeze amused him, but the sight of so much water did not. All he could see between himself and the lights that marked the edge of the land were several miles of undulating peaks, dotted with chunks of unfused ice. “It might be days,” he said, thumping the surface again to be sure.

  “Then why waste your energy pushing and prodding like an ignorant cub? Everything has its time, Nanuk. The stars travel slowly. So will we.”

  Stars. To the amber eye of the ordinary bear they were hidden in the reddening dusk of nightfall and the knotted clouds lying dormant overhead. Almost a day had passed since Thoran had spoken of following a “sign.” Ingavar had spent a large portion of that time walking alone and pondering this. Was it simply coincidence that he should be seeking out the tooth of Ragnar when there was a new star above the dump town? No, not a new star, a returning star, if the old Teller was to be believed. Ingavar growled and blew away a sigh. He scraped the ice into a ridge below his paw, feeling its wet bite soak around his claws. His mind had been dizzy with fragments of myth and legend all day. The ice, its texture, its coldness, its ubiquity was all that was keeping his sanity intact. The same could not be said of his patience. He trod the mound flat and swung his body sideways, limping back and forth along the jagged waterline, never taking his gaze off the lights.

  Thoran, watching him, stretched out his paws and allowed his body to sink to the ice. “Your injury is growing worse,” he said. “And
still you are anxious to walk, not rest.” He yawned and looked across the water at Chamberlain. “For every light you see, there are at least four men. It must take a quest of great importance to risk surrounding yourself with them.”

  Ingavar breathed in, tightening his jaw. Thus far on their journey, Thoran had not pressed him for information regarding his purpose in Chamberlain. To hear it voiced now, when they might be stranded for a number of days with only words and the wind for company, made Ingavar very uneasy. The old bear had cleverness wrapped around his tongue. No doubt he would have some reproving words to say about a settlement made with a changeling raven. But that trade was hidden in Ingavar’s heart, as sealed as a mother bear in her den. He dared not let it out, nor, despite Thoran’s kindness through the blizzard, drag him into potential danger. So, with a false air of severity, he said, “When we reach the town, we go our own ways.”

  Thoran responded with a courteous nod. “Do you know what they will do to you, when they catch you?”

  The young bear stared ahead in silence.

  “They will shoot you down again, Nanuk. This time with a potion to make you sleep. Then they will cage you and ridicule you. If fortune is with you, they will use their machines to fly you back to beyond where we met. Or they may cage you for the rest of your days. Tell me, son of Ragnar, where would be the honor in that?”

  The wind coursed through Ingavar’s fur. He flexed his shoulder so the cream hairs rippled. “I will be stronger in the town,” he said.

  “You speak like a bear with vengeance in his heart.”

  “All bears have a score to settle with men.”

  “So you know the legend of Oomara?” said Thoran.

  But Ingavar fell into a brooding silence and Thoran decided he would press him no further. “Rest,” he said. “Before morning, the fire star will guide us across the water.”

  “How?” Ingavar demanded grumpily.

  But by then, Thoran was asleep once more.