Sky Wolves (18 page)

He glanced over to where two stars shone in the space where Orion should have been. ‘They were once my beloved hounds,’ he sighed, ‘Sirius and Procyon. But now they too are doomed to wander through the trackless wastes of eternity. They are known simply as Canis Major and Canis Minor, and without their souls they are but pale imitations of the living, loving beings they once were. I miss them.’

He looked down at Gentleman Jim and Pico.

‘You remind me of them a bit,’ he said.

Gentleman Jim ignored this. ‘Do you mean to say,’ he said, ‘that you deliberately set out to kill every kind of animal on earth, just because of a
boast?
’

‘I had my reputation to think of,’ said Orion, and as Gentleman Jim gasped in outrage, he added, ‘But I have never killed a dog.’

‘Well, that’s something at any rate,’ muttered Gentleman Jim. Then, remembering the prophecy that Jenny had explained, he said, ‘So – would you say that you are the greatest hunter who ever lived?’

‘I was,’ said Orion, with more than a touch of pride.

‘OK,’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’

‘I am getting nowhere,’ said Orion, and he sighed his rustling sigh.

‘Can’t you find your soul?’ asked Pico.

Orion sighed again before saying, ‘This is my doom. Each night I travel westward to the furthest point of darkness before the sun can rise, flooding the sky with light. There, at the world’s furthest edge, lie the asphodel fields, in the kingdom of Hades, and there my soul is trapped, until such time as it repents.’

‘You mean it isn’t sorry for what you’ve done?’ asked Gentleman Jim.

‘No,’ said Orion, and both Gentleman Jim and Pico looked shocked.

‘Why not?’ asked Pico. ‘It seems to me that you were a very bad man.’

‘I am, or was, the mightiest of hunters,’ Orion said defensively. ‘What is the hunter without the chase? And the hunt itself is sacred to Artemis. No,’ he said, rustling, ‘my only crime lay in foolishly boasting about it. My soul must repent that boast. But first it must remember that I ever made it.’

‘It doesn’t even remember?’ asked Pico, looking more shocked than before.

Orion looked as sad as a constellation can look. ‘The asphodel fields are a place of forgetting,’ he told them, ‘where each soul drinks deep of the waters of the River Lethe, which numbs the mind and makes it forget. The souls of the damned descend to Tartarus, place of torment;
the souls of the blessed go to the Elysian fields, where all is laughter and delight, but the souls of the rest of us, those who have distinguished themselves neither by great goodness nor by great crime, they are lost forever in the asphodel fields, place of unremembering.’

‘I’d’ve thought that killing every animal the earth ever produced might be considered a crime,’ muttered Gentleman Jim.

‘I’ve told you before – I am the greatest hunter the world has ever known,’ Orion said a little snappishly. ‘It is unfair that I am being made to suffer for what I am. Does the bird suffer for flying? Or the fish for swimming? Or –’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Pico hastily. ‘But if you know where your soul is, why do you not simply go and get it?’

Once again the stars gave their rustling sigh.

‘Each night I traverse the globe,’ Orion said. ‘I have seen the gates of darkness by the palace of Hades many times. I can see the asphodel fields, but I cannot descend into them. I have no substance, you see. I am fixed to the sky. Not even my faithful hounds can help, because they too are trapped in the sky, parted forever from their souls.’

Pico hopped with excitement on top of Gentleman Jim’s skull, which wasn’t comfortable.

‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘you must permit us to assist you.’

‘Assist me?’ Orion said. ‘How?’

‘What my tiny friend means,’ Gentleman Jim said, determined not to let Pico do all the talking, ‘is that he thinks he can help you to find your soul.’

Once again the stars rustled, but this time they sounded as though they were laughing.

‘You?’ Orion said. ‘What can you do? I have been searching for thousands of years without success.’

‘Exactly’ said Gentleman Jim, and Pico added pertly, ‘Then you obviously need our help.’

Orion stared at him.

‘How can you help me?’ he said. ‘It is my doom. And yet I have paid, many times over, for my actions. By rights I should be enjoying the delights of the Elysian fields, the Isles of the Blessed, where the sun never sets. There I would meet all my old friends, the noblest of heroes from the golden age of man. There I could rest in peace finally with my two beloved dogs. Yes,’ he said, with infinite sadness, ‘that is what I should like. But there is no way of repaying my debt to the earth.’

Gentleman Jim and Pico had the same thought simultaneously.

‘Well,’ said Gentleman Jim, ‘there is one way.’

Pico almost fell over himself in his hurry to tell the starry giant about the prophecy – that only the greatest hunter of all could help to prevent Ragnarok by blowing his horn. He said ‘Ragnarok’ very quietly, but the earth still trembled.

Orion listened patiently, then, ‘Ragnarok?’ he said, and once more the ground quivered and shook.

Gentleman Jim’s stomach lurched. ‘Stop saying that!’ he said.

Orion’s face was very grave and his stars shivered. ‘I have heard of this. But it is not of my world. So what am I supposed to do?’

‘You are supposed to blow your horn,’ said Pico.

‘Ah,’ said Orion.

‘Ah?’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘Is that a problem?’

Orion hung his massive head and sighed, and his sigh was full of tears.

‘I can no longer blow my horn,’ he said. ‘That is part of my punishment. This horn was given to me by Zeus as a reward for being the greatest hunter who ever lived, and the note it sounds is like no other in clarity and purity of pitch. It can be heard throughout the nine worlds. But because I have offended the gods by abusing my gift, it no longer works. Until my soul repents and is allowed into the Elysian fields, I can no longer blow this horn.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Pico.

‘Of course I’m sure,’ said Orion. ‘Listen.’ He raised the great, glistening horn to his lips and took a huge breath, but the only sound that came out of it was:
Phtttht.

‘Ah,’ said Gentleman Jim.

‘Do you not think I would blow it if I could?’ demanded Orion. ‘If I could blow my horn, my soul would hear it and awake from its forgetful sleep.’

‘I see,’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘Hmm.’

He was about to say that it was all over, then, there was no point trying, but Pico jiggled up and down on top of his head.

‘There is only one thing to do,’ he said. ‘We’ll get your soul back for you.’

‘What – from the underworld?’ said Gentleman Jim.

‘Wherever it is – we’ll find it!’

If Pico hadn’t been on top of his head, Gentleman Jim would have nipped him.

The little dog went on, ‘That’s what dogs do, you know – we retrieve things.’

‘Only if we can find them, of course,’ put in Gentleman Jim.

‘But we already know where to look,’ Pico said.

Orion studied them and there was the faintest glimmer of hope in his starry eyes.

‘It is true,’ he murmured, ‘that my own dogs cannot help, for they are lost in the underworld as I am. But would you really go down into that dread place – into Hades itself – for my sake?’

‘Well –’ Gentleman Jim began, but Pico interrupted with ‘Of course!’

‘Of course?’
said Gentleman Jim. ‘You don’t know anything about it, do you? How to get there, how dangerous it is, how to recognize his soul when we’ve found it…’

‘I can tell you all those things,’ said Orion.

‘And how to make it remember,’ finished Gentleman Jim. ‘Really – I’ve heard worse ideas in my time, but I can’t remember when.’

‘Your haggard friend is right,’ Orion said.

‘Who are you calling haggard?’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘And to cap it all – we don’t know how to get back out of Hades once we’ve got in there!’

‘But we must try,’ said Pico earnestly. ‘For Jenny’s sake.’

All Gentleman Jim’s arguments faltered in the face of such absolute conviction, but he summoned a final objection.

‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘Tell me – how are we supposed to get there?’

‘You will walk through the galaxy with me,’ said Orion.

Pico gave a small gasp of delight.

‘Walk through the – hang on a minute,’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘You do know dogs aren’t meant to fly, don’t you?’

‘You will travel with me in the place of my dogs,’ said Orion, ‘Canis Major and Canis Minor.’

‘WOOF!’ said Pico joyously.

‘Oh dear,’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘Oh dearie dear. I knew I shouldn’t’ve got up this morning. I knew it was going to be a bad day.’

Gentleman Jim did not want to admit it, but he really wasn’t keen on heights. He didn’t often have to face them, but he had once been in a lift all the way to the thirty-first floor of the office block where Gordon worked. He hadn’t liked it at all and had expressed his feelings by widdling copiously over the feet of all the other people in the lift, so that Gordon had come to the conclusion that it was probably better to leave Gentleman Jim at home. But Pico was speaking again.

‘Fear not, my starry friend,’ he said. ‘We will travel with you, to the ends of the earth, and if your soul can be found we will find it and return it to you. Consider it done!’

Orion’s stars gleamed with emotion. ‘My friends,’ he said huskily, ‘no one has ever volunteered to help before you – not in all the ages of the world. We will travel together on the shining pathways. But first you must leave the earth and join me in the sky.’

‘Yes – about that,’ said Gentleman Jim, but Orion merely stretched out his fiery hand.

There it was before them, the edge of the world, rolling away into nothingness. The sky was a great black emptiness, pricked with stars and constellations. One of which was holding out its hand.

‘Right,’ said Gentleman Jim, not moving, but Pico said, ‘Leap, my friend, leap! Do not hold back. We must join the starry giant on his immortal journey.’

‘Of course we must,’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘What else would we do? Go home and lead a peaceful life? Why would anyone want to do that?’

He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the edge of the world was still there, and the great starry hunter still hung suspended before them.
No way,
he thought.

‘OK,’ he said. He braced himself, then slowly he lumbered forward, awkwardly and clumsily at first, then faster and faster towards the ridge. And even though he was climbing steeply uphill, he went on gaining speed, his legs powered by some strange force, until he reached the summit. There, no longer able to pause, he closed his eyes and leapt dizzyingly into the sky.

Baldur was horribly changed. Grey and withered, he was covered in the strange patterns made by frost and mould and lichen. With a pang of horror, Jenny realized he was becoming part of the tree. She nudged and nuzzled and licked all the parts accessible to her, but his arms and fingers were indistinguishable from the twisted roots. They even tasted like bark. And he seemed aged beyond measure.

Jenny felt that her heart was breaking. This was Baldur the Blessed Youth, with a face like the sun, perpetually shining with innocence and joy. Now he was transforming horribly right in front of her. Worse still, she could sense that, far within him, a muffled heart still beat faintly and thin blood trickled slowly through shrivelled veins. As she stood there, his filmy eyes opened.

‘Ley-sa,’ he breathed in a dry, crackling voice, ‘what have you done?’

If she had been human, Jenny would have sobbed aloud, but all she could manage was a broken whimper.

‘Master,’ she whimpered. ‘Master.’

Her breath came out in short, panting gasps. She thought this might melt the ice on him, but instead it formed itself
into little patches of frost on his flesh, and each time she breathed, he flinched.

‘Oh, Master,’ she said, ‘I wanted only to save your life.’

Baldur spoke slowly and painfully, as if each word cost him a mighty effort.

‘You – have – brought – me – to – a – living – death.’

Jenny could find no further words. Her head bent forward in sorrow, until her nose rested on his chest. But Baldur was speaking again.

‘The – mistletoe – dart ’ he said.

‘I took it,’ Jenny said miserably.

‘You must – pierce me – with it.’

‘No!’ said Jenny. ‘No – I can’t.’

‘Leysa,’ said Baldur, and his voice was like a trembling caress, or the rustling of leaves. ‘You must set – me – free.’

That was the meaning of her name, but she hadn’t known until now that it was also her purpose.

‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

‘Pierce – my – heart,’ he said, his voice dying away in a rattling moan, and he closed his eyes.

Now Jenny knew that her heart was broken. This was her beloved master, for whose sake she had leapt into the void. If he had asked her to die for him, she would, but to kill him – that seemed impossible. It went against every instinct she possessed.

As if he knew that she would fail him, Baldur turned his face away. Somehow, this was worse to Jenny than any reproach. She had caused his suffering and she could end it. She lifted the dart that she had carried all this time so
faithfully and pointed it at his chest. Then, with a moan, she drove it into Baldur’s chest.

Baldur shuddered once, before writhing in agony. Then he seemed to sag, as if collapsing in on himself. His face withered and twisted. His hair twined itself into the surrounding root. The mottled fungus spread over his flesh and his flesh in turn disintegrated into bark. It was like watching a speeded-up film of the process of decomposition. Within moments there was nothing left of the master she had loved.

Jenny lifted up her voice and howled – a long, bitter cry of desolation and despair. She flattened herself into the bark where he had been, wanting only to follow him into the darkness.

Wearily, Sam let himself back in.

‘Sam!’ his mother exclaimed. ‘Where have you been? And what’s happened here?’ she added, gazing in dismay at all the scorch marks. ‘You haven’t been playing with matches, have you?’