The First Collier (11 page)

Siv waited.

As dawn melted into morning the next day, there was no sign of the faithful old Snowy. But Siv did not begin to worry until that evening at tween time, those seconds between the last drop of the daylight and the first tinge of the lavender twilight. Siv had not long to wait, for these were among the very shortest days and longest nights of the year. As Siv watched the lavender deepen to purple and then the purple turn to black, she felt her gizzard begin to crumble. Something must have happened, for surely Myrrthe would not let her wait this long with no food. And not even Svenka was around.
Oh, Glaux,
Siv thought.
This cannot be happening. My mate has been killed, my egg taken, and now my dearest and most faithful friend is gone.

Siv knew that Myrrthe was much more than her nursemaid and servant. With her dear Myrrthe gone, Siv thought she would starve to death not from lack of food but from lack of those she loved. A wing could mend, but could a broken heart and gizzard ever heal?

Two days later, there was still no sign of Myrrthe, and Siv began to seriously doubt that she herself would survive. She could not yet fly. She had no food. But oddly, she felt no hunger—except in her heart, for even Svenka had left. She was trying to imagine where the polar bear had gone when, suddenly, the immense head poked
through the water just as the sun was beginning to rise. The moment Siv saw her dark lusterless eyes she knew something terrible had happened.

“Your cubs? You gave birth and they died? You lost them?”

“No.” Svenka shook her head. Siv opened her beak but not a sound came out. The words would not form. “She’s gone, Siv,” Svenka said, her voice breaking.

“You mean—dead?” Siv asked hoarsely. Svenka nodded. “But how can you be sure?” The bear put a huge paw on the berg and ever so gently placed in front of Siv a snowy white feather from the coverts of Myrrthe’s wing. Siv blinked. “She’s molted. I’m sure. Myrrthe always molts at odd times.”

“No, Siv. I found her.”

Siv shook her head trying to understand all this. “What do you mean?” She blinked rapidly.

“She was torn apart.”

Siv blinked again. The confusion that swam in her eyes vanished. “Hagsfiends! Hagsfiends are the only ones who kill that way.” Although Siv had been wilfing seconds before, she now seemed to swell up in the classic threat display known as thronkenspeer. “Tell me. Tell me everything. Spare me nothing. I must honor her death as I did
that of my beloved mate. She was no mere servant. She died for me, didn’t she?”

“Most likely. I think I arrived shortly after it had happened.”

“How did you know to go looking?”

“On the night she left, just before dawn I got a craving—as many expectant polar bear mothers do—for a bit of anchovy. I knew that the best anchovies this time of year swim near the fringe ice of the Hrath’ghar glacier. So I went.”

“
I
was gorging, I admit, on some of the best anchovies that ever swam in the Great North Waters. It disgusts me now when I think of it.”

“It shouldn’t,” Siv interrupted. “You were nourishing your unborn. What could be more noble?”

“Well, as I rolled over in the water to digest and pat my stomach with the babes inside, I was surprised to see a ragged dark patch appear overhead. At first, I thought it was a weather front coming in. But then tattered shadows began to skim across the still waters. Remember how windless it was on the night she left?” Siv nodded. “Well, there was still no wind. And the water was perfectly still and, with the full-shine moon, every shadow was printed on the water. It was an amazing sight. I had a terrible feeling deep in my gut. My babes seemed to roil within me, sensing my own fear. I knew that Myrrthe had gone for lemmings. I had heard you begging her not to go. But she was right, you did need meat.”

“No, no.” Siv shook her head in despair.

“Well, I decided I had to go a-land. So I climbed out of the firth and followed those shadows. I began to see that unmistakable silky movement across the glacier. It appeared as if the ground was pulsing. It heaved and swelled. It was the lemmings, white as the snow in their winter pelts, surging across the landscape. It is an unforgettable sight.

“And Myrrthe sailed overhead, plunging down at intervals to attack. The sea of lemmings would part, just like water as it meets an obstacle but, then mindlessly, the animals would flow back together. They showed no panic. They seemed barely conscious that one of their own had been taken. It was as if their brains, what little they have, were fixed on one thing—movement. No destination in mind, no thought of their course, just forward. They were no longer individuals, single creatures. They were the surge, and the surge was them. It was easy pickings for Myrrthe.

“But unlike the lemmings, I could see that she was immediately aware of the danger. She veered off sharply to port. Her strategy was to get back to the water, any water at that point.”

Once again, Siv shook her head. “If only she had been diving for fish. They wouldn’t have followed her to open water.”

“Yes, indeed. They were on her so fast. I raced toward her, stomping on only Great Ursa knows how many hundreds of lemmings. I reared up in the night.”

It was Siv who told me this, Dear Owl, and it was as if she had witnessed it all herself. “You can’t imagine how it must have been, Grank.” She described this enormous white bear. “So huge, so immense,” she said, “that you felt she could pluck the moon from the sky.” Siv continued Svenka’s tale exactly as it had been told to her.

“But it was to no avail,” Svenka recounted. “For suddenly, a terrible yellow light began filtering into the moon-pale night. I saw strange shapes, like rags, streaking across the full moon. Now you must understand that we polar bears have little experience with hagsfiends. We don’t fly, and they don’t swim. I knew nothing of their ways. So although I batted at a few of them and I think injured some gravely, when that yellow glare began to envelop me, I felt completely paralyzed. I sank to the ground, crushing dozens of lemmings beneath me. And still they flowed over me, determined not to alter their course. And I, on my back, could see it all.”

Siv said she tried to imagine this mountainous furry animal with lemmings crawling all over her. She understood that weird paralysis as the yellow light seeped from
the hagsfiends’ eyes. “I don’t know how I ever escaped it,” Siv said. “How I ever broke from it.”

But I know, Dear Owl, how she escaped it: Ga’! I doubted that King H’rath had Ga’, despite his being a king of infinite goodness and courage. In that moment, however, as Siv told me of her escape when she was up against the ice wall, I knew in my heart and my mind and, most important, in my gizzard, that she had Ga’.

Svenka continued her story: “The worst part about it was that I was completely helpless. I stared into the sky. I stared into death…” She paused and could not continue. She simply could not say the words.

“As they tore her apart,” Siv said.

Svenka looked at her. “You know then how it is.”

“Oh, yes, all too well. I saw my mate torn apart at the battle of H’rathmagyrr.” She paused a moment. “And then did they take her head and fly off with it on an ice sword?”

“Yes.” Svenka’s voice was low and hoarse.

When the hagsfiends had left and the yellow glare had melted away, the moon once more turned silver, and Svenka awakened from her stupor. The lemmings, too, had moved on, and the great bear searched the scene of this dastardly murder for the remains of Myrrthe. What
she found, which was little, was a foot with three of the four talons torn off, a wing. She buried them. But she saved one snow-white feather to bring back to Siv. She added in a growlish whisper, “And you know, Siv, the lemmings—they just kept coming and coming and coming, mindlessly racing across the land.”

We were quiet for a long time after Siv had finished telling me this sad story. “You know,” she finally said, “we could not have a proper Final ceremony.”

“But you had one?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

“Yes. I could not bear the thought of doing nothing.”

“What did you do?”

“It might seem odd, but you must understand that I still could not fly. So I climbed on top of Svenka’s head and asked her to stand up. She is so tall, I might as well have been flying. The sheer immensity of this bear will never cease to amaze me. I perched as erect as I could and, holding the feather in my talons, I recited a poem I had composed in honor of Myrrthe. Then I released the feather to the winds. It floated away on the curl of a katabat, a lively, wonderfully boisterous katabat wind.”

“Would you recite the poem for me now, Siv?” I asked.

“I’ll try,” she said, and began.

I see her in the wind,

I see her in moon’s light,

I see whiteness in the dark,

I see her day and night.

When the dawn meets the morning,

when twilight slips to night,

I think of dearest Myrrthe,

a bird so white, so bright.

She is the snow of the N’yrthghar,

her whiteness curls in breaking seas.

She is everywhere I look,

but she still is lost to me.

She is the song in my heart,

she is the wind beneath my wing.

Her mercy knew no bounds,

her faith as deep as any sea.

She is everywhere I look,

yet she still is lost to me.

A
nd in the far firthkin, in the ice cave of the berg while Siv herself was steeped in grief over the loss of Myrrthe, I had my talons full with young Theo. I knew that this Great Horned was an owl of unusual intelligence and extreme stubbornness. He could be absolutely maddening at times, but I had never seen an owl learn faster. To be observed by Theo is an experience in itself. He seemed to see with his entire body. If there was such a thing as a gizzard with eyes—well, that would be Theo. I, of course, kept him away from my hollow and the schneddenfyrr. Despite all the lessons and my experiments with fire, I managed to keep a close eye on the egg—so as not to arouse Theo’s suspicions.

I myself knew a lot about coals and embers and flames, but Theo seemed to understand rock in ways I never imagined. First of all, he classified rocks into all sorts of categories that went way beyond the hard and soft groups into which Fengo and I used to separate the rocks
during our initial experiments. He knew which rocks to use to split other rocks, and he seemed to sense just how these rocks would break when struck.

Theo often went off to look for the special rocks that he sought, ones that were extremely hard and that contained a peculiar element he called “redmor.” These were the ones he wanted, and they were most often found in what Theo referred to as “weathering regions” that were near the surface of the earth. The only problem with these rocks was that the fires had to be made much hotter than normal. Oh, what I would have given for a good bonk coal! My work would have gone a lot faster. But I worked hard to keep the fires going. One day as Theo was banging away, I imagined something very different emerging from the lumpy mass he was striking.

“Theo,” I said, “that prong you’ve got coming out there?”

“Yes,” he replied. “What about it?”

It reminded me of a talon but I wasn’t going to tell Theo that. Theo loved a challenge. “Can you make three more just like it? And join the four at the top?”

“Sure,” he said.

One of the first tools that Theo had made were pincers, which he called “tongs.” Clever gadgets, they allowed him to manipulate what he was making in the fire and then to
hold it and dip it into the snow to cool it down. With his pincers, he now dipped the four-pronged object into the snow and held the finished piece up. “Pretty good, eh?”

“Excellent, lad. You are brilliant!” Theo’s eyes beamed and a shiver of joy riffled through his feathers. Sometimes I wondered what kind of life Theo had had. He was so obviously smart, but had no one ever praised him? I had no idea, because Theo never spoke of his family except for that one time when he told me of his uncle the teacher. “All right. Now I have a real challenge for you.”

“What is it?” His eyes blazed as brightly as the fire.

“I want you to curve those prongs at their pointy ends and make them hollow.”

It took him some time, but he did it and when he stepped back, he blinked. “It looks just like a claw, almost like my talons, but more like polar bear claws,” he whispered.

“Yes, Theo. You have made the first battle claws.”

“I what?” He looked stunned. But I was so excited, I hardly paid attention to his reaction. “Now make another one and we’ll have a pair.”

“
You’ll
have a pair!” he said hotly. “You seem to forget that I am a gizzard resister.”

I stepped close to him. “I am not asking you to fight, Theo. I’m just asking you to make these claws. Hagsfiends
are on the rise, you know this as well as I do. The coalition with Lord Arrin and Penryck is a monstrous one.”

“Lord Arrin and Penryck?” Theo asked. He seemed surprised. “You mean the Sklardrog.”

“Yes, precisely, the Sklardrog, the sky dragon. He has joined forces with Lord Arrin. And I repeat: I am not asking you to fight, but just to make these battle claws.”

“There’s no ‘just’ about it. ‘Just’ is a stupid word to use. What difference does it make if I don’t fight if I provide the weapons that help owls kill each other?”

I was so exasperated. I wanted to wring his impudent neck. I squeezed my eyes shut for a long time and tried to think of a reply. There must be something I could say that might change his mind, but I didn’t know what. Then it came to me: I had to tell him about the egg and whose egg it really was. I began slowly.

“Theo,” I said, “I am going to tell you something that I swore I never would.” He slid his head around to peer at me. I knew I had his attention. Theo’s curiosity knew no bounds. “The egg in that schneddenfyrr up there.” I nodded toward the tree. “It is not just any egg. It is not an ordinary egg.”