Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits

by Robin McKinley

  By dusk they had enough piled up at the foot of the moraine for half a moon of ordinary fires, and had begun stacking it ready to light on the platforms either side of the gully. Meanwhile they let one side of their decoy fire burn down enough to provide a good bed of embers, and at nightfall roasted chunks of caribou meat over it and feasted, boasting and teasing, tossing the gnawed bones back into the fire.

  That night, as before, they kept watch by turns, and as before, when Tandin’s watch came round, he fed the fire and settled down and entered the spirit world. But this time there was no need to probe for the fireworms. Both of them were instantly clear to his inward senses, the female this time more strongly—her intense and desperate sudden need, her pleading. And his reluctance, his despair, his dread. He had nothing in his pouch to give her. The humans in the cave had driven him off with the terrible cold weapons of the outer world, and now, night after night, blocked his entry with the same things. They were ready to fight him again should he make a new tunnel. . . .

  The cavern seemed to fill with the odour of charring flesh.

  A change, a sudden attention, a focussing. A hope.

  The fireworm had become aware of the new fire, almost directly over its head.

  Now it began to move. Sideways at first—it couldn’t reach the roof of the cavern to begin its tunnel—into the fissure, perhaps. . . . Ah, now, much more slowly it had begun to climb. It was drilling a fresh tunnel, upwards. Tandin could sense the steady, continuous effort, the pure power.

  Merip, whose turn it was to watch next, woke of his own accord and went to see what had become of Tandin. He found him sitting trance-held by the fire, so he kept his own watch and woke Bond in his turn. The others joined Bond before dawn for a breakfast of cold roast caribou and mashed root. Then they continued all morning with the task of gathering timber and were having their midday meal when Tandin returned to the world where people live and die.

  When he woke, he told the hunters what he had seen.

  ʺSo how soon will the bastard finish his hole?ʺ said Vulka. ʺHe’s been going for a night, roughly. How far has he got?ʺ

  ʺAbout a third of the way—a bit less, maybe,ʺ said Tandin.

  ʺGive him a day and a night and a bit more—he’ll be through tomorrow noon, then. We’d better get the big fires lit, Barok,ʺ said Bond.

  ʺIt doesn’t matter if we don’t get it melted till after he’s through,ʺ said Barok. ʺThe hole will be there.ʺ

  ʺProvided he doesn’t go blocking it up again,ʺ said Bast.

  ʺI’ve been thinking,ʺ said Sordan, slowly, as if to indicate the speed of his thought processes. ʺThey didn’t wake up first night after we’d lit the fire, though it had been going long enough, surely—it was good and hot by then. But last night, all of a sudden, there was the female, wide awake and all eager. And Tandin said he smelt burnt meat down there. Right? Remember Denini and the birds’ eggs?ʺ

  All the others laughed, even Merip, though the laughter was at him. He was a small, cheerful man, nothing like a typical hunter, never on his dignity but affable and easy-going. The women said that the other hunters had only allowed him to join them because he was a brilliant tracker. Denini was his woman, and he doted on her. When she’d been pregnant with her first child, she had craved birds’ eggs, and Merip had had to spend good hunting days climbing trees to poke the nests down. The other hunters had mocked him for his solicitude, but he’d only laughed and said that it was for the sake of his unborn son, so that he could grow to be a hunter, fleet as a bird. And then the child had been a girl, and he’d doted on her too.

  All this was good for a fresh round of teasing. Only Sordan, rapt in the seriousness of his thought, didn’t join in.

  ʺNo, listen,ʺ he said, as soon as he got the chance. ʺWhat was the difference between last night’s fire and the one before? Answer, we’d roasted caribou and chucked the bones on it. Now suppose somehow the female had gone and smelt that, down there—suppose Tandin had taken it down with him—ʺ

  ʺNo need for any of that supposing,ʺ said Vulka. ʺWhat Tandin does is a sort of dreaming, far as I can make out. So you’re dreaming, and a gust of wind blows a bit of smoke towards you, and you smell it in your sleep and make it part of your dream. Right, Tandin?ʺ

  ʺI don’t think so,ʺ said Tandin slowly. ʺI started my watch well past midnight, and there wasn’t any meat smell then, not with this wind. And I suppose there is something a bit like Denini about the female—ʺ

  ʺShe’s not fat, not even when she’s whelping,ʺ said Merip indignantly. ʺAnd she doesn’t hoot either.ʺ

  That, and the whole absurd idea, was good for a fresh bout of laughter and teasing, which finished with Barok saying, ʺWell, I reckon we’ll get the big fires lit before we pack in tonight, and if all we’ve got to do to bring the brute up here is sling our scraps into the fire, it’s no great hardship.ʺ

  He set the example with the rib-bone he’d been gnawing, and they all went back to work.

  That afternoon they lit bundles of small stuff at their fire and poked them into the tunnels they had left for that purpose in the main wood-piles. More small dry stuff already laid in the tunnels quickly caught, and almost at once the flames were racing up through the logs with a jerky, scampering movement like squirrels running up a tree. Even in their weariness and anxiety the men laughed in triumph as both piles roared into flame.

  Almost at once the fires were too hot to stand beside, and soon it was impossible to approach them for more than a few instants. The men had to choose their moment, strip off their furs, dart in with a branch or log, fling it onto the furnace and dart away. The flare lit the wooded slopes on either side of the valley. Now, from any distance, they could see how the separate updraughts either side of the ice-fall were carving two steadily widening and deepening slots into the cliff. A stream of melt-water came gushing down them, under the boulders of the platforms, down into the gully, where they became a single stream, slicing into the snow in the bottom of the gully, freezing into fresh ice-falls as they tumbled from boulder to boulder.

  The three combined fires would have given light enough to work all night, but after a while the hunters became anxious that the ice wall would give way too early, so they broke off for their supper and then four of them left to rest in their snow-hole, while the others continued to feed the fires. Tandin took no part in their work now, but sat alone and apart, deliberately upwind of where they had eaten. Deep in the spirit world, immune to the appalling cold, he watched the fireworm’s progress. Again the smell of charred meat seemed to reek through the cavern, and again each time the fireworm returned there to rest the female soon drove it back with fresh entreaties. As it neared the surface Tandin began to be able to sense the exact point at which it might emerge. Sure enough, it seemed to be aiming not for the two great blazes by the ice wall, but for the far smaller decoy fire, where the hunters had roasted their meat.

  Soon after sunrise, when the hunters hauled their first load of fresh timber out from the woods on the western slope, they found three men standing on the edge of the gully, staring up at the deep cuts that the fires had carved into the cliff either side the of ice-fall. They turned when Barok hailed them and came striding across the rocks, frowning, hands on axe-helves.

  ʺThe one on the left is Findri,ʺ muttered Dotal. ʺI gave him my elder daughter. They come from Upmountain Cave. Let me speak to him.ʺ

  The others watched as he walked confidently forward to greet his son-in-law, calling his name. The scowls softened only slowly as he gestured and explained. The strangers turned to stare at Tandin, sitting wrapped in the bear pelt, as motionless as the rocks around him. Dotal came smiling back.

  ʺTricky,ʺ he said. ʺThe glacier’s their protecting spirit. But they’ve had the fireworm too—drove it off the same way we did—knew the stories, of course—they’d be glad to be shot of it. I told ’em what Tandin did. It’s a good four generations since they’d a spirit-walker in their cave. They’re going to giv
e us a hand.ʺ

  With the extra workers the log-stacks were quickly replenished and the fires roared up anew. The stream in the gulley was now a torrent. Twice more Tandin returned to the world where people live and die and told the workers that the fireworm was very near and looked like breaking through well before dark, but the third time it was different. Only a man’s height from the surface and directly below the decoy fire, the fireworm had stopped digging and gone back to the cavern. Despite all the female’s unceasing pleadings and scoldings, it was now deep asleep. But he had sensed no sudden alarm or caution before the withdrawal, only a feeling more like weary satisfaction.

  ʺIt’s waiting till nightfall,ʺ he said.

  The men had stopped work to eat and were sitting on the lower boulders of the moraine, gnawing the last bits and pieces of caribou and tossing the stripped bones down into the nearer of the two fires. Now they began to argue about when the ice wall would give way. As the fires had carved into the cliff either side of the ice-fall, the two competing teams had driven them steadily deeper by swinging fresh logs clean over the blazing piles to feed the further sides. The funnelling effect increased the updraughts, and large logs began to crumble into embers almost as soon as they had burst alight. In the short time the men had been eating, both fires had reduced themselves to great, glowing mounds and the noise from them dwindled to a fluttering murmur. In a pause in the talk the ice wall groaned.

  The sound wasn’t huge, just a slow, deep creak. They froze, and looked up at the ice-fall, towering almost immediately over them.

  ʺLet’s be getting out of here,ʺ said Barok.

  The sound had hauled Tandin from his dream. He woke and heard the men calling to him as they scrambled down the moraine, and followed them along the track they’d cleared through the snow by their steady hauling of timber down from the hillside. Where the ground began to slope upward, they halted and turned.

  It was now half-way through the short afternoon. The air, freezing even at midday, was already chilling fast, and seemed bitingly cold to bodies that a little while ago had been almost sweating in the glow from the fires. Again Tandin moved a few paces apart and returned to the spirit world, while the others huddled down in the lee of a low crag and waited to see what would happen.

  Twice more the ice wall groaned, loud enough for the men to hear where they sat. But the fires were visibly shrinking. They seemed to glow as strongly as ever, but that was only in contrast to the fading light. Much as the cold of the coming night crept into their bodies, so tension, boredom and impatience suffused their minds. Continually they glanced to where Tandin sat oblivious and withdrawn. He gave them no sign at all until, with the last light fading and the stars plain to see, they heard a voice. Not Tandin’s voice, but a voice speaking directly to them out of the spirit world, forcing itself between his unmoving lips, as eerie as the groan of the glacier:

  ʺThe fireworm wakes. He comes.ʺ

  The hunters tensed, staring at the heaped embers of the decoy fire. Its outline blurred and wavered as the rising heat sucked in night-frosted air from the sides, heated it in an instant and drove it upward. Twice more the glacier groaned. None of them perceived the actual moment of change, the point at which the fireworm broke through and the embers began to slither down into the shaft it had drilled. The first they knew of it was a shuddering indrawn sigh from Tandin, and his own voice saying, ʺHe’s come. He’s here.ʺ

  Now they could see the ember-pile collapsing, sifting away inward and down. When it was two-thirds gone, with a pit at the centre and the sides of the surrounding pile no longer steep enough for the embers to tumble down, it stopped.

  They waited, expecting no more. But now a shape began to emerge above the dully glowing heap, rising further and further—the huge, blunt snout of the fireworm, then its massive head and shoulders, black against the still fierce glow of the two main fires. The hunters leaped to their feet, gripping axes and spears, poised to charge down on their enemy. The hunt was on, and Barok took control. They looked at him for the order.

  ʺWait,ʺ he said. ʺHe will hide in his hole. Let him come farther.ʺ

  Somehow wedging itself with its hind legs against the walls of its shaft, the fireworm reached out and began systematically scooping the remaining embers towards itself, rotating its body in the pit as it did so, in order to clear the whole ring.

  ʺWhen his back is towards us,ʺ said Barok.

  They waited.

  ʺWhy do we not sleep?ʺ muttered someone. ʺAll slept in the stories.ʺ

  ʺToo far?ʺ suggested someone else. ʺOr his breath is blown away, out here.ʺ

  ʺMove forward,ʺ said Barok. ʺNo, wait, he has heard us.ʺ

  The fireworm, its back now almost towards them, had paused in its steady rhythm of work, and visibly tensed, like an animal suddenly alert. Its great head angled up, but as if to sniff rather than listen. Puzzled, they watched it heave its whole body out of the shaft and start to crawl towards the nearer of the two main fires, moving with great difficulty over the rock-strewn slope because it was dragging beneath it, immensely distended and glowing with the stolen embers, the pouch that Tandin had seen in the cavern. And still it wanted more.

  Seen like that, despite its size, it looked utterly vulnerable and clumsy.

  ʺNow,ʺ whispered Barok.

  The hunters stole confidently forward.

  The fireworm reached the nearer fire, but instead of scooping up embers wholesale, as it had done before, it began to pick and nose through the fringes, choosing only here and there. The hunters were about half-way towards it when the glacier groaned again.

  They paused. This was a different noise, with a sharp, cracking onset and then rising and increasing.

  ʺBack!ʺ shouted several voices, and they had already turned and were racing and scrambling over the rocks when the ice-cliff gave way and all other sounds were swallowed in its thunder.

  Only Tandin, watching from the slope where they had waited, saw it happen. There was no visible warning. The sheer ice split open like a seedpod either side of the ice-fall. The section of the cliff that held it tilted out and crashed down between the fires, and the dark green wall of prisoned water launched itself into white and bellowing freedom. The central gully vanished in an instant. The fires were drowned. A few instants more and the fleeing hunters, though already on rising ground, were struggling in the fringes of the flood. Tandin saw one man swept away, and another almost, but grabbed from a rock by Bast and hauled to safety as he passed below. The survivors scrambled up the slope, glancing now and then over their shoulders at what they’d just escaped. When all were well above the flood-line they turned to look. Too exhausted by their efforts, too stunned by the colossal results, they were in no mood to exult or triumph, but could only stand and stare sombrely at the careering water.

  Of the fireworm they could see no sign.

  They found its body next morning, as they followed the still roaring torrent down the mountainside, looking for their lost comrade, a hunter from the other cave named Illok. They had no luck with him, but they came across the fireworm lying sprawled among the rocks where the first great outrush had hurled it. Its pouch had relaxed in death, losing almost all the embers it had so striven for, and lay in flabby folds beside its belly.

  Though they had seen the monster the night before, that had been at a distance and in the uncertain glow of the ember-piles. Now they could stand round it and realise its true size.

  At first they merely prodded the body with their feet and poked at it with their spears. Then Sordan slapped Barok on the shoulder, Dotal loosed the hunter’s yodelling cry that signals a successful end to the hunt, and in a moment they were all glorying in their achievement, whooping and prancing and baying to the skies, the sound of their voices floating up over the snowfields towards the summit of the mountain.

  Once again Tandin stood to one side. His feelings were very different from theirs, and at the same time utterly different from his exhausted but triump
hant return after his contest with the fireworm in the spirit world. There was no hero in this part of the story. This had been something else, a team of men bringing off a difficult and dangerous task. Nedli might tell the tale, so that people in after time could know of a way to kill a fireworm, but she wouldn’t do it in the manner in which she told her stories of heroes, because it is in the spirit world that they do their great deeds, not here.

  Sordan was trying to hack off one of the fireworm’s feet, to take back to the cave as a sacred object to hang on the wall, but his sharpest flint made not a scratch in the monster’s hide.

  That was as it should be, Tandin thought dreamily. He felt a strange fellowship with the fireworm, far deeper than he felt with the rejoicing hunters. It too didn’t belong in the world where people live and die. No weapon of this world should harm it, even in death. It had taken a spirit force, the huge, cold spirit force of the lake, to destroy it. That was what the Blind Bear had been telling him when she’d given him his weapons in her cave.

  His dream-state deepened. There was life of a kind still there in the great carcass, he realised. Just as a light still gleams in the eyes of a deer after the blood has stopped pulsing from the death wound and the breathing died away, so there was something, some last element of the fireworm’s fiery being, still seeping out of its cooling hulk. But not out into this world above the rocks, into its bitter cold and wet. Back down into the world of fire beneath the mountains.

  Like a lone wolf on a scent, Tandin followed the difficult trail, down and yet further down, until he entered the world of fire, and became one of its creatures. There were other creatures there, of many kinds, just as there are in this world above, and just as people were the masters here, so were fireworms in the world below. They had thoughts, like people, and loves, and longings.

  They lived in the heart of the fires below, and fed upon substances in the fiery rocks, but they could not give birth there. Just as toads must leave the air to mate and lay their eggs, so a pregnant fireworm must go up among the chill rocks above to give birth, and her mate must carry up burning rocks to keep her and her unborn brood alive.