Firesong

by William Nicholson

  ‘They live in the stillness and know the flame.’

  ‘Please don’t talk like a book. Tell me what they actually do, and why.’

  ‘But you know that, my child. You’ve felt it.’

  ‘When have I felt it?’

  He smiled back at her with his owlish eyes, but said no more.

  ‘Do you mean earlier, in the cabin?’

  He inclined his head.

  ‘When I felt I wasn’t there any more?’

  Again he inclined his head.

  ‘But that was like dying.’

  ‘Like dying, but not dying.’

  ‘Yes.’ She puzzled over her memory of that brief extraordinary moment, when the cabin had turned into bright nothingness. ‘Is that what Singer people do?’

  ‘They do many things. But that’s what they’re for.’

  ‘For dying?’

  ‘If that’s what you want to call it.’

  ‘In the wind on fire.’

  ‘You see,’ he said. ‘You do know.’

  ‘But I don’t know what it is, or why.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  She said nothing. His tone of voice rather than his words told her to ask no more questions. She looked at him steadily. He was such a funny little creature, so round-bellied and short-legged, so ridiculous and yet so powerful. He started to hum quietly to himself. She found herself studying his hair, which was, like all of him, of an indeterminate colour, and wispy. It was lifting up off his mottled scalp and rippling in the river breeze, catching the light and giving off silvery glints. You would almost have thought that his hair was glowing, the way the surrounding air shimmered as he hummed. Now that she looked further, she realised that it was glowing: and more, his skin was glowing, and his coat, and his hands. All over him there was forming a layer of bright trembling air.

  Kestrel stared at Jumper. He had gone very still. His humming continued, but very low. His eyes were open, and directed towards her, but she knew he didn’t see her. This sheath of light that now surrounded him was familiar to her, but she couldn’t recall from where. Then, looking up above his head, she saw how the bright air rose in a tall plume, through which the trees on the riverbank beyond were distorted, and seemed to wave and dance.

  Of course, she thought. It’s heat rising. It’s like the heat that surrounds a candle flame.

  Jumper was generating heat. She put out the palm of her hand and felt it clearly. He himself was not burning, there was no flame at the centre of the cowl of heated air, and yet she understood that this plump and homely body was its source. In some strange way, Jumper was aflame.

  Little by little the heat died down, and the disturbance in the air was calmed. Jumper awoke, if he had ever been asleep. He smiled at her once more. He had stopped his humming.

  ‘What would have happened if you’d gone on longer?’

  ‘I would not have returned.’

  ‘And that’s what Singer people do, at the end?’

  He inclined his head.

  ‘It’s the only thing we do. Everything else can be done in one way or another by others. Only Singers know the flame.’

  ‘Only Singers choose to go so far and not return.’

  His grandfatherly gaze showed her respect.

  ‘If you know that, you know everything.’

  ‘And after the wind on fire? What then?’

  ‘The time of kindness.’

  ‘No, I mean for the Singers.’

  ‘Ah, child. That I don’t know. That no one knows. We make that journey without maps.’

  Kestrel looked out at the rushing river, and let her thoughts run with its currents. The river was wider now, and fuller, as ever more mountain streams came rushing to join it on its race to the sea. The barge moved swiftly past tree-clad banks, following the turns of the river as if commanded by an expert pilot, though there was no one at the wheel.

  ‘When you came for my brother,’ she asked after a while, ‘did you know I would come too?’

  ‘What a one you are for knowledge!’ Jumper answered. ‘No, I didn’t know. I know very little. I have no plan.’ He waved one plump hand at the river. ‘It’s like this river. Do I know where there are rocky shallows, or dangerous cross currents? No, I know nothing. But I stay alert, and when I meet danger, I do what I must. So when you joined us, I thought to myself, I must stay alert, and see what comes my way.’

  Kestrel asked no more.

  In a little while she heard people moving about in the cabin, and the hatch slid open, and Bowman came out. He stepped carefully over the sloping roof of the hold to join Kestrel and Jumper on the prow.

  ‘Albard says we’re nearly at the river’s mouth.’

  Jumper nodded. ‘Not long now.’ He looked up at the clouds massing above. ‘Snow on its way.’

  He had hardly spoken the words when the first flurry of snowflakes began to fall. Within moments the snow was falling steadily, powdering their heads and shoulders.

  ‘We’d better go below,’ said Kestrel.

  ‘Stay a moment longer,’ said Jumper.

  Albard joined them on deck, stamping far too hard on the roof boards, cursing the snow.

  ‘Damn winter!’ he complained. ‘Damn cold! Damn everything!’

  ‘Look,’ said Jumper.

  The riverbanks were widening on either side, and there ahead, in a churning ridge of white foam, the fast-flowing river water crashed into the sea. The sight of so much open horizon came as a shock after the long day bound in on all sides by winter forest. The falling snow blurred the line between grey sky and grey sea, surrounding the barge with a boundless featureless immensity. Even the coast on either side lay veiled and insubstantial in the falling snow.

  The barge rode on, out into the open sea. As it crossed the bar it lurched violently, forcing its human cargo to cling to the hatch-handles and straps. Once past the confluence of the waters the rocking settled down again, to a new motion, a long regular swell.

  ‘You see that dirty smudge ahead?’ said Albard, pointing with one finger. ‘North-west of us, on the horizon?’

  Bowman and Kestrel looked through the curtain of snow in the direction he was pointing, and just made out a low shape that was a deeper grey than the clouds above.

  ‘That’s Sirene,’ said Albard. ‘Damn fool place, full of damn fool people.’

  Kestrel looked at Jumper and found that he too was gazing towards the island. He looked young again.

  Bowman stared and stared.

  ‘Sirene,’ he murmured. ‘At last.’

  16

  Ira sees the future

  The snow fell on the column of the Manth people as they toiled up the mountainside. The track that they followed was narrow, and climbed steeply. Beneath its coating of snow the sparse earth had been scraped from the stones by the hooves of goats, and the beat of their passing had formed the ground into narrow steps, all of different sizes. It was hard going, treading up this irregular stairway, between the snow-laden trees.

  As the mountainside became steeper still, the travellers faced a second hazard. Rollo Shim brushed a loose stone with his limping foot, and sent a shower of debris tumbling down on those below. One larger stone, gathering speed as it tumbled, triggered a small avalanche, a rush of snow that was heavy enough to knock Fin Marish over and send her rolling back down the track. Miller Marish and Lolo Mimilith clambered down to her aid; and the entire party was forced to wait while they carried the child back up.

  Rollo Shim cursed his wounded leg, but he was glad of the enforced rest. The climb was hard: most of all for the horses, who hauled Ira Hath on one litter and Mrs Chirish on the other. They felt their way with nervous hoof-fall, plodding on up the track, their sweating coats melting the snow as it settled on them. The cows too were a matter for concern. They followed the column willingly enough, but time and again came to an exhausted standstill, their breath steaming through the falling snow. At such times Creoth waited with them, calling ahead to Hanno,

 
‘Pause a while!’

  After a few moments the cows would shiver their hides and set off again, knowing this was no place to stop. Creoth would cry out,

  ‘On our way!’

  The whole column, grateful for the rest, would set off once more up the stony staircase of the mountainside.

  Hanno walked beside his wife as she was jolted along in her litter. They had covered her up with blankets against the snow, so that nothing of her could be seen except, beneath a projecting peak of cloth, her familiar eyes. Now as he watched her he saw that most of the time her eyes were closed. Whenever they stopped to rest he would kneel down so that his face was close by hers, and they would speak, but her voice was weak. He never asked her how she was feeling, it only annoyed her. He told her what was happening, and how far they were from the mountain’s ridge.

  ‘Will we reach the top before dark?’ she asked.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said. Then, ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Not this evening, then,’ she murmured. ‘Tomorrow evening.’

  He knew that she was thinking of the sunset, and the red sky she had seen in her dream.

  ‘Most likely tomorrow evening,’ he said.

  ‘Help Pinto,’ she told him. ‘The child needs you.’

  Hanno knew at once that she was right. In his anxiety over the climb, and Fin Marish’s fall, and the waning day, and his wife’s all too visible decline, he had forgotten about Pinto. She had struggled on with the rest, quiet and uncomplaining: too quiet, in fact. It struck Hanno now that she had barely spoken a word since they had left the frozen lake.

  When the column resumed the wearying climb, he left Ira’s side and tramped up the track to find Pinto. For several minutes he climbed the mountain by her side without speaking, letting her adjust to his nearness. This was one of Hanno’s habits. He believed it was always a mistake to open a conversation cold; more than a mistake, a kind of assault. It took time, he felt, for two people to organise their feelings about each other, to bring them up out of store, before it was appropriate to speak the first words.

  The falling snow matched his mood. A constant motion between him and his daughter, but not a distraction, it soothed them both. In a little while, he felt her turning towards him. He felt her fear and her uncertainty. He said nothing. He let her feel his love and his patience. He listened.

  So it was Pinto who spoke first; and they were already in mid-conversation.

  ‘Why us?’ she asked.

  ‘You,’ said Hanno. ‘Not me.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘No. I’m proud.’

  Hanno knew well that the gifts and burdens of the prophet came through his wife’s kin. He had married into the line of Ira Manth. He had no gifts himself.

  ‘Why are some people different?’ asked Pinto.

  ‘How are you different, my darling?’

  ‘I can do things.’

  ‘Then I expect you’re different so that you will do those things.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Does it make you feel afraid?’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid of – of being the one who does things.’

  ‘You don’t need to be afraid. In a way, it isn’t you that will do the things you’ll do.’

  At this point in their climb the track was running close to a mountain stream, a narrow fast-moving thread of icy water that raced down the mountainside over a shiny stream bed. Here and there the ground dropped away beneath the stream, and the water hurled itself out in a miniature waterfall, to land seething in a pool below, before tumbling on its way. Hanno Hath pointed out one such jet of sparkling water, as he tried to explain to his younger daughter how her new-found powers were hers and not hers at the same time.

  ‘You see how the water makes a curve in the air? That arch of shining water – you see it?’

  ‘Yes, pa.’

  ‘You’re like that waterfall. All the power, everything that makes it leap out from the stream bed and hover in mid-air like that, it all comes from the water flowing down the mountain. The water in the waterfall is changing all the time. But the waterfall stays the same. Do you see?’

  ‘Yes, pa.’

  ‘So you don’t have to be afraid, my darling. The power doesn’t come from you, or belong to you. It flows through you, and makes you the shape you are.’

  She listened gravely as his soft words came to her through the falling snow, and young as she was, she understood.

  ‘Is it like that for Bo and Kess?’

  ‘I believe so, yes.’

  ‘And ma?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So we don’t really do anything at all. We get done to.’

  ‘No, darling. You can do many things. You can refuse the power you feel in you now. You can take it for yourself. You can fight it. You can throw it away. But whatever you choose to do, know that the power doesn’t begin with you, or end with you.’

  ‘I don’t want to do any of those things you said. I want – I want – to make things right.’

  ‘Then so you shall.’

  ‘Is it so easy?’

  ‘Not easy. Not easy at all. Think how much is wanting to make things wrong. All the fear in the world, and the violence that comes from the fear, and the hatred that comes from the violence, and the loneliness that comes from the hatred. All the unhappiness, all the cruelty, it gathers like clouds in the air, and grows dark and cold and heavy, and falls like grey snow in thick layers over the land. Then the world is all muffled and numb, and no one can hear each other or feel each other. Think how sad and lonely that must be.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pinto, feeling it just as her father described it. ‘Yes.’

  They tramped on without speaking for a while. Then Pinto said,

  ‘You know so much, pa. I think you must have the power too.’

  ‘No, my darling. I have no powers at all. I can’t prophesy, like Ira. I can’t read thoughts, like Kestrel, or strike with my mind, like Bowman. I can’t talk with wolves. All I can do is listen, and learn. Read, and learn. Think over what I’ve heard and read, and learn.’

  ‘That’s how you know so much. We don’t know the things you know. Not even ma.’

  ‘I wish knowing was enough,’ said Hanno, sighing. ‘I’m not even sure how useful it is. It’s how I am. I like to try to puzzle things out. But all my knowledge can’t help me, now that –’

  He fell silent.

  ‘Now that Bo and Kess are gone. Now that ma is dying.’

  ‘You have changed,’ he said quietly.

  ‘We all know. We just don’t talk about it.’

  Hanno turned and looked back down the track, through the veil of falling snow to the horse pulling his wife on her litter.

  ‘I don’t know what I shall do without her,’ he said. He spoke simply, without self-pity, and Pinto knew he was telling her a plain truth. He couldn’t imagine a future without his wife. Then he added,

  ‘But of course, when it happens, I’ll find out.’

  The light in the sky was dimmed by the heavy clouds, and by the falling snow, and it was not easy to tell how long they had been climbing, except by the aching in their legs. But in time it became clear that night was falling. The snow, which hadn’t ceased all day, now came down more heavily than ever. With visibility shrinking by the minute, and no means of knowing how close they were to the top, the Manth marchers decided they must make camp for the night.

  The first plan was to shelter under a row of pines that grew beside the track. But Creoth, leading his cows deeper into the trees in search of forage, found a better resting place.

  ‘Hanno!’ he called. ‘Come and see!’

  It was a single, huge old oak, an evergreen oak, its rust-brown leaves still clinging to its branches. The snow had formed a dense canopy over the upper branches, but beneath, where they reached out from the massive trunk, there lay a high-vaulted dry-floored shelter, as big as a house.

  Here the Manth people gathered, grateful to be out of the falling sno
w, with their cows and their horses. They stamped their feet and shook the snow off their coats and hats, and propped up the two litters by the great tree trunk. They unbundled their firewood and lit a fire in the most sheltered spot, while the young men scraped up the snow outside to form a wall round their house, to shut out the night wind. As the fire caught, and the yellow flames sent dancing flickers of light up to the ribbed branches that formed the ceiling, the darkness fell all round, and suddenly it was night. The heat of the fire warmed them, as they gathered round, and the food they had brought with them filled them and gave them strength. Within a surprisingly short time the chilled and weary marchers were feeling cheerful and full of hope. The rising heat of the fire melted the snow in the branches above, so that it dripped hissing onto the burning faggots, and threatened to douse the whole fire; so Miko Mimilith fashioned a canopy out of sticks and cloth, well soaked in snow. This canopy, erected high over the fire, caught the drips from above, but also sent the rising smoke of the fire swirling down to sting their eyes. To counter this, they made a second contraption, a frame of tied sticks over which they stretched a length of cloth, which could be flapped slowly back and forth, to send the smoke away to the far side of the under-tree hall.

  In these ways and others, the Manth people turned their natural shelter into a comfortable home for the night. More than comfortable: it was beautiful. The firelight on the snow walls and on the tracery of the branches arching above made their house seem somehow ancestral, as if they had built it long ago, and had lived in it for generations. Beyond the heaped-up snow, beyond the living roof beams, there was nothing. All life was here, in this red and golden light. Firelight makes faces beautiful. The travellers looked at each other in wonder that they had come so far, and were still together. As for tomorrow –

  ‘Will it be tomorrow? Are we almost there? Will we see the homeland tomorrow?’

  Only Ira Hath knew. Hanno had made her comfortable, and she had eaten a little bread, and was sitting bundled in blankets smiling at them all.

  ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ she replied. ‘Not long now.’

  Hanno was happy to see her smiling, and to hear her voice. It was firmer and clearer than it had been all day.