The Polar Bear Explorers' Club

by Alex Bell

  It belonged to the Royal Crown Steam Navigation Company and had been specially commissioned to take the members of the expedition to Coldgate, so they could visit the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club, and then continue on to the Icelands.

  Stella followed Felix onto the ship by way of a wooden gangplank that creaked and groaned alarmingly beneath their weight, as if it was about to dump them in the freezing sea foaming far below. Up on deck there were supplies for the expedition everywhere, including unicorns and wolves. Stella could hear the unicorns snorting and shuffling in their makeshift stalls, and the wolves were already starting to howl.

  Stella wasn’t sure if the animals just didn’t like the ship, or whether they could sense that bad weather was coming. The clouds on the horizon looked black and threatening; everything smelled of salt and brine and storms, and there was the constant slap, slap, slap of the icy waves against the hull. The deck lurched beneath Stella’s feet, causing her to reach out and grab Felix’s sleeve for balance. For the first time since leaving home, some small, traitorous part of her felt a twinge of nervousness, and something that was almost homesickness. She could be sitting in the orangery right now, throwing twigs for Buster, warm and safe and—

  ‘It doesn’t do to be too afraid of life and taking chances,’ Felix announced cheerfully, as if reading her mind. ‘No one ever had any fun that way.’ He glanced down at her with a reassuring smile and said, ‘Let’s go and report to the captain.’

  The captain was a tall, thin man named Montgomery Fitzroy. He had a magnificent hat and a hooked nose, and didn’t seem terribly bothered by Stella’s presence on board the ship. Stella decided she liked him on the spot, partly because of his hat, and partly because of all the maps and charts scattered about his office. Stella liked anyone who liked maps.

  The ship set sail just as she and Felix left the captain’s quarters. Stella heard someone up on deck bellow, ‘Full steam ahead!’ – and then they were on their way.

  She hadn’t been prepared for the rocking motion as the ship set out into open water, and found she had to cling onto rails and bannisters to stop herself from toppling over. Trying to navigate the ladders that led below was even more of a challenge. Thankfully, the corridors down there were narrow, and Stella found she could manage them fairly well by allowing herself to bounce against first one wall, then the other, like a skittles ball zigzagging between runners. Felix achieved an inordinate number of accidental strikes that way whenever he took her to the local skittle alley.

  There hadn’t been any spare cabins on board, so Felix and Stella were sharing one right at the pointy end of the ship. Felix opened the door – and revealed one of the tiniest rooms Stella had ever seen. Really, it was little more than a cupboard, with a pair of bunk beds, a bedside table, and a porthole that offered a glimpse of the increasingly bad weather outside.

  ‘Felix, look!’ Stella said, placing her hand against the bed to brace herself. ‘If you stare out the window you see the sky to begin with, and then it changes to sea and then back again. It’s like being on a seesaw!’

  Felix grunted in response, which really wasn’t very much like Felix at all. Stella glanced around at him and said, ‘Are you all right? You’ve gone an awfully funny colour – sort of like putty.’

  Felix staggered over to the bottom bunk and flopped down on it. ‘Sea sickness,’ he groaned.

  ‘Already?’ she said. ‘We’re barely out of the harbour.’

  ‘Gets me every time. I need to lie completely flat and not move a muscle.’

  Stella wrinkled her nose. That didn’t sound like much fun at all, especially when there was a whole ship out there to explore.

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’ she offered reluctantly.

  ‘No, nothing helps,’ Felix replied. He was gripping the edge of the mattress so hard that his knuckles had turned white. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Can I go and have a look around, then?’ Stella asked, already edging towards the door.

  ‘All right but, listen – don’t go out on deck whilst the weather’s bad. I don’t want you getting washed overboard. And come straight back here if the storm hits.’

  Stella promised she would, and then hurriedly left the cabin before Felix could change his mind.

  *

  Exploring turned out to be every bit as thrilling as Stella had imagined. Some of the Polar Bear explorers were having a cocktail party in the gramophone room, with lots of thick cigar smoke and irritatingly loud laughter and flamboyant moustache-twirling, so Stella gave that a wide berth and headed to the lower decks instead. Down in the hold she came across their stored supplies, which included sleds, tents, snowshoes, tin cups – and rifles, in case they came across any woolly mammoths, yetis or bandits. Or angry gnomes, Stella supposed. There was also a giant crate of iced gems for the unicorns. Stella couldn’t resist sneaking a few of the yummy biscuit treats on her way past, taking care to pick out only the pink ones.

  The ship was now out in open water and bobbing around like a cork, which made walking in a straight line particularly difficult. In no time at all, she was lost again. Stella was delighted. She’d never really had the chance to get lost before and found it a perfectly delicious feeling, not knowing where she might come out next or who she might meet.

  One couldn’t help where one got lost, so it wasn’t entirely Stella’s fault that she found herself up on deck where Felix had told her not to go. She just happened across a ladder – which she climbed – only to enter the wolf kennels, filled with the smell of wet fur and sweet hay. She tried to tell herself that she wasn’t technically out on deck, since the kennels had a roof and some canvas walls, but these were flapping about like anything, with icy air whistling in through the gaps, along with occasional flurries of snow and steam from the great ship’s funnels. She could hear the wind roaring and the waves beating against the wooden sides.

  Stella was just thinking that she really shouldn’t be here, and ought to get back down below, when a heavy thump made her turn around.

  There was a boy at the back of the kennels, shifting great big piles of hay. He looked about a year older than Stella, with very dark hair that reached almost to his shoulders, golden brown skin and shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow.

  Stella felt a twinge of jealousy at his light brown skin. Until she’d started at the village school, she’d always assumed that there were other white children like her. But all the other kids at school were pink or black or brown. No one was white like she was, absolutely nobody. She came home from her first day crying, and when she told Felix the reason why, he had said, ‘Oh, my darling, it simply doesn’t do to be jealous of other people’s skins. Or of their possessions, or good fortune, or little triumphs. Nothing lies down that road but misery. The man – or woman – who walks around constantly comparing their lives to others’ will never be happy.’

  ‘But I’m different from all of them. No one else had white hair or skin. They said I was a ghost girl! Why can’t I just be normal?’

  Felix scooped her up in his arms and kissed the top of her head. ‘I tried to be normal once, and it made me utterly miserable,’ he said. ‘So I gave it up and have been perfectly content ever since. It is no great achievement to be the same as everybody else, Stella. Being different is a perfectly fine thing to be, I promise you.’

  Back on deck, Stella took a step further into the kennels and called a greeting to the boy at the back, raising her voice to be heard over the gale.

  He turned around and lifted his eyebrows in surprise at the sight of her. ‘Hello there,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect to see anyone else up here. Haven’t you noticed there’s a storm coming?’

  ‘You’re here, aren’t you?’

  ‘Sure, but I’m looking after the wolves.’ The boy’s clothes were covered in hay, and there were even pieces of it sticking out of his hair. He had brown eyes and wore a silver wolf pendant attached to a cord of leather around his neck. He also had an earring dangling from his left ea
r – Stella was pretty sure it was a wolf’s fang. It made him look like a pirate, which made her like him instantly.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Shay Silverton Kipling.’

  ‘Captain Kipling’s son?’ Stella recognised the name of their expedition’s captain from all the times Felix had mentioned him.

  ‘That’s right,’ the boy replied.

  ‘I’m Stella Starflake Pearl.’

  Shay grinned. ‘I know who you are. You’re Felix’s daughter. He’s visited our house to plan expeditions before. Mum says he’s one of the most charming men she’s ever met. He talks about you all the time, you know.’

  Stella was pleased that Felix had talked about her, although she hoped he’d only said nice things and not shared any stories where she had been bad – like the time she had tried to give Gruff a haircut, but ended up making him look like a giant white poodle, which had been very embarrassing for them both.

  ‘Can I help?’ She gestured towards the canvas wall. ‘I’m not afraid. I like storms.’

  ‘I hate to break it to you, but this isn’t the storm. This is just a touch of rain. Trust me, when the storm catches up with us, you’ll know about it.’

  The words were barely out of his mouth before the ship gave a great lurching, bucking movement that hurled the children and the wolves against one of the tent’s thin canvas walls.

  The storm had finally arrived. But the canvas wasn’t strong enough to take their weight and instantly tore free of its ropes. Before they knew what was happening, Stella and Shay were out on the open deck, slipping and sliding across the soaking wet boards whilst the rain lashed at their skin like thousands of salt needles.

  ‘The wolves!’ Shay yelled, gesturing at the two that had fallen out with them. ‘We have to get them back in or they’ll be washed overboard!’

  As the ship gave another stomach-churning lurch, Stella thought that they were in danger of getting washed overboard themselves. Felix would be absolutely furious if he knew she was up here. But no wolves were going to get swept away tonight if Stella had anything to do with it, so she wrapped her arms around the nearest one – a reddish-coloured wolf with soft brown eyes. Shay grabbed the other, picked it up and hurried back towards the canvas wall of the kennel. Stella tried to follow but she wasn’t strong enough to lift the wolf, and the next moment another great wave crashed into the ship.

  The wooden deck made a groaning sound, and Stella and the wolf fell back against the railings. For a moment she couldn’t tell what was up or down, what was sea and what was stars. Then a huge flash of lightning lit up the sky, making it almost as bright as daylight, and a cold, foaming wave reached right over the side of the ship and tried to pluck her from the deck, drenching her in the process.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Stella gasped as the wolf whined and panted in her arms. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got you. I won’t let go.’

  She struggled back to her feet and took a lurching step in the direction of the kennel. Thunder broke overhead so loudly that it was almost like the sky was being cracked in two. The deck suddenly fell away from Stella’s feet as the ship took another plunge over the edge of a giant wave. She fell back, and this time she was higher than the railings and there was nothing to stop her from sailing right over them – out, out, out towards the sea.

  As she flew over the side – beyond the point of no return – she couldn’t tell whether the roaring in her ears was from the pounding of the waves, or the crack of the thunder, or just the thrumming of her own blood beating against her eardrums. She heard Shay shout her name, but her jaw was too locked up with fear to call back. Her arms were still clamped tight around the wolf as she screwed up her eyes and tried to brace herself for the shock of the icy water hitting her skin; the terrible, black, greedy sucking of the ocean that would draw her right underneath the surface with the drowned men and the mermaids and the sunken pirate treasure.

  Only it never came. Instead she landed with a crash and a thump on something solid. And then everything went unnaturally, eerily quiet. The wolf squirmed out of her grip and Stella sat up, trying to work out what was happening. Her back gave a twinge of protest but she seemed to be all in one piece. An oar clattered against her foot and she realised that she had landed in one of the lifeboats.

  ‘Are you all right down there?’

  Stella looked up and saw Shay peering over the railings at her.

  ‘I think so,’ she called back.

  ‘Thank the stars! And Kayko?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The wolf.’

  ‘She’s okay too.’

  ‘Man, when I saw you go flying over those railings I thought you’d had it for sure! Look, please don’t start crying or anything – I’ll have you up from there in a jiffy.’

  ‘I have no intention of crying,’ Stella replied, feeling quite indignant at the suggestion. ‘What happened to the storm anyway? Is it over?’

  Shay hesitated, then shook his head and said, ‘It’s not over.’

  ‘Then how come it’s so quiet?’

  It had completely stopped raining. There wasn’t even a puff of wind – just a strange heavy feeling in the air, as if the sky was pressing down on her.

  ‘It’s the Eye,’ Shay said.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Eye of the storm,’ Shay said. ‘Look there.’

  He pointed down into the water and Stella craned her neck over the side of the lifeboat. She couldn’t work out what she was seeing at first but then, suddenly, she gasped. Where she had expected to see only dark waves, there was a huge great eye staring up at her, shining silver in the moonlight. It was easily the most enormous eye Stella had ever seen. The pupil alone was wider than she was tall – a deep, dark black, the colour of strange and terrible secrets. The silvery iris rippled like water, and gigantic eyelashes, as thick as a man, reached right up out of the sea to brush against Stella’s lifeboat.

  ‘Great Scott!’ she muttered, staring down, torn between fascination and dread. There was something almost hypnotising about that eye, something that made it hard to look away.

  ‘We don’t have much time. Hold tight, I’m going to pull you up,’ Shay called from the deck, already tugging at the ropes.

  Stella looked back over the side. If she were to reach over she would actually be able to touch one of the eyelashes with her fingertips. The fleeting thought occurred to her that perhaps she should grab hold of one and try to yank it free. An eyelash from the Eye of a storm would, after all, be a fine addition to the curiosities on display at the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club. The president was sure to be pleased with her, and such a trophy might help persuade him that she really was cut out to be an explorer. She reached her hand out over the side, all set to do it. But then she recalled something Felix had once said to her.

  Sometimes you should let sleeping polar bears lie …

  Stella thought that the same general rule probably applied here. Poking the Eye of a storm on her very first voyage seemed like a rather foolhardy thing to do, plus it would have been very rude. Stella had always liked storms and had no wish to offend this one.

  ‘Goodbye, storm,’ she whispered instead, as Shay tugged on the ropes above and the lifeboat rose steadily up towards the deck.

  ‘Well, you’re a sparky thing, aren’t you?’ Shay said with a grin when she finally drew level. ‘Exactly what I’d expect from Felix’s daughter, really.’ He gave her his hand and helped her scramble out before scooping out the wolf. Then he turned back to Stella and, to her surprise, threw his arms around her and squeezed her tight in a great big hug. ‘You wonderful girl – thank you, thank you, thank you!’ he said. ‘Kayko would have been lost if it weren’t for you.’ He let her go, glanced out towards the horizon and said, ‘The calm won’t last. Let’s batten down the hatches while we still can.’

  Stella cast one last look down at the Eye before following Shay to the wolf pen. They just about had time to get inside and tie the wall firmly down
before the Eye of the storm closed, and the gale started up around them once again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘How come you’re looking after the wolves, anyway?’ Stella asked Shay as the two of them set about properly securing the canvas walls of the kennel.

  ‘Dad says a proper explorer should always see to his animals before seeing to himself,’ he replied. ‘Seems only fair. Besides, it’s easier for me because I speak their language.’

  He pulled the silver wolf pendant free of his shirt, and Stella realised that this was no ordinary pendant at all, but a whisperer’s wolf – a magical clockwork creature.

  ‘You’re a wolf whisperer!’ she said.

  Felix had told her about whisperers: amazing people who could speak to animals, but who were quite rare, and hardly anyone was born with the gift these days. Felix had once met a man who claimed to be a frog whisperer, and carried a small frog around with him in a box, telling anyone who would listen that it was a genius who could solve all the problems of the civilized world. But the frog seemed very uninterested in whatever conversation the man was trying to have with it, and Felix wasn’t convinced that he was really a frog whisperer at all.

  ‘Can I see the wolf?’ Stella asked, a little breathlessly. The ship gave another rolling lurch and she grabbed hold of a rope to steady herself.

  ‘Sure.’ Shay slipped the pendant from around his neck and dropped it into Stella’s palm. The animal had been sitting up with its eyes closed but as soon as it touched her skin it lay down on her hand in one quick movement, its nose between its paws. The silver was warm and Stella could feel the soft thump of a tiny heartbeat deep within it. Animals like these were only given to whisperers who’d been rigorously tested and vetted and verified by the Royal Guild of Whisperers. Otherwise there was nothing to stop any old person from putting a frog in a box and claiming he could speak to it.