The Fire Chronicle (20 page)

Michael dreamed of snow. He dreamed of fields and valleys, plains and mountains, all covered in snow and stretching to the horizon. He was flying over it, floating. He was alone, but not afraid.…

A pair of giants crouched in the distance. He flew between them, passing through the teeth of a dragon.…

Then he was in a long tunnel. A red glow throbbed all about him. The heat was incredible. His skin crackled like dry paper. Each breath burned his lungs. Suddenly, he was standing beside a bubbling lake, and the heat was much, much worse. He stared at the fiery surface—

“Michael! Michael! Wake up!”

Emma was shaking him. He opened his eyes and had no idea where he was. Then he recognized the interior of the plane, saw Gabriel moving about, getting their things together, and he remembered.

“Are you all right?” Emma asked. “You were making noise.”

“What did I say?”

“Not so much words. More like
mmmrrrraaaaggghhhhh
.”

“Oh.”

“Get ready. Gabriel says we’re landing soon. And Michael …”

“What?”

“He says we might see penguins!”

Michael rubbed his eyes and looked out the window. In the dim predawn, ghostly white cliffs rose up before them. Michael watched as an enormous ice shelf cleaved off the cliff and collapsed, almost gently, into the sea. Then the plane passed over
the wall of ice, and there was nothing but whiteness below them and before them.

I brought us here, Michael thought. Whatever happens is my fault.

He set about pulling on his boots.

“There! Look! Don’t scare him!”

The penguin waddled toward them, flat wings held out wide to balance its wobbly, bowling-pin body. The penguin came to just past their knees, and its webbed feet went
thop-thop-thop … thop-thop-thop
on the hard-packed ice and snow. Michael and Emma stood perfectly still as the bird maneuvered by them and disappeared around a building.

“That’s the best thing I ever saw,” Emma said. “Ever.”

It was nine in the morning, and the sun had yet to rise. The temperature was only ten degrees below freezing, which was apparently quite warm. The plane, whose pontoons doubled as skis, had landed on a runway of compacted snow beside the outpost. The outpost itself seemed like something you might find on the moon: nine or ten low metal buildings, domed roofs studded with antennas, half-buried tunnels snaking here and there.

It looked like a space station, Michael thought, or a giant hamster run.

Gabriel had made the children wait in the plane till he returned with new cold-weather gear and their own clothes, which he’d run through the dryer at the outpost laundry. It was fortunate that Dr. Pym had given them warm clothes before
going to Malpesa since the outpost store did not cater to children. Gabriel had simply bought the smallest sizes he could find, and Michael and Emma both got long underwear, heavy parkas with fur-lined hoods, insulated snow pants to go over their normal pants, thickly padded mittens, liners to go inside the mittens, face masks, hats, goggles, and shell-like boots that fit over their old boots. “Like boots for our boots,” Emma said. “Cool.” Michael’s parka and pants just about fit him, but Gabriel had to cut some length off the sleeves of Emma’s parka and the bottoms of her pants, the edges of which he then sealed with heavy tape. When both children were finally dressed, Michael felt as if he were embarking on an undersea expedition or a journey into deep space. Emma looked at him and giggled.

“You look like Mr. Sausage.”

“So? You’re dressed the same.”

Then she tried to punch him, lost her balance, and fell over.

Even dressed as they were, when they stepped out of the plane, Michael’s breath was ripped away by the cold. It was a kind of cold that the children had never experienced, and they stood there, taking short breaths, getting used to the cramped feeling in their lungs. It was then they saw the penguin, whom Emma immediately named Derek, and this put them in a good mood as they headed to the outpost café to join Gabriel for breakfast.

The windows of the metal hut were steamed with heat, and the floor was a steel grating through which the snow that people tramped inside could melt away. There were a dozen tables, perhaps half of them full. Gabriel and the small pilot sat in the
corner. Gabriel got the children trays and plates and let them place their orders—scrambled eggs, pancakes, bacon, toast, hash browns—with the man at the grill. As Michael pressed the button to fill his hot chocolate, he noticed the stares he and Emma were getting. Gabriel had told them that the outpost was a way station for scientists, oil workers, explorers, and traders from all over Antarctica, but that children here were rare.

“We’ll leave as soon as we’ve eaten and the plane is refueled. The fewer questions asked, the better.”

At the table, Gabriel and the pilot had laid out a large map of Antarctica.

“Now,” Gabriel said to Michael, “as long as the weather holds, Gustavo will fly us wherever we want. But you must tell us where to go.”

“It’s not easy,” Michael said. “It’s all in pieces in my mind. But the next thing we’re looking for should be a pair of mountains. They’re really tall and thin. There’re other mountains around them, but they’re the biggest. And they’re right next to each other. Does that make sense?”

As Gabriel spoke to the pilot in Spanish, Michael saw that Emma had already eaten both of her pancakes and was half finished with her eggs. He knew he’d better hurry or she’d start in on
his
breakfast. The pilot was saying something to Gabriel and pointing to a spot on the map. Michael could see a shaded area, which he knew indicated mountains.

“He says,” Gabriel interpreted, “you mean the Horns. A pair of mountains at the head of the Victoria Range. It is perhaps two hours’ flying from here. What do we do when we get there?”

“There should be a cave between the two mountains,” Michael said as he chewed through three pieces of bacon. “And there’re these rock formations in front of the cave that make it look like a mouth with huge teeth. The dead man called it the Dragon’s Mouth. He must’ve called it that in his own language, but somehow I know that’s the name.”

Gabriel spoke to the pilot, and the pilot replied and shook his head.

“He knows of no such cave, but that means nothing. What then?”

“Then,” Michael said, fending off Emma’s fork, which was stabbing at one of his pancakes, “there’s, like, a gap in the memory. I told you it was all in pieces. But on the other side of the cave, we should find a volcano. That’s where the
Chronicle
is hidden.”

Again, Gabriel spoke to the man. Again, the man said something and shook his head. Then the pilot rolled up his map and walked out.

“He says,” Gabriel told the children, “that there is no volcano in that region, and that this would be a thing he knows since he has flown all over this area. But he will fly us to the base of the Horns, and we will see if we can find the cave. We must hope the weather holds.”

“There is a volcano,” Michael said, surprised at his own stubbornness. “I know there is.”

Gabriel nodded. “I believe you. But I am worried about this cave. These memories you inherited are more than two hundred years old. In that time, there could have been landslides. Earthquakes.
The cave could be hidden or collapsed. Either way, we shall see. Now eat. The sun will soon be up.”

“I’m getting seconds,” Emma said. “Since Mr. Sausage here won’t share.” And she picked up her syrup-smeared plate and carried it to the grill.

Soon, they were in the air. The sun had finally risen over the horizon, and as they flew, Emma kept jumping from one side of the plane to the other, pressing her face against the windows. The night before, she’d been too tired and upset to appreciate her first-ever plane ride. Today, she was fed and rested. Though really, Michael knew, the change in her mood was due to Gabriel. After breakfast, in the tunnel-like corridor outside the café, Michael had heard him whisper, “I won’t leave you again,” and Emma had leapt up and thrown her arms around his neck. Since then, she had been more and more her old self, and now, with the sun shining in the distance and a beautiful, strange land passing below, she was clearly enjoying the moment.

He was not quite so carefree.

The certainty he’d felt in the café had given way to doubt. What if the pilot was right and there was no volcano? Or there was, but the Guardian was sending them into a trap? Michael only had a few of the dead man’s memories; he didn’t truly know the man’s mind. He could be leading Emma and Gabriel to their deaths! He wanted to mention this to Gabriel, to let the man assuage his fears, but he was terrified of appearing less than completely confident. He couldn’t come across as weak.

“Michael!” Emma cried. “Come quick!”

He joined her at the side of the plane.

“Look!” She pointed to the ground far below. “It’s Derek!”

Michael could just make out a small, dark shape moving across the white expanse.

“Are you sure that’s him?”

“Oh, that’s definitely Derek. I’d recognize him anywhere.” She pressed her forehead against the window, peering down. “I wonder where he’s going.”

Michael felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Gabriel, and he motioned them to the cockpit. Michael and Emma crowded in behind the pilot, who grinned and pointed through the window.

Emma let out a low gasp.

Directly before them was a range of enormous mountains, white peaks rising from a white plain. The mountains were wide-waisted and packed in tight, one against the other, but two peaks stood out. They were the furthest forward, and the tallest and the thinnest; there was no mistaking them.

The Horns, Michael thought.

He experienced a moment of intense déjà vu. For though he was seeing them for the first time, he knew the mountains from the dead man’s memory. Michael found it unsettling, as if his sense of who he was—the things he knew, the things he remembered, the things that made him him—had begun to blur at the edges.

“These are the mountains?” Gabriel asked.

“Yes.” His voice was barely audible over the whine of the engine.

The pilot then spoke to Gabriel, who nodded and turned to the children.

“We will be there in twenty minutes. He will land a few miles from the base of the Horns. From there, we will go on foot. It is time to get ready.”

Michael’s hand shook as he tried to zip up the front of his parka, and he turned so no one would notice. Soon, both children were muffled in parkas, hats, face masks, goggles, mittens; all that remained were the hard outer boots that Gabriel had bought at the outpost. The children were too stiffly dressed to bend over, so Gabriel had them lie on the floor while he stuffed their old boots into the new ones and snapped them shut. Then he checked to make sure all their gear was zipped and cinched properly.

Michael could scarcely move, and he wondered how in the world they were supposed to hike for three miles.

The plane bumped and rocked as they glided lower. Clinging to a strap on the wall, Michael watched as Gabriel went over the contents of a large pack, double-checking that he had food, water, an emergency shelter, ropes, an ice ax, and other necessary gear. He also, Michael saw, strapped a slender, three-foot-long, canvas-wrapped object to the pack. Michael knew it was Gabriel’s falchion, the machete-like weapon the children had seen him use while fighting in Cambridge Falls. It reminded Michael—as if he needed reminding—that they had no idea what lay ahead.

The plane skipped across the ground, and Michael and Emma lost their grips on the wall straps and flew forward, crashing into the bulkhead, though their many layers kept them from getting
hurt. Twice more the plane struck the ground and rebounded into the air, for while the snow was hard, it undulated like a frozen sea. Finally, the plane settled, wobbled unevenly for a hundred yards, and came to a halt.

Michael looked at his sister.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m hot,” Emma grumbled. “I wish they’d open the door.”

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant. I’m just hot.”

Gabriel checked their clothing one last time.

“We have four more hours of daylight. If we find this cave, the Dragon’s Mouth, we will continue on. Failing that, we will either return to the plane or camp if we can find shelter. Gustavo will wait till midnight, then fly back to the outpost. He will come here every day for three days and wait for us during daylight hours. Are you ready?”

Michael saw that Gabriel was looking at him, waiting for an answer, and it crossed his mind to say, “You know, now that I’ve had time to sit with it, I think we should scuttle the whole thing.” But he knew that wasn’t what Gabriel was asking. Their way led onward, not back; and in asking if he was ready, Gabriel was merely letting Michael make the decision to begin.

Michael reached up to straighten his glasses, realized he was wearing goggles, and straightened them instead.

“Yes. Let’s go.”

Gabriel opened the door, and it was as if all the cold air in the world swept into the plane. Gabriel carried his pack out first,
then helped Emma to the ground. Michael saw the pilot, Gustavo, watching them with a worried expression.