The Last Dragon Chronicles: The Fire Ascending (34 page)

“You are funny,” she said, laughing.

And from nowhere she had a sweater in

her hands, compressed and ready to slip

over my head.

“Where’s Arthur?”  I  was   almost

panting.

“In the kitchen, at his food bowl, where

he usually is.”

“His food bowl?”

She shrugged. “A cat has to eat.”

She stepped forward and drowned mein wool for a second.

“Arthur’s a
 
cat
?!”

She pushed my hair from my eyes as Istretched my arms straight. “Four legs, alot of whiskers and a curly tail. Still blindin one eye. You’ve been having thosetimeline dreams again, haven’t you?”

I didn’t know what to say. Mymemories of Alexa and Yolen, and the

seer’s apprentice I had been so long ago, were fading away like lights in fog. This… altered reality… seemed to be all that mattered now. But one name was still

very prominent in my head.

“Muh–” I began, then changed my mind.

This was Elizabeth, not Zanna (and where

was
 
she
 
now?) “Grand…  ma… ?”

“Hmm?”

At least I’d got that right. “Tell meabout Gwilanna.” “Great
 
Aunt
 
Gwilanna,”she tutted. “She’ll think you impolite ifyou refer to her so bluntly. What abouther?”

“Is she alive?”

“I beg your pardon?”

There was a fluttering sound and a

firebird flew in. It landed on the table

beside the sculpture. It was not as big as Gideon or any I’d seen before, more the size and colour of a Pennykettle dragon. A stunning shade of green with turquoise ear tufts.
 
Rrrh?
 
it went, through its elongated

beak.

Elizabeth said, “It’s all right, Gryffen. Agawin seems to have stepped out of thewrong side of his sleep chamber thismorning. You can go back to your tree.”

Rrrh
, went ‘Gryffen’. And he zippedout again.

Elizabeth took my hand and swung it. “Would you like to see a counsellor? Youseem to be on another planet thismorning.”

“Co:pern:ica?”   I   said,   a   littleuncertainly.

She blinked at me, uncertain whethershe should smile or not. “Is Co:pern:icathe world in your comix?”

This wasn’t going well. So I laughedout loud (as convincingly as I could). “Only joking. Got you, Grandma.”

“Phew,” she sighed, falsely flapping ahand. “You nearly had me worried therefor  a  moment.  You  and  that  big

imagination of yours.”

“Sorry.” I tightened my hand around hers. “So… you were saying – about Aunty Gwilanna?”

“Well, she’s on her way. That’s all I can tell you. I had a :com yesterday to say she’s… close. I hope I get this finished in

time.”

“In time for what?”

“Her birth day, silly.”

“Sorry,” I said again. “Brain’s gone to sleep. I’m a bit…  cold now.” Colder than she knew. Almost freezing in terror. Something to do with the way she’d said ‘birth day’.

She slipped her arms around me. “Come here,” she whispered, giving me a hug. She turned me to face the sculpture. “What do you think? Coming along, isn’t it?”

“Mmm,” I said. About a quarter of the ice block now had form, but I didn’t have any idea what it was. At the risk of being sent to a ‘counsellor’, I said, “So… ?”

“It’s a gathering of angels,” she said. “I’ve got a name for it, too. A really good name. Do you want to hear it?”

More than she knew.

She squeezed herself together, in theway people do when they’re pleased withthemselves. She was so very pretty whenshe spread her mouth and smiled. “In theold tongue it would translate as ‘the firethat melts no ice’.”

“And in the new tongue?” I tentatively

asked.

She walked forward and unveiled a

temporary plaque.

On it was written ‘ISENFIER’.

3. Capture

It wasn’t just men and wolves. On the longtrek down to the shores of the sea, Davidsaw birds, rodents and even a wild deerdisplaying signs of the darkling template. Some of them had wings (the deer didnot), but those that did – like a mouse hespotted   turning   worried   circles   –appeared to have no use for them or noidea what the wings were for. Manyanimals lay dead or rotting in the foliage,all of which was losing its shades ofgreen. Like the animals, the plants werephysically changing. He saw leaveswithout symmetry. Roots knotted aboveground. Flowers that stank of something

unholy. As the party reached the edge of the wood, a long grey vine with helical nodules snaked down from the trees and

fixed itself around Rosa’s neck. She

screamed and was heard by Tam, who galloped forward and chopped the vine through with a knife.

“Take the rest of it off her,” Lucy said. “The Pri:magon won’t be happy if she thinks the girl’s lost any auma to the Shadow.” The nodules were oozing a gooey black fluid.

“So the Shadow got clear,” David said, “and infected everyone at Scuffenbury Hill. But why has it drawn you here? Why has it pulled you back through time… ?”

Lucy angled the unicorn towards him. “Scuffenbury,” she said. It wasn’t a

question.

He let his mouth form into a smile. “Of

course, you won’t remember the battle. Or the ‘Pri:magon’ won’t allow you to. That’s what playing with dragon claws does   for   you.   Think   back,   Lucy. Somewhere in that strangely inverted mind you’ll find a better place.” He let his gaze drop, inviting her to follow. With the toe of one boot he had scratched the number

‘42’ in the dry soil around his feet. He saw a flicker of movement in her eyes. The first hint of confusion. The first sign that he might have a chance of saving her. “Wayward Crescent,” he whispered.

She looked up fiercely. “My name is not Lucy. I have no name. I only exist to serve the Pri:magon.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, which earned

him a thwack across the head from Tam.

“No talking,” Tam said. “Move.”

By now the sea had come into view: a widespread, unsettled slate of grey, fixed between a characterless sky and land. It was raining as they made the descent. Rosa,   whose   footwear   was   barely adequate for the slippery terrain, lost her footing because of the enforced pace and had to suffer the ignominy of being slung across a shoulder and carried the rest of

the way down. On the flat, they entered what had once been a village, though, rather like the mammals with wings, the darkling people seemed to have no awareness of what to do with their

dilapidated shacks. They were moving in

clusters, scavenging for food. A whole crew of them were using their bare, clawed hands to tear at what had once

been a whale. David and Rosa were

ushered through quickly, into fishing boats oared by the men under Lucy’s command. Rosa was planted back to back against David. As the rain lashed down and the

boat struck open water, she whispered over her shoulder to him, “Where are we going?”

“The island,” David said. “I’m guessing it’s round that headland.” He nodded

across the water, even though she couldn’t see from where she was sitting.

“Can’t you do anything?”

“There are too many of them. And Tam and Lucy are still there under that…

façade. The only way to free them is to get

to Gwilanna and reverse all this.”

“Hmph. Easy as that. Remind me to brush my hair before the showdown.”

That brought an irritated sigh from his chest. “You know, you really are more like Suzanna than you realise.”

Rosa shivered and shook the wet hair

off her face. “Suzanna? Why did you call

her that?”

“It’s her name, Rosa.”

“But you
 
never
 
call her that. Why here? Why now?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I was… thinking about Alexa. And Suzanna sounds

more… ”

“Feminine?”

“Motherly.”

“Oh.” Rosa looked away, over the ocean. The boat hit a wave and bumped them apart for a second. “Do you think Alexa will be at the island?”

“I hope not. I hope she got away.”

“What about us?”

“Us?” he said, as a rower struck an elbow against his knee and growled in fury at losing his rhythm.

“You! Seven! Keep rowing,” barked Tam.

The darkling growled and heaved at the

oar.

Rosa waited for the fuss to settle then

whispered again, “We, or rather ‘they’, were at Scuffenbury Hill. David and Zanna. I know you have this ability to flit between timepoints, but what about her?

Am I going to see
 
her
? Won’t that create amassive paradox?”

“Only if you touch.”

“What happens if we do?”

“You two!” This time it was Lucyshouting. She turned, stern-faced, to Tam. “I said they weren’t to talk. Separatethem.”

“What happens if I touch her?” Rosa hissed again as Tam came forward from the back of the boat. He yanked her upright and told her to be silent. Spray from a loose wave slapped her face but her eyes met David’s and she mouthed again,
 
What happens if I touch her?

“You’ll fade from time.”

She had a moment of time to think about

that.

Then she was dragged away out of his

sight.

4. Erth

She made angels in this timeline. Angels,not dragons. Flying humans, inspired bythe firebirds, she said. She liked toexperiment with different kinds of media. Paper. Card. Strangely, not clay. Clay wasnot appropriate here, she said. She paintedthem, too. In various states of flight. Hands lifted to the sky. Soft violet in theireyes. Just like the beautiful tapestries of Taan, they hung in every room throughoutour ‘pod’. Wherever I looked, a new onewould appear. Yet I saw no signs ofbrushes or paints, even though she waswearing a paint-stained smock. Morepuzzling still, no hammer or chisel for the

Isenfier sculpture. No ‘stuff’ existed at allin the pod. Just us, the firebirds and Elizabeth’s creations. I had yet to see Arthur the cat.

On the second day, after a very longsleep, she sensed I was finding the podconfusing and asked if I’d like to use thetele:computer.

The
 
tele:computer
?

“Where is it?” I asked.

“Right here,” she said.

There, taking up the whole of one wall, was a huge screen. How, I wondered, could I have missed it?

“Watch for as long as you want to,” she said. She tousled my hair and straightened a piece just above my ear. “You know where to find me.”

As she drifted away, a gradient ofcolours swept across the screen, leavingbehind a small row of icons. I steppedforward and touched an image of a pod. Its title was simply ‘Home’.

It told me I lived at Wayward Crescent,in the ‘burrow’ of Scrubbley, ‘position’ 42. A clock with a dateline faded up. Theyear was the same as the one I’d leftbehind, right down to the nearest second (for some reason, I seemed to instinctivelyknow it).

42.

Wayward Crescent.

Scrubbley.

3:15 and 22 seconds.

Home.

Next to ‘Home’ was a flashing icon of a

planet. Blue one moment, grey the next, but not keeping to any regular pattern. The wording underneath was flickering too, between ‘Earth’ and the slight alternative, ‘Erth’. I prodded a finger.

The icon stayed grey. The screen came back with a strange message:

INFORMATION PENDING

I pressed again, trying to turn the planet

blue.

The icon stayed grey. Then flickered again. Grey.

Flicker.

Grey.

Flicker.

INFORMATION PENDING.

“Grandma,   this   isn’t  working,”  I

shouted.

I looked over my shoulder. She wasn’t

there.

But on the opposite wall, sitting on thefloor like a misplaced vase, was a browntabby cat.

“Arthur?” I said.

Brrr-up?
 
it replied, sounding peeved.

Not Arthur, then.

It flicked an ear. A triangular piece wasmissing from the shell.

“I know you,” I whispered.

N-yeh
, it burbled.

But no matter how I tried, the namewouldn’t come to me.

Suddenly, two firebirds went flyingpast, drawing my gaze away from the cat.