Fireborn Read online

  Golden lads and girls all must,

  As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

  William Shakespeare, Cymbeline

  This book is dedicated to all those who are no longer

  here for me thank them. I wish I had expressed

  more gratitude when I had the chance.

  Part One

  FIRE GIRL

  “It’s your birthday tomorrow,”

  said Slowin

  Bee looked up.

  “Is it?”

  Slowin picked up a piece of paper from her desk. He crackled. That had been happening more recently. Bee drew away from him.

  “What’s this?”

  Bee hated him to touch anything that was hers.

  “It’s a list,” she said, “of different types of wood.”

  Slowin dropped it back on to the desk.

  “You’ll be twelve years old tomorrow,” he said. “You’d better come over to the workshop after breakfast. We’ve got something to sort out.”

  His fingers had left a small, dark stain on the paper. Bee waited until he had left, then she sniffed it. The paper was scorched where his fingers had been. The page was lined with lists. It had taken Bee most of the morning to think about it, write it out, but she took a fresh sheet, dipped the pen in the ink and began to copy it all out again. She did not want anything that Slowin had touched or marked. Especially now. It was as though sparks were shooting off him.

  The first time of writing Bee had sorted out the names, dividing the different types of wood into how they would burn. Which ones were sweet-smelling, which made harsh smoke; which ones flared up with cheerful flames, or smouldered in sullen lumps; which ones needed to be stored through the winter before they would burn, which ones could be used as soon as they were cut. She had a special section for kindling, another for woods that were good for leaving safely to burn slowly through the night. The names of the different tress were like a song to her. Ash and elm, elder, rowan, the slender poplar, the broad oak. Beech, sycamore, chestnut and spruce.

  This time she was just copying and didn’t have to think about what she was writing. Her mind went on a journey, leaving her hand moving the pen.

  Twelve years old. She had never had a birthday before. Well, she must have had. Not that she remembered. No one had ever mentioned it since she came to live here with Slowin and Brassbuck. There were shining fishes of memories. They darted through her mind, glinting light from their scales. If she tried to catch them they slipped away.

  Lime, birch, her pen trailed the ink.

  There was a day when she sat on the ground outside her parents’ house. The kitchen door was open to her left. Her mother making the red tiles of the floor shine. It was snowing. The first snow Bee had ever seen. She raised pudgy hands to catch the flakes, and she was puzzled when they disappeared, leaving a wet trace. She soon tired of this and thought of something better for them. Her father came up the path and found her. She was surrounded by a cloud of tiny flames, each one a snowflake. They fell to the ground and died, a never-ending storm of lights. It wasn’t the snow Bee remembered. It was the look of fear in her father’s face, and her mother’s wet arms as she hugged her and cried.

  Bee’s fingers were stained black. That was the trouble with ink. No matter how you tried to be neat, some of it always managed to crawl up the pen and find your fingers. Apple, pear, cherry, plum. Damson and greengage. She smiled as she wrote the names of the fruit trees. A fish of memory darted through the green fronds of her mind. A cottage and a garden. Fruit trees and butterflies. The sun on her neck. She was older now. Her father arguing with someone she now knew was Slowin, the wizard. Her father shouted at him and he left. She tried to see her father’s face, to remember what he looked like, but the fish flashed away.

  Twelve years old tomorrow. And something to sort out with Slowin.

  Brassbuck looked more like a machine than like a woman. The soles of her boots were studded with iron that sparked against the flint of the cobbles in the yard. Her jerkin and leggings were black leather, held together with iron rivets instead of stitches. Her hands and face were black with soot from the fires and furnaces that were everywhere in Slowin’s workshops and his storerooms. And she was broad. Not fat. Strong and wide. She watched Slowin leave Bee’s quarters. He fizzed and sputtered with a new energy. Watched him cross the cobbled yard between the tall, brick-built circular towers, slim at the top and wide bellied. It had been a pot bank before Slowin took it over, a place where pots and bowls were fired. A place where soft clay was baked into ironstone. Now it was a place, walled-in, where magic sizzled and crackled, glowing in the daylight and gleaming in the darkness. The magic inside these brick walls never slept. And neither did Slowin. Not any more.

  Brassbuck was afraid of magic. She had come to Slowin years ago, more than she could remember. Slowin was just a local wizard then, and a bit of a joke. People said that he was emptied out. Brassbuck had come to ask him to work some magic for her. She could hardly remember what it was, a spell to make her cow give more milk, or a charm to ward off rats from the granary? Perhaps. Perhaps something else. It was all such a long time ago. Slowin had said that Brassbuck did not have enough money to pay for the spell and she would have to work for him to pay it off. It had been such a small spell, and such a lot of work for so many years. Once, she had asked him if it was paid off yet. She wanted to leave.

  “Let me see,” said Slowin. “Almost, I think. Very nearly. Yes. You should be able to leave any day now.”

  Brassbuck clapped her hands.

  “So, where will you go?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “When the debt is paid. Where will you go?”

  “Home.”

  “And where is that?” asked the wizard.

  Brassbuck couldn’t remember.

  Slowin put his arm around her shoulders. It wasn’t easy, even back then, her back was so broad. Now, after years of carrying coal and shovelling ash, she had the strength and muscles of a miner.

  “You can stay here, then,” said Slowin. “You carry on with your work and I’ll look after you.”

  To her surprise, Brassbuck was grateful for the offer, and she stayed.

  There hadn’t been much magic back then. Slowin charged a lot and gave very little. Often, people came back and complained. The spells they had paid for didn’t work. They wanted their money back. If Slowin couldn’t chase them off with a poisonous word he would threaten them with Brassbuck. One man, a butcher, came to complain. He dangled a heavy, sharp meat cleaver from his hand, ready to help to persuade Slowin to give back his money. He had paid for a spell on all his knives and saws and cleavers. To make them safe to use. There had been a young assistant, just learning the trade, and he had swung the cleaver to chop through the bone in a loin of lamb. His eyes and his hand didn’t agree on the spot where the cleaver should fall and it had snapped his thumb off. The boy screamed, dropped the cleaver and ran around the shop, spraying blood from the wound.

  “It was your spell made it worse,” said the butcher.

  “Nonsense. Get yourself out of here or I’ll make your meat rancid for a month.”

  “Over twenty years I’ve been in this trade. Cuts and nicks, hundreds, but no one has ever chopped off a finger or a thumb. Not until your useless magic turned the blades against us. Now, pay up. I want the money back for the spell and I want ten times as much again to give to the lad. He’ll need the money now.”

  Slowin looked around for Brassbuck, but she was watching from round a corner, interested to see what the butcher would do. She could always come and help later. It was lonely working for Slowin. Not many people called by and she was enjoying seeing the butcher arguing.

  “Have you got the money?”

  Slowin hadn’
t, but he wasn’t going to admit it to this fool of a tradesman. Slowin had no money and almost no magic. The butcher stared at him, waiting. Slowin looked away, hoping to see Brassbuck.

  “I’m going to take the money,” said the butcher, “or I’m going to take your thumb and give it to the boy.”

  Slowin tried to smile.

  “My thumb will be of no use to the boy,” he said.

  “Nor to you,” said the butcher. “There’s some justice in that.”

  He waited.

  “What’s it to be?”

  “I’ve no money.”

  “Then I’ll take your thumb.”

  The butcher grabbed Slowin’s wrist and slammed it on to the table. Slowin struggled and shouted out for Brassbuck. He kicked. He tried to bite the butcher’s hand. The butcher swung his fist to the side of the wizard’s head. Slowin fell back dazed. Brassbuck thought it was time she stepped in and helped. Then everything happened faster than she had expected. The butcher held Slowin’s wrist, raised the cleaver and swung it down. The bright blade sliced through flesh, cracked through bone and dug into the wooden table-top with a thud. Blood spurted out. The thumb rolled over and fell to the floor.

  Slowin shrieked as the meat axe fell. The butcher stared at what he had done. Then, with a roar of pain, he jerked his hand away and watched the blood spray Slowin’s face. The crippled spell that Slowin had cast on the butcher’s knives had made this cleaver miss its target, too. It had chopped off the wrong thumb. The butcher ran out, yelling, leaving the cleaver buried in the table top. Slowin skulked away, found his room and lay on his bed and curled up, hugging his knees to his chest. Brassbuck shrugged her shoulders, carried in a bucket with warm water, and a cloth, and knelt down to clean up the blood.

  She liked the pattern the blood made on the floor. A pool under the table edge. Then small dots radiating out. The thumb lay on the floor. She picked it up, looked at it. The thumbnail was bitten down to the quick. The chopped bone stuck out of the flesh at the other end. It was messy. Brassbuck popped it into her mouth, sucked it clean, then put it into her pocket.

  She squeezed out the cloth and began to mop up the blood. The small drops were like dark jewels against the cobbles, round and gleaming. She touched one with her finger. It moved aside. She touched another. It lifted up and scurried away. Each time she touched one it hardened, rose and scrambled over the floor. The spray of blood was turning into beetles at her touch, red-black, hard-shelled, with clattering, angled legs. She trapped three of them in her hands and put them in the pocket with the thumb. She could feel them squirming in there. She liked it. It was company. Slowin was not much company; this would be better.

  That was how the beetles first came there. |

  Bee reached the end of the list

  before her hand started to shake. She sprinkled powder on the paper to dry the ink, blew it off, placed the paper on a pile of others, then scrunched up the original that Slowin had touched. She sat back in her chair and breathed deeply. Breathing regularly, slowly in, pause, slowly out, getting rid of all the air, then slowly in again, helped her to get her hands to stop trembling. At first, she had tried to control the trembling, to tense her muscles. That had made her arms and back and neck ache. It had made her head thump with pain. And when she stopped controlling the shakes they came back, worse than ever. She’d taught herself to breathe, to let her body go loose, dangle her arms. She closed her eyes and pretended that the shakes were running away, out of her fingertips, like water from a downspout. It worked.

  The trembling stopped and she was left with no pain, no headache. Bee tried to remember how long it was since the shakes had started. Two summers, at least. Three winters? They came more often now. They lasted longer.

  She folded the paper, and, on a whim, decided she didn’t want anyone to see it. She rummaged in her box of writing implements. A penknife, feathers, bottles of different coloured inks, and, there it was, a lump of sealing wax and an iron seal.

  She didn’t need a candle to melt the wax. Holding it above the paper she clicked her tongue and it burned steadily, red drops of wax trickling onto the folded edge. She put it to one side, took the seal and impressed a mark in the soft wax, holding it there till it was dry and hard. Now no one would be able to look at the list without breaking the seal.

  She smiled. The iron seal was pleasant in her hand, heavy, cool, curved and simple. It looked like a pawn from a chess set, or a weight from grocer’s scales.

  Fresh air helped. Bee made sure that nothing overhung the edge of her desk. She moved pens and paper, her dust shaker and the ruler, a small jar with clematis in it, a book and other bits and pieces that settle on a desk like sparrows on a fence. She closed her eyes, her lips moved and the whole of the top of the desk began to shimmer. Opening her eyes, she smiled, licked her fingers to get rid of the ink, and went out into the sunlight.

  Brassbuck was in the yard. Bee had to walk round her to get out.

  “Going out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where to?”

  “Nowhere.”

  Brassbuck crossed the yard with Bee. Beetles too slow to dart away popped under her tread. The iron studs sparked against the cobbles.

  “Everywhere is somewhere,” she said.

  “Yes, but nowhere is everywhere as well,” said Bee. “So that’s where I’m going.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No.”

  Brassbuck stopped at the gate and Bee passed through. The woman’s black eyes followed Bee as she walked away. When she was out of sight, Brassbuck clattered back over the yard.

  Bee had her own tower where she slept and worked and ate all her meals. When she had lessons with Slowin, or when he wanted her to help him with some magic, she went to his tower or to one of the others that housed his workshops. Slowin had many magical projects that he was working, each with its own tower.

  Bee’s tower was her own place.

  Brassbuck or Slowin could go in if they wanted. Bee was not allowed to lock it. But she made it plain that she did not like them in there. For the most part they stayed out. Brassbuck went in as often as she could, when Bee was not there.

  A beetle crawled over Brassbuck’s boot, toppled off and would have tumbled through the opening into Bee’s quarters. But it bounced off nothing and turned away into the yard. Bee’s tower was the only part of Slowin’s place where there were no beetles. Brassbuck had once walked in with a beetle in her pocket, for a snack later. As soon as she was through the doorway the beetle exploded and burst into flame. Brassbuck didn’t like that. She loved the beetles. She liked to see them on the floor. She loved the way they tickled when they fell down her shirt. She enjoyed the clatter of their legs on the cobbles. She even liked the little crunch they made when she trod on them, and the sticky patch they left behind when she lifted her boot.

  Brassbuck crossed the threshold into Bee’s room. Bee would know she had been there and would be angry. Bee always knew. Brassbuck sniffed. The smell was unpleasant. Bee covered her floor with fresh rushes that she changed every second day. She mingled wild flowers and herbs in with the rushes. Clover and mint, thyme and marjoram, honeysuckle in the summer, lavender in winter. As Brassbuck’s boots trod on the rushes they released their scents. It was like walking through a meadow on a hot afternoon. Brassbuck wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  She stood by the desk, eager to see what Bee had written. She wanted to shuffle through the papers, pull open the drawers and see what was hidden there. Time after time she came to do this. Every time she found the same. She had learned from her mistakes. If she tried to touch anything the shimmering surface would clench, then lash out a whip of flame. Everything in the room was protected in the same way. Brassbuck pulled a savage face at the desk, then spat on it. The green gout of snot sizzled and stank for a moment, then it was gone.

  Brassbuck went to find Slowin.

  Brassbuck liked Slowin’s rooms better. The gaping mouths of the workshops breathed
out the stinks of a hundred magical works. There was the fragrance of ash and the scent of burning wood. They were everywhere, coupled with the dusty smell of coal. Layered on these, like the breath of a dog who has eaten bad meat and garlic, were the other smells. Sulphur from one tower, like rotten eggs. Another had the lingering, greasy smell of fried meat, not lamb or beef, nothing like pork or any fowl, but meat all the same. There was the stale, damp smell of mould and there was the special smell of things that had died long ago and been left, cabbages and potatoes, and the cuts of meat that were tossed aside as not good to eat. In one tower Slowin conducted experiments in dyeing cloth. People loved clothes in bright colours, and Slowin’s magic could capture them with a vivid clarity. The blue of a cornflower, the red of a wound, the dozens of different yellows, of cowslips, of butter, of pus, and the yellowhammer. The magic perfected these better than any ordinary dyer could, but the basis of the art was the same. The cloth and the pigment needed to be steeped together in vats of piss. Brassbuck particularly liked the dyeing tower, most of all when the mixture had lain there for a while and the sudden stink caught the back of her throat.

  She lingered for a while, on her way to see Slowin, enjoying the menu of smells and trying to scrub the fragrance of Bee’s flowers from her nose.

  When she had prepared herself she found her way to Slowin’s room. This was her favourite smell of all. It was an infusion of all his smells, and it lingered like a sea mist in his tower, so strong you could almost see it. The beetles liked it, too, and there were more there than anywhere else. They had lost their red sheen over the years and were now coal-black. She stooped and picked one up as she entered. Seeing Slowin in his armchair by the fire she held the beetle out to him, as a gift, seemingly unaware that they were everywhere, like a child on a shingle beach offering a grown-up a pebble.

  Slowin took it, chewed it once and swallowed.

  “Tomorrow?” asked Brassbuck.