The Fire Chronicle (32 page)

Michael woke, saw blue sky above him, and, for one perfect moment, had no idea where he was.

Then a face appeared, upside down, leaning in very close to his own.

“How do you see out of these? They make everything so fuzzy!”

Instantly, Michael was on his feet. He took in the blurred outlines of the forested valley, the snow-covered mountains, the volcano, the ruined tower.…

Okay, he thought as his heart galloped in his chest, okay, I know where I am.

Then his hand went to his throat and he felt the bump of the glass marble, still hanging from the rawhide strip about his neck. Reassured, Michael reached up to adjust his glasses and
realized he wasn’t wearing glasses, that they were being worn by the figure in whose lap his head had been resting just moments before.

“You don’t really need these awful things, do you?” The elf girl had taken off his glasses and was holding them as one might hold a particularly slimy piece of seaweed. “You look so much better without them. Except for your nose. Were you in an accident?”

“What? No.”

“Or cursed by a wizard?”

“No—”

“So you were born with that nose? I suppose after we’re married I’ll just make a point of not looking at your face too often so that it doesn’t frighten me.”

Michael was still groggy from sleep and struggling to get his bearings—not to mention that what the elf girl had said was so utterly horrifying—and he had no idea how to respond. He simply said, “Can I please have—” then cut himself off. “Wait—where’s Emma? Where’s my sister? And where’s the
Chronicle
?”

“Your overly large friend carried her downstairs. And he took that annoying book with him. As if I ever want to see it again—oh la!”

“Gabriel? He’s okay?”

“Perfectly fine. Shall I throw these away then? We’re agreed?”

She dangled the glasses off the side of the tower.

“No! I need them! Please.”

“Oh, very well.” The elf girl skipped over and handed Michael his glasses. “To the rest of the world, you may be terrifying to
behold, but to me you will always be the most handsome man alive. Provided, of course, I periodically look away from your face.” She curtsied. “Princess Wilamena, at your service.”

“You’re … a princess?”

“Well, of course! Why do you think I wanted my crown back so badly?” She touched the gold circlet now around her brow. “Don’t you think it becomes me?”

“What? Oh, uh, sure. Lots.”

With his glasses on, Michael could finally see the elf girl clearly. She was a perfect living duplicate of the ice sculpture. Her hair, he decided, was the color of morning sunlight. Her eyes were bluer than a cloudless summer sky. Her nose—

Bluer than a cloudless summer sky? Michael thought. What’s wrong with me? She’s got blond hair and blue eyes; that’s it.

But even then, Michael heard himself comparing her voice to birdsong, the whiteness of her skin to new snowfall—

Stop it, he told himself. You’re being duped by some elf magic, is all.

“Oh, wonderful.” The elf girl clapped her hands. “You’ve already fallen in love with me!”

“I have not—”

“Don’t be silly! You should see the ridiculous look upon your face! By the way, have you noticed the way my hair moves?”

“Listen,” Michael said with as much sternness as he could muster, “I need to know you’re not going to turn back into a dragon. You’re not, are you?”

At this, the elf princess grew somber and reached down to pick up the severed gold bracelet from where it lay amid the rubble.
Michael saw that the bracelet had shrunk down to person size, but even so, it looked large and bulky in the elf maiden’s delicate hands. Wilamena ran her fingers over the cut made by Michael’s knife.

“It was almost two hundred years ago when I came upon Xanbertis in the forest. He offered me this bracelet as a symbol of the friendship between the Order and my people. I had no knowledge then of the atrocities he’d committed. So I accepted the gift, and became his slave. Two centuries of darkness and fire. A prisoner in my own horrible body. But no more. The dragon is dead and I am saved—all because of you!”

She gazed up at him with tearful, adoring eyes.

And Michael thought, Poor thing, she’s had a rough time of it.

Then he thought, Her hair really does move all by itself.…

The elf princess clapped her hands in delight.

“Oh, you
are
in love with me!”

“What—no, I just—”

“Yes, you are! My own rabbit!”

“Please, don’t call me Rabbit.”

“Bunny!”

And she leapt forward and kissed him on the cheek, causing Michael to stumble back.

“Don’t do that either! I’m serious.”

He could feel his cheeks burning and a tingling where she’d kissed him.

“True,” she said. “There’ll be plenty of time for kissing later. Oh yes indeed!”

Enough of this elf nonsense, Michael thought.

“I want to see my sister. Now.”

They found Emma in the Guardian’s quarters, a low-roofed building tucked along the back wall of the fortress. The furnishings were spare—a wooden chest, a cot, a stool, a table—but considering the Guardian’s own fairly filthy appearance, the room was surprisingly clean and tidy. Gabriel had laid Emma on the cot and covered her with several blankets, and when Michael and the elf princess entered, he was sitting beside her, holding her small, lifeless hand in both of his. Michael had the impression that Gabriel had been sitting like that, without moving, for hours.

Gabriel, whose head was wrapped in a bandage, rose and embraced him.

“I am very proud of you.”

“Oh, well … you know …” Michael was suddenly tongue-tied. “… It’s no big … well, you know …”

Then Michael tried to return Gabriel’s knife, but the man refused to take it.

“You have earned it. King Robbie would agree.”

Michael thanked him and slid the knife back into his belt.

The red leather book was on the table beside the cot. Michael had felt its pull the moment he’d entered the room, and his hands itched to hold it. But as he took Gabriel’s place on the stool, he gave all of his attention to Emma. Save for the fact that she was lying down and covered with blankets, she appeared exactly as she had the night before. Her eyes stared out at nothing. There was the same crease of anger on her brow. Her mouth was still
slightly open. Michael picked up the clenched hand that rested on the outside of the blanket. It was as cold as a stone.

It’s okay, he said silently. I’m here now.

And only then, finally, did he turn to the book.

It was both smaller and fatter than the
Atlas
. In size and shape, it reminded him of
The Dwarf Omnibus
, a book Michael considered to have near-perfect proportions. As Michael had predicted, the
Chronicle
showed no signs of having been submerged in a pool of lava; indeed, it was in far better shape than the
Omnibus
, whose black leather binding was scarred and worn with age. Michael did find, however, that a design had been carved into the leather cover. He couldn’t say what it was for sure, but the network of ripples and whorls made him think of tongues of flame. For a moment, Michael wondered about the significance, then filed the question away and turned his attention to the most intriguing, and unusual, aspect of the book.

Two metal hooks, fixed along the edge of the back cover, were clutching what looked like an old-fashioned pen. It was four and a half inches long, smooth and slim, and it tapered to a point at one end. It appeared to be made of bone.

“What is this?”

“That’s the stylus.” Princess Wilamena was standing behind him; and even with his back to her, Michael was frustratingly aware of her presence, and of the fact that her hair smelled of springtime and honey and—

Focus, he told himself.

“What do I do with it?”

“You silly, that’s how you get the
Chronicle
to work! You write
in the name of whomever you wish the
Chronicle
to fix upon, and voilà! The thing is done! Is that helpful?”

“Yes,” Michael said. “Actually, it is. Thank you.”

“Is it worth a kiss perhaps?”

Michael ignored that. He snapped the stylus out of the brackets. It was very light; it felt almost hollow.

“And now I just write Emma’s name in the book? Seems so easy.”

The elf girl laughed. “Do you even know what the
Chronicle
is, you rabbit you?”

“I told you—”

“Hush! You’re about to learn something. The
Chronicle
is a record—you could even say
the
record—of all living things. Any creature that walks or talks or breathes or sings or laughs or cries or runs or blows bubbles—I do like blowing bubbles!—is listed in its pages. And the list is constantly changing as the lives around us bud and wither. By writing someone’s name in the book, you add them to the scrolls of the quick.”

“But Emma’s already alive; she’s just frozen—”

“As I was about to explain, the
Chronicle
is, first and foremost, a record; but the stylus allows you to focus the power of the book—the power of life itself—upon a specific being, either to call them into existence, or—and think now of your dear, sweet sister—to heal them. But all
you
have to do is write the name down with your little rabbit hand.” And then Michael heard her whisper to Gabriel, “He doesn’t like me to call him Rabbit, but I do it anyway because he’s such an adorable rabbit. Don’t you agree?”

Gabriel gave a noncommittal grunt.

Michael opened the book. He was not surprised to find the pages blank, although, unlike the
Atlas
, whose pages were smooth and white, these were rough and marked with tiny splinters of wood. Michael flipped through to the middle and flattened the book on his knee. He paused. He had the sense that this was one of the shining moments of his life. To get here, he’d triumphed over great odds and great danger. He imagined Dr. Pym learning of what he’d done, or Kate, or King Robbie, or even, one day, his father. As Michael set the tip of the stylus to the page, a smile creased the edges of his habitually serious face and, with a confident stroke, he wrote his sister’s name.

Nothing happened.

“Um, Rabbit …”

“What?” Michael said irritably.

“You will need ink. The letters won’t just magically appear.”

“Well, you could have told me that. Does the Guardian have any—”

“Oh, you don’t use normal ink.” The elf princess came forward and took his thumb in one hand and the stylus in the other. Michael was about to ask what she was doing—even as he marveled at the rose-petal softness of her skin—when she jabbed the sharp point of the stylus into his thumb.

“Oww!”

“Don’t be a baby bunny. Here, you see?” And she dipped the stylus into the drop of blood welling on the pad of his thumb. “Not only does it function as ink, but the blood also forges the connection between you and the book. A bit gruesome, but very
effective. Now wake up your poor sister, we’ll all go outside, and I’ll let you braid my hair!”

Michael said nothing about this last suggestion (though a small voice in his head thought it sounded wonderful), but took a deep breath, gave one final glance at his sister’s motionless face, and touched the stylus to the page.

He jerked upright. It was as if he had jammed a fork into an outlet; an electric current was coursing up the stylus, along his arm, and out through his entire body.

“What’s happening?” he heard Gabriel demand. “Is he in danger?”

“No, he’s linked to the
Chronicle
,” the elf princess whispered. “Watch.”

It seemed to Michael as if all of his nerve endings, from the tips of his fingers, to his earlobes, down to the bottoms of his feet, were humming. After the initial shock, the feeling was not painful, or even unpleasant, and as Michael began to relax, he realized that his senses had become almost supernaturally keen. He saw flecks of gold he’d never noticed in Emma’s eyes; he smelled the faint oatmealy odor of the soap they used at the orphanage in Baltimore; he even heard, though this seemed impossible, the soft, fluttery beating of her heart.…

He began to write, and the letters smoked and bubbled as he laid them down, as if he were somehow soldering his sister’s name into the pages of the book; and then Emma lurched upward, shouting, “You’d better not—” She stopped and looked about, saying, “Huh? How did—” and a loud and joyful chaos broke loose all around her. Gabriel swept her up in his arms, Wilamena
clapped and kissed Emma, declaring that she was so happy that they were to be sisters, and Emma said, “Huh? Who are you? Where’s that dragon?” and in the midst of this, only Michael was silent, sitting there on the stool, his hands trembling as he closed the book, his face bled white with fear.

“So there I was in the clearing, and this big, stupid dragon—” Emma glanced at Wilamena. “Sorry.”

“Oh la!” The elf princess waved her hand. “It’s nothing. We’re family, after all. Or we soon will be.”

“Huh?”

“Skip it,” Michael said.

“Well, then we flew over the forest,” Emma went on, “which was actually kind of cool, and landed on the tower, and that hairy, smelly guy jabbed me with a needle, and next thing I knew, I was here.”

Here being the Guardian’s quarters, where they were all still gathered. Emma had just been told, partially by Michael, but mostly by Gabriel and Wilamena, everything that had transpired since she’d been frozen: how Michael and Gabriel had tracked her to the fortress, how Michael had gone into the volcano alone, how the Guardian had tried to murder them, how Michael had figured out that the dragon was really the elf princess, how he’d managed both to lift the curse and retrieve the
Chronicle.…

“The rabbit was quite extraordinarily brave,” Wilamena had said.

“What rabbit? There’s a rabbit?”

“She means me,” Michael had said glumly.

“He was willing to lay down his life for you. Imagine a little rabbit like that standing up to a dragon with only a puny dwarfish knife.”

Michael had felt everyone staring at him, and he’d quickly asked Emma to tell her story. When she was done, Gabriel announced it was time to think about leaving.