by Alex Bell
“Here you go,” she said, holding it out.
The mermaid took it and immediately slid it behind her ear.
“Thanks, I guess,” she said. “Although I wish you people wouldn’t steal them from us in the first place.”
Stella swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” she said.
She noticed that another couple of mermaids had broken the surface just behind the first one. She could only see their outline in the darkness, and it was impossible to tell how many of them there were altogether. They didn’t seem as if they were going to attack, but Stella wasn’t sure what they wanted, either.
“You shouldn’t be out here on that hippo, you know,” the mermaid said. “It’s not safe.”
Had Stella imagined it, or was there just a hint of a threat in those words?
“We’re trying to find our way to the Black Ice Bridge,” said Felix.
The mermaid gave him a strange look. “On an inflatable hippo?” she said. “It’ll take you a very long time. Besides which, only fools go to the Black Ice Bridge. You’ll perish, for sure.”
“That’s our business,” Ethan said. “Look, how about a bargain? We need to get to shore somehow. What would it take for you to pull us there?”
There was a little gasp from the mermaids, and the one in front looked horrified. “Pull you?” she said. “Like some common sea cow?” Her eyes went cold. “You talk of bargains, but what’s to stop us from simply taking everything you have after we’ve drowned you?”
Stella gulped.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” Felix quickly said. “I assure you there was no offense meant. We have only the utmost respect for merfolk.”
“And I really don’t want to be drowned by a mermaid on my birthday,” Beanie said miserably.
“Birthday?” the mermaid said sharply. She sighed and glanced over her shoulder. “One of them has their birthday today.”
There was a soft sigh from the gathered mermaids behind her.
“We cannot drown a person on their birthday,” the mermaid said, turning back to them. “It’s against mermaid law.”
The mermaid swam slowly over and peered up at Beanie with her impossibly large eyes. Now that she was closer, Stella could see that her skin was covered in scars, and a fresh open wound stretched down her right-hand side.
“We have to give you a gift,” she said, sounding disgruntled. “It’s the law. So name it—what would you have us give you? A ride back to shore, I suppose.”
Beanie slowly shook his head. “Thank you,” he said. “But I’d rather not have a gift that someone was forced to give me. We’ll find some other way of getting there.”
“Beanie!” Ethan hissed.
The medic ignored him and said to the mermaid, “How were you hurt?”
“It’s all the ships passing back and forth,” the mermaid said. “Sometimes we can’t get out of the way in time. Sometimes fishing boats hunt after us deliberately, hoping to catch us as curiosities to sell to the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club.”
“I’m sorry,” Beanie said, sounding stricken.
The mermaid narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. “Why?”
“You shouldn’t be hunted. Or have your flowers stolen. It’s cruel and wrong.” He reached out his hand. “Do you mind?”
The mermaid slowly shook her head, and the next second green sparks fizzed from the end of Beanie’s fingers as he used his healing magic to knit the mermaid’s torn skin back together. Apart from looking a little red, it seemed like she’d never been injured at all, and Stella found herself thinking that Beanie’s healing magic must be getting stronger.
The mermaid ran her webbed fingers over her side in surprise, before looking back at Beanie, blinking her large eyes rapidly. “Why would you do that? What do you want in return?”
“You needed help, and I was able to help you,” Beanie said simply. “I don’t want anything in return. There’s no reason why explorers and mermaids can’t be friends.”
Some of the other mermaids had come closer to see what was going on. Stella saw that they had gills in their neck and that there was something fishlike and cold about their eyes too.
“There is every reason in the world why we can’t be friends,” the mermaid said. “Not least of which is the many hundreds of years of bloodshed between us. However, that doesn’t apply to you today, little elf, so we would like to give you a gift, please.”
“Taking us back to shore?” Ethan asked hopefully.
The mermaid ignored him and said, “We will give you the gift of not harming your friends. It’s not their birthdays, after all.” She smiled. “And we will take you back to shore.”
In a flurry of ripples, the mermaids had attached seaweed ropes around the hippo, and the next moment it jerked forward and they were racing over the surface of the ocean so quickly it felt like the hippo barely skimmed the surface. It seemed, unsurprisingly, that mermaids could swim much faster than polar bears.
“Well done, my boy,” Felix said approvingly to Beanie. “A little kindness can go a long way in life, I’ve found.”
Joss leaned forward to briefly touch Beanie’s shoulder, looking proud.
They traveled on beneath the stars for much of the night. Somehow, they managed to doze a little by sitting propped against each other, but it was a precarious business when you were bobbing about on an inflatable hippo that was being towed by mermaids in the middle of the sea. Stella found she couldn’t relax enough to sleep even though she still felt extremely tired. Felix had mastered the art of sleeping anywhere, and Stella could hear him snoring softly at the back with the jungle fairies curled up in his pockets, echoing his snores. Beanie had slumped forward over the hippo’s head, and she wasn’t sure about Shay and Joss.
Ethan was definitely awake, though. He sat directly in front of her and seemed too restless to settle. Eventually, Stella felt obliged to lean forward and ask, “What’s wrong? Have you got an itch you can’t reach, or something?”
Ethan glanced back at her. “Do you think I’m a bully?” he asked in a low voice.
“Oh.” Stella was taken aback by the question. “Well…”
“You do,” Ethan said with a sigh. “Don’t you?”
Stella couldn’t help thinking of Gideon, standing in the lobby in his pants, ashamed and humiliated as everyone pointed and laughed at him.
“I don’t want to be,” Ethan said. “A bully, that is. But I’m afraid it’s not something I have any control or choice over. It’s just something I am.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Stella whispered, thinking of her snow queen heritage.
She’d always wanted to know what had happened to her birth parents, but when they found their abandoned castle during their first expedition, they had discovered that Stella’s biological mother and father had been cruel, cold people. And if Stella used her ice magic too much, it would freeze her heart and the same thing might happen to her, too.
“Do you remember when you said that if you’d known about Julian’s death, you would have made allowances for me when I was being obnoxious?” Ethan asked. “Well, the truth is that Julian’s death didn’t make me this way. I was like this before—long before—from the very beginning, I think. There’s this big mean streak running right down the middle of me, and sometimes I can’t stop it from taking over. And I don’t even want to. I’m just as bad as Gideon Galahad Smythe.”
Behind Stella, Shay stirred and leaned forward slightly. “The difference is that you think about it later and you’re sorry,” he said. “You realize you made a mistake. Which means you can resolve to do better next time.”
“He’s right,” Stella said. “We can decide for ourselves that we’re not going to be a certain way.”
“It’s that easy, is it?” Ethan grunted.
“It’s that easy,” Stella replied. “And it’s that hard.”
Shay gripped the magician’s shoulder. “You’re nowhere near as bad as Gideon Galahad Smythe, Prawn.”
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Ethan flashed him a grateful smile, and they continued on through the night. By the time they reached the shore, the sun was just starting to peek above the horizon, painting the waves gold. Felix leapt off when they got to the beach, his boots splashing into the shallow water as he dragged the hippo up onto the sand. The others scrambled to help him and then turned back to thank the mermaids, but they had already gone, melted away like the morning fog.
“They’re going back out to sea. Look,” Stella said, pointing at a mermaid’s tail that flashed briefly above the waves.
“Do you think they really would have drowned us if it weren’t for Beanie?” Shay asked, staring after them.
“Who knows?” Felix said.
He stretched, and Stella heard something pop loudly in his back. They were all feeling the aches and pains of having clung to an inflatable hippo for most of the night. In fact, Stella’s legs were like jelly, and from the wobbly look of the others, she thought they probably felt the same. The sun was climbing higher in the sky now, and they all flopped down on the sand to enjoy the warmth for a moment and to catch their breath before getting up and picking their way across the beach to start the next part of their journey.
CHAPTER SIX
THEY SOON DISCOVERED THAT the mermaids had dropped them off on the outskirts of Cragstaff, the neighboring village to Blackcastle. The explorers scrambled up the cliff—which wasn’t the easiest climb in the world and not much fun doing on an empty stomach, either. When they reached the top, they could see the small collection of buildings that made up Cragstaff just a short walk away. And in the other direction was the incredible sight of the Black Ice Bridge itself, stretching out across the sea.
It was said to be the largest bridge in the world, and Stella could definitely believe it. It was simply monstrous—like a bridge built for a giant—with great towers that were so tall their tops were lost in the clouds placed along it at regular intervals. Thick cables ran down from these, attached to black marble railings running all the way to the bridge.
Stella had heard stories about the bridge, of course, but it was a very different thing seeing it in real life. Faced with its humongous size, she wondered whether there might actually be giants on the other side of it, after all.
“Felix,” she said, looking up at her father. “Have you ever seen a giant?”
He slowly shook his head. “We used to hear stories about giants many years ago,” he said. “But no one’s seen one for centuries.”
“Do you think that’s what could be on the other side of the bridge?” Stella asked.
“My dear, I really have no idea.”
“It’s one of the theories,” Beanie said. “Some people believe the Black Ice Bridge leads to one of the Land End Giants.”
Although no one could know for certain what shape the world really was, one of the most popular theories was that it was a flat square, with each of its four corners held up by a tremendous giant.
“Captain Munro of the Desert Jackal Explorers’ Club claimed to have seen one of the Land End Giants with his own eyes just a few months ago,” Beanie said.
“He also claimed he traveled through the treacherous Tambuctoo Desert with nothing but a compass, a rifle, a blue dress coat, and a wide-brimmed hat.” Ethan snorted. “Father says he’s a liar who ought to be expelled from the club.”
“There did seem to be a convenient lack of evidence,” Felix agreed. “You know, there’s a new theory I read about in a scientific journal recently. It was penned by the secretary of the Royal Academy of Science, who suggests that the world isn’t flat at all, but actually a sphere.”
Everyone laughed at the preposterousness of such an idea. Stella was grateful to Felix for sharing the theory just then—seeing the bridge for the first time was extremely frightening, and it was a relief to break the tension for a moment before she turned her attention back to the gigantic structure.
Built from black ice, it gleamed like an oil slick in the sunlight. Everyone knew black ice was particularly treacherous due to the fact that it contained evil magic. The bridge stretched out a long way over the cold sea, before disappearing into the freezing fog on the other side. It had been there for hundreds of years, and suddenly it seemed so strange to Stella that no one knew who had built the bridge, or why, or where it went. But she knew that looking at it now sent a chill racing down her spine and made her hands sweat and her skin crawl. There was just something wrong about it. Something bad. Something unnatural that wordlessly screamed at them to stay away.
Then Stella heard a soft sniffle and looked up to see that Joss was crying. Beanie had noticed it too and moved closer to her.
“Mum,” he said quietly. “What can I do to help?”
“Oh, my dear, don’t mind me,” Joss said, suddenly flustered as she fumbled in her pockets for a handkerchief. “I never thought seeing the bridge would turn me into such a silly…”
“Here,” Felix said kindly, pressing a clean handkerchief into Joss’s hand. “There’s nothing silly about it. You lost someone very dear to you.”
Joss blew her nose with shaking hands. Stella felt quite dismayed to see her so upset, especially as she was usually so cheerful. She moved closer to wrap her arm around the elf’s waist.
“He promised, you see,” Joss said softly. “Adrian, I mean. He promised he’d come back to Beanie and me.”
Beanie slipped his hand into his mother’s and squeezed her fingers.
“I mean, I knew he couldn’t really make a promise like that,” Joss went on. “No explorer can.” She glanced up at the bridge. “And yet… I still… I always believed he would come back. Sometimes, even now, I expect him to walk through the front door, stamping snow off his boots, grinning that big grin, and saying it was all a mistake.”
“He’s gone, Mum,” Beanie said in a quiet voice. “He’s been gone for over eight years. He’s never coming back.”
“I know, dear,” Joss said with a sigh. “I know that really. It’s just sometimes I forget to know it.” She took a deep breath and handed the handkerchief back to Felix. Then she straightened her shoulders, gave Beanie’s hand a squeeze, hugged Stella a little closer, and said, “Right, that’s quite enough of that. Adrian would be ever so cross if he could see me making such a fuss. Let’s get going.”
“Do we… do we still think we should do this?” Shay asked, sounding uncertain.
Stella turned toward him. A low whining sound attracted her attention, and she saw that Koa had appeared beside him. She was trembling from head to foot, and frost iced her black fur.
Shay knelt down and spoke to her in a low voice, trying to soothe her, but the wolf was clearly freezing.
“I’ve never seen her affected by weather before,” Ethan said, staring. “Even in the Icelands she never seemed cold.”
“It’s the witch wolf’s bite that’s making her cold, like me,” Shay replied.
Stella thought back to those fearsome wolves, with their white coats, frozen silver eyes, and snarling rage, and she shivered.
Soul eaters, Cadi had called them. Doomed to roam the wilderness, trapped as wolves forever. They couldn’t let that happen to Shay or to Koa.
“Yes,” Felix said. “I think we all still want to do this, but if anyone’s changed their mind, now is the time to turn back. It may be too late once we step onto the bridge.”
No one wanted to turn back, so Felix suggested they go into Cragstaff and pick up whatever last-minute supplies they could get their hands on. Stella was quite comfortable in just her traveling dress, but the others could all do with some extra layers under their cloaks. Everyone thought that weapons and some mode of transportation would be a good idea too.
“I don’t suppose we’ll be fortunate enough to find a Weenus’s Trading Post set up outside the bridge,” Felix said as they made the short walk to the village.
Unfortunately, Cragstaff wasn’t much of an explorer stronghold, either, and the little shops seemed to have more in the way o
f knit sweaters and tea cozies than spears and sleds. To make matters worse, the shopkeepers started casting curious looks at Stella, clearly recognizing her as the ice princess who’d been in the papers recently.
“Perhaps some of you should wait outside the village with Stella,” Felix said. “It doesn’t take all of us to pick up supplies.”
Stella was reluctant to go, but she could see Felix was making sense. So, after a brief discussion, it was agreed that Stella, Shay, and the jungle fairies would wait on the road leading to Blackcastle while Felix, Ethan, Beanie, and Joss went to pick up whatever supplies they could.
When they met again about an hour later, the shopping party didn’t have all that much to show for their trip except for a few bars of mint cake, some extra sweaters, and a battered-looking sled attached to a piece of rope.
“Not a single weapon to be found anywhere,” Ethan said, kicking the sled in disgust.
“But we do have food and shelter thanks to the magic fort blanket,” Felix said. “That’s the main thing for now.”
They continued on their way to Blackcastle, taking the winding path along the cliff top and casting frequent nervous glances at the Black Ice Bridge. As they got closer, they began to pass signs telling them that the village was permanently closed and warning them to turn back. Naturally, they ignored these and continued to trudge through the snow toward their destination. Beanie pulled the sled part of the way, but it was so crumbling and rotten that it fell to bits less than a mile out of Cragstaff.
Ethan picked up a broken plank of wood with a nail sticking through it and sighed. “At least we can use this as a weapon,” he said, stuffing the plank into his bag.
No one said much, but Stella found she was chewing her lip nervously. This was their most dangerous expedition yet, and they were less prepared than they had ever been before. It was not the arrangement any of them had hoped for.
Finally, they rounded a corner and found themselves looking over a crest at the village walls below.
“Oh, look!” Stella cried, pointing. “There’s a child.”
