Eight Days of Luke (20 page)

“I am going right, aren't I?” Luke asked him. “It's such a long time since I was here.”

“Quite right,” said the man. “You want Firestone Ward these days. And you'd better have these, in case someone asks you what you're doing.”

He handed David and Luke each a round metal disk with
Firestone 7
stamped on it. David turned his over and found it said
Visitor Admit One
on the other side.

“Ah,” said Luke. “Official stuff. By the way, can you give David some kind of hint or sign? He's afraid he won't recognize the thing when he sees it.”

“I've been wondering,” said the ginger-haired man. “I think he will, but to be on the safe side, David, if you think you've found it, look at that disk. If you have got it, you'll see the right word under the name of the ward. If there's nothing, you have to look again.”

They walked on. David was expecting to see Mr. Wedding too, but though they passed a number of people—one on a trolley being put into a lift marked
Operating Theater
—none of them was Mr. Wedding. And at the end of the next long corridor was a brown door marked
Firestone Ward
.

The ginger-haired man pushed it open for them. “I'll see you,” he said. “Do your best for him, Luke.” The door bumped shut in front of him and left David and Luke on their own.

The door led straight on to a hillside covered with pale grass. All round and very near, big purple-gray clouds came driving past and shed gusts of small icy drops on Luke and David. The grass bent and whistled in the wind, but, in spite of this it was not cold, because the hillside was on fire. David thought they were on the edge of some great forest fire. The flames were fully twenty-feet high, forked, and fierce orange. They bent under the gusting wind, streaming across the sky, roaring and crackling, shedding pieces of themselves into the clouds, hissing in the rain, and leaping up more fiercely after each wet gust. At any moment it looked as if the whole hillside would be burning and David and Luke forced back through the hospital door again. The grass in front of them caught, in little running flames, and David put his hand on the door, ready to push it open again. Then came another gust of rain. The great flames leaned and roared. The flames in the grass died into blue smoldering and left the grass none the worse for having been alight. The tall flames stood straight again and stayed where they were at the brow of the hill.

“Why didn't the grass catch?” David asked. “Is it too wet?”

“No,” said Luke. “This fire is something of a special job. It won't move and it only consumes itself.” He was looking uphill much as he had looked at the burning building, gently and fiercely, with the flames reflected in his red-brown eyes.

“Did you do it?” David asked.

Luke smiled. “Long ago. Yes. And it's going to burn to the end of time, and maybe beyond that.”

David began to suspect what he might be in for. “Where do I have to go?” he asked.

“Through, I'm afraid,” said Luke. “The whole lot is beyond time, you see, and I'm sure that's where it is. I can't put the flames out for you, but I can help you get through. Do you want to go now?”

“Yes,” said David, knowing that the longer he stood and looked, the more horrifying the flames would seem.

They climbed the hill together. The rain seemed warm and the heat from the flames reddened David's face, while Luke's became narrow, white and exultant. But it did not seem too hot to bear. Even when David was standing right beside the fire, looking into the whirling, changing heart of it, he was no more than uncomfortably hot. He looked at Luke to ask him why and saw that Luke had gone small and pale and strained.

“Not too hot are you?” said Luke.

“Not,” said David.

“Then go now, if you're going,” said Luke. “I can't hold this heat forever.” He dropped to a crouch on the grass and David could see him shaking slightly with some huge hidden effort.

“Thanks,” he said. With his arms across his head and face, rather as Alan had run the gauntlet, he plunged forward into the fire. He heard his hair frizzle. He could see smoke coming from the soles of his shoes as he trod the red-hot ground, and he smelled his clothes burning, but he still felt no more than rather too hot. There was none of the pain of burning that he had been dreading. “Perhaps I'm going to die without feeling it,” he thought, and he was very grateful to Luke.

Then the flames parted ahead and he was through. Or rather, he was inside, in a hot, lurid cave surrounded by racing flames. Above, he saw a snap of stormy sky from time to time, but mostly the flames arched across and hid everything else. Dazzled by the glare and constant movement, David looked round. There seemed to be a tomb in front of him left over from a church—the tall square kind that has a statue lying on top. Otherwise, apart from a circle of grass, there was nothing else there.

“That grave, I suppose,” David said to himself, and he went over to it.

It was not strictly a tomb. It was more a heap of rocks piled up to mark the top of the hill and now holding the statue. David looked down at the statue and, with a jump of horror, found it was a body. It lay on its back, as statues do on tombs, and it had been arranged so that one hand had been clasped round a queer old spear with a wide flat head which the flames made the color of copper. The other hand was empty, but it looked as if it ought to have been holding something too. The body was wearing queer old armor, not quite like that of a knight of old, but not unlike, and the flames made that look copper too. David guessed that if whoever it was had been alive and standing up, he would have been as tall as Mr. Wedding.

Then he looked on to the body's face and found it was a lady. Somehow that upset him. It was not simply that she was dead without reason and lying in the middle of timeless flames; it was that she had the most beautiful face he had ever seen. Even with her eyes shut and red in the flames she was beautiful. In a way, she reminded David a little of the lady who had driven Mr. Wedding's car, except that this dead face was full of living feelings. It was a face that had no business to be dead. David gazed at it, and it dawned on him that he had never seen anyone look so sad. When the lady died, she must have been more unhappy than he had known anyone could be.

It seemed such a pity that David put out his hand and gently touched the lady's hair, which spread out in long twisted strands from her strange helmet. It might have been brown hair, but the flames made it seem coppery. As he touched it, he knew she was alive. There was a warmth about her that did not come from the fire. So he put his knuckles to her face and gave it a gentle push.

The lady did not move. Wondering why not, David looked at her chest to see if she was breathing. Because of the armor she was wearing, he was quite unable to tell. But there was a very strange object lying across her chest, now he came to look. It looked a bit like a pick-ax and seemed to be made of stone—anyway it was made of something the flames did not turn coppery. The ax part was blunt and square at one end and curved to a rough point at the other. It had a hole in the center of it through which the handle was slotted, and the two parts were tied together with a mass of black thongs, but, David thought, it would not have been much use as a pick because the handle was so short. There were strange writings or signs carved into both blade and handle. Everything about it suggested that it was much older than the rest of the lady's equipment.

Luke had said the thing would be the odd thing out. David said “Of course!” and was just about to snatch up the pick-ax triumphantly, when he stopped and thought. It would do no good to come away with the wrong thing. That would be all his trouble for nothing, and Luke dragged off to a worse prison than before. He took the hospital disk out of his pocket to make sure.

Visitor Admit One
, it said. David turned it over. The number had vanished from the other side. It now read
Firestone
and, underneath,
Hammer
.

David looked uncertainly at the pick-ax again. Yes, the blunt end could be a hammer—it must be a hammer—if the disk said hammer, then it was a hammer and the thing he had been looking for. But the reason for his hesitation had nothing to do with that. Of course it was a hammer, and he knew who the man was who owned it now. The trouble was, he knew who Luke was too, and he would never be able to think of Luke in the same way again.

The flames blurred a little in front of David as he reached out to pick the hammer up. Looking at the lady's unhappy face, he thought he knew a little what she felt like—just a little. But why she should lie here so sad was still a mystery to him.

The hammer was unbelievably heavy. David had to use both hands and exert all his strength to lift it. As he hauled it away across the lady's chest, he wondered why she did not move, when a great weight like that was taken off her. But she never stirred. Staggering backward with the hammer in his arms, David thought that at least she could breathe more easily now. He meant to look if she was, but the hammer was impossible to carry as he had it, and for a while he could think of nothing but how to stop it slipping through his arms and crushing his foot. In the end, when his arms were weak and aching, he thought of hooking the curved end over one shoulder and supporting the handle in both hands. Like that he could carry it.

Then he took a last look at the sleeping lady. She had not moved. Her look of sadness had not changed, but her chest was gently rising and falling. Perhaps she was more peaceful. Full of bewildered sadness himself, David turned and trod heavily in among the flames. They whirled round him like a hot blizzard, but this time he was thinking of other things and hardly noticed them.

When he came out on the hillside, the storm had died down and there was a sunset gathering. Luke was crouching just below him looking tired to death, ten times more tired than he had looked after Mr. Wedding caught him. And as soon as he set eyes on him, David discovered that knowing all about someone need not change your feelings at all. Luke might be lord of fire and master of mischief. He might have done a number of appalling things and be going to do more before he was through. But David was simply very glad to see him again, and extremely sorry that he had been so slow fetching the hammer that he had tired Luke out.

“I've got it,” he called out.

Luke's red head jerked up and he gave David a big tired smile. “Thank goodness!” he said. “Get down the hill a bit and then I can let it go.”

David slithered under the weight of the hammer ten yards or so down the slope. Then he felt a sudden blare of heat on his back and turned to see Luke getting up slowly and stretching as if he were stiff.

“I was afraid you'd been burned,” Luke called across the roaring of the flames. He came slithering stiffly downhill, and there was no doubt he was quite as glad to see David as David was to see him. “I kept remembering you were only human,” he said, “and I was scared stiff you'd had it. I kept telling myself that once anyone leaves time there's no telling how long they'll be, but I'd stopped believing it by this time.”

“How long was I?” asked David.

“Well,” Luke said, rather apologetically, “it's Sunday evening now.”

“Sunday!” David exclaimed, and could think of nothing but Luke crouching and quelling the heat of the fire for nearly two days and a night.

“I know,” said Luke. “What will Aunt Dot say?”

“Idiot! I wasn't—” David began, but he was distracted by the sight of black pinions spread like fingers against the flames.

“Can I tell him you've got it?” called the raven, wheeling above Luke's head.

“Yes,” said David.

The bird swooped up and away. It must have been going to Mr. Wedding, because there was a shout from downhill just then and David saw the owner of the hammer running delightedly up the slope toward him. David was very glad to see him. His shoulder was aching badly from the weight of the thing by this time. He slithered down to meet the ginger-haired man.

“Here you are,” he said. “Your name's Thor, isn't it?”

“That's right,” the man said, smiling. “Thank you.” He took the hammer off David's shoulder with no trouble at all and hooked it on to his own shoulder in just the same way. He looked familiar and comfortable doing it. “That feels better,” said Thor. “I've missed the feel.”

Then the tall people began to come up the hill and congratulate David. The Frys came, large and laughing, and Mr. Chew, who wrung his hand painfully and said: “Well,
I
didn't think you'd do it.” Numbers of others came too and they all said something to David, though not all of them said anything to Luke. Thor did, and the red-headed girl, who could hardly wait to thank David before she threw her arms round Luke. Then Mr. Wedding came up the hill with the raven on his shoulder. He smiled at Luke over the girl's head and then at David.

“Thank you, David,” he said. “It's always a better bargain when we're on the same side.”

For a moment, David had the idea Mr. Wedding might be looking at him in something the same way that he had looked at the young man with the dragon, but before he could be sure, Astrid came rushing up, stumbling in very silly shoes, shoved Mr. Wedding aside and flung both arms round David. Not being used to it, David felt very shy.