Robin McKinley - Fire - Tales of Elemental Spirits

ʺQuestion is, how fast can the brute dig?ʺ said Bond.

ʺAnd how long to melt the cliff?ʺ said Sordan.

ʺLast thing, he was having a nap, Tandin said,ʺ said Merip.

They looked at Tandin.

ʺI don’t know how fast he can dig,ʺ he said. ʺWhen he wakes and starts, perhaps. I’ll see tonight, if I can.ʺ

ʺRight,ʺ said Barok. ʺWe’ll start by building a decoy fire. There.ʺ

He pointed to a place a little way down the slope where the further wall of the gully had collapsed, half blocking it with a low pile of rock. ʺBest if he comes out there,ʺ he added. ʺThen, when the water fills the gully, it will flow down his hole. And tonight Tandin can see if the fire has woken him. All right? And we’ll build two rock platforms close against the ice-cliff either side of the gully for our main fires. That way, when the melt-water starts to flow down the cliff it’ll run out under the rocks. Then we’ll all set about fetching fallen timber out of the woods.ʺ

ʺIt’ll all be wet,ʺ said Bast.

No one paid any attention. They were used to Bast. They shared the tasks out, and by the time the main party had heaved and trundled rocks from the moraine to build the platforms for the two larger fires, Vulka and Sordan had found enough small dry timber for Vulka to work his firebow and get the decoy fire started. Then they split into two groups and scoured the woods on the flanking slopes for burnable timber among the tangles of fallen branches and dragged it down to the gully. Tandin rested, minding the fire, and no one nagged or mocked him for not joining the work.

At nightfall the hunters retired exhausted to the snow-hole. Tandin joined them, but when it was his turn to keep watch, he fed the fire and then settled cross-legged with the bear pelt around him, entered the spirit world and probed with his spirit down through the snow and the permafrost into the rock beneath, and on down through that for the fireworm.

Yes. It was there, he sensed, but still sleeping. There was something uneasy about its sleep, though, like a troubled dream. How had it experienced their earlier encounter? he wondered. It can’t have been totally unaware. Though, on the surface, events in the spirit world have no effect on their counterparts in the world where people live and die, at a deeper level they are the same event. Defeat and death in the spirit world aren’t necessarily followed by defeat and death in this world. They may be felt only as a nightmare troubling the sleeper. But still, surely, there has to be some weakening, some loss.

Troubled himself, he didn’t know why, Tandin withdrew from the spirit world, fed the fire and then watched the slow rising of the stars until it was time to go and wake Vulka.

Next day was much the same. All day they toiled at timber gathering, tying thongs to the butts of fallen trees and forming teams to drag them down to the glacier. At first Tandin joined the work and they seemed to welcome him, but still he didn’t belong. They were a team of men, doing what men do—in the hunt, in guarding the cave from wild beasts, in confronting aggressors—understanding how these things were done by a team to achieve ends they couldn’t have achieved as individuals. If Tandin had been merely a new recruit, they would have treated him roughly, putting him down, letting him make mistakes and then jeering at him for them and so on, until he had earned his place. Instead, they treated him with respect, warning him of risks, giving him the lighter end of a load, standing out of his way. It was not the same, and he sensed their hidden relief when he withdrew to rest after the midday meal.

By dusk they had enough piled up at the foot of the moraine for half a moon of ordinary fires, and had begun stacking it ready to light on the platforms either side of the gully. Meanwhile they let one side of their decoy fire burn down enough to provide a good bed of embers, and at nightfall roasted chunks of caribou meat over it and feasted, boasting and teasing, tossing the gnawed bones back into the fire.

That night, as before, they kept watch by turns, and as before, when Tandin’s watch came round, he fed the fire and settled down and entered the spirit world. But this time there was no need to probe for the fireworms. Both of them were instantly clear to his inward senses, the female this time more strongly—her intense and desperate sudden need, her pleading. And his reluctance, his despair, his dread. He had nothing in his pouch to give her. The humans in the cave had driven him off with the terrible cold weapons of the outer world, and now, night after night, blocked his entry with the same things. They were ready to fight him again should he make a new tunnel. . . .

The cavern seemed to fill with the odour of charring flesh.

A change, a sudden attention, a focussing. A hope.

The fireworm had become aware of the new fire, almost directly over its head.

Now it began to move. Sideways at first—it couldn’t reach the roof of the cavern to begin its tunnel—into the fissure, perhaps. . . . Ah, now, much more slowly it had begun to climb. It was drilling a fresh tunnel, upwards. Tandin could sense the steady, continuous effort, the pure power.

Merip, whose turn it was to watch next, woke of his own accord and went to see what had become of Tandin. He found him sitting trance-held by the fire, so he kept his own watch and woke Bond in his turn. The others joined Bond before dawn for a breakfast of cold roast caribou and mashed root. Then they continued all morning with the task of gathering timber and were having their midday meal when Tandin returned to the world where people live and die.

When he woke, he told the hunters what he had seen.

ʺSo how soon will the bastard finish his hole?ʺ said Vulka. ʺHe’s been going for a night, roughly. How far has he got?ʺ

ʺAbout a third of the way—a bit less, maybe,ʺ said Tandin.

ʺGive him a day and a night and a bit more—he’ll be through tomorrow noon, then. We’d better get the big fires lit, Barok,ʺ said Bond.

ʺIt doesn’t matter if we don’t get it melted till after he’s through,ʺ said Barok. ʺThe hole will be there.ʺ

ʺProvided he doesn’t go blocking it up again,ʺ said Bast.

ʺI’ve been thinking,ʺ said Sordan, slowly, as if to indicate the speed of his thought processes. ʺThey didn’t wake up first night after we’d lit the fire, though it had been going long enough, surely—it was good and hot by then. But last night, all of a sudden, there was the female, wide awake and all eager. And Tandin said he smelt burnt meat down there. Right? Remember Denini and the birds’ eggs?ʺ

All the others laughed, even Merip, though the laughter was at him. He was a small, cheerful man, nothing like a typical hunter, never on his dignity but affable and easy-going. The women said that the other hunters had only allowed him to join them because he was a brilliant tracker. Denini was his woman, and he doted on her. When she’d been pregnant with her first child, she had craved birds’ eggs, and Merip had had to spend good hunting days climbing trees to poke the nests down. The other hunters had mocked him for his solicitude, but he’d only laughed and said that it was for the sake of his unborn son, so that he could grow to be a hunter, fleet as a bird. And then the child had been a girl, and he’d doted on her too.

All this was good for a fresh round of teasing. Only Sordan, rapt in the seriousness of his thought, didn’t join in.

ʺNo, listen,ʺ he said, as soon as he got the chance. ʺWhat was the difference between last night’s fire and the one before? Answer, we’d roasted caribou and chucked the bones on it. Now suppose somehow the female had gone and smelt that, down there—suppose Tandin had taken it down with him—ʺ