Robin McKinley - Fire - Tales of Elemental Spirits

Dag stirred. ʺSure,ʺ he said absently. ʺThanks, Tinhead.ʺ Mum would stop my brothers calling me that if she was around, but since they’d always used it when she wasn’t it came out automatically. I was supposed to call him Geezer back but I didn’t have the heart. I put the mug by his elbow and sat down opposite him with my own.

The blastweed started exploding through my veins and the silence got too loud to bear. ʺWant to come out to Ralas’ with me?ʺ

It took Dag about two minutes to come back from wherever he was and answer me. Was it his life he was looking at being wrecked before it got started—even I knew that if you failed First Flight you were pretty well doomed—or was it the dragon? That took about two seconds to decide. Dag and I don’t have much in common but we’re both nutty about animals.

ʺOkay,ʺ he said. ʺThanks.ʺ

Sippy always knew when I was coming. Don’t ask me how; he usually met me halfway between the village and Ralas’ which means he has to have got started almost as soon as I did. Ralas said she always knew when I was coming because Sippy disappeared. He rushed up to us and cavorted like a puppy the way he always did, except unlike puppies foogits are green(ish) and don’t wag their tails. If you didn’t know about his leg you probably wouldn’t guess; he’d adapted really well, although his run was a little strange. But foogits all run a little strangely. Dag actually smiled.

I knew Ralas would take one look at Dag and know something was badly wrong but being Ralas wouldn’t ask. She just took him on a tour. There was someone coughing in the back of her house but we all ignored it. I knew it was Moga, the cooper’s son, who was allergic to wood dust. Ralas was trying to talk his dad into apprenticing him early to get him away from home, but Gakan was a stubborn old so-and-so, and since Ralas couldn’t actually say what she meant outright—including that she’d be happy to do the tricky negotiating for an underage apprentice that didn’t include any mention of the crime of illness—poor Moga was still coming out to Ralas’ to cough pretty regularly. Ralas would load him up with gil berry tincture and he’d go home and be okay for a few weeks. And then he’d start to wheeze, and then he’d start to cough, and then he’d be back to Ralas’ again.

I let the tour get ahead of me. Sippy wanted to play his charging game, which involved running at me full tilt and at the last minute swerving aside and leaping straight into the air. I guess it was some kind of variation on the foogit dance, maybe because Sippy didn’t have any other foogits to do it with. Fortunately he’d begun teaching me this game when he was still small and unsteady so I was willing to stand still while he charged me because he didn’t go that fast and wasn’t big enough to do either of us much damage if the purpose of the game was to slam into me after all, like maybe when I wasn’t expecting it. Except it wasn’t. So I held my ground as he got older and bigger and cut the last-minute swerve till I almost had to shut my eyes, and the breeze of his turn would hit me instead, and maybe the tickle of the end of a flying ear.

I’d asked Ralas if he ever charged her, or anyone else, or maybe a tree or something, or if he ever just leaped in the air and did his trick out of nowhere, and she said she didn’t think he ever did.

So I stood there so Sippy could play his game, and moved around a little to go on facing him when he charged, which seemed to be what he wanted, and thought some more about Dag and his dragon. When Sippy got tired—which didn’t take long; this was a very high-energy game—we went off to find Ralas and Dag.

I could tell he was telling her about his dragon. People do tell Ralas things. I suppose we were both secretly hoping that she’d say, ʺOh, your dragon is missing an eye? Why, I had a case like that last month. Apply this night and morning for a week.ʺ But she didn’t of course. She just looked really sympathetic. I wondered if maybe she could give a two-eyed dragon a home but she didn’t say anything about that either. And a dragon does take up an awful lot of space (and food) and the woodland where Ralas lived isn’t that big and Birchhome is on one side and Twobridge on the other side.

Dag was just finishing when Sippy and I arrived. We sat around (in Sippy’s case lay around) in silence for a few minutes drinking Ralas’ tisane (Sippy had most of a bowl of water) and then Ralas said to Dag, ʺWhy don’t you take Ern and Sippy with you when you go back to the Academy?ʺ

She said it in this really reasonable voice like you might say, ʺBe sure to pack enough sandwiches, and don’t forget your oilskin because it’s going to rain some more.ʺ Dag opened his mouth and closed it again. He may call me Tinhead but he’s not a bad guy. So since he wouldn’t say it, I did.

ʺ Why? ʺ

Ralas laughed. ʺI don’t know,ʺ she said, in that maddening wiz ardy way of hers. ʺIt feels like a good idea.ʺ

It’s true that when your wizard suggests you do something—especially a local wizard who usually gives pretty good advice and who furthermore has done your family a good turn or two already—you tend to do it. However useless or insane it sounds. Even so, when Dag looked into the bottom of the mug he was holding and sighed and said, ʺAll right,ʺ I wondered what she’d put in his tisane.

I could think of about six but s immediately and, give me a minute, I’d think of six more. But I looked at Dag with his big shoulders all slumped staring into the bottom of his mug with his hands cupped over the brim like the answer was in there and he was trying to prevent it from jumping out and running away, and didn’t say anything after all. No, that’s not true. After a little while I said, ʺWhen do you want to leave?ʺ

ʺTomorrow,ʺ he said.

Mum blinked once or twice when Dag told our parents what Ralas had said, but Dad didn’t even do that much. He was polishing a fancy carved chair leg he’d just mended and neither sons nor wizards were going to interrupt his train of thought. Mum tried to get him to pay attention by repeating the news but all he said was, ʺAh? When’re they leaving then? Maybe you can get Jardy to do some of your deliveries.ʺ But when he came in from his workshop he gave me a very clear, sharp, paying-attention look, and then nodded. I knew that nod. It was the nod he used when he’d been going around a craft fair or something looking at all the other carpenters’ work and found something he really liked. It rattled me, that nod, but it also made me feel good, although I wasn’t going to risk it by saying anything like ʺWhat do you mean?ʺ

But it was even stranger, later on, when I was doing the washing up, and Mum came up behind me and said, ʺErn.ʺ Dag had already gone to bed; he’d had no sleep last night. I braced myself. Mum tended to know everything and to be generous about spreading her superior intelligence around. Or maybe I just wasn’t cleaning the dishes well enough. But she didn’t say anything for so long after she’d said my name eventually I turned around (dripping water and soap-suds) and she was standing there with her face all screwed up with worry.

ʺMum—?ʺ

ʺTake care of him, won’t you?ʺ she said. ʺYou’ll take care of Dag.ʺ

This was more worried than I’d ever seen her. I tried to look taller and older. She didn’t even say anything about the dripping when I put my arms around her. ʺOf course I will.ʺ

In more of her usual manner she said, ʺDon’t patronise me, young man,ʺ although she didn’t shake me off. She added, ʺBut you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and Dag has . . . temporarily mislaid his. I don’t suppose Ralas can do anything about the dragon?ʺ