“I bet you’re not mad because you like exploring!” Celia accused him. “You’re just like Mom and Dad!”
Oliver shrugged. He wasn’t mad. In fact, it was kind of true. The walrus-and-bear battle was pretty cool. He’d never seen anything like it on TV. And he liked driving the dogsled too.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said.
“No!” Celia yelled. “I’m not right! You need to be mad! You’re Oliver Navel, my brother, and you hate exploring and you hate when I’m right and you want to argue with me because I always make you go first and act like you’re dumb!”
“But I don’t want to argue anymore,” said Oliver. He thought if he could just sleep for a minute, maybe he’d be ready to argue when he woke up. He closed his eyes.
“Hey!” Celia snapped in his face. “You need to stay awake! Focus! Get angry!”
“Can’tgetangryatmysister,” mumbled Oliver. He started to sway on his feet. He felt silly. He felt confused. He couldn’t talk straight. “Sister,” he repeated. “You’re my best friend.”
“You’re mine too, Oliver,” said Celia. If Oliver was in his right mind he never would have said that to her face and she would never have said it back to him, but times were desperate. She had to do something drastic. She slapped him across the face and yelled, “Wake up!” She slapped him again.
He smiled dumbly, half opening his eyes. He wasn’t even shivering anymore.
“Don’t close your eyes!” Celia yelled.
Hearing the noise of Celia’s yelling, the polar bear turned its head and looked toward her. It sniffed the air. The walruses bellowed and puffed their chests. That was all the encouragement the polar bear needed to go after easier prey. The two human children wouldn’t give him as much meat as a walrus, not by a long shot, but they’d be as easy to eat as cheese puffs.
He turned and began to stalk toward them.
Celia saw the bear coming over her shoulder. It was moving slowly, tired from its fight. Its mouth was ringed red with walrus blood; chunks of torn blubber clung to its claws. Its dark eyes showed no emotion, like the twins’ eyes after five hours of Saturday morning cartoons.
The walruses, all three of them exhausted and perhaps still angry for the tent trick that Oliver had tried to pull on them, immediately dove into the water and swam for the far shore of the ice field. They weren’t about to risk their lives to save two human children. They had their own walrus families to worry about. Before he dove, the scar-faced one may have even waved a mocking flipper at Celia.
“Jerk walrus,” Celia grumbled. “Oliver,” she turned back to her brother. “You have to wake up . . . we have to run. The bear’s coming . . .”
“I’m just gonna take a quick nap.” Oliver sighed, flopping down in the snow. “You can wake me when the show’s over.”
“You’re not making sense,” said Celia. “We’re not watching TV. A polar bear is really coming to eat us.”
“Offer it some cheese puffs.” Oliver laid down in the snow. It made perfect sense to him. Why would a polar bear want to eat him when cheese puffs have that extra-cheesy crunch?
“No!” Celia begged. “Come on! Please!” She grabbed Oliver’s arm and pulled, trying to lift him. She couldn’t, so she started to drag him through the snow, struggling backward while facing the bear. It lowered its head and kept creeping forward, its cruel eyes fixed on her. “Shoo, bear!” Celia shouted. “Shoo!”
The bear did not shoo. It rushed toward her. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the canister of bear repellent, pointing it at the bear, turning her ahead away, and squinting back as she sprayed. The bear ran right into the mist and stopped. It shook its head. It blinked.
“Yeah!” said Celia, sniffing the air. It smelled peppery. “Stay back!”
As she dragged Oliver away, the bear stepped forward with every step she took backward. Celia stepped and the bear stepped. Celia stopped and the bear stopped. Every time it got too close she raised the bear spray and gave him a spritz. The bear backed off and growled, low and threatening. Celia knew then that if she turned her back or if she fell or if—no, when—she ran out of bear repellent, both she and her brother would meet a most gruesome end.
She had to keep moving.
The fate of the Navels was in her very cold, shaking hands.
27
WE BEAR THE UNBEARABLE
ICE HAD FORMED all over her clothes and over her hair and along her cheeks. Luckily, her clothes were dry underneath the cold-weather gear. The duct tape had kept the water out. That was probably the only reason she and her brother hadn’t frozen to death yet.
She took another careful step backward.
The bear took another step forward.
“Come on, Oliver,” she groaned, pulling him.
“Just leave me,” he mumbled, half awake.
“I’m not leaving my little brother,” she answered.
“We’re the same age,” he replied, opening his eyes.
“Are not!” Celia pulled.
“Are too!” Oliver kicked his feet a little, pushing himself up as she pulled. He had some life in him yet.
Unfortunately, Celia had not actually expected her brother to push himself up, and so when he pushed, she pulled too hard and they both fell down. The bear repellent fell out of Celia’s hand.
The polar bear charged.
It bounded across the snow at them, and reared up to pin them both beneath its paws. Out of instinct Celia dove to protect her little brother, although Oliver dove at the same moment to protect Celia—who was, after all, only older by three minutes and forty-two seconds—and they smacked heads right into each other and bounced back in opposite directions.
The bear’s paw came down in between them, smashing harmlessly into the snow. It turned to bite at Oliver, who kicked it in the snout, and then it spun to snap at Celia, who punched it in the same spot, and then it stood to its full height again. It roared.
The twins scrambled backward. The bear hesitated, looking from twin to twin, but it didn’t attack.
“What’s it doing?” Oliver yelled across to his sister on the other side of the bear.
“I think my punch stunned it!” she said.
“I think my kick stunned it,” said Oliver.
“I think it’s deciding which of us is tastier!” said Celia. “Run!”
Oliver pushed himself up and ran. Celia grabbed the canister off the ground and sprayed it. It fizzled, empty. She threw it at the bear and ran after her brother.
They sprinted, slipping and sliding on the ice. The bear hesitated, unsure how much energy it could waste on a stringy child. It sniffed at the empty canister. When the twins met up about a half a football field’s length away, the bear started toward them again at a trot. Time was on its side.
“We can’t slow down.” Celia panted. Her sweat had already frozen against her skin underneath her clothes. She felt herself shivering uncontrollably. “The bear is just waiting for us to slow down.”
Side by side, the twins helped each other along, stumbling through the snow. The bear followed, never taking its eyes off of them.
“I feel tired again,” said Oliver.
“Me too,” said Celia.
“I can’t feel my feet,” he added.
“Me neither,” said Celia.
They trudged on, the minutes passed. Or maybe it was hours. They couldn’t know how long they’d been walking. The light never changed. The aurora borealis still waved above them. Neither of them spoke. It was too hard to speak. Celia wanted to argue to keep them warm, but she didn’t have the strength. The cold was shutting her body down. Oliver had started mumbling again, talking about Bizarro Bandits and Rodeo Clowns.
“Do you think they have cable TV in Atlantis?” he mumbled. “I hope they do. I’d like to see Corey Brandt again, even if it’s just on Sunset High.
I’m glad he ended up with Lauren on that show. She seemed nice.”
Celia didn’t answer him. She didn’t even have the energy to argue for Team Annabel or to talk about Corey Brandt or television or anything. She was too cold and too tired and too afraid of being eaten by a polar bear.
As she trudged along, she didn’t hear her brother behind her anymore. She worried she would have to drag him again because his brain had frozen or something. She turned and saw Oliver standing still in the snow.
The bear in the distance stopped too and watched them. He waited for one of them to fall. For a bear, a frozen child on the ground was just like a Popsicle. Celia did not want to become a Popsicle.
“Oliver, we can’t stop here,” she said. “Keep going.”
“I think we should climb,” he said.
“What?” Celia clomped over to him through the snow. “Did your brain freeze?”
“I think he wants us to climb?” Oliver repeated.
“What are you talking about? Who wants us to climb?”
“Him.” Oliver pointed up. High in the air above them floated a shining silver ball with a basket hanging below it. A rope dropped down from the basket.
Just then, a bearded man wearing big goggles and a brown parka leaned over the edge of the basket.
“Quickly!” he yelled. “Climb up here!”
The bear, sensing his meal might get away, charged across the ice.
“That guy looks just like Santa Claus!” Oliver smiled. “Did you see that?”
“This is a little too convenient, don’t you think?” said Celia. “I mean, haven’t you heard of deus ex machina?”
“No,” said Oliver, grabbing the rope. “But I have heard of Santa Claus.”
“There’s no such thing as—” Celia looked back at the bear charging toward them. “Oh, whatever.”
She grabbed the rope beside her brother and the balloon lifted into the air.
The bear leaped and swiped, his steak-knife-sized claws brushing the bottom of Celia’s boots, but he landed on the ice again with a crash, breaking through and smashing into the cold water.
As the twins rose away, the bear climbed out and roared, shaking the ice from its fur and trudging on the ground after them.
28
WE MEET THE ODD
WHEN THEY REACHED the basket at the top of the rope, the man pulled them in. The twins sat on the floor, out of breath, but glad to be warmed by the electric heater sitting in front of them.
They looked up at the man, trying to figure out who it was who had just rescued them. His long white hair fell down over half his face and one bright blue eye gazed at the twins with a mischievous twinkle. He smiled, his bright red nose bursting like a flame from his icy white beard. He wore a light animal skin parka with a fur hood and big fuzzy white fur pants.
“Polar bear,” he said, dancing from foot to foot. “You like ’em?”
“Um,” said Celia.
“Oh, I know.” The man shook his head. “Kids these days think wearing fur is cruel, but I’ll tell you, up here, nothing goes to waste. Meat, bone, blood, and fur. You’ve got to use it all. A sign of respect. That bear down there would do the same to you.”
“Um,” said Oliver.
“The parka is reindeer skin,” he added.
Oliver shuddered. “Santa?” he asked, dreading the idea of Father Christmas wearing his reindeer as a jacket.
The man laughed a jolly laugh, pulled off his glove, and stuck out his big red palm at Oliver. “Odd.”
He frowned at the man and crossed his arms in front of himself. “I am not.”
“No! Of course not.” The man laughed. “But I am! Odd. Odd’s my name!”
“Odd?” said Celia. “Your name is Odd?”
“Odd is not a good name?” the man smirked.
“No,” said Celia. “It’s . . . it’s just . . . you know . . . odd.”
“Exactly!” Odd laughed. “And it’s quite a common name in these parts. Be right back!”
He turned and started pulling on ropes and levers, which unwound springs, which turned pedals, which spun rotor blades on the back of the basket, steering it over the open water, across the craggy ice, above the honking herd of walruses, and toward the horizon. Two dark ravens swooped and flapped around the balloon, cawing as they flew.
“I told you he wasn’t Santa Claus,” whispered Celia.
“You said he was a deus ex machina,” Oliver answered her. “He doesn’t look like it to me.”
“No one looks like it,” said Celia. “Deus ex machina is a plot device.”
“You think he’s plotting something?”
“No!” Celia rolled her eyes. “It’s a storytelling trick. Something helpful that appears just when all hope seems lost and fixes all the main characters’ problems.”
“You think he’s going to fix all our problems?” Oliver sat up straight, hopeful.
“No,” said Celia. “I think he’s going to make a lot more problems.”
“How do you know?”
“He looks like the man in the drawings,” she said. “That means he’ll probably be all mysterious and we’ll end up getting chased across the ice by a monster or something. That’s how these stories go.”
“What stories?”
“Ours,” said Celia.
The man came back over to them.
“Well, as I was saying, I am Odd. Very glad I found you. That bear looked mighty determined.”
“Yeah, thanks for being our deus ex mechanic,” said Oliver.
“Machina,” said Celia. “Sorry, my brother doesn’t pay attention to educational programming.”
“I do too,” Oliver grumbled.
“My name’s Celia and this is—” Celia began, but the man interrupted her.
“Oliver,” said Odd.
“What?” Oliver’s jaw dropped. “How did you know that? Are you . . . a shaman?”
“Of course he’s a shaman,” said Celia, looking at the man’s long beard and one piercing blue eye.
Celia and Oliver had met shamans all over the world, people who could speak with the spirits and know things that no one else could know. Every society had shamans, but some listened to them more than others. In desert tribes of North Africa, shamans were tellers of stories and keepers of the culture. In the Amazon Rainforest, they were sometimes healers. Where Oliver and Celia lived, shamans were mostly people with their own talk shows.
“I bet now is when he tells us something crazy, like,” she lowered her voice to an ancient groan, “I’ve been expecting you . . .”
The man smiled and lowered his hood, brushing aside the long hair that covered his other eye, revealing an eye patch embroidered with the symbol of a key in golden thread, a symbol just like the one on the golden ring in Celia’s pocket and on the compass that Oliver dropped: the symbol of the Mnemones.
“Oliver and Celia Navel,” said Odd, crossing his arms and leaning back on the edge of the basket, nothing but sky and two ravens circling behind him. “I’m guessing that if you’re here all alone, then your mom’s in trouble?”
The twins nodded.
“And you all need to get to the North Pole, because that’s where Atlantis is supposed to be?”
The twins nodded again.
“And yes, Celia,” Odd lowered his voice, “I have been expecting you.”
29
WE DETEST DESTINY
ODD WAS NOT a shaman, at least, not professionally.
He did, however, use ancient methods for sending and receiving messages, practicing his obscure art in the solitude of the frozen north. He read symbols few others could read, and followed paths few others could follow.
“I’m a mailman,” he declared proudly, pointing to the corner of the basket at three sacks, each overflowing with letters and postcards.
“The only one in the Arctic Circle.”
“Just a mailman?” Oliver asked, sipping the hot chocolate Odd had poured for them from a thermos.
“Just a mailman!” Odd threw his hands in the air. “It is the noblest profession!”
“I mean . . . uh . . .” Oliver didn’t want to be rude. Odd’s heater and his blankets and his hot chocolate and his balloon had saved them from freezing to death and being eaten by a polar bear. He was just disappointed. He’d really thought that maybe they’d been rescued by Santa Claus. That would have showed Celia.
“What my brother means, sir, is why would our mom’s secret society have a mailman in it?” Celia tried more politely.
“Your mother’s secret society?” Odd raised the eyebrow of his one good eye.
“Well, yeah,” said Celia. “The Mnemones, the symbol on your eye patch; they were the scribes of the Lost Library and our mom’s the leader.”
“Did she tell you that?” Odd smirked.
Celia didn’t like the tone of his voice. “No,” she said. “But we heard a prophecy . . .”
Odd burst into a fit of laughter. He slapped his knee and doubled over like someone had just said Djibouti to him ten times. His nose and cheeks turned an even brighter red and he hugged himself in hysterics.
“So Mom’s not the leader?” Celia tried. She did not like to be laughed at, not by her brother when she said Djibouti and not by this mailman in a balloon.
“The Mnemones are far older than the library at Alexandria,” said Odd. “They are older than you can possibly imagine.”
“I can imagine a lot,” Celia told him.
“They are the memory keepers,” said Odd.
“We know,” said Celia. “We’ve known that for a long time now.”
“But did you know that all societies have them? The scribes and storytellers, the scholars and librarians. The explorers. The mailmen.”
Celia coughed.
“Excuse me,” said Odd. “Mailpersons.”
We Sled With Dragons Page 14
