The First Collier (10 page)

It was for this reason that both Siv and Myrrthe knew that they would be safest in one of the sea-washed caves of an upper firth where a warm current helped keep the water fairly free of ice. Myrrthe had been scouring the coast for just this sort of refuge as they flew well up into the Firth of Fangs.

“Anything yet?” Siv gasped.

“Nothing so far, milady.” Myrrthe angled her wings and turned into a narrow inlet, which she believed was called the Firthkin of N’or, and which pierced far into the Hrath’ghar glacier. It was a narrow, deep channel. It rarely
froze except in the very coldest weather, and yet, because of the odd currents, icebergs occasionally floated through it.

“Milady!” Myrrthe suddenly said. “Would you consider sheltering on an iceberg?”

“My dear Myrrthe.” Siv’s voice had become low and guttural. The words tore from her beak, jagged and nearly incomprehensible. But despite her pain, she managed to maintain a sense of humor. “At this moment, I would consider anything, even a seagull’s nest!”

Myrrthe blinked in astonishment. The notion of this regal queen occupying the same quarters as a wet pooper was beyond the bizarre.

“That shan’t be necessary, milady.”

Myrrthe peered down and briefly studied the iceberg they were flying over. There were overhanging beaks of ice undercut with shelves that might offer up caves. At this point, however, there was little choice. Myrrthe knew that she had to get Siv to a roosting spot quickly. And her own wings ached. Her refined feather adjustments were becoming sloppier by the second. It was imperative that they find something now.

“All right,” she announced. “We’re going down. Stay in position, milady. Don’t move.”

“I doubt that I’m going anywhere, Myrrthe.”

The berg was an amazing creation. It was, as Siv would
later say, “the berg of all bergs,” so intricately carved by sea and wind and currents, it was a veritable labyrinth of ice and water. A perfect refuge.

“This is it!” Siv gasped as they landed. “I know it in my gizzard. I know it in my plummels, or what’s left of them!”

It did not take Myrrthe long to find the perfect cavern. Washed by the jade-green waters of the firthkin, it offered an ideal defense against the hagsfiends. Here, Siv knew she could wait and heal.
But wait for what?
she wondered. The hatching of a chick she might never see, in a distant place she knew not where, in a schneddenfyrr that she had not made? She told herself that she must not dwell on such matters. Healing was her first task. If she could not heal, she was useless to her chick—if, indeed, she should ever meet the hatchling—and useless to her kingdom.

Her port wing was a wreckage of fractured shafts and feathers. The flight feathers on it were gone, the secondaries almost demolished.

Myrrthe immediately sprang into action. She had to stop that bleeding. So taking talonsful of snow and ice, she packed Siv’s wound.

“That feels good,” Siv said. “But do you think I’ll ever fly again?”

“Of course, milady. Just think of this as a violent molt.”

If Siv hadn’t been in such excruciating pain, she might have laughed. “More snow, Myrrthe. It numbs the pain.”

“Yes, dear, I know. And ice will even be better.”

The ice did begin to relieve the agony. The bleeding stopped. “Do you remember your first molt, Myrrthe?” Siv asked.

“My first molt. Oh, my goodness, milady. I am so old. How could I ever remember back that far?”

“But it must be interesting for a Snowy because you might not even notice it, what with all your white feathers and all the snow and ice of the N’yrthghar.” Siv’s voice was growing thick.

“You forget, madam, that when we are hatchlings, we are not yet pure white. We’re rather sooty in appearance, if anything.”

“I remember my first real molt.” Siv’s speech was slow and dreamy. “I don’t count the ones when my down fell off. I was barely old enough to remember. But the first real one—Great Glaux, I was so shocked. Here, I had just fledged and really mastered flight. I felt so grown up after months of being a hatchling with all that patchy fluff. I had just begun to enjoy my plummels, primaries,
secondaries, and my lovely lulus, when all of a sudden, there was a gorgeous tawny brown feather on the ground.” Siv’s speech slurred a bit.

“Time to rest, dear. You must rest.”

“Yes…I must rest.”

“Remember your great-aunt Agatha. She got better, didn’t she?”

“Yes, Aunt Agatha, of course.”

Siv hadn’t thought of her aunt Agatha in years, but her great-aunt had been terribly wounded in a catastrophic encounter with hagsfiends long ago in the Bitter Sea. During this battle, not one but both of her wings had been horribly maimed. She had been a superb warrior, but she never could fly the position of first ice sliver again. Nonetheless, she had recovered enough to fly in combat. This time as strategic commander of the Ice Scimitar Brigade. She had developed a superb talon technique with the reverse ice scimitar, a very oddly shaped weapon that was perfectly suited for her peculiar wing configurations. Aunt Agatha’s amazing courage and determination had been the source of that most famous Krakish motto: “Cintura Vrulcrum, Niykah Kronig,” which roughly translates to “Every wound a new opportunity, every curse a new challenge.”

Siv drifted off to sleep with one thought.
I must heal. I must heal. I must heal. So much to be done.

“I need fish!” Siv said when she awoke. Myrrthe greeted this news with mixed emotions. She was overjoyed that her dear lady was hungry. This was a good sign. But at the same time she felt her gizzard crinkle.
She needs fish!
Myrrthe thought.
What she needs is a Fish Owl!

“Yes, milady, fish oil is the best remedy for rebuilding splintered feather shafts.”

“Can you get on with it?” Siv pressed. But she immediately felt guilty for being so peremptory with her dear servant. Although her port wing sent ripples of pain through her body, she knew that this was no cause for rudeness. “I’m sorry. So sorry, Myrrthe. How insensitive of me. I know no more about catching fish than you do. Forgive my rudeness.”

“No need, milady. Just let me think a moment.”

“Take all the time you need, Myrrthe.”

I
n her day, Myrrthe had seen a few Fish Owls, and now she tried to remember how they performed the complex feat of plunging through the water’s surface and coming back up with a nice fat fish. She was fairly sure that one had to begin the dive from very high up and come in on a fairly steep angle. She thought about it several more minutes and then perched herself at the edge of the cavern and peered down into the water. She supposed she would have to keep her eyes open under the water. Not a pleasant thought!

“All right, milady. I’ll give it a go.”

“Good luck, Myrrthe,” Siv said.

But Myrrthe was already spiraling upward in flight.

She tried once, twice, then three and four times. She was keeping her eyes open underwater but she never saw anything. She hated the rush of bubbles and the deafening sound of the water roaring by her ear slits.

On her fifth try, a single word rang out in this isolated firthkin:

“WRONG!”

Myrrthe pulled out of the spiraling plunge and lighted on top of the iceberg.

“Who said that?” She looked around and saw nothing but another iceberg floating by. But suddenly, part of the iceberg rose up and a furry, clawed paw poked at the sky. Myrrthe blinked.

“You’re starting too high.” It was a polar bear. Myrrthe had seen them many times from a distance but never had met, let alone spoken, to one. In the N’yrthghar there was very little exchange or communication among species. The bear swam up to the edge of the berg and, resting both paws, peered up at Myrrthe with its small close-set dark brown eyes. The iceberg tipped, the edge now buried in the water. Myrrthe began to slide and gripped the ice with her talons.

She had never seen such hugeness, such enormity, such byggenbrocken. Every word for “gigantic” flooded through Myrrthe’s head, but then she realized with a start that she was not even seeing half of this bear. Its coat was thick and creamy in color and, although the fur was tightly packed, Myrrthe could see very black skin beneath it
where the coat creased as the bear’s paws spread on the iceberg. Its shoulders and neck had a bunched look, and Myrrthe bet that, if swimming at full speed, this bear could ram an iceberg in half. Its ears, round and stubby, were rather adorable. “Look,” the bear said, “when you’re finished staring at me I’ll give you some tips on fishing.”

“Oh, sorry, so sorry. How rude of me!” Myrrthe said.

“You’ve never seen one of us close up?”

“Not this close.”

“Well, your loss,” the bear said blithely. Then in a more companionable manner, she said, “Might I offer some suggestions on where you are going wrong in your fishing attempts?”

“Please do.”

“It’s simple,” the bear explained. “You’re coming in too steep. Face it, you don’t have the power or the bulk to go really deep for the larger fish. You have to stick to the surface ones—the herring, the silver slips, the bluescales.” With one large paw, the bear swept the water and deposited a small mound of squirming tiny bluish fish on the iceberg. Myrrthe gasped.

“Bluescales,” said the bear, nosing them up higher so they wouldn’t slip off. “They’re running now. They’ll help your queen.”

“Great Glaux, you know?”

“Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me. And as you might have noticed, this firthkin is rather desolate, few creatures about. Just me, really.”

“And who are you? How do you call yourself?”

“Oh, how quaint! How do you call yourself! I love it. You owls give such a nice twist to Krakish,” the bear said in a friendly way. “My name is Svenka. And yours?”

“Myrrthe. I have served the queen from the time before she was queen. I was her nursemaid, then her governess.”

“And the king, I understand, has been killed.”

“Yes.” Myrrthe did not mention anything about the egg. The less said about that, the better. “Have you heard anything of the wars?”

“Very little. King H’rath is dead. Lord Arrin has gained new territory on the Hrath’ghar glacier. They say that his scouts go out and press young owls into his army. But as I said, I hear very little. I spend most of my time alone and away from all that.” Svenka waved a paw dismissively as if to say that the owls’ world was no concern of hers.

“But why are you here alone?” Myrrthe asked.

“That is the nature of polar bears. We are solitary creatures. We come together during mating season. And then we part. If we are lucky and have cubs, they stay with us until they can go out on their own.”

“Do you have cubs?”

“Not yet, but soon.” Svenka pushed off from the iceberg and rolled onto her back. She patted her stomach. “Two, possibly three.”

“In there?” Myrrthe said.

“We’re not birds, my dear. We don’t lay eggs. Our young don’t hatch. They get born. We give birth.”

Myrrthe blinked and cocked her head thoughtfully. “It’s a good system. Convenient. No nest building. No guarding the nest. They’re just with you all the time. Better than our way, I think. One might almost wish…”

“Don’t even think of it, Myrrthe. You’re a bird. Birds are birds, bears are bears. Glaux, as you call the great spirit, knows what is best for each creature.”

“But what do you call your Glaux?”

“Great Ursa, but it is all the same spirit. No matter what you call it.”

“But how can that be?”

“Are you sure you want to get into this now? Shouldn’t you take these bluescales to your lady?”

“Oh, you’re right, of course.”

And so Myrrthe did take the fish to Siv, but the conversation would soon continue. It became the first of several philosophical discussions between the polar bear and the Snowy Owl—until the night that Myrrthe vanished.

S
iv couldn’t tell me about that horrible night without breaking down. “Everything had been going so well, Grank, so well. I was healing. Myrrthe had learned to fish and then one night…” She began to sob. “I begged her not to go. Hunting lemmings on a moon-bleached night in the middle of winter when their coats had turned white. How would she ever see them? But she argued that I needed the meat now to heal completely.”

Myrrthe, you see, Dear Owl, had an expert’s knowledge of lemmings and kept track of their cycles and movements. She knew their range, and where they built their nests and tunnels in the shallow spaces between the everfrost and the surface of the tundra. Unlike many of the other non-bird creatures who hibernated during the winter, lemmings did not. They were busy foraging, eating constantly, and doing what they really did best—making babies. No animal can reproduce faster than a lemming. Myrrthe often thought how stupid this was, for, in truth,
it was their undoing. About once every four years, the nests became overcrowded and, like idiots, the rodents raced to find new homes. No planning whatsoever. They would just up and leave, the entire mob, often hundreds of thousands of them. Not heeding where they were going, many fell off cliffs into the sea. And they seemed to never learn!

Myrrthe was counting on the lemmings’ stupidity and her knowledge of the range. She knew that not far in from the firthkin, on the edges of the Hrath’ghar glacier, there was a colony that had started four years earlier and was about to burst from overcrowding. “With seven litters a year and eleven babies a litter, there must be squillions of them, milady,” Myrrthe had told Siv. So off she flew one moonlit windless night when the water in the firthkin was so still that nary a ripple wrinkled its surface. Myrrthe knew lemmings in any season. And Siv, who had flown with her on many past expeditions, knew that she would look first for the puckering up of the land into the ridges and depressions created by the seasonal thawings and freezings. These ridges became the travel routes for the migrating lemmings. Myrrthe would fly over these ridges and, as she told Siv, “Bring back a nice juicy little fellow for my queen.”