The Forge: Fire and Ice

ON THE SLOPE OF SURVIVAL Lynn McInroy

I am fire and she is ice. The fire of desire and the ice of indifference. She will not share. Her fields are on the high slope. The ground is warm, the soil rich. Her crops grow thick and high. My land is lower. The ice sheet is creeping up, year by year. Already its fingers are reaching for my boundary. By the end of the season, they will have grasped the edge.

Three years ago, it was different. My fields were high and fertile, hers just a little lower down, but still productive. I knew she coveted my plot. She was young and attractive, and I courted her all summer. Together, I said, our land could feed us and more. Slowly, slowly she was responding. And then Old Growler started to grumble.

We all knew what that meant. In a couple of days, or perhaps a week, the lava would start pouring down his slopes and covering our fields, destroying whatever was left. In haste, we gathered the crops and the animals and started the trek to the ice caves. The entrances were clear, the caves still sound. The supplies that we had tithed each year were good, and we gathered round the fire for our first hot food in two days. I looked across at the woman, wondering why she didn’t sit beside me, but she avoided my gaze.

‘Tell us a story,’ said one of the older women. ‘One of the old days.’

The oldest man began the story, the one we had heard many times before, of how the earth used to be warm all year round and produce three crops a year, and how people lived in crowded cities and the fertile fields fed them and they did no work. And how they feared the coming warming. And then came the ice. The snow was thick that last winter. And there was no spring. The glaciers heaved their heavy shoulders out of the earth and year by year the ice ate the fields. And our people fled the dying cities and founded this little colony on the slopes of Old Growler, where the earth is always warm and the growing good.

‘Hey, hey,’ said the woman when he had finished. ‘That’s a good story. But I don’t see how it could be true.’

‘I tell it as it was told by my father and his father before him. No more and no less.’

‘But if they didn’t live by their fields, how did they get their food?’ asked a young boy.

‘The people who farmed the fields took the food to the people in the city.’

‘And how did they know when to hold the race for the fields, without Old Growler to tell them?’ added the boy.

‘They didn’t race for the fields. They owned them.’

‘Owned them? You mean like a pair of boots?’

‘Yes, just like you own a pair of boots.’

‘But that’s not fair. No-one had a chance to win the best land!’

‘That’s why we race for the land here.’

When the fire was put out for the night, we all settled down in heaps of furs to sleep. For our whole stay in the caves, the woman managed to steer clear of speaking to me. Why was she avoiding me? I had thought we were reaching an understanding. Finally, I pushed the thought away. The race would come soon enough, and I was a good runner.

The first sunrise of spring came and our scouts told us Old Growler had been quiet for weeks. It was time to go and set our boundaries again. We trekked across the ice sheet and made our final camp near the edge of it. But when we rose to gather for the race, my shoelace was missing. I knew who had done it; as the race to the slopes began, she threw me a triumphant glance. By the time I reached Old Growler, there was nothing left but this land just above the ice sheet’s edge.

Time turns and all things change. Old Growler is grumbling again and we know we must flee to the caves. We share food and stories, but my dreams are haunted by the fear that this time, Old Growler will not be content with just one season’s vomiting of ash and fire, but will carry on through the planting season, and we will have little food, and none to restock the caves. Our grasp on land and life is so fragile that even a small disturbance will destroy it.

My fears were groundless. Spring sunrise has come and there have been no underground rumblings for a week. We trek to our campsite near the start point for the race. In the middle of the night, I creep between the sleeping bodies and take her shoes. I bury them under a bush. She’ll never find them and the ground is still too hot for bare feet. We start our race up the slopes and I am in the front ranks. I reach the plot I want and plant my boundary markers. The ground will need a week or so to cool enough for me to sow seed. I look down and see her searching for a plot free of ice. She must have run all over the slope to find cool spots for her feet. There isn’t much ground to choose from. The ice sheet is higher than last year.

I turn my back. I am ice and she is fire. The fire of anger and the ice of hatred.

the end