The Fire Ascending

by Chris D'Lacey

  Then she was dragged away out of his sight.

  She made angels in this timeline. Angels, not dragons. Flying humans, inspired by the firebirds, she said. She liked to experiment with different kinds of media. Paper. Cardboard. Strangely, not clay. Clay was not appropriate here, she said. She painted them, too. In various states of flight. Hands lifted to the sky. Soft violet in their eyes. Just like the beautiful tapestries of Taan, they hung in every room throughout our “pod.” Wherever I looked, a new one would appear. Yet I saw no signs of brushes or paints, even though she was wearing a paint-stained smock. More puzzling still, no hammer or chisel for the Isenfier sculpture. No “stuff” existed at all in the pod. Just us, the firebirds, and Elizabeth’s creations. I had yet to see Arthur the cat.

  On the second day, after a very long sleep, she sensed I was finding the pod confusing and asked if I’d like to use the tele:computer.

  The tele:computer?

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “Right here,” she said.

  There, taking up the whole of one wall, was a huge screen. How, I wondered, could I have missed it?

  “Watch for as long as you want to,” she said. She tousled my hair and straightened a piece just above my ear. “You know where to find me.”

  As she drifted away, a gradient of colors swept across the screen, leaving behind a small row of icons. I stepped forward and touched an image of a pod. Its title was simply HOME.

  It told me I lived at Wayward Crescent, in the “burrow” of Scrubbley, “position” 42. A clock with a dateline faded up. The year was the same as the one I’d left behind, right down to the nearest second (for some reason, I seemed to instinctively know it).

  42.

  Wayward Crescent.

  Scrubbley.

  3:15 and 22 seconds.

  Home.

  Next to “Home” was a flashing icon of a planet. Blue one moment, gray the next, but not keeping to any regular pattern. The wording underneath was flickering, too, between “Earth” and the slight alternative, “Erth.” I prodded it with a finger.

  The icon stayed gray. The screen came back with a strange message:

  Information pending

  I pressed again, trying to turn the planet blue.

  The icon stayed gray.

  Then flickered again.

  Gray.

  Flicker.

  Gray.

  Flicker.

  Information pending

  “Grandma, this isn’t working,” I shouted.

  I looked over my shoulder. She wasn’t there.

  But on the opposite wall, sitting on the floor like a misplaced vase, was a brown tabby cat.

  “Arthur?” I said.

  Brrr-up? the cat replied, sounding peeved.

  Not Arthur, then.

  He flicked an ear. A triangular piece was missing from it.

  “I know you,” I whispered.

  N-yeh, he burbled.

  But no matter how I tried, the name wouldn’t come to me.

  Suddenly, two firebirds went flying past, drawing my gaze away from the cat. When I looked again the cat wasn’t there.

  Nor the screen.

  Annoyed, I went in search of the firebirds and quickly found myself in Elizabeth’s room, though how I’d got there I couldn’t say. I seemed to be floating around the pod. I had no memory of the room I’d come from or of the layout of the rooms nearby. Time was all the while passing, I thought, but all I ever had was the feeling of “now.”

  Elizabeth was sitting on a cushion on the floor, facing the sculpture, six feet away. She had her legs crossed over, the way I’d seen Arthur Merriman meditate. Her thumbs were making a circle with her fingers. Her eyes were closed, but she knew I was there.

  “Shh,” she said gently. “Don’t speak, Agawin. Not while the birds are busy.”

  I saw then how the magick happened. She was picturing the carving in her head. And through some means of interspecies telepathy, three birds were using short bursts of fire to melt away the ice that wasn’t needed. They were working on the base of it, creating what looked like a sleeping dog. Though it was large for a dog. A bear, perhaps.

  Elizabeth shook her shoulders and let out a single puff of air.

  The birds stopped working and came to hover in a line in front of her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Rrrh, they went, and zipped out of the room.

  She extended a flappy hand sideways to me.

  “You okay, Grandma?” She looked a little tired.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m very happy here. But I can only concentrate for so long. Then the tiredness comes and they make me stop.”

  “Who?” I asked. “Who makes you stop?”

  She smiled and tugged at the ends of my fingers. “Are you having a good day?”

  I wasn’t really sure. What made a good day, here? “Grandma, can I ask you something?”

  “Anything you like.”

  And it should have been about the cat or the screen, but I heard myself saying, “Where are … the others?”

  “Others?” she said.

  “I can’t remember their names, but I know there were others.” I was sure I’d shared this pod with someone.

  She looked at me kindly. The green in her left eye grew a little brighter. “The others will come for you when they’re ready. I think they’ve sent you here because they know you’ll be safe.”

  Or they’d made a terrible mistake. If Gwilanna was coming, I must be on my guard. I had to warn someone … Henry? Joseph? Joseph Henry. Yes, that was it. That was the name. But how?

  I was almost punching the air with my thoughts when an idea struck me. “Grandma, is the listener still in the kitchen?”

  “Probably,” she said. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Just … y’know, curious.”

  She looked past me to the door. A gray-haired cat had just strolled in, different from the one with the damaged ear. This one had a black patch of fur across one eye and walked with a slight, left-sided limp. He padded straight past me and curled into her lap, meowing as she smoothed her hand along its back. “It’s all right, Arthur, I’m with you,” she whispered. And she hummed a gentle lullaby to it. And the walls of the pod responded to the sound and began to glow with life-sized scenes.

  I saw a beautiful red-haired girl, singing along while she tended her goats. Then the same girl on a mountain-top, a sudden explosion of light in her hands. And again on the back of a huge brown bear, emptying that same light into an ocean. Then there was ice as far as I could see and as many white bears as the ice could hold. All of them squinted proudly at Elizabeth. They planted their claws and held their heads high, but in their hearts I knew they were bowing to her.

  A single drop of water ran down the ice sculpture and dripped with a fiery plink onto the table.

  And I wanted to cry and cry and cry.

  “Grandma, what does this mean?” I begged.

  She stroked Arthur’s head and finished her song. “Isn’t it time you were in bed, Agawin?”

  And placing a soft kiss on my head, she carried Arthur out of the room.

  They landed, not on the island itself, but on the curved strip of rocks that joined it to the mainland, only visible when the tide was low. Some leveling had been done on the upper surface to make a passable breakwater. “The Bridge of Souls, how appropriate,” David muttered. “You remember the legend, don’t you, Tam?” He was being held by Tam while the boat was moored. He nodded back toward the land. “Gwilanna stands on the shore and creates a wave that carries Thoran and Guinevere out to sea. The rest is … frozen in the Earth’s proper history, not in this sordid sidestep in time.”

  The darkling commander looked at him oddly, the growths on his temples straining like warts. He attempted the closest thing to a frown. “You talk too much,” he said eventually, and bundled David off the boat, onto steps hewn crudely out of the rocks. Every one was riddled with dark gray weed and the slime from
another marine “experiment.” Behind him, through the rain, David heard Rosa shouting, “Get your hands off me, you ugly excuse for a human being!”

  “She’s going to give you trouble, that one,” he said.

  Tam hauled him up the steps and onto the bridge. “The Pri:magon will deal with her. Walk.”

  A powerful thump in the center of his back persuaded David to do just that. As he stumbled forward he let his gaze pan across the island. He had seen it before, in its appropriate timeline, locked in ice, mostly blanketed in snow. A place for bears to winter their young. They called it “The Tooth of Ragnar,” because its famous tip hooked over like a canine. It was as sacred to the bears as it was to the people who inhabited the north. The legendary resting place of the last known dragon, Gawain.

  A plume of fire suddenly erupted from the peak. It boxed with the low cloud hanging overhead, then scrolled into an orange ball and fizzled away. The gray sea arched its back. David looked to the northern shore. The swirling patterns of water there confirmed his worst suspicions.

  They had Gawain and they were using him, somehow, to draw out Gaia.

  They were working on the Earth’s magnetic core.

  “How are your hands, Tam?”

  “Shut up,” he growled. “Or you’ll die drinking salt.”

  “I doubt that,” David said, with confidence. “The Pri:magon wouldn’t like to lose me, would she?” The darkling man nearest them began to cough. The heat falling back toward the water was bringing down a filmy cloak of ash. The man cursed and spat a lump of phlegm onto the stone. Dotted throughout his murky saliva were small dull spots of yellow sulfur.

  “So … hands. How are they?” David repeated. “Not the reptilian skin, of course; the chemistry of the inversion doesn’t really interest me.” Or does it? he wondered, glancing at those spots of sulfur again. Maybe there was a weakness there. He could hear more coughing farther back along the bridge. “It’s what’s under the skin that matters.”

  “What are you talking about now?” Tam snarled, betraying a hint of his once-Scottish accent.

  David stopped abruptly. They bumped together, eye to alien eye. “Under the skin,” he said again quietly, looking as deep into Tam as he could. “We were allies once, Tam and Ingavar. I gave you a gift to help you kill darklings. All you have to do is look for it.”

  With a rasp of steel, Tam brought out a knife. It was pressing at the border of David’s neck when Lucy bellowed, “Stand down! Now!”

  Tam growled, showing his changing teeth. The enamel, David noticed, was already breaking up, splitting into the familiar darkling “needles.”

  “Now!” Lucy barked.

  Tam stood aside, kicking a dead fish back into the sea. The tide had dropped them all along the bridge. One or two men were scooping them up, eating the heads and throwing the rest back. Ravens, likewise, were dropping like stones, helping to clear the path ahead.

  “That must hurt — being told what to do,” David said. He ran a hand inside his collar, relieved, perhaps, that Tam had not cut him. “Then again, she was always feisty. It’s the dragon in her. She’ll never be entirely rid of it — agh!”

  Lucy’s fist came up and struck across his cheek, almost rearranging his top row of teeth. “One more word from you and I’ll kill you myself.”

  David straightened up and looked her in the eye. A trail of blood was running down his cheek. A gift from the calluses spread across her knuckles. “Gwendolen sends her love,” he ventured.

  And thankfully she didn’t kill him. She made a muted gesture at Tam, and David was made to start walking again.

  At the junction between the bridge and the island, a wooden ramp had been laid to even out the final part of the join. The drumbeat of approaching men brought others running from the bluffs and crags like ants spilling from a hole in the ground. Still the rain came sweeping down. The darklings seemed oblivious to it and lined the rocks to watch and sneer, clinging to the wetted surfaces like lizards. An unsettled rumble from the belly of the island signaled another belch of fire. Nearly all the darklings coughed. Several of them turned and spat at the mountain. David, wondering how Rosa was coping, tried to look over his shoulder for her. Another whack to the back of his head kept him focused on the path in front. They were heading for an opening where the slope was less steep. Until then it had been hidden from view by fallen rocks and the angle of approach. Tam went in first, dipping his head, even though the space was high enough for him. Two of the party grabbed David’s arms. They flung him through the hole but didn’t follow. Shortly afterward Rosa was hustled in as well, followed by Lucy, pushing all the way.

  Lucy strolled on ahead. “Pri:magon, we have them. They were in the woodland, where you predicted.”

  Tam grabbed Rosa and hauled her into line beside David. He shoved them forward as one.

  To David’s surprise they had entered a hollow. It obeyed the shape of the island so well that he wondered if the layers of granite and earth had been plastered onto a conical bubble. For once, there was an element of color present. The ragged walls of the chamber were glowing amber, reflecting a pool of clinkery lava swirling in a crater at the center of the void. David glanced upward, wondering at first how the heat and fumes were being channeled away from the island floor. Then he realized this was no ordinary fire. There was an element of natural magma present, but it was heavily mixed with dragon auma. A violent blup! made Rosa squeal. She gripped his arm and said, “We’ve got to get out of here. If that explodes, we’ll all be dead!”

  “Clearly, you know nothing about dragons,” said a voice. As if to demonstrate that, the pool was sucked loudly into the crater. A second later, a column of air and gas was ejected toward the dome of the island. It ignited before it hit the open air and swirled around the walls of a man-made caldera before escaping into the sky. The interior rock face shook like a tissue. Already, cracks were beginning to show.

  A figure moved through the shadows. A woman, dressed in a floor-length gown, pinched at the waist by a knotted cord. She had long wild hair and her feet were bare.

  Tam and Lucy knelt to her, bowing their heads.

  David said, “Rosa’s right, Gwilanna. The island is unstable. It will be destroyed if you —”

  The woman began to laugh. “Oh, David. Has it been that long?”

  She stepped forward into the light.

  And David saw her altered face, but the bangles gave her away to him first.

  Rosa gasped and covered her mouth.

  A darkling clone was standing before them.

  Not Gwilanna at all.

  Zanna.

  I didn’t go to bed. I didn’t feel tired. I went chasing out of Elizabeth’s room, thinking I would run downstairs to the kitchen. I wanted to speak to the listening dragon.

  But as soon as I emerged, I realized I hadn’t seen a stair since I’d been here. I looked left and right. There wasn’t even a door. Then I heard a gentle muffled sound and saw the brown tabby cat in the floor space ahead of me, the one with the damaged ear. He was sitting down, scratching his collar with a paw. “You must know the way to the kitchen,” I said.

  He looked up and frowned, the way cats do.

  “Bowl,” I suggested. “Food.”

  That did it.

  N-yeh, said the cat. With a twitch of his whiskers, he turned and trotted away.

  I followed him — or rather the tink of his bell, for the cat himself was always too far ahead. All I saw now and then was a flash of its tail. Doors opened up where they hadn’t done before. Walls changed color. Lights came on. A potted plant with red and green leaves appeared (KOLEUS written on a label in the soil). Tele:screen images flashed up on the walls. The first I saw was a stuttering lecture about the history of the planet Erth. I glanced sideways at it as I ran. A man in a plain white suit was explaining that a change of timeline did not have to disrupt the advance of learning. In our particular history, for instance, a stroke of serendipity had brought the discovery of electricity
and the invention of silicon-based circuitry much closer together. Since “our” seventeenth century, technology had grown at a furious pace. Thanks to this, the Pearlygates Interactive Tele:computer was now a feature of every …

  I ran on. I had almost lost the sound of the bell.

  The second time I saw a tele:screen, I did.

  It felt as if I’d been following the cat for hours. Yet the only time I could think of was “now.”

  3:15:22

  No bell. I paused for breath. In front of me, another tele:screen lit. A documentary feature about firebirds. Likewise, said a slow voice-over, every species on Erth has experienced a changed evolutionary path. Some for better. Some for worse. One of those that have come to major prominence, of course, is the firebird. Here we see three, in their natural aerie. What draws them to structures such as this isn’t clear. An image of a giant building appeared. It had thousands of square-shaped windows, all identically spaced apart. I knew that I knew this place — but from where? The camera zoomed in and came to rest on a cream-colored firebird with apricot ear tufts. Females, said the voice, like this fine example, are often attended by two or more males. A grumpy-looking red one was in the window to her right; a mild-mannered green one in the window on her left. Rrrh! went the red one, making the female jump. She leaned forward and squinted — at the lens, or at me?

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  But the screen had cleared, and the next thing on it was a series of schematic diagrams, aiming to describe how the birds had evolved their strange ability to generate fire. By filtering small quantities of hy:drogen from water and collecting it in tonsillar sacs in the throat, these highly intelligent birds are able to throw a jet of flame by rapidly expelling the stored gas. What benefit this has is not entirely clear, for the birds appear to have no natural predators. And their extraordinary progress does not end there. Evidence has recently come to light of another remarkable physical development…. Up came another set of images, which appeared to predict that the next stage of firebird evolution might be a hardening of their feathers into scales. Were we to extrapolate from here, said the voice, almost beside itself with scholarly excitement, who knows what magical creature might result…. The beak morphed into an extended jaw. The tail feathers coalesced into a kind of whip. The wings grew out into powerful canopies. Small arms emerged from the breast. A glint pinged out of a jeweled eye. A burst of white fire clouded the screen.