The Last Dragon Chronicles: The Fire Ascending (28 page)

danger of changing her timepoints.

At that moment, Stygg wandered into the barn. “Squir’l,” he muttered, and picked up a lump of rotting wood. With a thwack that made the barn walls rattle, he brought the wood down and tried to squash me flat. Splinters flew in all directions, even into Gwilanna’s crib. I was lucky to escape unharmed. Stygg was groggy and his aim was poor. I avoided the hit and found enough energy to skitter away and hide in the damp straw among

the mice. But I knew I could never take a

risk like that again. When he hauled Grella off to do Griss’s bidding, I went to the tapestry and pulled every thread of grey I could find, gradually working the whole squirrel free.

When Grella returned and saw the

piece ruined she fell to her knees, broke down and cried. Griss beat her in the

morning for being late and for damaging a precious cloth (in my haste I had made a hole in it). She told Grella this was her final warning. One more slip and the babby died. Maybe the ungrateful mother, too. Once again, Grella swallowed her pride. She offered an apology. This would not happen again. She lifted her head and saw me from the corner of her cherry

black eye. That was a terrible moment. After four months in captivity she was barely recognisable as the girl I’d met in Taan. They had beaten the beauty out of her and she looked no better than Griss at

her worst.
 
Why?
 
her face asked me.
 
Why did you do that?
 
There was still a thread of grey wool caught between my claws. At the risk of threatening the timeline again I sent her a signal I hoped would be of comfort. I lifted a paw and held it as near to my heart as I could. Grella’s gaze narrowed. She made a fist of one hand and

touched it to her breast. I let the squirrel chirrup quietly. She blinked in confusion and cried a little more. Perhaps she thought her wits had deserted her. For how, even in a time of dragons, could a

squirrel have known the age-old salute of

Taan—?

“You were lucky,” said Joseph, when I reappeared on the librarium window. So much time had passed in Nomaad; in Co:pern:ica, we’d barely paused to breathe.

I looked at the stars. There was more of

Grella’s story to see.

“Did I do too much, showing her thegreeting?”

A daisy appeared in his hands. Hecaressed each petal with the back of hisfinger, making them lift and slightlychange colour. “She will believe for awhile that magicks were at work. Thenshe will begin to question her sanity. Thenshe will tell herself a squirrel is a squirrel

and that squirrels have a habit of holding one paw in a certain fashion. You did no harm. But there will come a moment when

your limits will be tested. And then, Agawin, what will be, will be.”

I resolved to be stronger. I would not tease Grella with hope again. “Tell me this: why doesn’t Gwilanna age?”

To my surprise he said, “She does. She is. There are just no physical signs of it. She’s aging rapidly – and growing, too. Far quicker than a normal child.”

“Because of the unicorn auma she was

born with?”

“Yes. She is fully aware of her development, but she cannot break the curse Hilde put on her.”

“Hilde did this? To her own child?

Why?” If memory served me correctly, Gwilanna blamed Voss for her wrinkled

skin.

Joseph looped his hair behind his earon one side, reminding me a little of hissister, Lucy. “If you were to visit thetimepoints of Hilde you would see that Hilde tried to prevent Gwilanna beingborn. Too late she realised that Voss had

poisoned her with darkened auma and that she, the mother, would perish giving birth. If Grella had heard the sibyl’s curse she might not have rescued Gwilanna from the cave. Hilde condemned the child to grow old in a sack of wrinkled baby skin, until someone showed her she was beautiful.”

But who would do that? The child was

as ugly as a common wart. “How did she

become an adult?”

“The fire stars will show you. And

there is something you’ve missed.”

I turned to look at him.

He threw the daisy into the timeline andan image of Grella appeared before us. She was bending over Gwilanna’s crib,making baby talk and waggling a raggedydoll. She had made the doll from

sackcloth stuffed with straw and dressed it

in a Taan-style robe. Gwilanna gurgled happily and reached for the toy. Grella had given it a beautiful face and attached red strands of wool for the hair. “This is

your kachina, your spirit doll,” said Grella. “It will guard your auma and be your guide. Are you going to say hello?
 
Hello, Gwilanna
.” She waved the doll’s

arm. “When you’re old enough we’ll give

her a real Taan name.”

“Guh… ” said the baby, taking the toy and shaking it as if she might bring it to life.

“Yes,” said Grella. “Guh, like a dragon… ”

The sound of Stygg clomping out of the shack stopped her happy chatter dead. She snatched the doll back and pushed it under a pillow she had made from a hollowed log. She looked anxiously over her shoulder. Her eyelids were puffy and purple-coloured. Sores had formed in patches on her scalp where her hair had been continually severed. A red split that refused to heal marked where Stygg had broken her cheek.

The image faded away.

“You must prepare yourself for greaterhorrors,” said Joseph, noticing a tearrolling out of my eye.

“Why did you show me this?”

“For the doll.”

“What of it?”

“It’s important,” he said. “There is more you should know. You remember Rune?”

Grella’s noble father.

“Four times she took a baby to the

border to show to him.”

To prove the child was normal or facehis wrath. I remembered Gwilanna tellingme about it. “She made an arrangementwith a woman from Horste and showed

Rune that child in place of the sibyl.”

“Yes,” he said. “She was afraid that

Rune would kill Gwilanna because the

baby was wrinkled and refused to grow. It was not long after their fourth meeting when Stygg ran across her near Yolen’s grave. Remember this as you progress through the Is.” He moved his hands and Grella’s stars sparkled in front of me again.

Once more, I went back as the squirrel.

Grella did as she’d promised. She grew less rebellious and settled into her servile

role. She did not argue with Griss any more or complain about the baby’s lips being scalded. She cooked. She skivvied. She mended cloth. More than once she had

to fend off Stygg’s attentions – which was easy, given that his mother was near. On

the surface, she seemed to accept her confinement,  and  I  feared  she  had conceded all hope of escape. Then, one night, she began to sing Gwilanna a brand new lullaby. It told of a hero come to slay an ogre: a toothless beast with very little hair. I soon realised the ogre was Griss and the hero could only be Rune, Grella’s father. It occurred to me then, as it must have done to her, that her promise to show her baby to the Taan would be broken – which meant Rune would be forced to

come looking for her. I noticed her scratching fresh marks on the barn, marks recording the quarters of the moon. She was counting down the time to the next winterfold and the anniversary of their regular meetings. But Rune’s chances of

finding her in Nomaad were slim. It was untamed country with no set paths. Grella, however, had an answer to this. It lay, of course, in her needle and thread. With the tools of the Taan tribe at her disposal she had seen an opening that avarice had blinded her captors to. A picture could be more than a thing to look at. It might conceal a message. Or a signature.

Or a map.

I watched her carefully. The eremitts did not. Grella noted where the sun rose in

the mornings and where it came to rest at night. She counted the trees and studied every possible curve of the land. She mentally copied down the layout of the stars. She picked out where the villhund barked and in which direction the spring

birds flew. She studied the shack from

every angle. The days grew shorter. The nights blew cold. Winterfold approached the land again.

And  Grella’s  tapestries  began  to

change.

They moved away from dragons to more ‘homely’ scenes. Woodland animals. General landscapes. She even drew an image of Stygg chopping wood. Griss complained at length about this. Who would want to trade a tapestry of Stygg?! she demanded. Or a river running through an empty field? Or the shack poking through  a  thicket  of  trees?
 
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
 
Each picture cost the girl another wallop. Grella accepted it all. She simply replied that in her experience

people liked views of things they could relate to, not necessarily things they’d never seen. Who among the Nomaads didn’t chop wood?

To the eremitt’s surprise, the pictures
 
did
 
trade. Stygg exchanged the river for a pair of old boots and brought home a saddle cloth in place of the shack. The chopping scene, however, he saved for himself. He told his mother he’d traded it

for apples, but the truth was he’d actually stolen the fruit. Later, he went to the barn and shyly revealed the tapestry to Grella. To his dismay, she was angry with him.

“Go   back,”   she   hissed   at  him, scratching her ankle. The link around her leg had rubbed down the flesh. Blue ulcers were beginning to form underneath.

“Back?” he said, puzzled. “But Stygg

like thissun. Ain’t never seen no show o’

me, afore. You makee look strong.” He flexed his muscles till the blood vessels

strained.

“Sell it, Stygg. Or your mother will be angry.”

“Bah, Muther.” He flapped a hand. He tucked the tapestry into his robe. (He had a fine robe now, made by Grella. She’d even inscribed it with her own mark.) “She don’t be missin’ one nibbly bit o’ cloth.”

“Sell it, Stygg, or I’ll tell her you’ve got

it.”

That cast a dim shadow over his mood.

He was about to respond when he saw meperched on the water trough, watching.

“Darned squir’l,” he muttered. “Al’ays round ’ere.” He whipped out a knife, but I was under the trough before he could advance and from there up into the rafters of the barn. He thumped a post in frustration and blew aside his hair. He

rolled the blade in his callused hand, then walked to the log pile and tipped it at Gwilanna.

“Stygg? What are you doing?” Grella’s chain rattled in tune to her panic. She hobbled towards him as fast as she could.

He stopped her at arm’s length and heldher by the throat.

“This babby be right unnat’rul,” hesaid. He tapped the blade against the lice-infested shawl. Gwilanna made gurglingnoises. Her hands reached up for the shiny

metal. Stygg allowed her pudgy fingers to grip it, not caring that the baby might cut herself. “Why don’t it grow? You bin ’ere ten moons an’ it ain’t spread a toe.”

“She lacks food,” said Grella. “Let her be. I beg you.” She pushed against his hand. He held her back, squeezing a glugging sound from her mouth. Wisely, she relaxed and didn’t try to fight him. “All right, you win. Keep the tapestry. I don’t care.”

“If I slit ’er,” he muttered, “what wud I

see?”

“You’d see her die,” said Grella. “Please, let her be.”

Stygg pulled the knife back and held it vertical. A trickle of blood ran down the

steel. “Black,” he said. “There be night in

’er veins.”

“What   have   you   done?”   Grella

squealed.

“Nowt,” he grumbled. “It jus’ be a fingernick. Weren’t my doin’. Babby med its own mark on the blade.”

At last Grella wrestled clear of his

grip. Pushing him aside, she lifted Gwilanna out of the logs. The child had a minor cut on one finger. It was oozing a bubble of dark, dark blood.

“Why izzit
 
black
—?” Stygg muttered again. He twisted the blade in front of his face. He put it under his nose and sniffed.

Gwilanna started to cry.

“Be quietin’ that!” a voice shouted from the shack.

“Leave us,” said Grella, cradling the

child. She looked grimly at Stygg, urging him to go.

He sneered and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Suddenly, he pointed at a piece of cloth sticking out from under one corner of the shawl. “Whassat?”

“Nothing. A wrap to keep her warm.” Grella tried casually to tuck the cloth back.

But Stygg, for all his idiot ways, wasn’tgoing to be put off easily. He stepped upand tugged at the swaddling materials. “Thas a tap’stry, I reckun. Show it to Stygg.”

“No,” said Grella, struggling with himnow. “No. It belongs to Gwilanna. Getaway.”