Peter Dickinson - Tears of the Salamander

“A light supper after our midday feast,” said Uncle Giorgio pleasantly enough. “I think we are both too tired for talk.”

Alfredo agreed, with relief, and took up his book. They did not speak again until they said goodnight. That was Tuesday.

All night Alfredo dreamed restlessly of his vengeance. He woke early, and discovered that his confidence had somehow thinned in the night, as if it had become part of the now forgotten dreams. Yesterday his decision to trust the salamanders, his new hatred of his uncle and his determination to take his vengeance if he got the chance had seemed fixed and certain. Now both trust and determination had become doubtful, and without them what right had he to hatred? And even suppose, miraculously, he found the proof he needed, he could see no way forward, and was heavily aware of how little his power was, how few and small his secrets, compared to all that Uncle Giorgio knew from his study, and his long Mastership of the mountain. Fear had returned—not full-fledged panic, but a steady underlying apprehension, a feeling that he was picking his way along a narrow track with a precipitous drop below, and dared not look down.

The sun was just rising as he went out into the silvery sweet dawn, not with any purpose, simply needing to be away from the house and all it meant. As before he found himself wandering along the overgrown driveway until his way was blocked by the old lava flow.

He gazed a while, unthinking, and then, though it was still full of the chill of night, stretched himself out on it, molded his body to it, made himself part of it, imagined himself seeping down through its hidden veins, feeling his way toward the distant central fires. Faintly now he thought he could hear the singing of the salamanders.

Oh, what is going to happen to me? he asked them.

The singing paused and resumed, but muddled and uncertain. Like a fever dream. Whoever had written the notes he had found had been right— Nobody, not even we ourselves, the salamanders seemed to be telling him, knows what is going to happen, not until it happens. Till then there is no certainty about it, no truth for us to tell .

He wasn’t disappointed. In his heart he had known this to be so, just as he knew, too, that it was no use asking them what Uncle Giorgio was planning. They couldn’t see into the minds of men. But the singing of the salamanders, and the fact that he could hear them, were comforting in themselves, so he lay where he was for a while, and then went back to the house for breakfast. As soon as they had eaten Uncle Giorgio took him down to the furnace room.

Alfredo went reluctantly. He wasn’t in the mood for grief. Doubt and fear left no room for it. But sing he must, sing the music of sorrow.

“By the waters of Babylon I sat down and wept…”

For once in his life the music didn’t seem to be part of him. Some of the adult choristers had been like that, singing their way through the services by rote, steady on the note from endless repetition, while their minds were on other things—a woman they were keen on, a bit of gossip they’d heard, their next meal. Nevertheless the salamander rose and wept. The sorrow was in the music, as Uncle Giorgio had said. That was all it needed, and its own grief, the grief of exile, which was real, and apparently unending.

How did it come to be here, in this prison? he wondered.

Alfredo hadn’t intended to ask the question—to question it at all—but it answered. As they sang on together he saw it swimming in the fiery currents of the mountain with its comrades, none of them yet fully grown. They were exploring, as young creatures tend to, the edges of their territory, daring each other to see how far they could go. A music reached them, strange and powerful. The rock above them split open and the current that carried them welled into the world above. Still the music held them, compelling them upward. The salamander raised its head above the surface and looked around. Something seized it from behind and lifted it clear of the molten rock into the killing cold of air.

It had struggled desperately, but it was gripped firm between two meshes of metal and was carried to where two huge creatures were waiting—Alfredo recognized these as a pair of horses or mules—with a large object slung on poles between them. An arm reached from beneath the salamander and opened the lid of the object, which was filled with glowing coals. It was lowered into the life-giving heat and there released. As the lid was closed upon it it could hear, close by, two human voices, loud with anger, and farther off, the horrified wails of its comrades mourning its loss.

Then darkness and endless jolting, and the embers cooling, cooling, until it lost consciousness. And finally waking to find itself in this furnace, also then filled with coals which were just enough to keep it alive, and were constantly replenished until out of its own natural process it had transmuted what was fed to it into the true stuff of the sun in which it now lived, and had lived for thirty long years.

It was an account of cruelty and horror and loss. The salamander wept, but Alfredo did not weep with it or for it. Deliberately he used his thoughts of vengeance as a kind of harness to hold his tears and his voice in check, to stay dry-eyed, to sing the notes clearly and truly. So as he watched Uncle Giorgio coolly harvesting the tears of his prisoner, his resolve seemed to harden. That his uncle should treat the wonderful creature so! And Toni, too, and Annetta. And probably, all too probably, Alfredo himself.

Yet still it was not quite enough. Some final, definite proof must be found, and then he would have vengeance on his uncle, and part of that vengeance would be somehow to free the salamander, take it back up the mountain and release it into the fiery torrents that were its home.

At last Uncle Giorgio closed the lid of the furnace and removed his spectacles. Alfredo did the same and wiped his eyes.

“That is better,” said Uncle Giorgio approvingly. “But there is still too much feeling. You must not exhaust yourself so. There is more important work waiting for you.”

He tipped the little draught of tears into his phial and started to tap off the molten gold from beneath the furnace. Trying to look as if he were simply waiting for him to finish, Alfredo let his glance wander round the chamber, all dim and shadowy after the furnace glare, in case there was anything here that would help him in his enterprise. Yes, in the corner to his left what looked like the selfsame large lidded iron bucket that Uncle Giorgio had used to carry his captive down the mountain; beside it a similar smaller bucket; and propped behind them a heavy ladle, an instrument like a large pair of tongs, each arm ending in a circular metal grill, and a stout pole with a hook at the center so that two people could carry the buckets between them.

Uncle Giorgio rose from his crouch, holding the little pan into which he had been running the gold from the bottom of the furnace, and put it back on the table. A thin film of still-molten metal covered what he had collected five days ago. Uncle Giorgio turned the full pan over, rapped it sharply with a wooden mallet and pocketed the little ingot that fell out.

Lost in his thoughts of vengeance, Alfredo gazed vaguely at the two pans, one now empty, one half full, as if they, too, might help him somehow to free the salamander, until Uncle Giorgio broke the trance.

“Yes, Alfredo, pure gold. The First Great Work,” he purred, and turned to leave.

Alfredo pulled himself together and on the way out took a good look at the door and its lock. Both seemed formidably sturdy. As usual Uncle Giorgio put the key back in his pocket as soon as he had locked the door.