Ember and the Ice Dragons

by Heather Fawcett

  Puff crouched on her haunches, hissing like a round, furry snake. Her second-least-favorite thing, after strangers, was being disturbed when she was sleeping. “Away!” she yelled at Nisha.

  “Oh, it’s the widdle kitty!” Nisha scooped Puff up and squeezed her to her chest. “Moss said you had a talking cat. She’s so cute!”

  Puff froze. Never in her life had she been squeezed to a human’s chest, and it seemed to have stunned her. Ember leaned back fearfully, certain that Nisha was about to lose an eye.

  “We had a cat when I was little,” Nisha said. She plunked Puff down on her lap, stroking her. “Aditi accidentally let him outside, and he was hit by a carriage—oh, she cried for days about it.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Moss! Will you stop sulking and get in here?”

  There was a sigh from the corridor, and Moss drifted into the room.

  “That’s better,” Nisha said. “Honestly, you don’t think Ember will be afraid of you, do you? That would be weird.”

  “Are you . . . are you both all right?” Ember said, while surreptitiously examining Moss’s shadow to ensure it wasn’t missing its head or something.

  Moss gave a shrug. He sat awkwardly on the desk chair, looking as if he wanted to fade into the wall. Of course, he usually looked like that.

  “Do you know that Baxter stopped us in the dining room and invited us to a game of lookabout?” Nisha said. “I think he just wanted to ask us about the hunt, but still. It was the first pleasant thing I’ve heard him say.” She motioned to Moss. “He hasn’t been able to turn into a dragon again. He doesn’t know how he did it before. It may be something he can only do when his life’s in danger, your father said. He’s a very nice man, isn’t he? I mean, he’s extremely odd. But apart from that . . .”

  Ember examined Moss. Though he looked clean and well-fed, there were dark circles under his eyes. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I don’t know what I am.” He was quiet for a moment. “I always felt like I was part of this place. Now I understand why.”

  Ember didn’t know what to say. Moss was both like and unlike her. A dragon and not a dragon, his past shrouded in mystery. She couldn’t begin to understand how that felt. But if she could help him, be there for him as no dragon had ever been there for her, she would.

  “I’m just afraid I’ll wake up like that,” he said abruptly. “Or that the next time I’m angry, I’ll change again. I—I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  Ember touched his cold hand. Perhaps she could understand what he felt after all.

  “Would you like to visit me in London?” she said. “I could show you around Chesterfield’s botanical gardens.”

  Moss’s expression brightened. “I . . . That would be fantastic.”

  “You can both come,” Ember said, turning to Nisha. “If your parents will let you.”

  Nisha grimaced. She was still petting Puff, who, to Ember’s astonishment, had settled into a wary sort of sphinx on Nisha’s lap. “They’ll let me. We had a talk. I mean, after my parents stopped yelling. When I told them why I ran off, my mother started crying.” She paused, looking away. “I shouldn’t have left without telling them. You know, Aditi, she . . . she got sick so fast. She wasn’t even able to say goodbye. I just keep thinking, if I had died out there . . .”

  Ember squeezed her hand. “I wouldn’t have let you.”

  She nodded slightly. “I know. I had fun. Even when I was terrified! I haven’t had fun like that since Aditi was alive. It was like having her back, in a way.” Her smile grew sad. “You know, I didn’t want to tell you this, in case you thought it was creepy. But you—you remind me of her.”

  Moss burst out, “I hope you’re not going to leave forever, Ember.”

  “Yes, that would be perfectly awful,” Nisha said. “I mean, I’m sure you’ll have plenty to do in London. But . . . it would be nice if you didn’t have to leave at all.”

  Ember smiled, reaching out to scratch Puff’s chin. She didn’t know what to say, because she didn’t know what the future held. But she did know that, suddenly, she had two homes, where before she had only had pieces of one.

  Twenty-Four

  The Prince’s Gift

  Ice dragons, perhaps uniquely among their kind, are capable of speech. This astonishing discovery, first documented by Myra and Ember St. George of the British Antarctic Laboratory and Research Station, has led to unprecedented efforts by zoologists and draconologists to study these elusive beasts, as well as the creation of a special conservation zone at the South Pole.

  —TAKAGI’S COMPENDIUM OF EXOTIC CREATURES,

  Second Edition

  Ember hovered nervously on the threshold as the enormous palace gates swung open. One of the guards motioned for her to enter, and she took a slow step forward. If the guards hadn’t been frowning at her, she suspected she would have run away.

  It had been almost a week since the sinking of Prince Cronus’s ship, and Ember hadn’t seen Gideon once. He had kept to his castle, as she had kept to the Firefly, apart from her daily excursions with Aunt Myra to gather soil samples. Part of her had been hoping she could avoid seeing Gideon altogether.

  But that morning, to her surprise, he had sent for her.

  Inside the castle, Ember turned around and around, awed. She stood at the end of a long, grand gallery, the floor covered with polished marble. The marble was decorated with leaves and hundreds of small, ugly fairies. Ember tried to avoid stepping on their beady little eyes—it was disconcerting to be glared at by things you had to walk over. Lining the gallery were marble columns, and at the end was a sweeping marble staircase. She could have been standing in a country estate back in England. What was she doing here?

  There came a muffled yip, and a dog trotted toward Ember—Finnorah!

  Ember crouched down to rub the dog’s snout. She licked Ember’s face excitedly. “Hello, girl. Made it back, did you?”

  “She came straight home,” a voice said. “It was the wisest thing to do, given that she thought us all dead.”

  Gideon strode out from one of the rooms lining the gallery. He wore an ordinary white sweater, and was without his green coat and sword. For once, he looked like a boy, and not a prince.

  “Welcome to Gloaming Castle,” he said, giving her a distrustful look that mostly undermined his politeness. Ember wondered if he would always look at her as if she was about to bite him.

  She folded her arms. “It’s lovely. But I’d rather not be locked up in it, thank you. I hope that’s not why you brought me here.”

  “What? Oh.” The prince flushed. “No, I’m . . . I’m not going to lock you up. I haven’t told any of the hunters about you either. Or anyone else.”

  Ember wondered if she was supposed to take this as an apology. “Nice of you.”

  The gazed at each other in wary silence.

  “You’re leaving, then?” Gideon said.

  “Yes. Tomorrow. But I’ll be back to visit.” Ember still wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about this. On the one hand, she was overjoyed to be going back home to Chesterfield. But she would miss Nisha and Moss, and her aunt. She would visit using Montgomery (minding the fabric of the world, of course), but that wasn’t the same. At least she would be spending Christmas with both her father and Aunt Myra. When her father had visited yesterday, he and his sister had only argued twice, which Ember suspected was some sort of record.

  “Why?”

  Ember frowned. “Why will I visit? Well, my aunt is here, and—”

  “No, why are you leaving?” Gideon said. “I thought you liked it here.”

  Ember examined him. He stood with his arms crossed, wearing his usual arrogant frown. But there was something awkward underneath it, as if he was wearing a costume that didn’t quite fit anymore.

  “London is my home,” she said.

  He shrugged, as if he hadn’t truly cared in the first place, but had only asked to be polite. “I’m going to London soon too,” he said. “My gr
andmother invited me to stay while all this . . . gets sorted out.”

  Ember knew he meant his father’s death, and pretended not to notice how his voice faltered.

  “Will you stay for long?”

  “No.” Gideon gazed out the window at the gently falling snow. “As much as I enjoy my grandmother’s company, I . . . I always miss this place when I’m away. Besides, there’s so much to do here. My father didn’t do a very good job managing the territory—Port Gloaming is falling apart, and the Scientists have been after him about building a proper road for years . . . It’s going to be different now, though.” He blinked, as if remembering she was there. “I have something to show you. Come.”

  Ember didn’t much appreciate being addressed like one of his dogs, but the prince was already striding away, oblivious. Finnorah trotted at his heels, seeming reluctant to let him out of her sight.

  He led her up the grand staircase, then along a hall with gold-leaf wallpaper and oil portraits of frowning aristocrats. Every room they passed had a fireplace, most of them lit, warming empty spaces. Though Ember marveled at the luxury, the castle intimidated her. It was too large, too empty. She was glad she didn’t have to live there.

  “Here,” Gideon said, several staircases and passages later, after Ember had become thoroughly lost. He drew a key from his pocket and unlocked the door to a little room with a window overlooking the ice-choked sea. It was lined with shelves and wooden crates, and smelled faintly musty.

  Gideon strode to a shelf and drew out another key. He unlocked a small crate, then handed it to Ember.

  “Open it,” he said.

  She drew back the lid. Silver light sparkled, dazzling her. She started—she was gazing at three heartscales.

  “My father is responsible for those,” Gideon said quietly.

  Ember closed the box. She disliked looking at the heartscales—they felt cold and lifeless in a way her mother’s didn’t. “I think it’s too late to save them.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do with them?”

  “That’s for you to decide. They belong to the dragons,” the prince said.

  Ember frowned. “To the ice dragons. I’m not an ice dragon.”

  Gideon gave her a blank look that suggested the distinction eluded him.

  Ember sighed inwardly. “Shouldn’t you give them to King Zaffre yourself?”

  “No.” The prince’s voice turned cold. “I will have no more dealings with those creatures. I’ve put a stop to the Winterglass Hunt, but that doesn’t mean I plan on giving them gifts.”

  “Or an apology, of course,” Ember muttered.

  “I didn’t quite catch that,” Gideon said with a glare.

  “Oh, never mind.” Ember smiled innocently. “Your Highness.”

  Gideon gave her a dark look that Ember might have found intimidating once. Now, though, she just wanted to roll her eyes.

  “So you won’t be hunting ice dragons anymore,” she said. “What about those fire dragons that escaped? I hope you don’t think they’re to blame for what happened on that ship.”

  Gideon’s face darkened further. Ember felt bad for mentioning that night, which surely the prince had no interest in dwelling on, but she needed an answer.

  “A Spanish vessel spotted the beasts off the coast of Argentina several days ago,” he said. “There’s plenty of wilderness in that part of the world, much of it impassable. I doubt any hunter could track them. If they’re wise, they’ll stay well away from humans. Not,” he added in a pointed tone, “that I expect much wisdom from fire dragons.”

  Ember opened her mouth. But the prince was striding away again, and she could only trail behind, stewing. He led her back to the grand hall, bowed his head stiffly, and stalked off. Finnorah followed, though she at least had the decency to cast a look over her shoulder. Ember was left alone with the box, staring after him. She wondered why he had bothered to summon her to the castle—if all he wanted was to give her the heartscales, he could have simply sent them to the Firefly. And now he had stormed off without even a proper goodbye.

  She made an irritated sound. Well. She was glad to be rid of Gideon, anyway. She repeated this until the twinge of disappointment faded.

  Ember breathed a deep sigh as she left the castle and strode down the snowy headland. In the distance, the Firefly shone bright as its namesake. The stars gleamed over a frozen land, a strange wilderness where ice dragons hunted and prowled, or recited riddles in their city of ice. Her breath rose in glittering clouds as she stood still, taking it all in.

  Before her was a world of adventure, vast and frightening and wondrous, and she had a home in it, and people who waited for her return.

  Ember spread her wings and leaped into the sky.

  A Note on the World

  This book takes place in the late Victorian era, sometime in the 1880s, in a world both like and unlike ours. To give just a few examples, the British Empire, while massive, never included Antarctica, nor did people use canals and “kiteships” to get around London. In some cases, decades were rearranged to suit the story; Robert Scott, one of the explorers Ember learns about in school, actually came to the continent in the early 1900s, during the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. Unfortunately, the hunting of endangered species was just as popular in our world, though dragons aren’t usually the targets.

  The Firefly is inspired by a real, modern-day Antarctic research station: Halley VI, which is operated by the British Antarctic Survey. It too is made of detachable modules on hydraulic stilts that can be moved easily, which is useful if your research station is located on a sheet of ice that has a tendency to melt and crack open. Like the Firefly, it’s by the Weddell Sea, and it also looks a bit like a caterpillar. Halley VI, though, wasn’t built with the help of magic (probably).

  The ice dragons Ember encounters speak Middle English, which was an actual language spoken in England from about the eleventh to the fifteenth century. Any and all errors are naturally due to the fact that this is a dragon version of Middle English, which would have diverged from the human language sometime during this period.

  Two of Rose Gold’s riddles, “fish in a stream” and “one-eyed garlic farmer,” are taken and (loosely) translated from the Exeter Book, a collection of poetry composed by a lot of different people that was written down in the tenth century. Not all of the riddles translate well into today’s English. One of them describes a bird that hatches from barnacles, which is where people used to think some geese came from. Needless to say, few nowadays would be able to figure that riddle out.

  Nisha’s answer is, in fact, the correct one.

  About the Author

  Photo by Karen McKinnon

  HEATHER FAWCETT is also the author of the Even the Darkest Stars series. She has a master’s degree in English literature and has worked as an archaeologist, photographer, technical writer, and backstage assistant for a Shakespearean theater festival. She lives on Vancouver Island, Canada.

  Heather can be found online at www.heatherfawcettbooks.com.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Copyright

  Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  EMBER AND THE ICE DRAGONS. Copyright © 2019 by Heather Fawcett. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.harpercollinschildrens.com

  Cover art © 2019 by Matt Rockefeller

  Cover design by Alice Wang

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2
019021047

  Digital Edition OCTOBER 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-285453-7

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-285451-3

  1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321

  FIRST EDITION

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