Rain & Fire (10 page)

Aunty Gwyneth clicked her fingers.

Gretel, sitting on the ledge of the wardrobe, opened her throat and released a jet of fire. There was a smell of burning and the green ground wire in the core of the light cord sizzled red-hot and duly snapped. The cord lurched, jerking G'reth another millimeter or two toward the mass of rubble littering the floorboards. Though his wings were bound (by Aunty Gwyneth's
industrial-strength hairpins) he nevertheless managed to swing his head upward. All that remained of the electrical cord now was a strand from the outer sheath of white and the light blue neutral wire. With a whimpering
hrrr?
he looked toward Gretel. She blew a tart wisp of smoke and looked away.

 

Getting no useful information from G'reth, Gwilanna decides to take a sneakier approach and aid David in his quest to get to the Arctic, hoping that he will discover more on her behalf. To this end she fluences an editor to not only accept David's squirrel book, but also to publish his polar bear saga. Zanna wins the essay competition, but David can now afford to pay his own way for the field trip, using the money due to him for writing his books.

But what about Liz and the egg?

Liz is semi-comatose while the egg is going through the hatching process. The boy that Liz has been told to expect turns out to be a male dragon, the first “natural” dragon to be born in modern times. Zanna reaches
out to touch it, and is scarred by Gwilanna's fingernails with three jagged lines which never heal. Under cover of this distraction, the dragon escapes through the open window and, aided by G'reth, flies to Bergstrom's rooms. David, having overcome Gwilanna, follows with Zanna and Gretel. Gretel, by now, has swapped her loyalties to become Zanna's dragon.

At Rutherford House, where Bergstrom lives, Zanna discovers that the young natural dragon, whom she calls Grockle, has been born without fire. She is upset by this, even more so when he turns to stone in her arms, and totally distraught when she finds out that David suspected this might happen, but failed to warn her.

Zanna disappears, refusing to speak to David. Although he tries to find her, he has no luck. The days pass and eventually, just before David is due to go to the Arctic, the contract from the publisher arrives.

 

“Sign,” Lucy urged him.

But Liz raised a hand. “Wait. Have you read through this?”

“Sort of. It's just … legalities and stuff.”

“Exactly. You ought to know what you're signing. Perhaps Henry could check it for you?”

“It's all right,” said David. “It's just boring blurb. Don't spoil my big moment. Pen, someone?”

Lucy grabbed one off the countertop and handed it over.

“Signed … David … Rain,”
David muttered, scratching his name on the line marked “author.”

 

David has no time to do anything further — his ride to the airport is about to arrive and he therefore asks Liz to mail the contract to the publisher for him.

 

Liz picked it up off the kitchen table. For a moment she stood there reading a chunk, then she began to quickly flick through it. At the final page, she stopped and stared. “Lucy, you know that pen, the one David used to sign his name. Does it leak?”

Lucy drew a few lines with it, on her hand. “A bit, yes.”

“As much as that?” Liz turned the page around.

From the lower curves of David's signature, three long trails of ink had formed.

Lucy tilted her head … and shuddered. “They look like Zanna's scratch.”

 

Was Lucy right to shudder? What effect will these lines called “the mark of Oomara” have on Zanna and on
David? Will David find the secret of Gawain's fire tear, as he wished? And if so, will he live to regret it?

The mark of Oomara

David makes it to the field trip, with Zanna by his side again, and continues writing his book. Things are beginning to get more and more complex and confusing for him, though, as he realizes that once again, his writing is mirroring real life. This leads him into questioning his beliefs about the world and his role in it, especially when something called a fire star becomes more and more apparent in the sky, and this portal is due to open a way between worlds.

David has been writing that Gwilanna is determined to raise the natural dragon, Gawain, from a mountaintop on an island in the Arctic called the Tooth of Ragnar. This mountain is where Gawain cried his fire tear and turned to stone in ages past. Guinevere, the woman who caught his tear, had allegedly agreed to
trade it with Gwilanna for a daughter. However, the trade never took place.

The child, Gwendolen, was brought up by Gwilanna, but eventually turned her back on the sibyl and went to live among the bears, earning their love and respect. Gwilanna has always hated the bears for this, and is therefore prepared to use them selfishly for her own devious ends.

David writes that Gwilanna has promised to heal a bear named Ingavar, who has been shot, if he will retrieve a certain polar bear tooth for her. David carries this talisman around his neck on a cord. Gwilanna tells Ingavar to kill him when he has succeeded.

David's story finally comes to a head when he and Zanna are faced with Ingavar at a trading post in Chamberlain. Fortunately, Ingavar is tranquilized and taken away to “polar bear prison.” The tooth, however, is lost in the melee, but is picked up by Tootega, the Inuit guide who works at the research base where David and Zanna are staying.

Zanna, by now aware that David has the power to write “fact” rather than simply fiction, is none too happy about this state of affairs.

 

“This is just too spooky,” said Zanna. “Read the story, Dr. Bergstrom.
Now.”

Bergstrom glanced at the open laptop, weaving colored pipework on its flat gray screen.

“No, I'm destroying it,” David said. He stepped forward and moved the mouse. Bergstrom immediately clamped his arm.

“You have a contract, remember?”

David looked into the scientist's eyes. It wasn't clear whether Bergstrom was referring to Apple Tree Publishing or the personal promise David had made him to keep on writing about the Arctic. Even so, David said, “I'm wiping it.” And he dragged the file into the computer's trash can and emptied it.

This was still not enough for Zanna. “Defrag the disk.”

“What?”

“I don't want it in memory, even in bits. Run a defrag over it. Now.”

“But —?”

“Just
do it,
David.”

“Be my guest,” said Bergstrom, wheeling his chair away.

Silently furious, David ran the program that would rearrange the disk so all the files were contiguous and any scraps of deleted files were eliminated. “There. Happy now?”

 

Unbeknown to David, however, Bergstrom has previously printed out a copy — but to what purpose? Anders Bergstrom is definitely not what he first appeared to be. A lecturer, yes, but much, much more than that, for not many professors can shape-shift between man and polar bear … or possess a small dragon not unlike those that Liz makes, who can Travel through space and time, also shape-shift, and become invisible to boot….

Meanwhile, back at Wayward Crescent, Gwilanna has abducted Lucy to be a “Guinevere clone” to aid in
the raising of Gawain. Lucy has been taken to a cave on the Tooth of Ragnar, where she is to be held for the next three months, until the fire star is in its correct alignment. While there, she finds an isoscele, the last scale of a dragon's tail, belonging to Gawain, which she hides from Gwilanna.

After a frantic phone call from Liz, informing him of Lucy's fate, David returns home early from the Arctic. Zanna remains behind and, with Tootega, helps release the tranquilized Ingavar back onto the ice. Gwilanna, in raven form, creates a blizzard, hoping to steal the tooth at last, but her plans backfire when three polar bears arrive and carry Zanna off with them.

While all this is happening, G'reth, the wishing dragon, is still trying to fulfill his duty and find the whereabouts of Gawain's fire tear for David. Rather like David, his investigations are about to take him far beyond what he might have expected. He manages to Travel outside the boundaries of the known Universe and there meets up with a young entity from a race called the Fain.

 

He had a startling impression of emptiness now. No light. No color. No temperature. No smell. And yet he
sensed
he was not alone.

He was not.

He felt it enter through the tip of his tail, lift the scales along his spine, and whisper through the tunnels of his spiky ears. Intelligence, finding its level, like water. A youthful, happy being, fusing with his auma.

What are you?
it said, tickling his thoughts.

What are you?
G'reth asked it.

I am Fain,
it said.
Shall we commingle?

 

The Fain are thought-beings who have no physical form of their own, but can merge or “commingle” with any other entity, sharing their host's body. They have a long and benevolent historical connection with dragons, and their ultimate aspiration is to merge with one. G'reth is transformed by this experience, returning back to the known Universe along with the young Fain.

By the time G'reth gets home, Liz has taken Bonnington, the Pennykettles' cat, to the vet. It is not good news. Bonnington is dying. His plight does not appear to be helped by drinking some melted icefire water. There is one beneficial outcome from this sad news, however. Grockle, the young natural dragon who turned to stone at the end of
Icefire
, has been brought back to the Dragons' Den, where he rests in a basket of straw. With the aid of the young Fain being and a drop of Bonnington's saliva, the Pennykettle dragons bring Grockle back to full life. Once again, Grockle escapes through an open window.

David asks Gadzooks for help to find Grockle.

 

[Gadzooks] scribbled something fiercely across the pad. Gretel and G'reth leaned in to take a look, exchanging a puzzled
hrrr
at what they saw. David closed his eyes to picture the message. It surprised him too. A name:

 

 

He whispered it aloud.

As usual, he had no idea what it meant (at first). Insight would come a little later, from Liz. Right then, however, she was incapable of speech.

She had just fainted in a heap on the floor.

 

David discovers that Arthur is the love of Liz's life. Many years earlier, he was tricked by Gwilanna into breaking off the relationship and has had no contact with Liz since. Eventually, David traces Arthur to a place called Farlowe Island, where he has become a monk, changing his name to Brother Vincent. Arthur has also been writing fact as fiction, using a claw belonging to Gawain as a pen. Grockle, seeking the claw, has been drawn to the island and hidden there by Arthur. Arthur's secret is given away to the abbot by one of the other monks, Brother Bernard, who later regrets his actions, as Grockle is captured, held in a stable block, and tortured.