Robin McKinley - Fire - Tales of Elemental Spirits

ʺWe’ve called this general session to tell everyone what happened three days ago during First Flight and so, we hope, put an end to the rumours. What did happen is quite remarkable enough and the absurd stories that are already being told and listened to and passed on are doing no one any favours, least of all the Academy.ʺ He said this in such a way that anyone who’d let one of those rumours go through them would now be feeling about ant-sized.

No one moved. Maybe the rumour-tellers really had turned to stone, and when everybody else got up to walk out, they’d just stay there forever.

Then he started explaining what had happened, starting with what he’d told us yesterday about choosing the First Flight list, but the moment I heard my name—ʺCadet Dag also took his younger brother Ern with him on Hereyta, and Ern’s foogit, Sippyʺ—I went back into my daze again and stopped listening. So I don’t know how long that part of the story lasted or how he told it, but I don’t think it was very long and I don’t think he’d have made it any more gruesome than he had to.

Then there was a staccato bit when different voices spoke, and I think that was people from the audience asking questions and the old guy answering them. After a few minutes it started getting sort of uproary like the old guy had said it would. I kept hearing my name. Early on the old guy turned and looked at me, and I probably had ʺno one homeʺ on my face, even though I was staring at him again. I was staring at him because staring at Ralas would only make it harder to stay in my daze because I kept wondering what she was doing here, and I still didn’t want to look at the audience. He got that amused look again, and then turned away and answered the question. I think he had been thinking about asking me to answer the question. It’s a good thing he changed his mind.

I heard Dag say something twice, I think, and Setyep once.

And then the next thing I knew was that everybody in the audience was getting up and filing out. I was so surprised I looked at them. There was a heavy sense of disappointment and frustrated curiosity in the air and a few audience members looked back over their shoulders as they left like they knew they were missing something and didn’t want to—I was reminded of the way your parents send you to bed when you’re dying to know what’s going on and they think you’re still too little—but that was as rebellious as anyone got. Most of the ones looking over their shoulders were looking at me so I didn’t look back at them very long. But I doubted anyone was going to lurk around and then press their ears to the door either.

The old guy must have turned the rumour-spreaders back to human again because everyone left.

And then the eight of us on the stage were coming to our feet (I got up because everyone else did) and following the old guy out behind the stage, another way than the way we’d come in. And we were in this hallway, and there was a door with someone in hsa livery standing by it and we all went in and were waved toward a long oval table with chairs around it and pots and ewers and stuff to drink and plates of other stuff to eat in the middle of it. Like we were all going to sit down and relax and have a nice cozy chat. Because you always notice the stuff you don’t want to notice when you’re trying not to notice, I noticed that there were more chairs and plates than there had been people on the stage. So there were going to be more of us now.

I found myself sitting between Dag and Ralas, with most of Sippy wedged under my chair. I kept scraping my knuckles on the bottom of the chair when I leaned over to pet him. Ralas poured out some blastweed and put it in front of me. When I made no move to touch it Dag pushed it a little closer to me. Oh, well. I took a big gulp and it half scalded me going down. Which brought me out of my daze . . . just long enough for the old guy to nail me.

ʺErn,ʺ he said, ʺI realise this will not be popular with you, but the fact is that this meeting is mostly about you. We want to know—we badly want to know—how you got Hereyta into the Firespace and how you got her out.ʺ He was almost half laughing as he said it at the same time as he was absolutely deadly serious. The other old guys—they were all old—around him mostly weren’t bothering with the half laughing part. Their stares really were like being stabbed. All but one of them, and he was just sitting there smiling like somebody’d given him the biggest present in the world and he hadn’t got over it yet. Some of the wrinkles on his face were scars and there were two sticks leaning on the wall behind him and I wondered if, just maybe, he was Carn. I didn’t think he’d been on the stage. But he was smiling and he was the only one, so without thinking I smiled back and his face just lit up. When he spoke I figured some of the wrinkles on his neck must be scars too. ʺErn. Anything you can tell us. Please.ʺ

ʺI don’t know,ʺ I said, desperately, knowing that I had to say something, and knowing they weren’t going to leave it at that. I looked back at the original old guy and I knew, suddenly, that the on-stage part had been a lot shorter than planned, because the old guy knew I couldn’t stand it. I told myself that he only cared because of Hereyta and the Firespace—and I thought, well, why not?—but then I also knew it wasn’t true. He wasn’t just some old guy that everybody has to obey, trying to make me obey too. I remembered the affectionate look I’d seen on his face yesterday, looking at his cadets. Maybe he was used to the weight of the world on his shoulders, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel it, that he didn’t have to remember, sometimes, to stand like he had a broomstick up his coat. He understood what he was asking me to carry, and he’d help me if he could.

Except he couldn’t. ʺI don’t know,ʺ I said again, knowing that it wasn’t just they weren’t going to leave it at that, they couldn’t. If I were in their place I couldn’t leave it either. But there still wasn’t anything I could tell them. I’d taken my header off Hereyta because I was following Sippy. That had just happened. I thought about when I’d taken Arac’s place in Sippy’s three-way game, and the way the other two had looked at me afterward. And then I thought about standing up, when we had to get back out of the Firespace again, and pointing, and how it had been that way, it had been how we could get out. But that wasn’t anything anyone could use—it wasn’t like ʺmash up some delor leaf and pour boiling water over it and drink it.ʺ

You just do it, Ralas had told me, long ago, and when I said, Do what ? she’d laughed and said, It. It.

The head old guy—I don’t know how to explain this—he was staring at me just as intently as the rest of the old guys, but he was doing it softer somehow. Him and Carn, if it was Carn. I thought, I’d tell you if I could, and the old guy’s expression changed briefly, as if he’d heard.

He said, ʺErn. Believe me. It doesn’t just happen. The Academy has been here for eight hundred years and no dragon who has lost an eye has ever crossed into the Firespace again. Or if they have there’s no record, and there would be a record. Or rather, the only hint of a record is from the tale of Erzaglia and Sorabulyar, which I told you about yesterday, and which you, interestingly, had heard of, although it’s an old obscure tale that no one tells any more. We don’t teach it at the Academy.ʺ He added gently, ʺErn. I can see how much you hate this. But think about how important this is to us, to our dragons—to all dragons, maybe—to Hereyta.ʺ

I could feel my face getting hot. That was unfair.

ʺNo, it’s not unfair,ʺ said the old guy as if I’d said it aloud. ʺI love Hereyta myself. She was the leader of the king’s guard for twenty years, did Dag tell you that? The king loved her too. I’ve hated seeing her crippled. Seeing her carry her authority—as she does still carry her authority—among the other dragons, when she can no longer Fly.ʺ