The Last Dragon Chronicles #4: The Fire Eternal (4 page)

T
he Pennykettle house was full of many strange and special dragons: the inspirational Gadzooks; the healer, Gollygosh; the wish-maker, G’reth; the mysterious shape-shifting (even to the point of invisibility) Groyne; the feisty potions dragon, Gretel. But the dragon known as Gwillan was not considered “important.” He was special in the sense that he could fly like the others
and speak in dragontongue like the others and turn his oval-shaped eyes from green to violet (stasis to life) just like the others, but he had no
magical
abilities to hurr of. His had always been a life of service and simplicity.

Until the morning he spotted Gwendolen acting strangely.

His duty was to
snuffle
— or to put it another way, to clean. He was excellent at it. Truly committed. There
was barely a speck of dust in the house (including on the scales of his fellow dragons). No crumbs on carpets. No dried autumn leaves just inside the hall door. No falls of ash down the open chimney. All of them snuffled up and burned to cinders. (Cinders, of course, were puffled away later, usually around the roots of the yellow rosebush which grew near to the garden rockery.)

He was hardworking,
uncomplaining, and incredibly efficient. As well as keeping dust bunnies in order, he was able to turn his paws to many other domestic chores, such as hanging out the wash, feeding Bonnington, or chopping up vegetables with his tail. Any small task that might help Liz run the house more smoothly. Putting stray socks into the laundry basket, for instance. Fetching the mail. Tugging Lucy’s wild
red hairs out of the drain. Anything. Gwillan loved his work — especially watering the plants.

He had seen a lot of things during indoor gardening, but he had never witnessed anything as frightening or bizarre as the intense beam of light that poured out of Gwendolen’s eyes that day, the day she sneaked into Zanna’s room. Gwillan almost dropped his watering can (a tiny replica of the big ones
used by Liz). His first instinct was to hide, but he was already hidden in the overhanging leaves of a flourishing coleus. Through the greenery, he saw papers being picked up and turned. And when the light went away, he saw it disappear into Gwendolen’s eyes.

Gwendolen. She was Lucy’s dragon, who, like him, never had adventures or ever got
involved.
Why would she be here, on Zanna’s desk?

For
several days he lived with this knowledge, though he wished that he could puffle it into smoke. He carried it around, but it rattled his scales. If he tried to ignore it, it nagged him like the grime in an awkward place to clean. People noticed he was out of sorts. A potato peeling was found on the floor of the kitchen. Arthur’s slippers were arranged the wrong way around.
Bonnington got a bowl
of packing peanuts for dinner.

Bad. Questions began to be asked.

Eventually, Gwillan himself, realizing that his standards were slipping, made up his mind to tell someone what he’d seen. That someone was Gollygosh, the healing dragon.

Golly was a kindred spirit. He and Gwillan were an unofficial team. While Gwillan ran errands, Golly fixed things — like fuses in plugs, or blown lightbulbs,
or the TV reception, or Bonnington’s cat bell. He was making the ink flow in Liz’s favorite pen (by hurring gently on the barrel) when Gwillan came up and asked for advice.

Golly thought about it and said perhaps they should mention this to Gretel?

Gwillan gulped. He didn’t like to tangle with the potions dragon who was, after all, the fiercest thing in the house.

So, together, they approached
G’reth. The wishing dragon had traveled the universe and boldly gone where
no dragon had gone before. Surely he would be brave enough?

No.

The three of them spoke to Gadzooks, perhaps the most respected dragon in the house. He was curious, but also worried. He identified the papers as a letter. Every year he watched Zanna writing one, he said. And every year, including this, he watched Gretel
burn it (under Zanna’s instruction). He suggested Gwendolen might have read it in some way. But why?

They checked with Groyne, who could offer nothing more. So then the five of them called in Gruffen, who was recently returned from the shop. This was a security matter, they decided. Who better to deal with it than a guard dragon?

Gruffen did as he always did. Long ago, when he’d been made by
Liz, he had been given a book of instructions, a manual of “what to do in difficult times.” He consulted it now, under
S
for Security. He found just six words:
If in doubt, tell the Liz.

Every dragon sighed. They knew this instruction was wise and correct, but if Gretel was left out …

It was no good. She had to be told.

They approached her in Zanna’s room. She was practicing a form of acupuncture
on Bonnington, using pine needles she’d collected from the Christmas tree some weeks before. The needles were sticking out all over his head. He looked like a tabby cat version of a porcupine.

A-hurr,
said Gruffen. There was no correct way to approach a dragon of Gretel’s status. One just went for it and hoped she wouldn’t scorch.

What?
she said.

A-hurr,
he coughed again.

She twiddled a pine
needle and pointed it at the guard dragon’s chest.

He continued with his report.

As predicted, Gretel was immediately suspicious.
Bring Gwendolen to me,
she said.

Gwillan flew upstairs and brought her down.

Outnumbered and surrounded, Gwendolen told them what she knew. (It was either that or be zapped by Gretel’s magicks.) She didn’t think the Lucy meant harm, she said.

What was in it?
hurred
Gretel, meaning the letter.

Gwendolen hunched up and flicked her tail.
Words, to the David.

Gadzooks gulped and stared longingly at the notepad he carried. The corners of the pages were beginning to curl and the paper itself was yellowing with age. Every now and then he tore a blank page off, in the way he’d seen Liz remove dead leaves from plants. It hurt him to talk about messages to David
when none came through to him anymore.

She didn’t finish reading it, Gwendolen said, but …

But. The biggest word in the universe. Every single dragon lifted his or her ears.

Gretel waved a solitary flower, a warning to Gwendolen that she had better speak up or feel the effect of a truth scent in her nostrils.

She sent a message, what she calls an e-mail, to …
Gwendolen gave the address.

Every dragon held its breath. Inklings of doubt and distrust were gathering in Gretel’s intelligent eyes. Tam Farrell. She remembered him clearly. At the time, when he’d walked through the door of the shop, she had paid very little attention to him. Why should she? Hundreds of people came to the shop and many of them spoke at length to her mistress. But none of them left any kind of impression. He
was different. They’d been talking about Tam at home for two days. Something about this wasn’t right.

Are we going to tell your mistress?
G’reth asked quietly, hearing Zanna’s voice outside in the hall.

No,
said Gretel, growling at them all, suggesting there’d be trouble if any of them did.
We —

She’s coming in,
said Golly, twizzling his ears.

Scatter,
hurred Gretel, and in a flash each dragon
found a separate location as Zanna swept in, with Liz close behind, saying, “It’s probably with my stuff. Yep, here you go.” She lifted a Benson’s bag from the floor.

“Mommy, Mommy! G’lant wants to see!” Alexa scooted in, bouncing with excitement. She held the cup of her hands up close to the shopping bag.

Zanna hoisted it higher. “G’lant will have to wait until we go into the garden.”

“All
right!” Alexa dashed outside.

“G’lant?” asked Liz.

Zanna gave a rueful nod. “I told her about him on the anniversary. Not sure it was a wise idea. She’s been talking about it ever since.” She glanced tight-lipped at Gadzooks. The writing dragon had turned to face the window.

“Well, I wasn’t supposed to blab about the fairy door till we’d installed it, but I did,” said Liz. “Maybe it was simply
time that she knew. Come on.” And resting a hand in the middle of Zanna’s back, she guided her out of the room.

As soon as they were gone, the dragons that were not already on the windowsill flew there to watch what was happening outside. Gretel immediately said to
Gadzooks,
Tell us about G’lant.
It was a dragon name. A good one, ringing with authority.

Gadzooks made a whimpering sound in his
throat.

It was the last thing he wrote on his pad,
said G’reth.

I know
that, said Gretel, scowling at him.
The David child speaks as if she can see him.

G’reth shook his head.
I think she just wishes it.

A sudden jingle of wind chimes made them look out at the garden again. Liz was hanging up the set she’d bought, dangling them off a bracket she’d previously used for a flower basket. Though
her voice was muffled Gretel heard her say, “There. When you hear them chime, the fairies will be in the garden.”

Fairies?
someone hurred.

Gadzooks said,
Mythical creatures, I think.

Gretel watched Alexa clap her hands, then shifted her gaze a little wider to Lucy. The girl had gone outside, but clearly under duress. She was hovering, arms folded, looking cold and bored. Suddenly, she looked
up and saw the dragons watching. There was the usual grin of recognition, but when she saw Gwendolen among the others, her eyes narrowed slightly. She was wondering why.

Gretel gave Gwendolen a jab with her tail.
Are you with us?
she hurred, from the corner of her mouth.

Gwendolen nodded. It was a difficult choice, but dragon was dragon.

Then wave,
said Gretel.

Gwendolen waved a paw. All the
dragons did. The flurry made Lucy smile.

We need to know more about the Tam,
said Gretel.

An outsider?
said G’reth.
How will we do that?

Gretel produced a big broad smile, one that brought her nostrils together in a sideways figure eight.
He bought a dragon,
she said.

The others gulped uneasily, wondering what was coming.

Who can make themselves into a Gudrun?
she asked.

A
s missions went, it seemed impossible. Walk to this region and find a
raven
? A useless (and generally annoying) black bird, preserved in a block of ice? It would be easier to point to a glinting star and turn it into a flake of snow. This must be a test, Kailar told himself. A demonstration of allegiance.
A measure of faith. But why would Ingavar need that of him when he had already sworn to fight for him till death? Snorting heavily, he trudged on again, pace after weary
paw-dragging pace, using the patterns of the stars to guide him, and the memory of the wind, and the motion of the ice. And as he walked, he let his mind drift back in time to his first encounter with the bear he called Nanukapik.
It had been a night, much the same shape as this, when sickness had brought him collapsing to his knees, and he had lain down, panting in short dizzy bursts, not sure if he was dying, half-wishing that he were. That was when Avrel had appeared beside him. He winced, remembering the shame he’d felt to see a bear with a pelt like untouched snow and eyes as soft and innocent as the moon. For there
was he, Kailar, a son of Ragnar, once the most powerful of fighting bears, all but glued to his place on the ice, his path across it marked by poisonous black smears.

“What … what happened to you?” asked Avrel, his voice expressing tenderness at first, then fear. Tenderness. Not something a fighting bear was used to.

“If you’re going to kill me, strike quickly,” said Kailar. Despite the toxins
swelling his tongue, his voice was still able, fearsome and low.

Avrel gulped and shook his head. “Are you Kailar?” he asked. Instantly, he knew this was too quick a prompt. The fighting bear shook with confusion and rage, an act which only increased his suffering and made him cough spots of bright red blood.

“Be calm,” Avrel said, shuffling back. He trod his paws anxiously, fretful that the
fit would end the bear’s life. And where would his mission be, then?

“How do you know me?” Kailar said. The words were a gargle of air and bile. His brown eyes rolled and he saw the sky shift. He put out a paw, as if to touch it.

“I am a Teller. I was sent to find you,” said Avrel.

“Teller?” said Kailar in a whisper of death.

“Listen to me! You’re not going to
die
!” said Avrel. He stamped
the ice hard, making Kailar snort himself back to full consciousness. Avrel stepped forward and sniffed at the awful, bitter-tasting substance that covered nearly three parts of Kailar’s body. Twice he reeled back, for the stench was foul. And the texture? Like blood, half-gelling into blubber. “This is oil,” he said,
as a memory of it came to him. He and his mother had once swum close to a small
vessel — a boat, steered by men, that leaked this dirt. She had made him taste it, not to ease his hunger but to warn him that some things were worse than hunger. On the water, the oil had seemed harmless enough. On Kailar, it looked like a coat of death.

“How did you come to be like this?”

“What does it matter?” Kailar replied. “Who sent you? How could you find what you do not know?”

But Avrel
was no longer listening to him. His gaze was fastened into the distance where the dome of the sky was steadily changing. He could feel a strange wind rising off the ice and prayed for the help and relief it might bring. “Look!” he gasped suddenly. “Look ahead of you! Now!”

Kailar had already seen it and thought he must be dreaming. Far ahead was another landscape of ice, somehow in the sky but
tilted toward them. It was not a reflection, for the patterns of the leads and ridges were different and the sky there was brighter, like
another season. Neither was it upside down. This he could tell because walking across it was a large male bear. It was padding toward them.

“Turn around, Teller,” Kailar said wearily. “This spirit is for me. Go, or he might take your ears for a prize.”

“No,”
said Avrel, standing his ground. “His name is Ingavar. He is your Nanukapik, come to be with you.”

Kailar looked up and saw the air shimmer. When it was still, there was one lot of ice but two bears over him. Nanukapik? The word bubbled through his head like water emerging out of a seal hole. He was a cub the last time he’d heard this term. It meant “greatest bear.” Was this the nature of death,
he wondered? Regression? A swift return to the den?

Ingavar looked at the stricken body. “You have done well to find him,” he said, even though Avrel thought he could see a great fury raging in Ingavar’s eyes. How deeply it must pain him to see such a proud bear wounded so.

“I am dying,” said Kailar. “Leave me in peace.”

“You were strong once, you can be strong again,” said Ingavar.

Kailar
snorted and closed his eyes.

“Listen to him. Trust him,” Avrel said urgently. “You saw him walk out of another world.”

“Then maybe he could lick this poison off me!” Kailar said bitterly, trying to growl. His head thumped back against the ice once more. Nanukapiks. Tellers. Death by spoiling. Would this torture never end?

Ingavar slowly circled the body, pausing at last by Kailar’s head, where
a paw print of oil was clear on the surface. “What would you do for a new life, Kailar?”

“I have nothing to give,” he said.

“All I ask is your devotion,” Ingavar said. And he placed his paw briefly where Kailar’s had stood. Avrel shuddered as a circle of flames leapt off the ice, eating up the space where the oil had been.

Kailar saw them and snarled. “Do what you want to me, spirit. I was
born into the line of the ice bear, Ragnar. I will fight your fire to my dying breath.”

Ingavar came forward and raised his paw. “This is the
fire of life,” he said. “Believe it, if you want to survive …” And from each of his claws came a short burst of light. When he stepped back again, Kailar was burning.

It was the most chilling sight Avrel had ever witnessed. Twice before he had seen the
spectacle of fire and even once seen a careless bear singed by its heat. This was different. Kailar was immersed in a purifying blizzard. A white fire that neither made the ice around them zing nor sent smoke lines curling through the air. It consumed his whole body from tail tip to snout. And Avrel saw — for an instant, before terror turned his head — the dry bones, the frame, the peltless Kailar.
Only when Ingavar said,
It is done,
did he find the courage to look back again.

Kailar was alive. Alive and unstained. The only marks on his creamy pelt now were old battle scars. The tattoos of his life. The symbols of his lineage, importance, and strength.

He got up groggily, as far as one knee. “My name is Kailar,” he said — a gesture of formality. “Everything I am is yours to command.”

“Rise,” said Ingavar, and when Kailar was standing he addressed both bears. “You are my chosen companions: a bear from the noblest of fighting packs and a Teller’s son.” (Avrel tipped his head.) “We are on a journey of life,” said Ingavar. “The ice is changing. The North is under threat. Bears are starving because the seasons have altered. The spirit that is Gaia, goddess of the Earth, is restless
and wanting to act upon these changes. All living things may suffer if she does.”

“Can we fight this spirit?” Kailar asked boldly. “No,” said Ingavar, “we must work with her to bring about the means for change. There will be stories to Tell,” he said to Avrel, “some battles to be fought,” he said to Kailar, “but the greatest battle is here, inside us.” He turned a paw inward, close to his chest.
“Soon, the world will turn its eyes north, and the ice will be melting in the souls of men —”

“Men?” said Kailar, deep in his throat. Avrel glanced uneasily at him. Kailar looked taller now, prouder, dangerous.

“The enemy and the savior,” Ingavar said. “We must appeal to them, Kailar. We must make them understand that protecting the North protects them also.”

“How do we do this?” Avrel asked.
He was thinking back to the oldest stories, of the Inuk, Oomara, and the war with Ragnar.

“We make our struggle known to them,” Ingavar replied. “To as many as we can, in all the ways that we can. Some of these ways you will not understand.”

“And then?” Kailar remembered asking.

“Then something wonderful will come of it,” said Ingavar. And he struck the ice with fire once more, sending a blaze
far back across the pack until, in the distance, a light could be seen on the ocean itself.

It was a flicker of light, not as bright as fire, that brought Kailar’s thoughts back into the present. He glanced at the sky where a star was winking. There was nothing unusual in that, but the more he looked at this weak yellow speck, the more he thought it resembled
an eye. He let his gaze widen and
thought he could make out a shape around it. A bird’s head. A raven’s head. A
raven.

A sign.

He looked down. Just ahead of him, a pressure ridge had formed with a heavy collection of snow at its base. Instinct told him that was where he should dig.

He went in with powerful scoops of his paws, throwing back layers of compacted snow as if they were no heavier than the fur around his ears. Soon,
he had a hole as large as his body. But still he plowed on, convinced he was correct, until — fortune: His claws struck ice. Ice within ice that resisted his raking. He shuffled his position and dug sideways a little, uncovering a block that seemed to measure almost the width of his chest. Before long, two sides were completely revealed. He grew impatient then and threw his body weight behind it,
pushing with all of a fighting bear’s might. The block spilled out and tumbled to the flat. It was filled with fracture lines and opaque patches, but even
in dim light the shadows at its center were unmistakable. Feathers. Feet. A raven in flight.

Kailar snouted it and eyed it for life. He had been enclosed in some dens in his time, but never one quite as tight as this. The creature looked perfect,
but had to be dead. Even Ingavar’s fire couldn’t bring it back, surely? But if the Nanukapik’s words were true, this thing would walk once its legs were freed. Intrigued, he knocked the block onto its side, where he had a better overall view. The bird’s frozen yellow eye unnerved him for a second. So he rose up and laid a paw over the chunk, blocking the stare from view. He tapped the ice with
his stronger left paw, figuring out where best to make his strike. He knew he must be accurate — forceful, but restrained. One serious blow would crush the whole thing, and all that would be left would be water and smears.

He punched it. A corner broke off with ease. He punched again, harder, and heard the ice groan. Once more and it split along an internal rupture. Kailar scraped at it and thumped
again. Away came the
uppermost section of the chunk, freeing the raven’s head in the process.

Success.

“Bird, can you hear me? Speak to me, raven.” Several times he repeated these words, even tilting his ear to the animal’s beak to try to detect any whispers from its lungs. But there was nothing. And he dared not touch it. The slightest pressure from his clumsy paw would snap the head right
off the body. Legs, he thought, would be even more fragile. What should he do? Leave it? Wait? Eat it and be done? He chose to wait, lie down, and sleep for a while.

Later, when the journey back to Ingavar was about to begin, he wished many times that he had not been so patient or so lenient. He was sleeping soundly when an awful
caark! caark!
ripped through his brain. He shook himself awake,
unsettling several light ridges of snow that had collected around his eyes and ears. The raven had not been so lucky. Its head was entirely covered with snow, apart from a minor breathing hole created by the constant spitting from its beak.
Caark!
it sounded again,
making Kailar jump. He approached, half-thinking he might kill it anyway just for having his sleep disturbed. But he relented and
merely blew the snow away, as much as he could remove by snorting anyway.

The raven shook its head. One eye swiveled forward. “Oh, perfect,” it sneered. “That’s all I needed. Stale seal breath from a snow-shuffling lump of potbellied fur. Let me go, you squinty-eyed piece of …” The insults went on and on, but Kailar was tired — and the blizzard was beginning to increase in strength. As the first
cold spicules pinged his snout, he remembered some advice his mother had given him. “When you can’t sleep, imagine your ears are filling with snow. Count the flakes and sleep will take you.” Kailar settled down again.

“
What
?” screeched the bird.

Tomorrow, or however long it took to wake, he would free the bird’s legs and they would search for Ingavar —

“Lemming brain!” it spat.

— if he hadn’t
rolled over and flattened it by then.

One flake, two flakes, three flakes …