Crossing the Black Ice Bridge

by Alex Bell

  “How many of you are there?” Ethan asked.

  “Six hundred and seventy-four at the last count,” Melville said.

  “We’d be here all night,” Ethan said. He deflated a little and said, “Besides, I don’t know how. The truth is, I wasn’t trying to pull you out of the hat. I was trying to pull out a fluffy bunny.”

  “Oh,” said Melville, disappointed. “Might you at least try to rescue my brother Burroughs?” he asked. “He’s the oldest, you see. He’d know what to do and how to rescue the others. I’m only the useless younger brother and not really cut out for this kind of thing.”

  “I’m sure you’re not useless,” Stella said kindly.

  Ethan sighed. “Well, I’ll try,” he said, picking up the pith helmet. “But, you know, I’m not always a very good magician.”

  “On the contrary, sir! You are an excellent magician,” Melville assured him. “Simply capital! One of the best of your generation, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Ethan’s ears turned pink with pleasure, and he stared into the hat with renewed concentration. Finally, he reached in and tugged something out, only this time it wasn’t a mongoose, or a fluffy bunny, or another gentleman flamingo.

  “Oh, it’s a sweet little kitten!” Stella exclaimed, reaching out to stroke it.

  Sadly, it was not a sweet little kitten, either, but a savage mini-cat, which flew straight at Stella’s face and might very well have scratched her eyes out if it weren’t for Melville striking out with his umbrella and blocking its path.

  There was some pandemonium while everyone raced around after the savage mini-cat, which tore up the walls, shot under beds, dived into cupboards, and lashed out viciously at anyone who got near it. Ruprekt’s net was shredded within seconds, and the genie spent the rest of the chase up on a chair, wringing his hands and wailing.

  Finally, after everyone had been thoroughly scratched, they managed to get the savage mini-cat out through one of the canvas walls, where it fled into the snow, and they all breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I say.” Melville panted. “Perhaps it’s better you don’t try to pull any more of my kind out of that hat. We’ll just have to think of another way. After we’ve completed your various rescue missions, of course. And if I can help with those in any way, then I’d be only too glad to.”

  It had been an exhausting couple of days for everyone, and they were pleased to turn in, grateful for a warm bed and clean sheets. Ruprekt set up a little cot for Melville in the bedroom with the others and produced a tiny nightcap for him to wear that looked like it had once belonged to a jungle fairy.

  At first Stella was afraid she wouldn’t sleep because she was too nervous about being on the Black Ice Bridge. What if something dangerous came along when they were all asleep and gobbled them up? But, in fact, she was so tired that she fell asleep the moment her head touched the pillow.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  STELLA WOKE UP TO the sound of howling. She jerked upright and scrambled from the bed, half expecting that some dangerous beast had crept into their tent while they slept. But then she took in the scene and saw there was no monster. The howling was coming from Koa.

  The shadow wolf hunched in the corner of the tent and, as Stella watched, tipped back her head and let out another howl so full of angst that Stella shuddered. To her dismay, she saw there was far more white fur on the shadow wolf than there had been before. Where it had started out as just a streak, it now took up almost a third of her body. Whatever was happening to her was definitely getting worse.

  The sound had woken Ethan, Beanie, and Melville, who were all out of their beds. Shay, however, was tangled up in his sheets, groaning and clutching his hands to his head. Stella hurried over to him, quickly followed by the others, and they crowded around their friend in concern.

  “Shay,” Stella said, gripping his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t…” The wolf whisperer gasped. “I can’t…”

  “Can’t what?” Ethan demanded. “Talk to us.”

  He took hold of Shay’s wrists and dragged them away from his face. The others gasped. One of his eyes had changed from its normal brown to a ghostly silver color, exactly as they remembered the eyes of the witch wolves back on Witch Mountain. And not only was his eye a different color, but it was frozen as well, glittering in a coat of frost that made the light reflect back strangely. It was difficult to look him straight in the eye, and Stella found that her head ached when she tried to.

  “I can’t see properly,” Shay said. “There’s something wrong.…”

  “Let me see if I can help.” Beanie raised his hand to Shay’s face, and green healing magic fizzed between his fingers.

  A moment later, the ice started to melt from Shay’s eye and it returned to his usual color.

  “You did it,” the wolf whisperer said, waving his hands in front of his face. “I can see clearly again. Thank you.”

  “It’s only a temporary fix,” Beanie said, looking worried. “Like when Ethan had frostbite, remember? Magic can only slow this down; it can’t stop the effects completely.”

  “It might buy us time, though,” Stella said.

  She noticed the white streak in Shay’s hair had gotten a little wider, even though his eye had returned to normal. And Koa’s fur remained white too. It was a reminder to everyone they had no time to lose and no time to make mistakes on the Black Ice Bridge.

  “We’d better press on,” Stella said.

  Shay scrambled from his bed and walked over to Koa. He dropped down into a crouch before the shadow wolf, as Stella had seen him do a hundred times before. Even though she had no physical substance, usually Koa would nuzzle into him affectionately. This time, however, when Shay reached a hand out toward her, she bared her teeth in a snarl.

  Shay froze. “Koa,” he said softly. “It’s all right, girl. Hey, it’s okay. It’s me.”

  He moved his hand toward her again, and quick as a flash Koa bit him.

  Stella watched in horror as the shadow wolf—who wasn’t supposed to have any substance—bit down on Shay’s hand. She could tell it was an actual bite by the fact that Shay cried out in pain and a thin trickle of blood ran down his wrist.

  Ethan was the first to react—throwing a blast of magic at Koa that caused her to let go of Shay with a whimper. The magician’s attack seemed to shock her back to herself somehow because the next moment she was pressing herself close to Shay with her tail between her legs and a guilty expression on her face.

  “Did you see that?” Shay gasped.

  “Yes, but how was it possible? I thought Koa was made of shadows—” Stella began.

  Shay cut her off. “No, not that. I meant me. I felt like… like I disappeared for a moment. Did I?”

  Stella stared at him. “I don’t think so. No, you were there the whole time.”

  Shay reached a trembling hand down to touch Koa, but she had gone back to being insubstantial and his hand passed through her like she was made of smoke. The next moment, she disappeared altogether.

  Beanie came forward to look at Shay’s hand.

  “It’s not bad,” Shay said, as the elf healed it for him. “But she shouldn’t have been able to do that.”

  “We knew that a witch wolf’s bite might affect her differently,” Stella said, trying to contain her dismay.

  No shadow wolf had ever been bitten by a witch wolf before, as far as they were aware, so they couldn’t know what the effect would be. But here was proof that, whatever was happening, it wasn’t good.

  “Look,” Beanie said, bending down to the spot where Koa had just been. “Wolf hairs.” He held the white hairs up for the others to see. “As if a real wolf had been here.”

  “We should get on,” Shay said quietly.

  Ethan nodded, his pale face looking tense. “Let’s get dressed,” he agreed.

  They all returned to their bedsides and drew their curtains to get back into their sweaters, scarves, and cardigans. Once Stella was done,
she walked into the main living area to find Shay and Ethan already by the fire.

  “How are you feeling now?” Ethan was saying to Shay. “I mean aside from your shadow wolf going mad for a minute and your eye turning weird, do you feel okay?”

  Shay sighed. “Well, I feel just about as scared as I can ever remember feeling.” He managed a smile and said, “But other than that, I’m fine.”

  Ethan briefly touched the wolf whisperer’s shoulder. “You’re not alone,” he said. “If there’s a way to fix this, we’ll find it.”

  Stella had never wanted something to be true so fiercely, and yet she couldn’t help thinking it was an almost impossible task.

  She heard Felix’s voice inside her head. “A fellow can’t turn away from something just because the odds are stacked against him,” he’d often told her. “That’s the time to really throw yourself into a thing, with every last bit of your might. Marvelous things can happen when you ignore the odds.”

  They had a quick breakfast. Ruprekt said Melville wouldn’t be able to stay in the fort once it had been turned back into a blanket—being a living thing that wasn’t a genie he would certainly be pulverized, and since no one wanted that to happen, the gentleman flamingo would have to go with them.

  “It’s terribly cold out on the ice bridge,” Stella had told him, looking at his smart little jacket dubiously. “Perhaps we can fashion something for you to wear.”

  They hunted around the fort in search of something suitable, and then Ruprekt came up with the idea of cutting holes in the tea cozy.

  “It isn’t exactly the most elegant ensemble, is it?” the flamingo said, somewhat sulkily. “I look ridiculous.”

  “You look a bit ridiculous wearing a bowler hat, too, in all honesty,” Ethan said. “At least this way you won’t freeze to death.”

  “I shall let that remark pass on account of you saving my life.” Melville sniffed. “But I’ll have you know that this was my great-great-grand-pappy’s hat, and it is superb.”

  He adjusted it on his pink head.

  Ethan rolled his eyes. “Whatever.” He picked up the little flamingo and said, “Outsider alert!”

  The fort immediately vanished around them as it transformed back into a rather tatty old blanket, which Ethan thrust in his bag. The four explorers and the gentleman flamingo found themselves back on the Black Ice Bridge, and it was every bit as inhospitable as it had been before. The air was thick with swirling snowflakes and freezing fog, and the cold reached right through their skin down into their bones.

  “Good gracious!” Melville squeaked. “Aargh, it’s so cold! We never had anything like this on the Islet of Gentleman Flamingos, I can tell you. Just sunshine and pineapples all the way. Good grief, this is simply intolerable! My beak is freezing! It feels like it might actually fall off!”

  It was extremely cold. Even Stella could feel it, and the snow didn’t normally bother her. She pulled on her gloves and tried hard not to think of sunshine and pineapples. Ethan stuffed Melville—who was shivering badly—into his sweater before doing up his cloak so that only the little flamingo’s head poked out the top.

  “Where are the gargoyles?” Shay suddenly said.

  Stella turned around on the spot, straining her eyes through the freezing fog. It was so thick they could barely see more than a few feet in front of them. Stella couldn’t even make out the rails of the bridge, or the tall towers reaching up into the sky, or the sun itself. Sound seemed strangely muffled too, and she could no longer hear the sea lapping beneath them. Everything was white, and she was hit with the sudden strange feeling that they weren’t in a real place at all, but rather inside somebody’s shivering dream, or perhaps the cold, dead space inside a broken heart.

  But then the gargoyles came clanking through the mist, pulling the snow-boat behind them, its ice candles shining brightly.

  Stella was extremely relieved to see them and was just about to walk over to the ladder when she froze.

  “What’s that noise?” she asked.

  “It was just me blowing my nose,” Ethan said, stuffing the hankie back in his pocket. “Sorry.”

  “No.” Stella stopped. “It sounded like… a heartbeat.”

  The others stopped too and listened, but there was only the muffled noiselessness of freezing fog cloaking everything.

  “You’re imagining things,” Ethan finally said. “We know the bridge can play tricks on people. We need to keep our heads and not give in to wild fantasies.”

  Stella frowned as she peered ahead. Her eyes ached with the effort of straining them into the fog. She told herself Ethan was right and they had to remain sensible.

  But then, just for a moment, she could have sworn she saw a silhouette.

  “There’s someone there!” she said quickly to the others, trying to keep her voice low. “I saw them! Just up ahead of us. In the fog.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EVERYONE STARED STRAIGHT AHEAD. The fog seemed to swirl around them in ribbons and, as it parted for a moment, Stella dreaded catching a glimpse of a fur-trimmed hood or a lavish ermine coat, a flash of a silken glove or the twinkle of diamonds.

  Her mind was full of Queen Portia, who had last been seen fleeing onto the Black Ice Bridge. But that had been over two hundred years ago. Surely she couldn’t still be alive out here? How long did snow queens even live? With a lurching feeling, Stella realized she had no idea. She had assumed she would have a normal lifespan like everyone else, but what if she was going to live on and on, long after everyone else was gone? The idea made her feel very tiny and alone.

  “I don’t see anything,” Ethan said.

  Stella could no longer see anything either, but the thought of Queen Portia was in her mind now.

  “Perhaps it was Koa,” Shay suggested. “She’s on the bridge somewhere. I can feel her.”

  Sure enough, the next moment, Koa padded silently out of the fog. She went straight over to Shay and flicked her tongue at his fingers in her old affectionate way.

  “There’s nobody out here except us.” Ethan grunted. “No one else would be so stupid. Let’s get a move on.”

  They climbed up onto the deck of the snow-boat, and the gargoyles set off along the bridge.

  Before long the fog had melted, so at least they could see a little way up ahead. They took it in turns keeping watch and spent the rest of the time sheltering belowdecks, browsing the books Beanie had taken from Queen Portia’s library or chatting with Melville in order to get to know him better.

  “What’s that you’re reading?” Stella asked, noticing that the little flamingo had a book of his own, bound in smart red leather.

  “It’s the gentleman’s code,” Melville replied. “We all endeavor to live our lives according to its rules. Would you care to see it?”

  Stella was already shaking her head. “No, thanks,” she said. “We’ve got something similar in the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club. I think I know all there is to know about grooming and mustaches and things.”

  Melville gave her a puzzled look. “What on earth do mustaches have to do with being a gentleman? There isn’t a single mustache in this whole book, so far as I can recall—indeed, they’re more associated with villains, as I understand it. Here, take a look.”

  Before Stella could protest again, he’d thrust the book into her hands. Not wanting to seem rude, she opened the cover and flicked through the pages. But then some of the rules started to jump out at her, and she slowed down and started reading them properly. Melville had been right. There was nothing in there about mustaches. Instead, the book was filled with the sort of things Felix had taught her.

  Be kind.

  Treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself.

  Cherish your friends.

  To your own self be true.

  Stella felt a big smile spread across her face. Here, at last, was a real gentleman’s code, not the stuffy nonsense peddled by the clubs. She heard President Fogg’s insult once again as they sto
od in the courthouse back at Coldgate:

  You, sir, are no gentleman!

  Only, when she thought about them this time, the words had lost some of their sting. For Felix was a gentleman, right down to his bones, and nothing anyone said could change that.

  “How marvelous,” Stella said, handing the book back to Melville. “I think everyone should try to live their lives that way.” A thought occurred to her, and she said, “Do the ladies of Swan Island have a code too?”

  “Naturally,” Melville replied. “It’s a beautiful book with lots of little pearls encrusted on the cover. Of course, the basic rules are the same as ours, but they have some additional ones as well. Let me see now.… Yes, I can remember a few of them. Clementine was particularly fond of number six: ‘Laugh as long and as hard as possible, wherever possible, and preferably until tears run down your beak.’ And number twelve: ‘If you’ve a choice between turnips and chocolate whoopie pies, always choose chocolate whoopie pies.’ Number nine: ‘Ward off bullies with firm words and, if necessary, parasols.’ And, of course, number twenty-two: ‘Make every effort to banish unhealthy envy of others and embrace your own unique weird wonderfulness at every possible turn.’ ”

  “Gosh, how absolutely marvelous!” Stella exclaimed.

  She thought, perhaps, that once this was all over and everyone was safe, she might have a go at writing her own lady’s code, as a helpful reminder to herself for those times when she lost sight of the person she wanted to be.

  After a pause for lunch, they traveled on for an hour or so and then Stella told the gargoyles to stop.

  “What are we stopping for?” Ethan asked, poking his head up from belowdecks. “It’s too early to make camp.”

  “Listen,” Stella said. “There’s that sound again.” She could feel the reverberation throbbing up through her boots, and this time she was sure she wasn’t imagining it. “It’s definitely a heartbeat,” she said.