by Alex Bell
“Jared Aligheri was a sorcerer,” the gargoyle explained, holding out the locket. It was just as Stella remembered it from the painting—a silver dragon curled around a golden disc with a twinkling starflake held in one clawed foot. Now that she saw it up close, Stella realized there was an inscription engraved in the middle of the disc. It read Love you to the stars.
“He was one of the last sorcerers of his kind,” the gargoyle went on. “Even two hundred years ago.” Carefully prying open the locket, he held it up so Stella could see the tiny oil painting hidden inside. It depicted a handsome man with a neat, pointed beard, blond hair, and magnetic eyes.
So this was the Collector—the man who had murdered Stella’s birth parents and stolen her Book of Frost. She couldn’t help shuddering as she gazed into his cold dark eyes.
“But… but if he was an evil sorcerer, why does Queen Portia have a painting of him inside her locket?” Stella asked. She glanced at the snow queen, who still knelt on the ground before her. She’d made no attempt to join the conversation in any way and didn’t seem as if she was even listening to it. There was a faraway look in her eyes, and one solitary tear was making its way slowly down her face.
“Because he was her soul mate and she loved him,” the gargoyle said simply. “He wasn’t evil to begin with. He made her happy. He gave her this locket. He loved her.”
“So what happened?” Stella asked.
“Well, they started to disagree about something very important to them both,” the gargoyle said. “Their difference of opinion got bigger and bigger until eventually it fractured their love right down the middle.”
Stella frowned. “What was the disagreement about?”
The gargoyle sighed and glanced back at the snow queen. “That is a long story,” he said. “And I will explain, but right now what you need to know is that Jared stole the Book of Frost from Queen Portia. And in doing so he released a dangerous magic on Blackcastle. The neighboring village thought Queen Portia must be responsible and came banging on the castle doors with their flaming torches and their pitchforks. Everything was in chaos. Queen Portia told us to wait for her in the cave, but she never came back.”
“According to the ancient accounts, the mob chased her out onto the Black Ice Bridge,” Stella said.
“They didn’t chase her out here!” The gargoyle sneered. “Maybe that’s what they thought they were doing, but she’d intended to come here all along. To confront Jared and take back what was rightfully hers. When she didn’t come back, we knew something must have gone wrong—that Jared had won the fight instead of her. And we could do nothing but stay in our cave and grieve. We couldn’t even try to go after her because she had sealed us inside to keep us safe. Only an ice princess could open the doors and wake up the castle.”
“Well, what did happen?” Stella asked, looking at the snow queen. “What’s wrong with her? And how is she still alive after all this time? She looks exactly the same age as when she left, but that was more than two hundred years ago.” She recalled Beanie’s father’s expedition and said, “And we know she’s been attacking explorer expeditions that come onto the bridge. If she really isn’t evil, why has she been doing that?”
“I haven’t had a chance to ask her yet, because I’ve been standing here jabbering with you!” the gargoyle replied, a little peevishly. “But now that you’re not determined to attack the queen, perhaps we can attempt a civilized conversation.” He paused and narrowed his eyes at Stella. “You have changed your mind about attacking the queen, I hope?”
“We never wanted to attack anyone,” Stella protested. “That’s not why we came here. We’re simply trying to get to the other side of the bridge, to find the Collector.” Her eyes went past the queen to the vast emptiness beyond. She sighed and said, “Although it doesn’t look as if there is another side to the bridge. It doesn’t look like there’s anything there at all.”
It was a crushing disappointment to the young explorers, but the gargoyle’s focus was solely on Queen Portia and he turned away from Stella and bowed to his mistress before handing her the locket. She clasped the necklace back around her neck.
“My queen,” the winged gargoyle said in a gentle voice. “We waited for you, but you never came back. What happened?”
The snow queen raised her head to look at him, and finally she spoke. “We were friends once, a very long time ago,” she said, frowning as if trying to remember.
“Oh yes, Majesty,” the gargoyle said, reaching for her hand and clasping it in both of his own. “Very dear friends.”
The Pegasus still stood at Stella’s side, and in the light from its horn something glinted at the snow queen’s wrist. Her charm bracelet was there, looking just as it had in the portrait except for the golden heart charm, which had badly rusted. But something else flickered there next to the bracelet, and Stella realized it was a handcuff. It was a pearly white color—strangely beautiful—but a handcuff nonetheless. Stella could clearly see that the snow queen’s skin was red and raw where the cuff pressed into it.
Stella pointed at it now and said, “Are you a prisoner?”
The snow queen let go of the gargoyle’s hand and rose slowly to her feet. She gazed at her handcuff for a long moment before saying, “A prisoner. Yes. He took my heart, you see. I caught up with him—here on the bridge, I think. We fought.…” She frowned again. “It is hard to remember.” She looked down at the cuff again. “But I suppose he must have won. His magic was stronger and fiercer than mine in the end. So I have been here for all these years, forced to do his bidding.”
“You attack people who come onto the bridge?” Stella said. “Make them disappear? In those snow globe things?”
Her eyes went to the empty snow globe the queen had placed on the ground. A dull pain had started up behind her eyes from the effort of keeping both magic charms going at once, so she allowed the Pegasus to melt away into nothing.
“The Collector doesn’t want to be disturbed,” Queen Portia replied. “There is important work to do, you see. Even I have not seen him in years. The signs about the Land End Giants were not enough to keep people away, so I’m cursed to roam the bridge, looking for trespassers. No one has come for such a long time that I have not been patrolling the bridge as I should. But also I am so very tired.” She looked at Stella and said, “I am sorry about the explorers. Truly.” Her free hand fiddled with the white handcuff. “But the enchantment he put on me is a powerful one. If I see trespassers on the bridge, I must capture them.…”
She trailed off, her eyes fixed on Stella as if she were only just seeing her. Both her hands began to tremble, and she seemed to turn even paler.
“Oh!” she gasped. “You… you’re an ice princess!”
“My name is Stella Starflake Pearl,” Stella replied, a little warily. The snow queen was staring at her with a very intense expression all of a sudden.
The explorers all flinched as Queen Portia suddenly moved, but it was only to drop to her knees in the snow before Stella and grab hold of her skirts. “Please set me free!” she cried.
“What?” Stella stared at her. “What do you mean? I have no idea how.”
“He used a spell from my own Book of Frost to make this cuff,” the snow queen replied. “Only ice magic can unlock it.”
“Then why can’t you do it?” Stella asked.
“I lost my powers when he took my heart,” she replied. “Only another magical person can free me from the enchantment.” She looked up at Stella and said, “It would be in your own interest to help me. With every moment that goes by, the urge to trap you all inside a snow globe becomes harder for me to resist.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Stella replied. “It’s that I have no idea how.”
Queen Portia gave her a disbelieving look. “But there the charm hangs right before my eyes,” she said.
Stella glanced down at her charm bracelet. “Which charm do you mean?” she asked. “Look, I didn’t grow up as an ice
princess, so I don’t know everything about this stuff. You’ll have to explain it to me.”
“The key,” Queen Portia said, indicating the silver charm. “Using it creates an ice key that can open any lock.”
“Oh. And it works like the other charms? I just touch it and think of what I want it to do?”
“Yes. Concentrate upon it really hard and it will happen.”
“Is that such a great idea?” Shay said to her quietly. “You’ve already used two of the charms in the last five minutes.”
The snow queen groaned and seemed to grab on to the snow globe on the ground almost against her will. “Do it quickly!” she gasped. “Or else you’ll all end up trapped within this globe.”
“What choice do I have?” Stella said, glancing at her friends. “We know what will happen if I don’t. Besides, it’s the right thing to do. No one should be enslaved like this.”
So she pressed her fingertips to the key and concentrated as hard as she could, even though the effort caused her head to pound. A moment later, a small ice key glittered in the palm of her hand. Stella didn’t hesitate, and reached out to insert the key into Queen Portia’s cuff.
The key went straight in, but to Stella’s surprise it wouldn’t turn.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking down at the queen.
Queen Portia was staring at the cuff in dismay. “It must be because he has my heart,” she said. “He took it right here on the bridge.” She gazed up at the forbidding black structure. “Some evil magic soaked into the marble when he attacked me, and made the bridge go a little strange. But he took my heart with him. Locked away inside one of his snow globes. The key can’t set me free because part of me isn’t here.” She slipped the key into her pocket and looked at Stella. “You’re going to have to fetch my heart from the Collector. And you’re going to have to be quick. I’ll stay here for as long as I can, but sooner or later I’ll have to go after you and deliver you to the Collector.”
“But…” Stella’s head was spinning. “But where is the Collector? The bridge runs out. There’s nothing here.”
They had come so far and risked so much to make this journey. All along, she had believed there would be something on the other side of the bridge. She had thought they would win in the end, and save Shay, and Felix, and Joss. The alternative was too terrible to think of. But perhaps it was simply a fact that not all stories could have happy endings.…
“The Collector is here,” Queen Portia replied. “But not on the other side of the bridge. Beneath it.”
“What do you mean, beneath it?”
Stella’s head was pounding and she couldn’t seem to think straight. She could feel the magic slipping rapidly away from her as the tiny dragon whispered good-bye in her ear. She swayed slightly and Shay immediately took hold of her arm.
“There’s no more time!” Queen Portia gasped. She grabbed the snow globe with Koa trapped inside it from her pocket and threw it to Shay. “You must go at once!”
“But—” Stella began.
“I can’t resist the spell anymore!” the queen cried. “You must go now or else it will be too—”
But it was already too late. As Queen Portia spoke, her hand unscrewed the top of the snow globe and a great hurricane of ice seemed to burst out of it, heading straight toward them.
The explorers tried to run, but the ice magic followed them until they were trapped right at the edge of the bridge. Stella couldn’t prevent herself from looking down, and saw that the ocean had run out as well—the bridge seemed to be suspended above a great, vast, black emptiness that stretched on and on. It looked as if they really were at the very edge of the world, with nothing but outer space surrounding them. Stella even thought she caught the faint twinkle of distant stars down there.…
The queen’s ice magic tugged at her dress, and Stella knew that it meant to suck them all up in its grasp and whip them away into the snow globe, where they would be trapped forever. And this time there would be no hope of any rescue party coming to their aid, no hope of Felix risking everything to save them. It would be the end of everything. If Stella had had her ice tiara she could have tried to fight back against the hurricane, but without it she had no idea what to do.
Fortunately, Ethan leapt in front of the blast and threw up his hands to produce a large magic shield that hung suspended in the air before them. It was a magnificent shiny black object, stamped with the crest of the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club. But it wasn’t strong enough to withstand Queen Portia’s ice magic for long, and multiple cracks raced out across its surface.
The next moment, the shield had been smashed apart. But it had given just enough time for the gargoyles to race toward the explorers, barreling into them with their full weight—which was easily enough to send them all hurtling straight off the end of the Black Ice Bridge, plummeting into the vast, endless nothingness below.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AS SHE WENT HURTLING over the edge of the bridge, Stella wondered if the gargoyles had suddenly turned on them. What other explanation could there be? One of them was yelling something, but Stella could no longer understand now that her dragon charm had disappeared.
They were free-falling—plunging into nothing with icy air racing around them, tugging at their clothes and hair. It was so fast and terrifying that Stella couldn’t get enough air to scream, and being forced to fall in silent horror was somehow worse. It must have been the same for the others—even Beanie wasn’t reciting his usual explorer death facts.
Stella could see nothing up ahead but blackness and thought they were probably just going to fly right out among the stars, where they would most likely freeze or suffocate to death. No one knew for sure what would happen to a person in space because no one had ever been there, but everyone agreed that no human could possibly survive.
Stella’s mind flew to Felix, and as she tried to prepare herself for the cold vast terror of space, she thought of how much she loved him and desperately wished she could have hugged him again just one last time.…
But then she hit the top of a tree—crashing through its branches and scattering leaves and fruit until she landed on the ground hard. All the breath was squeezed out of her with an oof!
She was vaguely aware of her friends and the gargoyles hitting the ground beside her, groaning and gasping for air as more leaves showered down around them. Stella noticed the leaves were bright pink and wondered whether perhaps she might be hallucinating.
The next moment there was a hand on her shoulder. “You okay, Sparky?” Shay said.
Stella let him help her sit up, her head spinning as she tried to work out what on earth was happening.
“I… I think so,” she said. “What about the others?”
She gazed around and was relieved to see Ethan and Beanie picking themselves up beside her. Apart from a couple of bumps and scrapes, they seemed okay, although everyone’s cloaks were looking a little worse for wear. Not only were they snagged and ripped, but they had bright purple stains on them too.
Beanie was deathly pale, but nodded and said, “Six hundred and thirty-three explorers have died falling from bridges.”
“I’ve been better,” Ethan grunted, pulling twigs—and a wonky squish-squish frog—from his collar. “But I’ll live.”
“Why do you have a wonky squish-squish frog?” Shay asked, staring.
“What? Oh, it’s Melville,” Ethan said. “I changed him on the way down just in case.” He held up the frog so the others could see that it had been squashed completely flat when Ethan landed on it. Fortunately, as they knew from their previous expedition, this type of frog could be bounced, squashed, and even set on fire without any harm coming to it.
Ethan quickly pulled the frog back into a frog shape, put it down on the ground, and then threw a magic spell at it to turn it back into Melville. The gentleman flamingo tottered around rather unsteadily on his long legs, his eyes huge inside his head.
“You okay?” Ethan asked,
leaning down to poke him.
“Good heavens, that was a shocking experience!” Melville replied. He patted himself down and said, “But I appear to be all in one piece, thanks to you, kind sir.”
“Koa seems to be okay too,” Shay said, peering into the snow globe where the shadow wolf still paced around. He thrust it into his pocket and said, “Nice work with the shield back there, Prawn.”
“Fat lot of good it did,” Ethan replied tersely. “The snow queen ripped right through it like it was made of paper! For weeks I’ve been practicing that!”
“Well, it gave us enough time to escape,” Shay said. “So the hard work definitely paid off.”
“But where have we escaped to?” Ethan said.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Shay offered a hand down to Stella, who scrambled to her feet and finally took in her surroundings. Her mouth fell open in astonishment, and she could see that the others—including the gargoyles—were equally stunned.
They appeared to have landed in an orchard. Sunlight dappled through the leaves of tall silver trees, which were indeed bright pink. Clusters of purple fruit about the size of oranges hung from the branches. The ground beneath their feet consisted of lush soil, with a winding white marble path curling through the trees. There was no snow to be seen, and it was no longer very cold. In fact, the sunshine made it practically balmy.
Stella looked up and saw that the Black Ice Bridge towered some way above them, and thin silver chains attached the orchard to the bridge.
“I think we fell through some kind of canopy,” Ethan said, peering upward. “You can see the tattered remains of it—look!”
He pointed, and Stella saw that he was right. Shreds of a large canvas hung from ropes attached to the bridge.
“Perhaps it was a magic-disguise painting,” Ethan said. “Made to look like space and hiding all this from view.”
The trees made it hard to see beyond their immediate surroundings, although Stella could hear water falling somewhere close by, as well as the most beautiful birdsong.
