The Ice Chips and the Stolen Cup

by Roy MacGregor

John O’Brien handed the scarf to Isobel, and she immediately unwrapped it. Tears welled in her eyes when she saw that she was once again holding Lord Stanley’s shining Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup in her hands!

  “Thank you,” Isobel said to the young kid.

  “It’s not from me,” said John, blushing. He pointed a little farther down the road, to where his cousins were waiting for him. “It’s from them. They felt bad after your friends fell through the ice—they just didn’t know how to say they were sorry.”

  “Well, I’m glad you were brave enough to give it back,” Isobel said with a smile. She waved to the boys in the distance, and then turned her head toward her brothers. “Edward, Albert—can you take my friends back to the house in your buggy? Or wherever they need to go?” She’d begun gathering her things and was soon rushing back toward her own buggy. “Now that we’ve got the cup back, I have to get it somewhere safe. I’m not going to lose it again!”

  Isobel had already climbed up onto the seat, grabbed the reins, and pointed her horse in the direction of Rideau Hall when Bond grabbed Swift’s and Lucas’s arms.

  “But she does lose it,” she said, her eyes wide and her voice a deathly whisper. “Did you see that soot mark on her dress from the fire? Isobel is about to time-travel to Riverton!”

  Chapter 14

  “You have to run FASTER!” Swift yelled at Edge and Lucas, waving her hand from the back of the electric train. The Chips had decided they didn’t have time to wait for the Stanley brothers to put out the fire and collect their belongings. They had to get to Isobel and the cup. Fast!

  With all her track training, Swift was the first to reach the streetcar, where she’d grabbed a railing at the back and leapt on. She’d pulled Bond up next, and now they were just waiting on Lucas and Edge.

  But the train was picking up speed as it barrelled down Rideau Street, jostling the passengers, who were making their way home from work.

  There should be a stop. There has to be a stop! Swift thought, but at the same time, she hoped the streetcar wouldn’t stop at all. If they were going to catch Isobel before the wormhole sent her to Riverton, they’d have to make it all the way to Rideau Hall.

  Lucas pushed hard with his legs, like he would on a breakaway. He held the purple bag above his head and tossed it straight into Bond’s outstretched arms—where it landed with a whump! His legs were burning, but he was so close that he and Swift could almost touch fingertips . . . until the train turned a slight corner and was gone!

  “They’ll find her,” Edge said, huffing heavily. He’d stopped running and was now bent over with his hands on his knees. There was no way he and Lucas could have caught up to that train after their time in the frozen canal. They just didn’t have enough energy!

  “They’d better get to her before she leaps,” said Lucas. “If Isobel loses the cup again, then what will we do? They’ll be no Stanley Cup, no NHL . . .”

  “I guess it’s good that I started playing basketball, then,” said Edge with a quick smile. “But here’s what I don’t get—why can’t Swift just give her the cup in her bag?”

  “How would she do that?” asked Lucas. “Hand it to her? Show her that there are two of them? Tell her we’re here from the future to save the fate of the game?!”

  A moment later, Edge was grabbing Lucas’s arm and they were running again.

  * * *

  Swift and Bond arrived at Rideau Hall to find Isobel’s horse still attached to the buggy, which was parked at an angle near the front doors.

  “What do we do? What do we DO?!” asked Swift as she approached the doors and reached for the handle. Just as her hand was about to turn it, a man from the house—a butler or a driver—opened the door and let out a startled yell. He had a carrot in his hand for Isobel’s horse, and he hadn’t expected any visitors.

  “We need to see Isobel!” Bond stammered, trying to sound like she was supposed to be there. “You have to let us in! We need to stop her!”

  “Do you have an appointment?” the butler asked calmly, looking down his nose. Now that he was no longer startled, he wasn’t about to be bullied.

  “We just—” started Swift. She was clutching her track bag like it was her favourite stuffed animal. “We wanted to—” she tried again, but Bond was already holding on to the back of her jersey, pulling her away from the doors.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it, kind, uh, sir,” said the Chips’ defender, almost bowing as she slowly backed away. “We’ll come back tomorrow. Thank you for your . . . uh, hospitality.”

  Once the butler had handed the carrot to the horse and closed the door behind him, Bond completely changed speeds.

  “I know how this will work,” she said quickly, looking at Swift with a new light in her eyes. “Give me your track bag.”

  Swift handed the bag over, but she had no idea what Bond had planned.

  “What are you going to do with it?” she asked nervously.

  “Just trust me,” Bond whispered, looking around. “You take the front entrance, okay? I’m going around to the side of the indoor tennis courts. Do you remember when Lucas was talking about secret passages?”

  “He found one?!” Swift asked, shocked.

  “No,” said Bond, swinging the track bag up on her shoulder. “But he did find a back door.”

  * * *

  Swift had finally, unexpectedly, worked her way into Rideau Hall, past the butler—her acting wasn’t half bad, either—and she had climbed the stairs to the second level just in time to see the flash.

  She’d spotted Isobel running down the hallway ahead of her, toward the display case, when she noticed the flicker. Anyone else would have just thought they’d blinked, but the time-travelling Ice Chips knew better.

  There was a light—a bright one.

  And then a scream . . .

  And then the governor general’s daughter was crashing down onto the carpet and hitting her head.

  Isobel had leaped to Riverton—and then leaped back again!

  “ISOBEL!” Swift yelled as she ran to her new friend’s side.

  Isobel’s eyes were closed and she was moaning, saying something about being chased across the ice.

  “It’s okay,” said Bond, appearing from behind a curtain. “It took her a while to find the keys for the display case, which made the timing perfect. Just let her wake up slowly. This is a tough one—don’t you remember your very first leap?”

  “I do,” said Swift, wrinkling her nose. She was cradling Isobel’s head in her hands and wiped some hair away from her eyes. “On that leap, I was completely turned around and confused. It took me a while to even figure out what had happened.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m counting on,” said Bond, smiling. She held up Swift’s empty track bag and winked.

  “Where am I?” Isobel asked, her eyes flickering. She reached her hands out beside her, searching for the bowl, but all she grabbed was air.

  “You’re at home, in Rideau Hall,” Bond answered calmly. “You were putting the Dominion Cup in the display case, to keep it safe, when you tripped on a bump in the carpet.”

  Swift pulled on the carpet slightly, trying to make the bump look more pronounced.

  “I tripped?” Isobel asked, her eyebrows twisted, as she finally opened her eyes. “But you were there,” she said, looking at Bond. “And Edge! And Lucas! You had the cup. Where’s the cup?! You were . . . skating toward me! Trying to take it?”

  “Was I there? In your dream?” Swift asked, smiling as she helped Isobel to her feet. She knew full well that she’d been at her track practice in Riverton that day—and that this hadn’t been a dream at all. But what else was she supposed to say?

  “The cup is here? You mean the cup is safe?” Isobel asked, shaking her head and beginning to look more alert.

  “It’s safe,” said Bond, pointing to where she’d just slipped the Chips’ Dominion Cup—the one Edge had grabbed on the ice in Riverton. It was back in the display case, where it belo
nged.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” said Isobel.

  All three girls breathed a sigh of relief at exactly the same time.

  Chapter 15

  “You picked the lock?!” Lucas asked, laughing. Swift and Bond had buzzed the boys on their comm-bands, and the four had met up again at the lower end of Rideau Street.

  “I picked two locks,” said Bond proudly. “The back door and the display case. Crunch taught me how to do it at the Fix-it Club one night.”

  “Isobel never had to use her keys,” Swift added with a smile.

  While the girls were checking that Isobel was okay, they’d also gone over that strange “dream” she’d had, to make sure she believed that was all it had been. Their story was that she’d tripped on the carpet putting the cup into its display case, had a little dream about her friends, and then woken up to find the cup exactly where she’d left it.

  Bond hadn’t known how to explain why the two girls were in the house, since Isobel remembered leaving them at the rink, but Swift, as always, had been quick on her feet.

  “Oh, but we forgot to give you back your dresses!” she’d said, grinning and offering one final awkward twirl. She then turned around and pointed to the buttons along her back. “Now that the game is over, can you please get me out of here?”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to keep them? I’ve got plenty,” Isobel replied kindly, but the Chips insisted on changing into their old clothes. They’d leave the dresses at Rideau Hall, they said, in case some other girls wanted to try the game.

  “This is your sport, just as John O’Brien said,” Bond added as they prepared to leave. “You’ll be able to switch from dresses in not too long. And soon—”

  Swift had grabbed her arm to cut her off before she could say anything more.

  Luckily, Isobel hadn’t seemed to notice. “I know this is my game,” she said, grinning. “And it’s the greatest one on earth.”

  Now a light snow had started to fall, and the four Ice Chips realized they had no idea where they were going. They started to walk back up Rideau Street, toward the Parliament Buildings, but only because Edge had been talking about them again.

  “You know what I’d love to see while we’re here in Ottawa?” Edge asked, placing his hand, palm up, in front of him to catch some snowflakes.

  “Summer!” Lucas answered and everyone laughed.

  “At least it wouldn’t be so bad if you fell in the water then,” said Bond, wondering if it was too soon to make jokes about their fall through the ice.

  “No, but it’s true. It’s the summer logging that I’d love to see here, in this time,” said Edge, and everyone laughed again.

  “Logging—like wood? Trees?” Swift asked, giving Edge a soft push on his shoulder.

  “Well, yeah! Logs used to be floated down the river here, right behind the Parliament Buildings. Down the Chaudière Falls, too. The loggers made rafts out of the wood they had to move, and the workers even rode on them to move them around.”

  “Are you kidding? Where did you learn this stuff?” asked Bond, rolling her eyes and giggling.

  “In Mr. Small’s history class,” said Edge, shaking his head. “Same place as you.”

  “I’m not riding a log down a river to travel back to Riverton,” said Swift, pretending to balance on a floating piece of wood—and then pretending to fall.

  “Of course you’re not,” said Edge, elbowing Lucas for a little help. “Once it gets dark, we’ll sneak back to the outdoor rink at Rideau Hall . . .”

  Lucas got the hint. “And then we’ll strap on our skates . . . so we can glide home!”

  * * *

  “WE DID IT! YES!” Crunch cheered as the Chips came flying across the centre line of their ice back in Riverton with Swift’s now empty purple track bag. “But where did you leave the bowl? Who did you give it to? Were you able to find that girl?”

  “We found her—yes,” said Lucas, slightly out of breath. “It all worked out. She has the cup. We saved the world—well, the hockey world.”

  “Ha! How did you save the hockey world?” asked Crunch, thinking Lucas was exaggerating. He was sitting in the stands with his tablet, in the same spot where Lucas and his friends had left him—hours earlier for the Chips, but only a moment ago from Crunch’s perspective. “What kind of adventure were you on?” asked Crunch, moving toward the ice. “All you had to do was return that girl’s salad bowl and get out of there!”

  “Uh, Crunch, that wasn’t a salad bowl,” said Lucas, afraid to break the news.

  “It was a silver cup—one that hockey players sometimes hold like this,” said Edge, lifting his helmet over his head like he was cheering with a trophy. He was excited to see Crunch’s reaction, but he wanted to make him guess. “They sometimes drink out of it, or take it to their hometowns to show it off.”

  “Or if you’re Alexander Ovechkin, you take it swimming in a fountain,” said Bond, getting tired of the suspense game.

  “That bowl was the Stanley Cup, Crunch,” said Swift, grinning. “And that girl was Isobel Stanley, the daughter of the man who donated the cup in the first place.”

  “So yeah, we saved the hockey world,” said Lucas. “That is, if there’s still a National Hockey League in this time. Did we do it? Did we save the Stanley Cup?”

  Crunch’s mouth was open, but not a single sound came out.

  This was the weirdest landing back in Riverton that the Chips had ever gone through. Normally, they were falling all over each other; this time, they’d just skated across the centre line like they were going for an evening skate along the canal. (Minus the freezing water holes.)

  “How did that leap feel?” Crunch asked in the dressing room, when he was finally able to speak again. “I swear I didn’t fiddle with anything.” All four Chips were there, but he was looking at Bond and holding up his hands.

  “The leap was . . . interesting,” said Swift, thinking about how the wormhole had tossed them from scene to scene: the ice castle, the boy knitting the toque by the fire, and that time in the hospital, where they’d heard that baby’s first scream.

  “What do you mean?” asked Crunch, positioning his tablet so he was ready to take notes. “Were there glitches? Was this trip bumpier than usual?”

  “We’ll tell you tomorrow,” Edge and Lucas answered at the very same time. The two Chips’ forwards had never felt so tired. But they didn’t know if that was because they’d fallen through the ice, run after an electric streetcar, or leapt through time. Or maybe it had to do with what awaited them in their own time:

  The championship for the Golden Grail—the most important game of their lives.

  Chapter 16

  As Lucas and Edge approached the Blitz Sports Complex with their bags tossed up on their shoulders and their families following behind, they couldn’t help feeling that this moment was a big one.

  This was game day—the championship final. And it was the furthest the Ice Chips—their Ice Chips—had ever made it in a season.

  By the end of this day, either the Riverton Ice Chips or the Riverton Stars would have their names added to their league’s trophy, the Golden Grail. And the Chips knew that if they wanted to win it, they’d have to play better than they’d ever played before.

  “LOOOOOOSERS!” Jared shouted as he and his sister breezed along the path toward the Stars’ new high-tech arena without their equipment on their shoulders. Jared bumped Edge’s bag and Beatrice bumped Lucas’s. The two Stars didn’t have their equipment with them because their father had probably arranged for one of his assistants to bring it. The Blitz twins were treated like royalty here at the Blitz Sports Complex—after all, it was their castle. Or at least, as Edge now called it, their Kingdom of Rinkness.

  “Ignore them,” said Edge, slowing down to wait for his grandmother, who’d called something to him in Punjabi. “Just think about your lucky underwear, Top Shelf-eroni. Think about how you’ll feel when that lucky underwear kicks those nasty Stars’ butts!” />
  Lucas smiled. He knew his linemate thought his superstitions were ridiculous, but he was still nice about them. If Lucas forgot to do part of his lucky routine—like kissing his fingers and touching the trophy case or rubbing his quarter—Edge was always there to remind him. Edge wanted Lucas to be the best Lucas he could be. That was what friendship meant to him.

  “Have a gooooood game,” Edge’s dadi said to Lucas once she’d caught up. “And pass that rubber tiki!” This was the most English Lucas had ever heard her say. She didn’t speak it much, even though Edge always told him that she understood the language very well. Lucas loved that she called their puck a “tiki,” after an Indian dish made of potatoes.

  “Wait, where’s your jersey?” Lucas asked her. Dadi was wearing the same kind of clothes she normally wore to their games, but she had a light beige cardigan over top, rather than her lucky hockey jersey.

  “Edge’s dada has it in his backpack,” she said, continuing in English as they walked toward the rink. “New superstition—you will like it. Once his grandfather has parked his Ferraris, I will show you.”

  * * *

  In the dressing room—on this big, amazing day—Lucas didn’t care who saw that his bright red underwear was on inside out and backwards. In fact, he wanted his teammates to know that he was going to be lucky that afternoon, and that out there on the ice, his luck would be working its hardest.

  “Hold on—your grandfather has a Ferrari? And more than one of them?” Lucas asked Edge, surprised, as he pulled his socks on over his shin pads. There was so much talking in the dressing room, so much excitement, that he almost needed to shout.

  “No, no!” Edge said loudly, laughing. “He has two crutches that he’s supposed to use while his broken knee heals. My grandmother’s been calling them his Ferraris to make them sound cooler—to make sure he uses them. It was either that or the names of two wrestlers.”

  “That’s great that he’s here, too,” said Swift, who was dressed and ready to step onto the ice. Her parents were in the stands. And of course, her sister, Sadie—“Blades” to the Chips—would be playing in the game with the rest of the team.