Cold Fire by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee [Fire, Tanith Lee: Cold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The weather it held, with the sea in pleats and slow, and soft gray sky that has sun like a lemon slice, and by night a moon like a ghost.

Porpus teem through water, wet slick speckle, like cats. Then is later, and the packs of the flat ice drifting by, and above over us black head tarna flying.

All this while the dragon coil in the berg. No moving.

The twenty feet ice of the berg glister but never cracks. Each dayup, Corgen comes out with gun, and look over the berg ice, check.

I try say to him about the dragon in the ice.

Corgen won't say back. Three times I try. Third time he slap me hard in the mouth so down I fall. Beau pulls me away, but as I not any drink in me, I feel no will ter do nothing on this, only sad, like as when I child.

Nights though, he, me, and Beau we eat in the cabin. The wodka is still plenty. The guys from the tramper, they brung over a lot. Good best stuff, best than any ever drunk. Only tastes bit of kerosene, Corgen say. Who care for that? They drink, try to make me, laugh at me that I won't.

They sing some nights. So I with them.

In the ice it never moving. Eyes shut.

I think what eyes did it had behind the close, hot metal color lids. Were they like fire? Was fire what it breathed as the book say?

As Corgen won't speak, I ask of Beau, what did the officers on the other ship say of the dragon, when first they make Corgen and he to see it.

—They come out talk of prehistry, say Beau. —Say this like elephant thing in Rus, that was trapt in hard old ice. This one some kind of dynosar. But I see them dead dynosars in a show once. This out there nothing like them.

—Is it died? I say.

—For Christ, Pete, how fuck am I go to know? Looks well dead to me.

But the one who dies around then is Bacherly. I find him, as we was getting well up north, toward the world's top.

Dense white mist that day, and we to go very slowly cos for of the ice drifts, which you hear grunt and creak and squeak now near, and now far off, but never see till close. And I go down with mess of meatpotato, and Bacherly is there and he's dead, with a red smear on chin.

Corgen come and kicks him to wake up. Bacherly don't take notice. We havta put him over side, and Ando say the prayer.

Some of the others have gutache too. But Corgen say they are all time drunken and that this is why, can't hold Rus wodka, it too good for them.

Then he say soft to me, —Or it that thing in there.

Meaning the dragon in the ice.

He say, —Some shitten disease carry on it. Those guys from the military, they jaw on, say too cold for any germ.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.