The Last Dragon Chronicles #4: The Fire Eternal (7 page)

“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 planet, 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.

T
he 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 heart.
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….

… Yet, she did not perish. Poisoned by the magic of a raven’s bile and further tormented by unresolved grief, she made her house at the bottom of the sea, where she became the goddess of
the ocean, raging at men through violent storms….

All of this Avrel, the ice bear, knew as Sedna came up to speak with Ingavar. And his brave heart beat a little quicker. Sedna had domain over the sea mammals
of the North. Every living creature that preyed upon seals relied upon her grace to give some up for hunting. If she refused, bears would starve and be no more. Avrel had no doubt that Ingavar
would command the goddess’s respect, but when he saw his Nanukapik walk into a mist and walk out of it again in the shape of a man, he became agitated and concerned. How could this be? How could the Lord of the Ice be so changed? Avrel shook his head and looked again. The man was dressed in furs, like the Inuit. But he carried no spear or weapon of any kind.

The sea goddess dribbled water from
her mouth. In a voice that caught in her throat she croaked, “Who is this who calls me from my house of bones?”

“I am the hunter Oomara,” said the figure.

Oomara. The enemy of countless bears. Avrel snorted in confusion. Was this treachery or genius? He trod on his paws.
Have faith,
he told himself.
Watch and wait.

“Oo-ma-ra?” said Sedna. “Walking with a
bear?”

“A time of change is upon us,”
he said.

She spat at him, covering his boots with algae. “I have no fingers and my hair is like
weeds.”

“I have come with a comb for your hair, oh goddess.”

Sedna slithered back. Her hideous body squelched at the join between human and fish.

The figure of Oomara stepped boldly forward. In his hand was a finely serrated shell. He plunged it into Sedna’s hair. She quivered in relief as its spines
dislodged sea maggots, sand beetles, and kelp.

Avrel, looking on, saw purpose in this now. Had a bear tried to rake its claws through Sedna’s hair, she would have thought herself attacked by it. He swallowed hard and continued to watch, remembering all he would have need to Tell.

“Sedna is soothed,” Oomara said, working the comb with skill through her tangles.

She gurgled with pleasure, swaying
gently. Her crusted eyelids crunched as she closed them. Yellow bile oozed from the side of her mouth.

“Her fury is diminished,” Oomara sang.

“She is beautiful,” Sedna whispered to a long-lost reflection of her earthly mind.

“Very beautiful,” he said. “Will she help those who please her? Will she help Oomara, in his greatest hunt?”

“He needs seal?” she said.

“More than seal,” he replied.
He pulled tighter, raking out dead black fish skins.

Sedna shuddered with joy. “Tell me, hunter, what is it you seek?”

“Something my arms cannot reach,” he said. “It lies on the ocean bed, in a place once called the Tooth of Ragnar.”

“A sacred place,” Sedna said guardedly. She pulled away slightly. Her tail slapped the ice.

Oomara bowed. “Is Oomara not worthy? Does he not comb well?”

Sedna
touched the stump of her hand to her hair. “I cannot feel it! Or see it!” she spat ungratefully.

“Your beauty is here, in my eyes,” he said.

Sedna looked and saw the woman she had been long ago. A fine tear rolled down her plain brown cheek. “But I cannot stroke my hair,” she whimpered.

“Then swim to the seabed and bring me what I need, and I will give you fingers, goddess.”

“And what do you
need, oh hunter?” she hissed. “The eye of the dragon, Gawain,” he said.