The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice) (18 page)

It had been about Porenn, he remembered.   She had wanted a fire and hadn’t been allowed to warm up and dry off by one.  She had been close to tears, and Marco had felt sorry for her.  He looked over at Pesino.  She didn’t look woeful, he thought with an internal smile; how was he supposed to work up enough outrage and sympathy to ignite a blaze if she wasn’t motivating him.

If only she looked more sympathetic, he thought, more like Mirra had looked when he first met her, holding Sybele in her arms, believing her child was going to die.  Mirra had touched the chords of his heart, and made him want to help.

There was a sudden, loud whooshing sound, and Marco felt a heavy weight on his chest.  He was looking up at the sky, looking past Pesino’s face.  He was lying on the ground – on his back – and he was looking upward, as he heard a roaring sound from a burning fire immediately nearby.   He turned his head and saw the fire burning ferociously only a few feet away, and beyond it he saw the door flap of the tent open and Kate and Cassius’s faces stare out in wonder.

“What did you do?  Are you trying to burn us?” Pesino asked, as she rolled off of him.

“What’s happening?” Kate asked, as Gawail came flying out of the tent and hovered near Marco.

“It is the blessed one.  He has used his powers to make heat for us,” the pixie’s voice spoke.

“Why are you making the fire burn like that, Marco?” Cassius asked.

“I didn’t mean to make it so big.  I was trying to make it burn so we could stay warm, and then I just overdid it,” he answered.

“Well, it’s burning,” Kate commented, as she came out of the tent and stood near the fire, absorbing its warmth.  They all stood together quietly for several minutes, appreciating the warmth that soaked into their bodies, as the sun set behind the clouds in the west and snowflakes continued to fall.

Marco assigned shifts for keeping watch, and then went into the tent and tried to sleep before his shift arrived in the middle of the night.  The bright light of the fire dimly penetrated the walls of the tent, and then the light grew much brighter, as Kate and Pesino came into the tent as well, leaving Cassius to remain outside on watch duty.

“What did you do to make that fire so bright?” Pesino asked as she lay down in her blankets.  Her feet were near his head, while Kate’s head was on the other side of her feet across from him, as they packed themselves tightly into the limited space.

“I thought of Mirra,” he told her softly.  “I remembered how desperate she looked the first time I saw her.  She had Seybele in her arms and the baby was dying.

“She looked so much in need of help, like there was nothing that could solve the greatest problem of her life,” he told them.

“And you saved the baby?” Kate asked.  “You touched it with your golden hand?”

“I saved it, but that was before my hand was like this.  I just used old-fashioned alchemy,” he said.

“And then the two of you fell in love,” Pesino concluded.

“Maybe so.  It didn’t quite seem that way at the time, but that may have been how it was,” Marco agreed.

They talked about Mirra further, then they all drifted off to sleep, and Marco only awoke when Pesino tugged on his shoulder.  “Your turn to go out there,” she murmured as she waited for him to arise, then she crawled into his blankets to absorb the body warmth he left behind.

Outside Marco found Gawail sitting near the fire, watching the flames.

“Pixies like the warmth more than the cold?” Marco guessed as he stood next to the little person.

“Of course.  We were born from fire,” Gawail answered.  “We have to come to the valley of steaming waters in the winter, or we wouldn’t survive the cold.”

“You were born from fire?” Marco asked, his interest piqued by the unusual statement.  He needed to go walk around the campsite to inspect its perimeter, but he wanted to hear Gawail’s explanation for his unusual statement first.

“Yes,” the pixie immediately answered.

“There was a mountain, whose entire top was consumed by a great fire, a fire that burned whole trees and stones and the very earth itself.  The fire wanted to grow larger, to go out and make all the world a great fire.  So it released a tiny little flame, a single flame, and sent the flame out to find out what it was going to burn up.

“So the little flame went down from the mountain top,” Gawail explained.  “And it flittered around, until it came to a village of people who lived by a river.  The little flame wanted to cross the river, so it hopped on a log and asked the log to float it across.

“But when they got halfway across the river the log stopped.  ‘Are you going to burn down the forest where all my friends live?’ the log asked.

“’No,’ the little flame answered.  ‘I’m just exploring so I can tell my mother what the world is like.’

“‘Who is your mother?’ the log asked.

“Just then a little girl from the village saw the tiny flame on top of the log in the middle of the river, so she got in her canoe, and she paddled out to see what they were doing.

“’My mother is the great burning fire on top of the mountain,’ the little flame told the log,” Gawail continued.

“’Your mother has burned a great many trees, and now you will help her burn more.  I will not help you cross this river,’ the log cried out in anger at the little flame, and so it started to submerge itself.

“That was going to make the little flame fall into the river, where the water would extinguish it.  It was afraid, and it cried out in fear,” Gawail was telling the story with gusto, standing now and striding back and forth as he told the creation story of the pixies.

“And just then the little girl reached the little flame, and she held her hand out.  The tiny flame jumped into her open palm, just as the log sank all the way under the water, and the little flame was saved.

“‘Thank you!’ the little flame told the girl.  ‘You saved my life!’

“‘
I’m glad I could help you.  What are you doing in the middle of the river?’ she asked as she set him down and starting paddling back to shore.

“So the little flame told her the same story he had told the log.

“‘Your mother fire won’t come down and harm us, will she?’ the little girl asked as they reached the shore.  ‘We like fire, and we treat it with respect.’  She pointed to the chimneys of the houses to show that every house had a fire burning.

“And so the little flame went back up the mountain and told its mother about the kind little girl and the small fires that already lived in all the houses, and the mother promised that she would not ever create a fire to burn down the whole world, but would stay on top of the mountain and flare
up to call attention to herself once in a while to remind the world to respect her.

“‘
You’ve done well, my little flame,’ the mother said.  ‘How can I reward you?’

“‘
Can you make me like the little girl, able to survive the water?’ the flame asked.

“And so the mother did.  She gave the flame the shape of a pixie.  ‘And you shall have wings, so that you can float high up in the sky the way a flame can,’ the mother said, and that’s how the first pixie was born.”  Gawail finished his story, and looked up at Marco.  “Do you like that story?” he asked.

“Very much,” Marco said sincerely.  It was an enchanting tale, one that he was sure couldn’t be true, yet it still seemed to be told so sincerely that a tiny part of Marco wondered whether it might be.

“I’m going to go walk around the campsite to make sure everything is safe.  I’ll be right back,” Marco told his pixie companion.

“And I’ll stay here, where it’s warm, you know,” Gawail said with equanimity as Marco strode off.

Marco left the bright ring that was lit near the campfire, and ventured out into the forest glen.  He found that the snow was not melted once he left the comfort of the fire’s heat, and he saw that they would face a difficult journey the next morning, through snow that had piled up a foot or more deep.  But happily, there were no tracks in the snow, something that gave Marco relief, as it demonstrated the safety of their location.

He completed a circle through the snow, then returned to the fire, and sat down near Gawail.  “Where do you live in the summer time, when you’re not in the valley with the hot springs?” Marco asked.

“I live up in the Nightshade Mountains; our clan travels farther than any other to come to the winter valley.  It’s a dangerous journey, but we haven’t lost anyone for fifty years,” Gawail said proudly.

“The Nightshade Mountains!  That’s where we’re going!” Marco cried, astonished at the incredible coincidence.

“You’re going to the Nightshades?  I thought you were going to the human city, Boheme,” Gawail looked at him in surprise.

“We’re only going to Boheme as a stop on the way.  We’ll go to Boheme, then Fortburg, then the Nighshades, on our way to Clovis,” Marco laid out his full itinerary.

“Clovis?” Gawail asked in a whisper.  “The haunted city?  You would dare to go there?  Why?” the pixie appeared badly shaken to Marco, who felt his own confidence suddenly shrink because of Gawail’s reaction.

“I have to go to Clovis to go to the old library there, to try to find a clue to know where to go to find the Echidna,” Marco replied.

“The
Echidna?  Clovis and the Echidna?  You have a death wish – or you have great faith in your blessing!  To go to such monstrous places is unthinkable!  We who live in the Nightshades only go to the edges of Clovis, in the middle of the day.  We believe the city is haunted,” Gawail told Marco.

“I am under orders from a great spirit, the spirit of the island of Ophiuchus, which has told me to go to the
Echidna, and get one of its scales,” Marco explained.  “I am going to Clovis to see if I can find out where the Echidna lives; I was told that the old library there is my best hope to find information about the Echidna.”

“Blessed one, a great spirit would not send you out on a hopeless journey, I am sure.  But this is an extraordinary course you have laid out, I’m sure,” Gawail told him.  “I will help you as much as possible.  I will help you get to Clovis, and to the safest part of the city ruins, though I do not know if that is where this library is that you seek.”

They each sat silently, contemplating what had been revealed.

“I see that the sun is coming up,” Gawail observed, breaking Marco’s brooding introspection.

“We’ll need to leave soon, then.  I better wake the others and tell them to pack up,” Marco responded.

“What about your fire?  When will you put it out?  I want to stay beside it until the last moment, then go to my cozy traveling space,” Gawail grinned up at Marco.

Marco grinned back in return, shook his head, and gently poked the pixie in the shoulder with his finger, then rustled the tent flap, and opened it to awaken the others.  “We need to go,” he spoke into the tent, and let them stretch the stiffness out of their muscles before the group returned to the snow-covered trail.

He looked at the fire as the others took the tent down, trying to imagine some way to extinguish it.  He placed his hand on the same stick he had touched to ignite the magical blaze, and thought of Mirra again, in need of help, but nothing happened.  He tried imagining her feeling hot from the fire, and wanting to cool off, but again nothing happened.  Finally, he thought of the pixies and their mother, the volcano, ready to send fire spreading across the earth, but choosing not to, and the fire extinguished itself with a single puff of white smoke that left a bed of dying embers.  Everyone looked at Marco, but said nothing, and they all knew that it was time to leave.

They walked slowly during the morning, eating their breakfast of hardtack, dried meat, and raisins.  Gawail had selected Kate to be his hostess, convinced that she had a surer step through the snow, and his conclusion turned out to be correct.

After a midday stop to eat lunch, they all stood shivering at a curving portion of the trail, where it went around the inside of a ravine as it descended towards a broad mountain river valley.  Pesino stepped to the edge of the trail to look out at the view below.  “Look at those birds floating in the air,” she pointed at a trio of condors that were effortlessly circling at nearly the same elevation the travelers were at.

As she took a step closer to the edge of the trail, the snowy crust she stepped on collapsed, and tumbled down the steep side of the ravine, giving away beneath Pesino, and making her fall off the trail and out of sight.  She gave a sudden shout, and then she was gone, faster than any of the others could react to.

Pesino!” Cassius cried out, shocked by the loss of his fellow merperson, and he stepped up to the edge of the cliff where the snow had been swept away.  There were bushes immediately below the trail’s edge, blocking any view of what was below.

“What do we do, Marco?” Kate cried out, distressed by the loss of their companion.

“Gawail,” Marco called, and the pixie peeked out of the neck of Kate’s cape.  “I know it’s cold,” Marco told the tiny figure, “but could you go fly below and try to find out where Pesino is and what shape she’s in?”

“I can do it,” the pixie said stoutly.  “For a few minutes, I won’t even feel the cold, and then I’ll just need to warm up again.”  He flew out of Kate’s clothing.  “Which way did she go?” he asked, and when Cassius pointed down, the pixie flew over the edge and outside the limbs of the bushes as he began to search for the missing girl.