Fire Star

by Chris D'Lacey

  Gwilanna’s reply was tainted with scorn. “Are you planning to consort with bears?”

  “I’m bored!” snapped Lucy, rocking forward, her unwashed hair lying thick around her cheeks. “I’m fed up of sitting around watching my hair grow!” She pulled her furs about her. “And where’s the sun gone? I hate this darkness. What am I doing here?”

  “You are becoming attuned to the dragon,” said Gwilanna. “When the fire star moves into its rightful position, you will aid Gawain to rise.”

  “How?”

  “How? By being what you are. It’s in your blood, girl. You are a child of Guinevere’s line. You will act because you have no choice. The call of the dragon will be all there is.”

  “Then what?” Lucy said with a frown.

  “That is for me to know and the idiots of mankind to discover,” snapped Gwilanna. “Now, no more prattle. You will stay in the cave until I say otherwise. The Arctic winter is closing in. There will be permanent darkness for a time …” she paused as the rocks beneath them shuddered, “… but the island will be lit by the fire star’s auma, and when it reaches the very top …”

  “I hope Gawain chews your head off,” said Lucy.

  “Clear the slops,” growled Gwilanna. She kicked the stew pot over, making Lucy squeal.

  With a show of defiance Lucy kicked it back, making it crack against a nearby boulder. The pot split into two clean halves. They separated away like the husk around a horse chestnut seed.

  The sea of darkness within Gwilanna’s cruel eyes boiled. “Well, child, now you have something to keep you from idleness. While I’m gone today, you will make another pot.”

  “How?”

  “With your hands and the dirt and dust you see around you. You are a Pennykettle. Find clay. Shape it. Or else.”

  The “else” made Lucy shudder. For there were times when she imagined that, while it might be preferable for Gwilanna to have a descendant of Guinevere present when the last dragon in the world was raised, it was not completely essential. It frightened her to think she was probably dispensable, but, determined not to show it, she hit straight back. “Why don’t you teach me something? You’re always complaining that I don’t know things.”

  “And what, child, would you like to learn?”

  “Magics,” said Lucy, surprising herself. Though terrified by Gwilanna’s powers, she envied the sibyl as well. Once or twice she’d caught herself snapping her fingers at the embers of the fire, trying, without luck, to make them dance. Gwilanna commanded such elements with ease.

  The sibyl gave an unkind hoot of laughter. “Guinevere’s line couldn’t charm a flea. You have too little of Gwendolen in you. You’re not capable of any form of enchantment.”

  “Mom is. She made Gadzooks — and Gretel.”

  “Hmph, with the aid of the shaman bear. Without the icefire, your mother’s pathetic creations would be no more use than doorstops or bookends.”

  “That’s not true!”

  Gwilanna waved her away. “I have work to do,” she snapped, and shrank into a dark-eyed raven again. She stretched her wings and flapped them twice, creating a widespread blanket of dust.

  Lucy pressed herself tight up against the wall. Even now, these transformations made her start. “Where are you going?”

  “To find the girl.”

  Zanna. Lucy’s hopes of company rose. “Are you bringing her here?”

  “No,” the bird spat. “I’m going to observe her. She’s dangerous. She is —”

  “Like you,” said Lucy. “A sibyl. I know. She’s one of us, isn’t she? Is she my sister?”

  “She is the youngest of Gwendolen’s line,” said the raven, “and therefore your part-sister. She is a natural born. She has a human father. Somehow, despite these … impurities, she has a remarkable degree of untouched power….”

  “Don’t you hurt her,” said Lucy, curling her fingers.

  “When the time of the dragon comes,” said Gwilanna, rolling her blue-black eyes fully forward, “the girl will wish she had died on the tundra.”

  She stretched her wings for flight.

  “What about Gwendolen?” Lucy said suddenly, forcing the raven to abandon its takeoff.

  “What about her?” it screeched.

  “She lived with you. Did you teach her things?”

  The mountain rumbled, rocking the bird from side to side. “Everything,” it said, with bittersweet resentment. “I taught her everything.” And away it flew, a dwindling black line in the oval of the cavemouth.

  Like the slow, pendulous tick of a clock, the heart of the mountain moved on another beat. The broken pot clinked. Silage fell from the high dark places. Bored, frustrated, tired of being showered, Lucy picked up a firestick and decided she would change her position yet again. She had done this several times already in her search for the safest, warmest spot to sit. It had not been a very fruitful endeavor. Fear of the unknown (strange creepy crawlies, if she was honest) had forced her to roost in the open, by the firelight, even though this was the worst place for debris. But there were several unexplored areas of the cave. Many cheerless alcoves, for instance, most of them barely a superficial notch in the jagged wall of stone that faced the cavemouth. But there were deeper cuts, too, all of which Lucy had so far avoided. They had as much appeal as a lonely alley or a bottomless well. Nevertheless, she did approach one, pushing her timid carnation of fire into the eye of the island’s secrets. Almost immediately, the rocks groaned again and released a genielike wind around her ankles. Lucy shivered and the furs slipped off her shoulders, leaving her in sneakers, jeans, and sweater. And how incongruous a sight was that? A sweet young girl, used to all the comforts that a modern life could offer, standing in the throat of an Arctic island, bravely trying to reassure herself that she had an inherited right to be there. She rested her hand on the smooth dry wall and with a gulp she said, “It’s all right. I’m your friend.” It was not the first time she had spoken to Gawain, but it was the first time she had thought to use dragontongue — and the first time she received a reply.

  From somewhere deep within the belly of the island, she heard a whistling moan.

  “Who’s there?!” she gasped, and jumped away.

  No reply.

  Her firestick went out.

  Frightened, she ran back to her sleeping area for another. But by the time she had returned, she had no need of it. A new and beautiful light was shining. Starlight. Falling through the mouth of the cave.

  Lucy traced it back into the open air. The sky glittered. Beneath it floated the parchment of sea ice, faintly reflecting the night like a bruise. On the horizon, low down like a setting sun, one bright yellow star was throwing its radiance onto the island. Lucy put out her hand and let its magic stream over her, watching it weave through the furrows of her palm. Then she turned and ran back into the cave again, to see what the light of the star wished to show her.

  At first, nothing but a plain slab of granite, set back a little like a recessed door. Or was it a plugged-up tunnel, Lucy wondered? She raised her firestick and thought she could see a chink or a vent on the uppermost surface. Wedging the light into a crevice, she scrambled over a loose mound of boulders, put her hands into the chink, and pulled with all her might. Hardly a pebble came away. She tried again and again, but the barrier would not budge. Frustrated, she hit it with the heel of one hand. There was the faintest of cracks, but something definitely moved. She hit the wall again, with both hands this time, and the whole structure collapsed inward, carrying her forward and down.

  With a squeal of terror, she rolled to a halt and found herself looking back the way she’d come, up a dimly lit tunnel that was roughly the diameter of a very large washing machine drum. She leaped to her feet and squealed again, as her hair caught on a frozen spike of rock. There was just enough light from the treacherous star (for that was how she thought of it now) to show her she was in some kind of den. Its depth was barely double its height, and the walls — what she c
ould see of them — were slightly rounded, scooped out like a Halloween pumpkin. She took a pace forward, crushing something underfoot. With a gasp she halted, not daring to look down, wondering what ghost she might have disturbed. When no specter materialized, she bent her knees and felt warily around the floor. Straightaway, something dry and powdery came into contact with her trembling fingers. Courageously, she closed her fingers around it, long enough to work out its structure and shape. It was a bone. She had stood on and crushed a piece of bone.

  Out of that hole, like a hare, she went. She sat among the furs for a timeless time, quaking with fear and humming sweet dragonsong. And maybe it was that which soothed her mind and told her she should not be afraid to go back, because surely only the living could hurt her and nothing dead had come to haunt her. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she now knew something about this island that Gwilanna did not. For the sibyl had never spoken of a tomb. But who would have the arrogance to rot away here, overshadowed by the petrified remains of a dragon?

  She slithered back in with a good, strong light. It was indeed a tomb, for there were two complete skeletons laid out in the center. One was small and clearly human. The other, lying nearby, was enormous. She guessed it was the carcass of a polar bear. At first she came to think that the bear must have caught a careless human hunter and brought it here to eat, then been trapped by a landslide. But she soon realized this could not be so. Both sets of bones were in perfect order, not scattered as the human ones would have been if the body had been torn apart. So had the person come here to die, she wondered, with the bear lying down beside them, like a guardian? These thoughts brought a lump to her throat and moved her closer to the human frame. Just below the skull lay a necklace of charms: teeth, a bear claw, hanks of fur, and several small carvings made from a stone Lucy did not recognize. She raised it from the shreds of rotted clothing, severing through the crumbling neck bones. “Sorry,” she whispered to the staring skull. “It’s beautiful. May I keep it?” The bones did not reply. So Lucy slipped the necklace over her head, gathering it softly against her chest. Then she noticed something else. In the skeleton’s hand was a small stone vessel. It was the height and shape of a slim tea mug and had a bound, hinged top made from some kind of animal hide. Lucy prized it from the grasping bones. The binding snagged and all but disintegrated. Around the walls of the cave, a wind from another world began to blow. Lucy opened the lid and tipped out the contents. Two objects fell into the palm of her hand. The first was a braid of red and cream tresses (human hair and the fur of a bear, forever intertwined). The second was a small triangular piece of matter that most people would have mistaken for leather or a tough chunk of peel from a tropical fruit. But Lucy knew right away it was precious. The first moment it touched her skin she felt its power race along her veins and set fire to her youthful, quivering heart. She was holding a piece of dragon scale. The only part of the beast she had ever heard her mother give a proper name to. The isoscele. The very tip of the spiky tail.

  31 WHAT TOOTEGA SAW

  He told no one he was leaving the base. Two days after the incident with Zanna, with the omnipresent threat of an arctic winter keeping the sun pressed low in the sky, Tootega harnessed his dogs to his sled, drove them, tails high, out onto the frozen crust of the bay, and followed the unadorned coastline north. He knew this land. Every hump and hollow and curve of the earth was written in the vessels on his retinal membranes, every pattern in the snow was a message from the wind. After five long days spent pushing the dogs to the edge of their endurance, roaring in defiance at the whirling blizzards, his dark brown eyes took in the headland he’d been waiting for: Seal Point. On the far side of those pregnant cliffs lay the Inuit village of Savalik.

  A modern settlement of twenty or thirty large wooden houses, it mirrored Chamberlain in all but size. It was snowbound on three sides, the houses huddled in a cloistered heap like Christmas presents on a large white armchair. Tootega, when he saw it this time, was reminded of something David Rain had said about Inuit settlements looking like a room that you forgot to clean. Anything an Inuk did not need, any broken-down appliance or unused item, he would cast away — but not very far. So it was in Savalik. An incongruous mix of brightly painted roofs and overhanging wires and old oil barrels and junked bent metal and columns of steam. But it was home, and the dogs knew it, too. Their noses lifted at the first scent of seal meat warming in a pot. Their tails wagged. Their paws spent less time in contact with the ice. Orak, the lead dog, whose mapping was every bit as sensitive as his master’s, was tugging his comrades toward the colony long before the whip was up.

  “Yai!” cried Tootega. The seal skin cracked the air twice before its tongue was muted by a fast buzzing engine. In the distance, a figure dressed in a dark blue parka and large purple sunglasses was bumping a snowmobile across the ice.

  Tootega pulled the team to a halt as the snowmobile, smelling of diesel fumes, swung around beside them. The rider’s mouth twitched. “Welcome, brother, we’ve been expecting you.”

  “How is this?” said Tootega, though he knew in his heart that Bergstrom would have worked out where he was going. Had the scientist sent word ahead? Was he here, perhaps?

  “Grandfather always knows,” said the rider. He leaned back, gunning the snowmobile’s throttle. Its bull nose lifted. The skis on which it sat tap-danced on the ice.

  With the rear of his glove, Tootega wiped the frost off his upper lip. “I must speak with him, Apak.”

  The younger man nodded. The halo of fur around the hood of his coat glistened in the rays of a deep orange sun. “A good time to be home. Just before Sedna closes her eye.” He smiled a familiar gap-toothed smile.

  “Ayah,” said Tootega, and whipped the team onward.

  He released the dogs and tethered them beside an old refrigerator, using the snowmobile to lug the sled up the slope toward their grandfather’s house. While Apak secured it to a post, Tootega looked around. His arrival had not gone unnoticed. Everywhere, people were watching. He waved at Peter Amitak, who was standing by his boat with a young child whom Tootega did not recognize. He called out a greeting. Peter Amitak waved. The child stared as though it had seen a great spirit. “What’s the matter with them?” Tootega asked Apak. “Why don’t they speak?”

  “You have been away a long time,” Apak replied.

  But Tootega sensed there was more to their distance than unrenewed acquaintance. They seemed wary of his presence here. Frightened, perhaps.

  He stepped inside the house and was glad of its warmth. The oily scent of seal meat and drying arctic char turned his belly and made it speak.

  Apak laughed and clapped his brother’s shoulder. “What has become of your hunting skills that you should make your innards complain so, brother?” He clapped his hands and called out, “Nauja!”

  A door opened and a young woman came to greet them.

  “My wife will feed you,” Apak said, grinning.

  “You —?” Tootega gaped at them both in amazement. The last time he had seen the little “seagull,” Nauja, she had still been his baby cousin. The brothers laughed and hugged and Nauja, though pleased to see them in happy spirits, bade them be quiet for their grandfather’s sake.

  “Is he sleeping?” asked Tootega, blowing air at the door to the old man’s room.

  A voice weathered by age and cold croaked out, “Why does my grandson not come to greet me?”

  Nauja tilted her head.

  Tootega went in, bowing his head. The old man, famed throughout the north as a healer and shaman, commanded great respect within the community and even more esteem at home. He gave a thin cry of joy to see his firstborn grandson and called out to Nauja, Mattak! Mattak! meaning she should bring them whale meat to chew. Tootega crossed the floor, surprised to find a woolen rug under his feet. It dismayed him every time he came to this house to see his grandfather a little more absorbed by southern culture. This room, with its wardrobes and lampshades and remote-
controlled television, was a painful affliction of the disease called progress. Tootega could readily remember a time when this proud and happy man, now lying in a bed that had drawers in the mattress and propped up loosely on a cluster of pillows, would have been surrounded by furs and harpoons and a seal oil lamp, with blood and blubber stains under his feet. On the wall above the bed, slightly tilted at an angle, was a framed embroidered picture saying “Home, Sweet Home” in the Inuit language. To see it made Tootega want to empty his gut.

  He reached out and took his grandfather’s hand, reeling himself into a firm embrace. “Your arm is strong,” he said, though it clearly was not. But it brought a dentured smile to the wrinkled face. His grandfather’s name, Taliriktug, meant “strong arm.” With a fragile cough, he waved his visitor into a chair, clouding the space between them with smoke. He put a flimsy cigarette into an ashtray. There were burn holes in the patterned pink eiderdown. How many more, Tootega wondered, in the old man’s withering lungs?

  Apak, resting himself against the windowsill, said, “Have they released you from the base?”

  Tootega shook his head.