The Book of Fire series

Chapter 3

The scar on his face glistened in the sun, while his eyes belied his words. Leaving words.

‘You know I have to do this. It gives the legatio a chance. I know where to go. I can lead them – it’s what I’m good at … Tal?’

Hopelessness, then worse, hurt fleeted across his face as I gave him nothing back. But how could I when emotion was the cause of so much.

‘Feral means free, remember?’ he whispered. ‘That’s worth something even if you let go … of everything else.’

I stared at the spring grass surrounding my leather-soled feet. It looked so fragile and swollen with monsoon rain. There were no dark veins or dust-choked roots. It had no idea of the shadows creeping closer every day. Unlike Augustus Aquila, standing less than a metre away, in my forest home, trying to save any part of us that was still salvageable.

Why didn’t he understand? How could he stand there, alive, thinking of us when we’d watched so many others sink to the icy depths of the glass river … the icy depths.

‘For all Oceanid revivals there has to be a payment of sorts: either a trade of treasure or promise of recompense …’

August’s words never felt more poignant.

Was that it? Had August and I paid the ultimate price? Could our revival have cost us … us?

I swallowed, trying to force thoughts past the rush of blood in my ears. Why would the Oceanids demand such a payment? Yet it would explain so much.

‘The Oceanids are loyal to no one but themselves.’

That they helped us was indisputable, but to what purpose?

Thoughts tumbled through my head, confused and overlapping. I gritted my teeth. It had to be a purpose bigger than us altogether. Was it to make us strong enough to finish what we’d started? To lead the war?

‘It was real for me, Talia.’

And it seemed as though the branches around us leaned in to catch his whisper, and cocoon it within their scrolled leaves.

We both knew the dangers of the legatio meant his return was against all the odds. Leaving nothing. An enormous silence, when so much had preceded it. Which was why no more words made it into the dead air between us.

After all, what was there left to say if we’d already traded it all?

Chapter 4

Two months later

I tensed, Harlo’s slingshot taut and short in my hands. The catapult was larger than my old one, and made of a hard wood I didn’t recognize. Harlo called it camphor when he relinquished it, but a borrowed slingshot made of foreign wood was only the beginning. Arafel had been slowly changing since the new Outsiders started arriving.

Ida’s soft whistle perforated the humid air. I peered through the thick foliage and spied her blue-inked skin gleaming through the giant yuccas a little way off. Lifting my hands, I hooted twice by way of response. Birdcalls were a useful method of communication when the Elders weren’t around to disapprove. They were simple and uncomplicated, which suited us both.

I retrained the slingshot, as a warm breeze rustled the foliage cocooning me. Ida was a Komodo, one of the first Outsiders to arrive, and a formidable huntress, even among her people. I caught the rise of her hand, just enough to say she’d heard, and nodded once. It was always enough.

The arrival of her tribe had stopped everyone in their tracks. Flanked by lizards the size of small ponies, and with midnight bodies and long plaited hair, they looked more like gods and goddesses than flesh-and-blood Outsiders. They were also a people of very few words, and though it was the same Outsider community August had described before leaving, their actual appearance had turned our quiet village into a place I no longer recognized.

August. I exhaled slowly, forcing his image from my mind. It was how I’d survived, volunteering for every possible shift and spending all my days in the outer forest, away from everyone. Denying it all.

I tucked the slingshot into my leather rations belt and climbed higher.

The Komodo tribe were some four hundred in number, and brought whole families of naked, inked children with them. Within a single day the outside forest had looked and felt like an entirely new world. They set up ad hoc camps, cut down mature trees for shelter and baited large food for their unusual guard – the dragons, who were also the tribe’s symbolic alter ego.

The Komodo dragon lizards tested everyone. The huge, lumbering reptiles were constantly hungry and aggressive, particularly to children, so Art insisted they were herded into pens in the outside forest. It had sparked the first real confrontation. The tribe were unwilling to be parted from their reptilian family, and unable to return to their Europa home without stockpiling provisions from Arafel’s forest.

Art called an emergency Ring, and counter-proposed bringing the newcomers into Arafel, where food and shelter could be shared and a war strategy agreed. The lizards would remain in pens, while the tribe would have the protection of the North Mountains instead.

There was a long, heated meeting but the motion was eventually passed, and there was no doubt it was a good compromise. The tribe moved into the village, while the lizards stayed in the outside forest, and if they mourned their separation, the pens were built sufficiently close to the river stepping stones to ensure any lovelorn tribe member didn’t have far to go.

The simple truth was, we were all acutely aware that the Komodos’ arrival was a powerful show of solidarity and support – and that harmonious living was essential if we were to stand any chance against Cassius.

Yet the new integrated living brought sharper edges to Arafel none of us could ignore. While the tribespeople were an undeniable asset to our hunter army, their physique an easy match for any Pantheonite gladiator, it was less clear whether the outside forest could keep up with their significant drain on resources. It wasn’t helped by the fact the tribe were focused ground hunters, and preferred to work alone when it came to securing a kill, which was too often outside our regular village shifts.

Another muted whistle reached through the undergrowth, the warning call of a green turaco. I scanned the bushes, but couldn’t see Ida. It didn’t matter; the call was her warning to keep my distance, that she had a scent or a lead. Today, I was content to oblige. I scurried up a few more branches and lodged myself in a fork.

Everyone knew the new rate of consumption was unsustainable. Our stockpile of grain and pulses had depleted at a frightening rate, even though the Komodo tribe’s diet was predominantly carnivorous. Their survival philosophy was different to ours too. While we tried to strike a balance with nature, their approach was territorial. Food was there for the taking, until it wasn’t. Then they moved on. Art and the Council remonstrated, pointing out that their approach wouldn’t work within a fixed community like Arafel, but there were still too many unofficial dawn raids to number.

At times, the differences seemed bigger than the similarities. While my people had long, sculpted limbs, adapted for swift passage through our forest trees, the Komodos had developed a muscular physiology that almost matched that of their dragon friends. The tribe had also travelled their lands nomadically for more than two hundred years, while Arafel had been our home since Thomas’s discovery. The Komodo considered hunting to be a right, while Arafel people considered it the blessing of a healthy forest.

And yet, there was one binding commonality that put us all squarely on the same dirt ground. The Lifedomes of Isca Pantheon. Their ancestors had also passed down myths about the Great War, how the Lifedomes were supposed to be a refuge before the trapped population realized they couldn’t leave. It explained their swift arrival, their unquestioning solidarity and was the first sign the legatio might actually succeed.

I reached out to pick a few rare bunches of ripe blueberries and add them to my foraged roots and oranges. I’d only discovered two other blueberry bushes in the outer forest before and they’d quickly disappeared. Max would be impressed with this particular crop, especially now the outside forest was supporting so many more.

I popped one into my mouth, before dropping the rest into my bag. While the Komodos were the first to arrive, they weren’t the last. Less than three weeks after their arrival, two more Outsider communities arrived. First there was a pale-skinned, northern hemisphere tribe calling themselves Lynx – they didn’t say why but I had a feeling their green eyes and shy, nocturnal habits had something to do with it – and they were swiftly followed by a large party of peace-loving Eurasians. While the Lynx had built a life hunting fattened seals and ice-diving for fish, the Eurasians were much more like us – forest dwellers with farming and pottery skills. And it seemed each new arrival built new pillars of hope, yet August was never with them.

Another turaco warning call whistled through the leaves, followed by the swift and soft impact of an arrow about ten metres away. Seconds later, Ida’s athletic form crept through the clearing below. I watched as she retrieved her arrow from a twisted baobab root and swiftly cleaned it, before melting back into the trees. Hunting was often like this now. The forest animals seemed to understand they were under greater threat, and that the old balance was shifting.

It was a permanent heated agenda item at the open leader meetings. Art’s diplomacy and leadership were tested more than ever before, and for the first time since Thomas’s days, a penal code was resurrected. The Council called it a temporary measure while communities grew and integrated. But we all knew it was a by-product of the new conflict that was unlikely to disappear, and while the Ring had been nominated as a place where disputes could be resolved – the village grazing field stood in for those who couldn’t wait.

It was Raven who suggested using Arafel’s story nights as an opportunity for communities to exchange stories and history. There was plenty of scepticism at first, but the evenings bred a little ease as we learned about our new brothers and sisters. And each new community arrival meant one certainty to me: August was still out there, still breathing. Which somehow still eased my own.

A spotted tiger beetle scurried across the dirt floor before disappearing beneath a pile of large maple leaves. There was a momentary lull, before the telltale rustle, and a young corn snake slithered out looking satisfied. I watched unmoved. It was the way of the forest, from the smallest to the largest. Each and every species had its natural predator and check – all except, it seemed, for Lake.

I pictured her vast, scaled head and grey spiny body as I swung myself up between the thick fringed leaves of a papaya tree, intent on reaching the fruit weighing down the topmost branches. Her existence had been harder to explain to the Council.

‘Lake is believed to possess extraordinary strength, speed and agility. Cassius intends to recapture and use her against us.’

The Elders were still reeling from August’s bombshell about outside communities, when I shared the news that an unstable draco-chimera was also living among the mountainous peaks above our quiet valley. And their initial scepticism was rapidly replaced with palpable fear, even though I was careful to provide only as much detail as they really needed.

‘I’ve kept Lake’s chimera coding safe,’ I whispered to Grandpa, touching the tiny dart tube resting against my chest, just to reassure myself it was still there.

It was a small consolation, but one of the few I still had. Grandpa had entrusted the legacy of the Book of Arafel to me, and the circle of knowledge had grown so much since then. I had to trust that protecting the genetic coding of the Voynich’s oldest secret, as well as Thomas’s original cipher, would thwart Cassius, until the day he brought his war.

And found an army of freshly trained Outsiders waiting.

One of August’s key instructions, before he left, was that training and weapon instruction should take place in the outside forest. It was also where a skeleton shift of Arafel hunters, Komodos and Lynx warriors kept careful watch on the fringe of the forest every day. If there was to be a battle, it would be in the outer forest, away from Arafel, our home and the only real retreat we had. And there was no doubt we had a formidable Outsider army now with a wide range of skills and weaponry.

Training was intense and overseen by Bereg, Ida’s father, and a sharp Lynx captain called Marta. I assisted where I could, describing Cassius’s creatures and training some of the younger recruits in darting and knifing, but I escaped to hunt and forage whenever I could. It was the only time I got to escape, and pretend.

Somewhere above my head a lemur called a warning as a green lorikeet swooped low. I lowered my borrowed slingshot and watched its silent dive towards the forest floor, before it flew up and out of sight. There were still some compromises I couldn’t make, though we were trying to widen our diet as much as possible.

I leaned back into the fork of the gnarled papaya, and reached into my leather rations bag. It was still there, my lucky apricot stone. I withdrew it and rolled it around in my fingers, drawing some comfort from its mottled, wizened surface. It reminded me of the stone I’d rolled into the cage of the little apricot monkey; a seed from the outside world offering comfort and hope through the bars of Isca Pantheon. It was a promise I was determined to deliver.

A young monkey swung through the cedar branches opposite, and Ida’s turaco call followed. I frowned. We were asking the other outside communities for so much, but there were rules about the infant animals.

At the same time, a series of thin branches snapped in the bushes directly below me. Medium-sized … bold given its proximity … wild boar? Years of hunting had equipped me well when it came to assessing a potential meal and I focused on the bushes intently. A single bigger kill would keep everyone happy.

I drew Harlo’s slingshot back, my eyes narrowing as a swift silver blade suddenly flew through the opaque sunlight beneath me. A hoopoe cried its warning seconds too late as the blade impacted softly halfway up a neighbouring tree, while my intended quarry rustled away through the undergrowth.

Scowling, I watched as Ida’s different target swung through the low branches, screeching its distress. We’d made our feelings about young monkey meat clear, and while it was a Komodo delicacy, the forest couldn’t sustain the rate at which the tribe wanted to feast on them. Instinctively, I leapt into action, running swiftly through the neighbouring trees until I reached the baby bonnet macaque, which seemed frozen to the cedar trunk above the gleaming blade. My arrival startled it back into life, and it scurried swiftly up to the topmost branches, where a mature macaque chattered her relief.

Satisfied, I yanked the blade out of the trunk and dropped to the ground, just as the low grunting of a confident predator filled the air. I swung up into the nearest fork and swivelled to glance at the snorting creature, which was only a stone’s throw away. It had to be the same wild boar, and by the way it was squaring up to me, a hungry adult male.

‘First rule of the jungle: never hesitate or show doubt.’

Bereg’s training was entrenched in us all and his voice echoed through my head. Stealthily, I levelled Harlo’s slingshot just as a second flash of silver flew past and buried itself in the boar’s neck. It dropped forward onto its knees, eyeing me reproachfully, before collapsing in a growing pool of its own dark blood.

The bushes parted a moment later and Ida, clad in a leather sarong and beaded tunic top, strode past me, her long plaited ebony hair glistening in the iridescent light.

She reached down and placed her palm over the animal’s forehead as a mark of respect, before retrieving her knife and tucking it inside her leather waistband. Then she shot me a questioning glance, the painted seasons on her forehead and forked tongues around her oaken eyes crinkling with satisfaction. I swallowed my frustration and nodded; it was a clean kill and we were all hungry.

Together, we strapped the boar onto a short length of hickory using a mixture of rudimentary signing and gestures. It hung there, unprotesting, and now that I was closer I could see why it hadn’t run when it could. It was starving. I suppressed another frown as Ida lifted her trophy over her strong shoulders and melted back into the bushes. Then we set off at hunting pace, and I took my last forage into the trees among the leaves and birds.

The Komodo knew how to ground-run, even wearing a kill, and I had to concentrate to forage while keeping her dark silhouette in sight. A lone hoopoe’s echo rang among the branches as I ran down a twisted kapok branch and leapt into the tree opposite. It was an easy leap, and one Max and I used to navigate without blinking.

I set my teeth, refusing to let the memories consume me, as two fat pheasants ran out of the bushes below. I raised my slingshot instinctively, and within a heartbeat they were still. Relieved, I dropped to the forest floor and grabbed their scrawny legs, just as Ida pushed through the bushes. I held up a count of two, and it was her turn to nod, her lips parted in a garish smile that displayed her impressive Komodo teeth chiselled into tiny points.

Deftly, I strung the pheasants to my tunic belt, alongside my leather rations bag. It was full of wild roots, blueberries and the small papaya. The wild roots would provide an alternative stock to our usual cultivated vegetables, and now there was the boar and pheasant. It had been a good early shift. The sun was glinting through the dense foliage, casting longer shadows across the forest floor, which meant it had to be approaching breakfast time. I gesticulated at the sky and Ida nodded.

We set out again, two hunters from different communities bringing food to share. It was progress, I told myself as a jaybird darted low in front of us, dropping the remainder of its meal onto the forest floor.

In a breath, the jungle melted away, and I was free-falling towards the glass river with its slow snaking arms and muted starlight. My eyes closed briefly and I willed it to consume me, to take me back to oblivion. But the jungle loomed back anyway with its coarse sunlight and unapologetic life. I was conscious of a rush of disappointment, before a cool palm on my cheek. I longed to fold into it, to take the comfort my silent friend offered, but I’d learned the hard way that caring led only to pain.

I quickened my pace. We’d stayed too long today.

Chapter 5

‘Astra inclinant, sed non obligant.’

August’s whisper was barely there, but his pain was as clear as a monsoon moon.

I tried to resist the dream but it fought back, tightening its hold, and trapping me inside my own memory. I told myself that I would wake soon, that I should focus on breathing, but each inhalation drew nails over my lungs. Raking in and raking out. Shouldn’t it be easier than this now?

‘The stars incline us … they do not bind us,’ I whispered, a hazy echo of Grandpa’s wisdom reaching through.