Firesong

by William Nicholson

  ‘You’re feeling better?’

  ‘Yes. I have some strength now. I must use it.’

  ‘No, no. Save your strength. We haven’t got there yet.’

  ‘Ah, Hannoka.’ She gave him a reproachful smile. ‘You know my strength is given me for getting there.’

  Hanno frowned and looked down.

  ‘What is it you want to do?’

  ‘I must do what it’s given me to do. I must prophesy.’

  ‘No.’

  Every time I touch the future I grow weaker. My gift is my disease. I shall die of prophecy.

  The words of the prophet Ira Manth sounded in Hanno Hath’s ears every day now, as he watched his wife become thinner and quieter.

  ‘No,’ he said again.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Before it’s too late.’

  So Hanno bowed his head and accepted that it must be.

  ‘I shall listen.’

  ‘And the others. All of them.’

  Hanno gathered the others round, twenty-seven of them, now that Bowman and Kestrel were gone. With Ira and himself, they made twenty-nine. Jet Marish, the youngest of them all, only six years old, was asleep in her father’s arms. Seldom Erth, the oldest, had his eyes closed, but was not asleep. They were all there to hear Ira Hath prophesy. Even the cows and the horses, drawn by curiosity, loomed out of the shadows and stood watching behind the circle of people.

  For a few moments, Ira Hath was silent. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire, and the pat-pat-pat of melting snow dripping on the canopy.

  ‘I think we will see the homeland tomorrow,’ she said at last, ‘I think as the sun sets tomorrow, we will look down on the homeland at last. I feel its warmth on my face, stronger than the heat of the fire.’

  The people listening all smiled and nodded at each other as they heard her. The end of the journey at last.

  ‘Now that we’re so close,’ said Ira, ‘I find that I can see a little further. If you would like, I could tell each of you the little that I see.’

  Their eyes opened wide.

  ‘You mean,’ said Branco Such, ‘a personal prophecy? For each of us?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ira. ‘If you would like that.’

  Branco Such wasn’t at all sure he would like it. He still felt troubled over the part he had played in dividing their group, in Canobius’s valley. It seemed to him that his decision had been right, given what he had known at the time, and yet it had turned out to be wrong.

  Ira Hath understood the source of his nervousness.

  ‘I think,’ she said gently, ‘that you and your wife will do very well in the homeland. You will establish a shop.’

  ‘A shop?’

  Branco Such was extremely surprised. He turned to look at his wife.

  ‘You don’t want to have a shop, do you?’

  Gale Such looked guilty.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I have sometimes thought how neighbourly it would be to have a little shop, just a very little shop, where people might call by and pick up a little of this and that, and pass the time of day.’

  She blushed as she spoke. Branco had been a magistrate in the old days, and she knew he would think shopkeeping beneath him.

  ‘You astonish me! A shop! Whatever next?’

  But he did not reject the idea out of hand. Gale Such looked gratefully at Ira Hath. She had not dared suggest it herself.

  Little Scooch heard the exchange with excitement.

  ‘And me!’ he cried. ‘I’ll have a shop too!’

  ‘Of course. You will have the bakery. You and Lunki.’

  Now it was Scooch’s turn to blush. Lunki was at the back, sitting beside Sisi, and her face was deep in the shadows; but Sisi heard her utter a little gasp.

  The others were too excited at the prospect of hearing their own futures to linger over Scooch and Lunki.

  ‘I know my future,’ said Creoth. ‘And I don’t care who else knows it too. This lady’ – he pointed to Mrs Chirish – ‘this lady and I have come to an understanding, and we are to have a farm.’

  ‘You may have the farm,’ said Mrs Chirish. ‘I plan to lead a quiet life.’

  ‘Me, me, me!’ cried Fin Marish. ‘Talk about me!’

  ‘Come here, dear.’

  The little girl ran forward, and Ira Hath took her little hands between her own hands.

  ‘You will marry,’ she said, ‘and have five children.’

  ‘I want to marry Spek. Can I marry Spek?’

  ‘You will marry Spek Such.’

  Spek Such scowled as he heard this.

  ‘Do I have to?’ he said.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Ira. ‘But I think you will.’

  Tanner Amos stepped up with a simple question.

  ‘Will I marry again?’

  ‘You will,’ said Ira.

  ‘Who will I marry?’

  ‘Why ask me, Tanner? It’s no prophecy to tell you what you already know.’

  Tanner Amos looked round, and his gaze fell directly on Ashar Warmish. That was how he told her that he was waiting, and that in three years time he would come for her, if she was willing. Ashar said nothing, but nor did she blush. Some things felt right.

  In this same manner, sometimes holding their hands, sometimes just looking into their faces, Ira Hath prophesied for each of them, telling them for the most part what they already knew, but had not yet admitted to themselves. Bek Shim was relieved to learn he would marry Sarel Amos, because it meant he wouldn’t have to ask her. He could proceed now as if it was already established as a fact; which he found much easier. The teacher Silman Pillish was gratified to learn he would become a schoolteacher again, and frankly incredulous at the prophecy that he would marry the widow Cheer Warmish. Cheer Warmish too protested loudly that she had no such wish. However, they both began to look at each other in a new and curious way.

  Red Mimilith was told she would marry and have two children of her own, but four children altogether. This made no sense, and she was about to ask more questions, when she saw Miller Marish staring at her. She went bright red and asked nothing. Miller Marish was a good man, but he was ten years older than her. He was a good father, too, loving and reliable. Red Mimilith began to think about the possibility.

  Rollo Shim was to become a fisherman, which made him shake his head, and was to marry Seer Such, which made him laugh.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to marry you either,’ said Seer Such, irritated by his laugh.

  Sisi did not come forward for a prophecy.

  ‘I shall make my own future,’ she said.

  Mumpo wanted to know, but didn’t dare to ask. By now it was too late, anyway. Ira Hath was becoming tired. Hanno begged her to speak no more, desperately worried that she was using up the last of her strength.

  ‘Almost done, Hannoka,’ Ira murmured. She beckoned Pinto towards her, and took her in her arms.

  ‘My baby,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want to know,’ said Pinto. ‘Just tell me if I’ll be happy.’

  ‘You’ll have a long life,’ said Ira. ‘How can it all be happy?’

  ‘Can you really see the future, ma?’

  ‘Yes. A little. The part that’s in you now.’ She drew Pinto close, so that she could whisper to her without the others hearing. ‘You love Mumpo. I see it in you now. There’s part of your future.’

  Pinto kissed her and said nothing. Her mother’s words made her very happy.

  ‘And you, my dearest.’ Ira turned to Hanno and took his hands.

  ‘I have no future,’ said Hanno. ‘I need no prophecy. You talk too much, woman.’

  Ira smiled, and kissed his hands. He was right. She had talked too much. She was very tired.

  Pinto was woken by the dawn light. It was the strangest light, filtered through the snow on the leaves above, and tinged with the faintest rose pink. She stood up, and felt the aching and the stiffness in her legs, and wondered if the snow had passed. She made her way out between the snow walls, and into a space
between the surrounding trees. Here she found snow was still falling, but the flakes were light and far apart. The snow clouds were at last moving away. And where they had already cleared, the sky was glowing a light watery pink.

  The sun was about to rise.

  Pinto had slept well, and for all her aching bones, she felt refreshed. The glimpse of dawn sky through the trees enchanted her. Wanting a wider view of the sunrise, she made her way between the trees, up the rising slope, looking for a clearing in the forest. Shortly she came upon the mountain track they had been following from the valley, only this was an upper reach of it she had not seen before. the track led directly upwards, trodden into steps like a staircase, as before, while the mountain slopes rose higher on either side. Between these slopes was a notch of sky, in which snow clouds were giving way to the serene pink of dawn. The slopes to left and right limited Pinto’s view in an annoying way, but it seemed to her that if she climbed just a little further, she should come to a place where the land levelled off.

  On she went, as the last flakes of snow sailed to earth around her, and the pink in the sky deepened to red. She had come farther than she had intended, but she could not turn back now. She was so close.

  She shivered in the morning cold. Stupidly, she had forgotten to put on her outer coat. She heard the crunch of the crisp snow beneath her feet. She smelt the freshness of the dawn air. She felt strong, and bold, and excited.

  Faster now – up the last steps –

  Still snow-covered slopes rose on either side of her. Still the flurries of snowflakes settled around her. But now the sky was red, such a deep strong red, the red of a perfect dawn. And all at once, she had reached the top, the very top of the track, and she had come to a stop, and was gazing before her, and she knew what she was seeing.

  Through a V of hills, a red sky. Snow falling. A land far below, where two rivers ran to a distant sea.

  It was the homeland.

  In a wondering daze, Pinto walked forward, and then came to a stop once more. Just a few paces before her there was –

  Nothing.

  No mountains sloping down to foothills, no foothills sloping into the coastal plain. Nothing. The land just ended.

  She lay down on her stomach on the snow, and inched her way forward. In this manner, she came to the edge of the land, and dared to look over.

  It was a sheer cliff, that dropped thousands of feet, down to the beautiful unreachable land below. Already giddy, she made herself look to the left and to the right, and saw how the immense cliff ran away in both directions as far as she could see. In some far distant time, the mountains on this western flank had cracked and crumbled away, leaving a massive and impassable precipice.

  Shaking from the vertiginous sight, Pinto crawled back to safety, and rose once more to her feet. She looked up at the red sky, which was not sunset after all, but sunrise. There was the homeland before her, just as her mother had dreamed. But there was no way they could reach it.

  17

  The meeting place

  As the barge carrying Bowman and Kestrel to Sirene made its way into the open sea, a northerly wind began to blow, slowing their progress. Beyond the snow clouds, the horizon darkened to a leaden grey.

  ‘Ha!’ cried Albard. ‘The game begins!’

  A great wave, driven silently from the ocean by the rising wind, picked the barge up, and sweeping on towards shore, smacked it down again with a terrific crack. Bowman, Kestrel and Jumper, who had been in the cabin, came reeling out, half-stunned, to find Albard standing on deck, legs astraddle, arms reached up to the sky, shouting at the storm.

  ‘Come on, then! Do your worst! See if you can get me! What do I care?’

  Seeing the others, he called to them, eyes shining.

  ‘She’s trying to stop you getting to the island!’

  There was no time for explanations. A second bigger wave was racing towards them. There sounded a long rumble across the sky, culminating in a mighty clap of thunder. Up went the barge once more, tossed high on the crest of the wave: as it did so, without any words passing between them, Jumper, Bowman and Kestrel all lifted themselves a few feet into the air, so that as the boat plunged down again, they remained hovering above it. Only Albard had stayed with his boots firmly planted on the deck, letting himself be tossed and rolled with the boat.

  ‘Cowards!’ he yelled at them. ‘Runaways! Spectators!’

  They dropped down beside him onto the heaving deck. Albard seized Bowman by the arm.

  ‘You, boy!’ he shouted at him over the rolling of the thunder. ‘This is power! This is energy! Don’t you want it?’

  ‘I don’t want to be smashed to pieces!’

  ‘Afraid, are you?’

  ‘Yes. I am.’

  The barge rose once more, this time tipping to one side so far that Bowman had to grab hold of the hatch cover to stop himself being thrown into the sea.

  ‘Use the fear!’ cried Albard. ‘There’s power in fear! Find it, take it, use it!’

  Bowman saw Jumper watching him with that odd little smile of his. Kestrel was beside him, braced against the storm, watching him too. He felt as if he was expected to do something, but he wasn’t sure what. And all the time, the storm was rolling closer, and the waves were tossing with ever greater violence.

  Use the fear. But how?

  Crash! The sea struck from beneath like a whale, lifting the barge up until it was almost vertical, throwing Bowman out into the snow-filled darkening air –

  ‘Aaaah!’ he cried. And then louder, letting his panic terror sound all through his body –

  ‘AYAYAYAYANNAYANNAAAA!’

  He caught himself as he fell, and kicked with his legs like a swimmer rising through water. Up he shot, tingling and glowing from his shout, soaring up into the storm above, tumbling himself over and over in the electric cloud. As he spiralled and span, he called out long wordless sounds, drinking in the danger of the storm, vibrating with his own fear and fury. A slash of lightning tore across the sky, followed by a hammer-crack of thunder, whipping him and spinning him with dazzle and noise. Throwing wide his arms and legs, he let the storm toss him like a rag, a blanket, a sail, he spread himself wide, wide as the storm, and hugged it and wrapped it and bundled it. He sang to the storm as he took it in his arms and stomach and knees and feet, hooking it in close, blanketing the thunder, hugging the wind, taking the power into himself for ever and ever –

  ‘Tha-a-at’s my boy!’

  Albard bawled up from the deck, watching him tumble in the storm, his voice cracking with pride. Jumper and Kestrel were watching him, rocking, smiling. Then the rage of the sky began to abate, and Bowman felt himself floating downwards, until his feet came to rest once more on the deck. The barge was riding over a calm sea towards Sirene.

  ‘Has the storm passed?’

  ‘Passed? No! You’ve eaten it! You’ve a belly full of thunder! You could fart a hurricane!’

  Albard rocked with laughter.

  ‘Is it true?’ Bowman asked Jumper.

  In reply, Jumper held out his hand, and Bowman reached across to touch it. As his fingers came close to Jumper’s hand, a vivid blue spark jumped the gap, startling him. He pulled his hand away quickly.

  ‘You have the storm’s energy in you,’ said Jumper.

  ‘Let me feel it, Bo.’

  Kestrel came up close to Bowman, the same strange look in her eyes he had seen before. But everything was strange now. She reached out and touched him. A shiver of sparks rose up where her hand rested on his arm.

  ‘Hold me.’

  He put his arms round her, feeling the shivering at every point of contact. She held him close, and her body absorbed the hot-cold hurting-sweet needle-points of energy that pulsed from every part of him. The shock of it made her hold her breath, but she didn’t let go until she had taken as much as he had to give. Then they parted, their eyes locked on each other still.

  I can do anything, Kess.

  Kestrel said nothing. Fo
r her the pain was beginning. She could feel the silver voice that hung on a string round her neck, lying against her skin. It was hot to the touch, from where she had pressed herself against her brother. Now, slowly, her body was cooling; but the silver voice was growing hotter.

  The passing storm had swept away the snow clouds to reveal the light of the moon in the twilight sky. As night gathered round them, they saw Sirene ahead: the rock-strewn hill, the high roofless walls of the great hall. The barge which had neither sails nor oars passed quietly now over the rolling sea, and so nosed its way into the little cove that formed the island’s harbour.

  Albard was the first to step onto land.

  ‘Sirene!’ he cried. ‘This is for you!’

  He urinated noisily onto the stony ground.

  Bowman and Kestrel followed, their eyes straining in the dusk to make out the details of this mysterious island they had dreamed of for so long. All they could see was bare rising land, and here and there the bent shape of olive trees.

  Mist the cat came after them, and was unimpressed.

  ‘What’s the use of learning to fly,’ he complained, ‘if we come to a dull rock like this?’

  ‘They’re waiting,’ said Jumper.

  It was Jumper who led the way up the path, hopping and stopping, hopping and stopping, in his maddening way.

  ‘For pity’s sake!’ exclaimed Albard. ‘Must you jig about so?’

  ‘Would you prefer me to creep?’

  ‘Yes, creep.’

  But Jumper’s creeping was so slow and peculiar that it annoyed Albard even more.

  ‘Alright, alright. Do as you like.’

  ‘Bounce on, Jumper!’ said Jumper cheerfully.

  Shortly the little band arrived at the top of the low hill in the centre of the island. Here stood the high stone walls that formed the Singers’ roofless hall. The outline of the arched windows could be made out clearly against the moonlit clouds. The space between the walls was inky black.

  ‘I suppose they’re all here,’ said Albard, sounding suddenly subdued.

  ‘All but you and I,’ said Jumper.