Last Dragon 6: Fire World Read online

  “That is one aspect of what I do,” said Harlan. And feeling somehow vulnerable with both hands occupied, he de:constructed the tray of drinks and said, “Shall we go inside?”

  Aunt Gwyneth turned on her stocky little heels. “I prefer the gardenaria. I like the freshness of the air.”

  Eliza saw an opportunity to gather ground in this. “Harlan, look what Aunt Gwyneth has done. She’s added a new construct to the rockery.”

  Harlan glanced down. “Is that … fungus?” he said. Growing out between the rocks were three short stalks with large gray caps.

  “Very knowledgeable, Professor,” Aunt Gwyneth said, purring at the same low level as Boon. (The katt by now had padded away and was playing with a piece of tweedy fluff that he’d managed to imagineer — the same blue color, Harlan noticed, as Aunt Gwyneth’s suit.) “Fungal constructs are quite a rarity these days.”

  Rarity? thought Harlan, trying hard to keep his fain at bay. “I thought they’d been —”

  “Limited?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not to us.”

  Harlan gave a respectful nod. Aunts had a vast catalogue of constructs to call upon, though how anything with the poor nutritional value of mushrooms (was that what they were called?) could be helpful to anyone was beyond him. He looked up at Aunt Gwyneth and sensed she was reveling in a minor victory. Her fatuous smile reminded him of a wet line drawn across a steamed-up mirror.

  “So, may we talk about the prospect of a daughter?” He moved forward and took Eliza’s hand. “We’ve completed our application to the Higher and believe we are favorably placed to bring a new child onto Co:pern:ica. We have her image and her auma traits fixed. We merely ask for your guidance and approval, to help us bring together this happy —”

  “Tell me about your son,” said the Aunt, cutting him off without a glance. She was staring instead at two orange-colored firebirds, which were perched in Eliza’s cherrylea tree, hiding themselves in the thick of the leaves.

  “Oh. Well, David …,” Eliza began, but this was just the topic she and Harlan had been fearing, and she found herself unable to go on.

  Harlan patted her hand. A gesture that suggested that he should do the talking. Drawing down calm into his auma, he said, “We imagineered David over twelve spins ago. He’s been a model son.”

  “It says in my report that he’s ec:centric, Professor.”

  Harlan laced his fingers together. The woman was thorough. He must choose his words with care. “It’s … true that he’s been exhibiting some minor sleep disturbances, but —”

  “When did these terrors begin?”

  “Well, I’d hardly describe them as —”

  “It is not your place to teach me what I know! Answer the question, Professor.”

  “Some months ago,” he said, curbing the desire to snap. Was this a test? Was this woman deliberately trying to provoke him?

  “And how does he describe the dreams?”

  “He doesn’t. He appears to forget everything by the morning. We’re not sure why.”

  The Aunt closed her eyes. “Who is his counselor?”

  “Thorren Strømberg.”

  The corners of the woman’s mouth twitched into a sneer.

  “You disapprove of him?” asked Harlan.

  “I have heard he is very able,” said the Aunt, “though his methods are considered ‘questionable’ by some.”

  “In what way?” asked Eliza, looking concerned. “We took David to him in good faith, Aunt. We only want what’s best for our —”

  “It is of no matter,” Aunt Gwyneth muttered. She flapped a hand, startling the firebirds out of the tree. They fluttered away and landed on the slanting roof of the pod. Her sober gaze traveled with them and stayed there. “I wish to ask you a question, Eliza. You put in your application that you would like your daughter to inherit the demeanor of those creatures. Why was that?”

  Once again, Eliza seemed a little lost for words. “I … I find them … graceful,” she said.

  Harlan came in again before she could flounder. “Eliza has always had a strong affinity with the firebirds. They’re regular visitors to her gardenaria. They seem at ease here. We think if we could reproduce that same mutual fondness, that level of attraction in our daughter, then —”

  “Do you talk to them, Eliza?”

  “What?” said Harlan.

  “My question was intended for your wife,” hissed the Aunt.

  Once again, Harlan composed himself. He bowed and took a step back.

  “Well, I do talk to them,” Eliza said, playing with a corkscrewing strand of her hair. “They seem to enjoy the sound of my voice, especially if …”

  Aunt Gwyneth stared at her, probing her fain. “Go on.”

  “… especially if I sing,” Eliza said. She looked down at her feet as if she were ashamed. “It’s more a kind of humming, really. Don’t ask me why. It just feels natural. They like it and it seems to attract them. But I don’t converse with them. That would be silly.”

  Aunt Gwyneth tapped her manicured fingers together. Her nails, Harlan noticed, were completely black. “Have you ever attempted to commingle with their fain?”

  “Aunt Gwyneth, is this really —?”

  “Professor, be silent!”

  Now it was Eliza’s turn to signal to her husband that she was confident enough to deal with the questions. “Yes,” she said boldly. “Haven’t we all at some time?” With no success, she added into her fain, though the sentence hardly needed to be raised. No one had ever linked into the firebirds’ consciousnesses. No one. Not even an Aunt.

  Aunt Gwyneth made her own kind of humming noise. She strolled down the gardenaria a way, stopping to admire a bright yellow rose. “I cannot approve your application,” she said.

  Eliza covered her mouth. She looked at Harlan, who immediately placed himself within Aunt Gwyneth’s line of sight. “Why?” he demanded.

  Aunt Gwyneth brushed past him.

  “Why?” he said again, grabbing her arm.

  “Harlan, what are you doing?!” Eliza gasped.

  Aunt Gwyneth whipped around and confronted the professor. Her eyes were wide and violet and blazing. “How dare you touch me or question my authority? I could have you banished to the Dead Lands for less. The imagineering of a child is a selfless act that must benefit and support the continuity of the Design and the welfare of all Co:pern:ica. You have already constructed one ec:centric and I am not convinced you won’t do so again.” Harlan reeled as her fain powered into him. He stumbled back, clutching at the sides of his head.

  Eliza immediately rushed to his aid. “Aunt, please stop this. Harlan means no harm. He’s a good man. Believe me. He’s simply disappointed. We’ve wanted a daughter for so long now.”

  “Yet you only decide to call in an Aunt when your dysfunctional son has been removed to a librarium.”

  “I …” Eliza felt the heat in her eyes. “No, it’s not like that. Penny is not a replacement for David. I love him dearly. He …”

  Aunt Gwyneth raised a hand. “Enough,” she said. “My decision is made. I cannot grant approval for a daughter at this time.” She glanced down. Boon was pawing plaintively at Harlan’s leg. One of the firebirds had landed on a fence post and seemed to be carefully observing the situation. The other had flown away. Aunt Gwyneth pressed her hands together and went on another of her little walks. “Your husband will recover in a moment. When he does, he will be aware that I have branded him with a warning. This is not something to be taken lightly. His temperament is partially the reason for your son’s ec:centricity and should have been dealt with by your first Aunt. But it is not the entire reason your son now finds himself removed from the Design. You are responsible, too, Eliza Merriman.”

  “Me? Are you saying my auma is flawed?” Aunt Gwyneth turned. Her eyes were glowing violet. “No, quite the opposite. There is a purity in you that I rarely observe in other applicants. As such, I am prepared to offer you an arrangement. You will
have the daughter you desire, but first you will come away with me — for training.”

  “Training?” said Eliza. “Training? In what?”

  “In this, of course,” Aunt Gwyneth said. She ran a hand down her body. “I have chosen you as an aspirant. You are to become an Aunt.”

  10.

  In the librarium, time seemed nonexistent. True, there were always days and nights. The windows darkened and lightened again. The daisies closed and the daisies opened. A moon rose occasionally. A soft rain fell. Co:pern:ica spun around its yawning fire star. But to David and Rosa, this changing scenery was just something that occurred outside their frame of reference. All that mattered, to them, was books.

  Now that there were two putting the librarium in order, the building hummed with the spirit of competition. And yet it rarely observed David and Rosa in the same room for long. For each child had their own ideas of organization, and what this generally translated to was a frantic crossing of paths, not a selfless joining of forces. Several times a day — nay, dozens of times a day — one child would sweep past the other, usually with books stacked up to their chins, en route to whichever shelf was occupying them. Their snippets of conversation would go something like this:

  “I’ve done forty-seven L’s this morning.”

  “I bet you didn’t know there are twenty-four books about cushions.” (Thirty-eight, as it happened; David still had a way to go with that subject.)

  “My shelves are so tidy you’d faint if you saw them.”

  “My archaeology collection is going to fill two rooms.”

  On top of this there were the reading exchanges. For when the pair of them was finally too exhausted to sort or stack, they would sit down as Mr. Henry had suggested and actually read a text (usually with food in their hands, for their days had no timetable and there was no insistence on formal meals). Rosa was quicker at reading than David and could whip through as many as two hundred pages in a single afternoon. But what David lacked in speed he made up for in depth. He also liked to walk as he read, mainly because Mr. Henry did it. Many a time David had poked his head into a room and seen the old man sailing through it with a book in his hand, spouting the words (sometimes David followed him, just for fun, though the building seemed to know it and would eventually steer him off course). Once in a while, the curator would call both children to his study and inquire about their progress. And it was usually David who gained the most credit when the darts of factual information were flying.

  This was Rosa, for instance: “In our history, there were these things called ‘pi:anos’ that were, like, polished wooden boxes on legs. They had these parts called ‘keys’ — which sort of looked like teeth — and when you hit the keys with your fingers they made a sound. People used to play them and make music come out of them, which is weird, but there you go.”

  “And what made you read about pi:anos?” asked Mr. Henry.

  “I was doing some S’s,” Rosa said. “I found a book written by this man called Steinerway. I thought it looked interesting.”

  “Excellent,” Mr. Henry said. “You might also look out for Petrov, Graveau, Beckstein, and Frazioli. All of them famous for making these instruments. And how about you, David? What have you been reading lately?”

  “I know about the music pi:anos made,” he answered.

  “Typical,” said Rosa, sounding trumped. She flicked a piece of her sandwich at him.

  “I’ve been gathering books about composers,” said the boy.

  “What’s a composer?” Rosa asked Mr. Henry.

  “Think of them as people who imagineered music for the masses.”

  “Oh,” said the girl. She didn’t seem impressed.

  “I read about a man called Shopan,” said David, “who composed melodies so beautiful — on the pi:ano — that people thought he had captured them from the wind.”

  Rosa looked through the window at the stationary clouds. No melodies there today.

  Mr. Henry encouraged David to continue.

  “People talked in strange ways about the music he wrote, saying it was as light as the air, or as easy on the ears as sleep is on the eyes. They said it was like poetry. What’s poetry, Mr. Henry? I’ve looked for it, but I can’t find any.”

  Mr. Henry studied the boy carefully. “It’s an ancient, lyrical form of writing.”

  David thought back to the flipchart Mr. Henry had used on his first day here. Writing again. “Where is it? Can I see some?”

  Mr. Henry smiled. “It’s on the upper floors, David.”

  “The upper floors?” said Rosa. A slight gasp escaped her mouth.

  David sat up at once. “I’ve been meaning to ask about that. I’ve tried to go there, to the top of the librarium, but I never get farther than —”

  “Floor Forty-Two.” Rosa looked at him and shrugged. “It’s right. I’ve counted the windows. You can’t count upward above Forty-Two because of the clouds. I bet Runcey knows, though. I’ve seen him flying up there.” She sent a stream of tongue clicks across the room.

  The firebird, sitting by the window, preening, turned his head and went rrrh?

  “Why can’t we go up there?” David asked the curator.

  Mr. Henry pushed his glasses back farther up his nose. “You will,” he said, “when everything is in order.”

  “What’s it like up there?” asked Rosa. “What can you see if you stand on the roof?”

  Mr. Henry looked at his helpers in turn. “Everything,” he said. “All the world can be seen from the roof of the librarium.”

  This extraordinary, if somewhat metaphorical, notion almost sent both youngsters scuttling back to their shelves that instant. For the incentive in Mr. Henry’s statement was clear: Whoever completed their labors first would probably be the one who made it at least as far as Floor Forty-Three. And what an achievement that would be.

  But he told them the next day must be a rest day. From now on, there would be one in every seven, he said. They should go out. Walk. Enjoy the daisy fields. Chase around. Play. Be tiresome children. Make a nuisance of themselves. (He meant these last two jokingly, of course.) If they wanted to be helpful, the water butts were low.

  Water! Rosa sat up brightly. “Tomorrow morning, first light.” She elbowed David in the ribs.

  “What are we doing?” he asked.

  “Getting water, of course!”

  Of course. Everything was obvious if you lived in Rosa’s head.

  But he was ready, bright and early, at dawn the next morning, with a backpack of food (mainly cookies) on his back, leaning against the wall outside her room when she emerged. She was surprised to see him, but pleased, he thought. She’d changed her clothing: new white boots, pretty yellow dress. He looked her up and down, not sure if he should comment. She folded her arms as if to say, And what do you think you’re staring at? He wanted to reply but his tongue was in knots. She knew it, and was soon in command again. “Better tie your laces up.” She sniffed.

  Laces? Wasn’t he wearing slip-on shoes? Stupidly, he looked down to check. The next thing he knew she’d pushed him over and gone running for the fields.

  He caught up with her by a circular wall in an area where the daisies were a lovely violet color. He threw down the backpack and played a game of this way and that before she stumbled and he finally got hold of her.

  “Agh!” she squealed.

  With one heave he threw her onto his shoulder. And though she pummeled his back with her fists, she knew there was no escape.

  “What is this place?” he said. The circular wall was several feet in diameter. Above it was a V-shaped roof and a pulley. Suspended from the pulley was a bucket on a rope. Below the bucket was a deep, dark hole.

  “It’s a well, of course. Now, put me down.”

  “Dunno. It looks deep.”

  “I don’t mean in the hole!”

  “Hole?” he said, pitching forward a little.

  “Agh!” she squealed again. “What are you doing?”
/>   “Tripped on my laces.”

  “Oh, fun-nee.”

  “What’s down there?” he asked.

  “Water, stupid. Be careful, will you? This is my best dress.”

  “It’s just a dress,” he said. “You’ll dry out.”

  “NOOOOO!” she screamed, as he made to let her go.

  Instead, he brought her down with a bump on the wall, keeping his hands firmly around her waist (for safety’s sake, he later said). She threw her hands around the back of his neck (in case she lost her balance, she later said). She shook her hair from her face and glared at him with her smoky brown eyes. “Do you hate me?” she asked, pouting her lips.

  “Probably,” he said.

  She stuck out her tongue and called him a liar.

  In return, he pressed his fingers to her waist. She screeched with laughter and tried, with both hands, to slap his chest. He caught her and held her until she was still. She stuck out her tongue again. “Don’t know what to do now, do you?” she said.

  And that was true, he didn’t. He looked at her fingertips, roughened by years of handling books, and let his thumb glide across them.

  He was sure he felt her tremble.

  “You don’t really hate me — do you?” she asked.

  He made a show of thinking about it, but eventually shook his head.

  She cocked her head. “Do you love me, then?”

  “Probably,” he said, just as Runcey landed on the roof of the well.

  “Well, I’m spoken for.” She laughed, and blew the firebird a kiss. He responded, as usual, with a puzzled little rrrh?

  She struggled free and flopped down with her back to the wall. “We forgot the buckets.”

  “Buckets?” David said.

  “To carry the water. To the librarium.”

  “Oh. Right. Shall I go back?”

  “Only if you never want to see me again.”

  He chewed on that a moment, but only for a moment. Then he sat with his shoulder pressed against hers, pleased that she didn’t try to move away. He opened the backpack and took out the cookies. Runcey fluttered to the ground in front of them.