Crossing the Black Ice Bridge

by Alex Bell

  “It’s like she can see us,” Ethan said, echoing her thoughts.

  “No,” Beanie said. “She saw the fairy who was taking the photos. And then she must have gone after him. There’s no more photos after that, and the fairy is gone too.”

  The explorers all went very still.

  “At least now we know,” Ethan said.

  The mystery had indeed been solved. But no one seemed very much comforted by that.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY protect ourselves against a snow queen?” Ethan asked, giving the fire in the pit a bad-tempered jab with the poker. “It’s not clear what she even did to the explorers.”

  They had traveled on a little way from the deserted camp and then put the magic fort blanket up for the night. Ruprekt had been there to greet them with a tray holding four steaming mugs of hot chocolate, as well as a small cup for Melville. Stella could see that the genie was making an extra-special effort because the marshmallows floating in the mugs were polar bear rather than scorpion-shaped.

  “Perhaps she turned the explorers to ice?” Beanie suggested, wrapping his hands around his mug.

  “But then they would still have been there,” Stella pointed out. “Like the people at Blackcastle. And there was no sign of them.”

  “Perhaps some yeti came along and crunched them up like frozen ice pops?” Ethan suggested.

  Beanie winced, and Stella frowned at the magician. “Look, it doesn’t really matter exactly what she did,” she said. “All we need to know was that she used her ice magic to make them disappear somehow.”

  “But that’s precisely my point! How are we going to stop her from—would you stop that fidgeting?” Ethan said to Melville, who was trying to make himself comfortable on the magician’s lap and making a fuss about it.

  “Sorry, old sport, it’s just that your knees are rather bony, you know,” Melville said.

  “Sit on the chair, then,” Ethan grumbled.

  “I would, but I want to be as close to the fire as possible. My beak is still frozen solid. I can barely feel it. It’s still there, isn’t it?” He raised one feathered wing and gave his beak an experimental pat.

  “It’s still there,” Stella reassured him.

  “Like I was saying,” Ethan went on. “How exactly are we going to stop the snow queen from magically disappearing us? We don’t have a single rifle.”

  “Rifles didn’t seem to help much last time,” Beanie said quietly.

  “Nothing has helped that we know of,” Shay pointed out. “Expeditions to the Black Ice Bridge have gone armed with all kinds of things.”

  “And it hasn’t helped them one bit.” Ethan groaned. “Those were experienced adult explorers, too. We’re just four kids. What chance have we got? The snow queen could come storming in here at any second and we’d be absolute goners.”

  “Giving up before we even start isn’t going to help much,” Stella said, although she wasn’t exactly feeling confident herself at that moment. But she summoned up her last shreds of optimism and said, “Besides which, we do have something the others didn’t have. Two things, in fact.”

  “A genie and a gentleman flamingo?” Ethan sneered. “A lot of use they’ll be!”

  Stella could feel herself getting annoyed with Ethan, but she tried to remind herself that he sneered the most whenever he was anxious or upset.

  “No,” she began. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Ruprekt could offer the snow queen a nice cup of hot chocolate, I suppose,” Ethan interrupted. “Perhaps throw a couple of scorpion marshmallows at her. And you,” Ethan said to Melville, who’d finally settled on his knee. “What can you do if we come face-to-face with the snow queen?”

  “Ethan!” Stella said. “Please listen to me for a moment! When I said we have two things that the other expeditions didn’t have, I didn’t mean Ruprekt and Melville.” She glanced at them and added, “Lovely as it is to have you both along, of course. I was talking about two other things.”

  “Enlighten us, then,” Ethan said, a little sulkily.

  “First of all we have an ice princess,” Stella said, indicating herself. “And yes, I know I’m not as experienced or as powerful as Queen Portia, but I do have some frost magic of my own, as well as the charm bracelet, so perhaps I might somehow be able to protect us. If we’re desperate, I could try the dragon charm the gargoyles seem so keen on.”

  “And create an ice dragon that may very well devour us all?” Ethan said. “I don’t think that would improve our situation much, do you?”

  “It’s a last resort, definitely,” Stella agreed. “But at least it’s something.”

  Ethan sighed. “And what’s this second wonderful thing we have that no one else did?”

  “Well.” Stella glanced at Shay. “We have a shadow wolf who seems to be turning into a witch wolf.”

  Everyone looked at Shay.

  “Koa wants souls, doesn’t she?” Stella said. “Well, maybe she will attack the snow queen if she appears. Perhaps you could suggest it to her?”

  Shay rubbed the back of his neck. “Perhaps,” he said. “But she doesn’t seem to want to talk to me much right now. In fact, she’s talking to me less and less. And when she does speak, it doesn’t always make sense.” He sighed and said, “But it’s worth a try. She’s hungry all the time; I know that. She’s looking for souls to devour. Just like the witch wolves. When she saw that fairyologist’s ghost, I could feel how starving she was. But perhaps if I tell her there’s something on this bridge that she can hunt down, it might… I don’t know… be a kind of compensation to her—give her something to focus all this wild energy on.” He looked at Stella and said, “It can’t hurt. It might even help solve two problems at once.”

  The others thought it sounded like a sensible idea too, and so Shay called Koa silently inside his head. The shadow wolf appeared almost immediately and sat down close to Shay. They could tell he was talking to her because the whisperer’s wolf pendant he wore on a chain around his neck opened its eyes, which sparkled red.

  Although Koa was panting slightly, she seemed more her usual self. She gazed calmly at Shay while he talked to her and flicked her tongue at him affectionately a couple of times. She’d lost her solid form, and Shay’s hand passed straight through her like it usually did when he tried to stroke her, but Stella noticed that a couple of her white hairs fell to the floor and remained there even after the wolf herself had disappeared.

  “I think she’ll attack the snow queen if we come across her,” Shay said to the others. “But she’s changing rapidly, so who knows what will actually happen.”

  “Well, it’s some kind of plan at least,” Stella said.

  Everyone was tired, so they decided to turn in for the night. But even though her eyes itched with fatigue, Stella found it hard to sleep. She was worried for Felix and Joss back in the cave, and hoped that the fairies were providing them with enough food.

  And she kept seeing the photos of Queen Portia inside her head and recalling the terrified expressions of the frozen people back in Blackcastle. There had seemed to be no reason for the attack on the village or the explorers on the bridge. It was as if the queen had just suddenly turned evil. And Stella was so terribly afraid that one day, no matter how hard she tried to prevent it, the same thing might happen to her.

  * * *

  The explorers set off the next day with a sense of trepidation. This was, after all, unknown territory now that they no longer had Beanie’s father’s journal to warn them about what was coming up.

  “There could be absolutely anything,” Ethan complained as they gathered together on the snow-boat’s deck. “From rampaging giants to dinosaurs playing hopscotch.”

  Stella clapped Ethan on the back and said, “That’s the spirit. There could be dangerous things up ahead that want to eat us, or there could be absolutely wonderful things, like dinosaurs playing hopscotch. At least it’s a sunny day today. Hopefully we’ll make good time.”


  The mist had indeed lifted, and they could see a good length down the bridge. It looked clear enough, but they had gone only a short distance before the surface of the bridge changed. Instead of the flat, smooth surface they’d had before, they were now faced with a collection of lumps and large shapes lying beneath the snow. Stella slowed the gargoyles to a halt, and the explorers climbed down from the boat to take a closer look.

  “What do you think it could be?” Stella asked.

  “I hope it’s not bodies,” Ethan said. “Or some kind of hibernating monster.”

  “Well, we’ll need to clear a path for the boat, so we’d better find out what we’re dealing with before we start digging it up,” Stella said, already having visions of them waking up a snoozing dragon.

  Cautiously, the explorers started to clear away the snow, and that was when Stella realized that one of the fingers from Ethan’s glove was missing so his index finger poked straight through and was rapidly turning blue.

  “Oh, what happened to your glove? Did it tear when you fell over the side of the bridge?”

  Ethan glanced down at his hand and, to Stella’s surprise, blushed. “Oh. No.” He paused, then said, “I cut it off.”

  Stella frowned. “Why on earth would you do that? It’s freezing out here.”

  Before the magician could reply, Melville fluttered up beside them and said, “I say, I’d like to be useful if I can. Perhaps I can dig snow out with my umbrella?”

  His posh voice came out slightly muffled, and Stella glanced at him to see that he was wearing the finger of Ethan’s glove around his beak.

  She glanced at Ethan, who shrugged and said, “He kept complaining about how cold his beak was.”

  “You did something nice,” Stella said, beaming at him.

  “He was getting on my nerves, that’s all,” Ethan replied.

  Stella felt a little burst of affection for her grouchy friend and said, “You should have mentioned it before. I’ve got a spare pair in my pocket.”

  She pulled out the gloves and handed them to Ethan, who gave her a grateful look as he slipped the new glove on.

  They continued to dig and quickly revealed an object.

  “It’s a flag,” Beanie said, pulling it free.

  “Which club?” Ethan asked.

  Beanie brushed away a layer of frost to reveal a fiery-red emblem. He looked up at the others. “The Sky Phoenix Explorers’ Club,” he said quietly.

  “I think this is the remains of a hot-air balloon,” Shay said. “It must have crash-landed here. Look, this is the basket, and this is the balloon itself.”

  The others saw that he was right. They were indeed standing upon the ruins of a crashed balloon. As they brushed away more snow, they saw it was unmistakably a Sky Phoenix Explorers’ Club vessel. The balloon itself was striped red and white and painted with yellow and orange flames. A second Sky Phoenix Club flag hung down from the basket.

  Inside, they also found explorers’ bags made from red fabric and stamped with the phoenix emblem. Some of them had the individual explorer’s names stitched onto them.

  “Percy Leeroy Vane,” Ethan read from one of the bags before going on to the next. “And Theodore Franklin Goudge.”

  “This one says Harkam Peewee Lewis,” Beanie said, indicating another bag.

  When they opened the backpacks, they found broken compasses, battered telescopes, and antique sextants, along with balls of string and emergency whistles.

  “But this means there really was a Sky Phoenix Explorers’ Club,” Shay said, peering into an open bag. “These were the actual names of some of the explorers, and this is their stuff, and they really were here. They’re not a myth at all.”

  It felt very strange to the four junior explorers to learn that there had once been a fifth club. There had only been four for as long as anyone could remember.

  “Incredible,” Stella said. “Felix will be so excited to learn about this. We should take the flag back with us as proof.”

  They carefully removed the flag from the basket, folded it up, and put it in Stella’s bag.

  “There are no bodies,” Ethan said, as they continued to clear a path through the ruins of the balloon, the gargoyles following along with the snow-boat behind them.

  “Well, I guess there wouldn’t be after all this time,” Shay said. “This balloon must have crashed here hundreds of years ago.”

  “You’d still expect skeletons, though,” Ethan said. “Maybe the snow queen got to them?”

  There were in fact several crashed balloons on the bridge, all belonging to the Sky Phoenix Explorers’ Club. They saw bags, and supplies, and more flags, but there was no sign of the explorers themselves.

  To make matters worse, when they got past the balloons, they found themselves confronted with a sinister sign:

  GO BACK! LAND END GIANT AHEAD!

  Alongside this were several other signs, all reading things like DANGER! or BEWARE! or DO NOT ENTER!

  Stella saw another one that read TRESPASSERS WILL BE MUNCHED BY GIANTS.

  While another read DO NOT DISTRACT, TICKLE, OR AGGRAVATE A LAND END GIANT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. SUCH ACTION MAY LEAD TO CATASTROPHIC LOSS OF PLANET.

  And another: GIANTS ARE DUMB-WITTED CREATURES, EASILY DISTRACTED BY MANY THINGS, INCLUDING:

  EXPLORERS AND ADVENTURERS

  SHADOWS AND WHISPERING

  TIPTOEING AND CHEWING

  BREATHING AND BLINKING

  There must have been fifty or so signs altogether, and they all seemed to contain the same basic message: There was a Land End Giant up ahead of them, and if the giant so much as caught a whiff of their presence, then it was very likely to become distracted, which may lead to it dropping its corner of the world, which would, in turn, lead to the destruction of their entire planet.

  “Good heavens,” Shay breathed. He turned to the others with a worried look. “Do you really think that could be what’s on the other side of the bridge?”

  “Look at what we’re standing in!” Beanie exclaimed. “I didn’t notice at first, but look!”

  The others glanced down and saw that what they had at first taken for a shallower area of snow was, in fact, a footprint. An impossibly huge footprint.

  “Only a giant could have made this!” Beanie exclaimed. “It’s got to be six feet long at least!”

  “Perhaps it’s a yeti footprint?” Stella suggested, but even as she spoke she realized that couldn’t be true because yetis were always barefoot—whereas the owner of this foot had clearly been wearing a shoe.

  “If this is true, we should go back,” Shay said. “We can’t risk destroying the entire world. Not for anything.”

  “But it can’t be true,” Stella said. “Jezzybella said the Collector lives on the other side of the bridge.”

  “No offense, Stella, but Jezzybella doesn’t exactly have all of her marbles, does she?” Ethan said. “I mean, for all we know, the Collector might not even exist. Besides which, even if he did come from the other side of the bridge all those years ago, there’s no guarantee he’s still there now.”

  “I know all that,” Stella replied, clenching her hands into fists. “We all knew this was a long shot. But anyone could have put those signs and this footprint there. It might have even been the Collector himself, trying to keep people away.”

  “Maybe,” Shay admitted. “But it’s still a risk.”

  “Look, if we see a Land End Giant, we’ll be very quiet and careful not to distract him, and we’ll turn back,” Stella said. “But there’s no proof that’s actually what is on the other side.”

  “Except for the footprint,” Beanie said. “That’s proof, isn’t it?”

  Stella frowned down at it. “Is it?” she said. “It seems very convenient to me.”

  “How do you mean?” Beanie asked.

  “Well, it’s very clearly defined, for a start,” Stella said. “There’s no blurred edges or anything. It’s almost like someone put it here deliberately. Plus
, how come there’s only one print? Where are all the others? I mean, the giant must have gotten here somehow. Even if it only has one foot and hopped all the way down the bridge, there ought to be more footprints, and there aren’t.”

  “You’re right,” Ethan said, gazing down the bridge. “The rest of it is just clean snow.”

  “Exactly,” Stella said. “I don’t think there is a giant. I think those signs are nothing more than a trick.”

  They decided to keep going, but on foot so they could keep their eyes open for any sign of giants.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  THEY HADN’T BEEN TRAVELING long before Beanie said, “What are those things up ahead?”

  They squinted through the mist that had started to drift back in and saw that the path before them was blocked with bulky, circular objects.

  “Hopefully they’re nothing to do with giants,” Shay said. “They could be huge bouncy balls, or something like that.”

  “I just hope they’re not more screeching red devil squid nests,” Ethan said with a shudder.

  “They’re not,” Stella said. “They’re too bulky for that.”

  She paused to take her telescope from her bag, training it on the mystery objects.

  “Good heavens!” she exclaimed.

  Ethan sighed. “Go on, then. Let’s have it,” he said. “I suppose they’re poisonous rocks, or spiky eggs, or barbed—”

  “No,” Stella replied. “Nothing like that. It looks like they’re tiny submarines.”

  “Nonsense,” Ethan said dismissively. “They’re far too small to be subs.”

  “But I can see the big glass dome,” Stella said. “And the propeller at the back and—”

  “I tell you, it’s not possible,” Ethan said. “The smallest submarine in the world is ten times as big as those things.”

  When they reached the objects, though, it looked as if Stella was right. The gargoyles hung back with the snow-boat while the explorers took a closer look.