by Alan Early
‘It’s really sticky and gooey usually, especially when it mixes with the water from the lake. When I was small we used to come down here in the summers and make mud-men. You know – snowmen but with mud.’
‘Cool!’
‘Yeah, it really is. We should come here again this summer. You’re still going to be in Dublin, right?’
Arthur really didn’t want to tell her that he might be moving home sooner than they’d thought. ‘Eh …’
Luckily for him, Ash cut him off.
‘Wait!’ she said, looking out onto the lake. ‘What’s that?’
Arthur followed her gaze. Roughly halfway between the shore and the island, something was out on the ice. He squinted to try to see better. The thing looked about the size of a small backpack; it was dark brown and was moving slightly. It looked like a–
‘Dog!’ Ash exclaimed, shocked. ‘It’s a dog, isn’t it?’
‘Looks more like a pup to me.’
Ash handed Arthur her sketchpad and charcoal. ‘Hold these for me.’
‘Wait – what are you doing?’
‘I’m going to save that pup,’ she answered, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
‘You can’t!’ he protested. ‘The ice could–’
‘It won’t break,’ she said. She put one foot on the edge of the frozen lake, leaning all her weight on it. It didn’t so much as crack. ‘See? Nice and solid! Listen to the dog, Arthur. It’s too scared to move.’
Arthur heard it now that she pointed it out. Over the slight breeze in the air, he heard the dog whining softly. There was no denying that it was stranded out there.
‘I’ll be fine, Arthur,’ Ash assured him again, seeing the worried look on his face. ‘I’ll just take it slowly.’
Ash turned away from him, trying to look more confident than she felt, and walked further out onto the ice.
‘Careful!’ he exclaimed as her foot slipped out from under her. She stopped, nodded back to him, then proceeded even slower and with more caution.
The going was tough and the muscles in her legs were straining before she was even midway out to the pup. She kept her eyes on her feet but couldn’t see the water below the surface. Despite this, as she moved further out the ice started to groan under her weight and she worried that Arthur had been right. But she was too far gone now and couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the little dog out there by itself.
Finally, she reached the pup. Its coat was mostly brown with grey streaks. Its snout was long and narrow and it had pointed ears that stood to attention when Ash approached. It looked up at her with sad black eyes.
‘Hello, puppy,’ Ash said, then patted her legs, stepping backwards. ‘Come on. Follow me.’
The pup tilted its head as if listening to her. Then it pulled itself forward on its front paws, its hind legs dragging behind it as if something was wrong with them.
‘Can’t you move your legs?’
The pup whined in response. Ash took another tentative step forward, to more groaning of the ice. She was so focused on the pup that she didn’t even notice the crack.
As she leant forward to pick up the pup, the ice finally gave way. There was another loud crack and Ash plummeted into the frozen lake.
Chapter Six
‘Ash!’ Arthur yelled as he slid across the slippery surface of the lake, concentrating hard on keeping his balance. He ignored the angry groans and creaks of the ice below him.
He slowed down as he approached the hole, wary of the cracks spreading out from its edge. The pup was still whining in a high pitch, looking from him to the breach and back again. He heard a train pass nearby, but all his attention was fixed on the break in the ice. Where Ash had fallen through, he could see that the ice was about three inches thick. It seemed strong but was clearly not strong enough, as it continued to groan under his feet. The water was deep and dark, rippling lightly.
Ash was floating under that water, her eyes shut, her long hair and coat flowing around her like some sort of mystical mermaid.
Arthur fell to his knees and the ice gave another loud crack. ‘Ash! Ashling!’
There was no response from her. He could see tiny air bubbles escaping from her mouth and nostrils. She still had air in her lungs, at least, but for how long? He plunged his arm into the water, reaching for his friend, but she was sinking too quickly and was beyond his reach. The cold ate through his flesh and he quickly withdrew his arm, pain lancing through it.
He realised that the only way he could reach Ash was to enter the water himself. Before his courage failed him, and realising that every second would count for Ash, Arthur quickly stood up, kicked off his shoes and pulled off his heavy coat. He dropped it to the icy surface, followed by his fleece-lined hoodie. Now just in a T-shirt and jeans, he shivered with the cold as he took the pendant off his neck and tied it in a tight double-knot around his wrist. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to lose that. Taking one last deep breath, he leaped into the water, feet first.
The water was so cold it knocked the wind out of him completely and he gasped in shock, his mouth filling up. He’d never experienced a temperature so low and his fingers and toes were numb within seconds. Choking, he returned to the surface, took another deep breath, then dived back under the water.
The singing of the pendant had steadily increased in Eirik’s dead ears, its urgency transmitting itself to him. He knew he was close as he crested a small hill. Below him a long metallic snake sped down a track cut through a wood. He pushed the horse into a trot down the hill and crossed the metal tracks, pulling up beside a frozen lake. He knew from the intensity of the pendant’s signal that he should be able to see Arthur, but all he could see was a pile of clothes and some sort of animal beside a large hole in the ice. The pendant was clearly there, but where was Arthur? Eirik swung himself down from the horse, looking around uncertainly. He had been sent to protect the boy, but it looked like he might already be too late.
Back in Dublin, under Arthur’s bed, the hammer started to glow.
Arthur found it hard to move his limbs under the water. Or, rather, he found it hard to know if they were moving. He couldn’t feel anything. But somehow he reached Ash. He shook her shoulder but she didn’t open her eyes. He shook more furiously, gripping her biceps a little too tightly. Suddenly her eyelids shot up and she opened her mouth to scream, bubbles flowing out of her mouth and taking her remaining oxygen with them. Arthur quickly clamped his hand over her lips, forcing her to stop. He pointed urgently upwards.
She looked at him with wide-eyed terror, then nodded quickly. Together they kicked hard, pushing themselves towards the surface. Arthur would never forget the physical strain it took to kick his legs and swim upwards under that lake.
They reached the top of the water and hit the bottom of the ice. Arthur scanned the ice around him. He didn’t think they could be that far from the hole, but in the murkiness he couldn’t see it anywhere nearby and there was no shaft of light to indicate where it might be. They were lost under the lake and, from her expression, Ash had also just realised it.
They could just about see the faint glow of the sun through the thick ice. With no other obvious escape option, Arthur started pounding his fists against it in a desperate attempt to break through but, with his strength failing him, he made little impact and the white wall above them remained solid.
The hammer flew out from underneath Arthur’s bed, radiating green light. It smashed through his bedroom window and soared over the city of Dublin at an impossible speed. A handful of people noticed the tiny trail of light disappear across the sky. Most assumed it had been a trick of their eye – only one man was certain that aliens were invading.
Arthur felt the air seeping out of his lungs with the exertion of knocking on the ice. Ash would soon be completely out of oxygen, followed closely by himself. They were done for. This was it. They would die under the lake. They probably wouldn’t be discovered for days. Days in which Joe and Cousin Maggie an
d everyone else who cared for them would be tearing their hair out in frustration. Days in which Loki could enact some evil plan without Arthur around to stop it. He couldn’t die under here. He wouldn’t.
Ash’s eyes fluttered shut once more, her whole body starved of precious oxygen. Arthur shook her again with the little energy he had left, but to no avail. Her arms drifted lifelessly at her sides as Arthur studied her face. She looked asleep, peaceful. Her body was losing the fight to stay alive.
Then a movement behind her caught his eye. Something had plunged into the depths of the water, with a white plume of bubbles marking its path. But it quickly stopped its descent and started racing towards them. For a moment Arthur wondered what new disaster was about to hit them, but then he realised the object was glowing and the glow was a familiar green colour. His heart
leapt.
As it drew rapidly closer, the item came into focus. An iron top, a small handle covered in rope: it was his hammer!
It didn’t even slow as it approached him. Arthur swiftly wrapped one arm around Ash and stretched the other one out, his palm open. The hammer slammed into his hand and he curled his fingers tightly around the handle. It kept moving, dragging them through the water at breakneck speed.
The hammer dived deeper, taking them with it, then turned towards the surface once more. It paused for a split second before shooting rapidly upwards again. Arthur ducked his head and shut his eyes as it broke through the ice and soared skyward.
As Arthur clung on for dear life, the hammer flew him and Ash high over the lake. It hovered there for a moment and Arthur could see a man standing on the shore with a horse by his side. Then they sailed back down to earth, landing softly on the hard ground. Arthur dropped the hammer and laid the unconscious Ash on the ground.
‘Eirik?’ Arthur asked, totally bewildered as to how the Viking came to be there and why he was wearing bad make-up. ‘Never mind. You can explain later. Help me with Ash!’
Unexpectedly, he heard a siren in the near distance. He looked in the direction of the sound to see firefighters, paramedics and Gardaí clambering over the train tracks towards them from the main road. Some were carrying stretchers, others clutched warm blankets.
Arthur turned urgently to Eirik and pushed the hammer into his arms. ‘Hide!’ The Viking disappeared as the emergency services struggled over the train tracks.
The first of the paramedics to reach them raced straight to Ash. He pushed Arthur out of the way, fell to his knees and put his ear to her chest.
‘Was she under long?’ he asked, quickly taking her pulse.
‘A few minutes,’ Arthur panted.
‘OK, give me space.’ Arthur didn’t budge, frozen with terror. ‘Move away!’
Arthur took a step back as the other paramedics arrived on the scene.
‘Will she be all right?’ he asked as they piled around his friend, blocking her from view. ‘Will she be all right?’ No one would answer his question. One firefighter wrapped a couple of blankets around him. Arthur could make out the shoulders of the first paramedic bobbing up and down as he tried to pump the water out of Ash’s lungs.
‘Come on, come on!’ Arthur pleaded, clutching the blankets and feeling heat start to seep back into his flesh, not daring to take his eyes from the backs of the paramedics working on Ash.
Come on.
Suddenly he heard a spluttering cough. The first paramedic sat back on his heels, while another rolled Ash onto her side to help her hack up the water from her lungs. Eventually she stopped coughing and, with a little help, sat up. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Then she saw Arthur through the crowd and managed a weak smile.
Chapter Seven
The news reporter strode across the red shore with the frozen lake behind her, her hair flawlessly coiffed, wearing a long lambswool coat and matching scarf. Her leather gloves were wrapped around the microphone like it was the most vital and powerful piece of machinery in the entire world. She walked awkwardly, with her torso turned towards the camera. Her breath condensed in front of her dark-red lips as she spoke.
‘All was quiet here at Lough Faol, just outside Mullingar, County Westmeath, this morning,’ she enunciated in an even and unaccented tone. ‘Until that silence was broken when twelve-year-old Ashling Barry …’
The camera operator zoomed right in on Ash so the picture shook slightly. She was sitting inside an ambulance parked on the verge beside the main road, wrapped tightly in a couple of blankets and sipping a plastic cup of steaming soup. One paramedic was listening to her lungs with a stethoscope. The reporter continued over the shot.
‘… of Ranelagh, Dublin – seen here – fell through the ice and into the freezing waters below.’
The cameraman zoomed in on the hole where Ash had fallen through, taking care not to step too close to the edge of the shore.
‘The shock of the chilly temperatures knocked Ashling unconscious and chances are she would have perished underneath the ice were it not for the quick thinking of her friend, twelve-year-old Arthur Quinn, also of Ranelagh.’
Arthur was now standing next to the reporter, with a couple of blankets still wrapped around his shoulders. His hair was no longer wet but one of the paramedics had given him a warm beanie hat to wear anyway.
‘It was colder than anything I’ve ever felt,’ Arthur said into the microphone that the reporter was holding to his mouth. ‘And it was really dark down there. But I found her and we got out.’
‘And how did you manage to find your way back out, Arthur?’
‘Em … well, we lost the first hole, but we were lucky and found a second one.’
The camera now panned around the busy scene, then back to the lake. Some paramedics fussed over Ash, while a little dog lay on the ground nearby, snuggling into its own brown blanket. A firefighter was leading a red-faced and flustered-looking older woman over to the rescued girl, accompanied by a young boy and teenage girl. A tall blond man was standing just beyond the edge of the woodland, patting a horse and watching the others intently.
‘Ashling and Arthur were incredibly lucky,’ the reporter went on over the image. ‘A passenger on a passing train spotted Arthur dive into the lake after his friend and called the emergency services, who arrived on the scene mere seconds after the children emerged from the water.
‘Paramedics revived Ashling and have found no major injuries. The Garda Síochána have stated that ice on lakes and rivers is unpredictable and that members of the public should not, under any circumstances, take the risk of stepping onto a frozen lake. This is Karen Kilfoyle, reporting for RTÉ News.’
And with that, the camera blinked off.
‘Oh my God!’ cried Cousin Maggie. ‘You poor things!’ She bundled Arthur and Ash into a constricting hug while Stace and Max looked on worriedly. Arthur and Ash had changed out of their dripping clothes into some too-large T-shirts and pants the paramedics had on standby and each of them was wrapped in a couple of blankets.
Eventually Cousin Maggie let them go, allowing them to breathe freely again.
‘We’re all right,’ Ash said. Her voice was hoarse and dry after almost choking on the lake water. ‘Honestly.’
‘You don’t sound all right to me.’ Cousin Maggie turned anxiously to the nearest paramedic. ‘How is she, really?’
‘No major damage that we can find,’ he answered. ‘No concussion. They both have a bit of a sniffle. But there are no symptoms of hypothermia, which is good.’
‘So I can take them home with me?’
‘Of course,’ he chuckled. ‘But at the first sign of their colds getting any worse, you have to bring them straight to a doctor.’
‘Don’t worry about that. I won’t let them out of bed for the next day, let alone outside. And my chicken soup has been known to work miracles.’
‘Sounds great. Let me just get their clothes and you can be on your way.’ He went off, calling after one of the other paramedics. For the first time Cousin Maggie looked down and noticed
the pup at Ash’s feet. Its fur was still damp, despite Ash’s attempts to dry it with the coarse blanket. The pup gazed up at Maggie with watery black eyes.
After Ash had been resuscitated, a couple of firefighters had set about rescuing the pup from the ice. Ordinarily they would have used a helicopter, but since time was tight (and since the rescuee was a dog) they had to come up with another method of saving the puppy without walking onto the ice themselves. Using a special hitch system, they were able to crank a rope out over the lake to the dog. One end of the rope had a grappling hook attached and once they had cranked it far enough out they dropped the hook around the far side of the pup, allowing the firefighters to crank it back in. Ash was thrilled to have the dog finally safe in her arms.
‘And who’s this?’ Maggie asked, crouching to pet the dog. Max, who had also just spotted the pup, did likewise, rubbing it behind the ears excitedly. Stace didn’t pet it but made cooing noises at it instead as Ash filled them in on how they’d discovered the pup on the frozen lake.
‘Can we keep it?’ asked Ash, finishing her tale.
‘Oh, I don’t know, Ash,’ said Maggie. ‘That’s up to your parents.’ She ran her hands over the pup’s ribs and looked at its teeth and eyes. Ash mentioned that the pup hadn’t been able to walk out on the ice so Maggie also felt its legs. The front two seemed fine and healthy; but the hind pair were a different story. They were thinner than they should have been, slightly malformed with very little muscle definition.
‘It’s a female and she seems healthy enough apart from those back legs; she’s not particularly fat but she’s not malnourished. Judging by her unclipped, dirty coat, she hasn’t been that well cared for. Her hind legs are lame, poor thing. That’s why she couldn’t walk to you, Ash. She was probably dumped by her owner because of her condition.’
The pup licked the side of Maggie’s wrist. For a stray, she certainly seemed calm and amiable enough.
