The Ice Chips and the Invisible Puck

by Roy MacGregor

  Dedication

  For Dayna Brons

  —ROY MACGREGOR AND KERRY MACGREGOR

  For my beloved hometown, Calgary

  —KIM SMITH

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Location Unknown

  Chapter 2: Location Unknown

  Chapter 3: Riverton, A Few Days Earlier

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6: Calgary, Alberta–Back to the Leap!

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14: Riverton

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  The Ice Chips Series

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Location Unknown

  Swift squeezed her eyes shut and tried desperately not to look down.

  One of her hands was clinging to the cold metal railing beside her; the other held on desperately to one of Lucas Finnigan’s hockey socks.

  That sock—and Swift’s grip on it—was the only thing keeping Lucas, now upside down, from sliding into the murky void that had suddenly appeared before them.

  The young hockey players had leaped through time once again. And they couldn’t believe this was where they’d landed: on a steep staircase, so high up in the air that they could be floating on a cloud!

  “I’m NOT losing you again,” Swift yelled, shivering in the darkness. She had no idea how this leap had gone so wrong, so fast, but she was sure of two things: that her grip had better not slip, and that she was the one who’d brought them here.

  “Top Shelf, you owe me,” she’d said last night in the Ice Chips’ dressing room, when she’d finally convinced Lucas (poor Lucas!) to take this leap. She’d leaned on him—pushed him—even when he swore he would never travel through time again.

  But hadn’t he expected her to do that? Everyone on the Ice Chips knew that when Nica “Swift” Bertrand wanted something, she went after it hard. That’s how she’d made goalie for their hockey team year after year, even when some parents had insisted she should be playing sledge hockey instead. And that’s how she’d figured out how to make saves with an adapted butterfly—so well that half the other teams didn’t even know she had a prosthetic leg.

  Swift was the one who’d wanted this leap; she’d been desperate for it. And now here they were . . . lost somewhere in time, and in trouble again.

  “Whatever you do, don’t wiggle! I’m going to try to pull you up!” Swift called down the steps, ignoring how quickly the icy wind carried her words away.

  She was pulling on Lucas’s sock as carefully as she could, but her heart was beating wildly. The moment they’d landed, she’d guessed they were high up—really high up. She’d felt it, even while her eyes were adjusting to the darkness. Her fear of heights was that strong.

  It had all happened so fast. They’d crossed the centre line of their rink back in Riverton, after the ice had been resurfaced by Scratch and his magical flood, and then—poof !—they’d appeared here, stranded on this strange staircase . . . on a cold, wintry night.

  “Ugh, we’ve leaped into the dark again?” Lucas had complained, turning to Swift just as his skate blade caught on one of the roughly carpeted steps and sent him flying.

  Swift had called out as she’d reached for his gloved hand, but Lucas had missed his footing on the next step and continued to tumble. She was lucky her quick reflexes had helped her snag his sock before she’d lost him completely.

  “Hey, help me! Give me your hand—come on!” Swift called back up the stairs to the other teammate who’d come with them.

  If I keep my breathing even, she told herself, trying to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach, we might get out of this alive.

  But Lucas’s sock had begun to slip, and all Swift could hear from farther up the steps . . . was giggling!

  “Stop it! Help me!” she called angrily toward Sadie—now known to the team as “Blades”—but her sister was laughing so hard she was doubled over.

  “Does Lucas fall every time you leap?” Blades asked, letting the air out of her mouth like an over-inflated balloon.

  Lucas, even upside down, turned beet red. He was trying not to move, but with his lungs breathing in the cold air, he, too, was soon shivering. Carefully, he shook off one of his hockey gloves, letting it fall beside him, and planted his hand down near his shoulder to keep from slipping.

  He was surprised when, instead of touching another step, he found he’d put his hand down on something cold and wet. Snow?

  “Ugh, Sadie! Give me your hand—NOW!” Swift yelled up the stairs again, at the exact moment when eight gigantic floodlights flashed on with a shhh-thunk, and a glistening white trail—the snow Lucas had half-landed on—was suddenly lit up beneath them.

  Squinting in the bright lights, Swift could see that the snowy trail had two lines down the middle, like two indented stripes, and at the end of it—way, way down below, where Lucas’s glove had ended up—it scooped out, almost like the arc of a crescent moon. Even from up high, the trail looked like it was ready to launch anyone who dared go down it into outer space—probably into oblivion!

  We’re at the top of an Olympic ski jump?! Swift swallowed hard. The butterflies in her stomach were going nuts.

  “No waaaay!” Lucas shouted as he looked down at the trail, almost forgetting that he was dangling there above it. When he turned back to Swift for her reaction, he finally saw a railing he could grab and went for it. Swift, who was in shock, could at last let go of his sock.

  “Hey, Falls-a-lot. You gonna be okay there?” Blades asked Lucas, laughing at his expression of relief. “Maybe you’re the one who should have stayed back at the ri—”

  “Shhhhh!” Swift hissed, cutting her off. She was crouching on the stairs, as though it were possible to hide under those bright lights.

  “Shhhhh what?” asked Blades, her voice still as loud as ever.

  “I said shhhhhhh!” Swift hissed again. As quietly as she could, she moved down another step to Lucas, who was sitting beside the railing, unlacing his skates. “There’s a guy,” she whispered without turning her head.

  “What guy?” Lucas asked, confused. He was still breathing heavily, trying to pretend he hadn’t been scared.

  “The guy. That guy,” she whispered, motioning toward the steps on the other side of the trail.

  There was now a man there, a little farther down and on a different set of steps, doing squats and throwing his arms out behind his back over and over again. He was in a blue ski suit and wore a helmet with pink goggles perched on top.

  “Ready to give it a go!” the man called, in a British accent, to someone near the top of the jump.

  Have they seen us?

  Swift didn’t think so, but it was hard to tell. She had no idea what might happen if they got caught.

  Luckily, this man seemed to be concentrating hard. He was nervous—and excited.

  “Now that’s my kind of daredevil,” Blades said with a mischievous smile, still not keeping her voice down. “I’d definitely take that jump.”

  “Blades—quiet!” Lucas warned as the skier scooted his butt along a wooden bench suspended between the two sets of steps and slipped his skis into the grooves in the snow.

  “Oh no! He’s not really goin
g to—” Swift started, her stomach churning, but the skier was already checking the strap on his helmet and pulling his goggles down over his thick glasses. As he stood up on his skis, she again squeezed her eyes shut. There was no way she could watch this.

  The skier bent forward as he let go and went sailing down the brightly lit trail with a loud scraping sound. Swish! He was gathering speed, fast. Then as he reached the end, the jump thrust him upward and launched him into the sky!

  “He’s flying!” Blades cheered, her voice bubbly, as she punched Swift in the arm. “I guess you wouldn’t like the view from up there either!”

  Swift was still angry with her sister about what had happened back in Riverton—about the argument they’d had before making this leap—but she knew she didn’t have time to think about that now.

  “You can breathe, Swift,” Lucas told his teammate as the skier, wobbling a little, landed some distance away. He was on his skis, but he was leaning too far to the right—and soon he was twisting . . . falling. As he hit the snow, sliding on his side, one ski was ripped from his foot. Enveloped in a wave of spraying snow, the jumper kept sliding until he skidded to a stop at the bottom of the hill, where the floodlights were still shining. Two onlookers immediately ran to check on him.

  “He’s okay!” said Blades, her eyes wild with excitement. He was incredible! The skier was soon jumping up all on his own, waving to tell everyone that he was he was fine. What courage!

  Just the thought of what he’d done made Swift dizzy. But slowly, she opened her eyes and watched as the jumper, now standing, placed his hands on his knees. She imagined how heavily he had to be breathing—how scared she would have been.

  “He’s lucky he didn’t break his leg on your glove on the way down,” Blades said with a giggle as she opened her backpack and pulled out her boots, just as the others were doing. She pointed at the spot where Lucas’s glove had come to rest. “I guess that’s lost now.”

  Swift couldn’t look. She kept her eyes on her skates as she zipped them into her backpack with the rest of her supplies.

  “Ugh, that’s my cousin Speedy’s glove. My parents are going to kill—” Lucas started.

  Just then, the bright floodlights flickered off, leaving them in the dark . . .

  And then quickly banged on again.

  “HEY! WHO’S UP THERE?!”

  Chapter 2

  Location Unknown

  “RUN!”

  All three Ice Chips yelled it at once.

  Throwing their packs back over their shoulders, they moved as carefully and as quickly as they could down half a dozen of those very steep steps. Once they reached the bench the skier had used, they pulled themselves across it and onto the other staircase.

  “There’s an elevator!” Swift called out, pointing to the area above them—their only way out, unless they wanted to launch themselves off the end of the ski jump.

  “Go for it!” Lucas shouted, grabbing Blades’s arm and pulling her with him.

  They still didn’t know where that voice had come from—where the light control box was—but they didn’t want to wait to find out.

  “The button!” Lucas cried out as they neared the elevator. “PUSH IT!”

  But Swift was already on it. The elevator arrived—empty, thank goodness—and they all piled in.

  A moment later, they were gone.

  * * *

  “Why on earth did we land there?” Swift asked, confused, once they’d cleared the ski jump area and found their way to the gates of the Olympic Park. “That’s not fair. I’m the one who chose this leap, and that’s the last place I’d want to end up.”

  Swift could swear that up on those steps, she’d felt the jump drawing her toward it. It was the same feeling she’d had when the Riverton Ice Chips had visited Toronto’s CN Tower—as if the void was trying to pull her over and swallow her up. Her sister had made her angry before the leap—angrier than she’d ever been—but now Swift was actually shaking. She’d never been so scared.

  “Wait! Isn’t that skier supposed to be your hero? The famous person you came here to meet?” Blades asked. She was out of breath, and she was still having trouble understanding how all this was supposed to work.

  “I don’t know if it can be just any athlete,” said Swift, annoyed that she had to explain this to Blades, that she had to share the magic of this leap—her leap—with her little sister.

  “That skier doesn’t play hockey,” said Lucas, trying to explain why Swift was so upset without making Blades feel bad. “We’re still learning, but so far we’ve only met hockey players.”

  “It’s GOTTA be a hockey player!” said Swift. “I mean, it’s all about the rink, right?”

  “Maybe—probably,” Lucas answered. But he wasn’t sure.

  “Okay, then,” said Blades, grabbing both of their arms and pulling them out of the park. “Let’s go find a rink!”

  * * *

  “It’s closed!” said Lucas. He pulled hard on the door of the large arena they’d found, not far from the Olympic Park. There was a metallic click, but it still wouldn’t budge.

  “What do we do now?” asked Blades, disappointed. “You got a skeleton key, or what?”

  “I guess we wait,” Swift said with a shrug. She took the elastic out of her hair and retied her ponytail. “It’s still nighttime. Maybe there’s an early practice—or a late one? What is it . . . midnight?”

  So far, Swift and Lucas had met Gordie Howe out on a frozen slough in Saskatchewan during the Depression, and Sidney Crosby in Halifax Harbour during a hurricane. But they hadn’t gone looking for those hockey players—they’d just sort of . . . run into them.

  “It’s dangerous to be out in the cold overnight,” Lucas warned. “We’ll need to stay warm. If we can’t get inside, we should walk around.” He’d already pulled on a coat from his bag and was reaching into its pocket to grab his lucky quarter.

  Swift’s eyes immediately brightened. “What does your quarter say? What year?” she asked impatiently. I need information! How else am I going to figure out who I’m supposed to meet?

  “You mean that nasty old quarter he rubs before every game? Yuck!” said Blades, her lips twisting into a frown. She still found most of Lucas’s superstitions ridiculous—or gross. Who wants to kiss a dusty old trophy case?

  “Yeah, that quarter,” said Lucas, turning it over in his hand. “We don’t know how, but when we leap, it changes. Look . . . it’s not from the 2010 Olympics anymore.”

  He was holding his arm outstretched so Blades could see what had happened to his lucky coin.

  “Calgary, 1988,” she read, as if it were no big deal—but of course it was. “And hey, there’s a figure skater.”

  Lucas snapped his coin back to look at it again. A figure skater? Does the coin look different to everyone? What he’d seen were the Olympic rings and a goalie reaching out a gloved hand to make a save.

  “Not on your stupid coin,” said Blades, hitting Lucas’s arm with the back of her hand and pointing to the parking lot. “This rink’s for the figure skaters. And—oh, wow!—that’s Elizabeth Manley!”

  Swift put her hands on her hips as they watched the petite figure skater from Ottawa pull her skate bag out of the trunk of a car in the nearly empty parking lot, swing it over her shoulder, and start walking toward the rink with her coach.

  “I just want to try that jump once more,” the skater was telling her sleepy-eyed coach, who yawned as she pulled out a rink key. “Then we can go back to the hotel to sleep—promise.”

  “Do you remember these Olympics, Swift? I was just watching this at home!” Blades whisper-yelled. She was excited. “Liz Manley was an underdog, and no one expected her to do very well. But then she came out of nowhere and won the silver medal!”

  Swift’s heart sank as she watched a huge smile spread across her sister’s face.

  “I guess we’re here to meet my hero!”

  * * *

  “It’s not fair! It’s no
t fair!” Swift repeated as Lucas and Blades followed her along one of the snowy streets that led away from the arena. She was angry and didn’t care that she had no idea where she was going—or that it was still dark out.

  “Turn around!” Blades complained. “We can get into the rink now!”

  But Swift was making it obvious that she had no intention of meeting some superhero skater named Elizabeth Manley.

  No one ever said we could control these leaps—or who we meet, Lucas thought. He felt sympathetic, but he also wished Swift weren’t so upset. It wasn’t like he’d tried to meet Sidney Crosby on their last leap—he’d just been lucky.

  “Swift!” Blades yelled, grabbing on to her sister’s arm. “Stop! Just wait a—”

  “Whoa! If these are the Calgary Winter Games,” Lucas blurted, suddenly remembering that he knew something about these competitions, too, “that British skier we saw must have been Eddie the Eagle. He’s a legend. His country didn’t have any other ski jumpers, and that’s why he picked that sport! He made the team because he was the only one who signed up!”

  “Good for him,” snapped Swift, not sounding like herself.

  “I mean, he was kind of a regular guy who just wanted to be in the Olympics. So he worked really hard and he did it!” Lucas continued, hoping this news might cheer her up. “My mom talks about him and how much he worked for this whenever I feel like quitting something.”

  “Of course she does,” said Swift. Lucas had never seen her be so negative. “He’s probably her hero, right? Maybe your mom should have come with us. I’m sure everyone’s got a hero here but me!”

  “What is that?” asked Blades, letting go of her sister’s arm.

  “Worst day of my life,” answered Swift. She was finally ready to continue the fight they’d started back home—a fight the two sisters had never had before, but one that had been brewing since the beginning of the hockey season. “Why do you have to be here anyway, Sadie? This is my leap!”

  “No—ugh, Nica!” said Blades. “I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about that!”

  There was a sound. A strange sound. A scraping sound, but not always scraping. A scrape, then silence, then a scrape, then another, another, another.