Dark Fire

by Chris D'Lacey

  Zanna banged her mug down and swept straight out. “I’ve got some packing to do,” she said.

  The door to her room slammed shut.

  “Behold, TLC in action,” Lucy muttered.

  Moments later, alone in the kitchen with Lucy, David slipped into a chair and said to the girl, “So, what did you decide about Scuffenbury?”

  Lucy sat down uneasily beside him. “How come you’re friends with Tam?”

  “I told you, he owes me a favor.”

  She tilted her head, expecting more.

  He took a banana out of the fruit bowl, studying its symmetry as he peeled it. “I rescued him from the Ix.”

  Them again. Lucy funneled a sigh. “Zanna hates him,” she said, musing to herself. “Not long ago he tried to use her to get some information on you. He wanted to write in his magazine about you. He thought you weren’t real and your books were written by someone else. Zanna went crazy when she found out. She branded her sibyl mark across his heart. She’s scary sometimes. Crazier than Gwilanna. Is Tam a male sibyl now or something? Is that why the birds weren’t scared of him?”

  David placed a foot on the bar of her chair. “He’s just a friend. Someone you’d want near you in times of trouble. Anyway, you haven’t answered my question. Would you be happy traveling to Scuffenbury with him?”

  “Happy,” thought Lucy, was hardly the word. Scared. Astonished. Ecstatic. Any of those might have fit. “Will we be camping? I was trying to remember where my tent was yesterday.”

  “The attic?” he suggested. “It was there the last time I looked.”

  “That was a long time ago,” she said, tying her fingers into knots. He’d gone up there in search of her old rabbit hutch, to make a trap to catch the one-eyed squirrel, Conker, whom he’d later immortalized in print. Everything had been so wonderful then. Conker. Mr. Bacon being grumpy. Gadzooks on David’s windowsill. The birthday gift of Snigger and the Nutbeast. The library gardens. Sophie.

  “Hhh!” Lucy popped upright in her chair.

  “Anyway, you won’t need your tent,” he said. “Tam will organize a B&B or something.”

  “No, it’s not that. I got an e-mail for you — from Sophie.”

  He took his foot off the chair. “From Africa?”

  “I guess.”

  “Saying?”

  “She tried your cell phone but got nothing. So she found the Web site I did for your books and e-mailed me through that.”

  “Clever girl. What did she say?”

  “Hi to all of us, some stuff about the wildlife hospital she works at, and … she wants to talk to you. It sounded a bit … important.”

  Hrrr, went a voice behind Lucy’s ear. Gwendolen, sitting on the rim of a plant pot.

  “Oh, yeah. She wrote that she thinks Grace’s ears keep moving.”

  David looked at her hard for a moment. He put the banana aside and shot a glance at the listening dragon. “Has Grace made contact?”

  The listener shook its head.

  “When did this e-mail arrive, Lucy?”

  She chewed her lip again. “Erm, a few hours ago. But I didn’t check my e-mail until —”

  He stood up quickly, just as Zanna emerged from her room looking flustered.

  “Don’t be mad,” Lucy begged, sensing that he might be. “I was going to tell you as soon as you came in. And I did. Almost. Didn’t I? David?”

  But by then he was heading for the hallway, with the narwhal tusk in his hand once more.

  “Don’t disappear, I need to talk to you,” said Zanna.

  “Not now.”

  “This is about Alexa. The rest of the world can wait.”

  “No, it can’t,” he said, and bundled past.

  “What’s more important than your daughter, David?”

  “Right now, Sophie Prentice …,” he said.

  17 AN OLD FRIEND

  Eyes. They’re, like … the weirdest thing. How can two balls of colored jelly make you feel so wanted or so … deserted? I can do green. I can do violet. It’s the dragon inside me, according to Mom. It began to show properly after the age of eleven, when my hair turned red as well. Green: I’m just gorgeous. Violet: deadly. Maybe I should have turned the violet on him? That look in the hall. What did it mean? Why didn’t he speak? Why didn’t he acknowledge me? It only takes a second to say “How are you?” … doesn’t it? All he had to do was part his lips. Maybe he’s not the Tam I knew? He’s different. His eyes. So brown. Like a bear’s. Or maybe he’s still got a thing for Zanna. Even after what she did to him. Why does everything whirl around ZANNA? Why couldn’t David have stayed with Sophie, instead of letting MORTICIA dig her purple nails into —

  Normally, when the phone rang, Lucy ignored it, especially when she was immersed in her journal. She hated landlines. What was the point of them in this age of cell phones? But with her mother and Arthur still not home and Zanna taking Alexa next door and a convenient break in the playlist on her iPod, she felt she had no choice but to answer the thing. With a huff, she pushed her keyboard aside, took out her earbuds, and went into her mom’s room to pick up the call.

  “Yes?” she drawled, with her characteristic lack of social grace.

  “Is that Lucy?” A girl’s voice. Breathy. Teen.

  “Yep.”

  “Omigosh!”

  “Who’s this?” asked Lucy, puzzled by the burst of enthusiasm. No one she knew ever talked to her like that.

  “Don’t you know?”

  Lucy tried not to tut. “If I did, I wouldn’t be asking, would I?”

  “Dragons …?” said the girl, letting the question hang. “We used to talk about them for HOURS on our sleepovers — when I lived on Orchid Close.”

  Orchid Close, just around the corner from the end of the Crescent.

  “Melanie? Melanie Cartwright?!”

  “Lucy Pennykettle,” the other girl said, as cheery as a chipmunk. “Long time no hurr, huh? Mom rustled up your number from the back of some old notebook. They come in useful, don’t they, moms?”

  Lucy flopped down on her own mother’s bed, her stunned reflection looking back from the dressing table mirror. Around her knees, the dangling earbuds began to throw out a loud, tinny beat. She switched off her iPod and said, “Where are you?”

  “Erm, on the other end of the phone?”

  “Yeah, I know that. Have you moved back to Scrubbley?”

  “No. Me and Mom are still in Plymouth. It’s not the best. And school is, like, the pits. But it’s good for Dad. He works on ships, remember? Captain Cartwright, yo ho ho. By the way, my granddad died.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Lucy murmured. When she and Melanie had been friends as young girls, “Pop,” Melanie’s grandfather, had been a sickly but lively old man.

  “It’s OK,” Melanie said. “It was ages ago, just after we moved. I was going to write to you, but, you know …”

  Lucy grunted, thinking of Mr. Bacon. Melanie had known him slightly. Not enough to mention his passing. “So why are you calling? I mean, it’s cool and everything, but …”

  There was a pause while Melanie gathered her thoughts. “It’s about Glade.”

  Lucy felt her stomach curdle. Many years ago, her mother had made a string of special dragons that went to live with people who’d bought them from the Pennykettles’ market stall or that sometimes had just been gifted by Liz. Glade was one such example. She was a mood dragon, who carried a scarf of ivy leaves around her neck, which changed color depending on how she, or those around her, were feeling. The practice of giving special dragons away had ended with the creation of Gadzooks. This had come as some relief to Lucy, who had always thought it dangerous. For though it was difficult for normal people to see the dragons moving, they were nevertheless capable of getting up to mischief or even being broken while in their solid state. It was this more than anything that Lucy feared as she asked, “What about Glade?”

  “Well, it’s not about her, really —”

  “Is she OK? What col
or’s her ivy?”

  “Green. She hasn’t changed today. She’s sitting on my desk. Hey, you know what’s weird about her?”

  Lucy held her breath.

  “She never gets dusty. Anyway, like I said, it’s not really about her, it’s about the one that’s been on TV. Is it one of your mom’s?”

  “TV?” said Lucy. “What are you talking about?”

  Melanie almost choked with disbelief. “What am I talking about? What the whole world’s talking about. What planet have you been on?”

  “I don’t watch much TV,” Lucy replied. That was a lie. She did. But not lately. Not since Henry and Apak and everything.

  “Then get on the Net, like … now, ‘cause this is mega.”

  Chained by wire to a phone, Lucy opted to go with conversation. “Can’t you just tell me?”

  “OK!” Melanie said. “Well, you must have heard about this mist in the Arctic and how everyone is saying there are dragons hiding under it?”

  “Are they?”

  “Lu-cy! Where have you been? The world’s on the edge. There’s, like, the Spanish Armada cruising around the Arctic waiting to blast whatever comes out of the fog.”

  “The Spanish Armada?”

  “Warships. Big ones. Kinda scary, don’t you think? Oh, and no one’s seen a polar bear for, like, two months and there’s this theory, right, that the dragons are actually feeding on them.”

  “That’s gross,” said Lucy. “Dragons wouldn’t do that. They …” But how could she tell Melanie in the space of a phone call the history of the Arctic, Gawain, Thoran? No way would dragons attack the bears. But it was something to ask David about when she saw him next.

  “Anyway,” Melanie rattled on regardless, “people are reporting sightings of scaly beasts everywhere. There was a photo on the news of one that was snapped in the sky over Scotland. People are calling it the Loch Ness Dragon ‘cause you can’t really tell if it’s a giant kite or a blowup of a bird. But it looks totally real. A little like a pterodactyl. Horns. Spiky tale. Claws. Everything. And everyone, I mean everyone, is talking about it. You know when someone sees a UFO whizzing about and then zillions of others say they saw one, too?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s what it’s like. Except there’s been no real proof — until now.”

  “So … what’s happened?”

  “Well, this is where you come in.”

  “I haven’t done anything!”

  “No, but … Oh, just … shut up and let me spill, OK?”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. Ten minutes ago would have been good. If blabbing was an Olympic sport, Melanie would have won medals every time.

  “There’s this place in Canada, some sort of big meditation stroke healing center. A little ‘out there,’ you know? Anyway, they were having this kind of conference about peace and love and healing, whatever, and it was being filmed by one of the networks. So it gets to this bit where some guy in a none-too-fetching white robe is about to bless this lady in a wheelchair and there’s a gasp from the crowd and a dragon materializes on the lectern thingy.”

  “What?”

  “I know. Awesome, isn’t it? It was just sitting there, like a bird.”

  “What color was it?” Lucy asked, thinking of the ravens Zanna had described.

  “Green, duh. It looked like Glade. That’s the point. Well, not exactly like Glade. But like one of your mom’s. But it was living, ‘cause they filmed it before it flew off. When I showed Glade the reruns her ivy went crazy. Rainbows. All the colors you could think of. Weird.”

  Lucy slid the phone from her ear to her shoulder, but when Melanie’s vibrating, squeaking voice was in danger of burning holes in her flesh she raised it again and asked, “Did it do anything? The dragon on the TV?”

  Melanie blew an exaggerated sigh. “Well, people are saying it was a trick — but if it was it was a really, really neat one. It grabbed a light pen they use for showing messages on a screen and it drew something. Well, it made squiggles. Some people think it’s a word in an ancient language. Go on the Net. You can see it everywhere. It’s the biggest thing since Harry. Bigger!”

  “Harry?”

  “Potter. Are you alive today or what?”

  Once again, the conversation stalled. Then, in a voice muted by a note of awe, Melanie asked, “Is she real, Lucy? Is Glade like the one on the TV?”

  Lucy glanced at her reflection again. A red-haired dragon princess. A descendant of Guinevere. Crumpling up in fear, on a comforter, on a bed. “I have to go,” she said, hearing the front door opening. “Can I e-mail you?”

  Melanie gave an easy-to-remember address. “Lucy?”

  “Um?”

  “Please answer my question. I’m looking at Glade now and her ivy’s glowing gold. How does it happen? How does —?”

  “She’s just clay and fancy glaze,” Lucy cut in, hating herself for denying the truth. “Look after her, won’t you?”

  “I guess,” said Melanie, disappointment crumbling her voice into shreds. “You still there?”

  “Lucy?”

  “That’s my mom. Gotta go.”

  “Wait. Just tell me what you think. I mean, we always said how great it would be to have actual dragons flying about, didn’t we? It’s creepy, but sort of exciting as well. It’s like, everyone’s looking at the sky for a miracle. We want it to happen, but we’re not quite sure. Do you think they will come?”

  There was a two-second pause. “Yes,” said Lucy, and put the phone onto its cradle. She noticed as she did so her hand was trembling.

  “Lu-cy?”

  The eleventh commandment rang out once more: the abbreviated form of thou wilt come down and speak to thy mother. Sighing, Lucy glided to the landing.

  She was about to swing onto the flight of stairs when she saw her mother going into the front room clucking, “She’s not home. Probably next door with Zanna. Maybe that’s just as well.”

  “You can’t keep this from her,” Arthur replied. “Rupert is describing the Hella writings as the most important document in the history of mankind. Now that he has the full translation he’ll publish the transcript of the photographs. When he does, the whole world is going to know. She’ll pick it up off the Internet anyway. Far better that it comes from you.”

  Lucy crept down a few steps. Over the top of the front-room door she could see Arthur, sitting down, stroking Bonnington. Her mother was out of sight.

  “I need time to think it through. It has to be broken to her gently.”

  “Do you think so? I think she’s mature enough to understand Gawain’s motives.”

  Motives? thought Lucy as her mother went on, “Arthur, she’s been brought up to believe that Gawain was a magnificent, peaceful dragon, completely incapable of any kind of aggression. How am I going to tell her that he was on the verge of destroying — what? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, go on,” Arthur said.

  “You jumped.”

  “Bonnington dug in a claw.”

  “What’s he staring at?” Liz marched to the door and yanked it open.

  But by then, Lucy had had the foresight to put in her earbuds and come plodding downstairs. “What?” she said as she reached the bottom. She clicked her iPod off.

  Liz stared at her suspiciously. “I called you. Twice.”

  Lucy wafted by with a casual shrug. “The god that is Pod called louder. Sorry.” She stepped into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “What’s with you anyway? You look whiter than this stuff.” She took a swig from a carton of milk. But then you would look pale, wouldn’t you, Mother, because you’re keeping something from me, aren’t you? And it was obvious that Lucy had a right to know. But to ask would have only blown her charade. For now, she was enjoying the buzz of being one up on the old and the “wise,” even though she was burning to know the truth. Gawain was ready to destroy what, exactly? She’d find out later. There were ways.

  In true parental fashion, Liz avoided the question. “How come yo
u’re alone? Is Zanna next door?”

  Lucy offered up a vacuous grin. “Dunno. S’pose we’ll have to get used to not having her around here from now on, won’t we?”

  “And David?”

  That was Lucy’s undoing. One twitch of concern around the mouth was enough to hand the advantage to her mother.

  Issuing one of those I-can’t-leave-you-alone-for-five-minutes kind of sighs, Liz said, “Has there been trouble while I’ve been out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Stop saying you ‘don’t know.’”

  “He’s gone,” snapped Lucy, hurling the milk back into the fridge. The listener, long practiced in the art of jumping, did so again as she slammed the door.

  “Again? Where to?”

  “Mom?! I’m not his secretary! I don’t know.” But she did, of course. And if the truth be told it was worrying her, the way he’d left so suddenly. “Oh, all right, he’s gone to Africa,” she muttered.

  “Where?!”

  “Africa!” This time, Lucy stamped her foot. Her eyelashes, slightly moist, were gluing together. “He’s gone to see Sophie.”

  Liz glanced at the listening dragon.

  Hrrr, it confirmed. That was the implication of David’s last words.

  “Does Zanna know?”

  “Who cares?” Lucy growled. And she jammed her earbuds in, turned her iPod up loud, and stomped away upstairs again.

  18 AFRICA

  Smoke. Spiraling upward like a weak tornado, dragging west in the breeze across the outlying flood plain and blotting out the early evening sun. The whole site was ablaze: one large building, which David took to be the veterinary hospital, plus an arc of five or six smaller thatched huts. The spit and crackle of burning wood was as loud as the voices calling through the smoke. A barefooted woman, in T-shirt and shorts, was screaming at a male colleague to leave the water pumps and go to the animals. From mesh pens just beyond the burning huts, the cries of distressed wildlife added to the general chaos.