Explorers on Witch Mountain

by Alex Bell

  As if sensing he was being talked about, Gus gave a loud bellow before sliding forwards across the ice towards them. He obviously did have poor eyesight because the walrus almost collided with Ethan. When he realised there was a person there the walrus became very interested and immediately raised himself up to snuffle all around Ethan’s hair, pressing his soft, whiskery face right up close to the side of the magician’s head.

  ‘Great Scott, this is even worse than the polar bear!’ Ethan exclaimed. ‘He’ll have my eye out with one of those tusks!’

  ‘No, he won’t!’ Cadi said indignantly. ‘His whiskers are just his way of seeing you properly.’

  Gus insisted on inspecting every one of the explorers this way. When he got to Stella, she couldn’t resist flinging her arms round him in a big hug, causing him to snort appreciatively. When he tried to greet Nigel, though, the camel spat at him in outrage, although Gus didn’t seem to mind particularly. He just sloped off back to Cadi, who kissed him on the neck.

  ‘Why do you have a walrus, anyway?’ asked Ethan.

  ‘Why do you have a camel?’ Cadi shot back.

  ‘He was foisted upon us,’ Ethan said. ‘Although, actually, he’s not half bad. I rather like him.’

  ‘Well, Gus wasn’t foisted on me,’ Cadi said. ‘I chose him. Apprentice hunters all get to pick their own walrus when they go off to hunt witches in the Icelands. They’re terribly useful for carrying all your supplies and things. Plus they help keep you warm in a blizzard. Walruses are supposed to be good for hunters because they make hardly any sound as they glide along the ice. Nobody wanted Gus on account of his being a little odd, but I liked him more than the stuck up, noble walruses.’

  ‘Seems to me that a noble walrus is just what you ought to be picking rather than an odd one like this,’ Ethan said.

  ‘Don’t be rude,’ Stella said. ‘And don’t call him odd. You’ll hurt his feelings.’

  ‘Oh, Gus doesn’t mind,’ Cadi replied. ‘He’s been called far worse. Anyway, you’ll certainly be safer with us. I know a bit about what to expect from the mountain. I’ve been here a few times before. For example, I could have told you to travel through the Cave of Hypnotising White Cats rather than the Cave of Flying Sharks. That would have been much simpler.’

  Cadi set her hat back on her head and adjusted it to a jaunty angle. ‘I would like to offer my services as a guide.’

  ‘And what is it you want in return?’ Ethan asked, because he always thought that everyone had an agenda.

  ‘References,’ Cadi said promptly. ‘And testimonials. Dad says the clubs are still a bit twitchy about accepting girls, and they might not think a hunter has the right skills to be an explorer. Well, if I prove myself useful to you here, then you’ll all provide references for me, won’t you?’

  ‘Seems fair,’ Shay agreed.

  ‘Then we have a deal.’

  ‘You can take the witch we capture as your bounty too, if you like,’ Stella said. ‘Before we take her to the Court of Magical Justice.’

  ‘Oh, that won’t be necessary. I already have a witch,’ Cadi said. ‘Captured her before you arrived. But then I saw your dirigible, and all that business with the cow and the flying carpet, and I thought you just had to be explorers. No one else would be loopy enough to send a cow flying down on a magic carpet. Don’t worry, we’ll go back past my witch up along the way.’

  ‘Won’t two witch prisoners be a bit difficult to handle?’ Stella asked.

  Cadi waved a hand. ‘I don’t need to take the witch back,’ she said. ‘Just one of her hairs as proof. You know, like how woodcutters have to bring the princess’s heart back to the evil queen?’ She glanced at Stella then and said, ‘Oh, sorry, no offence.’

  ‘None taken,’ Stella replied.

  A boom in the sky made everyone jump, and they looked up in time to see what appeared to be an enormous vulture hovering in the air over the mountain. It flapped its wings several times, and then its image started to break up. Stella realised that it was actually made from hundreds of little pieces of paper, which dispersed as they fluttered to the ground in the distance.

  ‘What was that?’ Ethan demanded.

  ‘It’s probably the witch looking for her vulture,’ Cadi replied. ‘One crash-landed here yesterday, you know. That’s a location spell that shows the witch where the vulture is. It’ll be making its way up on foot, I expect.’

  ‘That’s where Felix is then,’ Stella said. ‘So he’s not that far ahead of us, at least.’

  Cadi hoisted her bag on her shoulder and pointed to the path winding its way through the pumpkin patches. ‘We should press on,’ she said. ‘It’s best that we’re out of the pumpkin patches by sunset. They bite, you know. Once they light up they sort of come alive and gnash at you. They’ll take a chunk out of your leg if you’re not careful.’

  Since nobody wanted to have a chunk taken out of their leg by a gnashing pumpkin, the explorers quickly gathered up their things and set off on their way, Gus bellowing happily and Nigel giving the occasional bleat of protest as he trudged along behind them, looking pretty disgusted by the whole affair.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The mountain path wasn’t the easiest to climb, and they found themselves slipping and sliding on the snow every time it got too steep. At one point, they passed a little cloud of magical vulture confetti, each tiny vulture flapping its wings as it flew along.

  ‘They’re following in the path of the real vulture,’ Cadi said, pointing them out. ‘The spell will start to wear off eventually and they’ll hop along on the ground for a bit before finally turning back into ordinary paper. You might see some on the floor as we go.’

  They all automatically glanced down at the path around them and then Beanie said, ‘Oh, look, that screaming pumpkin doesn’t have any teeth!’ He turned to Stella and said, ‘Do you think I should take it back as a present for Moira? Perhaps then she’ll come to my party.’

  Moira was Beanie’s cousin, and at Beanie’s last birthday had announced that she was never coming to one of his parties again because he was weird and she didn’t like him.

  ‘Forget Moira,’ Stella said with a sigh. ‘She’s always so horrible to you. I don’t know why you try so hard to be friends with her.’ She noticed, however, that Beanie picked the pumpkin up anyway and strapped it to the back of Nigel’s saddle with a great deal of care.

  Eventually, they were out of the pumpkin patches and the path levelled out, turning away from the mountain edge and leading them into the crags of the mountain itself.

  ‘Can’t you shut him up?’ Ethan asked, jerking his thumb towards Gus. The walrus had kept up an almost constant stream of bellowing since they set out.

  ‘He talks to himself when he’s happy,’ Cadi replied.

  ‘Well, he’s giving our position away to any witch who might happen to pass by,’ Ethan grumbled. ‘Between that and the jungle fairies’ chant of doom, we’re making quite a racket. We might as well all start blowing trumpets to announce our location.’

  ‘We didn’t bring any trumpets,’ Beanie said, giving him a puzzled look. ‘And I don’t think that would be a very good idea, at any rate.’

  They continued on in this manner for most of the day, climbing further and further up the mountain, as the air became increasingly colder and sharper around them.

  They were some way into the afternoon when Shay suddenly lifted his head and said, ‘What was that?’

  ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Stella replied, but the words were barely out of her mouth when a faint howling filled the air.

  ‘Oh no,’ Cadi said, stopping on the path. ‘It’s the witch wolves. They don’t normally come out until nightfall.’

  ‘What are witch wolves?’ Ethan demanded. ‘They sound bad.’

  Cadi turned to look at them, her face pale. ‘They are,’ she said. The fact that the hunter was worried was a little unnerving to the others, especially given that she’d jumped onto a flying shark’s back with n
o sign of fear at all. ‘They’re soul eaters,’ she said. ‘But we’ve got another problem to deal with right now. Look over there.’

  The others followed her pointing finger and immediately saw the witches. There were six of them lined up upon a distant crag far above. Their dark silhouettes were motionless, all long skirts and pointed hats, but Stella felt sure they were staring directly at them. A large sign on the mountain beside them read: Trespassers will be eaten by scarecrows.

  ‘Those witches are always there,’ Cadi said. ‘Day and night. Hail or thunder. I think they must be guardians of some kind. The legend goes that once they’ve laid eyes on you you’re doomed.’

  Beanie gave a little squeak of alarm, but Ethan snorted. ‘Rot,’ he said. ‘They’ve seen you before, haven’t they? And you’ve lived to tell the tale.’

  Cadi grinned and adjusted her hat. ‘Yes, but I’m a hunter,’ she said, leaping onto a nearby rock just as the snow beneath the explorers started to shift and warp into long-fingered hands that wrapped themselves tight around the children’s ankles.

  They were, unmistakably, witch’s hands. Even though they were made of snow, the explorers could see that the fingers were crooked, the nails were dirty, and the knuckles had warts on them. The cold seemed to seep right into their bones as the frozen hands tightened their grip.

  ‘It’s the witches,’ Cadi said, pointing up at the guardians on the crag. One of them had lifted her broomstick and was pointing it straight at the explorers.

  Turn back! a disembodied voice seemed to float across the air to them. Turn back!

  ‘Never!’ Stella gasped. ‘Not without Felix.’

  Before Cadi could offer any advice about how to escape, Stella had pulled a box of matches from her bag, lit one and dropped it on the snow hand. The match burned straight through the wrist, leaving a smoking hole in its path. The hand jerked back at once. Following Stella’s example, the other explorers quickly produced matches of their own to ward back the hands – all except for Ethan, who threw magic fire instead. The jungle fairies came to their aid too, taking aim with their catapults from the safety of Nigel’s humps. The terrible smell from the stink-berries was so potent that they melted the snow where they landed every bit as much as the matches. Soon the hands had lost their shape entirely and were just twitching lumps of snow on the ground.

  ‘You might have warned us!’ Ethan exclaimed, glaring at Cadi.

  ‘I just wanted to be sure you could look after yourselves,’ the hunter replied. ‘If not then I would have sent you home. Witch Mountain is no place to be if you can’t think on your feet. But, come on, we’d better hurry. They’ll regrow quickly enough, and it’s harder to escape them once they’re bigger and stronger. We need to get out of sight of the witches.’

  The explorers didn’t need telling twice. They quickened their pace and shortly passed round a bend in the path, glad to leave the watching witches on the crag behind them.

  ‘Thank you for your help,’ Stella said to the jungle fairies, who were shaking each other’s hands in a congratulatory fashion. Mustafah gave her a bow so low that the top of his spiky hair brushed against Nigel’s hump.

  A soft noise made them glance back and they saw that the snow hands had already re-formed and were stretched out towards them, long fingers grasping and clutching at empty space.

  Stella felt a cold all over that had nothing to do with the weather. In an effort to push it away, she said, as scornfully as she could, ‘It’ll take more than that hocus pocus to frighten us.’

  ‘I thought the hocus pocus was pretty scary, actually,’ Beanie said in a quiet voice.

  Stella dropped the bravado. If Beanie could be brave enough to admit being frightened, then so could she. ‘You’re right,’ she said with a sigh, patting her friend gently on the back. ‘It was.’

  To make things even worse, the witch wolves started howling again, somewhere in the distance.

  Shay clamped both hands over his ears, his eyes screwed up shut. ‘They’re so loud,’ he gasped. ‘They must know I’m here. They’re all trying to speak to me at once.’

  The wolves were still nowhere to be seen, but they could hear their howls in the distance.

  ‘Witch wolves used to be people,’ Cadi said. ‘They were cursed by witches and now they’re trapped in wolf shape, forced to roam the mountain for all time, looking for other souls to devour. They’re drawn to water. Probably because they have ice in their veins and frozen hearts.’ She glanced at Stella and added, almost apologetically, ‘Like snow queens. Just one bite and you’ll turn into a witch wolf yourself.’

  Stella shivered. What if that happened to Felix? What if it had already happened? His could be one of the howls they could hear out there. A low whimpering caused Stella to look down at Koa. The witch wolves were obviously affecting her too, for she was cowering on the ground at Shay’s feet. Stella had never seen the shadow wolf cower before, and it was unnerving. Normally Koa was so cool and calm. It wasn’t as if anything could harm her, anyway, given that she had no physical body, and yet she looked terrified. Stella was dismayed to see that Shay’s hands were shaking too.

  ‘Come on,’ Ethan said, taking the wolf whisperer by the arm. ‘We should get going. Put some distance between us and the wolves. We just have to keep away from them, that’s all.’

  They continued on up the mountain. Soon enough they had left the sound of the wolves behind, but Stella noticed that Shay stumbled a couple of times in the snow, which wasn’t like him at all – he was usually so sure-footed.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, noticing that his hands were still trembling.

  Shay glanced at her, a confused expression in his dark eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so. As soon as those wolves started speaking to me I got the most awful headache.’

  ‘Healing magic can help with that,’ Beanie said. They paused while the medic took off his glove and raised his hand to one side of Shay’s head. A fizz of green sparks filled the air and Shay breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘That helps.’ He frowned and added, ‘Koa isn’t right, though. I can feel it.’

  The shadow wolf was nowhere to be seen, but Stella knew that Shay still felt a connection to her even when she wasn’t visible.

  ‘Could you make out what the wolves were saying?’ she asked.

  ‘Not properly,’ Shay replied. ‘Only that they’re trapped and tormented.’

  ‘We should press on,’ Cadi said. ‘The sooner we get to this witch of yours, the sooner we can leave Witch Mountain.’

  Stella took out her explorer’s compass, which didn’t have North, East, South and West, but more interesting headings like Yetis, Ravines, Food and Danger. She set hers for Witches and the group continued on their way in a rather subdued state for the rest of the afternoon. Everyone was worried about the odd effect the witch wolves had had on Shay and Koa, and they all found themselves straining their ears for the sound of wolf howls, and wondering what might happen if the wolves came back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was early evening and they had travelled some way before Stella nudged Cadi and said, ‘What’s that?’ She pointed towards the horizon where, rising from behind a rocky outcrop, there were several columns of white, twisting steam.

  Cadi grinned. ‘Come and see,’ she said.

  The explorers, camel, jungle fairies and walrus made their way through a rocky chasm that led out into a sudden clearing filled with dozens and dozens of smoking ice towers. Most of them started wide at the base and then became thinner and thinner, leaning over at crooked angles until they tapered off into points. They rather reminded Stella of giant wizard hats.

  ‘They’re called ice fumaroles,’ Cadi told them. ‘Ice dragons live inside them. They’re what cause the smoke.’

  Stella gasped. ‘How extraordinary! I’ve never seen a dragon. Even Felix has never seen one. He says they’re incredibly rare. Are they dangerous?’

  Cadi shrugged. ‘I don’t
think so.’

  ‘I can’t recall any explorers who’ve been killed by a dragon,’ Beanie said. ‘Plenty have perished due to rampaging elephants, hippos, polar bears, yetis, squids, jellyfish and jungle cats, but never a dragon so far as I know. Although Sergeant Jameson Kirby Smith did get trapped in a dragon’s lair while exploring the Black Pepper Caves of Aragba, and a search party had to be sent to dig him out. There was no sign of any dragon, though.’

  ‘Well, you won’t see one here either,’ Cadi said. ‘I’ve been to this place several times with my father and he says he’s never seen so much as a dragon’s claw. Ice dragons are very reclusive, you see. Some people even think they no longer exist – that it’s just the smouldering remains of their dragon nests that cause the towers to smoke like that. But I like to think that the dragons are in there.’

  ‘Oh, I would so love to see one,’ Stella said, gazing at the smoking towers wistfully.

  ‘Good heavens,’ Shay said under his breath. He gave her a nudge with his elbow and said, ‘Stella, look.’

  He pointed at the nearest ice tower and everyone stared in astonishment at the sight of a small scaly snout poking over the top of it. This was quickly followed by a lizardy head, front legs, wings and a long tail, as the ice dragon clambered out from the fumarole, steam still billowing from its snout as it gazed down at them.

  It was made of ice, from nose to tail, with glorious bright blue eyes that fixed on them with interest. Its every movement caused it to sparkle in the setting sun as it scrabbled down the tower towards them.

  All around, more dragons were emerging from the ice towers and the explorers stepped closer to each other warily, half fearing an ambush. But, in fact, the dragons seemed more playful than aggressive as they slipped and slid down the ice towers, claws scrabbling in the snow, or else spread their wings and wheeled down from overhead. They were quite small dragons – about the size of a fox – and they all seemed particularly interested in Stella.