Icefire

by Chris D'Lacey

  David turned his head. A pepper-gray squirrel was balancing neatly on the flat bar between two railing hoops. “Oh, wow. It’s Snigger — I think.”

  Chuk! went the squirrel, flagging its tail. It lifted one paw and appeared to smile.

  “Cute,” said Zanna. “Hello, Snigger.” She wiggled her fingers and smiled right back. “He’s probably come to ask you for ten percent of whatever you earn when you publish his story. Did you call that editor yet?”

  “She was in a meeting; I left a message.”

  Zanna raised herself to a sitting position, looked at Snigger, and shook out her hair. “I’ll see that he pays you — in nuts,” she told him.

  Snigger, who was either terribly excited at the prospect of nuts or somewhat put off by his Gothic agent, jerked back slightly, then scrabbled down the fence. Within seconds he had hopped away through the trees.

  “Oh, nice job,” David said.

  “He’ll get used to me,” Zanna said, standing. “Everyone does in time, even you.” She spun around. “How’s my butt? Is it wet?”

  David glanced a bit sheepishly at it. Liz was certainly right about one thing: Zanna did have a very good figure. “No, not really.”

  “Good. Come on.” She pulled him to his feet. In the background, the library clock (which was always wrong) bonged three times. “Eleven,” said Zanna. “Lecture’s over. Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “A walk — to Rutherford House.”

  “What for?” David asked, as she looped her arm through his. Rutherford House was an academic residence.

  “The only person who can help us happens to be staying there.”

  “Bergstrom?”

  “Yep. He’s the key to all this. He’s interested in dragons and he works in the icy land of Lorel. I vote we go and ask him what he knows about the tear, and what happened on that glacier in 1913.”

  17

  A MEETING WITH DR. BERGSTROM

  Rutherford House was a large, gray-walled Victorian building. It was set on the grounds of Scrubbley College, close to the railway line along the border of Scrubbley Common. It was hard to believe that a hundred years ago it had served as the local lunatic asylum, but as he crunched up the shale path with Zanna at his side, David couldn’t help but think that what they were about to do could qualify as madness and get them both committed.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked as they marched through a small ivy-covered portico and Zanna ran her eye down the ladder of address tags beside the main entrance.

  “Room four. Let’s hope he’s in.”

  David tried again. “There are underground cells here where they used to lock mad people up, you know. We might never get out alive.”

  “Then we’ll end our days together, won’t we?” She kissed a fingertip and plunked it on his nose. “Come on.”

  Through a maze of corridors, they found the room — an unimposing blue door with a small brass number. Zanna raised her fist to knock, then quickly lowered it again. “Who’s doing the talking?”

  David threw her an incredulous look. “Oh, good time to be asking that!”

  “It’s you; you’re making me nervous. We’ll both talk — but you start, OK?”

  “Zanna?”

  “That’s fair. How’s my hair?”

  “Hair? What’s your hair got to do with —?”

  Suddenly the door curled open. Both students jumped to attention. Dr. Bergstrom, looking as composed as ever, scanned them with his air of unruffled poise. “Miss Martindale and Mr. Rain … and dragon.”

  David winced and swung Gadzooks out of sight. This was a bad, bad, bad idea.

  “Am I expecting you?”

  “Not exactly,” gulped Zanna.

  “We can go if you’re busy,” David added.

  “You look as if you’ve had a long walk,” said Bergstrom. He smiled and waved them in. “Take a seat. The sofa’s very comfortable. Swedish design. Coffee, anyone?”

  Both students shook their heads. They settled together on the edge of the sofa, a stylish two-seater with high curved wings and dark blue corduroy covers and cushions. Bergstrom, arms folded, perched against a writing desk strewn with academic journals and papers. He was dressed much like the last time David had met him, in a pair of gray slacks and a loose cotton shirt. He was wearing no shoes.

  “Is this visit to do with your essays?” he asked.

  “Done mine,” said Zanna, sitting up brightly with her hands in her lap.

  David made a clucking sound and looked away.

  “He’s still researching his,” she said.

  Bergstrom smiled again. “And is this a part of your research effort, David?” He stretched out a hand toward Gadzooks. “Please, may I?”

  David glanced at Zanna. She gave a hesitant nod.

  “That’s David’s writing dragon,” she said as David put him into Bergstrom’s hands. “It helps him do stories. It writes things — on its pad. In his imagination, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Bergstrom, running a hand down the dragon’s spine the way David had often seen Lucy do.

  There was a pause, then David felt a nudge on his ankle. “We want to know about Lorel,” he said.

  Bergstrom touched Gadzooks on the snout and set him down beneath the shade of a table lamp. “The only Lorel I know of is a polar bear, David. An ancient mythical creature reputedly with vast knowledge of the Arctic. He’s well documented. You can find his name in any number of books.”

  “He got it when he held your talisman,” said Zanna.

  Bergstrom’s reply was measured but blunt. “As I recall, he didn’t get anything at all.”

  “I keep dreaming about him,” David said.

  Bergstrom fixed him with a steady blue gaze. “I dream about bears all the time, David. What is it you’re trying to say?”

  “Lorel’s here,” whispered Zanna. “In David’s garden.”

  A puff of laughter escaped the Norwegian’s lips. “Then he’s a very long way from home. Forgive me, this may seem rather rude, but I don’t understand what you want from me.”

  “The truth,” said Zanna, gathering courage. “About what happened on the Hella glacier.”

  Once again, Bergstrom paused before replying. “The Hella glacier is a dangerous place. I would advise you both to steer well clear of it.”

  This David took to be a warning shot, a chance for him and Zanna to back off with dignity. But he also suspected that Bergstrom was testing them, pushing them to see how much they knew and how far they were truly prepared to reach. So he took a chance and in a hurried voice said, “I saw your picture — in a reference book. On an expedition, in 1913.”

  “A fatal expedition,” Zanna added quietly.

  There the conversation teetered for a moment. The pause grew so intense that David almost volunteered to leave the room. It was cold in here. Colder than the gardens. His skin began to prickle as Bergstrom moved toward them. “Please. Both of you. Touch my hands. Satisfy yourselves that I am not a ghost. Perhaps you might be interested to know that several generations of my family have worked in the Arctic, in some capacity or other.”

  “It was you,” said David, surprised at the brashness and speed of his response. “I know it was. I know about the watch. How it saved your life. You put it down on the ice to distract the bear.”

  “Was it Lorel?” pressed Zanna. “Was it Lorel that you met?”

  “How did you get the watch back?” asked David. Bergstrom looked at them both very carefully. “The watch was in the keeping of an Inuit shaman, who brought it to me in exchange for … the bones of a polar-bear cub.”

  Zanna immediately caught her breath. “Shamans have magical powers,” she said. “They can —”

  “What?” said David. “What can they do?”

  “Become bears,” she said in a voice so frighteningly low that it seemed to soak into David’s skin and pull every hair down into its root. He slowly lifted his gaze. Bergstrom was starin
g unwaveringly at him with that peculiar, narrow-eyed, imperious squint. Now David knew where he’d seen the look before: in the face of every polar bear he’d ever stared at — in particular, the print on Henry Bacon’s study wall.

  “You’re Lorel?” he whispered.

  Bergstrom parted his lips. “My name is Anders Bergstrom,” he said. “I’m a polar research scientist based in the town of Chamberlain, Canada. You have a vivid imagination, David. Maybe we should put it to a further test. The Inuit say that if Lorel has visited your inua, your soul, he will have told you something of lasting value to aid you on your journey through this life — if, and only if, you are worthy of receiving it.”

  “Tell him,” said Zanna. “Tell him what you heard in Henry’s study.”

  With a catch in his throat, David said quietly, “There was a time when the ice was ruled by nine bears.”

  Bergstrom pushed himself away from the desk. He took a key from the pocket of his slacks and unlocked one of the three desk drawers. “They had names, David, these ruling bears. Lorel was one of them. Give me one more. Then we’ll talk.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know any more.”

  “Try,” hissed Zanna. “Use Gadzooks.”

  “Gadzooks cannot help him with this,” said Bergstrom. He opened the drawer and took out the hand-carved narwhal talisman. “Take the charm — right hand this time. Think about Lorel. You may experience some odd sensations.”

  David looked at the section of tusk. Perhaps it was a trick of the afternoon light, but he thought he could see the etchings moving. “Who are you? Really?”

  “Your destiny,” said Bergstrom. “Now, take the charm. Tell me what you see.”

  18

  THE TOOTH OF RAGNAR

  It was like entering a waking dream. As David closed his right hand around the tusk, an irislike darkness quickly enveloped him and he was sucked back into a distant singularity, as though he had traveled through eons of time. He found himself in an Arctic wasteland, breathless, down on his hands and knees, fists sunk hard into a seam of snow just deep enough to chill his aching wrists. Somewhere, he sensed the ebb and flow of water, but superficially all he could see was ice, stretching out in every direction. It was cold. Very cold. The pores of his face were crusted and dry. His eyebrows, heavily frilled with rime, felt like small weights crushing the sockets. Icicles were forming in his tear ducts.

  As he lifted his head and rocked back on his haunches, the wind threw a voile of white into the air. Out of it stepped a figure, a girl. Though his lips were almost rigid with cold, David managed to utter her name. “Lucy?”

  She came forward, holding G’reth. She was humming in dragonsong, but did not speak. She set the wishing dragon on the ice, then stood back to watch him play. G’reth, bent forward, breathed on the surface to soften it a little, then scooped a layer of slush into his paws. He fashioned it into a lopsided ball, patting and smoothing until it was roughly the shape of an egg. But this was not an egg. As G’reth stood back and opened his paws (as though to utter a magic word: hrrr!), the thin end of the snow developed a snout. Then spikes appeared on the flanks and rear. And before David knew it, he was staring at a hedgehog. A white hedgehog with pink, blind eyes. He leaned forward for a closer look. Tiny as the eyes of the hedgehog were, he could see in them an image of a black-lipped bear. It was old and there were fighting scars on its snout. Half of one ear had been clawed or bitten off. Bloodstains marked its neck and paws.

  Suddenly the ice bear opened its jaws. It put back its head and roared in pain. Not a pain that had come from a blow to its body, but a pain that ran deep, from a blow to its heart. It roared so hard that a tooth worked loose from its upper palate and fell, spiraling, onto the ice. As it hit, David found himself removed into the scene, watching the events from a weak ridge of ice that shook with every swipe of the bear’s giant paws. Then, in a desperate fit of rage, the bear brought its left paw crashing down, pounding the lost tooth deep beneath the surface. The ice split with a plangent creak, and out of its mourning rose a rock. The bear struck again and the ocean gushed. Ice lifted. More rock burst through its crust. The quake sent David tumbling off the ridge. The world shook. The Arctic Ocean roiled. The cold air chimed with ice-wrecked crystals. Only when the dots had ceased to fall did David look back to see what damage had been wrought. A whole island had grown up out of nowhere. The same island he had dreamed about a few nights earlier.

  And then a voice like a wind from another world spoke: This is the tooth of Ragnar, it said.

  David fell backward against the ridge. Now, for an instant, he saw another bear. It was younger than the first and its fur was spotless. It was treading its front paws like a cat.

  “Lorel?” he muttered.

  The bear shimmered in a moment of sunlit haze, then disappeared in a show of white fire.

  At this point, David woke with a jerk. He was on the floor in Bergstrom’s room.

  “David!” cried Zanna. She dropped to her knees and draped her arms around him.

  “W-what happened?” he gasped.

  Bergstrom stooped to retrieve the tusk. “You released the talisman; it broke your encounter.”

  “You were writhing and shouting,” Zanna said. “What did you do to him?” she snapped at Bergstrom.

  “I’m all right,” said David, getting to his knees. “I saw things. A bear. A really big male. I think his name was Ragnar.”

  “Yes,” said Bergstrom. “A fighting bear, one of the original nine.”

  “Sit up,” said Zanna, helping David to the sofa.

  Bergstrom handed him a glass of water. “Drink, slowly. What else did you see?”

  David rubbed his fingers across his forehead. “Spikey. I saw it through Spikey’s eyes.”

  Bergstrom looked inquisitively at Zanna.

  “A hedgehog,” she explained. “An albino one. It’s in David’s garden. Lucy, the daughter of David’s landlady, has been trying to protect it.”

  Bergstrom gave a thoughtful nod. He looked at Gadzooks, still sitting impassively on the table, and closed his fist tightly around the talisman.

  “Ragnar was bloodstained. He’d been in a fight.” David was finding his breath again now. “He punched a hole in the ice and an island grew out of it. A whole island. Is it real or what?”

  Bergstrom rolled the talisman quickly through his fingers and holstered it smoothly in his pocket. “It lies to the west of the Alaskan mainland. There are many legends attached to this rock. The Inuit call it a place of souls. They fear it, yet revere it in the same breath. It is thought by some to be a sacred grave, the resting place of the last true dragon to inhabit this earth.”

  David looked up suddenly. A droplet of water spilled from his glass. “Gawain? He died there? Have you been? Has anyone checked it out?”

  Bergstrom smiled and clapped a hand to his arm. “That would make your essay very simple, would it not — an archaeological dig on the snowcapped ridges? Yes, I have been to the Tooth of Ragnar. Female polar bears den there occasionally. To the human eye, there is nothing to suggest that a dragon is set in stone on its peak.”

  “Tell us about the fire tear,” said Zanna.

  Bergstrom lifted a golden eyebrow.

  “We know, Dr. Bergstrom. Gawain shed a fire tear when he died. It’s hidden in the Arctic. You know where, don’t you? Is it on the island? Deep within the core?”

  Bergstrom raised a silencing hand. He paced across the room and rattled two ice cubes into another long-stemmed glass. “Let’s suppose that I did know the whereabouts of the tear. What would you do with this precious information — assuming I was willing to give it out?”

  Zanna sat up straight, regally indignant in her body of black. “Dragons are the servants of Gaia!” she declared. “I would … protect the fire for the good of the earth!”

  David groaned quietly under his breath.

  “Very commendable,” Bergstrom said, pouring water from a tall decanter. “But what makes you think you
could guard such a treasure better than a mighty Nanukapik?”

  “What is a Nanukapik?” David asked. He remembered Aunty Gwyneth using this word and had been trying to work out what it meant ever since.

  “It means ‘greatest bear,’ ” Bergstrom translated. “A leader. The highest. A bear to whom Ragnar, for all his strength, would lower his head and for whom he would gladly die.” He turned again to Zanna. “The location of the dragon’s fire has been guarded by ice bears for longer than you could possibly imagine. There may come a time when one of you, or possibly both of you, will know the secret and defend it wisely, but I cannot run the risk of speaking out when there are forces around you that would seize that knowledge and use it in a way that might damage the very fabric of the planet you love.”

  “Forces?” asked David, suddenly growing anxious. He looked at Gadzooks, still under the lamp.

  The scientist leveled his gaze. “There is a woman staying with you who is not what she seems.”

  “Aunty Gwyneth? How do you know about her?”

  “Trust me, David. I know about her. Aunty Gwyneth and I are old acquaintances. She has been seeking the tear of Gawain ever since the dragon closed his eye and shed it. She will stop at nothing to have it. She is a sibyl, sometimes called a crone or a seer. She hails from a time that man has forgotten. She goes by the name … Gwilanna.”

  19

  AN OPEN-AND-SHUT CASE

  At the exact same moment that Anders Bergstrom was revealing the true identity of the mysterious visitor to Wayward Crescent, Aunty Gwyneth was in David’s room with Lucy. They were packing a bag for the absent tenant and Lucy was finding it quite a strain.

  “Aunty Gwyneth, do I have to do this?” she was saying as she rummaged around in David’s socks, pinching her nose with a finger and thumb and trying to find a pair that didn’t have a hole.

  “Be quiet,” said her aunt, “my ears are burning.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Ssssh! I hear whispers, child.” She swung around like a weathervane until she was facing the open window. “Someone — or some thing — spoke my name.”