by Heide Goody
“We can do it Sam, because magic is real,” said Marvin. “I just need you to believe in me.” He gave her the faux-sincere look that worked on stage, but definitely not on her and hadn’t since the age of nine. Sam eyed him carefully. Was the stress of the situation getting to him? He did love to wallow in the past. Right now, it sounded as though he’d been transported back to a fictitious past, perhaps an old Disney movie, the way he was wheeling out his fairy dust stage patter.
She stood with her hands on her hips. “Go on then, can you seriously open these doors?”
He gave a mysterious waggle of his eyebrows and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He approached a locked door and flapped his hanky over the lock, obscuring the view. “Now, before we continue, I need you to say it with me.”
“You can just—”
“Say it with me!” urged her father.
“Fine. Mr bloody Marvellous.”
“Don’t you sully the name that has made our fortune.”
“Fortune? Ha! We’re broke.”
“Shut up and say the words.”
“Abracadabra!” said Sam, making it sound more like an expletive than a word of conjuration.
There was a brief movement, the hanky twitched away and the door was open.
Sam gaped. “How did you do that?”
Marvin gave a smug grin and held up a key. It had a label hanging off that read Master Locker Key. “It was on the table when we came in.”
Sam laughed. “Nicely played!”
Sam reached into the locker while Marvin unlocked the others. For a moment she wondered if she was invading the personal space of some long-departed engineer, She quickly got over it when she discovered most of the detritus in the lockers was rubbish. The scale was wide, encompassing mummified fruit, a dog-eared manual for a large industrial pump, a selection of ancient porn magazines (“Jazzle! Amazing Grace wants to sit on your face!”) and a battery that had leaked acid, corroding the locker base into a rusty puddle.
“Oh, now here’s a find,” said Marvin, reaching inside a locker right at the end. He pulled out a tin. Sam’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “A treacle pudding? No way!”
Marvin held it up. “I can’t see the date on it.”
Sam crossed the room to take a look. “It’s still in date! I can barely believe it!”
Rich appeared. “It’s not looking good for getting out of here. We’re going to feel the full force of Wendy tonight and no one can come out.”
“Windy Wendy, eh?” said Marvin.
“But you’ve found some food, yeah? I should think there’s plenty here we can use.”
“There really isn’t plenty of anything, Rich,” said Sam.
“Hey, there’s no need to be downbeat. Worst case scenario is we have to stay here for a couple of days,” said Rich. “There’s some sort of rainwater filtration system, so we’ll have enough water.”
“I checked. There is.”
“The electric’s working and there’s gas for cooking. I see you’ve already found the tinned provisions, so we’re good, yeah? We shouldn’t get bored, there’s a DVD library and a table football. I hereby challenge you both to a game as soon as we’ve found something to drink!”
“How can you sound so chipper at a time like this?” said Sam. Even after having been the man’s girlfriend for far longer than was sane, she still couldn’t get over his unbearable optimism.
“Winner gets to choose a restaurant when we get back to the mainland!”
“Slap up dinner,” nodded Marvin.
“He’ll be buying me a fucking restaurant at this rate,” said Sam.
“Either, both,” grinned Rich. “So how does that sound?”
Sam rolled her eyes. Maybe Rich was happy with not eating over Christmas, as long as he had table football. She wasn’t sure Marvin would be. She certainly wasn’t.
“You’re on, lad!” said Marvin, taking her by surprise. “You coming, Sam?”
“I’ll just have a bit more of a scout round,” she said. “I’ll come and find you in a few minutes.”
She went back into the kitchen and tried the gas. It seemed to be working. She searched around to see if there were supplies of any sort. She found a bottle of cooking oil that smelled slightly rancid, but nothing else. She searched the remaining communal areas. In the canteen seating area there was a drinks machine, but she couldn’t tell if there was anything inside as it was powered down. She decided to come back later and investigate. She found some board games, which she left on the table for later, but no more food. There was a brief moment of excitement when she found a Pringles tube; then she opened it and found it was being used to store a jigsaw.
She explored the laundry area and found washing machine pods and some ancient dryer lint, but no food.
She went back through the corridors until she came to the lab complex. The old signage made her realise it was a repurposed sick bay. She peered through the glass and wondered how safe it was. If she came across a cage with baby velociraptors inside she would definitely leave.
She nurtured a hopeful theory that whoever had set up or was operating the lab facility might have left some snacks behind. The door wasn’t locked so she entered. She looked inside the cupboards. There was scientific glassware, electronics, and boxes of things called Eppendorf tubes. She started to check cabinets that might possibly double as storage cupboards. Most of them turned out to hold more equipment, but when she pulled open a large upright cabinet she struck gold. It was a freezer!
She eagerly pulled open the internal drawers to see what was in there. Not much that looked useful. Lots of reagents, according to the labels. The last drawer was labelled samples, and she pulled it open just to check for a rogue box of choc ices. She was surprised to see a familiar shape: it was the mammoth specimen she had fetched from Hull. She lifted it out, feeling a sudden, nostalgic warmth towards it. It was like meeting an old friend in this isolated and hostile place. There was a section missing from one corner. Presumably Rich’s pet scientists had started using it.
She glanced around, struck by the sudden irrational idea she had missed a tiny cloned mammoth. “If there are any tiny mammoths in here, you’d better come out right now,” she said to the empty room.
No. She placed the sample back into the freezer. It had such a strong resemblance to a nice piece of roasting beef that she suddenly found herself quite hungry. She stood in the centre of the lab and had a final look round. There was a storage unit near one of the machines that she hadn’t checked. She opened it up and was stunned to find numerous packets of dried milk. She was suspicious it wasn’t the real deal, but on turning a packet over she found serving suggestions – including a warming mug of hot chocolate. The unexpected discovery lifted her mood, and she put the packets with the rest of her very small stash. Then she went to join the table football fun.
“Here she is!” said Marvin with a wink.
“Your dad’s wiping the floor with me,” said Rich. “I think he’s using magic.”
“There’s nothing in the rules that forbids a little sleight of hand! Come and have a go, Sam. Did you find anything else?”
“Yeah, some milk powder.” She took over the handles of the game from her dad and locked eyes with Rich. “Show me how we do this then Rich.”
“It’s pretty simple. You turn the handles to make the – what—?”
Sam grinned smugly. She had knocked the ball into his goal while he was explaining the game. “Sorry, couldn’t resist!”
They laughed.
“Nip of scotch, Sam?” asked Marvin. Suddenly there was full bottle of single malt in his hand.
“Scotch? Where did that come from?” she asked.
“Do you want the magical answer or the real answer?”
“Magical!” said Rich.
“The truth,” said Sam.
“My case,” he said. “I popped it in on a whim. Glad I did now.”
Sam smiled. It was a cheering thought. “Hey Rich, ho
w far have your scientists got with their work?” she asked.
“Hmmm?”
“Recreating Ice Age creatures.”
“They tell me they’re most of the way there with the current samples, apparently they extracted some viable material.”
“Cool!” said Sam. Her mind was considering something and she hated herself for even entertaining the thought. “So it’s fairly fresh then? The mammoth?”
“Oh yeah! Honestly, it’s amazing how well-preserved it is. But it’s barely fifteen thousand years old.”
“Must be rare? Irreplaceable even?” Sam asked.
“Not irreplaceable, you’d be surprised,” said Rich. “Mammoth flesh is found fairly regularly in deep ice. Now, can we play a sensible game this time, where you let me get ready?”
“Will you be ready at the count of three? Three!” Sam whizzed another ball into Rich’s goal. “Two nil!”
They played some more and Sam retired victorious after a few short minutes.
“You take over dad, I’ll be back soon,” she said. “Just need to do a bit of Christmas dinner prep.”
69
At nightfall the Odinson mead hall was full, and everybody was talking excitedly as food and drink was circulated. Torsten had given Ragnar a massive drinking horn worked with shiny filigree as a Yule gift. Hilde wasn’t sure where her cousin could have possibly got it from – the Odinsons bought a lot of their Viking amulets and ornaments from a pagan shop in Lincoln run by a guy who called himself Runesplicer (but whose real name was Nigel). Wherever Torsten had got such a lovely horn from it certainly made their farfar happy. The thing could hold a whole litre of mead and Ragnar demonstrated that to the family repeatedly.
Hilde watched with mild disapproval as crumbs were strewn and drink was spilt on the longship’s woodwork. It would doubtless see a good deal of mess during its service, but it seemed somehow disrespectful to soil it before its launch. However, she soon realised there were worse things than food that could be spilt on the floor.
The petting corner was a new feature in the Odinson’s yule, invented about thirty minutes earlier, and was proving very popular with the children. A belligerent goat was the centrepiece, having just arrived courtesy of Gunnolf and Hermod. Hilde had initially assumed they had stolen it, but was beginning to suspect someone had given it to them, just to be rid of it. It ran at the children, butting them violently and bleating loudly. The kids loved it and kept going back for more, taking scraps of food for the goat to eat. It had just vomited copiously onto the floor, and Hilde suspected she’d be finding nuggets of goat poop for weeks.
Ragnar stood and raised an arm to get everyone’s attention. “We will raise a toast to Odin!”
There were hearty shouts of agreement from around the hall, and mead was sloshed into goblets.
“But first we must prepare the sacrifice, as demanded by tradition!” Ragnar shouted.
Hilde shifted in her seat.
Ragnar stalked over to the prow of the boat which bore a carved dragon’s head. His position elevated him above the rest of the crowd. “We have always spilled the blood of a sacrifice to honour the Yule father, and this year will be no different!”
He bent down and picked up a huge sword. Hilde gasped.
“Who best to perform this act of ritual slaughter than the youngest people amongst us?” he shouted. “Come forward if you’re under twelve and you want to honour Odin.”
Some of the children headed straight up. A few others had to be shoved by their parents. Moments later a group of eight children stood with Ragnar. He held the sword aloft and swiped it at a rope that was slung across the ceiling, severing it.
“Behold the sacrifice!” he yelled as a huge piñata in the shape of a donkey swung down. “Children, take up your weapons!”
He indicated a row of little sticks and the children each picked one up.
“Odin! Odin!” Ragnar began the chant and the entire hall joined in. Ragnar gave the signal to the children and they attacked the piñata with their sticks, giving squeals of delight as sweets and presents dropped out of its belly. They carried on going until the cardboard donkey figure was smashed and distorted, then Ragnar turned the children to the crowd.
“Tek a bow, that was a fine job.”
There was much cheering and clapping. Hilde doubted any heard Ragnar say to his wife among the hubbub, “But next year we’re having a piñata of Jörmungandr the world serpent or we’re going back to goat.”
70
Sam got up early on Christmas day.
It hardly felt Christmassy at this point. There was no stocking hanging at the end of her bunk bed. There was no rushing to the window to see if, hope against hope, there was any snow. There were no windows in the accommodation block for one thing. And definitely no snow. There was no tree festooned with decorations. The only festooning in sight was the entirely unsuitable clothes she had brought with her, hanging on the metal clothes hooks on the wall.
She hadn’t slept well in this strange environment: it vibrated with the violence of the wind and the sea. They had eaten ramen noodles the previous evening, followed by Sam’s best attempt at rice pudding, but it was a joyless sludge as there was no sugar to sweeten it.
She looked through her clothes and decided to wear yesterday’s jeans and jumper. It wasn’t a festive outfit, but it was practical. She wandered out of her room to find she was the only one up.
She wished she could bring a little Christmas spirit to the place. If Delia was here she would have whipped up a Christmas tree out of an old mop by now. Sam wandered into the room with the lockers. She shuffled through the well-thumbed porn magazines (“Oiled Up Babes! Tina wants to work in YOUR hard hat area!”) She could make some crackers, maybe? Just the idea of porno crackers made her smile. She dropped the magazine onto the table, not all that sure how she would go about it.
“Morning sweetheart,” her dad said as he shuffled into the dining room. “We haven’t got any tea or coffee, have we?”
“No. I can do you a cup of warm milk if you want?” she said.
“Sounds lovely. Merry Christmas!”
She kissed his cheek.
The man was wearing slippers – actual comfy tartan slippers – which either meant he’d found them here or had wasted valuable packing space bringing them. Sam didn’t know if she felt disgust or jealousy.
“I thought we should make some crackers.” She indicated the porn magazines.
“Interesting idea,” said Marvin. “I’ll take care of it while you whip up some warm milk. Would I be correct in thinking we might be having rice pudding for breakfast?”
“Excellent choice,” said Sam.
She moved into the galley kitchen and got busy with the milk powder while Marvin started cutting up the porn magazine.
“Ah, morning, Rich,” she heard him say. “Happy Christmas! Tell me, which is more festive out of these two pictures?”
It went very quiet for several long moments. Sam was on the brink of going to see what was the matter, then Rich walked into the kitchen.
“Your dad has some strange hobbies,” he said.
“He’s trying to make us feel a bit more Christmassy,” said Sam.
“Lovely. Well, a happy Christmas to you.”
“Cup of warm milk followed by rice pudding?” said Sam.
“Sounds good,” said Rich. “I’ve been phoning around again. I can’t believe nobody will come out to us. I’ve offered some pretty tempting fees, but nobody’s budging.”
“You don’t want someone putting themselves at risk,” said Sam. “We can wait it out.”
“I know, I know. I just can’t bear that I promised you and your dad a special Christmas, yet it’s going to be worse than staying at home and eating beans on toast. A lot worse.”
“It won’t be that bad,” said Sam. “I saw The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven in that pile of DVDs. It will be just like a normal Christmas.”
“No queen’s speech though.�
��
“How about I do an alternative one?” said Sam. “I’ll be queen of – what’s this platform called again?”
“It’s known as Valhalla,” said Rich. “All the platforms round here have ‘V’ names. Viking, Vampire…”
“Vaginormous,” said Marvin from the dining room.
Sam peered through the doorway.
“Sorry,” he said, holding up a magazine. “I was just reading.”
“I’ll be queen of Valhalla and I will make my speech at three o’clock.”
“Cool! Just after lun— Ah. Yes. What are we doing for lunch…?”
“I’ll sort something,” said Sam with a confident smile. “Seriously, don’t fret.”
Rich smiled. “You’re brilliant, did you know that?”
“Yes, I did.”
“It doesn’t matter if we have rice pudding three times a day until we get off here, I’m happy I’m spending time with you.”
Sam didn’t like to break it to him that the rice was nearly gone. Or that the feeling wasn’t wholly mutual.
“Shall we exchange presents?” Rich asked.
“What? It’s morning!” said Sam. “I thought posh people all waited until the afternoon?”
Rich gave her a pained look. “I might have lots of money, but I would never call myself posh,” he said. “Let’s do presents after breakfast.”
They all ate the thin, rice-based gruel and pretended to enjoy it. Sam felt her face starting to ache, as she strained to stop it pulling into a rice-hating rictus.
“Right!” said Rich brightly. “I’ll pop out and get the pressies.”
They all got up to retrieve their gifts from their rooms and gathered in the community room. They each took a seat and exchanged packages. All three of them had brought neatly wrapped parcels. Marvin’s were done with the precision and care of a manually dextrous performer. Rich’s were clearly the work of an expert butler. If anything, Sam’s thoroughly competent wrapping was the poorest of the lot.
“Marvin, you go first,” urged Rich.