The Fire Eternal

by Chris D'Lacey

  She chased him to the floor and headed for the bathroom.

  But no sooner had she gone than Bonnington jumped onto the table again. He briefly exchanged a look with Gadzooks, but the dragon made no attempt to criticize the move, and Bonnington settled to his pose again, this time angling toward the mirror, looking not at himself, but at the moonlit reflection of the sleeping Alexa….

  The next morning, during the hubbub of breakfast, Zanna showed Alexa’s drawing to Liz.

  “Mmm,” she mumbled, through a mouthful of toast. “Gosh, she is growing up. That’s amazing. How did it go last night, by the way?”

  Looking fragile in her Japanese nightgown, with her hair tied back and pale of makeup, Zanna said, “Fine.”

  Liz raised an inviting eyebrow.

  “Fine,” repeated Zanna, slapping Liz’s arm. “Stop it, you’re making me blush. He read some poetry and he was charming. Period.”

  “Mom, look harder at the drawing,” said Lucy.

  I’ll tell you later, Zanna mouthed.

  Liz smiled and cast a glance at the dragon again. “Yes. It’s very good. Those eyes are fantastic.”

  “They’re blue,” said Lucy, scooping up cereal.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Liz murmured in reply. “She’s always liked to blob colors around, but I’ve never seen her add so much detail before. That’s really impressive. Look at how she’s used this stunning shade of green for the outlines of his body. So lifelike.”

  “But the eyes are blue,” Lucy repeated.

  “All right, we know where you’re going,” Zanna tutted, taking a yogurt out of the fridge. She ripped off the lid as if she’d like to do the same to Lucy’s head. “Blue’s her favorite color. We’re not reading anything into it, OK? Anyway, she’s probably just modeled it on Groyne.”

  On the countertop, Gretel was picking the nuts and seeds out of a piece of whole grain bread. At the mention of Groyne, she coughed a huge smoke bubble and spilled her entire harvest onto the head of a very bemused Bonnington.

  Zanna frowned at her but didn’t pursue it. “What gets me is, she hasn’t had that much exposure to dragon imagery, yet here she is producing realistic-looking eyes. I mean, what’s made her draw that triangular-shaped socket?”

  “It’s called a scalene,” said Lucy, and when Zanna and Liz both stared at her she added, “a triangle with no equal sides. We did it at school once. What’s your problem?”

  Liz glanced at the drawing again. The eye was wedge-shaped, slanted forward with a tented lid. From the back of it, Alexa had drawn three jagged extensions which helped to exaggerate the intensity of the stare. “That is remarkable,” Liz confessed. “Is it looking at something, do you think? What’s this shape she’s tried to draw inside it?”

  “I don’t know. I wondered about that,” said Zanna.

  “I think it’s a fire star,” Lucy said.

  Which made Zanna catch her breath and sigh again.

  “Well, what do you think it is, then?” Lucy said huffily.

  “Why don’t you just ask her?” said Arthur, coming in. He touched Lucy’s shoulder, which mollified her feisty attitude a little. “I heard your description. Very accurate. Very apt. Grockle had characteristic scalene eyes.”

  Zanna waved a plastic spoon, midair. The listening dragon on top of the fridge leaned back, wary of flying spots of yogurt. “But she’s never seen Grockle, or any dragon like him.”

  “Perhaps she doesn’t need to,” Arthur said, “now that she’s been given the opportunity to dream one.” He reached for a chair. The ever-helpful Gwillan guided his hand through the extra space.

  Zanna put her yogurt aside. “You think she’s drawing G’lant?”

  “G’lant?” said Lucy, on it in a flash. (Gretel and the listening dragon peered intently at each other.) “How does she know about G’lant?”

  “I told her,” Zanna said.

  “What? And she can see him?”

  “Lucy, that’s enough now,” Liz cut in, calming a potentially explosive situation. “We all know Alexa is a bright little girl. She’s stretching her imagination like children do, that’s all.”

  “Alexa is sending her thoughts into the universe and the universe is sending her a dragon back,” said Arthur.

  “An ancient dragon?” Lucy pressed. “One with the right scalene eyes?”

  “He was her father’s thought form; he’s real to her,” said Arthur.

  But for Zanna, that was a line too much. “Please,” she said, clamping her hands to her head. “Can we please stop bringing everything around to David and blue eyes and fire stars and —?”

  “Yes, we can,” said Liz, interrupting again, warning Lucy off with a violet-eyed flare. “If nothing else, I’m tired of this continual bickering. Where is Alexa anyway?”

  “Garden,” said Lucy.

  “Garden?” Liz repeated, sounding shocked. “But it’s freezing today! Why have you let her go out there?”

  “Oh, what? So I’m her nanny now, am I? Thanks!” Pushing her breakfast bowl aside in a huff, Lucy stormed out, making dents in the carpeted stairs.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Liz said. She put the drawing on the table and bracketed her hands as if she’d like to strangle the girl. “Someone tell me I was never like that when I was her age … please.” She stepped outside to call Alexa.

  Zanna laid a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like I was blowing up at you.”

  He covered her hand and pressured it slightly. “Alexa has dragons in her soul, you know that.”

  “I know,” Zanna said, glancing through the window. Liz and Alexa were up by the rockery, hunkering beside the fairy door. “It’s just …”

  “What is the dragon doing?” asked Arthur, letting his fingers flutter over the drawing.

  Zanna studied it again. “Nothing. It’s just … looking. There’s something in its eye, like a distant reflection.”

  “Is it a fire star?”

  She gave an incredulous laugh. “Arthur? Come on.”

  His expression didn’t waver. “Every light is visible somewhere, remember?”

  “She can’t know about such things. Please don’t do this.”

  “Alexa has a gift,” he said with authority. “A gift all children possess: the pure, uncluttered ability to create reality in their dreams. What we don’t know yet is how far Alexa can take that ability. When her father used that same talent he was able to distort time and bring probable realities into being.”

  “Arthur, stop it. You’re scaring me now. She’s just a creative little girl, OK?”

  “David’s little girl,” he reminded her, “and yours. A seer and a sibyl. Interesting combination, don’t you think?”

  On the countertop, Gretel tapped her paws in thought.

  Just then the door opened and Alexa ran in to collide with her mother.

  “Oh, look at your dirty feet,” Zanna scolded her. “What were you doing in the garden in your slippers?”

  “There was a bongle,” said Alexa, gripping Zanna’s skirt and swaying on it. Zanna smiled as she figured out the meaning of the word: Her daughter was strangely clever at inventing onomatopoeic descriptions, in this case the tinkle of a wind chime. “The fairies almost came,” Alexa went on. “But it was too cold for them to play outside today.”

  “Mmm, wise fairies,” Zanna said, hugging her. “Well, when it’s too cold for them, it’s too cold for you. Don’t go running out there too often, okay?”

  “Okay,” Alexa said in a chirpy voice. “Bonnington’s going to watch for them as well.”

  “Bonnington?” For some reason, Zanna felt uneasy about that.

  Liz hurried back in with arms crossed, shivering. “This weather is bizarre,” she said, banging the door fully shut with her bottom. “The sky’s clear, but there’s definitely snow in the air. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “Where’s Bonny?” asked Zanna, peering past her.

  “On another pl
anet, where else? There’s something resembling a snow leopard on the rockery. I’d guess that’s him.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “I don’t know. Waiting for the fairy door to open, so he can bang his head on the rock behind it and thereby return to normality, I hope. Why?”

  “Nothing,” Zanna said, smiling, dismissing it. She pointed to Alexa’s drawing. “Who’s a smart girl, then, drawing this? Shall we put it on the wall with the others?” (Alexa’s drawings were a feature of the kitchen — and useful for hiding the odd missing tile.)

  “Yes,” said Alexa, beating her fists.

  “It’s very good, sweetheart,” Liz said kindly, propping it up against a vase on the windowsill. “Better still from a distance. He’s very fierce, isn’t he?”

  Alexa nodded.

  “What’s he looking at?” asked Zanna.

  Arthur tilted his head to listen, but though Alexa opened her mouth right away all that came from it was a slight, “Don’t know.”

  “Does he have a name?” asked Liz.

  Alexa bounced on her toes. “It’s Daddy’s dragon.”

  “G’lant?”

  “Yes.”

  And there it was. Arthur nodded sagely to himself, Liz glanced at the drawing again and took a moment to reflect upon her long-lost tenant, and Zanna went into domestic mode. “Yes, well, look at the time. Come on, Alexa Martindale, I need to brush your hair.” And she took Alexa’s hands and whirled her out of the kitchen (with Gretel following close behind).

  Liz opened a cupboard and put a few boxes of cereal away. Behind her, she could hear the slow tap-tap of Arthur’s foot and knew that he was working up something to say. She turned back to him and smoothed his hair off his forehead. Since returning from the abbey he had let it grow out. Its gray streaks, peppered like a squirrel’s fur, charmed her.

  “This drawing,” he said, making circles on the table with his fingertip. “What do you see in it?”

  Liz lifted the pot and poured him his morning mug of tea. “I see a child’s idea of a dragon, nothing more. Why, what am I expected to see?”

  “A light in the shadows of the universe, perhaps?”

  She laughed and dropped a sugar cube into the mug. “Haven’t you got students to confuse instead of me?”

  “Not until my seminar this afternoon.”

  She smiled and closed the microwave door. “Tea’s hot, be careful. Gwillan’s making toast. I’m off to make the peace with Princess Lucy, then I’m stopping over at Henry’s for half an hour. See you later.” She kissed the top of his head and was gone.

  A few moments later the cat flap opened and Bonnington came flowing in. Arthur immediately lowered his hand. Bonnington padded forward, butted up, and nuzzled it. To any casual observer, this would have seemed a typical act of greeting. But for a cat and a man both damaged in their different ways by the Fain, both carrying a residual trace of the aliens, the contact between them was always significant. When Arthur laid his hands on Bonnington’s head, the resultant effect was more than just the physical sensation of stroking, it was the commingling sensation of knowing. In the quiet, secretive world they shared, the doors of perception were never closed. Arthur saw what Bonnington saw. And Bonnington reported seeing this: When the winter wind had blown and the chimes had responded, the door in the rockery had opened for a second. And it might have been the pressure of the wind that had moved it. But that would not explain the faint crack of light behind it. Or that unmistakable hazy ripple, characteristic of a shift in the fabric of the universe.

  12

  ARCTIC ICE CAP, NO SPECIFIC REGION

  The legend of Sedna was almost as old as the ice itself. Like ice, it had many variations, fashioned by slips of the tongue on the wind. But the version which came to the Teller of Ways as he watched the sea goddess thrash her tail and squirm from her ocean home was this:

  She had been a beautiful Inuit woman, courted by many worthy suitors, hunters of strength, agility, and passion, all of whom would have crossed the ice for her, drunk the ocean, sewn the clouds together with spears. But Sedna was vain and refused them all. She preferred to sit by her father’s igloo, admiring her reflection in the waters of the ocean, all the while combing her shining dark hair.

  One day, her father grew tired of this. He said to her, “My daughter, we are starving. All the animals have deserted us. We do not even have a dog to slay. I am old and too weary to hunt. You must marry the next hunter who comes to our camp or we will be nothing but sacks of bones.”

  But Sedna ignored him, selfishly, saying, “I am Sedna. I am beautiful. What more do I need?”

  Her father despaired, and thought to take a knife to her and use her as bait to trap a passing bear. But the next day, while he sat aboard his sled, sharpening his blade and his will to live, another hunter entered the camp. He was tall and elegantly dressed in furs, but his face was hidden by the trimmings around his hood.

  The man said, “I am in need of a wife.” He struck the shaft of his spear into the ice, making cracks that ran like claws.

  Sedna’s father was afraid, but he boldly said, “I have a daughter, a beautiful daughter. She can cook and sew and chew skins to make shirts. What will you give in return for her, hunter?”

  “I give fish,” said the man, from the darkness of his hood.

  “Ai-yah.” Sedna’s father waved a hand, for he thought it a poor trade: fish — for a daughter! But fish was better than a hole in his stomach. And so he said this, “Tomorrow, bring your kayak, filled with char. Row it to the headland, and I will exchange the char for my daughter.”

  The hunter made a crackling sound in his throat, but his face did not appear from his hood. He withdrew his spear from the glistening ice, pulling out with it a swirling storm. From the eye of the storm he cried, “So be it.” And he was gone, as if the wind had claimed him like a feather.

  That night, Sedna’s father made up a potion, a sleeping potion squeezed from the bloodshot eye of a walrus, that laziest of Arctic creatures. This he stirred into a warming broth, made from the boiled skin of his mukluks, his boots. “Come, daughter,” he said, singing sweetly in her ear. “Come, eat with your aged father.” And he gave Sedna a bowl of his broth to drink. Within moments, she had fallen asleep at his feet. Her father then wrapped her loosely in furs and in the morning carried her out to his sled. Still she slept on as he tied her to it, unaware of the trade that awaited her. But there was little remorse in her father’s heart. For Sedna was idle, and char were char. With a great heave, he pulled her away from their camp. She had still not woken by the time they reached the headland.

  The hunter stood by his kayak, waiting. Its skins were bulging, brim-full with fish. Their dead eyes watched a soulless father unload his daughter and roll her out at the hunter’s feet. The hunter made a chirring sound in his throat. He told the old man to empty the kayak. The Inuk, driven by greed and stupidity, gathered too many fish in his arms, and slipped and skidded and fell upon his back. As his head struck the ice his gluttonous gaze softened. His dizzied brain recoiled in horror as he watched the hunter pick up his only child, grow a pair of wings, and fly away with her to a distant cliff! “Come back!” he cried, and reached out a hand. A fish slithered out of it and lodged in his mouth. It was rotten from the tailbone through to the eye.

  When Sedna awoke she found herself lying in a nest of hair and night-black feathers. She was on a high ledge, surrounded by ravens. Far below her, the sea was rushing at the rocks, dashing itself to foam and spray. “Oh, my father! Help me! Help!” she cried. Then appeared by her side the hunter who had claimed her.

  “I am your husband now,” he said.

  And he threw off his furs to show himself to be a raven. The king of ravens. The darkest of birds.

  Sedna screamed and screamed, until her voice broke to the cark of a bird. Her fear was so great that the north wind wrestled with her terror for weeks, finally carrying it howling to her father. It beat about his ears, his soul, his he
art. How could you do this? it whistled at him. How could you marry your daughter to a bird? Do you want to be known as the grandfather of ravens?

  The old man was wracked with sadness and guilt. He chattered to his heart and his heart chattered back. He must go out and rescue his daughter, it said.

  So, the very next morning, he loaded up his patched old kayak and paddled through the frigid Arctic waters, until he reached the cliff that was Sedna’s new home. Sedna, who now had eyes as sharp as any bird, had seen him coming and was waiting at the shore. “Oh, my father,” she said and hugged him tightly, smelling his furs, which still reeked of fish.

  “Quickly,” he said, “while the mist is about us.” And they climbed into his kayak and paddled away.

  They had traveled for many hours and still had the calm of the ocean all about them when Sedna saw a black speck high in the sky. Fear welled up inside her, for she knew this was her husband coming to find her!

  “Paddle faster!” she urged her father.

  But her father’s arms were slow with age and exhaustion. The raven was upon their boat as swiftly as a ray of sunlight. It swooped down and set the kayak bobbing. “Give me back my wife!” it screamed.

  Sedna’s father struck at the thing with his paddle. He missed and almost fell into the water. “Trickster be gone!” he shouted in vain.

  The bird caarked in anger and swooped again. This time it came down low to the water, beating one wing against the surface. A ferocious storm began to blow and the waters became a raging torrent, tossing the kayak to and fro. Sedna screamed, but not as loudly as her father. Once more, cowardice had rooted in his heart. With a mighty shove, he pushed his daughter into the ocean. “Be gone! Leave me be! Here is your precious wife!” he cried. “Take her back and trouble me no more!”

  Sedna cried out in disbelief. “Father, do not desert me!” she begged. She swam to the kayak and reached up, grasping the side of the boat. But the icy waters had made her arms numb and she could not haul herself back to safety.

  Still the raven plunged and swooped. The storm grew worse. In his madness, Sedna’s father saw a shoal of rotten char coming to the surface to feed, if he fell. Addled by terror, he grabbed his kayak paddle once more and pounded Sedna’s fingers with it. She wailed in agony but he would not stop. “Take her! Take her!” he shouted crazily, believing that the only way to save his life was to sacrifice his daughter’s life instead. Over and over again he struck, until one by one, her frozen fingers cracked. They dropped into the ocean where they turned into seals and small whales as they sank. With her hands broken, Sedna could not hold on to the boat. Her mutilated body slipped under the water and slowly faded out of sight….