Robin McKinley - Fire - Tales of Elemental Spirits

Dave gave up trying to understand the legalities, his mind too numb for thought, but his hand unconsciously fingering at a dull ache that had started towards the back of his lower jaw. Not toothache—he had none left to ache—but—

Lord above! Got one comin’ back!

It was this discovery, as much as anything that the earl had said, that forced him at last to think about the reality of what lay ahead for him, to try to peer through mists and shadows down the diminishing perspective of the years to the mysterious vanishing point of his own unbirth. For some time after Mr. Askey and the earl had left, he continued to sit there, until he was roused by a sharp rap on his right knee—Sonny’s peck, demanding his attention.

As soon as he saw he had it, Sonny turned and strutted off round the corner of the cottage. Dave found him by the open shed where he kept his larger tools. Here Sonny pecked at the spade he wanted Dave to bring, then rose and, flying from branch to branch, led the way to the clearing where the broken walls of the Cabinet House enclosed the low mound of its remains.

Sonny settled onto the top of this, scratched at the surface and stood back. Obediently Dave started to dig. Below the first meagre layer of grasses the mound was still almost pure ash. He heaped the first spadeful to one side, and Sonny immediately started to scrattle through it like a chicken scrattling through loose soil for insects and seeds. Finding nothing, he stood back again. They repeated the process with a second spadeful, and a third, from which Sonny picked out something about half as large as a hazelnut and set it aside. From then on most spadefuls contained one or two of the things, varying in size from an acorn to a grain of wheat. There was a distinct pit in the top of the mound by the time Sonny decided he’d gathered enough.

The harvest was more than Dave could have carried in his cupped hands, so he unknotted his neckerchief and gathered the things into it. Sonny supervised the operation closely, picking up some of the smallest that Dave had missed. Dave knotted the kerchief into a bag and carried it back to the cottage, where he spread a larger cloth on the table and spilt the contents of the kerchief out onto it. The rattling and rubbing of transport had loosened much of the ash that had coated the things, and now Dave could see, or at least guess, what he’d dug up. The things were hard and shiny-smooth, some rounded, some faceted, but all glowing or glinting with the colours of fire.

Sonny stood beside the heap looking enquiringly at him.

ʺThese for his lordship, then?ʺ Dave asked him. ʺWonder what they’re worth. Pay for our keep for a good while on, eh?ʺ

With a feeling of intense relief at no longer being wholly beholden for his own safeguarding through the difficult years ahead, he watched Sonny soar up to the canopy of the trees to bask in sunlight until it was time for him to sing his evening hymn.

March 1915

In the same week that the news came from France that the heir to the earldom (mad on soldiering) had been killed by a random shell on his dug-out in a quiet section of the front near Arras, Mr. Askey died of the cancer that had long been killing him. On the estate the trauma of the major event wholly obscured the minor. Mr. Askey might have endured his slow and agonising passing almost unattended if Dave (now officially Ralph) Moffard hadn’t sat and slept by his bed through four days and three nights, mostly just holding his hand, sometimes talking a little, dribbling water between the tense, grimacing lips and injecting the prescribed doses of morphine with tenderness and precision.

For most of the time the drug only partly masked the pain. There was a brief spell of full relief after each injection, and then a slow return of the torture, like a jagged reef emerging from as the tide recedes, until the final stage in which the groans became sobbing cries and Dave could do nothing but hold his friend’s hand and suffer with his suffering while the seconds limped ever more slowly past until the cycle could be repeated.

Late on the afternoon of the fourth day, when both already foresaw another endless night of trudging across that Sahara of unmerited punishment, Dave heard a sharp rap on the window. He crossed the room to look through the slit between the curtains and saw Sonny perched on the sill. Astonished—it was at least a week sooner than he’d ever returned before, and the winter had not been kind—he raised the sash to let him in.

ʺHe’s bad, Sonny, bad,ʺ he gasped. ʺAnything you can do for him? Oh, Sonny!ʺ

The moan from the bed shuddered into a howl as the cycle entered its last phase. Sonny flipped deftly to the foot-rail and perched there, gazing dispassionately down the length of the bed at the living mask of Tragedy on the pillows. Dave came and stood beside him, gripping the rail. Without warning Sonny arched his neck and struck at Dave’s wrist, a precisely weighted peck that left a single bead of blood shining on the skin. He repeated the blow against his own breast, and withdrew with another bead, this time a fiery orange, at the tip of his beak. When he placed the second bead upon the first they mingled, and at the same time mounded up and seemed to solidify into a single jewel that glowed like an ember in the darkened room.

Sonny contemplated it for a moment, then picked it up, stalked the length of the bed and placed it neatly between Mr. Askey’s lips.

There was a pause, and the mask became human, became the face of their friend, drawn and lined with illness, but known, admired and loved.

Mr. Askey opened his eyes and looked at them and smiled.

ʺOh, that’s good,ʺ he whispered. ʺThat’s good. That’s good. Thank you for everything, Dave. Thank you, Sonny. Glad you made it home in time. Give my respects to his lordship. Tell him it’s all been worth while, all worth while.ʺ

He closed his eyes and died.

The earl bore the loss of his heir characteristically. His only known show of emotion on the subject came when some titled tub-thumper publicly congratulated him on setting an example to the nation by giving his son’s life for the cause. He glared at her briefly, then snapped, ʺDon’t be a fool, woman. I didn’t give it. He did,ʺ and turned his back on her.

Fourteen years later, he was to endure another bereavement when his grandson (mad on motor-cars) killed himself at Brooklands while road-testing a straight-eight speedster of his own design, leaving a great-grandson to inherit the earldom at the age of five when the old man eventually died in 1932.

Summer 1934

The madness that caused the eleventh earl eventually to be known—notorious, even—as the Green Earl was not immediately apparent. The seeds from which it was to grow were probably sown soon after his great-grandfather’s death by a Miss Wells, recently engaged as governess to his two elder sisters.

Miss Wells was a tall, plain young woman in her early thirties, with a wide mouth, wide-set eyes and a pale but not unhealthy complexion. She had a look of pleasant calm, with reserves of determination below the surface. She was a governess because she had been denied a formal education beyond the age of twelve, when her mother had fallen ill from an hereditary disease and her father had withdrawn her from school to help with the household chores. From then on she had educated herself in her spare time, choosing subjects that interested her, at first generally botanical, but concentrating more and more on native British trees, since there were subjects for her to study locally in the Forest of Dean, where her parents lived. By the time of her mother’s death and her father’s almost instant remarriage, she was a considerable expert on some of the larger species and had had technical papers published in professional journals; none of this was much practical use to a woman turned out of her home with no more than a token allowance and with no academic qualifications whatever. One of her brothers-in-law, a motoring crony of the young earl’s father, had recommended her for the post of governess, and the post had seemed right for her the moment she set eyes on the woodlands that mottled the estate. It was not surprising therefore that at almost the first opportunity she visited Dave’s Wood. Since it was the afternoon on which the girls had their riding lessons and the nursery maid had her afternoon off, she was in charge of the earl, so she took him with her. Besides, there was a Mr. Moffard, whose permission she would apparently need. If he proved difficult, she could tell him she wanted to give the earl a botany lesson.