The Ice King (A Witch Ways Whisper)

by Helen Slavin

  “Heterochromia Iridium.” the Ice Man, Lachlan Laidlaw, informed her, the Latin reaching out to her in a way he was oblivious to. Was he though? Vanessa searched his eyes, there was something in them, something familiar, she was reminded of her recent dream, or was it a memory? She was puzzled at the drift her mind was undergoing, as if it was trying to be in two places at once, like the day at the inlet and the lost ten minutes. Without thinking she leaned forward to look deeper, as she did so the Ice Man turned his face away, took in a deep breath.

  He cast his gaze slowly to the window, there was nothing in the whiteness outside. They spread out the maps and charts from the comms room and Lachlan Laidlaw shook his head, traced his finger across the emptiness, the contour lines of ridges, the crosses of forest and the blue of the lake.

  “Where I have to go isn’t on this map.” he confessed “It’s out there.” he gestured to the window “If I can get to the inlet, if you will take me there, I can get to Far North.”

  “Can you return from Far North?” Vanessa asked the question. Dr Laidlaw looked at her and after a moment’s pause shook his head.

  “I doubt that.”

  “Hearts will clash…bones will break…” Vanessa recalled.

  “Not a great forecast is it?” Lachlan smiled.

  “What if you give yourself an exit route?” Vanessa asked, her mind was already sorting the problem into solutions. “You don’t have a map to get you there…you’re relying on other forces…dimensions…Leave yourself markers, small signposts….”

  He nodded, understanding.

  “You mean a trail of crumbs, a thread through the labyrinth?”

  “Yes. We could pull together a map of what we know about here, about the inlet. When you’re returning from the other side of it…from the other direction…”

  “…I will be able to link the two.”

  “Once you get yourself back to the wood at the inlet.”

  Dr Laidlaw considered for a long moment.

  “I will wait there for you.” Vanessa offered. “Keep watch for you. Time works differently there. I understand that much. I’ve experienced it.”

  She was moving quickly now, rearranging the maps they had, turning a fresh page in the notes they were making. Vanessa tapped at the face of the company compass. “I’ve got True and Magnetic…” she mused. Dr Laidlaw shook his head.

  “Far North is not on that compass.”

  Vanessa waited for a moment more before reaching into her sweatshirt pocket. She checked the face of her own compass, the one from home, before placing it on the map.

  “But it is on this one.”

  He looked at it for a long moment.

  Dr Lachlan Laidlaw had been alone for a long time, not counting the sixty years trapped in the ice. His journey Far North had dropped off any map he’d had in his possession and now he reached into his inside pocket for a small black cloth covered notebook. Apart from some foxing at the edges and small water stains, it appeared to have survived all its ordeals.

  Lachlan opened it. Inside were his sketches of the route he had taken North as far as the inlet. He and Vanessa worked now to copy those maps and try and place them within the charted landscape they occupied. The compass disliked all the routes they tried to map, none married with the geography.

  They worked for several hours, by the time on Vanessa’s wristwatch. The time on the kitchen clock seemed to halt and Vanessa made a note of it in her book. As they worked Lachlan told her of Todber and Murnhull, of a leather armchair by an Oxbridge window, the amber light of evening whisky. A black dog.

  “Now Vanessa…” he said “Tell me about Pike Lake.” he looked very directly into her face. Vanessa’s breathing shallowed.

  “How do you know about that?” Vanessa had been reticent. The most information she had given away was only the ‘Way’ part of her name. She had said nothing of her origins or history before her arctic internship. Vanessa was aware of the intense shafts of light coming in and casting shadows. The light seemed to reflect more than its necessary brightness, diamond white, as she looked down the shadows were waiting for her, branching and breaking up the surface of the concrete, reaching across the floor. The shadows were complex, intricate, once again the ghosts of the leaves fluttering and brittle. She took a step backward, the vertiginous feeling sweeping across her, she was awake and yet she was in her dream, Lachlan Laidlaw’s hand on her hip, his breath against her cheek. Memory. Dream. Memory. It was a zoetrope flickering in her head. She did not need to look at her watch to know that it had stopped. Lachlan Laidlaw’s hand reached for hers.

  “I’ve waited sixty years for you to find me, Vanessa Way” he whispered, she looked up into the heterochromic eyes green as the wood, brown as the earth. She reached her fingers into his salt and pepper hair, pulling his face towards hers, his breath warm against her skin, her mouth on his, his mouth on hers.

  Time slowed and stopped and twisted them together. The dome of the sky seemed to fold further outward, clouds rushed and melted, ice creaked, black feathers burst from trees and became crows, and his skin against hers was the most beautiful skin, the most known skin, her own skin before time began to chase them once more, and darkness fell.

  Except it wasn’t darkness, it was the bronzed light of the Arctic and as the clouds intensified it was shimmered over with a cloak of green undulating light.

  Aurora.

  They had been sleeping, spooned together in a cocoon spun from tweed and twill and sleeping bag. Vanessa awoke with a start and was about to speak but Lachlan’s hand clamped over her mouth, he pressed her closer to him, an arm protective around her.

  “The Wild Hunt are here.” he whispered close, he began to move out of their bunk, pulling Vanessa with him. “Time to go.”

  They scuffled about in the murky light, Vanessa reaching for her backpack. As she did so the backpack was snatched from her and the darkness deepened as if the snowlight and twilight had been blanked out.

  “Lachlan?” Vanessa reached into the blackness, Lachlan’s hand reached for her, rough, pulling her to him and behind him, his body a shield for hers. There was a scent in the room, the cold bite of snow. There was a striking sound, a fizz and flare of flame and the rusty flickering light of a torch bathed the room. There were five men, all patinaed with dirt, their shoulders sheltered beneath animal skins, the light burnished the swords at their belts. One stepped forward; he was vast, to Vanessa it was like looking up into an oak, his shoulders a broad hulk of bone, a polar bears claws reached for each other across his chest, its shed skin shielding him against the snow. The smell of bear grease created a kind of olfactory force field around him.

  “Hearts will clash, Lachlan Laidlaw, bones will break.”

  Vanessa gasped at the sight of the dark inky tattoos of runic symbols that ran up into the man’s hairline. The man grinned.

  “Here is where the Wild Hunt end you.” his mouth snarled and he reached a swift hand towards Lachlan, the fist clenching at his shoulder as he pushed him down to his knees.

  “On your knees, Lachlan Laidlaw. Beg for mercy before last of the Ice Kings, the Lord of Winter’s Night. For you, at last, there is no time.”

  The man’s face split into a grin so wide Vanessa thought his head would split open. Lachlan, crouching, made a swift forwards movement and there was a metallic, swishing sound. In a second he was up on his haunches, his arms straining under the weight of the Ice King’s broadsword. There was the hissing of unsheathing steal as three of the other men made a move forward to protect their king, but the fourth man in a black bearskin halted them with a commanding hand.

  “Hold.” his voice hard.

  “NO!”

  The Ice King turned for a second at the betrayal and as he did Lachlan took his chance, the rusty light liquid against the weapon as Lachlan thrust the blade forwards.

  The Ice King took in a deep breath as his own sword pierced up into his ribcage. He looked displeased, his hands reaching, his finger
s closing around Dr Lachlan Laidlaw’s skull, pressing so hard that Vanessa could hear the bones grinding but Lachlan held strong, his shoulders tensing and straining, his arm forcing the stolen blade higher, deeper, further.

  The Ice King let out a long last breath as the blade retreated, slicing back through lung, kidney, liver, his blood rushing out, splashing, making the floor a slick, black-red river.

  The body shuddered and fell forward and the man in black stepped forward. Clamping his fingers around the Ice King’s head he lifted the body and looked into the dead face with interest. He turned the face this way and that as the body, huge as it was, dangled from his fist.

  “Here he is then, my friend, or here he was…” the man turned to Lachlan as to an old friend “…not so formidable, when death leaves behind the skin and bones.”

  Lachlan’s left hand was holding onto Vanessa, his body still shielding hers although their clothes were sticky now and wet with the Ice King’s blood. Lachlan spoke up.

  “Is it done?” His voice was not hiding its shakiness but already the man in black was shaking his head.

  “No, Lachlan…” His smile was not friendly, not wide, it was all knowing. “Not yet… This king shrugged off the mantle at last.” dropping the Ice King’s corpse to the floor the man in black reached towards Lachlan. Lachlan pinned Vanessa tighter behind him.

  “Don’t harm her. Not her. She found me, she’s done her part. Let her go.”

  The man in black held up his hands.

  “There is no letting go, Lachlan. She is part of your destiny and you are all of hers. Sixty years is no time at all where those like us are concerned.” The man in black smiled his unfriendly smile. “There are rules. Written somewhere.” He stepped forwards, his hands reaching to rest on Lachlan’s shoulders “The rule states that we must take an eye for an eye, my friend.” He smiled across at Vanessa and then glanced at the bloody mess on the floor “Recall…you are here to take the mantle from him, Lachlan and wear it yourself….”

  Vanessa gave a cry, understanding, with horror, what was going to happen.

  “No. Lachlan…no…”

  The man in black spoke over her.

  “The law states; A king…for a king. That, Lachlan Laidlaw, is your destiny…” the man in black reached a hand, spreading the fingers across Lachlan’s face. Vanessa rushed him.

  “No. No…please…” but she was plucked aside, picked from the ground by one of the other men and held.

  Vanessa watched. The man in black did not turn his head from his task, as Lachlan writhed and groaned the man’s fingers traced patterns across Lachlan’s skull and beneath the fingertips crisp black lines formed and merged, angled and grouped on Lachlan’s skin, rising up into his hairline, the runes writing themselves onto his scalp.

  “The King is Dead…” The man in black declared at last. Beside him Lachlan Laidlaw groaned and stumbled in his newly etched skin.

  “Long live the King….” the men thundered, their feet stamping approval, the storm building around them, the noise unbearable now, beating at Vanessa.

  She reached for Lachlan.

  “Lachlan?” her voice was weak. The Ice King turned to her, his face now fully recognisable, the dream stranger’s face “Lachlan.”

  “It is time to go.” The man in black looked at Vanessa, his eyes carrying sadness. Vanessa felt compressed, her limbs inactive, her breathing shallow. In the darkness there was a smell of blood, the cracking of bone and she watched as the Ice King Lachlan’s body bent and distorted at the storm inside him, scouring, displacing, ravaging. He looked at her,

  “Vanessa.”

  His jaw widened out, wider and wider until the bones snapped open, skin and fur folded and suddenly he was there.

  The wolf.

  Instinct should have made Vanessa step back, but she understood, there was no time. She reached forward, the wolf looking back at her, with one green eye, one brown.

  “Lachlan?” the wolf tipped its head back and gave a mournful howl, a sound as bitter as the wind, the volume rising and rising, filling her head so that Vanessa could not think anymore. The howl widened, stretched, the other wolves joined, the noise tearing at Vanessa until the sound was no longer wolf, it was weather. A sound of snow and wind, of ice chinkling on the surface of a frozen lake, the sounds grew and combined, deafening until the roof began to rattle with the energy of it.

  Hearts clash. She was choking with effort and fear, her lungs tightening in her chest. Bones break. Blood in her throat, the ice ringing and ringing around her. Until it did not ring, it groaned, there was a sound then as if the sky was tearing, shards of noise and a crack opened up above her.

  The roof ripped off, whipping into the wind, bent like cardboard and the cold bit hard, gripped her skin, froze her breath and there was nowhere to go now, but darkness.

  PART FIVE

  There is No Time

  “I hear your girl was a bit of a silly tart and got pregnant then?” Mrs Langdon was an unpleasant woman, revelling in other people’s troubles and keen to pass judgement wherever possible. Most people in Woodcastle disliked her but her small corner shop was useful if you ran out of bread, needed emergency beans or a pint of milk. It was a horrid shop, carrying an air of rancid fat and smelling of hay. Hettie Way always felt you needed a ration book to shop there. “So much for all her science then eh? Never did any biology did she not? Loves her Arctic Roll eh?” Mrs Langdon gave her grim smirk. She was an odd mix, a woman who was round in the middle, a heavy bust and heavier waist and hips, but she managed to be skinny at the edges, her arms sinewy and thin and her legs bony.

  “You never had children did you Mrs Langdon?” it was the cruellest thing that Hettie Way had ever said in her life. Anyone who knew Mrs Langdon knew that her husband had left her for a woman who later bore him five children. For a second she held Mrs Langdon’s gaze, felt the way that her comment sliced into that flabby belly and let Mrs Langdon’s emotional innards slop out. She left the loaf of bread she had come for on the counter.

  When Hettie returned to Cob Cottage Vanessa was sitting, as was her current habit, in the chair by the window with the notebooks by her. There had not been much salvaged from the wrecked Arctic research centre but the few notebooks had come in the supply plane along with Vanessa and some plastic boxes filled with samples of the local flora.

  The compass was in Vanessa’s hand and she was staring at it, deep in thought. She had made copious notes today, Hettie could see the drawings and scribbled comments, the pages that had been filled and she wished she had thought to buy Vanessa another notebook. They had to be a particular kind, a cloth bound A5 size that they could only get in Castlebury. It would be useful to have that as an errand, Hettie thought, she needed to distract Vanessa from whatever terrible knowledge the notebooks withheld.

  Hettie had pussyfooted around her daughter since her dramatic return. She did not have a phone and so it was young Sergeant Williamson who, initially, had come to the house with the news about the Arctic disaster. The first thoughts were that there had been an explosion, this theory being superseded a few weeks later by the evidence of a bad storm. It seemed to Hettie that no one knew what had happened and that no one was really bothering to go and take a look. It was a long way to travel after all and De Quincey Langport Ltd were on the brink of going out of business, a matter more pressing than unravelling the fates of the dead professors.

  Hettie was waiting for her daughter to tell her the tale. She waited. She waited. Even the news of the baby did not prompt the telling.

  So Hettie decided to take action.

  The bath made a wonderful waterfall sound that seemed to be a result of the strange acoustics of the curvaceous walls of the bathroom. The space was small and yet sounded vast. Hettie let the water run hot for several moments. She took her time lighting the candles in the window recess and the various small nooks and crannies set into the walls themselves. The room began to glow and steam.

  “You having
a bath?” Vanessa stood in the doorway. She was showing now, her belly rounded out, still with four months to go. She was looking tired, circles had darkened beneath her eyes and her skin was paler than it had ever been. Ghostlike. Hettie blacked the word out of her mind.

  “Nope. You are.” she rose as Vanessa entered the room “It won’t take long to fill. I’ll fetch your robe and the towels…and that bath stuff you like…” Hettie busied herself in the small hallway, pulling towels from the honeyed oak of the linen press, lifting Vanessa’s robe from the hook on her door. The bath oil was in a bag on the little chest of drawers, a little treat that she had brought back from the chemist in Castlebury yesterday.

  With Vanessa settled, the water running, the scent of the bath oil drifting through the cottage Hettie stepped back into the kitchen, through the arch.

  The compass was on the coffee table, perched on one of the much folded maps that Vanessa’s mind toured over again and again.

  Hettie Way knew what a compass was, of course, but it was her long held opinion that if you needed a compass to find your path you deserved to be lost. The glass above the face was cracked where, during the research centre disaster, it had saved Vanessa from being impaled by falling metalwork. Hettie Way understood that this small round of metal and enamel marked with letters was a talisman, an artefact, but she was uncertain whether it was for good or ill and there was a great deal at stake.

  Her hand reached for the compass. So small. So inconsequential. They’d bought it at the outdoors shop on Laundry Lane. Hettie knew that did not make the difference, events imbued the talismans, they were ordinary until some event lent them power. She reached and stopped as the compass’s energy reached back, a fierce prickling, like electricity, sharp and cold. Warned, she turned her attention to the notebooks. The oldest looking one with a black cloth cover, foxed at the edges and water stained, was lying open, face down on the arm of the chair. She reached and was warned once more, the bright prickling feeling like frost in her fingertips.