The Fire Chronicle

by John Stephens

  “We’ll leave as soon as we’ve eaten and the plane is refueled. The fewer questions asked, the better.”

  At the table, Gabriel and the pilot had laid out a large map of Antarctica.

  “Now,” Gabriel said to Michael, “as long as the weather holds, Gustavo will fly us wherever we want. But you must tell us where to go.”

  “It’s not easy,” Michael said. “It’s all in pieces in my mind. But the next thing we’re looking for should be a pair of mountains. They’re really tall and thin. There’re other mountains around them, but they’re the biggest. And they’re right next to each other. Does that make sense?”

  As Gabriel spoke to the pilot in Spanish, Michael saw that Emma had already eaten both of her pancakes and was half finished with her eggs. He knew he’d better hurry or she’d start in on his breakfast. The pilot was saying something to Gabriel and pointing to a spot on the map. Michael could see a shaded area, which he knew indicated mountains.

  “He says,” Gabriel interpreted, “you mean the Horns. A pair of mountains at the head of the Victoria Range. It is perhaps two hours’ flying from here. What do we do when we get there?”

  “There should be a cave between the two mountains,” Michael said as he chewed through three pieces of bacon. “And there’re these rock formations in front of the cave that make it look like a mouth with huge teeth. The dead man called it the Dragon’s Mouth. He must’ve called it that in his own language, but somehow I know that’s the name.”

  Gabriel spoke to the pilot, and the pilot replied and shook his head.

  “He knows of no such cave, but that means nothing. What then?”

  “Then,” Michael said, fending off Emma’s fork, which was stabbing at one of his pancakes, “there’s, like, a gap in the memory. I told you it was all in pieces. But on the other side of the cave, we should find a volcano. That’s where the Chronicle is hidden.”

  Again, Gabriel spoke to the man. Again, the man said something and shook his head. Then the pilot rolled up his map and walked out.

  “He says,” Gabriel told the children, “that there is no volcano in that region, and that this would be a thing he knows since he has flown all over this area. But he will fly us to the base of the Horns, and we will see if we can find the cave. We must hope the weather holds.”

  “There is a volcano,” Michael said, surprised at his own stubbornness. “I know there is.”

  Gabriel nodded. “I believe you. But I am worried about this cave. These memories you inherited are more than two hundred years old. In that time, there could have been landslides. Earthquakes. The cave could be hidden or collapsed. Either way, we shall see. Now eat. The sun will soon be up.”

  “I’m getting seconds,” Emma said. “Since Mr. Sausage here won’t share.” And she picked up her syrup-smeared plate and carried it to the grill.

  Soon, they were in the air. The sun had finally risen over the horizon, and as they flew, Emma kept jumping from one side of the plane to the other, pressing her face against the windows. The night before, she’d been too tired and upset to appreciate her first-ever plane ride. Today, she was fed and rested. Though really, Michael knew, the change in her mood was due to Gabriel. After breakfast, in the tunnel-like corridor outside the café, Michael had heard him whisper, “I won’t leave you again,” and Emma had leapt up and thrown her arms around his neck. Since then, she had been more and more her old self, and now, with the sun shining in the distance and a beautiful, strange land passing below, she was clearly enjoying the moment.

  He was not quite so carefree.

  The certainty he’d felt in the café had given way to doubt. What if the pilot was right and there was no volcano? Or there was, but the Guardian was sending them into a trap? Michael only had a few of the dead man’s memories; he didn’t truly know the man’s mind. He could be leading Emma and Gabriel to their deaths! He wanted to mention this to Gabriel, to let the man assuage his fears, but he was terrified of appearing less than completely confident. He couldn’t come across as weak.

  “Michael!” Emma cried. “Come quick!”

  He joined her at the side of the plane.

  “Look!” She pointed to the ground far below. “It’s Derek!”

  Michael could just make out a small, dark shape moving across the white expanse.

  “Are you sure that’s him?”

  “Oh, that’s definitely Derek. I’d recognize him anywhere.” She pressed her forehead against the window, peering down. “I wonder where he’s going.”

  Michael felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Gabriel, and he motioned them to the cockpit. Michael and Emma crowded in behind the pilot, who grinned and pointed through the window.

  Emma let out a low gasp.

  Directly before them was a range of enormous mountains, white peaks rising from a white plain. The mountains were wide-waisted and packed in tight, one against the other, but two peaks stood out. They were the furthest forward, and the tallest and the thinnest; there was no mistaking them.

  The Horns, Michael thought.

  He experienced a moment of intense déjà vu. For though he was seeing them for the first time, he knew the mountains from the dead man’s memory. Michael found it unsettling, as if his sense of who he was—the things he knew, the things he remembered, the things that made him him—had begun to blur at the edges.

  “These are the mountains?” Gabriel asked.

  “Yes.” His voice was barely audible over the whine of the engine.

  The pilot then spoke to Gabriel, who nodded and turned to the children.

  “We will be there in twenty minutes. He will land a few miles from the base of the Horns. From there, we will go on foot. It is time to get ready.”

  Michael’s hand shook as he tried to zip up the front of his parka, and he turned so no one would notice. Soon, both children were muffled in parkas, hats, face masks, goggles, mittens; all that remained were the hard outer boots that Gabriel had bought at the outpost. The children were too stiffly dressed to bend over, so Gabriel had them lie on the floor while he stuffed their old boots into the new ones and snapped them shut. Then he checked to make sure all their gear was zipped and cinched properly.

  Michael could scarcely move, and he wondered how in the world they were supposed to hike for three miles.

  The plane bumped and rocked as they glided lower. Clinging to a strap on the wall, Michael watched as Gabriel went over the contents of a large pack, double-checking that he had food, water, an emergency shelter, ropes, an ice ax, and other necessary gear. He also, Michael saw, strapped a slender, three-foot-long, canvas-wrapped object to the pack. Michael knew it was Gabriel’s falchion, the machete-like weapon the children had seen him use while fighting in Cambridge Falls. It reminded Michael—as if he needed reminding—that they had no idea what lay ahead.

  The plane skipped across the ground, and Michael and Emma lost their grips on the wall straps and flew forward, crashing into the bulkhead, though their many layers kept them from getting hurt. Twice more the plane struck the ground and rebounded into the air, for while the snow was hard, it undulated like a frozen sea. Finally, the plane settled, wobbled unevenly for a hundred yards, and came to a halt.

  Michael looked at his sister.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m hot,” Emma grumbled. “I wish they’d open the door.”

  “I meant—”

  “I know what you meant. I’m just hot.”

  Gabriel checked their clothing one last time.

  “We have four more hours of daylight. If we find this cave, the Dragon’s Mouth, we will continue on. Failing that, we will either return to the plane or camp if we can find shelter. Gustavo will wait till midnight, then fly back to the outpost. He will come here every day for three days and wait for us during daylight hours. Are you ready?”

  Michael saw that Gabriel was looking at him, waiting for an answer, and it crossed his mind to say, “You know, now that I’ve had time to sit with it, I think
we should scuttle the whole thing.” But he knew that wasn’t what Gabriel was asking. Their way led onward, not back; and in asking if he was ready, Gabriel was merely letting Michael make the decision to begin.

  Michael reached up to straighten his glasses, realized he was wearing goggles, and straightened them instead.

  “Yes. Let’s go.”

  Gabriel opened the door, and it was as if all the cold air in the world swept into the plane. Gabriel carried his pack out first, then helped Emma to the ground. Michael saw the pilot, Gustavo, watching them with a worried expression.

  “Thank you for the ride,” Michael said, his voice muffled by the mask. “We’ll see you soon. I hope.”

  And he followed Emma out into the cold.

  The ground had a hard, icy crust, which allowed them to walk without snowshoes. The Horns loomed above them, outlined against a blue sky, their crooked peaks bending in toward each other. Gabriel led, with Emma in the middle and Michael bringing up the rear. Looking back, Michael could see the pale disk of the sun hanging above the rim of the earth. More than ever, he felt like a voyager on some distant planet.

  With the extra weight of the clothes and the boots, walking was hard work, and Michael’s legs soon grew heavy. His watch was buried under multiple layers, and the only landmarks he had to gauge their progress by were the mountains before them (which seemed to grow no closer) and the plane behind them (which, somewhat distressingly, became smaller and smaller).

  They had been walking, Michael guessed, for half an hour when Gabriel stopped and turned, staring past the children.

  “What is it?” Michael could see nothing except the plane, tiny and dark, in the distance.

  “I am not sure.”

  Gabriel knelt and took a rope and set of metal clips from his pack. He ran the rope between the clips, and fastened the clips to his, Michael’s, and Emma’s jackets, linking them together.

  “What’s this for?” Emma asked.

  “Safety.”

  They kept walking. The ground rose. Michael was cold now, even though it seemed impossible that a person could be cold while wearing so many layers. To distract himself, he thought about the library in the house in Cambridge Falls, and how much he wished he was sitting beside the fire with a cup of hot chocolate and The Dwarf Omnibus open in his lap, watching the snow fall outside. Maybe eating a grilled cheese.

  And he was thinking this, and thinking how much nicer it was to read about adventures than to actually have them, when he noticed how faint his shadow had become. All the time they’d been walking, his shadow had stretched before him, sharp and black against the white ground, but now it was barely visible. He turned and saw that the sun had disappeared. But that made no sense. There were still several hours of daylight left. Then he realized that he could no longer see the plane either. He began to have an uneasy feeling in his stomach.

  “Gabriel—”

  That was all he managed before the storm hit. It was like a wave, crashing over him, knocking him into Emma. Sprawled upon the snow, the children were blown helplessly forward. Michael scrambled for something to cling to, but his hands found no purchase. He saw the two of them being blown, like leaves before a hurricane, to the other side of Antarctica. Then—with a jerk—they stopped. Gabriel had dug his boots into the ice, planted his ax, and wrapped his arm around the rope tying them all together. Like a fisherman reeling in his catch, he drew the children toward him, angling his back to take the brunt of the wind. Michael and Emma huddled into the small eddy of his body. The howling filled their ears. Visibility was an arm’s length or less.

  A whiteout, Michael thought, having read the word somewhere. We’re in a whiteout.

  Emma yelled something, but her words were swept away.

  Gabriel leaned forward, shouting over the wind.

  “I will set up our shelter! It is useless trying to return to the plane! We would become lost! We must wait out the storm!”

  “But we’re so close!” Michael shouted. “If we get to the cave, we’ll be safe!”

  “We’ll never find it! Even the mountains have disappeared!”

  “I can find it!”

  The words surprised Michael. He hadn’t thought them, or planned on saying them, but he knew that what he’d said was true. All the time they’d been walking, some invisible force had been pulling him forward. He was only fully aware of it now that they’d stopped; but he knew that if he let himself be led, he would find the cave.

  “What’s going on?” Emma turned from Michael to Gabriel. “I can’t hear anything!”

  Gabriel was staring at him, his eyes hidden behind dark, frost-covered goggles.

  “Are you sure? It is a risk!”

  He means we could all die, Michael thought. Become hopelessly lost. Stumble into a crevasse. Setting up camp was the only sensible, practical thing to do.

  He looked at Emma, swiveling her head between him and Gabriel, saying, “Huh? What’d you say?! It’s so loud! Huh?!” It wasn’t fair. Michael would risk his own life willingly; why did he also have to risk his sister’s? Or Gabriel’s?

  “You must decide!” Gabriel shouted.

  Michael closed his eyes. The tug was still there, like an invisible hook attached to his chest. He knew it was the Chronicle.

  “Yes! I can find it!”

  “Find what?” Emma shouted. “What’re you two talking about?”

  Gabriel didn’t answer, but set about switching the rope so that Michael was leading.

  “We’ll follow you!”

  He handed Michael his ice ax, and Michael stood and started off through the storm. He had to brace himself at every step to keep from being blown over, and it was incredibly tiring, walking forward while pushing back with all his strength. With the gusting of the wind, there were brief moments when things would clear and Michael could see ten or even fifteen feet ahead. But most times, he waved his hand before his face and saw nothing.

  Please, he kept thinking, please don’t let me be wrong.

  But he could feel the Chronicle out there, calling to him, more and more strongly with each step. He found himself thinking of a field trip that he and his sisters and a bunch of other kids had taken to a farm a few years before. They’d been out in the middle of nowhere, and the driver of the van, a sulky teenager, had scoured the radio for any station that, as he put it, “didn’t play banjo music.” Finally, he’d found one. It had been scratchy and faint at first, but as they drove on, and presumably got nearer to the source, the signal had become more and more clear.

  Michael felt that way now, as if he’d finally gotten close enough to hear the music.

  “Michael!”

  Emma had shouted in his ear, and was grabbing his shoulder and pointing.

  Michael looked up—he’d been staring at the ground, focusing on not leading everyone into a chasm—and there, ten feet away, just visible through the whirling snow, past three pillars covered in snow and ice, pillars that tapered as they rose to give a very credible impression of fangs, was the dark, gaping maw of a cave.

  Moments later, they were inside the cave, stamping their feet, beating the caked-up snow and ice from their bodies, brushing the crystals off their fur-lined hoods, as the storm raged outside. Gabriel clapped Michael on the shoulder.

  “Well done.”

  Michael tried to shrug, but the gesture was lost inside the enormous parka.

  “Oh, you know, it was no big deal.”

  “Yeah,” Emma said, “you’re probably right.”

  “Well,” Michael said, irked, “it was kind of a big deal.”

  Then Emma laughed and clapped her mittens together (or tried to—she couldn’t quite make her hands meet while wearing the parka) and told Michael that of course it was a big deal and if King Robbie were there he’d probably give Michael a dozen more dwarf medals.

  “Ha-ha,” Michael said. Though he couldn’t help thinking a medal wouldn’t be uncalled for.

  “Are you still cold?” Emma asked.
“You’re shaking.”

  In fact, Michael was trembling, but it had nothing to do with the cold. In trusting his instinct, he should have been filled with confidence. But the opposite had happened. He didn’t understand how it had worked, how he’d succeeded. He felt out of control, and the feeling scared him. He’d gotten very lucky, and he mustn’t count on it happening again.

  “I just need to start moving.”

  “Then let us.” Gabriel had taken three flashlights from his pack, and he handed one to each of the children. “You’re the leader. Lead.”

  Michael looked at Emma, who shrugged and said, “Just don’t get us killed.”

  And with that, Michael turned, and they set off into the cave.

  The cave was different from all the other caves and tunnels the children had explored in one major respect: it was covered in ice. Floor, ceiling, and walls were glazed in a hard blue-white shell. Luckily, the new boots Gabriel had bought them had rough soles that gripped the slick surface. Still, they proceeded slowly, and their flashlights kept reflecting back at them, making the children’s hearts beat faster as they imagined beasts with glowing eyes peering at them from the darkness.

  Soon, the sound of the storm had faded, and the tunnel opened into a vast cavern, and they walked along a narrow track that hugged the wall. They shone their lights into the abyss, illuminating a lake of black ice, and Michael peered down and saw things with claws and teeth and wings held in a frozen sleep. The tunnel resumed on the far side of the lake, and the ice on the walls began to give way to bare rock till there were only patches of ice here and there, and then finally none at all. Michael found himself pulling down his mask, pushing back his hood, unzipping his jacket.

  Then he snapped off his flashlight.