Akwa is an axolotl. Ignis is a fire salamander. They love each other dearly. Yet despite carefully navigating their physical differences and the fragile routines of their shared life, something remains unresolved. Akwa believes change is necessary. Ignis insists what they have is enough. But how long can love be sustained by comfort and routine alone?
Axalotl: an endangered amphibian resembling the larval stage of a tiger salamander. Axolotls are unusual, as they reach adulthood without going through metamorphosis and remain aquatic, retaining their external gills. Neither the axolotl nor the salamander has ears but instead “hears” through their lungs.
Within her cottage, in a high-backed armchair, an orange salamander sat in a paisley housecoat. She munched a honey-dried frog as she enjoyed a crackling hearth. From a window nook, a white axolotl wearing a water-filled fishbowl on his head, sat in breeches and a ruffled shirt. He plucked his lute as he gazed out of the window over his lake.
I swear, Ignis. I swear it’s true, his lute strumming sang, vibrating through the salamander’s lungs. Each tremoring note translated into words in her head.
“One cannot always believe things heard in songs, Akwa,” Ignis said. She licked the tacky honey from her lips and closed her big black eyes, appreciating the warmth of the fire.
Akwa strummed a restless E minor.
Ignis opened her eyes and looked square at him. His lips sent up a fizz of bubbles, and the purple feather-beard lungs trimming his head quivered.
Truth is hard to fake, he played. The troubadour who sang of the Singing Flames truly witnessed them.
Ignis sighed.“Troubadours – bah! Transmogrifying fire – bah! Even if not nonsense, word is this Fungal Forest you speak of is spore-ridden and moldering, and full of nasty business. Not to mention all the wretched creatures skulking there guarding the gloom.”
Guardians, exactly! Akwa strummed. Guarding what?
“Not magic flames! Anyway, what of the tabletop mountain beyond the forest? You’re a swimmer, not a climber.”
A discontented G minor twang rang out. Akwa’s moon-white complexion bloomed pink. I can’t stand living with this stupid thing on my head any longer! And I want to curl up by the fire with you. I want to speak in the air – not through this damn lute.
“We’ve been through this. You’re a talented bard. I understand your lute-speak just fine.” Ignis stood, smacking her lips. She navigated the maze of stacked book towers on the flagstone floor, eventually coming to the jar-crammed treat shelf. “How about some hopping crickets? No? Spiced spiders then? Oh, no … the legs tickle your throat. Ah!” Ignis took a jar of silkworm cocoons. “Mmm, how about a bomsy?”
Are you even listening? Akwa played an uneasy tune. This lute is no substitute.
“I appreciate its melody,” Ignis said, returning with the cocoons. She stepped closer to the nook where Akwa sat on the broad window ledge. He always had preferred the cool stone and damp mossy cushion away from the hearth’s full heat. His tail was curled about him and he gripped the neck of his lute as if he were strangling it. Bubbles fizzed from his tiny nostrils. His beady, close-together eyes bored right into hers.
It’s not enough, he played, I want you to truly hear me.
“I do,” Ignis said. “Here.” She presented the open jar.
Akwa turned up his snout to the offering and hammered-off low note after low note. This. Lute. Is. Not. Me.
Ignis pulled up a squat stool and sat. She selected a cocoon, gave it a squeeze and popped it into her mouth. “You’re being silly again,” she mumble-chewed. “Things are fine as they are.”
Power chords resounded as Akwa sprang out of the nook. They’re not. He paced back and forth hammering F minor frustrations. I can’t be up here in the hot – not without this stupid bowl. You can’t swim deep in the lake – you’ll freeze. We can’t be skin to skin – you’ll poison me …
“Hey, it’s not easy, I know. But we do embrace.”
In itchy shirts and breeches and gloves. We ought not be, Ignis. You’re fire. I’m water.
“So, we get steam …”
Twang! Now’s no time for jokes. One of us must change. I am willing. If there’s a chance these magic flames can transform me … Why won’t you let—
“You are fine. We are fine. Can’t you see that? Here, have a bomsy.”
With a swift slap, Akwa sent the bomsy flying across the cottage, and by fluke, into the fire. You’re not listening!
“You’re not seeing,” Ignis said, rubbing her hand. He’d never struck her before.
You’re drowning me, Ignis!
“You can’t drown. You’re an axolotl.”
Twang! There you go again. Not really listening. Akwa shoved past Ignis. A tower of books gave way to his anger, and in an avalanche of words, spilled to the cold floor.
“Where are you going now?” Ignis said as she rescued her precious leather-bound worlds, hugging them in her arms.
With three stark plucks Akwa replied, To. My. Lake.
“Fine!”
The cottage door slammed. The bomsy in the fire hissed and popped.
*
Ignis wriggled beneath the blanket she had cocooned herself in. She stretched out her back and the crick in her neck, and shivered and fidgeted some more. The armchair was no bed. Bed. She lurched up in the chair to turn and peer over the high back.
Their bed was empty.
Ignis slumped. “Maybe I am drowning him,” she spoke to the blackened hearth. A whisp of ash whipped up by a downdraft was her only answer. She frowned. No. He’s a foolish dreamer. Her inner-fire reignited.“Magic. Singing flames – bah!”
She stood, sending the pile of empty treat jars at her feet clinking about. Ignis strode to the window nook. Outside, the wintry lake reflected a morning sky thick with burgeoning storm clouds. On the stony shore, her little dinghy lay at a tilt, its sails furled tight but its yellow mast flag flapping out over the lake. He’s down there. Sulking.
Ignis looked to her moss-lined jacket and shrew-skin boots by the door. She wrinkled her snout and furrowed her brow into a stern telling-off expression and plodded over with slapping feet. Such a stark sound. Had her feet always been so loud? The rustling of bugs in the roof moss, too? And since when had there been a bird roosting in the rafters? The bottle-blow moan of the chimney brought a sigh from her. If Akwa were here … I’d hear nothing but him playing the morning in.
After donning her coat and gloves, Ignis slid on her boots, unlatched the door, and stepped out into the winter morning. She let out a shivering squeak and pulled up her moss-rimmed hood. Creeping frost numbed her tail. Idiot. Should have wrapped it. Past her dinghy, up the stony beach, Ignis trod a swift path to the leaning tree. The place where they’d met. “Two years,” she whispered to the tree.
Instead of a summer-green umbrella, the tree cut an inky calligraphed skeleton against the dejected sky. She leant with the tree and peered into the water, searching out Akwa’s grotto. All that waved back this time though was undulating lake weed.
“Akwa?” Ignis investigated the tree, its clacking branches in the gusting wind the only reply. But there, nestled in the hollow at its base, where Akwa stored bits and bobs, was his lute. Folded in the strings was a note scrawled in water-blotched ink.
I won’t be needing this any longer.
Ignis spun around, gripping the note to her chest. Her gaze flitted about until her eyes discovered tracks in the mud bank. She traced their path up into the sallow grass. Boot prints … and between them a faint dragline. The trail was obvious, towards the southern road. Towards the Fungal Forest.
Ignis grabbed Akwa’s lute and hurried back. She charged into her cottage not even bothering to close the door and ransacked the cupboards for warm clothes. She dressed properly this time, remembering to wrap her tail. In a satchel, she stuffed her tinderbox and fire flint, waxed packets of pickled slugs, dried centipedes, and the extra special bomsies she’d been keeping secret for Akwa’s birthday. She strapped his lute about her.
At the door, as she grabbed her walking pole, Ignis looked back at the cold hearth. “I’ll return. You’ll see. With him. With songs. I’ll sit in my chair and he’ll sit in his nook, and there’ll be warmth again.”
*
“Exactly as I described?” Ignis asked a haughty sales-toad she’d stopped on the road.
“Madame,” he said, from atop his giant snail whose shell was painted with wild claims of his tonics and elixirs, “one does not mistake a white axolotl wearing a water-filled fishbowl.”
“Bound for the forest, you say?”
“Undoubtably.”
“Thank you,” Ignis said, striding off giving no time for the toad to reply. She heard him yar his snail and cart along. He was the last she saw of any folk on the southern road.
When the road struck east to circumnavigate the Fungal Forest, Ignis examined the land. The moors behind her were scrubby and stark. Ahead, the place transformed into a dense mushroom forest where enormous inkcaps reached high above columns of blue-green fungus and fluffy clumps of mold. It took a good few minutes before Ignis discovered where Akwa had woven the grasses into patterns with his tail. Ignis stared into the fly-infested shadows and sniffed. Rot and compost. She wrinkled her snout and waved at the clouds of flies but it was useless. Instead, she took to flicking her tongue to snatch up clumps of bugs as she walked, though could do nothing about the steady spore falling like goose down from a burst-pillow sky.
All the time, she watched for the rumored creatures lurking in the murk. No one knew exactly what they were. No one had been brave enough to find out; the haunting moans drifting from this place saw to that. Her imagination saw to the rest. Skulking mounds, creeping crawling things. Every fungus clump, every wandering root, every looming mushroom came alive in the heady thickness of the forest. This is madness. When I find him …
Deep within the fungus stink and flies and spore, Ignis trudged. The ground sucking at her feet, roots grabbing and snagging. Giant shrooms crowded in on her like bullies on a playground and the gloom was a hood dropped over her head as if the forest were abducting her. Ignis stiffened at a squelch.
“Akwa?” she whispered. Stupid. How would he reply? He has no lute.
Again, a squelch then a muffled “Ooomeeeee!”
She crouched behind a clump of giant toadstools and narrowed her eyes. The sound resonated through her lungs and translated as a threat. She traced the melancholic call until ominous fungal shapes appeared in the muck and fuzz.
What a dreadful sound. Ignoring the gaseous moans, Ignis slinked ahead and pushed through soft blue-green mold into a clearing to find Akwa cowering behind a rock. Stooped over him were three mushroom creatures, shaggy inky cap heads and quivering black gills. How could such creatures breathe? How did they see? Lanky stemmed, they closed in on Akwa, shivering their ropey tendrils, searching.
So big! Do something. Think. Ignis watched them converging on Akwa in the cloying murk. That’s it! Ignis rooted in her satchel for her tinderbox. She took the cotton wadding and tied it to her walking pole and struck her flint. The forest glowed in unfamiliar light and the creatures halted, turning their attentions to the rising glow. Ignis bounded over, swinging her torch-pole and yelling, driving the fungus beasts back. In wild arcs she painted warnings in the air with flame and fireflies. She screamed oaths and spread her arms. The inky caps lashed out their tendrils and moaned when they struck flame, retracting like a startled snail pulling into its shell. Ignis threw herself at them, fierce and livid. A vengeful flame. The creatures shrank from the blaze of her, moaning and thrashing until they blended into the forest and spore-fall and disappeared.
Akwa ran to Ignis and squeezed her. She squeezed him back then took him by the shoulders. “What were you thinking? You could have died!”
Sorry, he mouthed.
With a gloved hand, Ignis grabbed his and tugged to lead him back home.
Akwa snatched his hand away and pointed south.
“Are you mad?!” Ignis said. She unslung his lute and handed it over.
Akwa scowled. He snatched the lute and swung it into the ground smashing it with one last twang.
“You are mad. Come on. We’re going home.”
Again, Akwa shook his head.
Ignis grabbed his wrist this time. He struggled and yanked backwards so hard it surprised them both. He stumbled back, tripped and fell.
A crack split the air and Ignis clasped her mouth. “Sorry, sorry, sorry …” She reached down to Akwa.
He pushed himself back with his feet, one hand against the spidering crack in his fishbowl helmet. Water seeped through his fingers. He stood and glared, lips trembling, before he turned and scurried into the forest.
What have I done?
Ignis dowsed her flaming staff in the moist soil and ran after him, pressing through stem and stalk and fluffy growths of mold. The forest choked her mind and blinded her nose to Akwa’s scent. Up and down and left and right lost all meaning. Nothing was solid anymore and barely tangible. No, no. I can’t lose him. It was as if she’d been breathed in through giant gills. Now a molecule, drawn forward. Pulled deeper in. Consumed by her tangled guilt. The world tugged at her body, sucked at her feet. The way forward seemed to become ever denser. Ever more impossible to see clearly. Her fire would rise when caught in fungus thickets, only to be doused when she sank in deep pools.
Mirky pools, cool and rank, stirred up by her presence. It repulsed her. There seemed no end to the depth of the stink and the cloying muck. The flies, clouds of them like niggling thoughts, buzzed about her. She was blind. I will lose him! Ignis choked on her thoughts, and fears. Down she plunged. A deep pool taking her from the world.
Lost! I will perish in this place. Without him. Without my dear Akwa. She sank. Her limbs limp with sorrow. Damn my fire! The stubbornness of flames. They consume and consume. Until that which they need to thrive is all burned away.
In the soupy mire she wallowed. All sound and sensation quelled. Yet in her head, one sound endured, welling like a fresh cool spring. Akwa’s song. It burbled and chattered like a brook. Gaining force and flow until it became a song of torrents. Heady and in want of air, Ignis thrust her arms up and heaved.
Akwa would not give up on you. Swim!
Ignis burst into the world, gasping for air. And though still in the forest, still in the spore-murk, the air seemed sweeter. Ignis pulled herself free of the sucking pool to sprawl in zesty moss. She rolled onto her back to stare into an evening sky where winking lights shimmered like sunlight caught in the ripples of a dark lake.
Ignis rose. “He would not give up on you,” she said as she continued to plough on through the knotted darkness, thwacking back the growth with her walking pole.
*
On the far edge of the forest, Ignis burst out of the rubbery fungus ranks and drank fresh air like hard liquor. Searching the horizon, she caught sight of Akwa again and her heart swelled with relief. The land now sloped up the foot of Mount Hertha. A good way up, Akwa was struggling with the climb.
Beneath a star filled sky, Ignis dragged herself up the shale slope with her burnt pole, following the water spots Akwa had left behind. I’m going to lose him. I’m going to lose him and it’s my fault.
Each damp spot seemed like a teardrop of guilt. “Forgive me,” Ignis repeated with each footfall.Ahead, the moon, impossibly big, nested on the tabletop mountain like an alabaster egg. When she’d paid her dues in trips and falls and stumbles, Ignis reached the summit heaving and huffing, Akwa was but a few feet ahead now.
“Wait! We can talk this through,” Ignis cried.
Akwa continued on. Water sloshing in his helmet as he staggered across the lonely plateau toward a faint bluish light. He paused upon reaching it, a silhouette in its supernatural glow.
“Wait. Please,” Ignis said, coming alongside him. She gasped. His helmet was almost empty. His lung-beard barely submerged and the darkest purple. Akwa was transfixed on the magical firepit and its woeful flames below. Ignis heard no singing from them, and what was that down the other side of the mountain? No, it can’t be. “Look! Akwa, you’re saved. There’s a lake a little way down. If we’re quick—”
He made to leap into the firepit. Ignis swung and grabbed him. They tussled. Her heel slipped. She fell back into open air, reaching out. Akwa caught her hand.
Ignis’s glove slipped off.
*
He threw out a hand. Tried to grasp hers and cried out “Ignis”. She would not hear though. Not beyond the fishbowl. Akwa gurgle-screamed her name, clenching her glove to his chest. The flames lurched, engulfing Ignis as she fell into the pit. They sang! In a crystal wineglass timbre, they sang! His helm vibrated. The crack spread like a web. Flames flashed blue to green, licking the ledge. Akwa shielded himself with an arm.
Cold?!
He knelt and peered over. The icy flames flickered then snuffed out, leaving Akwa in world-ending silence. Alone. All that remained in the pit was a large black stone. Without thinking, Akwa clambered down the ledge and threw himself upon it.
What have I done?
It was as chill as the flames that had forged it. He gasped as constricting air strangled his lung-beard. Get to the lake. Like she told you in the first place. Stupid. Selfish. Why didn’t I listen?
He stared at the stone. I can’t leave you here. Not like this. Akwa undressed hurriedly and tore his clothes to strips to fashion a rope and lashed the stone to his back. It was light, like Ignis, when he’d given her piggybacks through summer fields outside her cottage.
Dizzy with air, Akwa stumbled down Hertha’s scree slope to fall gasping at the shore of the nearby lake. He twisted off his helmet and tossed it aside to smash on the stony beach. What does it matter? I’ll never leave this place, he told himself as he plunged into the invigorating water. His lung-beard blossomed, his head cleared, yet the weight on his back and in his heart remained.
How deep could he go dragging the rock behind him? Right to the bottom – dragged by the weight of what he’d done. Just swallow me away. Bury me in greedy mud. When he came to the drop off, he leapt. The stone swung him round and pulled him down.
Down through gangs of fish. Down into a forest of broad palmed kelp. Down to strike the bottom. Instead of pluming silt, a crack, dull and creeping vibrated through the water. “No!” The cry rippled from Akwa.Ignis’s stone had struck a rock. He slipped the stone off his back. A bubble-gasp escaped him. It had cracked right in half. “No! I’ll fix you. I’ll fix you,” he said, squeezing it back together. He began to sing her favourite song about an owl and a cat.
He would never stop singing.
Bubbles rose from the crack and the two halves repelled each other. At first, Akwa thought it to be some current forcing the halves apart. Yet it shifted and squirmed. Akwa hung in the water, his song first dropping to a murmur and then silence.
Where the hollow stone parted, he glimpsed pale orange flesh and a cluster of red beardy lungs. They shifted and turned and through the widening crack he spotted two beady black eyes and a hearth-fire warmth staring right back. “Don’t stop, dear Akwa,” Ignis said, “sing me into your world.”
The End
M F ALFREY 