The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice)

by Quyle, Jeffrey

  The next morning, Marco and his friends packed up early and left their refuge to return to the grueling climb across the top of the mountains on their way to Boheme. They walked out on the path that was the exit from the tiny valley, and crossed beneath the natural arch of mountain stone that was the symbolic doorway away from the comfort. Ariel and Aleo and several of their family members fluttered around Marco right up to the arch, and descended on his shoulders momentarily as they all spoke of their gratitude for the visitation he had provided.

  “I will come with you to help you during your journey out of the mountains, should you ever have any trouble,” Gawail told Marco. The pixie, Ariel’s second cousin, continued to fly with Marco beyond the arch, as the other pixies returned to their homes.

  Marco looked over at the pixie. He wondered what the tiny person could possibly do to be of assistance, and Gawail seemed to anticipate his doubts. “Didn’t Aleo help you escape from the evil ones, then help you rescue your friends, and didn’t I help you retrieve the ingredients you needed for Ariel’s cure?” the pixie asked.

  “Those things did happen, but our journey will be cold and maybe dangerous,” Marco warned the pixie, hoping to dissuade him from joining the group. Marco didn’t want to assume responsibility for the well-being of another person, when he already felt that his ability to take care of himself and the others was tenuous at best.

  “I will stay warm. I can ride inside your cape, or perhaps with one of the others,” Gawail replied. He instantly flew over to Pesino. “May I stay inside your cape to remain warm?” he asked.

  “Of course, little friend!” Pesino said in a kindly tone. She pulled the neck of her cape open, and the pixie immediately dove into the warmth of her clothing. “How do you feel?” she asked a moment later, then smiled and nodded seconds later in response to the response that Marco did not hear as they walked along.

  Marco shook his head at the successful impudence of his new companion, but forgot all about it moments later. They rounded the large stone sentinel that the path had to curve around, and as they did, they felt the full force of the mountain winds come howling directly into their faces, instantly blowing away the comfort and relaxation the travelers had acquired during their brief respite among the pixies.

  The walk back to the main trail was slow, as all four of them walked with their heads down and their hands clutching the hoods of their capes as they struggled forward to the flattened crest of the ridge, a wide band of gravelly soil, covered with lichens, mosses, and thin wisps of grass.

  “It’s mostly downhill from here,” Marco shouted to the others over the whistling sound of the wind. “We’re pretty far behind the rest of the northbound stragglers, but our food supplies are full and we’ve had a chance to rest, so let’s give it our best shot to get to Boheme as quickly as we can.”

  “Good speech, blessed one,” Gawail’s muffled voice barely reached Marco’s ears, but he saw the grin on Pesino’s face, and knew he had heard correctly.

  Almost as soon as they began to descend down the north side of the slope, tiny pellets of icy snow started to smack against them, as the clouds seemed to lie in ambush and then drop suddenly lower, initiating an assault upon the travelers. The sleet came lightly at first, but within half an hour it had increased in intensity. The trail they followed drove a straight line into the sleet for several hundred yards with virtually no slope, then began to descend, meandering back and forth while providing no shelter from the weather.

  By noon the path was at last making a curve around a large peak, and they walked into a stretch of trail that was sheltered from the wind and the sleet. Marco called a halt to their movement, and the travelers scattered to find private spots for several minutes, then reassembled. As they did, they watched the sleet that was descending past them start to turn into heavy snow flakes.

  Marco gave a sigh. “At least the wind isn’t blowing so harshly,” he said, and they started off once again.

  For the former merpeople, the trek through the increasing snow accumulation was a trial. The slippery conditions and the need to lift their feet high made it awkward for them, and even more tiring than it was for Kate and Marco, who had some limited experience with snow on the very rare occasions when it had fallen in the Lion City in their childhood. Gawail, the pixie, grew so nervous about the unsteady gait that Pesino adopted as she slipped through the snow that he left his warm bower in her bosom, and switched allegiance by moving into Kate’s cape.

  They stopped in the mid-afternoon, twice, to let everyone rest. Snow fell the entire afternoon, and by the time they set out from their second stop, several inches of snow had piled up on the trail. They only waded on for another hour before Marco concluded they had to stop. They were in a small dell where stunted trees offered some protection from the elements.

  “Let’s set up the tent and spend the night here,” he suggested.

  “Can we afford to stop so early?” Cassius asked.

  “We’re not making much time, and we don’t want to be stuck in a worse place when night falls,” Marco answered, as he helped Cassius remove the pack with the tent from his back.

  They set the tent up, and Marco and Kate found sticks under the snow by stepping on and kicking them. They piled their tinder at a few yards distance from the tent as the sun fell, then Marco managed to get a fire lit after finding enough dry material to land a spark in.

  “Marco, will you walk me into the woods?” a weary-looking Pesino came out of the tent where she had been resting, and Marco escorted her to a patch of bushes, then escorted her back towards the camp site.

  “Is snow the worst thing that humans have to deal with?” she asked. “No, never mind, I know it’s not. Having to find a place to pee is the most aggravating thing. In the sea,” she paused. “You probably don’t need to know,” she concluded with a laugh. “Thank you for walking out here with me.” She reached her gloved hand out and held his, as they arrived at the fire.

  “We used to love to look at the fire at our village, but we weren’t supposed to burn it at night, in case any human sailors might see it,” she told him as they stood looking at the flames. Already, the fire was starting to burn down, the burning embers collapsing in upon the center of the fire and building a dimmer fire.

  “But you kicked that sand castle apart with that magical fire you started at the village. I remember how astonished we all were,” she said.

  Marco’s head snapped up. “That’s right! I did start a fire that burned all night by itself, didn’t I?” he remembered. He pulled his hand from Pesino’s and pulled a segment of log over by the fire, then sat down as he tried to remember exactly how he had made the flames burn. Pesino came over and settled in on his lap without him being truly aware as he placed his hand on the end of a stick and focused on his memories, trying to recall how he had started the fire.

  It had been about Porenn, he remembered. She had wanted a fire and hadn’t been allowed to warm up and dry off by one. She had been close to tears, and Marco had felt sorry for her. He looked over at Pesino. She didn’t look woeful, he thought with an internal smile; how was he supposed to work up enough outrage and sympathy to ignite a blaze if she wasn’t motivating him.

  If only she looked more sympathetic, he thought, more like Mirra had looked when he first met her, holding Sybele in her arms, believing her child was going to die. Mirra had touched the chords of his heart, and made him want to help.

  There was a sudden, loud whooshing sound, and Marco felt a heavy weight on his chest. He was looking up at the sky, looking past Pesino’s face. He was lying on the ground – on his back – and he was looking upward, as he heard a roaring sound from a burning fire immediately nearby. He turned his head and saw the fire burning ferociously only a few feet away, and beyond it he saw the door flap of the tent open and Kate and Cassius’s faces stare out in wonder.

  “What did you do? Are you trying to burn us?” Pesino asked, as she rolled off of him.

  “What
’s happening?” Kate asked, as Gawail came flying out of the tent and hovered near Marco.

  “It is the blessed one. He has used his powers to make heat for us,” the pixie’s voice spoke.

  “Why are you making the fire burn like that, Marco?” Cassius asked.

  “I didn’t mean to make it so big. I was trying to make it burn so we could stay warm, and then I just overdid it,” he answered.

  “Well, it’s burning,” Kate commented, as she came out of the tent and stood near the fire, absorbing its warmth. They all stood together quietly for several minutes, appreciating the warmth that soaked into their bodies, as the sun set behind the clouds in the west and snowflakes continued to fall.

  Marco assigned shifts for keeping watch, and then went into the tent and tried to sleep before his shift arrived in the middle of the night. The bright light of the fire dimly penetrated the walls of the tent, and then the light grew much brighter, as Kate and Pesino came into the tent as well, leaving Cassius to remain outside on watch duty.

  “What did you do to make that fire so bright?” Pesino asked as she lay down in her blankets. Her feet were near his head, while Kate’s head was on the other side of her feet across from him, as they packed themselves tightly into the limited space.

  “I thought of Mirra,” he told her softly. “I remembered how desperate she looked the first time I saw her. She had Seybele in her arms and the baby was dying.

  “She looked so much in need of help, like there was nothing that could solve the greatest problem of her life,” he told them.

  “And you saved the baby?” Kate asked. “You touched it with your golden hand?”

  “I saved it, but that was before my hand was like this. I just used old-fashioned alchemy,” he said.

  “And then the two of you fell in love,” Pesino concluded.

  “Maybe so. It didn’t quite seem that way at the time, but that may have been how it was,” Marco agreed.

  They talked about Mirra further, then they all drifted off to sleep, and Marco only awoke when Pesino tugged on his shoulder. “Your turn to go out there,” she murmured as she waited for him to arise, then she crawled into his blankets to absorb the body warmth he left behind.

  Outside Marco found Gawail sitting near the fire, watching the flames.

  “Pixies like the warmth more than the cold?” Marco guessed as he stood next to the little person.

  “Of course. We were born from fire,” Gawail answered. “We have to come to the valley of steaming waters in the winter, or we wouldn’t survive the cold.”

  “You were born from fire?” Marco asked, his interest piqued by the unusual statement. He needed to go walk around the campsite to inspect its perimeter, but he wanted to hear Gawail’s explanation for his unusual statement first.

  “Yes,” the pixie immediately answered.

  “There was a mountain, whose entire top was consumed by a great fire, a fire that burned whole trees and stones and the very earth itself. The fire wanted to grow larger, to go out and make all the world a great fire. So it released a tiny little flame, a single flame, and sent the flame out to find out what it was going to burn up.

  “So the little flame went down from the mountain top,” Gawail explained. “And it flittered around, until it came to a village of people who lived by a river. The little flame wanted to cross the river, so it hopped on a log and asked the log to float it across.

  “But when they got halfway across the river the log stopped. ‘Are you going to burn down the forest where all my friends live?’ the log asked.

  “’No,’ the little flame answered. ‘I’m just exploring so I can tell my mother what the world is like.’

  “‘Who is your mother?’ the log asked.

  “Just then a little girl from the village saw the tiny flame on top of the log in the middle of the river, so she got in her canoe, and she paddled out to see what they were doing.

  “’My mother is the great burning fire on top of the mountain,’ the little flame told the log,” Gawail continued.

  “’Your mother has burned a great many trees, and now you will help her burn more. I will not help you cross this river,’ the log cried out in anger at the little flame, and so it started to submerge itself.

  “That was going to make the little flame fall into the river, where the water would extinguish it. It was afraid, and it cried out in fear,” Gawail was telling the story with gusto, standing now and striding back and forth as he told the creation story of the pixies.

  “And just then the little girl reached the little flame, and she held her hand out. The tiny flame jumped into her open palm, just as the log sank all the way under the water, and the little flame was saved.

  “‘Thank you!’ the little flame told the girl. ‘You saved my life!’

  “‘I’m glad I could help you. What are you doing in the middle of the river?’ she asked as she set him down and starting paddling back to shore.

  “So the little flame told her the same story he had told the log.

  “‘Your mother fire won’t come down and harm us, will she?’ the little girl asked as they reached the shore. ‘We like fire, and we treat it with respect.’ She pointed to the chimneys of the houses to show that every house had a fire burning.

  “And so the little flame went back up the mountain and told its mother about the kind little girl and the small fires that already lived in all the houses, and the mother promised that she would not ever create a fire to burn down the whole world, but would stay on top of the mountain and flare up to call attention to herself once in a while to remind the world to respect her.

  “‘You’ve done well, my little flame,’ the mother said. ‘How can I reward you?’

  “‘Can you make me like the little girl, able to survive the water?’ the flame asked.

  “And so the mother did. She gave the flame the shape of a pixie. ‘And you shall have wings, so that you can float high up in the sky the way a flame can,’ the mother said, and that’s how the first pixie was born.” Gawail finished his story, and looked up at Marco. “Do you like that story?” he asked.

  “Very much,” Marco said sincerely. It was an enchanting tale, one that he was sure couldn’t be true, yet it still seemed to be told so sincerely that a tiny part of Marco wondered whether it might be.

  “I’m going to go walk around the campsite to make sure everything is safe. I’ll be right back,” Marco told his pixie companion.

  “And I’ll stay here, where it’s warm, you know,” Gawail said with equanimity as Marco strode off.

  Marco left the bright ring that was lit near the campfire, and ventured out into the forest glen. He found that the snow was not melted once he left the comfort of the fire’s heat, and he saw that they would face a difficult journey the next morning, through snow that had piled up a foot or more deep. But happily, there were no tracks in the snow, something that gave Marco relief, as it demonstrated the safety of their location.

  He completed a circle through the snow, then returned to the fire, and sat down near Gawail. “Where do you live in the summer time, when you’re not in the valley with the hot springs?” Marco asked.

  “I live up in the Nightshade Mountains; our clan travels farther than any other to come to the winter valley. It’s a dangerous journey, but we haven’t lost anyone for fifty years,” Gawail said proudly.

  “The Nightshade Mountains! That’s where we’re going!” Marco cried, astonished at the incredible coincidence.

  “You’re going to the Nightshades? I thought you were going to the human city, Boheme,” Gawail looked at him in surprise.

  “We’re only going to Boheme as a stop on the way. We’ll go to Boheme, then Fortburg, then the Nighshades, on our way to Clovis,” Marco laid out his full itinerary.

  “Clovis?” Gawail asked in a whisper. “The haunted city? You would dare to go there? Why?” the pixie appeared badly shaken to Marco, who felt his own confidence suddenly shrink because of Gawail’s reactio
n.

  “I have to go to Clovis to go to the old library there, to try to find a clue to know where to go to find the Echidna,” Marco replied.

  “The Echidna? Clovis and the Echidna? You have a death wish – or you have great faith in your blessing! To go to such monstrous places is unthinkable! We who live in the Nightshades only go to the edges of Clovis, in the middle of the day. We believe the city is haunted,” Gawail told Marco.

  “I am under orders from a great spirit, the spirit of the island of Ophiuchus, which has told me to go to the Echidna, and get one of its scales,” Marco explained. “I am going to Clovis to see if I can find out where the Echidna lives; I was told that the old library there is my best hope to find information about the Echidna.”

  “Blessed one, a great spirit would not send you out on a hopeless journey, I am sure. But this is an extraordinary course you have laid out, I’m sure,” Gawail told him. “I will help you as much as possible. I will help you get to Clovis, and to the safest part of the city ruins, though I do not know if that is where this library is that you seek.”

  They each sat silently, contemplating what had been revealed.

  “I see that the sun is coming up,” Gawail observed, breaking Marco’s brooding introspection.

  “We’ll need to leave soon, then. I better wake the others and tell them to pack up,” Marco responded.

  “What about your fire? When will you put it out? I want to stay beside it until the last moment, then go to my cozy traveling space,” Gawail grinned up at Marco.

  Marco grinned back in return, shook his head, and gently poked the pixie in the shoulder with his finger, then rustled the tent flap, and opened it to awaken the others. “We need to go,” he spoke into the tent, and let them stretch the stiffness out of their muscles before the group returned to the snow-covered trail.