Pugs of the Frozen North

by Philip Reeve

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 by Philip Reeve

  Cover art and interior illustrations copyright © 2015 by Sarah McIntyre

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Originally published in hardcover by Oxford University Press, Oxford, in 2015.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Reeve, Philip, author.

  Pugs of the frozen north / by Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre.—

  First American edition.

  p. cm—(Not-so-impossible tales)

  “Originally published in hardcover by Oxford University Press, Oxford, in 2015.”

  Summary: New friends Sika and Shen try to beat the odds and win the Great Northern Race—in a sled pulled by a team of sixty-six pugs—in hopes of meeting the Snowfather and having him grant their wish.

  ISBN 978-0-385-38796-5 (trade)

  ISBN 978-0-385-38798-9 (ebook)

  [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Sled dog racing—Fiction.

  3. Pug—Fiction. 4. Dogs—Fiction. 5. Magic—Fiction. 6. Arctic regions—Fiction.] I. McIntyre, Sarah, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.R25576Pug 2016

  [Fic]—dc23 2014044369

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  a

  For Dulcie and Laurence

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  About the Author

  Winter came in the night, like a white sheet laid over the world. It came so coldly and so fast that the waves of the ocean froze as they rolled. The good ship Lucky Star froze with them, trapped tight in the suddenly solid sea.

  Shen, the cabin boy, the youngest member of the crew, stirred in his sleep as the sounds of rippling and splashing faded into frozen silence. He snuggled deeper under the covers, trying to keep warm. Into the silence came other noises. First, the creaking of timber as the ice tightened its grip upon the old ship’s sides. Then the voice of Captain Jeggings, bellowing, “All hands on deck!”

  The crew bumbled blinking from their bunks. Able Seaman Bo; Mungbean, the ship’s cook; and Shen. They stumbled out on deck and stared at the frozen waves, which reared up all around them.

  “Don’t just stand there!” shouted Captain Jeggings, hauling an icy rope. “Get us out of here!”

  The rope snapped in his hands with a sound like breaking glass. The Lucky Star groaned and quivered as the ice clenched tighter.

  “What will we do?” asked Shen.

  But Captain Jeggings didn’t know. Neither did Able Seaman Bo. Neither did Mungbean. They’d weathered storms and sat out still waters, but they’d never seen a sea like this before.

  Creak. Crunch. Big tusks of ice pushed the planks apart and pierced the Lucky Star’s sides. Slosh. Gurgle. Cold black water that hadn’t frozen yet came swirling in. The ship sagged, and all the icicles that decked her rigging tinkled cheerfully But Captain Jeggings couldn’t see anything to be cheerful about.

  “The cargo!” he shouted. “We must save the cargo!”

  All summer long, the Lucky Star had been cruising from port to port, selling this and buying that. Two thousand chunky-knit sweaters from the Isles of Aran, a secondhand snowmobile…and sixty-six pugs. Captain Jeggings had said those tiny dogs would sell like hot pies. Now, down in the leaking hold, they let out a terrible howling as cold sea sloshed round their paws.

  “The dogs!” shouted Shen. “We must save the dogs!”

  Mungbean and Bo went running down the steep stairway that led to the cargo holds and came struggling back up with crates of sweaters. Captain Jeggings hauled the snowmobile over the ship’s side. Meanwhile, Shen turned over the boxes where more pugs were sleeping. The tiny dogs raced up on deck and jumped off the Lucky Star’s sides onto the ice.

  Shen had heard people talk about rats leaving a sinking ship before, but he’d never heard of pugs leaving a freezing one. There’s a first time for everything, he thought. He dragged the sack that held their leashes and harnesses up onto the deck and threw it after them.

  The Lucky Star shuddered again, squeezed in the teeth of the ice. Planks popped out of the deck. The mast trembled like a chopped tree. Captain Jeggings shouted as he jumped over the side.

  But Shen had thought of something else that needed to be saved. “The dog food! It’s still on board!”

  “It’ll have to stay there, then!” yelled Bo, jumping down onto the ice with Mungbean. Shen passed the smallest of the pugs down to them, then jumped after them.

  With a final heave, the ice crushed the old ship flat.

  Shen and the pugs stood and shivered, while Captain Jeggings and the others got the snowmobile ready. Its engine coughed and snarled as they started it up. Into its trailer they piled the crates of cargo—but there was no room for the dogs.

  “We can’t leave them behind!” wailed Shen.

  “Well, we can’t stay here with them,” said Captain Jeggings. “This ice might melt as quickly as it came, and then where would we be? Way out at sea without a ship under us. Awkward!” (He had told Shen that the sixty-six pugs would sell like hot pies, but he meant that they would sell in hot pies—his aunt ran a pie shop at home, and she was always looking for new ingredients. They were by far the least valuable bit of his cargo, so he had decided to leave them behind.)

  “Maybe they’ll follow us!” said Shen. He climbed aboard the snowmobile with Bo and Mungbean and the captain. “Come on, doggies!” he called to the pugs.

  The dogs looked up at him, heads to one side. Their hot breath steamed and smoldered in the cold air like the breath of sixty-six tiny dragons.

  The snowmobile set off with a roar. The tower of crates in its trailer teetered and swayed as the snowmobile weaved its way between the frozen waves.

  The pugs sat where they were and watched it go.

  “Come on!” shouted Shen. But they didn’t seem to understand.

  “Wait for me, Captain!” he yelled, and jumped down off the snowmobile. The frozen waves were slipperier than hills of glass. He slithered over them, back to where the pugs sat, and when they saw Shen coming, their tails began to wag and they ran to meet him.

  “Come on, doggies!” he said, patting sixty-six small round heads and getting licked by sixty-six small rough tongues. “You’ve got to follow Captain Jeggings….”

  But when he turned to look for the snowmobile, it was nowhere to be seen. Either Captain Jeggings hadn’t heard when Shen shouted for him to wait…or he had decided that Shen and sixty-six pugs weren’t worth waiting for.

  Shen could still hear the snowmobile’s engine buzzing like a distant bee. He started after it, followi
ng the scratch marks that its tracks had left along the troughs between the waves. The pugs seemed to understand now that they were meant to come with him, and they did. But they weren’t used to walking on ice. Their claws skittered and scrabbled at the frozen sea. They lost their footing and fell on their faces, or slid on their tummies down the steep sides of the stilled waves.

  “This is hopeless!” said Shen as he slithered to and fro, trying to help them. The sound of the engine was growing fainter and fainter in the distance. Soon Shen could not hear it at all. He kept following the snowmobile’s tracks while the pugs skidded after him. Big, feathery flakes of snow began to fall. It made the pugs sneeze and covered the tracks completely.

  Through the snowflakes, Shen saw something on the ice ahead. It was one of the crates from the snowmobile trailer. It had burst open, and a pile of woolly sweaters had spilled out. Shen guessed it hadn’t fallen off the trailer by accident. Bo and Mungbean had always been kind to him, ever since they’d found him as a baby, floating in an upturned umbrella in the South China Sea. They must have tried to persuade Captain Jeggings to stop and wait. When he wouldn’t, they’d quietly heaved the sweater crate off the trailer so that at least Shen would have something to keep him warm.

  “Thanks, Mungbean,” said Shen. “Thanks, Bo.”

  He put on a couple of the sweaters and looked back. The pugs were trailing after him. They were getting better at walking on the ice, but they were all shivering with the cold, the poor things. Shen took out his pocket-knife. Quickly, he cut the sleeves off thirty-three sweaters and made cozy body stockings for the pugs.

  As he was cramming the pugs into the sleeves, he noticed a new sound. Rummmble, it went. Rummmble.

  At first he hoped it might be the snowmobile coming back….

  Then he worried that the ice was cracking.

  Then he realized that it was the pugs’ empty tummies rumbling. No wonder they were going so slowly! They weren’t just cold and frightened—they were hungry!

  They sat there sadly in their new sweaters, tails down, ears drooping, waiting for their breakfast.

  Shen scrambled to the top of a frozen wave and looked around. Through the snow, he saw the dark line of cliffs not far off.

  The waves must have hidden it from Captain Jeggings and the others. They would not have seen the lonely lights that twinkled there.

  “Wait here!” he told the pugs. “I’m going to get help!”

  He spread some of the armless sweaters on the snow, and the pugs piled onto them, snuggling together in a big heap. He laid more sweaters over them and told them that he would soon be back.

  Then he set off across the motionless ocean.

  It was hard work walking on that frozen sea. In places the ice creaked alarmingly, and Shen had to back away and find a different route for fear it might not take his weight. In others it was as solid and as clear as thick glass. He brushed away the snow and looked down into cold, gleaming depths, where fish hung imprisoned. Captain Jeggings had been right about one thing: surely there had never been a winter like this before!

  As Shen reached the shore, the sun came up, peeking nervously over the edge of the icy world and scattering sequins on the snow. It shone on the frozen fjord that lay between the cliffs. It cast long shadows from the spindly legs of the houses that perched on stilts along the fjord’s edge. Smoke was drifting from the houses’ tin chimneys. Shen thought they were the coziest, funniest-looking houses he had ever seen. How nice it must be, to live in a house on stilts! He ran up the frozen beach toward the nearest.

  A girl no older than Shen was sweeping snow off the front step. Above the door some letters had been nailed to a wooden plank. They spelled out a mysterious message:

  PO OF ICE

  “What’s a po of ice?” asked Shen.

  The girl looked up. She had a round face, and her cheeks were rosy with the effort of sweeping. “It’s supposed to say post office,” she said. “But the s and the t blew away. Also one of the f’s.” She tossed her broom aside and held out a small, mittened hand for Shen to shake. “I’m Sika. Who are you?”

  “I’m Shen. I’ve been shipwrecked. Oh, please, I need help and dog food!”

  Sika frowned. She had thick black eyebrows like lines drawn with charcoal. They were very good for frowning with. “You have dogs?”

  “Yes! They are waiting out on the ice! I have to get them to shore quickly, before the ice melts!”

  “Oh, it won’t melt!” said Sika. “Don’t you know what this is? Didn’t you notice how suddenly the cold came? This is no ordinary winter. This is a magical winter. A once-in-a-lifetime winter. My grandpa has told me about winters like this. That ice won’t melt till spring. But tell me about your dogs. How many do you have?”

  “Sixty-six,” said Shen.

  “Sixty-six!”

  “Yes. So I’m afraid they’re going to need a lot of food,” said Shen. “And I don’t have any money….”

  Sika was looking at him, and her eyes sparkled just as brightly as the sunlit snow. “Never mind money! If I give you some dog food, could I have some of your dogs?”

  Shen shrugged. He hadn’t really thought yet about what he was going to do with the sixty-six pugs. He supposed he couldn’t keep them. Not all of them, anyway. And this Po of Ice looked like the sort of place where pugs might be happy. “Yes,” he said.

  Sika turned and ran inside the Po of Ice. Shen had a glimpse through the door as it closed behind her. It was snug and cluttered inside, and he saw shelves with tins of soup and racks of tools and big bins labeled OATMEAL and SYRUP. The Po of Ice wasn’t just a post office—it was a general store as well, but it didn’t look as if it was a very busy one.

  “Ma! Grandpa!” he could hear Sika shouting. “I’m going to help a boy who’s been shipwrecked! He has dogs! He’s going to give us some!”

  A moment later she came slamming back out, carrying a bin nearly as big as she was. This one was labeled DOG FOOD.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’ll use Grandpa’s sled to get out to your camp on the ice.”

  Shen helped her carry the dog food bin around the side of the Po of Ice, to a shed.

  When Sika booted the door open, the pale snow light shone in and showed Shen a strange shape buried in tarps. As his eyes got used to the dim light, Shen saw that it was a magnificent sled, with sleek whalebone runners.

  “I’ve never seen a sled like that!” he gasped.

  “Grandpa built this sled when he was a boy,” said Sika. “But we don’t have a dog team to pull it anymore. That’s why I’m so glad you showed up! Just in time, too! On the first day of True Winter!”

  Shen wasn’t quite sure what she meant.

  “So, if you don’t have any dogs to pull it,” he said, “how are we going to get it out onto the ice?”

  Sika did an eyebrow thing at him, as if to ask, How stupid are you?

  “We’re going to push it, of course!” she said.

  Up the steep slope behind the Po of Ice they went, puffing and panting, pushing the heavy sled ahead of them. They soon grew hot, despite the cold. Sika pulled off her mittens and hood and let the snowflakes settle in her hair.

  But it was all worth it when they reached the top of the headland. From there they could see the pugs out on the ice. The heap of little dogs under their blanket of sweaters looked like a knitted tent.

  Shen and Sika climbed onto the sled beside the dog food bin, and Sika pushed off. The sled went swooshing down the headland’s flank. Its runners threw up huge fans of powdery snow as Sika leaned this way and that to steer the sled around the rocks and frozen bushes that loomed in its path.

  “Wheeeee!” she shouted.

  “Waaaaaargh!” screamed Shen.

  The cliffs at the headland’s edge were drawing closer.

  But Sika knew the headland well, and she had aimed the sled at the place where the cliffs were lowest. They weren’t really cliffs at all, more like a stony step, and the sled shot over it, landed wit
h a thump on the sea ice, and kept going, slithering between the frozen waves almost all the way to the camp.

  The heap of pugs heard them coming. Sixty-six small dark specks bounced and yapped upon the ice, wagging their tails in welcome.

  “There are the dogs!” said Shen.

  “Where?” asked Sika, looking around. “Those? Those are dogs?”

  The pugs had caught the scent of dog food. They crowded around the sled, yipping and whining, wagging their tails. Shen opened the dog food bin and shoveled out scoopfuls of kibble. Soon the yapping was replaced by crunching.

  Shen looked around at them happily. Then he looked behind him. Sika was sitting on the sled. She had her head in her hands, and she was crying.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Oomph!” went Sika. Tears trickled down her face and dripped off her chin and froze before they hit the ice, where they landed with tiny plinking sounds. “Oomph!” she said. “When you said you had sixty-six dogs, I thought you meant real ones!”

  “These are real ones!” said Shen.

  “No they’re not! They couldn’t pull a sled!”

  “Oh!” said Shen. Now he understood. So that was why she had wanted some of his dogs. He looked at the sled—the bigness of it. It needed a team of huskies to tow it, not a team of pugs.

  “I thought Grandpa could enter the race after all!” sniffled Sika. “And now I will have to go home and tell him it’s hopeless.”

  “What race?” asked Shen.

  “The Great Northern Race,” said Sika miserably. “When True Winter comes, the teams arrive from all over the north. They will race through the night forests and across the frozen sea, all the way to the Snowfather’s palace at the top of the world.”