Book of Fire Read online

  ‘C’mon, we’re lit up like the 4th of July. Time to call it a day!’

  I signed one of our dad’s favourite expressions, before scrambling back down the knotty trunk. It was ironic that Dad’s voice rang bright and clear in my memory, while his face faded a little every day. He had been the village schoolteacher; a quiet man who always made time to read to us beside the fire, but one winter he just kept coughing. Mum made chicken broth and told us he would get better, but by spring he was dead. Eli and I had just shared our ninth birthday, and it was the year I stopped trusting in anything outside of my own control.

  We walked over to the familiar crossing stones, visible just beneath the rushing water. This was the trickiest part of the return journey, and timing was paramount. The river lowered twice a day, making the swirling water passable if you followed a specific route. Time it incorrectly, and the current would sweep you away and drop you over a fifty-foot waterfall. Eventually.

  Eli went first, leaping nimbly from stone to stone, while I followed closely behind. We reached the other side without mishap, and ducked beneath a protruding rock. It concealed the entrance to a small cramped cave, which always looked so unremarkable at a glance. This was the beauty of our valley home, and its discovery was retold at special Council gatherings, as a rite of passage.

  It was while Thomas had been hiding meagre food supplies that he made the chance discovery: a heavy metal disc concealing a slim dark tunnel and ice-cold water. Some believed it to be a disused mineshaft, others part of the old-world sewerage system. Either way, he glimpsed a stream of natural light, and desperate to protect his small following, climbed down into the icy water.

  The Council said he likened his first discovery of our hidden world to waking in Eden. I could understand why. I hated the tunnel, but it made the emergence into the sudden light and sanctuary of our valley so special. He named the valley Arafel there and then – lest we forget, he said, the dust clouds we were leaving behind. A few called the Hebrew name spiritual protection, but I suspected it was the solid rock between ourselves and the Lifedome, we really needed to bless.

  Taking one last look at the dusky forest behind me, I ducked into the cave to find Eli already sending his kill down the tunnel using our system of pulleys. Once the rope went slack, he pulled it taut three times, the general signal that all was clear, and stood aside to let me go first.

  ‘Race you to dinner!’ I threw back before dropping like an arrow into the freezing water. The temperature was always glacial, and hit my chest like a rock. I grabbed the guide line and followed it to the dark wall, before inhaling deeply and diving down into the blackness below.

  This was the worst part for me, blindly gripping a line and pushing against constrictive tunnel walls that scraped at and dug into my cold skin. And it was always just as my suppressed panic threatened to burst, that the tunnel would rise sharply, spitting me ungracefully into a pool of water at the back of a much larger cave. I swallowed hard to ease my protesting ears, and gazed out at my favourite view in the whole world: Arafel.

  The lazy afternoon sun was still bathing our woodland sanctuary, which was completely encircled by high, white peaks. The Great War had left its mark on our landscape, as well as the northern climate, and much of it was unrecognizable from before. Only an Insider Eagle aircraft could chance a glimpse of our village, but the Insiders dispatched them rarely, and it seemed the prospect of a descent through close, angular rock faces discouraged even their most skilled pilots. Thomas had made few rules, but the secrecy of Arafel’s location was considered sacrosanct – something no one ever questioned.

  Two sets of strong arms plunged in to pull me out as I reached the edge of the pool, and I smiled my thanks as I was thrust a woollen blanket. Wrapping it swiftly around my cold limbs, I gazed out at our small forest village. The maze of interconnected treehouses, just visible among the leafy foliage, reflected one of the pillar beliefs of our community, and the hum of ordinary village duties reached out like an old friend.

  It looked as though evening chores were underway. Resisting chickens were being rounded up, a wooden coop was being mended, Jed was adjusting one of the rudimentary crop sprinklers and, judging by the noise, work was continuing on the drainage system.

  In truth, we lived like kings compared to Thomas’s time. When everyone else had abandoned their homes for the protection of the Lifedome, my ancestors had placed their faith in the natural world. And, despite its terrifying destruction and slow recovery, I couldn’t be more grateful. Life was raw, we rarely knew where the next meal was coming from, and we had precious few expectations. But we were free.

  I looked back, waiting for Eli to surface. He always did so with a smile on his face and didn’t disappoint this time. I helped pull him from the black water, and passed him a dry woollen blanket from the stack in the corner.

  ‘How on earth can you enjoy it?!’ I signed, pulling a face.

  He flicked water from his sandy hair, making me step back rapidly. His grey-blue eyes shone with silent laughter and I chuckled, feeling the last of my stress melt away.

  ‘Hey, nice work, you two,’ Raoul called from the mouth of the cave. Eli’s catch was already attracting a small crowd. ‘Sausages for breakfast, lunch, and dinner ’til Christmas!’

  Laughter rippled through the evening air, as we grabbed our bags and made for the entrance.

  ‘Don’t forget the greens.’ I winked, emptying the contents of my leather rations bag onto the homemade twig-and-twine platters, before walking away. My hoard comprised a wide selection of wild herbs, edible berries, field mushrooms, and my best find of the day: a whole branch of sweet, ripe apricots – Joe would definitely put those to good use.

  ‘Great forage, Talia!’ Raoul called, tossing back two of the apricots.

  I spun to catch them deftly, before replacing them carefully in my rations bag. Grandpa never ceased to be amazed at the variety of fruit I foraged. He remembered when fruit didn’t grow at all except in the most isolated, sheltered areas; and most of that was withered and spoiled. His generation had a real problem with scurvy. Nowadays, we had our pick of many different exotic fruits, which would never have found a home in the forest before – one of the benefits of catastrophic climate change, or so the Council Elders said.

  With the excitement of fresh food supplies growing, we made our excuses and started for home – an old treehouse situated a little way into Arafel’s forest. It was one of the first to be built, and Thomas’s plans for the village were still etched out in charcoal on the living-space floor. Grandpa said it blessed our home, and reminded us how Thomas always trusted in the recovery of the natural world.

  ‘Eli … Talia, is that you?’ Daniel – one of Grandpa’s friends – called out as we started for home through the trees. He shuffled across the leafy forest floor and, grasping Eli’s hand, shook it profusely. My brother grinned from ear to ear as I rolled my eyes. Eli was going to be able to live off the boar glory for days at this rate.

  Nodding politely, I widened my eyes at Eli. He understood. Mum worried so much when we were outside, and all I could think about was watching the colour return to her face when she saw us. We walked swiftly, but were only a few metres on when we were interrupted again.

  ‘Apricots they said? It’s not even June! You really are the craziest queen of foraging!’

  This time, it was my turn to smile before peering through the trees in the direction of the teasing voice. Max was a couple years older than us. He was also a close friend, natural athlete, and one of the best treehouse builders in the village. He and his dad had designed the new open-air tree showers, and everyone was looking forward to washing without the complimentary mud footbath their predecessor had provided. Max, like Eli and a couple of his friends, were also gifted hunters, and willingly took extra shifts outside the village to boost meat stocks.

  ‘I saved you one, but I want to trade!’ I challenged, ignoring the faint frown on Eli’s face.

  Reaching i
nto my leather pouch, I held the promised golden-yellow treat high, turning slowly on the spot so he could appreciate its unusually perfect, ripened form.

  ‘Well, now I’m intrigued. What could the queen of foraging, teacher of … old stuff and OK, not half-bad tree-runner, possibly want from a lowly construction worker?’

  My grin widened and I flexed my limbs. Tree-running was a skill our ancestors had developed as a way of improving our coordination within our new environment. Thomas had started a timed hunter’s challenge around Arafel’s forest, recognizing that if we were to survive in a new habitat we needed to move more like the animals within it.

  ‘There’s no need to be embarrassed about being beaten by a girl, Max,’ I teased, craning my neck to peer through the thick undergrowth. ‘Last week’s new-moon trial was pretty fast, and I’ve a couple of new tricks I could show you … if you like?’

  An excited chaffinch twittered its warning from the undergrowth.

  ‘C’mon, a couple of tricks and a juicy apricot in return for one hour of your time to help fix Grandpa’s roof … What do you say?’

  My ears pricked and the apricot was suddenly spun from my fingers, as a lithe figure sprang from the middle branches of a nearby tree. Instantly I darted for the fallen fruit, but just as my fingers closed around it, Max performed the perfect side-on tackle, knocking all the breath from my body.

  ‘Cut it out!’ I yelled, between gulps of laughter as we rolled, his fingers tickling me mercilessly for ownership of the precious fruit. For a couple of minutes I held out, using my runner’s strength to keep him at bay while Eli watched from a fallen log. But I was no physical match for Max, and when he prised my fingers open I gave in, using his moment of victory to roll away and catch my breath.

  ‘Where in the name of Arafel did you get this?’ he questioned through mouthfuls of the apricot’s sweet juicy flesh. ‘This is definitely worth a bit of roof repair work – which you know I would have been happy to help with, apricot or not!’

  He reached out a strong brown hand and pulled me to my feet, his hazelnut-green eyes twinkling between indignation and amusement. A length of his golden-brown hair had escaped during our tussle, and I watched as he deftly tucked it behind one ear.

  He smiled and opened his mouth as though to speak, just as Eli stepped up beside me.

  ‘Is it me or is it raining?’ my brother signed with a flurry of fingers, and a brief smirk.

  It was a reference to the time Eli and I had needed to rescue Max from a narrow ledge behind a forest waterfall. We’d managed to live off that one glory moment for years.

  ‘Raining? You mean pouring!’ I signed with an exaggerated flourish.

  Max rolled his eyes, understanding perfectly.

  ‘For the love of Arafel, we were seven years old!’

  ‘Seven and eight to be precise,’ I corrected, giving in to the gentle pressure of Eli’s hand. ‘Tomorrow evening for the repair work … After supper good for you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Why don’t you help me?’ he threw out suddenly. ‘Give you a break from teaching all that old, dead stuff?’

  ‘All that old dead stuff is called history, and I happen to believe it’s important to learn as much as we can about the past – mostly so we don’t screw up the future! But I don’t mind lending a hand … Fancy it, Eli?’

  Eli’s face brightened, and I stifled a frown. He seemed so edgy around Max these days.

  ‘You should probably know,’ Max called as I turned away. ‘I strained my Achilles last Sunday.’

  ‘Yes … Eli said … no excuse not to win the quarter moon then!’ I responded, walking away.

  ‘Oh, I intend to,’ he responded, ‘so you better get practising those tricks, crazy queen of foraging!’

  I rolled my eyes before heading for home, unable to repress a small smile.

  Chapter Two

  Mum had boiled up leftover chicken bones and roots for dinner, and I sniffed the air hungrily as I reached our knotted-willow ladder. It was secured to our oak’s trunk with twisted twine, and refreshing it was one of my weekly chores. I’d always woken up under a green canopy, and couldn’t imagine sleeping inside a claustrophobic brick box, like our ancestors.

  There was a low growl from above and I smiled. Jas was our live-in, juvenile snow leopard ‘watch-cat’. And Eli’s shadow. Perhaps his fortress of silence had been a catalyst, but no one doubted Eli had been blessed with a unique gift when it came to animals. He’d cared for injured creatures for as long as I could remember, and all kinds of wildlife had passed through the woven hospital baskets in our living area.

  He and Jas had found each other when she was just a cub. She’d lost her mother, and wandered down the mountain in search of food. Eli had spotted her on the outskirts of the village, just a pitiful bag of bones. He’d insisted on hand-rearing her, despite my dad’s reservations about having a leopard in the house, and she’d turned out to be a sweet-tempered, much-loved member of the family. With her natural instincts and highly developed senses, she was also one of the best watch-cats in the world.

  ‘Hey, Jas,’ I whispered, pushing her tickling, soft whiskers out of my face as I climbed the ladder into our cosy nest of a kitchen above.

  The uneven, aged floor was freshly swept, and Mum was seated with her back towards me, stringing her share of the afternoon’s harvest of onions and wet garlic. A crude form of crop rotation had helped the village build a useful stock of essentials, and make full use of each recovering layer of soil.

  I glanced around the familiar, circular space, and felt its warmth reach out to embrace me. I’d painted the concave walls as a child, with dyes drained from crushed seeds and roots; and I loved the way my forest drawings had taken on a life form of their own as the canvas had aged and relaxed.

  Thomas’s treehouse map hadn’t escaped my crude, woollen brushes either. I’d coloured and recoloured his faded pencilled vision of Arafel, until I knew it by heart. It used to be my favoured pastime when the monsoon weather came, and I’d spent countless hours pondering the location of our own tiny green home among the maze of crude charcoal markings on the floor.

  ‘Mum?’ I murmured, relishing the way the word hung in this space.

  She spun around immediately, and relief flooded her wind-burned face as I flew across the floor to hug her.

  ‘Mum, it’s OK … we’re both OK.’

  ‘Oh, Talia! Thank Arafel! Where’s Eli? You’ve been gone so long I was beginning to … Never mind … Grandpa’s been asking for you since midday.’

  It was only when I held her that I noticed she was shaking. She’d struggled since Dad left us, and become increasingly stressed whenever Eli and I took a hunting shift in the outside forest.

  ‘We’ve been gone the usual time, Mum,’ I murmured quietly, letting her gaze wander anxiously over my face and limbs. When she was satisfied I hadn’t incurred any injury, she nodded towards one of the gnarled doorframes.

  A frail voice filtered through. ‘Is that you, Talia?’

  I frowned at Mum. He sounded a little worse. She nodded brightly, but her eyes were misted and only cleared when Eli crept up and lifted her cleanly off her feet in a bear hug spin.

  Despite – or perhaps because of – his silent world, Eli had the sunny energy to charm a raincloud before it cried. Somehow he always made me stronger. Drawing a breath, I stepped through to Grandpa’s room, savouring the cocooning scent of old books as I entered his snug den.

  My grandfather was one of the village’s Senior Elders and held a special, weighted vote in any decision-making. He was also caretaker to Arafel’s sizeable library, created when Thomas salvaged books among the city’s ruins. It was a role he took extremely seriously. And one I would inherit one day. The collection represented a wealth of our ancestors’ general knowledge, and since no one had been permitted to return to the city since Thomas’s time, it was also a priceless asset.

  ‘Hi, Grandpa,’ I called, forcing a cheerful tone.


  My gaze took in the proud, wan man reclining in his favourite oak chair beside the open window. His watery blue eyes leapt as they met mine, while my fragile spirits tumbled. Grandpa had been our rock since Dad had gone, and I couldn’t think about how we’d cope if he left us too.

  We’d consulted all three of Arafel’s voluntary medics. Although our small community had no traditionally trained doctors, efforts had been made to record the knowledge handed down by two original defector doctors. Radiation had eradicated many of the old water and airborne diseases, so when people in Arafel died, it was usually from injury or old age. Such was the prognosis for Grandpa, they said softly, as though it would ease the pain. It was his time.

  I walked towards his outstretched hands. Grandpa was the eldest resident of Arafel and one of the few remaining links back to the first days. He was a living reminder of how hard life had been compared with now, and as I grasped his hands I studied his shrewd face. Every year was carefully etched by time’s pencil; every line bearing witness to Arafel beliefs: natural order, respect for our place, and taking only what we needed to survive.

  ‘Close the door, Talia,’ Grandpa said softly, ‘and take a seat.’

  I stared in surprise. Grandpa rarely closed his door, and almost never called me by my full name. Suddenly the air in the room seemed heavier.

  I did as he wished, before scuttling to my knees in front of his chair.

  ‘Do you feel OK, Grandpa? Should I send for someone?’

  My chest contracted like I’d dropped into the freezing water all over again as Grandpa cupped my cheeks in his hands.

  ‘Hush now, child. I’m as fit as anyone who’s been blessed enough to take care of Arafel for eighty-seven years. We just need a little chat, you and I, about a special task I need you to fulfil when I’m gone.’