by Alex Bell
The air above them was suddenly filled with sharks. Stella was sure they must have been the shapes she’d noticed earlier, only now they’d come lower and glided menacingly between the stalactites, staring down at the explorers with cold, dead eyes. There must have been twenty of them at least – some were huge, others were slightly smaller – but they all had rows of gleaming razor-sharp teeth, and they were all heading their way.
‘—run!’ Stella gasped.
The four of them scrambled back to their feet and sprinted the rest of the way across the bridge as more sharks came bursting out of the rock pools below. The camel’s hooves kicked up showers of stone as Nigel bleated indignantly, and the jungle fairies kept up their huh-yah-yah-yah chant. The sharks came at them all at once, from both above and below, moving with a terrifying speed as they charged through the air.
Even though they were all running full pelt, the breath burning in their lungs, they couldn’t go fast enough. One of the larger sharks was almost upon them – teeth gnashing, tail thrashing, mere inches from taking a giant bite out of poor Nigel’s behind – when Ethan twisted and threw magic back over his shoulder. The spell hit the shark full in the face, and it instantly turned into a wonky squish-squish frog, hopping along the bridge and looking bemused. It was hard to tell whether Nigel stamped on the frog accidentally or deliberately but, either way, Ethan was clearly right about them being practically indestructible – it was flattened into the ground one moment, then popping back into frog shape and hopping off to the nearest rock pool the next.
The spell bought the explorers the time they needed to reach the end of the bridge but, to everyone’s dismay, the cave didn’t continue as they’d expected it to. Instead, the bridge led to a dead end – nothing but a sheer rock face reaching up to the spiked ceiling. The chasm was too deep to jump down, even if it hadn’t been full of shark-infested rock pools and fatally sharp stalagmites. The only escape was to go back the way they’d come – over the bridge – and that was now impossible. The entire structure was crowded with sharks, their huge bodies rippling first one way and then the other as they glided back and forth.
Shay had his boomerang in his hand but seemed reluctant to throw it. Stella guessed it was because a boomerang hit to the nose was probably more likely to enrage a shark even further than do any real damage to it. ‘Can you turn them all into frogs?’ the wolf whisperer asked, looking at Ethan.
‘As long as they come one at a time,’ the magician replied. ‘And not too quickly.’
‘I can freeze some of them,’ Stella said, already reaching for her tiara and placing it on her white hair.
The moment she spoke, a shape darted at them from the side and Stella threw up her arm, freezing the shark solid. It hung in the air for a moment before falling to the ground, splintering into pieces on the rock below. Stella couldn’t help feeling bad as it wasn’t really the shark’s fault it wanted to eat them, it was just its natural sharkish nature. But as more sharks followed and she froze a second, and then a third, she felt her guilt slipping away as an icy feeling ran down her back and the tiara did its job of chilling her heart.
Koa stood before them on the bridge, snarling and growling at the sharks, but she wasn’t as effective a distraction with them as she’d been with the guards back at the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club. The sharks seemed to be able to sense that she had no physical substance and simply glided straight through her on their way to the explorers.
Beside her, Stella was aware of Ethan turning two more sharks into frogs, one after the other. Unfortunately, with potentially catastrophic timing, Gideon chose that moment to wriggle free from Shay’s pocket. He landed with an ungainly splat on the bridge and immediately hopped off towards the other frogs. Perhaps he had been a frog for too long and mistook the others for his own kind. Whatever the reason, there were soon three wonky squish-squish frogs on the bridge and they were identical, which was not good news at all. Beanie lunged at the frogs and stuffed them in his own pocket, sneezing violently, while Ethan and Stella battled with the incoming sharks. But there were so many of them and they were coming too quickly now, diving at them one after another.
‘It’s no good,’ Stella gasped. ‘There are too many!’
She pressed herself right back up against the wall seconds before a particularly long shark snapped at the space where she had been. The explorers looked around desperately for a means of escape, but they were trapped and it really seemed as if this was it. They were going to be swallowed up by magic sharks before they’d been on Witch Mountain for five minutes.
But then a clear voice rang out across the cave, ‘Stay right where you are!’
Stella looked up in time to see a figure dressed in boots, a tattered cloak and a wide-brimmed hat crouched at the top of a rocky outcrop. Just as a shark passed by below, the person leapt from the rock straight onto the shark’s back. The creature bucked and thrashed in an attempt to throw them off, but the rider had spurs on their boots and pressed these into the shark’s side while leaning down low over its back, grabbing its fins and pointing them in the direction of the explorers. When they drew level, the figure leapt from the shark, cloak flying out behind them, and threw a bottle of bright red liquid on the ground at their feet. The moment it smashed, the sharks all tumbled from the air – some to fall back into the rock pools with a splash, while others fell, thrashing angrily, amongst the stalagmites.
‘Not a moment to lose,’ the newcomer said, and Stella was astonished to see that she was a girl, no older than she was, with dark brown skin, a cheerful smile and large brown eyes.
‘Who are you—’ Ethan began.
‘The red bottle has a gravity spell in it, but it won’t last long,’ the girl said, cutting him off. ‘Those sharks are about to come bursting back up out of the rock pools, and they’ll be mad as all hell when they do. There’ll be a witch hole around here someplace. They’ve got to get in to feed the sharks somehow. Aha! Here it is, by gum!’
She’d dragged a boulder away from the wall and, to their astonishment, a gaping hole led down into the rock behind it, stretching away like a slide into the darkness.
‘But who are you?’ Ethan demanded. ‘Where does that hole go? How do we know this isn’t some kind of death-trap?’
The girl glanced back at them. ‘Oh. Haven’t you heard of me? I’m Cadi Sarah Salt, witch hunter extraordinaire.’ She paused for a moment, then added, ‘Or, at least, witch hunter in training.’ She pointed at the hole behind her. ‘And this is your one and only chance of escape.’
At that moment, with a roar of awful fury, fifty sharks burst from the rock pools below. Whatever effect the red liquid had had was now clearly gone – the sharks soared straight up into the air, teeth gnashing in hungry anticipation as they made straight for the explorers. Cadi turned back around, gripped the brim of her hat, gave them a wide grin and said, ‘Best come with me if you want to live.’
And, with that, she leapt feet-first into the hole, leaving the others to scramble after her, dragging the camel behind them.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Nigel was most put out about the witch hole. It slid straight down into the rock for quite a long way, and the problem was that camels just weren’t designed for slides.
‘Twelve Desert Jackal explorers have been killed by accidental camel crushing in the last ten years!’ Beanie squeaked as they all did their best to avoid Nigel’s flailing hooves.
The statistic didn’t comfort anyone very much but, fortunately, they soon came flying out the end of the tunnel, whereupon they landed in a gigantic pumpkin patch. The pumpkins broke apart under the impact, orange pieces flying everywhere.
‘How do witches manage to crawl up that thing?’ Ethan groaned, flat on his back in the middle of the patch.
‘Witches slide up rather than down,’ Cadi said as she stood up and dusted herself off. ‘They’re tricky like that.’
With a rather ungainly sprawling of long legs and hooves and humps, Nigel ma
naged to get himself back on his feet and immediately began spitting at everyone in general outrage. Quick as a whip, Cadi pulled off her hat and used it as a shield against the camel spit. A great tumble of brown dreadlocks went cascading down her back as soon as they were free.
‘Gosh, your camel is a bit on the haughty side, isn’t it?’
‘I think most camels are quite haughty,’ Stella said, picking herself up and brushing pieces of pumpkin from her explorer’s cloak. She checked her pockets to make sure Buster was still there, and then said, ‘Felix says they can be quite conceited too. Well, wasn’t that fun? I’ve never slid down a witch hole before. Or seen a flying shark, for that matter …’
She trailed off as she became aware that Cadi Sarah Salt was staring at her.
‘What is it?’ Stella asked nervously. She hoped Cadi was just staring the way most people did when they saw her white hair and skin for the first time – or perhaps it was because she had a piece of pumpkin sticking out of her ear, or something like that – but, after Gideon’s reaction to her on the dirigible, she was worried it was more likely to be because she’d been recognised as an ice princess. Even witch hunters read the papers, after all.
‘You’re her, aren’t you?’ Cadi asked, confirming Stella’s fears. ‘You’re the ice princess.’
Stella stiffened, and felt her explorer friends all suddenly go still beside her.
‘What gave me away?’ she asked, trying to smile, while snatching the tiara from her hair and stuffing it back in her pocket.
She’d braced herself for Cadi to snarl some insult at her, or recoil, or at least take a step back. So she was astonished when the other girl hopped straight over the broken pumpkins and threw her arms around her in a tight hug.
‘Oh, thank you!’ she said. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’
‘For what?’ Stella asked.
Cadi drew back, beaming. She was quite a bit taller than Stella, who had to tilt her head back to meet her eyes. ‘For showing all those stuffy old clubs that girls can be just as good at exploring as boys, of course!’ she said. ‘Witch hunting’s okay – you get to travel a bit, and meet interesting people and the like – but all I’ve ever really wanted to be is an explorer.’ She clapped Stella on the back. ‘And you’re the reason I finally can! I’ve applied to all the clubs. Well, all the clubs that will now accept applications from girls.’ She glanced at Ethan’s black Ocean Squid explorer robes and said, ‘Your lot are a jolly strange bunch, aren’t they? I visited the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club in person last month to see if I could apply to be an explorer there, and some awful chap at the door brandished a tentacle at me and told me to get lost. He wasn’t at all civil.’
‘The Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club is the best explorers’ club in the world!’ Ethan said, pushing away Nigel, who’d startled nibbling at his hair again. He sighed, then added, ‘But they’re wrong about the girl members thing.’
‘This doorman told me that the day the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club started admitting girls was the day that starfish would all float away into space – ooh, space exploration, now wouldn’t that be something? Isn’t it a shame that there’s no Space Alien Explorers’ Club? One day, I suppose.’
‘You talk rather a lot, don’t you?’ Beanie said. He was wont to point out such things to people, which could sometimes cause offence, but Cadi didn’t seem fazed.
‘Witch hunters work alone,’ she said. ‘So you have to make the best of company when you find it.’
‘But surely you’re not here on Witch Mountain alone?’ Shay said. ‘Isn’t it a little dangerous?’
‘Oh, yes, witch hunting is terribly dangerous,’ Cadi replied. ‘But I’ve been through years and years of training, and this is my chance to qualify as a fully fledged witch hunter – by capturing a witch by myself.’
‘You can help us capture a witch if you like,’ Stella said. ‘That’s what we’re here for.’
‘You’re after the witch who murdered your parents, I suppose?’ Cadi said. She took a penknife from her pocket and began cleaning her fingernails with it. ‘The newspaper stories were full of it.’
‘Yes, that’s right. My father, Felix, has gone after her by himself.’
Cadi shook her head. ‘Silly thing to do. Only a trained witch hunter should ever go hunting alone. There are lots of dangerous things on the mountain.’ She nodded back towards the flying-shark cave. ‘As you’ve just discovered.’
‘Can you help us?’ Shay asked.
She gave him another of her big grins. ‘Sure can, my friend. Say, I like your wolf bracelets!’ She gestured at the cords of leather wrapped around Shay’s wrist, studded with wolf beads.
‘I’m a wolf whisperer,’ Shay said. ‘Shay Silverton Kipling, at your service. Thanks a lot for your help back there, by the way. We’d have been sitting ducks without you.’
Beanie scratched his head. ‘We wouldn’t have been sitting ducks,’ he said. ‘We’d have been dead. Gobbled up by sharks. Thirty-three explorers have been gobbled up by sharks in the last twenty years, but they were all snow sharks or sea sharks. I’ve never heard of flying sharks before.’
‘That’s Benjamin Sampson Smith,’ Shay said, pointing at him. ‘He prefers to be called Beanie. He’s a junior medic, so he’ll patch you up if you get any scrapes and bumps.’ He turned to Ethan and said, ‘That’s Ethan Edward Rook, magician. Nigel, the camel, and those four acrobats chanting on his back are Mustafah, Humphrey, Hermina and Harriet, the jungle fairies, and a great early warning signal of doom.’
Mustafah stood up and began pointing at himself energetically so Stella said, ‘Mustafah is the leader – on account of having the most impressive hair.’
Mustafah gave her a pleased look and then joined the others.
‘And this is Gideon Galahad Smythe,’ Beanie said with a sneeze, producing a frog from his pocket. ‘He’s a Jungle Cat explorer and a picnic master.’
‘Is that frog actually Gideon?’ Shay asked with a sigh. ‘There seemed to be a bit of frog confusion for a while in there.’
Beanie held the frog up, dangling him by one of his back legs, and peered at it. The frog blinked back at him with bulging eyes.
‘You know, it’s really quite difficult to tell,’ Beanie finally said. He produced the other two frogs from his pocket and said, ‘One of them’s got to be Gideon.’
‘Here, give them to me,’ Ethan said, holding out his hands. ‘I’ll take care of them until I remember that spell.’
Beanie sneezed again and passed over the frogs.
‘We’ve no time to lose,’ said Stella. ‘We need to press on after Felix.’ She glanced at Cadi. ‘I don’t suppose you know where Jezzybella lives?’
‘I don’t, but if she’s one of the criminal witches then she’ll probably be at the top of the mountain somewhere. The wanted witches have higher bounties, you see, so they stick themselves right at the top. Witch Mountain is littered with traps and pitfalls and monsters and hazards, and the more you have to travel through, the greater your chances of coming a cropper.’
‘What a cheerful thought,’ Ethan said darkly.
‘Where’s your shadow wolf?’ Cadi asked Shay. ‘All whisperers have them, don’t they?’
As if hearing herself mentioned, Koa suddenly materialised at Shay’s feet. Even sitting back on her haunches, she was so large that her head was level with Shay’s waist.
‘Here she is,’ Shay said.
‘Gracious,’ Cadi said softly. ‘How absolutely marvellous. Well, while we’re making introductions, I have someone I need to introduce you to as well.’ She put two fingers to her mouth and gave a loud, piercing whistle. Stella was very impressed and made a mental note to get Cadi to teach her if they travelled together for a while. ‘Gus!’ Cadi called cheerfully. ‘Here, boy!’
There wasn’t much to see from where they stood except for the ruins of the pumpkin patch, but the mountain path curved around the corner and Cadi was gazing in this direction. Stella wasn
’t too sure what exactly she expected to come in response to the hunter’s call, and was ready for practically anything – from an elephant to a magic carpet. She rather hoped it might be an arctic fox, or a penguin, or even a unicorn. Unicorns were Stella’s absolute favourite, along with polar bears, of course. But, in fact, Gus turned out to be none of these things.
Instead, a gigantic, eleven-foot-long walrus came lolloping around the corner, propelling itself forwards with two flat flippers, sliding along the ice on its belly. Its big, blubbery body was covered in short, bristly cinnamon-brown fur, and it looked somewhat like an enormous seal, only with a much more whiskery face that had something of a moustache look about it, and reminded Stella quite forcibly of the president of the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club. It also had two great white tusks protruding from its mouth. There were several bags tied to its back, along with an odd saddle and, strangely, a long stick that stretched out over the walrus’s head and dangled a sorry-looking fish just out of its reach.
Stella had seen drawings of walruses in Felix’s books back home, but she’d never seen one in real life before and hadn’t expected it to be so big. It was even larger than Gruff. There was something a little different about this walrus, though, and that was that his eyes both pointed in slightly different directions rather than looking straight ahead.
‘This is Gus,’ Cadi said proudly.
‘He’s wonderful!’ Stella exclaimed, delighted.
‘Why is there a fish dangling from a string over his head like that?’ Shay asked.
‘Oh, I tied that there before I came down the mountain to see you,’ Cadi said. ‘I was a little further up when I saw your airship arrive. I wanted to come and have a look at you without Gus following me.’ She glanced at the walrus. ‘It’s a little mean, really, as he can’t actually reach the fish, but he’ll bat around at it with his flippers for hours and it keeps him entertained enough that he won’t go wandering off and get himself into mischief.’
