Icefire

by Chris D'Lacey

  David glanced at the upstairs rooms. In the window of Liz’s pottery studio, a dozen or so dragons were peering out. “Why do they like the snow?” he asked again. “You must have some idea?”

  Lucy shook her head. “Will you help me now?”

  David rested his shovel and joined her on the lawn. “You have to pack it tight, like this,” he said, compressing the snow with several hard pats, “then roll it around and let the loose snow stick.” And off he went, up and down the lawn, till the ball was so big it needed both of them to push it. Lucy made a head and plonked it on. She was about to set off to find twigs for the arms, and stones for the eyes and nose and mouth, when the sky grew dark and it started to rain.

  “Oh dear, snowman abandoned,” said David.

  Lucy didn’t argue. She was tired and complaining that her feet were wet. David sent her back to the house while he made a detour back to the shed, in order to put the shovel away.

  As he was dropping the latch on the shed, he thought he heard something moving on the lawn. Just the faintest swish of snow, but enough to make him turn his head. The lawn was covered with the interlocking tracks of human footprints. But toward the top and center were some larger marks, certainly not made by human feet. Picking up a rock, he walked nervously toward them, his heart beginning to beat a little faster. He was a meter or two from the first indent when he realized they were nothing more than a small arc of stepping-stones peeping through the snow. He laughed at his stupidity and tossed the rock aside. For one ridiculous second he thought he’d seen the tracks of … what? Prints like that could be produced only by an animal of some considerable size, and as far as David knew, no one had ever yet reported polar bears roaming the yards of Scrubbley….

  5

  THE MYSTERY OF THE TEAR

  The rain fell and continued to fall. By late afternoon, when David drifted into the kitchen to begin the preparation of his promised lasagna, the rooftops and trees had been rinsed of snow and the garden was beginning to look green once more. In the center of the lawn, the snowman had sagged like an old used pillow, his head almost merging into his body. Bonnington was out there, sitting in front of it, looking like a damp, discarded rag. David frowned and tapped the window. Bonnington didn’t budge. Nuts, thought David. That cat is bonkers. He tweaked the blinds shut and began to fix dinner.

  Within half an hour he had the lasagna in the oven and broccoli and carrots ready to heat. Liz and Lucy came in about forty minutes later, drawn by the aroma of garlic bread.

  David was pleased. His “occupations” had taken his mind off Sophie, and Liz was in a better mood now as well — though she did complain once when she tried to wash her hands and found the sink clogged with carrot peel.

  “Old habit, sorry,” David said. “We always peel into the sink at home.” He dipped in his hand and scooped out the blockage.

  Lucy set the places, dinner was served, and soon everyone was sitting down to eat. Not surprisingly, Lucy ate all her lasagna and didn’t die on the kitchen floor as she’d expected. But when seconds were offered she politely declined and suggested that Bonnington might finish off the dish.

  “Where is Bonnington, by the way?” said Liz, glancing down at the half-full cat bowl.

  “In the garden, last I saw,” David said.

  Liz leaned back and opened the blinds. “Oh, look at him, silly animal. What’s he doing in the middle of the lawn? He must be frozen from his whiskers to his tail.”

  “He’s still there?” David craned to see. “He’s been in that position for over an hour.”

  “Perhaps he likes our snowman,” said Lucy.

  “Your snowman’s taken a bit of a battering,” Liz muttered, standing up and knocking the windowpane. “He looks more like a bear than a snowman now. Bonny, come in!”

  “Bear?” said David, thinking back to the prints that weren’t. “How do you work that out?”

  “They have a sort of hump in their backs, don’t they? Maybe you need a potter’s eye to see it. Speaking of bears, I meant to ask: How did you get on with your Arctic visitor? Lucy, go and fetch Bonny in, will you? Hand me your plate while you’re at it.”

  Lucy rose from her seat and gathered up her plate and David’s, too. As she handed them over, David answered Liz’s question: “Fine. You’d like Dr. Bergstrom, I think. He’s very … charismatic. He gave me a sort of talisman to hold and said a narwhal would show me my path of true destiny.”

  “What’s a narwhal?” asked Lucy.

  “A whale with a horn like a unicorn.”

  “Is it magic?”

  “More important, did it show you your destiny?” asked Liz.

  “I don’t know, but I saw Gadzooks write something on his pad. I don’t suppose you know what ‘Lorel’ means?”

  Hardly had the words had time to leave his lips before they were met with a loud crash of silverware. Lucy squealed and brought her fists to her mouth. All the knives and forks had clattered to the floor, spinning into every corner of the kitchen. They might have been followed by the dishes as well had David not jumped up and steadied Liz’s hand. “Whoa! Are you all right? What’s the matter?” The normal healthy pink of Liz’s cheeks had drained to a shade on the white side of gray. Her eyes were staring into nowhere. David guided her onto a chair.

  “Must have stood up too fast,” she mumbled. She took Lucy’s hand. “I’m all right now. Come on, help me pick up these things.”

  “No way,” said David. “You stay put.”

  “I’ll pick everything up,” said Lucy.

  “And I’ll wash the dishes,” David offered.

  “Goodness, now I do feel faint,” said Liz. She rubbed David’s arm. “Leave it, we haven’t had our dessert yet. Apple pie. In the fridge. I’m all right. Really.”

  David found the pie and brought it to the table. As he served it into dishes, he glanced at Liz again. She looked anything but “all right.” She seemed shocked and flustered and her hands were shaking. Did the word Lorel mean something to her?

  It was Lucy who kept the intrigue going. “Is Lorel the name of someone?” she asked, plopping the silverware into the sink.

  “I thought it might be the name of a dragon,” muttered David.

  Lucy soon quashed that. “Dragon names begin with a guh, not a luh. That’s right, isn’t it, Mom?”

  “Yes,” said Liz, offering no explanation. She picked up a carton of cream and poured some over her portion of pie.

  “Dr. Bergstrom talked about dragons,” said David, casually lobbing the remark at Lucy but all the while keeping an eye on Liz. “He assigned me an essay about them. I have to write two thousand words on whether dragons existed or not.”

  “That’s easy,” mocked Lucy. “Course they existed.”

  “Yes, it’s all very well you telling me that, but in an essay I have to have some sort of proof. It would help if I knew where dragons lived.”

  “They liked mountains and snowy places,” said Lucy. “Where they could cool off when they’d been flying.”

  “OK, then, answer me this: Why has no one ever found evidence of them? There isn’t a single museum in the world that has a dragon’s skull or a scale on show. If dragons had truly existed, someone, somewhere, would have dug up a bone.”

  Suddenly, out of the blue, Liz spoke: “Why has Dr. Bergstrom assigned you this essay?”

  David lifted his shoulders. “For the challenge, I suppose. If I do well with it, I might win a chance to visit the Arctic.” He told them about the field trip to Chamberlain.

  “Will you see polar bears?” Lucy asked brightly.

  “Tons of them — if I manage to get there. Come on, you’re the experts, give me a clue: Why has no one ever found the remains of a dragon?”

  “Because they don’t understand what they’re looking for,” said Liz. A sudden hush fell over the kitchen. Not a single hrrr echoed around the walls. Liz rose to her feet and turned toward the sink. “Dragons are spiritual creatures, David, far removed from the
image most people have of them. They were born from the earth, they lived for the earth, and when they died they returned to the earth. Their bones and scales became one with it.”

  “What, they just dissolved, you mean?”

  “No, they changed. As all things must. Legend has it they formed a layer of soil — a layer we know today as clay.”

  David felt his heart hit a sudden bump. He looked at the listening dragon on the fridge and thought about Gruffen, G’reth, Gadzooks — all of them lovingly molded from clay. “So your dragons are real — in a funny sort of way?”

  Liz and Lucy exchanged a glance. “All things have their auma, David. You simply have to learn to sense it.”

  “Auma? What’s that?”

  “An ancient word for fire.”

  “Not crackly burny fire,” said Lucy, keeping her voice to a reverential whisper.

  “The fire that comes from within,” said Liz.

  David nodded as he thought this through. “What about a dragon’s fire, then? That comes from within. That’s crackly, isn’t it?”

  “It’s specially crackly,” Lucy said.

  David laughed and threw up a hand. “Now you’re making it sound like a breakfast cereal. Come on, stop talking in riddles. Dragons are spiritual, fair enough. But they’re obviously flesh and blood as well. If their bodies eventually turn to clay, what happens to their fire, crackly or otherwise?”

  “Can I tell him?” Lucy turned to her mom.

  “Yes. Then go and bring Bonnington in.”

  David glanced through the window again. The Pennykettles’ cat was still by the snowman. What was the matter with him?

  “When dragons die, they cry their fire tear,” said Lucy, “and each tear trickles into the ground, where the real auma is.”

  David thought a moment before replying. “At the earth’s core, you mean?”

  Lucy gave a vigorous nod. “Dragon fire helps the world to breathe.”

  “Don’t be silly; the earth doesn’t breathe.”

  “It does,” she insisted. “Doesn’t it, Mom?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Liz said quietly. “Go and fetch Bonnington now.”

  Lucy pushed back her chair.

  “What about Gawain, then?” David said quickly.

  “His fire tear didn’t go into the ground. When Guinevere caught it, what did she do with it?”

  Lucy looked at her mom, who said, “Go on. I asked you to go.”

  “But —?”

  “Now, please.”

  With a sigh Lucy exited the kitchen.

  David, now wary that he’d overstepped the mark, chose his next words carefully. “I’m sorry, I know this means a lot to you both. I’m not belittling the story, honestly. It’s just … the legend of Gawain is a great angle for my essay, and I really want to win that prize. I’d appreciate any help you can give me.”

  Liz rested her hands in the washing-up suds. It was several seconds before she replied. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, David, but neither myself nor Lucy can answer your question. No one knows what became of the fire of Gawain. The legend is that Guinevere caught the tear — and hid it.”

  “What?” David sat up slowly, feeling a knot of tension in his stomach. “I thought she absorbed it into herself and became a sort of … human dragon?”

  Liz laughed and looked back at him over her shoulder. “None of us could possibly endure such a force.”

  “But if she hid it? Then … where is it now?”

  “David, if I knew the answer to that I’d —”

  Before she could finish, Lucy hurried in, fighting to keep a hold of Bonnington. “Mom, he’s hissing and clawing and — ow!”

  Bonnington wriggled out of her arms, only to be scooped off the floor by David. “Hey, hey, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Do you think he’s been bitten?” asked Liz.

  David checked him over. “Doesn’t look like it. But something’s spooked him, that’s for sure. Look at his eyes.” They were wild and staring, as large as pennies. David loosened his grip and the cat jumped down and ran straight to the door. Lucy, wary of being scratched, backed up, covering Bonnington’s cat flap. They watched him turn a frustrated circle before he bounced onto a chair and then onto the drainboard.

  “Now what’s he doing?” Liz said, astonished. “Perhaps he’s seen another cat,” said Lucy. David shook his head. “He’s looking at the snowman.”

  “Snow bear,” said Lucy. “I can tell the shape now. Do you think he’s scared of it?”

  “I’m not sure,” said David, and he glanced at Liz.

  She was staring at the snow bear and stroking Bonnington to calm him down. And then she said something quite unexpected. “I’d like to meet your Dr. Bergstrom, David. He does sound very charismatic. I feel as though I know him, in a strange sort of way. Thank you for cooking dinner tonight. Lucy, be an angel and do the drying up. I’m going to the den to finish G’reth.” And she pulled the blinds down again and left the kitchen, shutting the snow bear out of sight.

  6

  ONLINE WITH ZANNA

  With nothing better to do after dinner (no soccer on TV; no girlfriend to visit) David retreated to the quiet of his room and decided to make some notes for his essay. His mind was a jumble of polar bears and dragons and he needed the stark simplicity of a computer to separate those elements and keep things focused. But as he waited for his computer to boot, he couldn’t resist another glance into the garden. The ice bear — or snow bear, as Lucy liked to call it — stood regally in the center of the lawn, being steadily sculpted by the drizzling rain and looking more and more like its real-life counterpart. Why was Bonnington so mesmerized by it? Could the cat see something that human eyes couldn’t? And if he could, was he scared or awed by its presence? David closed his eyes and put the ice bear into darkness. But even as that visual shutter came down, a virtual world opened and there, at its bleak and frozen center, was a genuine polar bear. David jerked in surprise but held tight to the image. The bear was sitting in a field of broken ice, its fur dragged leeward by a howling blizzard, spicules of snow whipping up around its paws. David reached out to it with his mind. “Who are you?” he asked, and felt his heart tremble as the great bear squinted through the ice wind at him. It trod its spectacular columnlike paws and opened its black-lipped mouth to speak …

  You have e-mail, it said.

  Or rather, that was what the computer said. With a start, David opened his eyes. The polar bear disappeared back into the ether. Annoyed, David swiveled to face the monitor. He pointed the cursor at his e-mail inbox and immediately let out a mild groan. “Oh no, what do you want?”

  The sender of the message was:

  zanyzanna@worldmail.com

  David clicked his tongue before thinking of doing the same with his mouse. Suzanna — Zanna — Martindale was a girl in his department. She was a Goth. She had a face as white as a hard-boiled egg and she dressed from head to toe in black; black tiered skirts full of tassels and fringes that danced across the laces of her black boots; black T-shirts, usually sporting some mystic picture of wolves or Indians or a heavy metal band; jet black hair (very long and very straight and usually festooned with beads or braids); black-rimmed eyes (people sometimes called her Zan Zan, like a panda); black nails (fingers and toes both painted); and, what really freaked David the most, her black pneumatic lips. He had sometimes thought that kissing Zanna must be like smooching with a pair of black sausages. Not that he wanted to smooch with Zanna. She was one scary licorice stick. She was friendly enough, in a jangly sort of way (she wore more bangles than a curtain rod), but not at all David’s type. It made him shudder when she smiled at him, which she did, often, when they passed on the campus. People joked that Zanna had only come to Scrubbley because she’d missed the train to Hogwarts. What could she possibly want with David?

  He opened her message. It was just two lines.

  Heard you were lonesome. Fancy a drink?

  A drink? With the
panda? David’s blood ran cold. He hit “reply” and wrote something tactful. Working on an essay. Another time perhaps.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw a dragon’s face. It was Grace, Sophie’s listening dragon. He’d never really looked at her closely before, but now that he did he thought he could detect a glint of disapproval in her oval green eyes. He put his nose up close to her snout. “Stop frowning. I turned her down. OK?”

  The computer beeped again. Bergstrom’s essay? What’d ya get?

  David sighed and paddled his feet. An online conversation with the mad witch of Scrubbley was not supposed to be part of his evening’s agenda, but there was one thing he was curious about … Dragons, he tapped, the existence of. Someone tipped him off that I had one at home. I wonder who THAT could have been? Zanna was in his tutorial group. She’d always taken a keen interest when he’d mentioned Gadzooks. It had to be her.

  Yet to his surprise she wrote, Not guilty. Hand on my cold black heart.

  “Yeah, right,” muttered David, not sure he believed her. But it amused him, the way she’d made fun of herself. Who, then? he typed.

  Don’t remember anyone saying it, she wrote. Maybe when I went to the bathroom, perhaps?

  Maybe, thought David, as a raindrop or two began to tickle the windows. He turned his head and watched a bullet of water ping the glass. If one of the students hadn’t let on about the dragons, how could Bergstrom have made the connection? The computer beeped again.

  I got the Loch Ness monster, by the way — just in case you were wondering. It’s a sort of geo-biological thing as I’ve got a double major. I have to find out if a lake the size of Loch Ness could produce enough flora and fauna to support a “monster” of Nessie’s size. Been grabbing pix off the Net all day. Great essay. He’s cool, isn’t he, Bergstrom?

  He’s weird, replied David. Did you shake his talisman?

  Pardon?!

  David sighed loudly and hammered a response. He gave me an Inuit carving to hold and said it would show me my true destiny. He thought I might need some luck for his competition.