Ember and the Ice Dragons

by Heather Fawcett

  For some strange reason, the penguins made Ember think of the dragons again. Perhaps it was the way they moved, so clumsy and helpless. She tore off a chunk of ice and hurled it into the water with all her strength.

  It should have made her happy to learn that she wasn’t the last fire dragon in the world. Instead, she had discovered that there was something worse than being the last of her kind. The fire dragons on the ship would never know freedom. Hunters would buy them, and then they would kill them, as they had killed her parents.

  It’s not fair.

  She threw another piece of ice. “I’ve often had cause to observe that there isn’t much fairness in the world,” her father had remarked. Adults often said this sort of thing, as if noting the world’s unfairness was supposed to be some sort of comfort. An excuse that let you ignore bad things. Well, it didn’t comfort Ember—it made her wish she could turn those excuses to ash.

  She was sick of unfairness. She had always darted through the world like an unseen ghost—she felt safe that way. But maybe she didn’t want to feel safe anymore.

  Still, that didn’t mean she had any idea what she should do. She couldn’t free the fire dragons. She couldn’t bring back her parents, or any of the others. She threw another piece of ice, and it shattered against a frost-furred rock.

  The penguins were undisturbed by her fury. They gazed at her with vague curiosity, as if she were a mild-mannered walrus. She pulled out the fish pasty she had stowed in her pocket and fed it to them in scraps. Soon she was surrounded by a honking horde that groomed her boots and rubbed their beaks on her coat. Most animals took a fancy to her, and it seemed ice-dwelling creatures were no different. Gradually their squawks calmed her, and she found herself smiling at their antics.

  “Wouldn’t do that if I was you,” said a voice. Mac marched past, scattering penguins as he went. He came to a stop in the middle of the congregation, then took a notebook from his coat and scribbled something in it.

  Ember made no reply, but Mac kept talking anyway. “You don’t want to trust Adélies. They might look like cute wee things, but they have the hearts of lions. Nasty little tyrants, they are.”

  One of the penguins rubbed its beak against her knee. “Yes, they seem quite vicious.”

  “I’ve seen things I won’t soon forget,” Mac said in his ominous way. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “All right.” Ember wished Mac would go away. “I won’t.”

  Another penguin waddled up to Ember and buried its head in her side. She didn’t understand what it was doing until it withdrew its head, her flagstone clutched in its beak. It had taken it from her pocket!

  Ember made a lunge, but the penguin raced off. It jumped onto an ice floe that Ember couldn’t reach without using her wings. Other penguins clustered around it like spectators in a square, tilting their heads curiously. Ma—et Scientia was all Ember could read around its beak.

  Mac turned toward her, and Ember snapped her gaze away from the penguins, her heart racing. Given the Scientists’ aversion to anything related to magic, she doubted they would be pleased to find the penguins playing with an artifact from Chesterfield, even if it was just a bit of paving stone. She would wait until Mac left, then try to get it back.

  Mac scanned the rocks. He made another note.

  “What are you doing?” she said innocently.

  “Your aunt is conducting a study on penguin migration,” Mac said. “I’m tallying the birds wintering here and noting their general condition.”

  Ember thought this sounded interesting. “Can I help?”

  “No.” Mac swiped at his glasses, seeming to focus on her for the first time. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think you’re supposed to be out here at all, young lass. Are you?”

  Ember wished she could swallow the truth rising in her throat. She was just opening her mouth to answer—and land herself in more trouble—when a voice rang out.

  “Ember!”

  Ember turned. To her dismay, Nisha was making her way toward them. She was bundled in a jacket in a shade of purple that coordinated with both her glossy boots and the swirl of ribbons in her hair. Ember felt a shiver of nervousness. She had always been intimidated by girls who knew how to coordinate.

  “Moss and I were looking for you. We could use some help with the fort.” Nisha held up a thermos proudly. “I have hot chocolate!”

  “Er . . .” Ember glanced at Mac, who continued to gaze at her suspiciously. Nisha looked from one to the other, and then her eyes lit with a combination of understanding and mischief.

  “You did say you would help us,” she said in a cajoling tone. “And your aunt thinks you’re with us. She didn’t give you permission to go off by yourself.”

  Ember stared at Nisha, realizing that she was simultaneously rescuing her from Mac and obligating her to spend time with her and Moss. Ember didn’t understand her at all. Other children were put off by Ember’s unfriendliness, or because they were intimidated by her famous father. She thought of how strange it had felt to stand up to the Doll Twins, to take someone’s side. She wasn’t used to sides—she was used to standing alone.

  Nisha turned to Mac. She was wearing eye shadow and pink powder on her cheeks, which only made her pretty face look more angelic. “Hello, Mac. My mother says that you were a great help with the drilling equipment yesterday. She very much appreciated it.”

  Mac gave a mollified grunt. “You shouldn’t be spending your time with that boy, lass.”

  Nisha looked affronted. “Moss is my friend!”

  “And you should choose your friends more carefully.” Mac shuddered. “That bairn makes my skin crawl. When he wandered into the Firefly, I told Myra she’d regret taking him in. He’s unnatural.”

  Ember blinked. “Wandered in? Are you saying Moss just appeared?”

  “Aye,” Mac said. “I remember the night too well—just over two years gone. A storm was raging—terrible fierce. You couldn’t sleep through the racket, so we all sat together in the common room, drinking tea and whisky and trying to forget there was only an inch of metal and glass between us and certain death. None of us spoke much. All you could hear was the snow moaning about the station, like a horde of miserable ghosts.” He paused. “Then there was a knock on the door.”

  In spite of herself, Ember was spellbound. “What did you do?”

  “What do you think?” Mac gave a sharp laugh. “Jumped out of our skins, that’s what. Your aunt was the first to her feet, and she opened the door. And what do you think we found? A boy framed against the dark with his hair full of snow, wearing naught but his skin.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “Ah, that’s the question,” Mac said. “Where indeed? None of us had ever laid eyes on him. The last ship set sail for England days before, eager to beat the ice. And you can’t walk ten yards in a winter storm without getting lost and catching your death. Quite the mystery, isn’t it?”

  Ember looked at Nisha, expecting to hear the story contradicted. But the girl only shook her head, looking distressed.

  “Well, Moss must know where he came from,” Ember said.

  “No,” Nisha said sadly. “He can’t remember a thing before that night. Not even his own name. Moss is just what he decided to call himself.”

  “There’s all sorts of stories told about him.” Mac lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Some say he’s not from this century, even. That he’s from an ancient Viking expedition that wrecked in the Amundsen Sea, and that he froze inside the ice and woke up again when it melted four hundred years later. They say that when the survivors of that wreck ran out of food, they ate each other one by one, but nobody bothered to eat him on account of his size.”

  “Blech,” Nisha said.

  “The Vikings never came to Antarctica,” Ember said.

  Mac tapped his nose. “Maybe they did, lass. Maybe they did.”

  Ember rolled her eyes. She thought it silly that she would know more about history than
an old man, who after all had seen a lot of it himself, but then most adults were like that. They knew a lot about one or two things, and all that knowledge left no room in their heads for anything else. That was how it was with her father, who could talk for hours about Silverwood’s Treatise on the Third Era of Magic (not that anyone ever wanted him to), but when she had asked once why people had decided to keep cats and dogs as pets—and not, say, owls or opossums, which were surely just as useful—he had stared at her blankly.

  “He can’t be a Viking,” Nisha said. “He speaks English. I don’t know what the Vikings spoke, but it wasn’t English.”

  It was such a sensible thing to say that Ember looked at Nisha in surprise. Mac gave her a lofty look, as if he knew more about Vikings than she ever would, secret things, but both girls could tell that Nisha had him.

  “There’s a better explanation, anyway,” Ember said. “Moss must be a Stormancer.”

  Mac smiled his lofty smile. “We discounted that. The boy’s been tested by a renowned Magician, who found no trace of ability. Besides, those storm-chaser types don’t start to show it until they’re older.”

  Ember chewed her lip. That was true enough. Lionel St. George had come into his powers earlier than most, but even he had been fourteen before he could cast a single spell. Still, there must be some other explanation. Boys didn’t just fall from the sky.

  “That one’s trouble,” Mac said ominously. “Mark my words. Ah!”

  To Ember’s astonishment, one of the penguins had marched up to Mac and matter-of-factly slapped its wings against his boot.

  “Why, you little devil,” the Scientist said.

  The penguin gave him another slap.

  “Ah! See what I mean? You turn your back for an instant—”

  “I think he can smell your pockets,” Ember said, suppressing a snort. The penguin didn’t reach Mac’s knee.

  But Mac wasn’t listening. He lunged at the penguin, and it scampered off, chittering defiantly.

  Nisha took Ember’s hand and pulled her away. Once they were out of earshot, she muttered, “Ignore him.”

  “But I don’t understand—it’s like he’s afraid of Moss.”

  “Mac’s very superstitious. He’s afraid of a lot of things. He hides in his room on the thirteenth day of every month and burns peppermint candles—did you know?”

  Ember shook her head. “Why did Moss call himself Moss?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, he’s obsessed with anything to do with plants. He spends most of his time in the greenhouse, helping Professor Maylie with her experiments.”

  “But who looks after him?”

  “All the Scientists do. Your aunt gave him his own room at the station—it’s right across from mine.” Nisha smiled at her. “I’m so glad you’re going to play with us. I’ve always wished there was another girl here! Kitty doesn’t count, of course,” she added, spitting out the name of the girl Doll Twin. Oh, your hand is so warm!”

  Ember, befuddled, let Nisha lead her along the coast to a cave cut into the rock. Moss’s head popped up from behind a bank of snow that he must have piled there himself. He greeted Ember shyly. Ember thought he looked even more colorless than yesterday, as if the wan sunlight had bleached him.

  Moss and Nisha showed Ember what they were planning—to build a dome against the cave using rolls of snow piled atop each other. Nisha had worked out the precise number that would be required and wrote out the equation for Ember in the snow with a gloved finger. Overwhelmed by Nisha’s confident friendliness, Ember silently set to work rolling snow. In truth, she didn’t understand the point of what they were doing—why didn’t Nisha and Moss just play inside, rather than going to the trouble of building an outdoor shelter? She suspected, though, that if she asked, they would just give her strange looks.

  Nisha talked as she worked—a lot. Ember learned that Nisha’s parents were Elizabeth and Gurjit Singh, the renowned glaciologists, and that they had been in Antarctica for over a year. She also learned that Nisha wanted to be a mathematician when she grew up, or possibly a physicist, and that her twin sister had died from an illness several months ago.

  Nisha fell uncharacteristically silent after that, and Moss, with a sharp glance in Nisha’s direction, changed the subject before Ember could ask any questions. Moss himself spoke little, allowing Nisha to talk as much as she liked and dictate the construction of the fort, which Ember sensed was their usual way of doing things. Ember kept sneaking glances at Moss. He didn’t look much like a Viking to her.

  “Let’s see,” Nisha was saying, “if we wish to build a fort with a minimum height of twelve feet, assuming our snow bricks are approximately eight inches high—Ember, your bricks are a little small, I’m afraid—we’ll need eighteen layers of bricks.”

  “How will we build a twelve-foot-high fort?” Moss said. “We’re not half that tall ourselves.”

  “Easy. We’ll build a staircase with the—”

  “Hang on,” Moss said. “Didn’t your parents say you can’t stay outside for more than an hour? Isn’t that a new rule?”

  Nisha’s expression darkened. “There are so many new rules, I can’t keep track. Never mind. I’ll stay out as long as I want to.”

  “Have you ever seen an ice dragon?” Ember said. She hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation.

  They both stared. Ember flushed. Her natural inclination to honesty also made it difficult for her to avoid voicing whatever was on her mind, even if it wasn’t an appropriate time for it.

  Nisha, however, recovered quickly. “No. My mother has, but only from far away. It’s dangerous to get too close to their hunting grounds.”

  “Have they ever attacked anyone?”

  “Oh yes.” Nisha was nodding. “Not while I’ve been here. But there are stories. Every few years, a Scientist goes missing—usually near the South Pole. That’s where most ice dragons live, your aunt thinks, though they fly to the coast to feed.”

  “Two Scientists were killed last year,” Moss said. “They were researching magnetism.”

  “But how do they know it was dragons that killed them?” Ember said. “Did someone see it happen?”

  “They didn’t need to see it.” Nisha lowered her voice, as if afraid that a dragon might overhear. “The bodies, they—they were torn apart. There’s nothing else in Antarctica that could do that.”

  “Well,” Moss said. “There is one other possibility.”

  “I don’t want to talk about them,” Nisha said with a dramatic shudder. “Not for anything! It’s too horrible.”

  “But—” Ember began.

  “Well, all right,” Nisha said. “There are the—” She paused. “The grimlings.”

  “Grimlings?” Ember repeated. “What’s that?”

  “No one knows,” Nisha said. “That’s what they say the German expedition called them, back in the eighteenth century. A few Scientists have seen them, though most think they’re hallucinations. Scientists, you know. But a few others—including your aunt—think there’s more to the sightings than that.”

  “Well, what are they?” Ember said impatiently.

  “It’s like Nisha said,” Moss replied. “Nobody knows. They live in the crevasses, maybe—deep inside the ice. They’re small, and have no eyes . . . just ears to hear when something walks over them, and mouths full of sharp teeth they can eat you alive with. They travel in swarms, like insects, and some people say they can take the shape of other things—dragons, monsters. Even people.”

  Somehow, when Moss talked about grimlings in his quiet voice, it was more frightening than when Nisha did. The older girl gave another shudder.

  “We shouldn’t be talking about them,” she said, though her cheeks were flushed with excitement. “It’s bad luck.”

  Ember didn’t remind her that she had made fun of Mac for his superstition. She just went back to work, filing away this new information. Antarctica, she was beginning to realize, was stranger than she could have imagined.


  Six

  Ember Makes Another Enemy

  There were two primary subspecies of fire dragon: Old World and Australian. The Australian fire dragon was a bizarre violet creature that preferred traveling on its belly like a snake, and dug burrows in the desert soil. It is probable that in ancient times, many other subspecies roamed our planet, which have since been lost to memory. . . .

  —TAKAGI’S COMPENDIUM OF EXOTIC CREATURES

  In the days that followed, Ember helped Nisha and Moss finish the snow fort. She went to school, and she even did her homework with Nisha in the library, among the warm yellow lamps and rustling pages that contrasted strangely with the whirling snowflakes and long-shadowed mountains that loomed beyond the Firefly. She answered Nisha’s questions about Chesterfield and the famous Lionel St. George. She ate dinner with Aunt Myra sometimes, when her aunt wasn’t busy, though she didn’t try to ask about dragons anymore—her aunt kept up such a steady stream of talk that it wasn’t really possible anyway. Ember found herself preferring the nights when her aunt was busy with her research, and she ate dinner alone.

  She did all those things, but she wasn’t really paying attention to any of it. She missed London, and her father, and Puff. Even worse than that, though, was the dark mood that had settled over her. It was like dragging around an extra shadow, one even crankier than the shadow in the corner. Her dreams were full of the fire dragons’ cries, echoing behind her as she fled. Sometimes they were threatening. Other times, they were merely sad. Calling her back.

  A week after the fire dragons, Ember woke early and couldn’t fall back to sleep. She didn’t feel like going to school, and if she didn’t have to do things she didn’t like back in London, why should she here? Cheered by her rebelliousness, she pulled on her coat and boots. She crept past the Scientists huddled by the fire in the common room, darting so quickly through the dancing shadows that they didn’t see her.

  Once she was out of sight of the station, Ember spread her wings and let herself drift over the snow. The stars blazed and the Antarctic cold was like velvet against her skin. It had been several days since she’d felt it—Aunt Myra still wouldn’t take her on any field trips, and had even forbidden her from playing outside, claiming it was too dangerous.