ʺThen maybe,ʺ Jane said drily, ʺyou were right about Peggy and Tamari too.ʺ
Miri knelt beside Flame and began stroking his long extra-ribby side. ʺMaybe I am.ʺ
Flame moaned with pleasure, just like an ordinary dog.
Jane said, ʺTamari’s owner rang yesterday. She’s got a new show pony. She says it’s an angel. In fact that’s its name—Angel. She says Greyhaven is the best barn she was ever at and she wants to come back.ʺ
ʺBut there’s a catch,ʺ Miri said.
ʺShe’s still got Tamari.ʺ
Miri sat back on her heels and laughed. Laughing felt good. ʺTell her we’ll have him—at double rates. Because only you and I will be able to do anything around him, even fill his water bucket. Tell her that the extra money will go into the indoor arena fund—we’d be even better than the best barn she’s been at if we had an indoor arena.ʺ
ʺMy decisive new business partner,ʺ said Jane. ʺThat’s kind of the way my mind was going too. You’re two years older and here all the time. We can cope.ʺ
Flame had raised his head and was looking at Miri meaningfully. She started petting him again. ʺAnd you know,ʺ she added, ʺI bet they’ll write a big newspaper story about what happened tonight—isn’t Leslie’s mom dating a journalist?—and they’ll get everything wrong because we won’t tell them any of what we’ve been talking about, but we’ll tell them about Flame finding Mal and Leslie and then coming back to the barn to tell you he’d found them and to lead you back. And I bet all these people come out to get a look at this weird hero dog with the red eyes. And I bet some of them decide we look like a nice place and they and their kids should take some riding lessons. And when we can put the indoor arena up in two years instead of three, we can call it the Flame Arena.ʺ
Now Jane laughed. It was a nice sound: easy. Happy. ʺOkay. It’s a deal. Are you ready to go to bed yet?ʺ
ʺYes,ʺ said Miri. ʺI have to feed the horses in four hours. And I’m going to dream about the Flame Arena.ʺ
FIREWORM
PETER DICKINSON
This was the story Nedli told:Long ago there was only the Great White Owl, the spirit owl, so there was always ice and snow and darkness. There was never any thaw, never any long, warm days. No people lived in the mountains. Then the Sun sent his children, the Amber Bear and the Blind Bear, to drive the Great White Owl away beyond the mountains, so that people could live here. She was not the Blind Bear then, but as they fought the owl he pecked out her eyes.
Never was such fighting. The earth shook, and the mountains smoked and flamed and poured out burning rocks, but in the end the two bears drove the owl away, and the sun came, and the long, warm days.
The sun brought people, and animals for the men to hunt, and roots and nuts for the women to gather. But the people did not have fire, so they ate their food raw.
Now the two great bears grew fat and lazy in the good times, and they found a cave far up Bear Mountain and went to sleep, and the Great White Owl came back, bringing the snow and ice and darkness.
The forest animals did not know to go south, so they froze and died. But the people huddled into a cave. They broke branches from the forest and made a wall to keep out the wind and snow. But still they were cold, cold, and they had nothing to eat, and soon they would die. So they cried to the bears to save them.
Their crying woke the Blind Bear, and she said to her brother, “I cannot sleep for the crying of the people. Make yourself into a snow bear and go to the people and give them your old pelt, your amber pelt, to keep them warm.”
The Amber Bear did as she said, and as he journeyed the Sun came up for a little while and saw a great white bear crossing the glacier, carrying an amber pelt across his back. The Sun’s light struck sparks from the pelt and they fell on the glacier and melted a hole in it, and that is why in summertime there is a lake in the middle of the glacier. Only a few little sparks stuck in the hairs of the pelt.
When the Amber Bear reached the cave, he found the entrance blocked with branches. He pushed his way through, and as he did so those few sparks fell out and set the logs on fire. He left his old pelt on the floor and went back to the Blind Bear.
The people woke and found a great amber pelt on the floor of the cave and a fire at the entrance. They rushed down to the forest to fetch more branches to feed their fire, and there they found the frozen body of a deer. It was hard as ice, so they put it by the fire to thaw, but they piled so many branches onto their fire that when they came to eat the deer they found they had roasted all one side. So they learned that meat is best if it is cooked.
Now they had both warmth and food, and could live through the White Owl season, until the two bears woke feeling mean and hungry, and fought the owl again and drove it away and brought the sun back.
That was the first of Nedli’s stories. If you asked her whether it was true, she would tell you, ʺIt is true in the spirit world. My stories are a way of seeing, and a way of saying.ʺ
Tandin knew he was dreaming. The cave he was in wasn’t the Home Cave, but some kind of a dream cave. It was pitch dark, but he knew that the Blind Bear was there, though he couldn’t see her or smell her or touch her. Dream terror welled up, shuddering through him, forcing him out of his dream.
Just as he was waking, the Blind Bear whispered in his mind.
One word.
Fireworm.
And now he was swimming up out of sleep, sleep deeper than he had ever known. Only the Blind Bear’s whisper drove him into wakefulness, ordered his eyes to open, forced him up onto his elbow, to stare around the Home Cave. And all seemed well. The fire glowed in the entrance. It glowed through the cave, lighting the overarching rock, glinting off the hairs of the great bear pelt that hung on the back wall, casting shadows among the huddled bodies of the sleepers around him.
There was a strange, sweet reek in the cave, dragging him back into sleep. His body sagged.
Fireworm.
What did it mean?
ʺListen to your dreams,ʺ Nedli would say. ʺMostly they are silly, but some are messages from the spirit world. You will know when it is one of those, but they come as riddles, and you must guess their meaning.ʺ
This was one of those, Tandin was drowsily sure. Fireworm? Another of Nedli’s stories said that the Great White Owl hated fire, because it came from the sun, and sent the fireworm to take it away. For three winters people tried to fight the fireworm, but in the end they gave up and moved away. That was long ago, among different mountains. Probably it was only a story, a way of seeing, or a way of saying, but the dream had been so strong. . . .
He settled back down, but still the nightmare kept him from sleep. He tried to drive it away by imagining that he was lying with Mennel in his arms, where she slept among the women on the far side of the cave. Bast, her father, had forbidden her to speak to him, but he knew from the way she looked at him—
Fireworm!
The Blind Bear’s whisper broke through the flimsy dream. Again he eased himself up onto his elbow and stared at the fire. It had burnt down to a heap of embers, with a few ends of branches smouldering round the edges. Why hadn’t whoever was on watch been keeping it fed? Above the glowing heap he could see a section of the night sky, hard-starred, with the glittering flank of Bear Mountain cutting it off to one side. In front of that whiteness Barok sat with his back against the wall of the entrance, wrapped in his furs and fast asleep with his head on his knees. That was strange. Barok was a good man. Often he led the hunt. He wouldn’t sleep on watch.
The heap of embers seemed to settle a little. The movement continued. Tandin sat right up, then rose swaying to his feet, wrapping his fur round his shoulders. His mother was dead and no one knew his father, so he slept in a place without honour, well away from the fire. He staggered between the sleepers towards it. Twice he stumbled on limbs, but no one woke. Now he could see a hollow forming in the top of the mound, embers slithering down its sides, like the sand in the little traps some ants make in sum
mer. Any prey that steps into them loosens the sand and slithers helplessly down to where the ant waits at the bottom. . . .
Faster and faster. Tandin came wide awake.
ʺFireworm!ʺ he croaked. And louder, ʺFireworm!ʺ again.
No one stirred. He nudged a sleeper with his foot, prodded him hard. Dead? No, in Nedli’s story the fireworm put everyone to sleep with his breath. . . .
Yes! That sweet odour . . .
Tandin stumbled to the entrance and into the harsh, clean mountain air. It scoured the sweet stench out of his lungs. His mind cleared, and he remembered how the men in the story had fought the fireworm. He laid his fur on the path, ran back to the cave entrance, grabbed Barok’s axe from the rock beside him and started to hack chunks of compacted snow from the piled drift beside the path, heaping them on the fur. He folded the back legs over the pile, forming a bag which he could drag by the legs to the fire.
By now the hollow reached down to the floor of the cave, where it became a fiery pit going on down, with the embers still slithering into it. The pile was already more than half gone. With a huge effort, Tandin swung the bag up over the remaining embers, let go of the back legs and shot the snow pile down into the pit.
From down below came a hooting scream like the sound of a blizzard howling through a rock cleft. The sleepers began to stir.
ʺFireworm!ʺ Tandin yelled, and staggered back gasping to the snow-drift. Before he had half filled his fur, the hunters were stumbling out. As their minds cleared, they remembered Nedli’s story. They elbowed Tandin out of the way and finished filling his fur. Two of them dragged it off to the fire while the rest hacked out more snow.
Inside the cave the women used some of the branches stacked ready for burning to rake as many of the embers as they could into a pile well away from the fire, and then fed them with broken branches. As the hunters flung bag after bag of snow into the pit, the howl from below rose to a deafening scream, which then faded away as it sank further and further down into the rock. Long after it had dwindled into silence, the hunters toiled steadily on, while the women swept and swept to clear away the black but still scorching embers that littered the floor.
At last they gave up and settled round their new fire, coughing and spluttering because it was no longer in a place where natural drafts carried the smoke out of the cave. No one slept again. Nedli retold the story of the fight against the fireworm, and they then sat mulling it over in sad and anxious voices, knowing that the monster was no tale-teller’s invention to while away an evening, but was a creature of the real world, their ancient enemy. And it had found them again.
Towards dawn the hunters were discussing how to keep themselves awake on nights when the fireworm came. Someone said, ʺIts breath is very strong. All of us slept, even Barok, who was on watch.ʺ
ʺIn the old days they made a snow-hole outside and went out two at a time to keep watch, coming back often to check the fire,ʺ said another voice. Others joined in.
ʺAnd still some could not be woken when it was their turn.ʺ
ʺThe howling woke me.ʺ
ʺAnd me.ʺ
ʺIt couldn’t send out its breath when it howled.ʺ
ʺBut Nedli says the fireworm comes in silence. What made it howl? Someone must have thrown snow on it. Who was awake?ʺ
ʺVulka was already at the drift when I came there.ʺ
They turned to Vulka, who shook his head, puzzled.
ʺNo,ʺ he said. ʺThe howling woke me too. But someone . . . his fur was half filled with snow . . .ʺ
Frowning, he gazed round the shadowed faces. Tandin did nothing to catch his attention, but when their glances met and locked, he rose. A man without honour is no better than a woman. He dared not stay seated when speaking to hunters.
ʺYes,ʺ he said. ʺThe Blind Bear woke me. I dreamed I was in her cave. . . .ʺ
He told them about his dream and what he had done on waking. They stared at him and turned to Nedli. She didn’t only tell stories. She was their Old Woman, who remembered things that had happened before any of them were born, as well as all the lore of long ago, things that generations of Old Women had passed down. She sat among the women, and spoke for them, but spoke as an equal with the hunters. She looked round the circle and then rose.
ʺLet the hunters come with me,ʺ she said, and led them to the back of the cave.
ʺWho knows the name of Tandin’s father?ʺ she said. ʺWas it any of you . . . ? No . . . ? Lay your hands on the pelt of the Amber Bear and swear to me it was not.ʺ
All did as she told them.
ʺPerhaps the fellow’s dead,ʺ said Sordan. ʺOr perhaps he was from another cave.ʺ
ʺPerhaps,ʺ said Nedli. ʺBut the Blind Bear has called Tandin to her and spoken to him in his dream. I think he is a spirit-walker and it was Amber Bear that took human shape and fathered him, as long ago he fathered Tarr and Undarok.ʺ
ʺThose are only stories,ʺ said Vulka.
ʺLast night you thought the fireworm was only a story,ʺ said Barok.
ʺIn that case let Tandin walk the ghost path,ʺ said Bast. ʺLet him ask his father to help us.ʺ
The other hunters ignored him, well aware why he should say that. There were ghost walkers in one or two of the other caves, but most who had tried to take that journey had either died or returned too crazed to live long.
The Blind Bear whispered in Tandin’s mind.
Son of a bear, come.
He left his place by the wall, joined the circle of hunters and laid his hand on the pelt.
ʺYes,ʺ he said. ʺLet me walk the ghost path. Set me on the way.ʺ
ʺYou’re too young,ʺ said Barok. ʺGrown hunters have died. Remember what Nedli has said. ‘The ghost path is splintered ice beneath the feet, thorn bush tearing the flesh, bitterweed on the tongue, ice in the heart. It runs on the very edge of life, with a sheer drop down into the dark land of the Great White Owl.’ʺ
ʺThere is always a price to pay for anyone who walks the ghost path,ʺ said Daskan. ʺAn arm, or an eye.ʺ
ʺOr his mind,ʺ said Bast, with relish. ʺOr his life.ʺ
ʺThe Blind Bear calls me,ʺ said Tandin.
That settled it.
Nedli knew the ritual. She set everyone to preparing a feast but told Tandin to take extra furs and go and wait outside. As he went out into the pale and icy dawn, the Blind Bear whispered in his mind again.
Bears sleep at this season. Son of my brother, be a bear.
Something in him understood her meaning. He chose a place on the northern side of a boulder, so that the brief noon brightness shouldn’t wake him, and scooped a hollow in the snow. Deliberately, bit by bit, he slowed his heart and his breathing. His eyes were open, but he was neither awake nor asleep. When Mennel passed him with two other women, going to fetch roots from the pits where they were cached, she turned aside and stared down at him in wonder. Tandin perceived her as if from very far off, and knew who she was, but did not stir.
The others feasted and boasted and sang, and as the sun began to sink, they came out and carried Tandin inside. By then his flesh felt as cold as raw meat would have been on a summer morning, but he was still slowly breathing.
On Nedli’s instructions they had taken the amber pelt down from the wall and spread it on the floor. Now the women stripped Tandin of his furs and laid him on it and wrapped it twice round him and bound it in place with thongs. Six of the hunters hoisted him onto their shoulders and carried him down to the burial tree, with the rest of the people groaning and wailing the death chant as they followed.
The burial tree stood a little way into the forest at the top of a mound too rocky for anything else to have taken root. All round rose the cairns of long-dead hunters. The tree was very old, and dead all down one side. Most of the trees in the forest were pines of one kind or another, but this was an ash tree and leafless at this season. Two of the hunters climbed into the tree carrying thongs, which they passed over two branches growing side by side, a little way apart, one dead a
nd one still living. The men on the ground tied one end of each thong round the roll of pelt with Tandin at its centre and hauled him up into the tree. It was almost dark by the time they turned away, still singing the death music, and left him there, hanging between life and death.
Though he could see nothing from inside the pelt, Tandin had been aware of all this and knew what was happening to him. Now he could feel the night gathering itself round him and the utter cold in which nothing could live beginning to seep through the layers of fur and hide and into his still-sentient flesh. Slowly it moved deeper, but before it reached his centre, a strange warmth began to pervade him, a glow without heat, a peace. The feeling made him drowsy, and he slept.
He was woken by a savage thump on his chest, a battering of wings and a tearing sound. The bundle he was wrapped in rocked violently to and fro. The pelt that covered his face was ripped clear, and he gazed up into a strange dark shape, outlined against moonlit sky. At the edge of his vision, on either side, two curving silvery lines pulsed to and fro, glinting where the moonlight caught plumage on the leading edges of the beating wings.
Now, knowing what he faced, he could make out two dark and shining rounds, faintly gold, in the dark shape above him. The eyes of the Great White Owl gazing down at its prey. And below them the gleaming curve of the black beak, poised ready to strike.
This is the price I must pay, he thought, to be blind, like the Blind Bear. If this is what she chooses, I am ready.
Something buffeted into the tree-trunk. The leafless branches clattered together. Twigs rattled down. A roar of challenge rose from below.
The White Owl screamed, leaped into the air and hurtled down, savage talons reaching for the challenger. Something thudded against the tree. The violence of the impact snapped the dead branch from which Tandin was suspended. His whole bundle swung down, still held by the thongs at the lower end, and continued to swing heavily to and fro while the battle shook the forest. From time to time he caught glimpses of the fight, the owl plunging once more into the attack, or the monstrous bear it fought reared on its hind legs, fangs gleaming in the moonlight, forelegs held wide, with immense hooked claws extended. At one point he saw its mask clearly. Where the eyes should have been there were two scarred pits. Yet it turned its head to follow the owl’s flight and tensed to meet the next attack. He didn’t see an actual clash, or how the fight ended.
Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits Page 12
