“By not loving him,” said Lucy, as if it ought to be obvious.
“Imagine that there’s a spark inside him,” said Liz.
“If you love him, it will always stay lit,” smiled Lucy.
“To light it, you must give him a name,” said Liz.
“Something magic,” said Lucy. “Think of one — now!”
David had a think. “How about … Gadzooks?”
Now that Lucy knows Gadzooks is a writing dragon, she asks David to make up a story for her about how Conker damaged his eye. Initially, David refuses. But later, with Gadzooks’s help, he begins a tale about Conker and another squirrel named Snigger, as a present for Lucy on her birthday. This story turns out to be not only a recounting of events that have already occurred, but also a prophetic scribing of the near future. Whatever David writes about, happens.
In time, David and Lucy do manage to catch both Conker and Snigger (the latter accidentally). Along with Liz, they take the two squirrels to the vet at a wildlife hospital, where Sophie, a young woman David likes, works. Snigger is given a clean bill of health, but Conker is not so fortunate. He is given only a short time to live. Hoping to give the dying animal a last few happy days, the group releases the squirrels in the library gardens. David manages to finish his story for Lucy, but the ending is very rushed and unsatisfactory. David is trying to give it a positive outcome, but becomes frustrated and ignores Gadzooks when this seems impossible. Gadzooks becomes very unhappy, to the point where he is in danger of crying his fire tear.
A fire tear is something that a dragon cries at the end of its life. Inside it is all the fire that was within the dragon throughout its existence. This tear then falls off the dragon’s snout, drops onto the ground, and finds its way back to the fire at the center of the Earth, from whence it originally came. The only exception to this is related in a legend that runs through The Fire Within. This legend concerns Gawain, the last-known real (or “natural”) dragon in the world, and after whom one of Lucy’s “special” dragons is named.
David yawned and snuggled into his pillow, faintly aware of movement on the bed. It felt lighter, suddenly. More freedom to move. He stretched his legs and cuddled Winston. His body relaxed. His mind drifted. He saw Gawain on a mountaintop, silhouetted against the shimmering moon; Guinevere, wrapped in a kind of shawl, singing into the shell of his ear. Gradually, the dragon lowered his head. His spiked tail drooped. His scales fell flat. His oval eyes, long-closed and weary, blinked one final, fiery time. His life expired in a snort of vapor. But in that moment, a teardrop formed. A living teardrop, on his snout. A violet flame in a dot of water. It trickled down his face to the tip of his nostrils and fell, sparkling, into Guinevere’s hands.
But could she survive the power of the dragon’s auma? And can David correspondingly save Gadzooks from shedding his own fire tear? What happens when David rewrites the end of Lucy’s story? And what has Spikey, the hedgehog, got to do with it all? Well, some things are best revealed by reading the book….
The second book in the Last Dragon Chronicles series opens with David receiving the latest in a long line of rejection letters from various publishers. He has been trying repeatedly to get his squirrel story accepted, but with no success so far.
By now, David has discovered that, as a child, Liz was given a mysterious snowball, a pinch of which enables her to bring her clay dragons to life. He is interested to find out the secret of this “icefire,” which he knows is guarded by polar bears in the frozen north. When the enigmatic Professor Bergstrom, a visiting academic at the college, tells him about a competition to win a research trip to the High Arctic in Canada, David is desperate to win it. The rules, though, are rather unusual. He must write an essay about whether dragons ever existed on the Earth. David decides to ask Liz for information. At the same time, he begins writing a second book, White Fire, about the Arctic and polar bears.
David gets further help for his essay from a Goth girl named Zanna, who is taking the same course as him. She offers to lend him a book on dragons. As his girlfriend, Sophie, is now away working in Africa for eight months, David feels somewhat awkward about inviting Zanna to Wayward Crescent, especially since Liz and Lucy have gone out that afternoon. Nevertheless, he shows Zanna the Dragons’ Den. While there, she spies a wishing dragon, G’reth, made by Lucy, and a bronze clay egg. Zanna persuades David to make a wish.
David screwed up his face. “I’m not playing wishing games.”
“It’s not a game, dummy. You’re raising his auma. Believe. Wish for something — about Gawain.”
“Such as?”
“Such as finding out where his fire tear is hidden?”
David stepped back, shaking his head. “No. That’s not a good idea.” Not here, he thought, with all these dragons looking on.
Zanna grabbed him by the sleeve and tugged him forward. “The fact that you’re afraid of this only confirms you think it could happen. Do you want to know the truth or not?”
David sighed and looked away. This is ridiculous, he told himself. It won’t work. It can’t work. A wishing dragon? It was the stuff of fairy tales. But knowing he’d get no peace until he tried, he touched his thumbs to G’reth’s smooth paws.
“Careful,” whispered Zanna, “you’re making him wobble.”
David steadied his hands and tried again. “I wish,” he whispered, “that I knew the secret of Gawain’s fire tear.”
Zanna, meanwhile, who feels oddly drawn to the clay egg, somehow manages to “kindle,” or awaken, it. These two actions result in an immediate response from the Universe.
An evil sibyl named Gwilanna turns up, calling herself “Aunty Gwyneth.” She claims to be a relation of Liz and Lucy’s. She demands to see Liz, who arrives home almost at the same moment. Gwilanna has been “called” by the wisher, and is surprised to detect a powerful auma change in Liz, denoting that she is the equivalent of pregnant (“eggnant”?) because of the kindling of the bronze egg by Zanna.
In theory this pregnancy should not be possible. Gwilanna believes that Liz’s auma is getting stronger, while, with all the other descendants of Guinevere (for that is what Liz and Lucy are) it is getting weaker, generation by generation, as expected. “Aunty Gwyneth” questions why this exception might be so. Getting no response from either Liz or Lucy on the subject, she determines to interrogate the wishing dragon instead. Gwilanna demands help from Gretel, another Pennykettle dragon, who belongs to her and is under her power.
G’reth gulped and swallowed a plug of smoke. Under normal circumstances, this would not have caused any problems for him. But the fact that he was hanging upside down, tail knotted around a thin wire coat hanger, which in turn was hooked around the lightbulb holder swinging precariously left and right, had brought on a dreadful bout of coughing, which only added to his predicament — and his fear.
Aunty Gwyneth clicked her fingers.
Gretel, sitting on the ledge of the wardrobe, opened her throat and released a jet of fire. There was a smell of burning and the green ground wire in the core of the light cord sizzled red-hot and duly snapped. The cord lurched, jerking G’reth another millimeter or two toward the mass of rubble littering the floorboards. Though his wings were bound (by Aunty Gwyneth’s industrial-strength hairpins) he nevertheless managed to swing his head upward. All that remained of the electrical cord now was a strand from the outer sheath of white and the light blue neutral wire. With a whimpering hrrr? he looked toward Gretel. She blew a tart wisp of smoke and looked away.
Getting no useful information from G’reth, Gwilanna decides to take a sneakier approach and aid David in his quest to get to the Arctic, hoping that he will discover more on her behalf. To this end she fluences an editor to not only accept David’s squirrel book, but also to publish his polar bear saga. Zanna wins the essay competition, but David can now afford to pay his own way for the field trip, using the money due to him for writing his books.
But what about Liz and the egg?
&nbs
p; Liz is semi-comatose while the egg is going through the hatching process. The boy that Liz has been told to expect turns out to be a male dragon, the first “natural” dragon to be born in modern times. Zanna reaches out to touch it, and is scarred by Gwilanna’s fingernails with three jagged lines which never heal. Under cover of this distraction, the dragon escapes through the open window and, aided by G’reth, flies to Bergstrom’s rooms. David, having overcome Gwilanna, follows with Zanna and Gretel. Gretel, by now, has swapped her loyalties to become Zanna’s dragon.
At Rutherford House, where Bergstrom lives, Zanna discovers that the young natural dragon, whom she calls Grockle, has been born without fire. She is upset by this, even more so when he turns to stone in her arms, and totally distraught when she finds out that David suspected this might happen, but failed to warn her.
Zanna disappears, refusing to speak to David. Although he tries to find her, he has no luck. The days pass and eventually, just before David is due to go to the Arctic, the contract from the publisher arrives.
“Sign,” Lucy urged him.
But Liz raised a hand. “Wait. Have you read through this?”
“Sort of. It’s just … legalities and stuff.”
“Exactly. You ought to know what you’re signing. Perhaps Henry could check it for you?”
“It’s all right,” said David. “It’s just boring blurb. Don’t spoil my big moment. Pen, someone?”
Lucy grabbed one off the countertop and handed it over.
“Signed … David … Rain,” David muttered, scratching his name on the line marked “author.”
David has no time to do anything further — his ride to the airport is about to arrive and he therefore asks Liz to mail the contract to the publisher for him.
Liz picked it up off the kitchen table. For a moment she stood there reading a chunk, then she began to quickly flick through it. At the final page, she stopped and stared. “Lucy, you know that pen, the one David used to sign his name. Does it leak?”
Lucy drew a few lines with it, on her hand. “A bit, yes.”
“As much as that?” Liz turned the page around.
From the lower curves of David’s signature, three long trails of ink had formed.
Lucy tilted her head … and shuddered. “They look like Zanna’s scratch.”
Was Lucy right to shudder? What effect will these lines called “the mark of Oomara” have on Zanna and on David? Will David find the secret of Gawain’s fire tear, as he wished? And if so, will he live to regret it?
The mark of Oomara
David makes it to the field trip, with Zanna by his side again, and continues writing his book. Things are beginning to get more and more complex and confusing for him, though, as he realizes that once again, his writing is mirroring real life. This leads him into questioning his beliefs about the world and his role in it, especially when something called a fire star becomes more and more apparent in the sky, and this portal is due to open a way between worlds.
David has been writing that Gwilanna is determined to raise the natural dragon, Gawain, from a mountaintop on an island in the Arctic called the Tooth of Ragnar. This mountain is where Gawain cried his fire tear and turned to stone in ages past. Guinevere, the woman who caught his tear, had allegedly agreed to trade it with Gwilanna for a daughter. However, the trade never took place.
The child, Gwendolen, was brought up by Gwilanna, but eventually turned her back on the sibyl and went to live among the bears, earning their love and respect. Gwilanna has always hated the bears for this, and is therefore prepared to use them selfishly for her own devious ends.
David writes that Gwilanna has promised to heal a bear named Ingavar, who has been shot, if he will retrieve a certain polar bear tooth for her. David carries this talisman around his neck on a cord. Gwilanna tells Ingavar to kill him when he has succeeded.
David’s story finally comes to a head when he and Zanna are faced with Ingavar at a trading post in Chamberlain. Fortunately, Ingavar is tranquilized and taken away to “polar bear prison.” The tooth, however, is lost in the melee, but is picked up by Tootega, the Inuit guide who works at the research base where David and Zanna are staying.
Zanna, by now aware that David has the power to write “fact” rather than simply fiction, is none too happy about this state of affairs.
“This is just too spooky,” said Zanna. “Read the story, Dr. Bergstrom. Now.”
Bergstrom glanced at the open laptop, weaving colored pipework on its flat gray screen.
“No, I’m destroying it,” David said. He stepped forward and moved the mouse. Bergstrom immediately clamped his arm.
“You have a contract, remember?”
David looked into the scientist’s eyes. It wasn’t clear whether Bergstrom was referring to Apple Tree Publishing or the personal promise David had made him to keep on writing about the Arctic. Even so, David said, “I’m wiping it.” And he dragged the file into the computer’s trash can and emptied it.
This was still not enough for Zanna. “Defrag the disk.”
“What?”
“I don’t want it in memory, even in bits. Run a defrag over it. Now.”
“But —?”
“Just do it, David.”
“Be my guest,” said Bergstrom, wheeling his chair away.
Silently furious, David ran the program that would rearrange the disk so all the files were contiguous and any scraps of deleted files were eliminated. “There. Happy now?”
Unbeknown to David, however, Bergstrom has previously printed out a copy — but to what purpose? Anders Bergstrom is definitely not what he first appeared to be. A lecturer, yes, but much, much more than that, for not many professors can shape-shift between man and polar bear … or possess a small dragon not unlike those that Liz makes, who can Travel through space and time, also shape-shift, and become invisible to boot….
Meanwhile, back at Wayward Crescent, Gwilanna has abducted Lucy to be a “Guinevere clone” to aid in the raising of Gawain. Lucy has been taken to a cave on the Tooth of Ragnar, where she is to be held for the next three months, until the fire star is in its correct alignment. While there, she finds an isoscele, the last scale of a dragon’s tail, belonging to Gawain, which she hides from Gwilanna.
After a frantic phone call from Liz, informing him of Lucy’s fate, David returns home early from the Arctic. Zanna remains behind and, with Tootega, helps release the tranquilized Ingavar back onto the ice. Gwilanna, in raven form, creates a blizzard, hoping to steal the tooth at last, but her plans backfire when three polar bears arrive and carry Zanna off with them.
While all this is happening, G’reth, the wishing dragon, is still trying to fulfill his duty and find the whereabouts of Gawain’s fire tear for David. Rather like David, his investigations are about to take him far beyond what he might have expected. He manages to Travel outside the boundaries of the known Universe and there meets up with a young entity from a race called the Fain.
He had a startling impression of emptiness now. No light. No color. No temperature. No smell. And yet he sensed he was not alone.
He was not.
He felt it enter through the tip of his tail, lift the scales along his spine, and whisper through the tunnels of his spiky ears. Intelligence, finding its level, like water. A youthful, happy being, fusing with his auma.
What are you? it said, tickling his thoughts.
What are you? G’reth asked it.
I am Fain, it said. Shall we commingle?
The Fain are thought-beings who have no physical form of their own, but can merge or “commingle” with any other entity, sharing their host’s body. They have a long and benevolent historical connection with dragons, and their ultimate aspiration is to merge with one. G’reth is transformed by this experience, returning back to the known Universe along with the young Fain.
By the time G’reth gets home, Liz has taken Bonnington, the Pennykettles’ cat, to the vet. It is not good news. Bonnington is dying. Hi
s plight does not appear to be helped by drinking some melted icefire water. There is one beneficial outcome from this sad news, however. Grockle, the young natural dragon who turned to stone at the end of Icefire, has been brought back to the Dragons’ Den, where he rests in a basket of straw. With the aid of the young Fain being and a drop of Bonnington’s saliva, the Pennykettle dragons bring Grockle back to full life. Once again, Grockle escapes through an open window.
David asks Gadzooks for help to find Grockle.
[Gadzooks] scribbled something fiercely across the pad. Gretel and G’reth leaned in to take a look, exchanging a puzzled hrrr at what they saw. David closed his eyes to picture the message. It surprised him too. A name:
He whispered it aloud.
As usual, he had no idea what it meant (at first). Insight would come a little later, from Liz. Right then, however, she was incapable of speech.
She had just fainted in a heap on the floor.
David discovers that Arthur is the love of Liz’s life. Many years earlier, he was tricked by Gwilanna into breaking off the relationship and has had no contact with Liz since. Eventually, David traces Arthur to a place called Farlowe Island, where he has become a monk, changing his name to Brother Vincent. Arthur has also been writing fact as fiction, using a claw belonging to Gawain as a pen. Grockle, seeking the claw, has been drawn to the island and hidden there by Arthur. Arthur’s secret is given away to the abbot by one of the other monks, Brother Bernard, who later regrets his actions, as Grockle is captured, held in a stable block, and tortured.
Grockle in chains
Bernard, realizing that what Arthur has told him is the plain truth and that the dragon is sentient and capable of communicating with him, asks:
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