Firesong (27 page)

Bowman got back on the tree stump.

‘No doubts. No uncertainty. No
how.
The ground has power to draw you down, but you have power too. Use it.’

Bowman stepped off the stump. Then he fell. But for a fraction of a second, before he fell, he caught the sensation of what it would be like not to fall. He understood his mistake. He had supposed effort was needed not to fall. He had been straining invisible muscles. But no effort was required. He needed stillness. It was more like finding the point of perfect balance when standing on one leg. Until you find it, you wobble and wave your arms, but once you have it, perfect stillness keeps you in place.

He returned to the stump.

‘Don’t say anything. Let me try again.’

He stepped onto air – and stood there.

Hubba hubba Bowman!

He grinned to hear Kestrel’s silent cheer, and dropped to the ground.

Albard looked at him suspiciously.

‘Could you have stayed there?’

‘I think so.’

There came a splash from the river. Mist had tried to float off the boat, in imitation of Bowman, with less success. He crawled soaking onto the river bank.

‘Mist! Where have you come from?’

‘It doesn’t work,’ said Mist bitterly, shivering his coat.

‘Shoo! Filthy animal!’ said Albard. ‘Go away!’

‘Let him alone,’ said Bowman. ‘He’s a friend.’ And to Mist, silently, he said, ‘Don’t rush at it. You have to take it gently.’

In demonstration, not knowing at all how he was doing it, he let his arms rise from his sides, and he floated slowly up into the air.

Albard eyed him critically.

‘What have you got your arms out for?’

‘I’m not sure. It feels right.’

‘It’s pretend wings, isn’t it? Forget wings. You’re not a bird.’

Bowman let his arms fall.

‘How do you do it, boy?’ cried Mist, whimpering with longing.

‘I don’t know. I just do it.’

Jumper understood the cat’s desire. He reached out and touched Mist with the fringes of his mind. Mist started, and the hair went up on his back. Then he softened again, as he felt an unfamiliar lightness flow through him. He turned to see where it was coming from. Jumper was watching him, smiling. He looked to Mist for all the world like a comfortable purring mother cat.

Jumper nodded encouragingly. Mist stretched his long lithe body, and sprang.

‘Wheee! Here I come!’

The cat bounded up into the air, turning slowly over and over as he went. Bowman, still hovering, rose higher still, and in doing so, collided with a snow-laden branch, knocking the snow off to shower down on the cat below.

‘Yeow! Don’t do that!’

Mist wriggled in mid-air, to shed the snow that had fallen on him. Goaded by the cold snow, he made another mid-air bound that took him past Bowman and over his head, to land lightly on a higher branch. His weight shook snow onto Bowman below.

‘See how you like it, boy!’

He sprang away, moving from branch to branch, and Bowman gave chase, both forgetting that they were leaping from nothing to nothing, and landing with ease on the tips of branches that would barely sustain the weight of a bird. Albard and Jumper and Kestrel watched from the ground, all smiling the same smile, as boy and cat danced through the high branches, and the snow fell in cascading clouds between the trees.

When Bowman floated at last to the ground, pink-faced and glowing and proud, Albard strode up to him and wrapped him in his broad embrace.

‘Wonderful boy! You remind me of my first time!’

He kissed him on the cheeks and on the brow, then he stood back from him and said,

‘Did you hear it?’

Bowman knew Albard meant the sound within himself.

‘Yes. I heard it.’

‘Can you sing it?’

Bowman tried to imitate the sound with his voice. What came out was a humming burbling sound.

‘Get it right.’

He made his mouth refine the song, until he was as close as he could make it to the sound he heard within himself.

‘Don’t try too hard. Let the song sing itself through you. Like the old wind singers.’

Like the old wind singers? He remembered the wind singer of Aramanth well. The high creaking structure of wooden struts and metal pipes had possessed no mind of its own. The wind drove it round, and made its way down its pipes, and used it for its song. Could he be as empty, as mindless, as a wind singer?

He tried again. This time he opened his mouth and let the song pass out of him of its own accord. He knew at once that it was exact: the song he sung was the song he had heard. He felt his body rise in the air.

‘Yes!’ cried Albard, smacking his sagging belly, well pleased. ‘Learn the song. Use it at will.’

Let me hear it, Bo.

Bowman gladly opened his mind to Kestrel. He felt her enter and reach for the new sensation in him, and find the power that Albard called a song. He sensed her learning it, and taking it into herself. It was what he wished. His mind and all its power belonged to her, as hers belonged to him.

‘Boy!’ said Mist. ‘Let’s fly again!’

Mist curved up into the air, this time ostentatiously in control, arching his back and stretching as he flew, and showing his claws. Bowman followed, bounding up into the air with long strides of his legs, as if he was climbing an invisible giant’s staircase. And after a moment’s hesitation, Kestrel, watching them, smiling with pleasure, rose gently upwards to join them.

Kess! You can fly too!

Bowman danced through the air towards her, and took her hand. Hand in hand they floated up above the tree tops.

‘Shall we go higher?’

‘Higher, yes! And higher!’

Up they went into the clear winter sky, higher and higher, holding hands, until they became frightened that there was no end to their ascent. They could, it seemed, go on for ever. So they paddled to a stop, as if their limbs controlled their movements, though they knew very well it was their minds that chose to fly or not to fly. And there, treading air, up where thin clouds were passing, they looked over the forest and the land beyond.

For many miles the land was white. Snow lay on the trees of the forest, and on the rolling ground beyond. The cracks in the land showed as shadowed slits. Beyond, where the hills rose again, they could see clusters of houses, and here and there, bright flickers of flame.

As they became accustomed to being so very high and seeing so very far they began to pick out more of these points of flame. Why so many fires out of doors? Were these the camp fires of wandering people, driven from their homes by the troubled times? But as they learned to look better, they realised the fires, though small to them, were far bigger than those built for boiling kettles. These were great fires, these were whole houses burning, these were villages. All over the immense white landscape, homes were burning.

What’s happening, Kess? Who’s doing this?

It’s the time of cruelty
, Kestrel answered, knowing this was no answer.

A gust of wind carried towards them the distant smell of wood smoke, tinged with charred meat. It could be the smells of cooking, or it could be something far more grisly.

In silent consent, the twins floated back down to the snow-covered ground.

‘Everything’s burning,’ said Bowman. ‘It’s as if the world has been set on fire.’

‘That’s what happens,’ said Albard with some bitterness. ‘Take away mastery, and you get chaos. I warned them. But they don’t care. They just watch.’

‘Our time will come,’ said Jumper.

‘Our time, our time. And meanwhile what? Suffering and ugliness.’

Jumper replied only, ‘We should be on our way.’

They returned to the barge, this time joined by the cat as an acknowledged member of their group. Mist had half a mind to go flying after birds, but he felt tired and decided to rest first. Bowman too felt tired, heavy tired, as if he had been doing hard labour. So he and the cat curled up on the cabin bench and went to sleep.

Jumper cast off the mooring rope and remained on deck, sitting like a small fat gnome astraddle the prow, with his legs dangling down on either side. Here Kestrel found him.

‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘Who would you like me to be?’

‘I need someone to explain things to me.’

‘Then I’m the explainer.’

He looked at her with a friendly smile. As he looked, his appearance altered. Nothing physical changed, but he seemed to her to grow older. He was turning into a grandfather. As she watched the transformation, she realised that she must be doing it herself. She wanted a wise old grandfather, and he was obliging her.

‘What do Singer people do?’

‘They live in the stillness and know the flame.’

‘Please don’t talk like a book. Tell me what they actually do, and why.’

‘But you know that, my child. You’ve felt it.’

‘When have I felt it?’

He smiled back at her with his owlish eyes, but said no more.

‘Do you mean earlier, in the cabin?’

He inclined his head.

‘When I felt I wasn’t there any more?’

Again he inclined his head.

‘But that was like dying.’

‘Like dying, but not dying.’

‘Yes.’ She puzzled over her memory of that brief extraordinary moment, when the cabin had turned into bright nothingness. ‘Is that what Singer people do?’

‘They do many things. But that’s what they’re for.’

‘For dying?’

‘If that’s what you want to call it.’

‘In the wind on fire.’

‘You see,’ he said. ‘You do know.’

‘But I don’t know what it is, or why.’

‘Don’t you?’

She said nothing. His tone of voice rather than his words told her to ask no more questions. She looked at him steadily. He was such a funny little creature, so round-bellied and short-legged, so ridiculous and yet so powerful. He started to hum quietly to himself. She found herself studying his hair, which was, like all of him, of an indeterminate colour, and wispy. It was lifting up off his mottled scalp and rippling in the river breeze, catching the light and giving off silvery glints. You would almost have thought that his hair was glowing, the way the surrounding air shimmered as he hummed. Now that she looked further, she realised that it was glowing: and more, his skin was glowing, and his coat, and his hands. All over him there was forming a layer of bright trembling air.

Kestrel stared at Jumper. He had gone very still. His humming continued, but very low. His eyes were open, and directed towards her, but she knew he didn’t see her. This sheath of light that now surrounded him was familiar to her, but she couldn’t recall from where. Then, looking up above his head, she saw how the bright air rose in a tall plume, through which the trees on the riverbank beyond were distorted, and seemed to wave and dance.

Of course, she thought. It’s heat rising. It’s like the heat that surrounds a candle flame.

Jumper was generating heat. She put out the palm of her hand and felt it clearly. He himself was not burning, there was no flame at the centre of the cowl of heated air, and yet she understood that this plump and homely body was its source. In some strange way, Jumper was aflame.

Little by little the heat died down, and the disturbance in the air was calmed. Jumper awoke, if he had ever been asleep. He smiled at her once more. He had stopped his humming.

‘What would have happened if you’d gone on longer?’

‘I would not have returned.’

‘And that’s what Singer people do, at the end?’

He inclined his head.

‘It’s the only thing we do. Everything else can be done in one way or another by others. Only Singers know the flame.’

‘Only Singers choose to go so far and not return.’

His grandfatherly gaze showed her respect.

‘If you know that, you know everything.’

‘And after the wind on fire? What then?’

‘The time of kindness.’

‘No, I mean for the Singers.’

‘Ah, child. That I don’t know. That no one knows. We make that journey without maps.’

Kestrel looked out at the rushing river, and let her thoughts run with its currents. The river was wider now, and fuller, as ever more mountain streams came rushing to join it on its race to the sea. The barge moved swiftly past tree-clad banks, following the turns of the river as if commanded by an expert pilot, though there was no one at the wheel.

‘When you came for my brother,’ she asked after a while, ‘did you know I would come too?’

‘What a one you are for knowledge!’ Jumper answered. ‘No, I didn’t know. I know very little. I have no plan.’ He waved one plump hand at the river. ‘It’s like this river. Do I know where there are rocky shallows, or dangerous cross currents? No, I know nothing. But I stay alert, and when I meet danger, I do what I must. So when you joined us, I thought to myself, I must stay alert, and see what comes my way.’

Kestrel asked no more.

In a little while she heard people moving about in the cabin, and the hatch slid open, and Bowman came out. He stepped carefully over the sloping roof of the hold to join Kestrel and Jumper on the prow.

‘Albard says we’re nearly at the river’s mouth.’

Jumper nodded. ‘Not long now.’ He looked up at the clouds massing above. ‘Snow on its way.’

He had hardly spoken the words when the first flurry of snowflakes began to fall. Within moments the snow was falling steadily, powdering their heads and shoulders.

‘We’d better go below,’ said Kestrel.

‘Stay a moment longer,’ said Jumper.

Albard joined them on deck, stamping far too hard on the roof boards, cursing the snow.

‘Damn winter!’ he complained. ‘Damn cold! Damn everything!’

‘Look,’ said Jumper.

The riverbanks were widening on either side, and there ahead, in a churning ridge of white foam, the fast-flowing river water crashed into the sea. The sight of so much open horizon came as a shock after the long day bound in on all sides by winter forest. The falling snow blurred the line between grey sky and grey sea, surrounding the barge with a boundless featureless immensity. Even the coast on either side lay veiled and insubstantial in the falling snow.