Crossing the Black Ice Bridge

by Alex Bell

  Stella walked over to the nearest shelf.

  “Popping Peanut Island,” she read from the label carefully stuck to the snow globe’s base.

  Next to it was Elephant Island, the Island of Dancing Flowers, and Hopscotch Island, and they all seemed to contain real, living things. When Stella peered closely, she could see the water lapping at the shore of Hopscotch Island and the breeze ruffling the palm fronds in Elephant Island, and on Popping Peanut Island she could just about make out a bored-looking monkey sitting on the beach tossing peanut shells into the water in a morose fashion.

  She frowned down at the snow globes as her mind raced with thoughts. She remembered what Melville had told them about how the Island of Lady Swans had simply vanished one day and how soon after that everyone on the Islet of Gentleman Flamingos had woken up to find that the ocean had disappeared and they were surrounded instead by a strange white mist that they had been unable to find their way out of.

  She recalled what Felix had said after they’d fled from Coldgate on the polar-bear sleigh, about the Land of the Pyramids and how he’d seen it himself. Then there was the Lost Island of Muja-Muja, which no one had seen for centuries, and the mysteriously vanished Sky Phoenix Explorers’ Club. Stella also recalled something she had overheard when they had broken into the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club to reclaim the tiara—two explorers bickering about the disappearance of Frogfoot Island.

  And then of course there was the name of this society itself—the Phantom Atlas Society.

  “Do you think this is what the Collector is collecting?” she asked, turning to the others. “Islands and distant lands and wonders like the Hanging Gardens of Amadon? All those things we thought might just have been myths, mistakes on maps, or stories that explorers had made up to impress their clubs? Maybe those places really were there until the Collector came and trapped them inside these snow globes?”

  The words were barely out of her mouth before Melville let out a great, shocked squawk from across the room—clearly forgetting the need for stealth. The others quickly hurried over to shush him, but he was practically hopping up and down.

  “It’s right there, by Jove!” he exclaimed. “Right there!”

  “What’s right there?” Ethan hissed. “And keep it down, you fool, or we’ll all be captured and probably murdered!”

  Melville pointed at one of the nearby shelves with his striped umbrella, and they all saw the snow globe that had caused him to react like that. The island trapped inside it seemed to be full of flower blossoms and bright blue ponds on which elegant swans in big sun hats glided back and forth.

  “It’s the Island of Lady Swans!” Stella breathed, reading the label attached to its base.

  “Oh, Clementine!” Melville groaned, pressing his face to the glass. “Oh, my darling, she must be in there somewhere! Clementine, can you hear me?”

  “Stop that!” Ethan said, pulling the little flamingo back. “If the lady swans see your giant beak filling the sky, they’ll probably all have heart attacks.”

  “I’m not sure they can see out,” Stella said, peering more closely at it. “They don’t seem to be reacting to us anyway—”

  She broke off as something banged somewhere inside the house. The explorers all jumped, wondering what on earth it could be.

  “The Book of Frost isn’t here,” Ethan said, glancing toward the door. “Let’s move on.”

  “But we can’t just leave them!” Melville wailed. “My own island is probably around here somewhere too.”

  The junior explorers did a quick search of the shelves, but no one could see the Islet of Gentleman Flamingos.

  “I’m sorry, Melville, but we can’t afford to linger—it’s too dangerous,” Stella said. “But we’ll take this with us and see if we can work out how to free them later.”

  She snatched up the snow globe containing the Island of Lady Swans and put it into her bag. The others all grabbed up some snow globes at random, stuffing them into their own bags before hurrying back to the door.

  “What do you think that bang was?” Beanie whispered as they crept out to the still empty corridor.

  “Hopefully it was the gargoyles ambushing the Collector,” Ethan replied.

  They made their way down the rest of the corridor, poking their heads into the various rooms as they went. The brass plaques on the doors all had names like VOLCANO ROOM or JUNGLE ROOM or WATERFALLS ROOM or RARE SPECIES ROOM on them. And they all contained shelf after shelf of snow globes.

  “This is terrible!” Stella said as they crept out of the Mountains Room. “I wonder how many pieces of the world he’s managed to steal. And why on earth would someone do such a thing in the first place?”

  “I’m more concerned about where he is,” Ethan replied, glancing over his shoulder. “This is his house, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe he moves slowly now on account of being so old?” Beanie suggested. “He must be over two hundred, after all.”

  “We still need to speed this up,” Ethan said.

  They opened the door to the last room at the end of the corridor, which was oddly named the Explorer Room. When they stepped inside, they found there were nowhere near as many snow globes as there had been in the other rooms. It was barely larger than a storage cupboard, and there was only one shelf with snow globes on it.

  Stella’s eyes went immediately to the one on the end. “Good heavens!” she breathed. “Would you look at that? It’s the Sky Phoenix Explorers’ Club!”

  Everyone stared at the white building trapped inside the globe. It perched on the edge of a cliff, like a bird’s nest, with several hot-air balloons floating beside it all striped in the same red and yellow colors as the crashed balloons they’d seen on the bridge. The Sky Phoenix Explorers’ Club crest was clearly emblazoned on their sides.

  “It’s real after all!” Stella said. “The Collector must have stolen it and that’s why no one’s heard of them in so many years.” She picked the snow globe up. “We’d better take this one back with us too. There might be explorers still trapped inside there.”

  “Could they really be alive after all this time?” Ethan asked.

  “Queen Portia said that time was frozen inside the snow globes,” Stella said. “So they might be. We’ll just have to—”

  She broke off because Beanie suddenly let out a cry and lunged to snatch up one of the snow globes farther along the shelf.

  “What is it?” Stella asked, shoving the Sky Phoenix globe in her bag before hurrying to her friend’s side.

  Beanie wordlessly held up the snow globe in shaking hands so that they could see the label attached to its base. It simply read EXPLORER EXPEDITION. Added beneath this was a date from eight years ago.

  “This is the date my father’s expedition went missing,” Beanie said. “At least, it overlaps with when they think it got lost. And it’s on the Black Ice Bridge—look.”

  The scene inside the globe was indeed of an explorer camp—there were even a couple of tents and a few explorer supplies scattered about.

  “There’s no sign of any explorers,” Ethan pointed out.

  “People can move around inside the globe, can’t they?” Beanie said. “Perhaps they’re inside the tents. My father could be in there right now!”

  He gripped the base of the snow globe, as if to unscrew it, but Stella put out her hand to stop him. “Don’t,” she said. “We don’t know what will happen, exactly. And we can’t afford to do it here. We need to find the Book of Frost and Queen Portia’s heart and then get out before the Collector catches us.”

  Beanie looked momentarily stricken, and his hand clenched the globe’s base even tighter for a moment before he sighed and said, “You’re right. But we should take all of these.” He gestured at the remaining snow globes on the shelf. “There’s seven of them. And they could all have explorers trapped inside. We’ve got to find room for them.”

  “Quite right,” Ethan said promptly. “Explorers don’t leave other explorers behind
.”

  The four of them gathered up the snow globes and shared them between their bags, which were now completely full.

  Stella just about managed to close hers—and was leading the way toward the door when suddenly a wailing, piercing alarm began to ring throughout the house.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE SILENCE SHATTERED AROUND them like broken glass as the alarm wailed deafeningly. Stella supposed one of the gargoyles must have done something that had tripped it, but either way their cover was blown. They hurried toward the door, and Stella tumbled out into the corridor first, moments before an iron grille slid down from the ceiling, trapping the other three inside.

  “Oh no!” she groaned, gazing back at her friends in dismay.

  “Darn it!” Ethan exclaimed, grabbing hold of the metal bars and tugging at them ineffectually. “I knew we shouldn’t have brought those gargoyles!”

  “Could you try using the key charm?” Beanie asked Stella.

  Her heart sank at the thought of using magic again so soon and how exhausting it was sure to be, but she wasn’t about to leave her friends trapped in there like that. She was already reaching for her charm bracelet when Shay pointed at the gate and said, “There’s no keyhole.”

  Stella saw he was right. Even if she managed to create another key, there was no lock to use it on.

  “The gate came down from the ceiling,” Beanie said, squinting up at it. “There must be some central mechanism controlling it somewhere.”

  The last thing Stella wanted was to leave her friends trapped there, but there was no way of freeing them if she stayed. Their only chance was for her to venture into the house on her own and try to find some way of raising the gate.

  She clenched her hands into fists. “This isn’t going well, is it?”

  The others gazed back at her with the same worried expressions.

  But standing around wasn’t going to achieve anything, so Stella tried to sound as confident as possible as she said, “If there’s some way of raising the gate, then I’ll find it.”

  “Be careful,” Shay called after her.

  “Good luck,” Melville added.

  Stella nodded and set off quickly down the corridor. She saw that all of the doors had similar iron bars across them and that the library also had a number panel on the wall outside it. She paused by this, wondering whether it might be some kind of lock, but with no way of knowing what the combination was, it didn’t really help her.

  She had just reached the end of the corridor when a loud clattering announced that something was coming down the staircase. She quickly tucked herself into the corner in case it was the Collector, but a few seconds later the gargoyles came into view, falling over one another as they tumbled down the last stairs. One of them was clutching a snow globe, and Stella realized it must have been taking this that had set off the alarm.

  She came out to intercept them, and they startled at the sight of her before relaxing when they saw who it was. They had found the snow queen’s heart—it took up most of the space inside the snow globe and looked like a normal heart except for the fact that it was frozen and little particles of ice sparkled all across its surface.

  “That’s great,” Stella said with a sigh. “But you set off the alarm, and now the others are trapped in one of the rooms down there.”

  She waved back the way she had come, but the gargoyles didn’t seem to care, and Stella supposed it was no surprise. The only thing they had come here for was Queen Portia’s heart, and now that they had it they didn’t seem too keen to hang around. One of them even grabbed hold of Stella’s hands and gave her a little tug toward the library door.

  “Absolutely not!” she cried, pulling her hand free. “Not without my friends.”

  The gargoyle shrugged, and they continued on without her.

  “You won’t be able to get through that way,” Stella called. “The doors have all got iron—oh!”

  She broke off as one of the gargoyles marched right up to the gate and pulled the iron bars apart with his bare hands, creating a gap just large enough that they could all scamper through it.

  Stella called out for them to stop in the hopes that they might come back and help free her friends, but they disappeared into the library. She hurried in their footsteps in time to see them break through the iron gate that had appeared at the terrace doors and then disappear into the garden. Stella shook her head as she turned back to the staircase.

  There was another corridor stretching away from the staircase, but the gargoyles had come from the floor above and Stella had the feeling she was more likely to find what she was looking for up there. So she put her hand on the banister and cautiously began to climb up to the second floor of the house, keeping her eyes peeled for the Collector.

  She half expected to find the murderous old man waiting for her in the shadows at the top of the stairs. Indeed, when she reached the circular landing, a tall figure loomed there and several faces peered down at her from the walls, making her jump.

  But it was only a suit of armor and some paintings. They were all portraits of different men, and Stella immediately recognized Jared Aligheri, with his good looks and ruthless expression. There were several other men there too, and from the fashion of their dress it looked as if they were from various time periods throughout the last two hundred years. One of them in particular—a man with black hair and a widow’s peak—looked as if his portrait had been painted only twenty years ago or so. The nameplate beneath the painting read ELI SAUVAGE. There was a cold, soulless look in the man’s eyes that chilled Stella to her bones.

  She frowned at the paintings, trying to work out what they might mean. But before she had time to puzzle over it any further, there was a flash of movement down the corridor leading away from the landing. A few seconds later, something moved in the shadows again, and Stella realized it was a sea-gremlin, scampering across the hallway before disappearing into the nearest room.

  Light spilled from the doorway, and there was the faint patter of small footsteps from within. Perhaps the Collector was in there with the sea-gremlins? Stella could see several rooms in the corridor, but unlike downstairs, these didn’t seem to have plaques labeling them. She would just have to search at random, and to do that she would have to walk right past the open doorway. If the Collector was in there, then he was bound to notice her—unless he was so old he could barely see or hear anymore.

  Stella’s eyes fell on the suit of armor standing against the wall on the landing. It had a beautiful sword gripped in its gauntleted hands, which gleamed even in the dim light. An idea came into her head, and Stella went over and slid the sword free. It was extremely heavy and she could barely carry it. Certainly she had no intention of trying to stab anyone with it—not even the Collector himself. He may have murdered Stella’s birth parents, but Stella was not a killer, no matter what anyone said. Still, it might be useful to walk in armed as a form of self-defense.

  And if the Collector rushed at her, she might be able to knock him on the head with the handle or something. Most of her frost magic wasn’t much good for launching attacks. She had the charm bracelet, but Stella thought one more spell might finish her off. She felt like she needed to sleep for a week as it was, and her legs wobbled a little as she crept toward the open door.

  If the Collector was in there, then she might get lucky and he’d be snoozing in an armchair or something and she would be able to simply tiptoe past him. Perhaps he might even be dead, she thought. Maybe that was why he hadn’t come running at the alarm—which was still wailing away downstairs. After all, he had to die sometime, didn’t he? Even sorcerers didn’t live forever.

  She could no longer hear anything from inside the room, although strangely she thought she could detect a faint smell of paint.…

  She risked a peek around the doorframe, and what she saw almost made her drop her sword in shock. The room beyond was a sort of parlor, with cabinets lining the walls, and there were several sea-gremlins
in there, most of whom seemed to be clustered around an easel set up in one corner. They all held paintbrushes and kept shoving one another out of the way to daub at the canvas set up on the easel. Clutching their paintbrushes, scratching their blue heads, and scowling, they were all peering at a person on the opposite side of the room, who was sitting on an elegant chaise longue.

  Only it wasn’t the bent old man Stella had been expecting, but a young woman. She had long dark hair that tumbled down to the small of her back and she wore men’s clothing—a pair of straight brown trousers tucked into tall boots, paired with a dark leather jacket that was far too big for her. On her knee rested a sheepskin hat with a pair of goggles attached to it—a bit like the sort Stella had seen hot-air-balloon pilots wear when they took to the sky.

  She was looking toward the gremlins, but she must have known Stella was there, because without turning her head she spoke in a voice that was low and slightly husky.

  “Well, Miss Pearl, are you just going to stand there? Or are you going to come in?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  STILL KEEPING A TIGHT grip on the sword, Stella walked slowly into the room.

  The dark-haired woman turned her head to look at her, and Stella realized, to her surprise, that she was even younger than she’d first thought—probably no more than twenty-one. There was something striking about her magnetic green eyes, large nose, and full, dark eyebrows, which gave her a stern look. Her skin had an unhealthy pallor, and she had a widow’s peak that reminded Stella of the portrait she’d seen out on the landing.

  “Who are you?” Stella blurted. “How do you know who I am?”

  The woman raised an eyebrow. “Surely I should be asking you the questions given that you have broken into my home and are in the process of stealing my possessions.”

  Stella was about to deny stealing anything, but then she heard the clink of the snow globes knocking together inside her bag.