Fire Star

by Chris D'Lacey

  “Come away,” she said, and gathered him to her.

  Hrr-ruur, he protested, and struggled to go back.

  Hrrr, Liz sang, sending him gently to sleep in her hands. She laid him on the workbench near to Gretel. Even her wings were shaking lightly. Her eyes kept rolling toward the window. Outside now, all seemed calm.

  Lucy drew up to the window and stared into the night. “Mom, what happened?”

  Still numb with shock, Liz sank into her chair. “He’s a wishing dragon, connected to the universe. He can move, theoretically, through time and space.”

  “Mom, something took him. He didn’t want to go!”

  Liz sighed and tapped her fingertips together in thought.

  “Ask her,” snapped Lucy, stamping toward Gretel.

  “Lucy, stop it. This is none of Gretel’s doing.”

  “But she escaped!”

  “She was released. There’s a big difference. Something is trying to unsettle us. But I don’t know why and I don’t know what. I’m not entirely sure it’s malevolent, even.”

  “M —? What?” queried Lucy.

  “Evil. Wicked. I’m not convinced it’s bad. If it were, it could have done a lot more damage.”

  “But we nearly had a fire! And G’reth’s been stolen! How are we going to get him back?”

  Liz dropped her hands against her thighs. “Whatever force took G’reth is impossible for us to fight.”

  “Well, at least put Gretel back into her cage!”

  The potions dragon snorted and ground her teeth. All this shouting was hurting her head. She needed lavender, to clear the ache. With a snap of her wings, she flew across the room to a potpourri sachet and split it wide open, spilling dried flowers everywhere.

  “She’s as confused as we are,” said Liz. “Besides, whatever set her free could just as easily do so again. Gretel, I was wrong to cage you. Will you help us to understand what’s going on?”

  Hrrr, she snorted grudgingly, meaning she would.

  “Bring the phone,” said Liz. “Now I will talk to David.”

  Lucy, though unhappy with her mother’s decision, nevertheless ran for the cordless handset. She was about to press the TALK button to bring it into life when she paused, hearing movement in the house next door.

  Liz looked at the calendar on the wall above the bench. “Sounds like Henry, back a day early.”

  Lucy gave an indifferent grunt. But Liz was secretly pleased to have him back. Henry Bacon, while not the most ideal neighbor, did represent some degree of normality.

  Lucy hit a memory button on the phone. “It’s ringing.” She gave it to her mother, then placed herself close so she could hear every word.

  A charming Scandinavian accent spoke back: Hello, you have reached the office of Dr. Anders Bergstrom at the Polar Research Base, Manitoba, Canada. There is no one to take your call right now. Please leave a message after the tone.

  Beep.

  “Dr. Bergstrom, this is Elizabeth Pennykettle, calling from America with a message for David.”

  “An urgent message,” Lucy whispered.

  Liz flapped her quiet. “Could you ask him to call me back as soon as he can. It’s to do with his publishers. Thank you. Good-bye.”

  “His publishers?”

  “I don’t want to alarm him, Luce — or have other people knowing our business.”

  “S’pose not,” she muttered, distracted by the sound of Gadzooks waking up. “Can’t we send a message from him?”

  “Yes,” Liz agreed, “that’s a good idea. He can reach David quickly on a deeper level.” She put out her hand. Gadzooks fluttered onto it. “Can you do that?” she said, running her finger down his ear. “I know we shouldn’t use you as a postal service, but this is important.”

  Hrrr, said Gadzooks.

  “Quite,” said Liz. She found a piece of paper and a lightweight brush. “I want you to send him this.” And she drew as faithfully as she could remember the shape of the lines Gwilanna had made on the publisher’s contract, the same shape the sibyl had scratched on Zanna’s arm, the shape David called “the mark of Oomara.”

  The writing dragon twisted his snout and shivered.

  “It means something to you, doesn’t it?” Liz said.

  It’s in the David’s story, Gadzooks confirmed.

  “His story?” gasped Lucy.

  Liz blinked in thought. “Then he either knew of this mark already or Gwilanna is pricking his subconscious mind with it. Zookie, go and bring your pad.”

  As he zipped away, Liz heard the flick of a switch next door. “That’s definitely Henry. Go and invite him for a cup of tea.”

  “Now?” said Lucy.

  Hrrr? went Gretel, in agreement with the girl. She didn’t want to pretend she was a lump of clay at such a disturbing time as this.

  But Liz insisted. “It’s a neighborly thing to do. And it will hopefully take our minds off G’reth.”

  Lucy sighed heavily and clumped downstairs. She was halfway through the door when Gadzooks came past her on his way back to the den. She thought nothing of it and continued on her way. If she had known that he had gone whizzing back to report that his pad and pencil had both been stolen, she would have hung around, no doubt. But instead she went to Henry’s and rang the bell. Its trill reached far into the pitch-black house. That was odd, she thought. Why hadn’t Henry put the hall light on? Stranger still, why was the door ajar? She slipped inside. The lounge was lit by nothing but the deep blue glow of the fish tank. “Mr. Bacon, are you there?”

  “About time,” a harsh voice grated.

  A chair swiveled around. In it was a woman in a two-piece suit.

  “You!” cried Lucy.

  “Yes, me,” said the woman. “I’ve been expecting you, child.”

  14 ZANNA IN DANGER

  With a quick snap-snap, Albert cocked the rifle and opened the door of the trading post. A cloud of snowflakes billowed in, blowing across the stained wet boards.

  “Wait!” cried David, grabbing his arm. “You’re not going to shoot it?”

  “Son, that’s a polar bear denting your truck. He’s not here to trade, he steals for a living. I don’t want him near my store. Now take your hand off my arm and stay outta the way.” He stepped onto the landing of the outer stairs shouting, “Hey! Vamoose!” A bullet cracked the air. David, watching from the safety of the window, saw the bear leap back unharmed.

  “What’s happening?” asked Zanna, rushing to his side.

  “There’s a bear,” he whispered.

  “Oh my God. Where?”

  “Behind the pickup.”

  Zanna skipped sideways to the next window along. “Where? I can’t see him.”

  “Come on out!” Albert called. Another shot ripped out of the rifle. Across the windswept road, a group of people had gathered, pointing, shouting, training a light. But there was still no movement behind the truck.

  “Did he hit him?” shouted Zanna, moving to another section of the window.

  “No, he fired over him,” David replied.

  Albert, toting his gun at waist height, began to make his way down the outer stairs.

  A moment later, a white-haired woman dressed, like Albert, in heavyweight jeans and a red check shirt, came hurrying through from the back of the store. She put an arm around Zanna’s shoulder. “Aw jeez, is it a bear?”

  “Apparently,” said Zanna, not shifting her gaze.

  The woman hurried to the counter and picked up a phone. Within seconds, she had a connection. “Oh, hiya, Andy. It’s Margie, at the store. Yar, I’m doin’ fine. Yar, I think so. Sounds like we got ourselves a bear sniffing ‘round. Haven’t seen it, no. Albert’s out shootin’. O-kaay, I will. Come soon, now. Gotcha.”

  She put the phone down. “You see him yet, honey?”

  Zanna wiped the window clean. The arms of the people shouting warnings to Albert seemed to indicate the bear was lying low. But the wind was up, almost blanking them out. “It’s hard to tell,” she
shouted. “You see anything, David?”

  “David? Who’s David?” Margie asked.

  Zanna’s blood froze. She jerked her head back and saw the door swinging free. “DAVID!” she screamed, and burst through the door and onto the landing. Through the swirling snowstorm, the body of the pickup was still half-visible. But not the men. Zanna took a step down, slightly losing her footing on the gathering snow.

  “Hey, get back here!” Margie called from the safe warm amber glow of the store.

  “David!” Zanna pleaded, and reversed onto the landing. She ran to the far end. Clinging to the rail, she shouted again. It was then, just ahead, she saw a faint yellow light, drilling a well through the drifting flakes. It pooled like a spotlight in the middle of the road. At its center, sitting calmly, paws tight together, staring deep into her eyes, was a bear.

  “David! I see it! It’s there!” she hollered.

  “Honey, get inside!” Margie shouted again.

  “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s up the road,” Zanna said, plucking snowladen hair from her mouth. Hearing garbled voices on the far side of the truck, she turned to direct them to the bear’s location. But her eye was taken by a movement hard below: a fluid white shape, squeezing out from underneath the near side of the pickup.

  Speechless with terror, she watched another bear raise its head toward the light. “Oh my God, there are two! One of them is here, right by the stairs!” The bear reared and pounded the fascia by her feet. The boards snapped and splintered like matchwood. With a sickly creak, the nearest support pillar broke in two and the landing dropped with a sudden jolt. Zanna pitched forward over the rail and fell eight feet to the earth below.

  The bear swept around, snowflakes gyrating on its breath like moths circling an outdoor lamp.

  Zanna, forgetting everything she’d been taught, turned onto her back and began to scramble for the jeep, hoping she might slide under it.

  But as the bear padded forward, snorting at her, she suddenly stopped moving and looked into its eyes. The bear stopped also, angling its head to squint at the ripped sleeve of her parka. For half a second, there seemed to be a kind of recognition. Then the animal raised a paw.

  At that moment, several things happened. From the far side of the pickup came a squeal of brakes. Doors opened and slammed. Bright white searchlights flooded the road.

  David appeared at Zanna’s back crying, “Don’t let him touch you! He mustn’t touch you!” He bent down to hook his hands into her armpits, intending to drag her away to safety. The bear hissed and coiled back, readying to strike, when — whap! — it was struck in the shoulder by a plank of wood, wielded by the Inuit guide, Tootega.

  The bear howled in agony and crashed onto his side.

  Albert skidded forward, aiming his rifle between the bear’s eyes.

  “No!” David screamed, and pushed him into the broken staircase.

  A shot pinged off the cold gray tarmac.

  “All of you! Get back NOW!” yelled a voice.

  Another gunman had appeared, ten feet from the stricken bear’s rump. He was dressed in a black badged jacket and hat.

  “Don’t kill him,” panted David.

  “Move, boy, or I’ll shoot you first!”

  “No!” he pleaded, as Tootega’s rough hand took him by the collar and pulled him clear.

  The gun cracked.

  “His shoulder! Look at his shoulder!” David cried. He broke free and stood over the bear again.

  Blood from an earlier wound was pouring down the ice bear’s foreleg.

  And his great brown eyes were closed.

  15 AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

  It’s no use trying to run, child.”

  Even as Lucy turned to flee, she felt her muscles lock and her legs turn stiff. Rocking helplessly, she fell onto Henry’s leather sofa, all the while trying to scream for her mother.

  “Foolish girl,” Gwilanna chided. With a twist of her hand, she sent a spell which turned Lucy’s words to feathers.

  Lucy coughed them away and tried again. This time bubbles of soap left her mouth.

  “Once more and I’ll make you speak nettles,” said Gwilanna.

  Lucy, defeated, pulled her lips inward.

  “Good. Now speak quietly and above all politely. I am your aunt, after all.”

  “What do you want?” Lucy hissed, not at all polite.

  Gwilanna brushed some dust off her skirt. “All in good time, child. All in good time. First, have you heard from the boy?”

  “David’s in Canada.”

  “I know that, girl. Don’t test my patience. Has he spoken to you recently?”

  “He wrote a letter. Why?”

  “Hmm,” went Gwilanna, stroking her chin. “Did he mention his story?”

  Lucy shook her head.

  “Pity. Then you won’t know what’s about to happen.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lucy, wriggling her legs.

  “Oh, stop fidgeting,” Gwilanna chided, and turned the girl’s lower half into a fish tail.

  Lucy’s heart nearly leaped from her chest. She whined so much that Gwilanna was forced to restore the girl’s shape lest her ancient eardrums should implode. “There. Now, behave yourself and listen. Your tenant is a nuisance, but an interesting nuisance. He has no bloodline to the olden ways, yet he and that peculiar dragon of his have abilities well beyond human expectation.”

  “Gadzooks just helps him write stories,” said Lucy.

  “Oh, he does more than that,” said her aunt. “Between them, they can shape the future.”

  Lucy put her head back, looking puzzled.

  “Remember this?” Gwilanna asked. From the shadows beside her chair, she brought forth a square-shaped wicker basket. A small lithe figure was darting around inside it.

  “Snigger!” gasped Lucy.

  Gwilanna raised a frown. “Is that what he called it? How dreadfully quaint.”

  Chuk, went the squirrel, standing on its hind legs and clinging to the wicker, doing its best to gnaw through the weave.

  Lucy balled her fists. “What are you doing with him?!”

  “He’s a hostage,” smirked the sibyl, and her face grew dark, “to make sure you do exactly as you’re told. If you even think about squealing for your mother I’ll turn this rodent into a pair of flea-bitten socks.” She poked a finger at the cage, then reeled back sharply as Snigger tried to sink his teeth into her flesh. “I discovered — during my ‘stay’ with you — that when the boy wrote his story about this tree rat, he was ahead of time.”

  Lucy pulled a face. “What do you mean?”

  “He could predict things, child; what he wrote came true, though the gap between the two only covered a few seconds.”

  Lucy puzzled over this but didn’t reply.

  “He, of course, was bewildered by it, just as you are now. His minute brain did not possess the intellect to understand that time does not truly exist.”

  Lucy glanced at the carriage clock on Henry’s mantelpiece. “Why do we have clocks, then?”

  The sibyl gave out an irritated sigh. “So we can glimpse different aspects of the present. Oh, never mind. Just take it from me, your tenant can do it. What’s more, his ability is growing stronger.”

  Lucy pushed her hands between her thighs and shuddered. She didn’t like the sound of this. “How do you know?”

  Gwilanna stood up and paced the room. She dropped the basket onto the fireside rug, causing Snigger to tumble like a hamster on its wheel. “I decided to watch him. I left a calling card on that silly little contract he made with his publishers.”

  “I saw it,” said Lucy, lurching forward. “Three squiggles — like on Zanna’s arm.”

  “Squiggles!” Gwilanna’s screech rattled the windows. “Don’t be so insolent, girl. That sign is feared throughout the far north.”

  “Sorry,” said Lucy, though she wasn’t at all. Her mind was working fast. It had just occurred to her how to attract her mother’s attention — if not that o
f a listening dragon. Gwilanna’s last shrill burst would have been heard in every corner of the living room next door. If she could be made to shriek upstairs, it would easily be detected in the Dragon’s Den.

  “Where was I?” snapped the sibyl.

  “I can’t remember. Can I go to the toilet, please?”

  “No, you may not. We were talking about the boy. Through magics, I have followed his latest saga. Did you know I feature in it?”

  Lucy shook her head very slowly indeed. Gwilanna, in David’s Arctic story? What could he be thinking of?

  “Yes, child, I was astonished as well. But then the boy is a strange enigma. When he writes, it seems his auma is driven by the need to engineer his fate. He is creating the circumstances for — well, you will discover that in time. Look out of the window. What do you see?”

  “Nothing.” It was pitch-black outside.

  “Stars, girl. Can’t you see the stars?”

  Not really, thought Lucy. One or two were winking gently, but … wait, here was her chance: “They’ll be easier to see from Mr. Bacon’s study window … upstairs.”

  “No doubt,” said Gwilanna, not taking the bait.

  Lucy clamped her fingers around her thumb and sighed.

  “What do you know about stars?” Gwilanna pressed.

  Lucy folded her arms. This was all she needed: a science lesson. “They’re a long way off. Our sun is a star and the Earth revolves around it.”

  Gwilanna raised a half-impressed eyebrow. “Elementary, but correct. Now, let me teach you something else. Every object you see in the sky, every twinkling celestial body, exerts an influence on our lives. You and I, this house, this idiot squirrel,” she kicked the basket, making Snigger squeak, “were created from stardust.”

  “How?” asked Lucy.

  “Never mind, girl. Be quiet and pay attention. There is a significant alignment forming in the heavens, the same pattern that was present when dragons were first introduced to this Earth. As above, so below. Do you understand?”

  Lucy was still a sentence back. “Dragons?” she queried, beginning to sound interested.

  Gwilanna’s gaze shifted back to the window. “There is a fire star coming, signaling a time of new beginnings. A time for dragons to rise again.”