Fireborn

by Toby Forward

  Nothing happened.

  No one spoke.

  Cabbage began to grow uncomfortable.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked Flaxfield.

  “We’re waiting for you to start,” said Flaxfold.

  “What?”

  He looked around the room again. They were in two clear groups. Dorwin, Cartford, Flaxfold and Flaxfield in one. He and Perry and Bee were the other.

  “We weren’t thinking about it in the right way,” said Flaxfield. “Remember what Springmile said?”

  “It’s about Bee,” said Perry.

  “And Cabbage, and you,” said Flaxfold. “So tell us, please. What are we going to do?”

  “That’s your job,” Cabbage argued.

  Flaxfield shook his head.

  “You have magic,” he said. “You, Bee, you made the new magic. And you, Perry, well, to tell the truth, I don’t know why you’re involved in this at all, but you are, so you’d better stay with them.”

  Perry grinned. He was the only one showing any pleasure in this.

  Into the gap left after Flaxfield’s words Bee inserted a statement.

  “Two things survived the fire,” she said. “You have one,” she looked at Cabbage. “The indenture. I have the other.” She opened her hand and revealed the seal. “These were the two things strong enough to withstand the wild magic. They are the key to defeating it. Or controlling it, at least.”

  The shawl around her face muffled her voice. They strained to make out what she was saying.

  “I think we should use these to…”

  “I can’t understand,” said Cabbage. “Sorry, but I can’t hear you properly.”

  Bee faltered. The authority fell from her. She drew the shawl tighter to her.

  “Cabbage,” Dorwin rebuked him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Bee’s eyes picked him out. She held him in her gaze for longer than he liked. Much longer.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said.

  Bee unwound the shawl, dropped it to her shoulders, stared at him, bare-faced.

  Her voice was strong and her look unflinching. There was a newer, greater strength.

  “I have a face,” she said. “I’ll not hide it any more. And I have a name that I don’t know yet. When I find that I’ll be well again. Well enough.”

  She smiled at Cabbage.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Cabbage didn’t know what to say or do.

  “Please,” she said. “They say you have a book. What does it say?”

  “Nothing,” said Cabbage. “It doesn’t help at all. It’s just about mines and caves and potholes.”

  “Places underground,” said Bee. “Where Up Top brushes against the Deep World.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where the iron comes from,” she said. “That made the mirror that made the magic.”

  “That’s right.”

  Bee looked at Cartford. For a second she hesitated to turn her face to him. The moment passed and she looked him in the eye.

  “Do you have iron, blacksmith?” she asked.

  “Does a roffle sing stars and sideboards?” he smiled.

  “Shall we see what iron can make?” she asked him.

  Cabbage gasped and pointed to Cartford.

  “You’re not Smokesmith are you?” he said.

  Cartford laughed.

  “I’d be hundreds of years old if I were,” he said. “What a question. Flaxfield, do you take half-wits for apprentice these days?”

  Cabbage made his lips a straight line. Flaxfield gave him a reassuring look.

  “There’s nothing of the fool about Cabbage,” he said. “As you well know.”

  “Ah, well,” said the blacksmith. “I suppose that’s good to hear. What do you want me to make for you, Bee?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Can we just go and see?”

  “Now?”

  “As good a time as any,” said Flaxfield.

  “I have iron and fire,” said Cartford. “Come and see.”

  “I’ll go back to the inn,” said Flaxfold. “Will you come with me?”

  Dorwin readily agreed.

  “Boys?” she asked.

  “Can we stay here?”

  Flaxfield went with them to the forge.

  “Show me how you make something from iron,” said Bee.

  “A horseshoe?” asked Cartford. “Just for a start?”

  “Come on,” Perry whispered to Cabbage. “I’ve got an idea.”

  The boys slipped away unnoticed.

  Bakkmann clattered an angry jet of abuse at Ash.

  Frastfil, who couldn’t understand what Bakkmann was jabbering didn’t even seem to be able to interpret the feelings behind the outburst. He smiled at the creature and jingled the coins in his pocket.

  “I want to eat the fool and spit out his stupid money,” Bakkmann clattered.

  Frastfil just managed to make out the word money and he held up a sixpence.

  “What’s the fool doing?” said Bakkmann.

  Ash put herself between Frastfil and Bakkmann to block the wizard’s view of the creature.

  “Put your money away, Frastfil,” she said. “Everything is free here.”

  “It’s so different,” said Frastfil, “from how it was.”

  “Is it?” said Ash. “No I don’t think so.”

  Bakkmann spat a gout of black slime on the wall.

  “I want to play with him now,” she said. “I want to stroke him.”

  “Go,” said Ash. “Enough.”

  Bakkmann slouched out.

  “What rough beast is that?” said Frastfil when he was sure the Bakkmann was out of hearing.

  “Nothing’s different,” said Ash gently. “See.”

  She took his hand and led him to the high window.

  Beneath them in the courtyard beetles scurried through dung and blood.

  “Look at the horses,” said Ash.

  “I thought,” said Frastfil.

  “Yes?”

  He shook his head.

  “No. It’s stupid. I can’t say it.”

  “Come,” she said. “You must be hungry.”

  “Did I tell you,” said Frastfil. “I used to come here once.”

  “You did,” she assured him. “You told me. Your uncle.”

  She led him from the turret, down towards the great hall. The floors of the passageways and chambers were slippery with slaughter, the walls greasy with slime.

  “Do you remember these tapestries?” Ash asked him.

  “They’re beautiful,” said Frastfil. He ran his hand along the damp bricks. His fingers were sticky with blood.

  “Sit here. At the place of honour.”

  Ash guided him to the oak board at the high end of the hall. She motioned for takkabakks to join them. They sat round, clacking and stabbing, hardly able to keep from killing him. Ash introduced them as family members, courtiers, servants, visitors. She found the ragged hank of a leg and put it before him.

  “Delicious,” he said. “The kitchens here were always wonderful. Such delicate flavours.”

  “We try our best,” she smiled. “For special guests. Now, tell me all about the college and what you do there. Who is the principal now?”

  “It’s a bad place,” said Frastfil. “They don’t appreciate me.”

  “Perhaps we can do something about that,” said Ash. “Tell me everything.” |

  Part Six

  FIREBORN

  Bee felt Cartford watch her hammer

  the hot iron, bending it on the anvil, flattening it with the hard downstrokes. He nodded. She seemed to be at one with the glowing metal. She moved between anvil and furnace, reheating and beating until the iron took the exact shape she was striving for. She looked at it, turning it over and over to check, then plunged it into the water trough where it sizzled and spat.

  She watched Dorwin fish it out, cold now and hard.

  “You’ve never worked metal be
fore?” asked Dorwin. “At Slowin’s? In his experiments?”

  Bee shook her head.

  “It’s in her nature,” said Cartford.

  “Fire and iron,” said Flaxfield.

  Bee had been absorbed in her work, forgetful of the others. Now that they were examining her work and talking about her she grew uncomfortable. Her hand went to her shawl to pull it over her face. She checked the movement and stared at them uncovered.

  “It was easy,” she said. “Sorry. I don’t mean that. I’m not showing off.”

  “You’re not,” agreed Cartford. “You can just do it. Like being able to swim if someone throws you in the river. Some people can, others can’t.”

  “No one swims the way she did that,” said Dorwin. “Was it magic that did it?”

  Flaxfield took the horseshoe from her.

  “It was magic and it wasn’t,” he said. “Magic’s in her. She is magic, the way some people are tall.” He held up the iron shoe. “She is fire and she is iron.”

  Bee had placed another iron rod in the furnace. She took the tongs, turned it, shook off the cinders, looked at it. It was red, going yellow. She left it in. Cartford gently applied the bellows, stoking up the heat. She looked again at the iron. It was white now, almost painful to look at. She drew it out of the furnace with the tongs and laid it on the anvil. After three strokes with the hammer she put her hand to the hot iron. “No!” shouted Dorwin.

  Bee twisted the iron in her fingers, pinched it and made a slim knot. The iron was cooling now, turning back to red, not hot enough, not soft enough to work. Bee thrust it back into the furnace.

  “Let me see your hand,” said Cartford.

  There was no mark where Bee had touched the hot iron. No blister.

  “That would have taken my fingers off,” said Dorwin. “Melted them like butter.”

  “Could you do that before?” asked Flaxfield.

  Bee thought about the question.

  “Fire never hurt me,” she said. “Only the wild magic fire. Now, I don’t think there’s any fire that can do me harm.”

  “Do you want to make something here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “I think so. Yes. I know what it is. But I don’t know what it’s for.”

  “That will come later,” said Cartford. “Let’s make it and see.”

  “How long will it take to get to Boolat?” asked Cabbage.

  “Four days if we walk,” said Perry. “A day and a night if we take horses.”

  Cabbage kicked a stone and it clattered against the stable door. The horse shifted, whinnied and banged a hoof in its stall.

  “Can you ride?” he asked.

  Perry had only been on a horse twice, both times as a passenger.

  “It looks easy enough,” he said.

  “So does swallowing a sword when you see it at a fair. I wouldn’t like to try it.”

  “We’d better walk then,” said Perry.

  Cabbage turned away from the stable and kicked another stone. This one bounced off, raising dust.

  “Four days?” he said.

  Perry walked alongside him.

  “We’d better take some food,” he said. “You know how hungry you get.”

  It was a joke, but Cabbage didn’t smile.

  “We can’t take four days. That’s too long.”

  “We could share a horse.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean,” said Cabbage.

  The road from Cartford’s house went across the river and into the trees. Half a mile along it there was a watermill and a mill pond with ducks. They walked in silence until they were at the mill. Cabbage leaned on the fence and pulled at a long stem of grass. The ducks fluttered the water and swam towards them. They were used to being fed. He rested Flaxfield’s staff against the fence.

  “By the time we get there it will be too late,” said Cabbage.

  Perry sighed.

  “I’m not allowed to take anyone into the Deep World,” he said.

  “If you went alone, how long would it take to get there?”

  “We could be there, or near to it by evening. I don’t know all the ways.”

  “So I wouldn’t be in the Deep World long?”

  “I’m not allowed.”

  “I’m not allowed to tell you about magic and show you secret things but I have. I’m not allowed to talk to you about spells and where magic came from. Am I?”

  “You won’t tell anyone?” said Perry.

  Cabbage punched him on the arm. He jumped off the fence and grinned.

  Perry punched him back and laughed.

  “I shouldn’t,” he said.

  Cabbage’s face was alight with pleasure.

  “We have to. Can we really?”

  “Promise you won’t tell?”

  “Come on. Where’s the roffle hole?”

  “I can’t.”

  Cabbage gripped Perry’s arm.

  “If we don’t find out what Bee’s name is we’re never going to get things right again, are we?”

  Perry walked towards the mill, Cabbage following. The mill wheel was still, disconnected from its gears. It was cool by the mill race, the sound of the water like laughter. Perry stepped up to the wheel and disappeared. Cabbage followed and found himself bumping into a stone wall. The wheel rose over him, twice as tall as Flaxfield. Perry was nowhere. He stepped back and looked at exactly the spot where Perry had disappeared.

  “Come on,” shouted Perry. “Over here.”

  “I can’t find it,” said Cabbage.

  Perry reappeared, just to his left.

  “Here. Come on.”

  And he was gone again.

  Cabbage looked for the entrance to the Deep World. There was nothing.

  “Here.”

  A hand appeared. Cabbage took hold of it. It tugged him forward. He stepped between the huge mill wheel and the wall and all of a sudden there was a gap, obvious now that he could see it, hidden before by some odd geometry. He walked through and followed Perry down a short tunnel to a door.

  “This way,” said the roffle. |

  Bee worked the white-hot iron

  in her fingers like clay. She couldn’t leave it alone. The iron came in rods. She heated one end in the furnace until it was soft enough to cut off with a pair of shears. Before it cooled and grew hard she rolled it in her palms and shaped it, tugging and twisting, feeling the stretch and bend. It set quickly and she needed to heat each piece several times to soften it as she formed her shapes.

  Cartford acted as her assistant, stoking the furnace, working the bellows, providing fresh supplies of iron. He showed her which tools would help her to shape the soft iron. There were pincers to twist it into a spiral, little snips to trim excess, sharp probes for detail.

  Bee made a bird, squat, flat and smooth. It was just like the clay birds on sale in the markets, simple, with no feathers or eyes, those were painted on later.

  She made a fish, twisted in movement, arched sides, flat tail, sharp fins. Using the bowl of a spoon she imprinted scales.

  She tried for a pig but the legs wouldn’t work and it looked more like a badger in the end.

  With each piece she grew more skilful, more adept. She learned how much the metal would tolerate, what its limits were.

  “Come and eat,” said Dorwin. “Rest.”

  “Later.”

  Bee knew that Dorwin was frightened. She had grown up near the forge. Her earliest lessons had been to treat it with respect, never to approach it alone, to observe all safety precautions with hot iron and fire. Seeing Bee tossing glowing balls of molten iron in her hands filled her with terror. Bee knew this and was sorry for her, but she couldn’t stop. The iron filled her with joy. When she put it back into the furnace to reheat she felt alone, deserted. As soon as she had it back in her hands she breathed more steadily, relaxed, lost her anxiety. Best of all, the hot iron took away the pain of the wild magic. While she was working the met
al the hurt was kept at a distance, too far away to damage her.

  At last it was Cartford who made her stop. He waited till she plunged a frog into the water trough and he damped down the furnace.

  “Enough,” he said. “We all need to rest.”

  “Just one more,” said Bee.

  “No. Not now.”

  The pain flowed back into her.

  Flaxfield lined up her iron shapes on the bench. Some of them were still wet from the trough, glistening, grey-black. The bird was quite dry. Flaxfield weighed it in his hands. A casual passer-by, seeing it in the ground could be forgiven for mistaking it for a smooth stone. It was only when you picked it up and regarded it that the artistry was apparent, the bird was revealed. The frog and the fish were more finished, more detailed, they carried the mark of the hand more clearly.

  “Is this one special?” he asked.

  Bee didn’t answer.

  “They’re all special,” said Dorwin.

  Flaxfield cradled the bird.

  “They are,” he agreed. “But one has meaning. One will be right.”

  “None of these,” said Bee. “Not yet.”

  “What’s this one?” asked Dorwin.

  It was an early piece, perhaps the first. Like the bird it was unformed, suggestive rather than complete.

  “It’s a head,” said Bee.

  “I can’t see it,” said Dorwin.

  Bee took it.

  “It’s there, though,” she told her. “I’ll come back to it.”

  “What sort of head?”

  “Can we eat?” said Bee.

  The daylight was bleeding away when Cabbage and Perry emerged from the Deep World.

  “You won’t tell, will you?” said Perry.

  Cabbage breathed in the air Up Top. It seemed thin and tasteless to him now.

  “I wouldn’t know where to start,” he said. “I don’t know the words to use.”

  “Still,” said Perry. “You won’t try?”

  “No. No, of course not. I promised.”

  They stood between light and darkness. Night rode towards them.

  “How far are we from Boolat?” asked Cabbage.

  “Let’s see. It’s in that direction. I can tell from the sun.”

  “There’s a house over there. We could ask.”