The Polar Bear Explorers' Club

by Alex Bell

  Don’t cry, Stella told herself. Don’t cry. She’ ll hear you …

  And then she was outside in the snow, and there were drops of blood all around, shockingly scarlet. Something bad had just happened. Something really, really bad …

  Stella sat up with a gasp, and found herself face to face with Koa, who was peering at her in a concerned kind of way. Shay stood just behind the shadow wolf. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That must have been some dream. You were thrashing around hard enough to put your foot through the blanket.’

  Stella glanced down and realised that the blankets were indeed in a terrible tangle. Beanie and Ethan were still sound asleep in their own blanket piles, snoring contentedly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Shay asked, still looking at her intently.

  ‘Yes,’ Stella said quickly. ‘It was only a dream.’

  She couldn’t help shivering as she remembered it. The burnt feet had never been there before. That had been new. And quite horrible. For some reason she couldn’t put into words, she didn’t want the others to know about her nightmare. She’d never mentioned it to anyone, not even to Felix. She wasn’t sure why. Only that it felt like something she should keep to herself.

  So she was relieved when Shay shrugged and said, ‘All right, Sparky. Whatever you say. Let’s wake the others. We ought to be on our way anyway.’

  After a hasty and unsatisfying breakfast of tinned Spam, the four junior explorers emerged from the tunnel only to squint and sneeze in the bright light that reflected blindingly off the snow all around them.

  ‘Snow,’ Ethan complained. ‘Just nothing but snow as far as the eye can see. I knew polar exploration was a waste of time. We’re not going to make any fantastic discoveries here. Absolutely none.’

  The others ignored him and proceeded to get out the maps strapped to the back of the sled. Unfortunately, it looked as if whoever had packed the map tube had done so in some haste, or perhaps they had just grabbed the first maps that had come to hand, but either way, most of them were completely useless.

  ‘This one is a map of the Scorpion Jungle,’ Stella said, wrinkling her nose in disgust. ‘That’s miles and miles from here. And this is a map for the Land of Pyramids, which is even further away.’

  By the time she’d pulled out maps for the Sapphire Desert, Volcano Island and the Lost City of Muja-Muja, Stella was beginning to think that they had brought no maps of the Icelands with them at all. But then she found one, right at the bottom of the tube. The Polar Bear explorers’ crest was stamped at the top of the map, and a snarling yeti drawing in the bottom right-hand corner held a box that contained the key to all the different symbols. Only a small proportion of the map had been filled in. The rest was left blank for the part that hadn’t been discovered yet.

  ‘Okay,’ Stella said, smoothing the map out on a box of moustache wax, enjoying the way the thick paper crinkled beneath her fingers. ‘So the Bold Adventurer dropped us off here.’ She pointed to the edge of the filled-in section. ‘And we set off north towards the ice bridge. Which means we’re probably somewhere around here.’ She pointed at a blank spot and then passed the pencils over to Beanie, who was very good at art and quickly drew the broken ice bridge and mountain onto the parchment.

  There was then a brief delay whilst they tried to decide which direction they should head in next. They all agreed that their most important issue was food. The salted beef and iced gems were for the unicorn and wolves, which only left the Spam and mint cake for the young explorers. And, as Ethan pointed out, those supplies wouldn’t keep them going forever. Plus, no one wanted to eat Spam for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

  Stella set the explorer’s compass to the Food heading, and waited whilst the arrow spun around in circles a few times before finally pointing straight ahead. Ethan was obviously still sulking and refused to get back in the sled with them, saying he’d ride the unicorn instead, which suited Stella just fine as she’d had more than enough of the magician’s bony elbows sticking into her ribs.

  They set off across the snow, with the wolf sled following Stella’s compass and leading the way, and Ethan riding Glacier a few yards behind. The cold air stung their faces as they moved along, forcing them to wrap their scarves up almost to their eyes. Stella pulled her hood back up over her head, and Beanie produced a striped knitted hat his mum had made for him, pulling it down low over his pointed ears. It had a narwhal stitched on the front and a pom-pom on top, and it clashed horribly with everything else he wore, but it was his favourite hat in the world, and Beanie refused to be parted with it.

  Ethan had been right about there being nothing to see. So far, at least, it really did look like there wasn’t anything there but snow and ice. Stella hoped it was going to get more interesting up ahead. It would be pretty disappointing if she returned from her first solo expedition without making any fantastic discoveries or collecting any curiosities, grotesqueries or rarities to put on display in the wooden cabinets Felix had had specially made for that purpose back home.

  They’d been travelling for a while – and the frozen landscape racing by had started to seem like one endless white blur to Stella – when, suddenly, Shay gave a shout of alarm and brought the wolves to such an abrupt halt that both Stella and Beanie slid right out of their seats and ended up sprawled on top of each other in the foot compartment.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ Stella complained, trying to disentangle herself from Beanie.

  But Shay wasn’t listening. He was looking back at Ethan and yelling for him to stop. The magician was cantering straight towards them on the unicorn, a puzzled frown on his face. It didn’t look like he was going to slow down any time soon. Stella heard Shay say a bad word under his breath and then scramble off the back of the sled, his boots crunching in the snow as he ran straight into the path of the oncoming unicorn. For a horrible moment Stella thought he was going to get run over and be trampled into the snow, which was bound to be a pretty messy affair, but Ethan dragged on the reins just in time, and the unicorn reared up on its hind legs, one pearly hoof narrowly missing Shay’s head.

  ‘Have you gone quite mad?’ Ethan gasped, staring down with a shocked expression. ‘I might have bashed your brains in!’

  Shay didn’t reply, but reached up for Ethan’s cloak and dragged him from the saddle, ignoring his indignant cries of protest. ‘Look!’ he snapped, forcing the magician around to face the direction they were travelling in.

  ‘There’s nothing there but ice, you fool!’

  ‘Look properly!’

  Stella gasped as she noticed what had been invisible to her before. Dozens and dozens of tiny igloos were spread out before them. Camouflaged against the endless white snow, Stella hadn’t seen them to begin with, but if the wolf sled and the unicorn had carried on they would have surely smashed the miniature homes to pieces.

  ‘Well, how was I to know?’ Ethan said, shaking Shay off. ‘I’m a magician, not a psychic. And don’t ever touch me again!’

  Shay turned away from him, shaking his head in disgust, his long black hair brushing against the shoulders of his cloak as he returned to the wolf sled.

  ‘What do you think could be living in them?’ Stella asked. The igloos were a bit bigger than the penguin one Felix had given her, but still only a fraction of normal size.

  ‘It could be snow goblins,’ Beanie said. ‘Or cold crabs. Or frost bats. Or ice scorpions. Or—’

  ‘Surely ice scorpions don’t live in igloos?’ Stella replied.

  ‘Uncle Benedict says they’re fiendishly clever,’ Beanie said. ‘I bet they could build themselves some igloos if they wanted to.’

  ‘With pincers?’ Stella asked dubiously.

  ‘There’s only one way to find out what’s in there,’ Shay said. ‘Let’s go and introduce ourselves.’ He fumbled in his cloak pockets and brought out a well-thumbed, rather battered book entitled Captain Filibuster’s Guide to Expeditions and Exploration. Stella remembered that Shay’s father was Captain Kipling, an
d realised that Shay was probably training to be a captain too.

  Stella and Beanie scrambled out of the sled and followed Shay, with Ethan slouching along behind. They stopped when they got to the nearest igloo and Shay crouched down in the snow. ‘Making first contact with the locals,’ he muttered to himself as he thumbed through the book’s index. He opened the guide to the correct page and said, ‘Good day. We are members of the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club—’

  Ethan cleared his throat loudly behind him.

  ‘And the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club,’ Shay said, rolling his eyes. ‘We have travelled a long way to make the acquaintance of the indigenous peoples of this land, and would like to formally introduce ourselves so that we may cultivate your friendship and esteem.’

  ‘Does it really need to be that verbose?’ Ethan complained. ‘What’s wrong with just asking them to come out of their igloos?’

  ‘If they’re ice scorpions then they won’t understand what you say anyway,’ Beanie pointed out. ‘I’m sure it’s ice scorpions. There’re one hundred and eighty-three types of poisonous scorpion in the discovered world. And I bet there’s twice as many in the undiscovered world. Perhaps even three times as many.’

  ‘Put a stick through the front door and wriggle it about a bit,’ Ethan suggested, ignoring Beanie. ‘That will bring them out, whatever they are.’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ Stella said, aghast. ‘We’re guests here. We’ve got to be polite. And poking a stick into someone’s house is definitely not polite.’

  She was about to suggest kneeling down and peering into one of the igloos, but then it occurred to her that that was really every bit as rude, and besides, if there were snow goblins in there, then that was a certain way to get one’s eye poked out with a stick, or a claw, or some other pointy object.

  But then Beanie suddenly said, ‘Stella, look – there’s a butterfly on your shoulder!’

  Stella glanced up at the beautiful blue wings, almost as large as the palm of her hand. ‘It’s not a butterfly!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s a …’

  She was about to say ‘fairy’ but trailed off unsure. Stella had grown up around fairies – they had lived at the bottom of her garden for as long as she could remember, tempted in by the beautiful fairy houses Felix built for them. But this was quite unlike any fairy she’d ever seen. Its blue wings were like lace, and its body looked like lots of ice shards stuck together. Its eyes were two chips of pale blue within its angular face and it had long hair as white as Stella’s own. The long hair made Stella think it must be a girl, but it was very difficult to tell otherwise. Stella was used to girl fairies with petticoats puffing out their dresses and flowers in their hair, and boy fairies with shiny top hats and frock coats. But this creature wasn’t wearing any clothes at all and its body almost seemed to be made out of ice itself. And were those claws on the ends of its fingers? Stella had never heard of any fairy with claws before.

  The next moment dozens of the winged creatures were coming out of the igloos, filling the air with fluttering blue wings and glittering clouds of some kind of fairy dust. Stella heard Beanie sneeze behind her. Unfortunately, Beanie was allergic to fairy dust – as well as hamsters, daisies, ducks, horned frogs, spotted frogs and blue frogs. Most types of frogs, really.

  Soon Stella had them on both shoulders and arms, dangling from the ends of her fingers and perched on top of her hood. Some of the fairies, she noticed, sported waxed moustaches, very much like most of the men back home.

  ‘Hello,’ Stella said to the creatures, who gazed up at her with their cold blue eyes. ‘Are you … are you some kind of fairy?’

  ‘We’re frosties,’ the frosty said. ‘Fairies are distant cousins of ours. It’s a great pleasure to meet you and your intrepid explorer friends. Do you have time to pause your expedition long enough to take tea with us? We love throwing tea parties, but we don’t get guests out here too often.’

  Stella thought that a frosty tea party in the middle of the snow was just about the best thing she could think of. So she was surprised, and quite annoyed, when Ethan said in a cold, unfriendly voice, ‘Why? What do you want in return?’

  ‘Nothing at all!’ the frosty exclaimed.

  ‘So you’re just trying to be nice?’ Ethan said dubiously, as if he couldn’t think of anything more unlikely or preposterous. ‘To total strangers who you’ve never even met?’

  ‘Of course! Hospitality is very important to us. Please. Come this way.’

  ‘Are you deliberately trying to offend them?’ Stella hissed at Ethan as the frosties moved away. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of strangers being nice before?’

  The magician crossed his arms over his chest. ‘It’s just not my experience, that’s all,’ he said. ‘And I am the only one of us who’s ever been on an expedition before. You lot have got no idea. I could tell you some stories that would make your—’

  ‘Perhaps the Icelands are just more polite than the South Seas, or wherever it is you went, Prawn,’ Shay said, before glancing down at Koa, who had suddenly appeared again at his side. The shadow wolf was staring at the retreating frosties with her ears flattened right back against her head. ‘Still,’ Shay said, frowning, ‘I guess it never hurts to be careful.’

  Ethan shrugged. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he muttered, but followed along behind them.

  The frosties led the way past their igloos. Then they all fluttered down and brushed a layer of snow away to reveal a large door set into the ground. It was a bright, shining, golden colour, with a glittering handle. It took five of the frosties to drag the door back with a thud. The explorers craned forwards to see a set of steps disappearing into the darkness.

  Perhaps it was Ethan putting doubts in her mind, but Stella suddenly felt unsure. After all, walking blindly into a hole in the ground did seem a bit on the risky side.

  ‘What’s down there?’ Ethan said in a suspicious tone.

  ‘A dungeon,’ the frosty replied.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I’m joking!’ the frosty said. ‘Really, there’s no dungeon. Who ever heard of a dungeon with a golden door? The steps lead down to the goose garden.’

  ‘Is that a code word for dungeon?’ Ethan said.

  ‘No, it’s where we keep our geese. You’ve got to see them. They’re quite extraordinary.’

  ‘Extraordinary geese,’ Ethan repeated in a flat voice. He shook his head. ‘I’ll be laughed out of the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club. Guffawed out, probably.’

  Privately, Stella also thought there was probably a limit to how extraordinary geese could be. When she’d dreamed about the kinds of discoveries she might make in the Icelands she’d had marvels and wonders a little larger in mind. Like a giant dinosaur frozen in a block of ice, or a lost city, or a strange beast no one had ever heard of before. But sometimes an explorer just has to take whatever discoveries they can find, and Stella figured that a goose garden was better than nothing, and would at least give them something else to put in their Flag Report when they got back to the club. Besides, they’d already discovered a new type of fairy, which was sure to count in their favour even if Stella didn’t intend to take one back to be pinned to a board in a display case. She resolved to keep a close eye on Ethan – in case he tried to stuff one of the frosties into his pocket for the sea fairy cabinet back at the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club.

  ‘Thank you very much for the offer. We would love to see your incredible geese,’ she said, and stepped down to the underground staircase.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The frosties led the way, followed by the explorers and the shadow wolf. Ethan was the last to step through the door and he deliberately left it open behind him. No matter what the others said, he still had a bad feeling about this, and wanted to be able to make a quick getaway if the frosties suddenly turned nasty.

  The staircase curved round and round in a spiral that made the explorers feel dizzy after a little while. It was damp and very, very cold. When Stella put her gl
oved hand on the wall to steady herself, her fingertips left trails in the frost that coated the stones. Finally, the staircase came to an end, and Stella was surprised to step through an archway and find herself blinking in the sunlight once again.

  ‘How have we ended up back above ground?’ she asked. ‘The stairs went down the whole way.’

  ‘Sometimes if you go down for long enough in the Icelands, you start to go back up,’ one of the frosties said with a shrug.

  The explorers squinted for a moment as their eyes adjusted to the light, and then Stella gasped as she took in the goose garden around her. They were in a walled space and there was no snow on the ground, but everything sparkled in a silver coat of frost. Colourful bunting hung from the branches of leafless trees and a blue pond glittered in front of them. Geese paddled in the water, sunned themselves on the banks, and waddled amongst the trees – but they weren’t entirely white like normal geese. They were covered in little gold spots.

  ‘Aren’t they fine?’ one of the frosties said proudly. She might have been the frosty who first landed on Stella’s shoulder, but they looked so much alike that it was hard to tell, especially without clothes to distinguish them. ‘We purchased them at the Goose Fair last year. They had all kinds of geese there: dragon geese, barking geese, hollow geese, raspberry geese—’

  ‘There’s no horned geese here, are there?’ Beanie demanded. ‘Because, you know, they can be extremely dangerous. Extremely.’

  Beside him, Ethan snorted. ‘Doubtful.’

  ‘Seven explorers from the Jungle Cat Explorers’ Club have been gored by horned geese in the last fifty years,’ Beanie said.

  Ethan shrugged dismissively. ‘Jungle Cat explorers are buffoons,’ he said. ‘Most of them probably perish falling on their own spears.’

  ‘Twelve Jungle Cat explorers have died falling on their own spears in the last one hundred years,’ Beanie said promptly. ‘Another sixty-three have injured themselves, including Sir Hamish Humphrey Smitt, who lost an eye.’