Laces? Wasn’t he wearing slip-onshoes? Stupidly, he looked down to check.
The next thing he knew she’d pushed himover and gone running for the fields.
He caught up with her by a circularwall in an area where the daisies were a
lovely violet colour. He threw down the knapsack and played a game of this way and that before she stumbled and he finally got hold of her.
“Agh!” she squealed.
With one heave he threw her onto his shoulder. And though she pummelled his back with her fists, she knew there was no
escape.
“What is this place?” he said. The circular wall was several feet in diameter. Above it was a v-shaped roof and a pulley. Suspended from the pulley was a bucket on a rope. Below the bucket was a deep, dark hole.
“It’s a well, of course. Now, put me
down.”
“Dunno. It looks deep.”
“I don’t mean in the
hole
!”
“Hole?” he said, pitching forward a
little.
“Agh!” she squealed again. “What are
you
doing
?”
“Tripped on my laces.”
“Oh, fun-nee.”
“What’s down there?” he asked.
“Water, stupid. Be careful, will you? This is my best dress.”
“It’s just a dress,” he said. “You’ll dry out.”
“NOOOOO!” she screamed, as he made to let her go.
Instead, he brought her down with a bump on the wall, keeping his hands
firmly round her waist (for ‘safety’s sake’, he later said). She threw her hands around the back of his neck (in case she lost her balance, she later said). She shook her hair from her face and glared at him through her smoky brown eyes. “Do you hate me?” she asked, pouting her lips.
“Probably,” he said.
She stuck out her tongue and called him a liar.
In return, he pressed his fingers to her waist. She screeched with laughter and tried, with both hands, to slap his chest. He caught her and held her until she was still. She stuck out her tongue again. “Don’t know what to do now, do you?” she said.
And that was true, he didn’t. He looked at her fingertips, roughened by years of
handling books, and let his thumb glide
across them.
He was sure he felt her tremble.
“You don’t really hate me – do you?”she asked.
He made a show of thinking about it,but eventually shook his head.
She cocked her head. “Do you love me,then?”
“Probably,” he said, just as Runcey
landed on the roof of the well.
“Well, I’m spoken for,” she laughed,
and blew the firebird a kiss. He
responded, as usual, with a puzzled little
rrrh
?
She struggled free and flopped down with her back to the wall. “We forgot the buckets.”
“Buckets?” David said.
“To carry the water. To the librarium.”
“Oh. Right. Shall I go back?”
“Only if you never want to see me again.”
He chewed on that a moment, but only for a moment. Then he sat with his shoulder pressed against hers, pleased that she didn’t try to move away. He opened the knapsack and took out the biscuits. Runcey fluttered to the ground in front of them.
All of a sudden Rosa said brightly, “I’mgoing to make you a daisy chain.” She satforward and picked a handful of daisies,plucking them close to the ground topreserve the lengths of their bright greenstalks. For the next ten minits she made David sit back to back with her, so hecouldn’t see what she was doing and steal
the ‘secret’ of how a daisy chain was made. Content enough to share a biscuit with Runcey and enjoy the warmth of the sun on his face, he obeyed. In the distance, the tall shape of Mr Henry could be seen strolling the walls of the librarium, completely lost in a book. David closed his eyes. Not quite an
adventure
, a day like this, but very pleasant all the same. As he sat there, with Runcey taking crumbs from his hand and Rosa tutting ceaselessly about her creation, thoughts of home began to flash through his mind. How, he wondered, were his parents and Boon? Why was it they didn’t come to see him here? Fortunately, any threat of despondency was soon dashed by Rosa’s energetic presence. She showed him the circle of flowers. He readily deduced that
it was simply made by splitting stalks and carefully inserting neighbouring ones into them, but he oohed and aahed in suitable fashion and was genuinely moved when she slipped the chain over his hand and wrist. It was the first real gift he’d ever been given.
He wore it the next day when they went back to work. By now each child was building up their catalogues and making a small, but visible impact on the clutter. The librarium buzzed in tune to their industry. But there was one minor flaw in all this endeavour that neither of them had
worked out, though it was about to be uncovered with dramatic consequences.
Mid-morning, as Rosa went flashing by en route to a room, David crowed that his collection of books on aviation history
was almost complete.
“I found this on Floor 29,” he said. He held up a large, rather weighty book that had a photograph of a bi-winged aero:plane on the cover.
Rosa skidded to a halt. “Let me look at that,” she said.
Caught a little off-guard, David gave it to her. Aero:planes had not existed on Co:pern:ica since the origins of global taxicars, but they were still talked about fondly in some quarters. David imagined therefore that Rosa was simply attracted to the beauty of the obsolete machines. But it was not the plane she was after at all. It was the author.
“Nyremann,” she whispered, measuring the width of the spine. “I’ve got a space on my ‘N’ shelf in ‘Transport’ for this.
Thanks, David. ’Bye.” She even had thetemerity to kiss his cheek as she ran.
“Hey!” he called out. “You can’t havethat. It’ll leave a gap in
my
collection. Rosa?!” And off he went, charging afterher again.
And so began the fateful chase that ledthem to the window on Floor 31, where Rosa, by then out of breath and out ofoptions, knew she could run no more.
“Hand it over,” David said. He wasnearly exhausted too, but had savedenough energy to come striding, almostmanfully, across the floor.
Rosa raised the book high. “Make you adeal.”
“What deal?” he puffed.
Her mouth curled into a mischievous
grin. “A race,” she panted. “Whoever gets
to it first gets to keep it. Agreed?”
David looked at the window and
guessed her intent. “No,” he said.
But her arm came down and she hurled
the book out. Almost immediately, they both heard a dreadful thump.
“Uh, what was that?” Rosa said.
Both children thrust their heads out of the window. Far below, the book was lying amongst the daisies.
Poking out from underneath it was an emerald green wing.
11
“Runcey!” Rosa gasped.
“He’s hurt,” said David, turning away at once. “Fetch Mr Henry. I’m going down to see.”
Rosa just stood there, pale and
mortified.
David stopped at the door to the room and looked back. “It was an accident,” he said, softening her auma with a huge slab of kindness. For on a world where everyone could create what they needed, what else but an accident would cause any kind of harm? Even so, Runcey’s situation looked desperate and there was no time to waste. “Find Mr Henry,” David repeated. And he dashed downstairs, asking the
librarium to guide him to the ground floor by the quickest possible route.
It was warm outside. The clouds nearly absent. The daisy fields still. Barring one small area of soiled pages and displaced feathers, all was well. “Runcey,” David whispered as he knelt. He lifted the book and put it aside. The firebird was flat on his back with his wings splayed out and his toes curled up. His delicate eyes were closed. His wonderful ear tufts were limp and askew.
In all his youthful time on Co:pern:ica, this was the closest David had come to actually handling a firebird. His mother had often desired to tame them, but he could not recall her, or anyone else for that matter, ever picking one up. But that was precisely what he did now. Sliding
his hands underneath the bird’s wings, taking care to centre them under its shoulders where the bones, he thought, were probably strongest, he lifted it out of the daisies. Straight away the left wing tried to flop back. It was weaker than the other one, presumably broken. There was a trickle of green fluid from the left ear as well. And patches of the breast were sore and grazed. To David’s greater dismay, the tiny spray of feathers that normally sprouted up from the top of Runcey’s head were all laid flat. He tilted his ear
towards the bird’s mouth. Not a breath of
air travelling through the nostrils. Runcey’s chances of survival seemed bleak.
Despair and anger raced through David’s mind. If only he hadn’t chased
after Rosa. If only he’d let her have the book. If only Runcey hadn’t flown by the window. If. If. If. The painful stabs of guilt went on. But as their composite effect turned into sorrow, it was his body, not his fain, that was first to respond. Heat prickled the corner of his eye. Astonishingly, a droplet of
water
bloomed out and settled precariously on his cheek. David felt the wetness forming but made no attempt to touch it or dry it. By then he was simply consumed with the need to do what he could to save Runcey’s life. He squeezed his eyes shut and extended his fain, hoping to commingle with the creature’s auma. The result was a little
odd. Like anyone who had ever attempted this before, David couldn’t link into the firebird’s consciousness. What he did
feel, though, was a tremendous warmth seeping into his hands. It spread swiftly up his arms and circled in the pectoral muscles of his chest, as if it was seeking out his thumping heart. The tear drop struggled to the edge of his chin. ‘Live,’ was the intent he put into his fain.
Live
.
Suddenly, there was a whoosh of air above his head and a fearsome squawk announced the arrival of another firebird.
David, his focus broken, jerked back. Thenew bird was twice the size of Runcey. Itwas a deep red colour with a purple frillright around its neck. There was savageryin its eyes and rage in its auma. All thewarmth David had felt in his chestsuddenly turned to a dreadful chill. Heknew without having to commingle or
speak that the creature judged him responsible for Runcey’s fall. Without another sound, it swept forward and gripped Runcey in its claws and took off for the upper floors of the librarium, but not before it had made its mark on the boy. As it closed in, it opened its jaws and sent forth a jet of fire, so white hot that it could only be described by the thermal patterns in the air around it. The fire should have struck David full in the chest. Instead, a blinding flash of light filled the space between them, as if something had jumped in and cushioned the flame. It only lasted a sec. Long enough for the firebird to leave with Runcey and David to fall back, barely conscious. By then, Rosa was close enough to catch him but not near enough to be dazzled by the light. Mr Henry was
right behind her.
“What’s it done to him?” she cried, clamping David’s forehead. The boy lay limply against her shoulder. “Why did it attack him? They just don’t
do
that.”
“Go inside, quickly,” Mr Henry said. Leaning forward, he picked the boy up. David was frothing lightly at the mouth. A large proportion of his favourite maroon T-shirt was bleached and some of the threads were torn. Mr Henry chewed his lip and looked up towards the clouds. Every window that was visible above Floor 35 was occupied by at least one firebird. They stared at Mr Henry. Mr Henry stared at them. When he went inside the building, they did too.
Only one – a pretty, cream-coloured creature with apricot tufts around its ears
– dropped down and landed amongst the daisies. It was smaller than the bird that
had come to claim Runcey and nothing like as fearful. It poddled around thoughtfully on its long feathered legs, stopping now and then to drum its claws, as if it was assessing the situation. It looked upwards at the window the book had come through, then at ground level and the damaged flowers. Suddenly, the lines of its eye sockets twitched. It tilted its head. It had spotted something. Lifting its long, spectacular tail feathers, it walked a few paces and peered at the ground. There amongst the squashed and bent-back flowers was a joined-up ring of violetcoloured daisies. At its centre was a tiny, glittering object. Extending one foot, the bird scooped the thing up as best it could
(such a nuisance, not to have paws), then turned away from the librarium to observe the item in a better light. What it saw made all of its feathers stiffen. It had