Ember and the Ice Dragons

by Heather Fawcett

  Ember didn’t want to risk saying no again—her aunt made her feel unsettled, like a wind that kept changing direction. With a last glance over her shoulder at the doorknob, which preened from its place on the fancy wardrobe, Ember followed her aunt into the hall.

  The research station was a strange place.

  The hexagons were joined up like train cars, so you had to walk through one to get to the next. At one end were the two sleeping hexagons, then the lounge, which was filled with yet more shelves of books and enormous squashy armchairs that looked liable to swallow unwary occupants. Here Aunt Myra introduced Ember to several Scientists: a meteorologist, an entomologist, a climatologist, and two volcanologists. Ember thought the lounge would have been a nice place to relax, if only people didn’t gawp at you as these Scientists were doing. She wondered if it was because she was the daughter of the famous Lionel St. George, or the niece of the infamous Myra St. George, or both.

  The next two hexagons contained a dining room lined with banquet tables that smelled of yeast and gravy, and a kitchen with a large pantry. The main section of the station was a library, crowded haphazardly with shelves of books, Scientific instruments, and desks topped with oil lanterns. The floor was layered with expensive wool carpets. Ember gazed about wonderingly. On the outside, the station was a weird gray thing, but inside it resembled a manor house. It reminded Ember of the fine estate her father sometimes rented in the craggy wilderness of Ireland, where they went whenever he needed space to test out his new spells. The walls were made entirely of windows. She felt as if she was still among the snow and rocks of Antarctica, even while she stood surrounded by grandfather clocks and flickering lanterns.

  “I expect you’re hungry,” Aunt Myra said. “How about some dinner?”

  Ember ran her fingers along the bookshelves. The library was nothing compared to Chesterfield’s, but at least all the books were about Science, not dull old Magical theory. “Do you have any books about ice dragons?”

  Aunt Myra looked startled. “I—no. There are no books on ice dragons. No one has ever gotten close enough to study them properly.”

  “I know,” Ember said. “Takagi’s Compendium doesn’t even mention ice dragons. But you’re studying them. Can I see your research?”

  “I . . . well, it’s in the very early stages. Your father tells me you have an interest in zoology! You know, Dr. Wemmal is working on a fascinating study of blue whale migration; perhaps he could—”

  “Do you ever go looking for dragons?” Ember said. “Could I come?”

  Her aunt was looking more and more flustered. She ran a hand over her hair, and several curls sprang free, as if they had been on the lookout for an opportunity. “I’m afraid that would be too dangerous, Ember. Now, how about I show you around the observatory? Have you ever looked through a telescope the size of an elephant?”

  “No,” Ember said. Part of her wondered whether her aunt meant an African or Asian elephant, but the rest of her noted that Myra seemed oddly intent on changing the subject from dragons.

  “Really!” Her aunt seemed unnaturally surprised—Ember doubted that many people had experience with elephant-sized telescopes, Asian or African. “Well, come along, then. We’ll see if we can’t find a meteor or two!”

  “But I—” But there was no interrupting Aunt Myra this time. She was off again at a mile a minute, recounting all the latest astronomical discoveries made at the Firefly. Ember, taciturn by nature, felt like a leaf overcome by a gale, and allowed Aunt Myra to lead her, silent, into the twilight.

  Four

  Montgomery Turns to the Left

  Some populations were migratory; Australian fire dragons, for instance, were sighted as far from their native habitat as Mongolia. Most, however, were unadventurous, preferring to spend their lives in the lands where they were born.

  —TAKAGI’S COMPENDIUM OF EXOTIC CREATURES

  The next day, Ember went to school.

  Her hands trembled as she brushed her hair. She thought of how people said they had butterflies in their stomach when they were nervous. Well, her stomach had pigeons. Possibly an owl or two. She squeezed the Chesterfield flagstone, which she had tucked into her pocket, as she walked to the classroom.

  She had never attended school before. Her education had mostly consisted of reading books on a patchwork of subjects. Sometimes her father gave her lessons on magic or history, or asked one of the professors to tell her about their research. But she had never had an actual teacher. She didn’t even know what children did in school—she assumed they just sat quietly and read, like she did. She felt shivery with excitement at the thought of all the new animals and Scientific theories she would learn about, twinned with dread at the prospect of facing a roomful of children. Her pigeons cooed and flapped all the way to the classroom.

  It turned out, though, that she had only three classmates—a twin girl and boy with blank, round faces and shiny black hair who reminded Ember of dolls on a shelf, and a girl a year older than her who wore a distracting number of ribbons in her hair—several dozen at least, in purple and green and blue, but especially purple. The children murmured their names at Ember, who promptly forgot them, being too uncomfortable under their curious gazes to pay attention. She was thoroughly tired of being stared at—she missed the ivy-shadowed paths of the Reading Wood and Chesterfield’s many secret corridors, along which she could glide like a ghost.

  Their governess was a tidy Frenchwoman with dark skin and close-cropped hair named Madame Rousseau, and her job was to stand at the front of the room and tell them things they could have read in books in half the time. Not everything she said was interesting, and you couldn’t skip over the dull parts. Ember thought it an inefficient way to learn. After sitting for hours at a cramped desk, she yearned to stretch her wings, but if she did, they would brush against one of the twins.

  Madame Rousseau tapped her pointer against a map of the empire. British America, Greenland, and Antarctica, as well as the tip of Africa, which were all part of the empire, were painted red. The Spanish and German empires, which controlled Europe and most of South America, were in green and yellow. Australia was also red, which meant the map was old, for the Japanese Empire had taken it from Britain several decades ago. Part of British America, too, was a lighter shade of red, perhaps because the map had been drawn in the midst of the failed uprising of the 1770s. Ember didn’t have much interest in geography, though her father had ensured she learned the basics. She tried to focus on what Madame Rousseau was saying, but her mind wandered back to last night, and her exhausting dinner with Aunt Myra.

  Her aunt had kept up a steady stream of chatter about life at the Firefly and what the other scientists were studying (everything from supernovas to volcanoes to albatrosses). She said very little about her own work. Ember began to suspect that Aunt Myra found it awkward to discuss her research with an actual dragon. She imagined it would feel strange—like an ornithologist sitting down to tea with a robin. After eating, her aunt had hurried off to deal with another soil sample emergency, her heavy boots clomping like exclamation points. Aunt Myra seemed to spend much of her time “thundering about” the station, as Mac had put it, solving this problem or ordering that person about. She was a whirlwind of energy, enough to wear Ember out just looking at her. Ember had been too tired after dinner to try the magical doorknob, and had instead fallen onto her bed and slept.

  Ember gazed out the classroom windows. The wind raced over the ice like a herd of ghostly horses, raising clouds of ice crystals. The white mountains were stark against the blue sky, and Ember yearned to explore them. The day was fading into twilight again—which, Ember had learned, lasted all night in Antarctica at this time of year: the sky maintained its purple glow until the sun rose again in the morning. This was because the earth was tilted, Madame Rousseau had explained that morning. During Antarctica’s summer, the bottom of the earth leaned toward the sun, which meant that the sun never went below the horizon as the earth turne
d. At other times of the year, the sun dipped just under the horizon at night, and then came right back up again. Madame Rousseau demonstrated using a globe and a lantern to represent the sun.

  Ember supposed there might be some value to school after all.

  “So you live at Chesterfield?” a voice asked. “What’s it like?”

  Ember jumped. It seemed that school was over—Madame Rousseau was tucking her papers and books tidily into a smart briefcase. Her questioner was the girl with the ribbons in her hair—during a particularly tedious writing exercise, Ember had occupied herself with counting them. She had made it to sixty-eight.

  “It’s very old,” Ember said. The girl’s question hadn’t been specific, so Ember could only guess at the answer she expected. “It has twenty-two indoor toilets. The curtains smell of pipe tobacco. Two crow families live in the Reading Wood, and they have an alliance against the crows that live in the poplars by the driveway.”

  The girl’s brow wrinkled. She was pretty, with brown skin and a veil of long black hair—less hair than ribbons, possibly. Ember was certain she had said something wrong, the way she always did when she spoke to other children, but then the girl said, “Twenty-two? How many in each building?”

  Ember had to think about this. “I’m not sure.”

  “I’m Nisha,” the girl said. “Would you like to play with us?”

  “Us?”

  “I don’t mean them,” Nisha said, shooting the Doll Twins a glare. “I mean me and Moss.”

  “Who’s Moss?”

  “Just a boy who lives here.” For some reason, Nisha’s face reddened.

  “Why isn’t he in school?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t like school.”

  Ember couldn’t make sense of this. All human children attended school—that was just the way it was. “Don’t his parents mind?”

  “He doesn’t have parents,” Nisha said.

  “Everyone has parents,” Ember pointed out. “Do you mean they’re dead?”

  “No,” Nisha said, calmly certain. “He doesn’t have any.”

  Ember thought that perhaps Nisha had seen too much snow, too. “I’m sorry, but I can’t—I have to speak with my father.” The idea of spending time alone with two children filled her with a fluttery sort of terror. Besides, all day she had been distracted by thoughts of the doorknob, and she wanted nothing more than to test it out.

  Nisha gave her a strange look. “Isn’t your father in London?”

  “Ah . . . yes,” Ember said, realizing her mistake. The truth about the doorknob rose up inside her, but her father had said not to tell anyone. Being unable to tell the truth, and unable to lie, she could only be awkwardly silent. She and Nisha gazed at each other with mutual suspicion.

  “Well, see you tomorrow,” Ember said a bit too loudly. She hurried down the corridor.

  Unfortunately, on her way past the storage room, she bumped into one of the Doll Twins. The girl had been hovering at the end of the shelves, peeping around the corner as if keeping a lookout.

  “Move along, blondie,” she said, giving Ember a shove.

  “What are you doing?” Ember was less intimidated by the girl’s rudeness than she had been by Nisha’s friendliness. You didn’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing to someone like that.

  “Never you mind.” The girl moved to the left to block Ember’s view of whatever was going on behind her. This only increased Ember’s curiosity, so she slipped around her in a movement quicker than the girl could follow.

  She found the other half of the Doll Twins crouched behind a shelf, his knee pressed into the back of a boy whose face was turned away from her. He had a hand tangled cruelly in the boy’s hair. As Ember watched, he opened a textbook at the midpoint—one of those textbooks that is so large and dull-covered it couldn’t possibly be taken for anything else—and slammed it around the boy’s head.

  Ember didn’t even think. She sprang forward and gave the doll twin a hard shove. It caught him by surprise, and he rolled across the floor and struck one of the shelves, his round, teacup-colored face screwed up in pain.

  “Are you all right?” Ember said to the other boy. He sat up and gazed at her dazedly. His lip was cut, and blood trickled down his chin.

  “I think so,” he said in a very quiet voice. The boy’s hair was silvery blond, and he was slender as a shadow. Ember thought he was probably her age, though he was shorter than she was.

  “Moss?” It was Nisha. She hurried to Moss’s side. She glared at the other boy, who had gathered himself to his feet. “Why don’t you leave him alone? I’ll tell Madame Rousseau this time, I really will!”

  The Doll Twins glowered, and though they still emanated violence, they made no move to attack. Ember thought of the crows of the Reading Wood, who liked to gang up on the crows of the poplars and steal bits of their nests. The crows of the poplars couldn’t do anything about it, because there were fewer of them. Right now, the Doll Twins were the crows of the poplars, and she, Nisha, and Moss were the crows of the Reading Wood.

  The girl spat on the floor, and they strode off in a huff.

  “You’re bleeding,” Nisha said to Moss. She touched his arm, flushed, then pulled back. Moss turned to Ember.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Yes,” Ember said, which wasn’t right. Moss and Nisha were both looking at her, and Ember experienced a moment of pure panic. Already she had spent more time with other children in a day than she had in her entire life, and now she had rescued one of them, intervening in a battle that she sensed was part of a longer, entrenched war. She had no idea what to do.

  “Goodbye!” Ember said, and ran away.

  Back in her room with the door safely closed, she felt a stab of regret. Nisha and Moss seemed nice enough—or Nisha did, at least; she couldn’t really assess Moss, for all he had done during their acquaintance was bleed. But she couldn’t think what she would say if she went back to them—should she apologize for leaving so abruptly? But she had rescued Moss, so wouldn’t it be wrong to apologize? Oh, children were so complicated!

  And what had she been thinking, getting involved in their squabble with the twins? It wasn’t like her at all. But as with Lord Norfell and the penguins, some instinct Ember hadn’t known she possessed had taken over her.

  She shook her head. Surely it was easiest—surely it was best—to keep to herself, as she had always done at Chesterfield, to stick to her books and stay out of everyone else’s business. What if Nisha or Moss found out what she was?

  Ember approached the wardrobe with trepidation. While she didn’t think the doorknob would harm her, her father’s magic hadn’t grown any more predictable over the years, and she was half afraid she might step through the wardrobe into a jungle, or possibly an asteroid.

  “Hello, Montgomery,” Ember said to the doorknob, removing it from her coat pocket. “I would appreciate it if you could help me reach my father’s study.”

  She had decided to treat the doorknob as if it were a person, including giving it a name. It had already tried to escape twice—yesterday, after she’d taken it out of the suitcase, and again in the night—both times rolling under the bed and tucking itself inside her fanciest scarf. Ember couldn’t shake the impression that the doorknob didn’t like her much, and felt it was cut out for better things.

  The doorknob turned easily beneath her hand, and the door swung open.

  Ember gasped. Beyond her coats and dresses was a room with a fire crackling in the hearth, and a candelabra, and an enormous desk piled with papers and books and quills. She was overwhelmed by the smell of home—woodsmoke, old books, and magic.

  “Now?” said a familiar voice uncertainly.

  Ember pushed past her sweaters and into her father’s office at Chesterfield. Puff was tangled in her feet in an instant, muttering and purring. Ember lifted her in her arms, and the white cat’s purr swelled.

  She gazed about, so happy her vision blurred. There was the familiar clock that her f
ather had tried unsuccessfully to fix, which now told time backward and transformed, every few years, into an earlier style of clock. Currently, it was a spring-driven thing of oak and glass, topped with a mechanical globe, and would have been the height of fashion in the 1720s. There was the portrait of Lionel St. George’s mother, a stern-faced woman who had died a year before Ember was born. There was the shadow in the corner, snoring. And there were Ember’s favorite books in a pile on the window seat, just where she had left them. The burned half of the office had been mostly repaired—her father must have expended a good deal of magic to do so.

  The university was quiet—the fire crackled, the clock tock-ticked, the nighttime wind rustled through the fruit trees in the courtyard. Puff nestled into her arms, her eyes closing blissfully.

  Someone knocked quietly on the door. Ember froze. The knock came again, and she realized that it came not from her father’s office, but from her room back in the Firefly, which she could still see through the door that normally led to a secondary hallway. Given the volume of the knock, she very much doubted it was her aunt. Ember wondered if she should close the wardrobe door. But if she did that, she wasn’t sure if she would be able to get back.

  In the end, it didn’t matter, for the knock wasn’t repeated. Her visitor must have given up.

  The door to her father’s office opened, and Lionel St. George marched in, clutching a stack of books that went up almost to his nose. He started, his books thudding to the floor. Then his face split in a massive grin, and Ember leaped into his arms.

  “There, there,” Lionel said. “All’s well, my dear.”

  The noise had awakened the shadow in the corner. “Come back to the scene of the crime, have you?” it grumped. “Just when he got the smoke out of the curtains . . .”