Icefire (16 page)

David threw up his hands. “What
is
the matter with you all today? First, Gadzooks is plotting something, and now you’ve got this ridiculous huff on. Did I ask you to come to Boston and —”

He stopped speaking then, as if a plug had been pulled. There was a strange, uncomfortable feeling in his head, as if he were standing at the center of a
balloon and someone had let out all the air. Whatever had gripped him had also taken Gretel. She staggered backward away from the window and started to reel like a circus clown. With a violent and noisy shake of her wings, she stumbled into the side of the box.

David grabbed her and held her steady. His vision was blurring now, and Gretel’s figure was ghosting badly. But David could see her well enough, and what he did see chilled him right to the bone. The dragon’s eyes were swimming with fear, their color flickering violet, then green, then violet … then gray.

“Gretel, what’s happening? Gretel? Gretel!”

Too late. The dragon had no reply. She let out a screeching wail more grating than the train wheels braking on the tracks. She shook like a demon and her scales began to stiffen. And yet, with one courageous effort, she reached back into her quiver and drew out a flower. Her paw opened and she dropped it at her feet.

And that was how she stayed: stopped, like a clock. Something had drained the auma from her and left just a tired gray husk behind. All the color that remained of
the potions dragon was wrapped in the single orange rose, sliding back and forth on the seat, rocking and rolling with the motion of the train.

David lifted it up to her nostrils. But in his heart, he knew she would not respond. For she had made no attempt to bring the flower to her snout, and that could only mean one thing: It was a cry for help, not a cure for ills.

The rose was meant for him.

28
D
AVID
T
URNS

 

A
pproximately ten minutes later, David burst into the Pennykettles’ house and skidded to a halt outside his room. “Aunty Gwyneth! Are you there? There’s something wrong with Gretel!” He looked down at the potions dragon, frozen solid in the open gift box, and ran a warm thumb along her snout. “Aunty Gwyneth, let me in!” He hammered the door. At last it opened with a tired creak. “I was on the train,” David spluttered, “and — Lucy? What are you doing there?” She was standing in the doorway with her head bent low, gentle snuffles rising out of her throat. With a sob, she left the door swinging open and flung herself down on the bed by her mom.

David edged his way in. What had once been his
student housing was now little more than a ramshackle hovel. A cold, dark hovel at that. A candle burning in a jelly jar on his desk was the only source of heat and light, apart from the egg in Liz’s hands. It was glowing with a strong, amber yellow luminescence, sending shadow pulses up the damaged walls. The dragon child inside it had grown considerably and was now curled double, almost breaching the shell. Liz, despite the devastation all around her, still appeared to be sleeping soundly.

And yet there was something horribly wrong. Lucy was in tears, and the house, which had always been so vibrant and warm, had been struck by the creeping odor of damp and a sinister strain of wanton neglect. David listened out. Not a hurr could be heard. Where on earth were the whuffler dragons? Why weren’t they heating the place? He shook Lucy by the shoulder and asked her what was happening.

“It would be better if I answered that,” said a voice, and Aunty Gwyneth drifted in. David stood back with a start. Her hair was down and rougher than rope; her
face so very lined and ugly that it was possible to wonder how the bones could bear to support her skin. Her neat designer two-piece suit had gone through an odd metamorphosis of rips until it resembled a piece of sacking. This was no longer Aunty Gwyneth. This was the ancient sibyl Gwilanna. As she approached, she raised her hands. Resting upon them was a plastic box — a plastic box with a pale blue lid. “There has been an interesting development,” she said. “Such a pity you missed it all.”

“Go away! I hate you!” Lucy screamed. She sat up and threw a handful of dirt.

“Insolent wretch,” Gwilanna sneered. She spat at the dirt and the crumbs turned into a posse of spiders. They came hurrying back in waves to the bed. Lucy screamed and drew up her feet. Gwilanna laughed and the spiders dissolved to dust.

“What’s going on?” David demanded.

“She’s killed all the dragons!” Lucy yelled. “Oh, Mom, wake up. Please wake up.” She threw her arms around Liz’s shoulders. But Liz’s sleep was deeper than
quicksand. No matter how firmly Lucy shook her, her eyes refused to open.

Gwilanna tilted the box to one side. From it came the sound of gently sloshing water. “There was a loss of power while you were out. I have yet to establish how it happened. I suspect it was sabotage, but that is by the by. When I came to investigate, I found the kitchen door open and the child in the garden, secreting this box and its contents in the snow.”

“The snowball,” said David, beginning to catch on.

“I was trying to save it from melting!” yelled Lucy. “And she
stole
it! And now none of the dragons can move!”

David pulled Gretel out of the gift box. “Is that why she went like this?”

“Break her!” cried Lucy, lunging forward. “She’s evil. Break her! Do it now!”

“Calm down,” snapped David, pushing her back. He turned to Gwilanna. “Are they all like this?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, with a broken-toothed grin.

David gulped and thought of Gadzooks, remembering the vacant feeling on the train. “Are they dead?”

Gwilanna moved closer, searching David’s face as if she had lost a few of the lice that crawled through the fraying twists of her hair. “No, they’re suspended in a kind of … half-world, kept alive by virtue of the fact that Elizabeth, when she created them, gave them a little of her natural auma — as well as a crystal of … shall we call it
icefire?”

“I hate you,” said Lucy. “When Mom wakes up —”

“When your mother wakes up,” Gwilanna cut in, snarling like a rabid dog, “she will tell me where this snowball came from or lose her precious dragons for good.”

“She won’t! She won’t tell you
anything!
Ever!”

“Then I will pour the water away and leave her dragons as hollow as a drum!” Gwilanna made a rasping
hrrr
and the lid came flying off the box as if it had been lifted away in a storm.

Lucy squealed with fear.

“Stop!” cried David. “This is ridiculous. I thought we were all on the same side, here?”

“You can’t side with
her,”
whined Lucy.

“Be silent,” said Gwilanna. “Let the boy speak.” She scraped David’s cheek with the one of her nails. “Well, boy? What have you to say?”

David pulled away in disgust. “I know what you’re up to, Gwilanna. All that business with Gretel in Boston. Making the publisher give me a contract. You want me to go to the Arctic, don’t you? You want me to find the fire of Gawain.”

“No!” cried Lucy.

“Shut up,” snapped David. And now a cold light entered his eyes. The candle flickered. The floorboards creaked. The tenant turned his gaze on the plastic box. “What you have there is a speck, am I right? A droplet of a droplet of the dragon’s tear?”

“Less than a cinder,” Gwilanna said tiredly.

“What if I could get you the rest?”

“No!” Lucy shouted

“Hold your tongue!” Gwilanna roared.

And poor Lucy found her tongue shored up against her teeth. The hex only lasted a second or two, but it frightened her enough to shut her up for two weeks. Sobbing heavily, she tried to run away. David held her back. “Sit down and behave.” Lucy kicked him halfheartedly and swerved away. This was all too much. Her mother lost, her dragons gone, and the tenant who had written her birthday stories and saved the life of an injured squirrel … was he deserting her, too?

“These two can’t tell you anything,” he said, tilting his head toward Lucy and Liz. “Only the bears know the secret of the fire.”

“Bears are charlatans, never to be trusted.”

“Maybe not, but they seem to trust
me.
They want me to work for them; you knew that, I suppose? But
they
can’t give me what I want.”

“And what is that?” said Gwilanna, narrowing her gaze.

David looked down and stroked Gretel’s wings. “I saw what she did in Boston. If it’s really that easy to get me a contract, it won’t be difficult arranging a
best-selling book. I’m not like you people; I didn’t hatch from an egg or find a way of living that was way beyond my expiration date. I’m normal, and that’s how I’m going to stay, unless you give me something more. Help me achieve success with the books and I’ll lead you straight to the fire tear. But I’ll need Gadzooks restored. The bears work through him. He’s my contact with them. The other dragons can go to the clay.”

From the top of the bed, Lucy made a sound like a wounded dog. Tears came pouring down her cheeks.

Gwilanna, however, was not easily convinced. “You? A storytelling nincompoop? Why should I put my trust in you when it was
your
dragon that led a revolt to try to steal the contents of my case?”

“She’s got the scale!” cried Lucy. “She brought it with her.”

David ignored her and looked at the sibyl. “Revolt? What are you talking about?”

Gwilanna snatched Grace up from the desk.
“This
was hiding in the wardrobe. While I was out of
the room with the girl, the others used her to speak the password. But I returned, unexpectedly, and battle was done. They had a guard: the dragon called Gruffen. It tried to burn me with a prick of fire … and only succeeded in melting the snowball. Amusing, don’t you think? Their heist ruined by their very own auma. Every dragon froze where it stood. I found your scribbler on the windowsill. It had opened the window in order that the stupid wishing dragon could attempt to fly the scale away.”

David sighed and sank down onto the bed. So that was why Gadzooks had been drawing an escape route. “Where are they — Gadzooks, Gruffen, and the wisher?”

“I cast them aside, among the rubble in the corner.”

David didn’t even look. “And Grace? Why have you kept her back?”

“I was intending to crumble her to dust, for amusement. She may be in a void, but she can still know discomfort. She was the informant. She needs
to be punished. They
all
need to be punished. But why don’t I let you have this pleasure? If you wish me to trust you … break her ears.”

“No! She’s Sophie’s dragon!” squealed Lucy.

“Take her!” rapped Gwilanna.

And David did. Pressing his thumbs against the paper-thin ears he calmly met Gwilanna’s gaze. “Betray me and we’re enemies forever,” he said.

“No!” shrieked Lucy.

But her squeal of protest could not disguise the sharp
click click
of clay. By the time her voice had faded into silence, the listening dragon could hear no more.

29
T
HE
S
ECRET OF THE
R
OSE

 

W
ell, well,” said Gwilanna. “How the worm turns.”

“I hate you!” Lucy screamed at David. “I wish you’d never come! I never wanted a tenant! And I don’t want a stupid brother either!” And before anyone could stop her, she had snatched up a lump of ceiling plaster and brought it crashing toward the egg. But it was she, not the egg, which came off worse. A shower of sparks lit up the room as the plaster turned red and started to fizz. Lucy gave out a yowl of pain, but the tears that followed really had more to do with her torment than her burns. She flung herself down in a pitiful heap, sobbing so heavily the bed began to shake.

“Idiot child,” Gwilanna sneered. “Did you think I would leave the egg unguarded?”

“She’ll learn,” said David, chewing his lip. He rolled Grace onto a spare bit of mattress and dropped the broken ears in a hollow beside her; they clinked forlornly against her scales. “What do you intend to do about the dragons? Won’t you need Gretel? Can she be revived?”

“That we will discover shortly,” said Gwilanna. “I have placed a small quantity of icefire water inside a drawstring pouch in the garden. It should be frozen — wait! What was that?”

David turned his head. Like Gwilanna, he had heard something rattling in the kitchen. “Sounds like Bonnington using his cat flap.”

The sibyl ground her teeth. “That dim-witted fur-ball. Next time I find it under this bed I will turn it into a pair of slippers. Come. Bring the girl. I don’t trust her to be left alone with the egg.”

David yanked Lucy onto her feet and dragged her after him into the kitchen. Gwilanna pulled the back door open. “The pouch is by the potting shed. Bring it, boy. Hurry.”

Hugging his upper arms for warmth, David hurried outside and crunched across the patio. Since his return from Boston, the weather had slumped to the lowest rungs of the meteorological ladder. The wind was scooping the marrow from his bones and every snowflake that managed to flick his cheeks stung like the crack of a tiny whip. He arrived at the shed, but the pouch was not in sight. He fiddled in the drifts around the base of the plant pots. Nothing there either. This was ridiculous. Where was the wretched thing? The wind laughed and picked at his brain. He searched twice more, then reported to Gwilanna.

“Not
there?”
Her voice was like the screech of a circular saw.

“Look for yourself. It’s not a trick.”

Gwilanna put the ice water on the drainboard. “Keep her away from that. If she moves toward it, snap her ears, too.” She swept out into the snow.

The moment she had gone, David and Lucy began a frantic babble. This was all very well, for both of them had a great deal to say. But they quarreled in such a
competitive fashion that neither was able to deliver their point or really be aware of what the other was saying. So it was no surprise that both of them failed to see Bonnington slinking out from under the table. The big tabby cat, unfairly described as a dimwit and a slouch, was not displaying those attributes now. His ears were pricked, his bearing agile, and his shining copper eyes like points of steel. He moved to the center of the kitchen floor and lifted his hunter’s gaze to the drainboard. With a silent bound, he was on it.

It was Lucy who first caught sight of him. “Hhh!” she gasped, pointing a finger.

“This rose,” said David, not looking at first, so desperate was he to show her Gretel’s flower. “Just listen to me, Lucy. Just … what? What is it?” The panic in her eyes made him turn his head.

Bonnington was lapping the water from the box.

“Bonnington, NO!”

Over the next few seconds it seemed as if a circus troupe had invaded. Gwilanna stormed in, purple with rage, almost breaking the door off its hinges; David
was tearing toward the sink, kicking cat litter into every corner; Bonnington was scrabbling his way off the drainboard, then running, ears flat, tail down, for his life. And the box? One moment it was safe in David’s hands, the next it was somehow flipping through the air and landing with a clatter in the kitchen sink.

Lucy’s fists came up to her mouth.

Even Gwilanna looked moderately shocked. “The auma,” she whispered and snatched up the box. It was empty. The last drops gurgled in the sink. “You festering fool!” She turned on David and hurled the box sideways across the room. Lucy yelped as it smacked into a corkboard behind her and bounced back, almost catching her head.

“It was the cat. I was trying to —”

Gwilanna seized him by the throat. “My pouch is missing. What do you know of it?”

“Nothing, I swear.”

She tightened her grip.

“Uthin’! H’nest! Lemme go.”

Gwilanna snarled and pushed him against the fridge. It rocked and the listening dragon fell over. There was a crunch as the frame of its spectacles broke. “Bring me that cat,” Gwilanna growled.

“You leave Bonnington alone!” cried Lucy.

“No. Let her be,” David croaked, stepping in before Gwilanna could react. “I’ll find the pouch. The cat’s probably carried it to the garden. He steals things and hides them away sometimes.”

Gwilanna’s eyes began to swirl like soup. Suddenly, her nose began to jump and twitch. “There is something not right about you,” she hissed. “I smell a potion on you. Show me your hands.”

David tried in vain to resist, but how could he oppose the power of a sibyl? His trembling fingers began to uncurl. The orange rose rolled over his palm. “Gretel dropped it on the train,” he gulped. “I meant to leave it in the gift box. I don’t know what it’s for.”

Gwilanna snatched it from him. She twisted the flower into one wet nostril, squeezed the stalk, and
took a gruesome sniff. Her eyes shone violet and boiled with rage. “Treachery,” she hissed. “Chamomile and peach. Gretel has turned you back.”

“What?” said Lucy. “He
can’t
be back. A real David wouldn’t be as nasty as him. He broke Grace’s ears.”

“All for nothing,” the sibyl smirked. “It was a useless sacrifice, a futile attempt to infiltrate my plans and make me believe he was my
ally.
The boy has been playing tricks, my dear. We should have known all along that he was merely trying to secure my trust so that he might upset this hatching. He is fouled by bears and will not change. He would steal the scale at the drop of a claw — and take your brother away from you.”

“Don’t listen to her,” David said to Lucy. “That egg she’s hatching is not your brother.”

Gwilanna narrowed her gaze.

“Oh yes,” said David, squaring up. “Gretel turned me back all right. She was made by a Pennykettle — or had you forgotten? She had enough basic goodness in her to realize her mistress was up to no good, and so
she passed your secrets to me. Your mom did want another child, Lucy, and put enough of her auma into that egg without ever thinking it might be quickened. Then Zanna happened by, and everything fell very neatly into place. Your ‘aunt’ here recognized the perfect conditions to kindle the baby
she’d
always wanted. Except it’s not a baby, is it, Gwilanna? It’s never going to lose its dragon features; it’ll lose its human ones instead.”

Lucy’s mouth fell open in astonishment. “Mom’s making a
real
dragon?”

Gwilanna ignored her and spat at David: “You cretinous, interfering dunce. I should turn your bones to ash for this, but I still might have a use for you yet.”

“Forget it. I’ll never help you,” said David. “Stop the kindling and wake Liz now. Let the dragon go back to the clay. It’s doomed, like the others you’ve tried to rear. Without the auma of the icefire, it can’t survive.”

“Oh, but it can,” Gwilanna said, coldly. “Elizabeth is no ordinary host. She has been touched by the ice for
years. She, like the red-haired girl who spawned her, has the true dragon’s fire within. And what is within can also be without.”

“What does she mean?” Lucy asked David anxiously.

“Find that pouch,” Gwilanna snapped. She pointed backward at the clock on the wall. Its hands, as though possessed of a whirlwind, whipped around and stopped at four-forty-seven. “You have until then, the first phase of the hatching. If the snow is not mine by the time the moon rises, the girl’s mother will join her dragons.”

“How?” bleated Lucy. “What does she
mean?”

Using his hands like a pair of bookends, David moved Lucy toward the hall. “Get your coat,” he said quietly, eyeballing Gwilanna. “We’re going out, into the garden.”

“But —?”

“Lucy, don’t argue.” David pushed her away. Streaming with tears, Lucy went to get her coat.

“A wise decision,” Gwilanna said smugly.

David looked back at her with all the loathing his heart could muster. “If any harm comes to Liz, I’ll —”

“You’ll what?” sneered the sibyl, staring down at him. “Who are you to meddle in the ways of dragons? If you want to aid Elizabeth, find that pouch.”

Surprisingly, however, David didn’t even try. On the doorstep, he abandoned the search and told Lucy they would go to Mr. Bacon’s instead. The snow was falling star upon star, bringing a cold gray fog down with it. No one could possibly see through that.

But the tenant was wrong. There
was
one creature with eyes capable of piercing such a mist. He was hiding in a plant pot behind the shed, confused and afraid, and wondering why the universe had brought him here. Somehow he had survived the loss of auma and escaped from the terrifying sibyl, Gwilanna (sneaking out cleverly through Bonnington’s cat flap). As far as he knew, he was the
only
survivor. And that troubled him, deep to his spark. But he must go on. He must not
shed his tear. He was a wishing dragon, born to serve. He had a duty to his naming master, the David, and the greater needs of the Mother Earth.

And so he brought his dishlike paws together and let the universe guide him once more. This time it responded with an eddy of wind that tugged his gaze to the center of the garden. Through the flurries he saw … great Gawain! A bear! It rose up out of the snow as if it had merely been sleeping flat. Startled, G’reth glanced quickly at the house. If the sibyl saw this, what further terrors might she unleash? But the bear, expert at hiding himself, merely tilted his black-tipped snout in a manner that suggested G’reth should follow. The wishing dragon flicked his tail. He let his spark glow bright a moment and melted the excess snow from his wings. In doing so, he leaped with fright at his stupidity. What was he thinking? Warming his scales so close to the pouch! With remarkable dexterity for one with paws as large as his, he pulled back the drawstrings and peeked inside. A nugget of frozen
water winked back. He pulled the drawstrings tight and hurred with relief (upward into the sky this time). A low growl reminded him the bear was waiting. G’reth hurred and flipped the pouch over his shoulder. Spreading his toes so his feet would skate the snow, he started on the next phase of his journey. This time, he would not have to travel far. Just to the box at the top of the garden …

… where the pink-eyed hedgehog, Spikey, would be waiting.