Ice Magic

This is a story from the time when the Land of Ytir was being formed.

  It is a time of great change. The Ice is melting, and babies are starting to be born - different, with new powers that nobody yet understands.

  Ice Magic

  by

  Lesley Arrowsmith

  4,100 words

  Copyright 2012 Lesley Arrowsmith

  Chapter One

  Bran ran.

  A stone whizzed past his ear, rattling to earth just ahead of him. He swerved a little, and kept running.

  They didn't chase him very far, but he kept going, across the boggy ground around the stream that ran straight out from the Ice, and up the other side of the valley.

  When he stopped, he could hardly see where the camp of the Ice Gull people was, and his side hurt.

  He slumped into the shelter of a big rock, out of the biting wind, and lay, trying not to cry.

  It wasn't fair. He was only trying to help. Why were they so scared of him?

  The rock was one of those that had been rolled over the moorland by the Ice - but now the Ice was moving north, into the mountains. There was less of it every year. Once, the Ice Gull people had hunted over the Ice, and lived on the Ice. Now they lived along the edges of it, on the bleak and boggy moorland that had appeared when the Ice melted. The Ice had left the rock behind, and it was leaving the tribe behind.

  Maybe that was why.

  Bran rolled onto his side, leaning against the rock, and rubbed at his eyes with one grubby hand. There was still the choked feeling in his throat, but he didn't want to cry any more.

  The world was changing around the tribe, so maybe that was why they hated any change inside the tribe.

  It had happened before. There had been a girl child with hair the colour of fox fur and milky pale skin, with little flecks of brown across her nose, instead of going brown all over, like normal people. The old women who helped to birth her had wanted to drown her straight away, but the mother wouldn't let them.

  It had been bad luck, though. There had been that flash flood that killed two people, on a camping site that had always been safe before. They drove the girl child off with stones.

  She had hung around the edges of the camp for a while, scavenging - he had thrown rocks at her himself. There had been nothing to mark him out as different then - and everyone else was doing it.

  One day she hadn't been there any more, and she was never mentioned again.

  It wouldn't happen to him. He wasn't going to hang around the edge of the camp until he died of hunger or some wolf or bear took him.

  He had a Power.

  But he had nothing with him to make fire, and his spear was back at the camp. How could he hunt, alone and without his spear? How could he cook meat without fire?

  Something moved, a dark shape flying low over the tussocky grass. A raven flew towards the rock where he was lying. When it saw Bran, it veered off, making its deep, mournful cry.

  It flew south.

  Bran watched the bird he was named for until it disappeared from sight among the low hills, and then he turned his face south as well.

  Bran woke, cramped and uncomfortable in the little hollow he had found under the gorse bush. There was an empty ache where his belly used to be.

  He crawled out and looked around. He could smell smoke in the air, very faintly, and along with it a smell that he couldn't identify - apart from being sure that something was cooking on that fire. His stomach rumbled unhappily.

  A thin plume of smoke was rising into the blue morning sky. Just beyond it was the largest pool Bran had ever seen, shining bright silver in the sunlight so that it hurt his eyes to look at it.

  The smoke was the important thing to him now, though - just the one, small camp fire, maybe a small group of hunters by the water's edge - not a full sized camp or a tribe.

  Maybe he'd be able to get close enough to steal some of the food they were cooking.

  He moved quickly until he came to the edge of the reeds. They were taller than he was, and it was almost impossible to move silently among them unless he was very, very careful, and very slow moving. His hand shook as he moved a stem out of the way - the smell of food was very strong now.

  There was a clearing in the reeds, a pebble strewn beach on the edge of the big pool. Near the water, the camp fire burned, and on a large flat stone next to the fire there lay the source of the food smell, something pale and flat. Bran had no idea what it was, but he wanted it.

  A naked boy crouched by the fire, slickly wet all over his brown body. His wet hair stuck to his back in long tangles.

  Bran kept very still. Maybe the boy would go away soon, and then he could take the food.

  And then the boy rolled sideways, catching up his spear and coming up in a fighting crouch facing Bran, all in one fluid movement.

  The bone spear tip was aimed unwaveringly at Bran's heart.

  Bran held out his empty hands in front of him, very slowly. "I saw the smoke," he said, "and smelt the - what is that stuff?"

  "Lake trout," said the boy. Which were two words that Bran did not know the meaning of.

  "Fish," he added, at Bran's blank expression. "From the lake." He waved the hand that was not holding the spear behind him at the water. "Who are you?"

  "Bran, of the - not of the Ice Gull people any more." He shrugged as if he didn't care.

  The other boy smiled, then, and laid his spear down - where he could catch it up again in a heartbeat, but still.... "Deri," he said. "Not of the Lake people any more." He motioned Bran to come nearer. "Share my fish."

  Bran scuttled over to the flat stone on his knees and took a handful of the white flaky meat. He'd never tasted anything like it before - meat was supposed to be red, and thick, and heavy, not white and delicately flavoured like this stuff.

  When he'd eaten all his share, he licked up the grease on his fingers before he wiped his hand down his deerskin trews.

  "Why did they throw you out?" Deri asked.

  "I brought down a swan," Bran said. "I took the wind out from under its wings, and it fell. I thought they'd be pleased, but they turned on me and threw stones at me to drive me away. I bet they ate the swan after, though," he added, bitterly. "What about you?"

  It was Deri's turn to shrug. "I can't drown. We were swimming, and I didn't think about it. I just stayed underwater until all the others were frightened of me, and they drove me off."

  "The world's changing," said Bran. "We're changing. When the Ice covered the whole world, there were no stories about people like us."

  "The Ice never covered the whole world," Deri said scornfully. "We've always been the Lake people."

  "It covered our whole world," Bran said. "Now it's going away. I suppose that's my fault, too," he muttered.

  "Why would it be your fault?" asked Deri.

  "I bet that's what they'll say," Bran said. "They always find someone to blame bad luck on."

  They followed the river that flowed from one end of the lake. Deri didn't like being away from water - he swam every day, usually several times, and they were never short of fish to eat. Bran had never known anyone so clean. He never took his deerskin tunic off from one season's end to the next, but he found himself carrying Deri's clothes and spear half the time. Travelling downstream seemed as good a way as any of seeing the world, and people needed water - they were likely to find other tribes if they stuck to the river, and maybe somewhere would be a tribe that wasn't afraid of them.

  It was the other tribe that found them - and found them while they were sleeping, under an overhanging low sandy cliff that the sand martens were using to build their nest holes.

  Bran and Deri woke to find themselves surrounded by men with flint tipped spears
.

  "Where's the rest of your tribe?"

  The speaker jabbed at Bran with his spear.

  "Ow! They live at the edge of the Ice," Bran said.

  "The Ice is many days' walk from here," said another man. "Why are you here?"

  "We were following the river..." Bran began, "...to - er - see where it went...." It sounded stupid, and unbelievable, even as he said it.

  The men whispered together, and one of them ran off, away from the river.

  Some time later, he returned, with a big, broad-chested man and a girl.

  The man looked the boys up and down - and did not seem impressed. He waved the girl forward.

  She wore a long dress and white deerskin boots. Like the man, she had feathers woven into her long plaits. All the men stood back for her to pass between them.

  Bran and Deri stood up, backs to the sand wall. The girl lifted her hand to Bran's head and let it rest lightly on his forehead. He shivered, as thought - memories - began racing through his mind without his consent.

  She took her hand away. "This one will be useful to us," she said.

  She