Icefire (3 page)

Lorel

 

David’s eyes blinked open in surprise.

“Any luck?” asked Bergstrom. He reached over and took the carving back.

David shook his head. “Erm, no. Sorry.” Lorel? What was
that
supposed to mean? Before he could search his mind for an answer, the ring of an alarm broke into the silence.

With the tip of one finger, Bergstrom snapped the
pocket watch shut. “I’m afraid that’s all we have time for, David. Still, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. You don’t mind if I ask you to see yourself out?”

David said no and stood up, a little bewildered. He hitched up his bag and turned to go. He was almost at the door before remembering to ask, “Your watch, you never told me how it saved your life?”

Bergstrom slid the watch into his pocket. “Ask me again — when you hand in your essay.”

“Oh, all right,” said David, looking disappointed. He said good-bye and slipped out quietly.

For a moment after the student had gone, Bergstrom sat back, staring at the door. Behind him the snowflakes swirled and landed, making small drifts on the thin-lipped sills. He rolled the talisman through his fingers, rubbing his thumb along the length of the shaft as if he was shaping a lump of clay. And then in a muted voice, he spoke. “Stay close to them. Follow their auma.” And what had been amorphous suddenly took shape. And the shape it made was that of a bear.

3
A S
TICKY
E
NCOUNTER

 

T
he snow fell steadily throughout the night. By morning it had covered Wayward Crescent with a generous icing, deep enough to bury a snow boot. David discovered this fascinating fact as he lay in bed, dozing. He’d been dreaming he was sitting on a drifting ice floe in the Arctic, looking across the cold, black ocean at an island shaped like a jagged tooth. As his sleepy mind pondered the significance of this, he became aware of movement behind him. Something large and heavy was scraping the ice, the sonorous thud of its swaggering steps sounding like the beat of a hollow drum.
Boom. Boom.
Closer. Closer. Until a humid snort of seal-stained breath was wetting the skin on the back of his neck. He
shuddered, far too frightened to turn. The animal opened its mouth to speak …

“Mom! If I stand
here,
right outside David’s window, I can’t see the tops of my boots
at all!”

“Aw …” groaned David as the dream bubble popped and the Arctic disappeared north once more. That was the trouble with this house, he thought. You couldn’t even have a decent dream without a loud eleven-year-old ruining it for you. With a sigh, he rolled over onto his side and promptly came nose to whiskers with Bonnington. Oh yes, and on top of the noisy child was the cat who usually slept under the blanket but had chosen to camp on the pillow that night. “Morning,” David greeted him. Bonnington opened his mouth and yawned. The resulting stench was surprisingly close to what David imagined raw seal might be like. He grimaced and got out of bed.

Slipping on his sweatshirt and a fresh pair of jeans, he drew back the curtains and assessed the weather. The garden was truly covered. In the center of the
lawn, the long brown stem of the Pennykettles’ bird feeder was the only spike of color to have survived the fall. Icicles were hanging off the roof of the shed. The rock garden looked like a small ski slope. David shivered and clicked his tongue. Winter had never been his favorite season.

“What do you think?” he said, rubbing out a small patch of condensation so Gadzooks had a clearer sight of things. The special dragon chewed his pencil in silence. David hurred against the glass, and in the canvas so created he wrote the word “Lorel.” “What does it mean?” he muttered, watching a tiny rivulet of water dribble through the
o
until it resembled the planet Saturn. He pressed a finger to its center and at once a large belt of snow came sheeting past the window, landing with a
whump
on the garbage can outside. David jumped back with a frightened start, almost treading on Bonnington’s tail. From the Dragons’ Den above, he thought he heard the echo of a gentle
hrrr.
Snowballing dragons. Hilarious, not.

Dragging a comb through his mop of brown hair, he
followed Bonnington into the kitchen — and almost tripped over Lucy in the process. “Hey, get out of the way,” he fussed. “What are you doing down there, anyway?” She was kneeling on the kitchen floor, digging around in the bottom of the freezer.

“Nothing,” she said, jumping up and slamming the freezer door shut. She leaned back against it, pushing her hands into her fawn-colored car coat. Dirty little puddles of thawing snow were leeching from the soles of her bright red boots. “Will you come into the garden and help me build a snowman?”

“I’m having breakfast,” David muttered, brushing past.
What’s she up to?
he wondered.
Is she hiding something? In the freezer?
There was only one way to find out. “Oh, I meant to tell you, Luce, if you look on the bookshelf in my room you’ll find a little present from Sophie.”

That did it. Lucy was gone in a flash.

In another flash, David was down on his knees and pulling out the bottom drawer of the freezer. It was loosely packed with frozen veggies. But in a space at
the back behind the bags was a gray plastic box with a pale blue lid. On top of the box, there sat a dragon.

David frowned. He knew this creature. Its name was Gruffen and it usually sat on a shelf just inside the Dragons’ Den where it was supposed to guard the doorway. But what was a guard dragon doing in the freezer? What exactly did the Pennykettles have in that box? A remnant of dragonkind, perhaps? A fragment of scale or tooth or claw? The thought both excited him and made him shiver. Wouldn’t
that
be something to present to Dr. Bergstrom: organic evidence of dragon life.

He picked Gruffen up to move him aside — and that was his first mistake. Immediately, his fingertips began to burn. It was a cold fire rather than a flame, of course, but the principal effect was identical: pain. As David let out an inflated whimper that seemed to stretch across several seconds, the stupidity of his actions dawned on him. Gruffen’s surface temperature was the same as the freezer: zero degrees Fahrenheit! That alone was enough to cause blistering and
frostbite, but the secondary effect was even worse: He couldn’t let Gruffen go. The difference in temperature between the dragon’s cold scales and David’s warm skin had caused his fingers to bond to the glaze.

Heat. He needed a source of heat. He had to get Gruffen off, and quickly. He reached for the hot tap over the sink and was just about to turn it when a voice screeched: “No!”

Liz swept in, casting a scowl at the open freezer. “Run
cold
water. Hot will crack him.” And using a dish towel to support Gruffen’s body, she pushed them under a slow, cold stream.

“What’s happening?” asked Lucy, running in. She had a glossy-backed wildlife book in one hand and a pretty little listening dragon in the other. She gasped in horror at the sight of Gruffen taking a shower.

David’s face turned bright cherry red. Caught dragon-handed. This was bad. “I was moving him to get to the, erm, broccoli, that’s all.”

“Broccoli? For breakfast? That’s a new one, David.”

“No, I was planning … a surprise meal.”

“He wasn’t,” said Lucy. “He was looking at the —” She bit her tongue and went to the freezer. “It’s all right, Mom. Gruffen guarded it properly.”

“Good. Bring the box over here, would you.”

“But —?”

“Lucy, do as I say. I want to show our inquisitive tenant what’s in it. If I don’t, his curiosity will never be satisfied and he’ll only cause more distress to my dragons.” With a gentle tug she separated Gruffen from David’s fingers and placed him safely on the table. Lucy fetched the box and gave it to her mom. “Thank you. OK, are you ready?”

David nodded.

“One quick peek, then it goes back.” “Mom, are you sure?”

“Quite sure,” said Liz. And she lifted the lid. A fine wisp of icy vapor rose like a genie into the kitchen. From all around the house came a gentle
hrrr.

David gulped and leaned his body forward.

Inside the box was a glistening snowball.

4
B
REAKFAST
N
EWS

 

A
snowball?” he said, looking cheated. In actual fact it was more like a lump of off-white ice cream, frozen so hard it had grown a few extra icy ridges.

“Not just
any
old snowball,” said Lucy. “Mom’s kept it forever, since she was little.” She dug around in a batch of papers in a letter rack and pulled out a small square photograph. “That’s Mom. When she was eight.”

“Wow,” David laughed. “She looks just like you.” Liz was dressed in a parka and snow boots, with a matching red hat with a pom-pom, scarf, and gloves. She was holding the snowball out at arm’s length as if she had caught a falling star. “Sweet,” he said, propping
the picture up against the toaster. “So why have you kept it all this time?”

Liz marched across the kitchen and put the box away. “We all keep little reminders of our childhood. You have your teddy bear; I have my snowball.”

“It’s nothing to do with the dragons, then?”

Liz looped back her hair and looked at him hard.

“I only wondered because Lucy said they liked snow.”

Lucy changed the subject. “Mom, Sophie’s given me a book about hedgehogs.”

“Very nice,” said Liz, and cast her eye upon the dragon that Lucy had brought in. “What’s Grace doing here?”

David’s mood became suddenly glum. “As of last night, I’m her keeper.”

Lucy looked up from the pages of her book. “Why has Sophie given her dragon to you?”

“Because Sophie has a new job,” he said tautly, “and where she’s going, she can’t take Grace.”

“Oh?” said Liz, looking concerned. “Is this what she wanted to tell you last night?”

“Yes. She’s leaving the Wildlife Hospital and going to work with elephants for a while.”

“In a zoo?” piped Lucy. “Mom, can we go?”

“Lucy, shush a minute. Go on, David.”

“No, not a zoo. A game reserve — in Africa.”

“What?” Lucy closed the book in shock. “How’s she going to come and see us from there?”

“She isn’t,” David told her bluntly, spilling cornflakes into a dish. “She’ll be gone for eight months. She flew out early this morning. She had to make a snap decision about the job, which is why she didn’t come and say good-bye. She wanted you to have the hedgehog book in case you — we — ever find Spikey.”

Lucy’s bottom lip dropped a little. “Africa?” she mumbled as it finally sank in.

Meow,
went Bonnington, springing onto a chair. His plaintive cry seemed to sum up the mood.

“Well, that’s a bit of a blow,” said Liz. “But if she’s gone, she’s gone. That’s all there is to it.”

David sighed and ate a cornflake.

“Come on, eight months isn’t all that long.” Liz
gave his arm a gentle squeeze. “The time will fly right by, you’ll see. What you need is an occupation.”

“I’ve got an occupation; I’m a geography student.”

“I meant right now, to take your mind off things. After breakfast you can clear the patio.”

“What?!”

“And you can cook dinner, too — as you were planning a surprise meal. Just because your poor heart’s broken doesn’t mean to say you’re excused for Gruffen.”

“Him?
Cook?”
Lucy looked on, horrified. “We’ll all be poisoned.”

Pride if nothing else forced David to say, “I happen to make a very good lasagna.”

A-row?
went Bonnington.

“Not from
Chunky Chunks.
Sorry, Bonners.”

“OK, that’s settled, then,” Liz said briskly. “It’ll make a nice change, someone else making dinner.” She patted David’s arm. “The apron is yours. Something with broccoli would be nice …”

The snow on the patio was soft and unbroken and came up in huge, meringue-like blocks. David launched load after load onto the lawn. Lucy, trying hard to build her snowman, squealed every time a wedge came near her. But she complained only once, when David pretended that he’d seen a hedgehog and hit her with a chunk that exploded on her head and showered down into the hood of her coat. She packed a snowball and tried to retaliate. It missed and thudded into David’s window.

“That reminds me,” he said as she blew Gadzooks an apologetic kiss. “What’s happened to G’reth?”

“He’s in the Dragons’ Den, being kilned,” she replied.

David glanced at the upstairs rooms. In the window of Liz’s pottery studio, a dozen or so dragons were peering out. “Why
do
they like the snow?” he asked again. “You must have some idea?”

Lucy shook her head. “Will you help me now?”

David rested his shovel and joined her on the lawn. “You have to pack it tight, like this,” he said,
compressing the snow with several hard pats, “then roll it around and let the loose snow stick.” And off he went, up and down the lawn, till the ball was so big it needed both of them to push it. Lucy made a head and plonked it on. She was about to set off to find twigs for the arms, and stones for the eyes and nose and mouth, when the sky grew dark and it started to rain.

“Oh dear, snowman abandoned,” said David.

Lucy didn’t argue. She was tired and complaining that her feet were wet. David sent her back to the house while he made a detour back to the shed, in order to put the shovel away.

As he was dropping the latch on the shed, he thought he heard something moving on the lawn. Just the faintest swish of snow, but enough to make him turn his head. The lawn was covered with the interlocking tracks of human footprints. But toward the top and center were some larger marks, certainly not made by human feet. Picking up a rock, he walked nervously toward them, his heart beginning to beat a little faster. He was a meter or two from the first indent when he
realized they were nothing more than a small arc of stepping-stones peeping through the snow. He laughed at his stupidity and tossed the rock aside. For one ridiculous second he thought he’d seen the tracks of … what? Prints like that could be produced only by an animal of some considerable size, and as far as David knew, no one had ever yet reported polar bears roaming the yards of Scrubbley….