The Wind on Fire Trilogy: Firesong

Cover

Title page

Copyright

Prologue: Bounce on, Jumper

1 The view from the sourgum tree

2 Drunkenness

3 Sisi’s kiss

4 Walking the storm

5 The winner chooses a bride

6 Farewell to childhood

7 The dying of the last fire

8 Fatness is happiness

9 Talking with pigs

10 Captain Canobius’s feast

11 Winter dawn

12 All my loves

13 The egg’s song

14 Pinto grows up

15 Bowman flies

16 Ira sees the future

17 The meeting place

18 Into the beautiful land

19 The wind on fire

Epilogue: A betrothal

About the Author

Praise for FIRESONG

Books by William Nicholson

About the Publisher

Prologue: Bounce on, Jumper

Albard lay undiscovered among the ruins for three days and nights. All this time he remained in a half sleep, a waking dream, too weak to move or call out. He saw the sun pass overhead, and then the stars. He grew cold, and colder. The flesh dwindled on his great body as he starved. He knew he was dying, and knew there was nothing he could do now to save himself; nor did he wish to. He was only puzzled that it was taking so long, and a little afraid about what would happen in that mysterious final moment when the dying, which is after all a kind of living, came to an end. So at last he composed his mind and prepared himself to sing the song all Singer people sing at the end, for the release of their spirit. Unlike most of the Singer people’s songs, this one had words. Albard’s lips did not move. No sound came from him. But in his mind, he sang:

Joy of my days, let me go

Days of my life, let me go

Life of my heart, let me go

Let me go, let me go, far away . . .

His own voice sounded sweet to him, and peaceful, and he thought he would sleep soon. The pain was all gone, and the ruined city around him was silent. He had no idea what time of day it was any more, or what time of year. It was for him the end time.

Heart of my life, let me go

Life of my days, let me go

Days of my joy, let me go

Let me go, let me go, far away . . .

Then as the song came ever fainter in his fading mind, he heard a new sound: the sound of footsteps approaching. They came in bursts, as if this unseen visitor was hopping and stopping, hopping and stopping. Through the fog of his own dying Albard heard a voice, a shrill chirpy voice that talked to itself.

‘Bounce on, Jumper!’ the voice said.

Leave me alone, said Albard in his mind. Leave me to die.

But it was no use. The newcomer couldn’t hear him, and would have paid no attention even if he had. He was getting closer. Any moment now he would stumble right onto Albard’s body.

‘He’s here somewhere, and I’m here, so when his here meets my here, I’ll find him. Bounce on, Jumper!’

No! cried Albard, deep within his fading mind. Not him! Not the jolly one! Now, death, now! Come quickly!

It was too late. Though his body was cold and his eyes long closed, stubborn life lingered in his core: and so the one who called himself Jumper found him, and cried out in joy.

‘Oh happy day! Albard! My dear companion, I have found you!’

Go away.

‘You don’t look at all well.’

I’m almost dead, you clot.

‘Never mind! We’ll soon have you up and smiling, eh?’

Drown yourself, moonface.

‘That’s the spirit! You know you can do it! Who’s let himself get cold? Dear oh dear! Rub-a-dub-dub! We’ll soon have you warm again.’

The little fellow set himself hammering over the dying man’s great starved wreck of a body, beating heat back into the icy limbs. Albard felt the tiny spark of life within him flicker and grow stronger.

His eyes opened.

‘Well, hello, stranger!’ beamed Jumper. ‘Welcome back to this wonderful world!’

Albard did not speak. He let his great grey eyes stare his outrage and his contempt.

‘You don’t have to thank me,’ said Jumper. ‘Making people happy is my reward.’

What a moonface clot it is, thought Albard to himself, as Jumper chafed his limbs. He felt the first painful thrill of returning sensation. And what sort of thing is he anyway? Is he man or woman? Or something else altogether, for which we need a new name?

You’re a blob, he decided. A silly smiling blob.

The creature was certainly human, though smaller and more short-legged and round-bodied than the usual sort. He was equipped with the standard number of limbs and eyes and ears, and had hair on the top of his round moonish head. But was the hair fair or dark? Long or short? The odd thing about Jumper was you couldn’t quite get a fix on any part of him, except perhaps for his ever-cheerful voice. Sometimes he looked like a little middle-aged man, sometimes like a ten-year-old girl. He was known as Jumper not only because of his bouncing, hopping manner of getting about: there was something jumpish about him altogether. No part of him ever came to rest, but was always changing, becoming something else. It was no use asking Jumper himself who or what he was, because he would only reply, with his eager-to-please smile,

‘What would you like me to be?’

To children he was an indulgent grandfather, to women he was a playful child, to men a willing friend. To Albard now, he was saviour, servant, and nurse. He scavenged food and drink for him among the ruins, and in the chill night he slept pressed tight to Albard’s body, warming him with his own life’s heat.

It was hard to complain. Above all, Jumper was so good-tempered. He was relentlessly, unstoppably good-tempered. As Albard returned to strength, he lay and plotted remarks that would offend him, but never with any success.

‘Believe me, Jumper, I would rather die than have to endure one more day of your baseless optimism.’

‘Oh, would you rather I was gloomy? I can be gloomy if you like.’

He hung his round head and turned down the corners of his mouth and shuffled about sighing to himself,

‘Sad and lonely, sad and lonely.’

‘And short and ugly,’ said Albard.

‘Sad and lonely, short and ugly,’ echoed Jumper.

‘And dull and fat.’

‘Sad and lonely, short and ugly, dull and fat,’ said Jumper, beating his breast. But then he spoiled it all by looking up with a radiant smile and asking, ‘Did you like that? Did I do it right?’

Very much against his will, and due entirely to Jumper’s devoted care, Albard recovered.

‘Thank you, Jumper,’ he said bitterly. ‘Thanks to you, my life, which has no purpose left to it, nor any prospect of happiness, will now drag on a little while longer.’

‘Oh no,’ said Jumper. ‘You’re entirely wrong. Your life does have a purpose. You’re to train the boy.’

‘What boy?’

However, Albard knew well enough. There was only one boy who mattered: the boy who was to rule after him. Of course he must be taught. The boy he hated and loved, the boy that was his enemy, his rival who had taken from him all his power, his successor who would be his inheritor. Albard envied him his youth and his future. He hated him for his victory over him. He loved him like the child he never had. He felt a wild pride in him. He longed with a burning desire to see him again, and just once, before the end, to hold him in his arms. So many emotions, and all so violent: and all because this moonface spoke to him about the boy.

Jumper, apparently knowing none of this, answered simply,

‘His name is Bowman Hath.’

‘And what am I to train this boy to do?’

‘To carry out his new duties.’

‘And why am I to do this?’

‘Because,’ said Jumper, beaming, ‘because you’re the best of us.’

‘I’m the best, eh?’

Albard knew what they said on Sirene. The best and the worst, that’s what they said of him. The greatest of all the Singer people ever to have kissed the Prophet’s brow, the one in whom the powers had been most perfected, and the only one ever to betray their calling.

‘Well, so I am. What of it?’

‘So you’re to train the boy. You see how it all comes out right in the end?’

‘In the end we’re all dead.’

‘That we are, and how glorious that will be!’

Albard sighed and gave up. There was no denting such wilful contentment.

‘Where is he, then? This boy?’

‘He’s on his way to the mountains, with his people. We must hurry. They’ve been gone many days, and the wind is rising.’

‘The wind is rising, is it? And will you be there at the end, little Jumper? Will you be singing the firesong, with the wind on your back?’

‘Oh, yes! Of course I’ll be there! How blessed we are to be the generation that will know the wind on fire!’

‘Not me. I made my choice long ago. I’ve had my day, and now it’s over.’

He looked round him at the burned ruins of what had once been the most beautiful city in the world.

They didn’t deserve it. I gave them perfection, and they feared it. They loved their mess. Now they have it back.

‘Sirene sent you, moonface?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Sirene hates me. Sirene wants me dead.’

‘Not at all. You’ve played your part, like all the rest of us.’

‘Played my part!’

Albard let out a big bellowing laugh. That was rich! Albard the rebel, the traitor, the mutineer, had played his part in Sirene’s plans! No, he was the breaker of rules, the defier of authority, the one who had split away from the rest and forged his own world, where he alone had been the Master. Singer people never sought power in the world. Only Albard, the best of them, had broken the rule of rules.

‘I played no part in any plan of Sirene’s, little Jumper. They call me the lost one. I am Sirene’s failure.’

He spoke with a certain pride. What else had he left, now that his city was gone and he had not been allowed to die?

‘We must go,’ said Jumper. ‘Are you strong enough?’

‘Getting stronger all the time. But not what I was. You should have seen me in my day! I was immense! Now my skin hangs loose about me, and I rattle as I walk. Ah, mortality!’

‘But you feel your powers returning?’

‘A little. Yes.’

He looked round. There on the ground, near the hole into which he had crawled to die, lay a short sword. It had fallen from the hand of some poor fool who had died doing his will, and now lay beneath a layer of dust and stones. Albard fixed his mind on the hilt of the sword, and with great effort, he caused it to stir beneath the debris. More he could not do.

With a sigh, he stooped down, and scraping away the stones, picked it up with one hand. Jumper beamed his approval.

‘There! That’s a start, isn’t it?’

‘And if I were to cut your throat with it, that would be a finish, too.’

‘Oh, you won’t do that. I’m no use to you dead.’

‘You’re no use to me, Jumper. There’s nothing you can give me I want. There’s nothing you can do for me I need.’

He slipped the sword into the rope with which his plain woollen robe was belted, and turned his great beak of a nose northwards.

‘But we’ll find this boy, and set him on his path, and then what has been begun will be completed. Not because Sirene plans it, you understand, but because I choose it. Sirene has no control over me. I’m the lost one. I’m the one who goes his own way.’

Albard was facing the causeway across the lake, his gaze fixed on the hills to the north, and so he did not catch the look that passed briefly over Jumper’s round and foolish face. It was the indulgent smile of the parent who allows his wilful child the last word, knowing the child cannot choose but to obey.

‘So you are, if it pleases you,’ said the curious young-old creature, hopping along after him. ‘Bounce on, Jumper!’

1

The view from the sourgum tree

The column of weary marchers made slow progress. The land was rising, and the day was cold. The two horses pulling the heavily-laden wagon kept their heads down and held to a steady plodding pace, but everyone could see that they were growing thinner every day. The wagon’s driver, Seldom Erth, walked beside them to lighten their load. He was the oldest of the marchers, well over sixty years old, but he strode along as determinedly as the younger men, watching the track as he went for stones too big or ruts too deep for the wagon’s wheels. The ones who found it hard to keep up the pace were the children. Miller Marish’s little girl Jet was only six years old. From time to time Seldom Erth swung her up into the wagon, to sit with the cat on the pile of folded tent-cloth at the back, and rest her little legs.

There were thirty-two people of all ages on the march, as well as the two draft horses, five cows, and the cat. Hanno Hath, the march leader, had ordered that they must keep within sight of each other at all times, so the column proceeded at the pace of its slowest members. These were dangerous days. There were rumours of bandit gangs that preyed on travellers. Young men with keen eyes and ready swords loped ahead of the straggling column, watching for danger; but Hanno knew his people had little experience of combat, and had been marching for days on reduced rations. When he fixed his eyes on the horizon ahead, it was not only bandits he feared, but the coming of winter. They carried food and firewood in the wagon, but every day the supplies grew smaller, and they were crossing a bleak, barren land.

‘Have faith, Hannoka,’ said his wife Ira, walking steadily beside him. She used his childhood name to comfort him, as if she was his mother as well as his wife, knowing how great a burden he bore. ‘Have faith, Hannoka.’

‘I worry about the children. How much farther can they go?’

‘If they get tired, we’ll carry them.’

‘And you?’

‘Do I slow you down?’

‘No. You march well. You still feel it?’

‘I still have the warmth on my face.’

She would not admit it, but he could see how she grew weaker every day, and her pace grew slower. He adjusted the speed of the march so that she would not fall behind, pretending to himself he was doing it for the children. He hated to see her grow thinner, and quieter. She had always been a noisy woman, a woman of quick passions and short temper. Now she was quiet, conserving her energy for the long march.

Have faith, Hannoka.

He understood her well enough. She was telling him to believe they would reach the homeland, that one day they would be safe for ever. But she was not telling him she would join him there.

He shook his head, a quick angry jerk, to send the dark thought skittering away. No good to be had looking that way. His care and his diligence were needed now, today, leading his people over the cold land towards the distant not-yet-seen mountains.

Bowman, his fifteen-year-old son, strode along at the head of the column, with his friend Mumpo by his side. The time was a little short of noon, and the young men knew that soon now the march would be called to a halt, for a rest to weary legs, and a share of the dwindling rations. But Bowman’s sharp eyes were fixed on the near horizon, the crest of the rising land ahead. He could make out a straggling fringe of trees.

‘Trees!’

‘Not many.’

‘Could be nuts. Berries. Firewood.’

So little grew on these rocky plains that even a few lone trees gave hope. They quickened their pace, opening up the gap between them and the rest of the march.

‘We might see the mountains from there,’ said Mumpo.

‘We might.’

They were well out of earshot of the rest now, so as they strode up the sloping hillside Mumpo took the chance to say what he had been planning to say all day.

‘I talked with the princess again. She asked about you.’

‘She’s not a princess.’

‘She thinks you avoid her. She doesn’t know why.’

‘I don’t avoid her.’

‘You do. Everyone sees it.’

‘Then let them look aside,’ said Bowman angrily. ‘What has it to do with them? What has it to do with you?’

‘Nothing,’ said Mumpo. ‘I won’t speak of it again.’

They went on in silence, and so reached the trees. Their feet crunched on the stony ground. Bowman stooped to pick up one of the dark-brown husks that littered the earth beneath the trees. He smelled it: a sharp, unpleasant smell. Disappointed, he let it fall again, and followed Mumpo to the crest of the hill.

‘Do you see the mountains?’

‘No,’ said Mumpo.

Bowman felt the weariness close about him like a heavy coat. Standing at Mumpo’s side, he looked north and saw how the barren land sloped down, and then rose again, another in the series of endless waves that limited the horizon. They were crossing an ocean of rolling waves, forever denied a sight of the farther shore.

He turned to look back at his people. He saw his father and mother, walking as always side by side. Behind them a straggle of people, in twos and threes, his twin sister Kestrel with the one Mumpo called the princess. The wagon rumbled steadily along after them, drawing Creoth and his five cows in its wake. Behind the cows he could make out the plump shape of Mrs Chirish waddling along, and behind her, holding hands in a chain, his younger sister Pinto and the other small children. At the back came little Scooch and the lanky teacher Pillish; and guarding the rear, Bek and Rollo Shim.

Bowman felt Mumpo’s silence, and knew he had been too sharp with him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just hard to explain.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘I think I’ll have to leave you. All of you. Someone will come for me, and I’ll have to go.’

‘Who will come for you?’

‘I don’t know who, or when. I only know why. There’s a time coming called the wind on fire, which will burn away the cruelty in the world. And I must be part of it, because I’m a child of the prophet.’

He knew as he said the words that they would mean very little to Mumpo. He felt for a different way to explain.

‘You know the feeling of not belonging?’

‘Yes,’ said Mumpo. He knew it well, but he was surprised to hear Bowman speak of it. Bowman had his family. He had Kestrel.

‘I think I was born not to belong, so that I can leave you all, and – and not come back.’

Mumpo hung his head in sadness.

‘Will Kestrel go too?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. The one who comes for me will say.’

‘Perhaps he’ll say I’m to go too. Like before. The three friends.’

‘No,’ said Bowman. ‘They need you here. Promise me you’ll protect them. My father and mother. My sisters. Everyone I love.’

‘I promise, Bo.’

‘You’re strong. They need you.’

The chain of small children had broken up, as they raced each other up the slope to the trees. The bigger Mimilith boys were there ahead of them. Before Bowman could stop him, Mo Mimilith had picked up one of the nuts on the ground and started to eat it.

‘Yooh!’ he cried, spitting it out. ‘Yooh! Bitter!’

‘Do you see the mountains?’ called Hanno.

‘No. No mountains.’

A sigh of disappointment ran down the length of the column. Hanno ordered a rest halt among the trees. Pinto came up, panting from running to the top of the hill, and took Bowman’s hand.

‘How much further do you think we have to go?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Bowman.

‘I don’t mean I’m tired. I was only wondering.’

Pinto was seven years old, and had to make two steps for every one of Bowman’s, but she hated it if anyone took pity on her.