Fire World

by Chris D'Lacey

  But there was something, just before the end of it, that aroused David’s curiosity and made him call again for a slower replay. He thought he had seen a blemish on the film. A small blip of blackness just before the pulse. A camera glitch perhaps? He asked the com:puter to zoom in and play back the end sequence, showing it in single frames. Over the course of five of those frames he noticed a strange sequence of events. The firebird’s flame, far from being blown well away from the shimmer, had been sucked right into it and something else had emerged in its place. It looked like a puff of black smoke, nothing more. Further zooming proved no help. And even when David lassoed the “smoke” with a drawing tool, isolated it from its background, and asked the com:puter to analyze the structure, the software had no answers for him.

  And yet a possible answer was about to emerge from a most unlikely source. As David swung back in his chair, tapping his toes and pondering what he’d seen, there was a knock at the window. It was Penny, of course. She was cupping her face and trying to stare through the half-open blinds. Not wanting her to see the images he’d found, David thought about blanking the screen, but decided instead to tease her a little by reimagineering the blinds in a different position. As she moved to try to find a clearer view, he partially frosted the glass.

  Her fist came up and she knocked again. In a muffled voice she shouted, “David, come here. I’ve got something to show you.”

  “Busy,” he shouted back. He blanked the screen anyway. “Close down,” he said to the com:puter.

  “Boon chased a firebird! Look, it dropped this.”

  David glanced at the waving hand. In it was a feather. A pure black feather. Puzzled, he rose up and opened the window.

  Penny waggled the feather proudly. “It was on the fence. Boon jumped for it and it flew away.”

  David glanced around the gardenaria. Everything was calm. “A black firebird?”

  “Yes!”

  “Did you see where it went?”

  She shook her head. “It was fast.” She let him take the feather. “Good, isn’t it?”

  David nodded. “It’s very interesting, Penny.”

  “I’m going to put it under my pillow.”

  “Put what under your pillow?” Eliza had just stepped into the gardenaria.

  “My feather,” said Penny, taking it back.

  Her mother’s face crumpled up in a frown. “Where did you get that?”

  “From a firebird, silly,” Penny said a little rudely, annoyed at having to repeat herself.

  “But there are no black firebirds on Co:pern:ica.” Eliza looked blankly at her daughter.

  “There are now,” David muttered. And he closed the window.

  And Penny shrugged happily and ran to her room.

  8.

  Although he would have liked to dwell a while longer on why a black firebird had appeared in the gardenaria (or indeed appeared at all), David abandoned the mystery just then in favor of reintroducing himself to some kind of home life. He spent the rest of that day with his mother and Penny, either walking in the woodland constructs near their pod, or playing with Boon, or looking through dozens of digi:grafs of himself when he was Penny’s age (carefully sifted to avoid shots of Harlan). Only when Penny’s bedtime came around did he get the chance to speak to his mother again privately. And it was she who began the conversation.

  “You’re troubled, aren’t you?”

  They were in the gardenaria, under the setting sun, imagineering possibilities for Eliza’s rockery. The horrible fungus Aunt Gwyneth had introduced had been not-so-mysteriously de:constructed. In its place Eliza had tried a variety of rocks, any number of different plants, a few ornaments, and a hanging light, though none of them seemed to fit her overall concept. Eventually, David solved the conundrum by imagineering a small arched door at the base of the stones, which, he said, would give Boon the impression that something actually lived in the mound. Hours of fun could be had, he suggested, watching Boon waiting for the door to open.

  Eliza punched his arm in jest. “You are horrible to that katt. All the same, it’s a sweet idea. Thank you.” She pulled him closer and kissed his cheek. “You haven’t answered my question: What’s bothering you?”

  “I’ve seen a film that was taken during my time at the therapy center.”

  “Film …? How?”

  “Dad gave me a micro:pen when he was arrested. Don’t worry, it’s in a safe place.”

  Eliza nodded. She crouched down and tended the flowers. “What was on this film?”

  “Me, turning into some kind of animal.” He described it for her. “I don’t know what it is or what it means, but there are only two places that might hold the answers. And as you’ll disapprove of me going to the Dead Lands, it will have to be the librarium. I need to go back there, Mom.”

  “So soon?”

  David shrugged and ran his hand over Boon (who had just stretched out near the rockery door). “In a day or two maybe. It never really occurred to me until now that I could use the books as a resource. And I feel very bad about walking out on Rosa.”

  “The brash girl? Is she still there?”

  “Mmm. Not much of a girl anymore. She’s very … well, grown-up, I suppose. When I left the librarium I had to get out quickly and keep my auma detached, in case Aunt Gwyneth found the micro:pen. I couldn’t tell Rosa. She was pretty hurt, Mom.”

  “You like her, don’t you?”

  “Hard not to, really.”

  “Will you bring her here?”

  David sighed and pulled a flower stalk through his fingers. “She’s not allowed to leave the librarium.”

  “Is she going to take over from Mr. Henry?”

  “I don’t know. She’d be the obvious choice.”

  “Hey!” a voice called.

  David turned and saw Penny at her bedroom window.

  “Are you coming?” she shouted.

  “In a minit,” he shouted back. He rubbed his mother’s arm. “Look, I don’t have to stay away long. I just want to find out what I can about the dream and make sure Rosa’s all right.”

  Eliza gave him a knowing smile. “You’ll stay,” she said. “You miss her already.” She reached over and pushed her hand through his hair, helping it fall toward his shoulder. “You’re everything I ever expected of you, David. If you care for this girl, I’d want you to do your best for her. But be a good brother to Penny as well. She’s going to miss you just as much.”

  He took hold of his mother’s hand and kissed it. “I’ll stay until I’ve finished the book.”

  “Books — whatever happened to them?” she mused. “What is it, again, this thing you’re going to read to her?”

  He rose up and took a step toward the house. “A story — from Floor Forty-Three.”

  When he got to the bedroom, Penny was sitting up in bed in her pajamas, the book already open in her hands. “I’ve been looking at the pictures,” she said excitedly. “There’s a girl in it. She looks like me.”

  “That’s Alicia. She doesn’t look a bit like you. She’s got more hair, for a start.”

  “Mine will grow. What’s she wearing? Over her dress?”

  David took the book from her and turned it around. “I think it’s called a ‘pinafore.’”

  “I like it,” Penny said. “She wears ankle boots as well.”

  “She does,” said David, remembering someone else who was never seen out of them. He sat down on the edge of the mattress and turned to the first page of text. “Right. Are you ready?”

  “Yes!”

  “Chapter one.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “Chapter one.”

  David flicked his eyes sideways. “Chapter one is the start of the story. Books are split up into chunks, called ‘chapters.’”

  “Oh. When will I see the pictures in my head?”

  “When you stop asking questions, and listen.”

  “OK,” she chirped, and set her shou
lders straight.

  “Chapter one. Alicia was in a bad mood —”

  “Why?”

  David paused and drummed his fingers over the page. “Well, if she’s anything like me, she gets annoyed at people who interrupt while she’s trying to read.”

  “Sorry,” Penny whispered, pulling in her lips. “Is Alicia reading to someone, then?”

  Stay calm, thought David. She’ll get used to it in a minit. He read on a few lines and summarized the text. “No. She’s fed up because her sister won’t play a game with her and now she’s wondering whether to chase a white rabbit across a field.”

  “What’s a rabbit?”

  OK, that is a fair question, he thought. He turned the book around and showed her a black-and-white illustration of a rabbit in a waistcoat looking at a pocket-watch.

  “I’ve never seen a rabbit before.”

  “No, me neither,” he said. Were they imagineered? he wondered. Or did they actually exist at the time the book was written? If so — what happened to them?

  “I like its ears,” said Penny. “What’s it doing?”

  “Checking the time.”

  “Doesn’t it have a :com?”

  David shook his head. “The book is very old. In those days, people carried devices called ‘watches’ and read the time from them.” He remembered Mr. Henry doing just that, and once again that reminded him, poignantly, of Rosa. He read a little more. “Odd though it was to see a rabbit with a timepiece, Alicia decided that she would give chase. She dashed across the field and was just in time to see the rabbit skid to a halt beside two doors in the side of a grassy hill.”

  “Show me!” Penny cried.

  “There isn’t an illustration for that,” David said. “The idea is you see it in your mind.”

  Penny drew her eyes down into a frown.

  “I can see it,” he said. “The doors are made of panels, some of which have holes that you can’t quite see through. And they don’t have handles but they do have knockers shaped like …”

  “Like what?” Penny prompted.

  Like dragons, David wanted to say, though there was nothing about them in the book.

  “Show me,” Penny said again, sitting forward.

  “I just told you, there aren’t any pictures for this.”

  “Show me your pictures. Mom says you imagineer really well.”

  David thought about it. “OK, that could work. But you have to join in.”

  Penny sat up, knocking her fists together. “Are we going to commingle?”

  “Well, we can try.”

  “Great!” She closed her eyes and started to hum.

  “Penny, what are you doing?”

  “Commingling,” she said.

  “You don’t have to hum.” He laughed. “You just need to focus your fain. Watch.” And right before his sister’s eyes, a perfect image of a worried white rabbit floated into view.

  “Hhh!” Penny gasped.

  “This is what makes reading fun,” said David. “Building pictures in here.” He tapped the side of her head. “You don’t need much fain to keep them there, just patience and the right words to guide you. See if you can imagineer Alicia.”

  “OK,” she said. Her eyebrows came together in a knot of concentration.

  The result made David smile. Floating beside the rabbit now were a pair of boots, minus a body. The rabbit stared down at them and jumped in surprise. David glanced at the book. That piece of action wasn’t described in the text. Interestingly, his imagineered character was acting on its own behalf.

  “Did it work?” said Penny. Her eyes blinked open. Right away, her shoulders sagged in disappointment.

  “You only got the boots because that’s what you most desired,” David said. “Think about Alicia — all of her. She doesn’t have to be like she is in the book. It’s how you picture her yourself that matters.”

  So Penny tried again. After a stuttering start, Alicia’s body grew upward out of her footwear. Penny had constructed her the way she was drawn, except for one thing: the color of her hair.

  “Well done,” David said (adding in an arm that Penny had missed). “Why the red hair?” The white rabbit, he noticed, had picked up a few strands to admire it.

  “When I grow up I want hair like Mom’s.” Penny’s, at the moment, was a grainy blond.

  David nodded and imagineered the rest of the scene: the doors in the hill; more hills fading to nothing behind them. “‘Oh dear,’” he read, in the character of the rabbit. (It began to hop about in front of the doors.) “ ‘I’m late! I’m late! And I don’t know which door I’m supposed to take!’”

  Penny giggled. “Is Alicia going to help him?”

  “Mmm,” said David, reading on. “Alicia stepped forward. She spoke politely, with her hands behind her back. ‘Why don’t you take this door?’ she said, pointing to the one on the left. Rather helpfully, a sign appeared upon it saying ‘THIS.’”

  “I can see it.” Penny laughed. It was hanging off the knocker by a piece of string.

  David ran his finger down the text and continued. “The rabbit, who was still in a fluster, patted his brow with a handkerchief. ‘Are you sure you don’t mean that door?’ he asked, aiming his paw at the door on the right. A sign saying ‘THAT’ had now appeared there. ‘No, I’m quite sure I meant that door,’ Alicia said, still pointing to her original choice. The rabbit danced from foot to foot. ‘But that’s THIS,’ he argued, scratching his nose. ‘I don’t think you know what you mean at all. You don’t know your THIS from your THAT in my opinion.’ Hearing this (or was it that?), Alicia stamped her foot. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve had quite enough of this — or do I mean that?’ And to simplify matters, she marched up to both doors and turned the signs over. Immediately, the doors disappeared.”

  “Hhh!” gasped Penny, watching them go. “Now what’s going to happen? The rabbit can’t get in without a door.”

  “ ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ “ David read on. “The rabbit was furious. His whiskery white cheeks were growing quite pink.”

  “He’s crossing his ears, look,” Penny said, laughing.

  “ ‘Now we’ll have to use the OTHER door,’ the rabbit said. ‘And I don’t know WHERE that goes to.’ Alicia played with a strand of her hair. ‘Where is the other door?’ she asked. The rabbit started to run again. ‘On the OTHER side of the hill, of course.’”

  Penny clapped as the rabbit hurried up the hill and over it. Once again, Alicia went in pursuit. But as they began to come down the other side, the plain grass gave way to clustered stones with fine plants growing in between them. The characters stumbled to the bottom and looked back at the slope as they dusted themselves off. Penny sat up in surprise. “That’s Mom’s rockery,” she said.

  Not only that, David noticed, but Alicia and the rabbit were standing in front of the arched door he had imagineered there. He closed the book softly.

  “Are we finished?” asked Penny.

  “This part isn’t in the book,” said David. “Shall we see what happens if we open the door?”

  “Yes,” said Penny, breathy with excitement.

  So, after a bit of polite bowing and a few “After you’s” and “No, after you’s,” Alicia stepped forward and opened the door. Into the rockery the characters went. Immediately, they slipped and lost their footing and both began to tumble down a deep, dark well (it made Penny feel a little queasy to watch it). After what seemed like a very long fall, they landed with a bump (thankfully not a splash, for the well was perfectly dry) at the end of a rather spooky-looking tunnel. Neither character was hurt, and the rabbit had already set off at tremendous speed toward a window at the far end of the tunnel. Alicia ran after him as fast as her boots would take her. She caught up very quickly but did not overtake him, and for a time it seemed there was no time at all, and that the characters were running but not really moving. Then, whether it was a jolt of David’s imagination or whether it was real or whether this land of new wonde
rs they had entered had finally decided to make itself known to them, Alicia and the rabbit arrived at the window and peered through it.

  Penny and David leaned forward instinctively, to see what their characters could see. It was a bedroom, not at all unlike their mother’s, but the common features (the bed, the wardrobes, etc.) were something of a blur in the background. Alicia and the rabbit were focused instead on a dressing table right in front of them. They were standing behind the table, looking through its mirror.

  “Look …,” said Penny, her mouth falling open. She pointed, just like Alicia was doing.

  On the table were three small creatures, all of which seemed to be solid sculptures, though David suspected they were actually quite real. Two of them were dragons, quite kindly looking and nothing like the pictures he’d seen in the books or on the ceilings of the librarium, though definitely cast in the dragon image. They had their eyes closed and were holding paws, as if they were waiting for something to happen. And yet, intriguing as these sculptures were, it was the third one that raised David’s pulse rate a little. Standing just in front of the dragons was an elegant creature he had never seen before and yet he somehow felt he ought to recognize. In general body shape it was not unlike Boon, though its legs and neck were very much longer and its head was far more graceful than the katt’s. The creature was white all over and did not have a blade of hair upon it, except for a mane down the back of its neck and an equally impressive tail. What really drew David’s attention, however, was the twisting horn that grew straight out of the animal’s forehead. He could see a familiar pattern on it — a wavy three-lined mark, spiraling outward from its base and repeating all the way up to the tip. He jerked back with a sudden realization. It was the code he’d used in the librarium to open the door to Floor Forty-Three, the one that translated in dragontongue as “sometimes.”