by Alex Bell
“Stella, above you!” Felix shouted at the exact same moment that a monstrous dark shadow fell over her.
She looked up, and a cry of fear lodged itself in her throat. A gigantic vulture loomed over her like something out of a nightmare, its twenty-foot wingspan flapping out icy ripples of frozen air. It had bedraggled, dirty gray feathers, a long, stringy neck, and a completely bald head. Stella saw the sharp, hooked beak, the curled claws, and the cold gleam in its predator’s eyes. If she had had her tiara she could have frozen the vulture, but without it she had no choice but to turn and run, her fur-topped boots kicking up great clumps of snow behind her.
The house seemed so far away. She was never going to make it. Behind her, the vulture let out a terrible squawk, which seemed to pierce the air. The next moment the giant bird swooped in so close that Stella could smell its damp, dirty feathers and the putrid scent of rotting flesh on its breath as it gave that screeching squawk once again, so loud that it seemed to slice right through Stella’s eardrums.
She gasped as she felt the vulture’s talons clamp down on her shoulders. Her boots were coming up off the ground, and she realized that the bird had caught her and was going to fly away and there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it—
But then Felix crashed into her, and her cloak ripped free of the vulture’s claws as he dragged her to the ground. Stella found herself pressed facedown in the snow, pinned there by Felix’s weight as he shielded her from the vulture, which immediately tried to throw him aside. There was the sound of fabric tearing, and Felix’s breath caught sharply in his throat.
Stella tried to push him off, because she didn’t want his protection if it meant he was going to get hurt instead, but Felix was too strong and kept her tucked firmly underneath him as the vulture screamed into the air. The thought flashed through Stella’s mind, clear as crystal, that the vulture was going to kill them both. There was no way they could fight it off, and there was no one around for miles. Even if one of the servants saw the attack from a window, Felix kept no weapons in the house, so there would be absolutely nothing they could do to help.
Suddenly she became aware of the ground trembling beneath her and looked up to see Gruff racing across the snow, faster than she had ever seen him move before, his huge paws kicking up tall fountains of beautiful, glittering ice. The great bear thundered up to them, putting his massive body between the humans and the vulture. His black lips pulled back in a ferocious snarl, and he let out such a deafening bellow of a roar that Stella felt it in the very ground beneath her.
She had never realized quite how many teeth Gruff had, or how cruelly sharp they were, and she had never seen him roaring and snarling in fury in such a terrifying way. The vulture squawked in alarm and drew back a little. Gruff stood up on his hind legs, towering at his full ten-foot height. He swiped at the vulture with his huge paws, landing a solid blow that sent the giant bird reeling farther into the sky.
Felix gripped Stella’s arm, and she found herself being dragged to her feet. Then he scooped her up in his arms and sprinted back toward the house. Over his shoulder Stella saw that Gruff had thumped back down to all fours, but he was still roaring over and over again at the vulture, which had flown higher and was circling warily above.
Felix threw open the door to the library with one hand and set Stella down in the doorway. Worried for her polar bear, she tried to see past Felix, but he was already turning back to the door.
“Gruff!” he shouted. “Come on.”
The polar bear turned and lolloped across the snow toward them. The vulture had flown so high now that Stella could no longer see it. The moment Gruff padded through the doorway, Felix slammed the door closed and drew across the bolts.
CHAPTER TWO
ARE YOU HURT?” FELIX asked, gripping Stella’s arms and peering at her closely.
“N-no,” she said. “No. I’m okay.”
“Thank heavens!” Felix replied, squeezing her tight.
“Are you all right?” Stella asked, remembering the sound of fabric tearing.
“Yes. Of course.” Felix let her go and threw his arms around Gruff’s neck. “You big, wonderful bear!” he said. “You shall feast on blubber pies for a month, I promise!”
“What was that thing?” Stella asked.
Felix frowned and said, “I’ll have to consult my books to know for sure. …” As he trailed off, Stella noticed that he’d turned an unhealthy shade of gray. She was about to ask again whether he was all right when suddenly he leaned forward, steadying himself against Gruff’s broad side. “Stella, I don’t want you to be alarmed,” he said calmly, “but I’m afraid that blasted bird might have succeeded in scratching me a couple of times. Perhaps you would go and fetch Mrs. Sap from the kitchens. There is a chance I might require her assistance removing my shirt.”
Stella walked around behind him and gasped. The vulture had shredded Felix’s jacket and ripped straight through his shirt as well. She could see angry red welts all over his back. Smears of blood stained the white cotton, and Stella could see at a single glance that these were no mere scratches, but slashes deep enough to leave scars.
She felt tears fill her eyes but blinked them quickly away. She could cry and be terribly upset about it all later, but right now she had to go and fetch help. She turned toward the door, but before she could take a single step, it burst open and the housekeeper, Mrs. Sap, rushed in carrying the most gigantic rifle Stella had ever seen. It looked rather incongruous alongside the housekeeper’s frilly hat and crisp white apron.
“Where is it?” she cried, pointing the rifle wildly around the room, her gray curls bouncing about her shoulders. “Where is that awful creature?”
“Good heavens, is that a rifle?” Felix asked.
“Now, I know your thoughts on guns, Mr. Felix, and that’s all well and good, but living out here in the snow, one never knows when one might suddenly be faced with a yeti attack.”
“Yeti attack!” Felix exclaimed. “My dear woman, the closest reported sighting of a yeti was miles and miles from this house.”
“That’s as may be, but haven’t you just been attacked in the backyard by a dragon? I saw it with my own eyes!”
“That was a bone-eating vulture, unless I am very much mistaken,” Felix said with a sigh. “Mrs. Sap, please do stop pointing that gun all over the place. You’re likely to blow our heads off. The vulture has flown away. Gruff frightened it off.”
Stella noticed that Felix put a little extra emphasis on that final sentence. Mrs. Sap had not been happy when Gruff arrived—not happy at all—and was forever disagreeing with Felix over things like whether polar bears should be kept as pets, or allowed in the house, or washed in the best bathroom in the massive claw-footed tub, or permitted to flop down on the four-poster bed in the guest bedroom whenever guests were not present (and sometimes even when they were, as Aunt Agatha had found to her dismay the last time she’d stayed. Really, anyone would have thought she’d discovered a hoard of horned baboon tarantulas nesting within the sheets the way she’d carried on about it).
“Felix is hurt,” Stella said, bringing everyone back to the subject. “The vulture clawed at his back and ripped through his clothes.”
Mrs. Sap huffed angrily. “If you hadn’t banned weapons from the house, Mr. Felix, and thereby forced me to hide the rifle in the jam and preserves cupboard, then I might have gotten to it a great deal sooner and saved you from terrible injury.”
Felix raised an eyebrow. “You might recall, Mrs. Sap, that the owner of the White Unicorn sent me a substantial bill for damage to the wood paneling of his pub’s four-hundred-year-old walls after you attempted to participate in the darts tournament there last year. So I think we can all count ourselves extremely fortunate that the rifle was hidden beneath piles of jam.”
Mrs. Sap huffed again but didn’t say anything more as she set the rifle carefully down in the corner and bustled over to them. She gasped when she saw Felix’s back, and made
him sit down in one of the chairs.
“Merciful heavens, you look like you’ve taken a flogging!” she exclaimed. “The doctor will have to be sent for.”
There was no arguing with Mrs. Sap once she decided on something, and in no time at all the doctor had arrived and was treating Felix upstairs. Stella found herself whisked away to the kitchen with the housekeeper and Gruff.
“You’re a big old stinky, messy, slobbery thing, but you were superb today,” Mrs. Sap said to Gruff, reaching up to pat him on the head. “Superb.”
She settled Stella in the comfiest chair in front of the stove with a steaming mug of hot chocolate and then fetched a whole roast chicken from the cool box and let Gruff have it all to himself. While the polar bear munched happily on the rug in front of the fire, Stella clutched the hot chocolate Mrs. Sap had given her but found she was too upset to drink it. She kept hearing the shriek of the vulture in her ears, the sound of fabric tearing, and then the image of Felix’s bloodstained, ripped shirt swam before her. Before she knew it, tears had filled her eyes again, and this time she was quite helpless to stop them from falling.
“Oh, my duck,” Mrs. Sap said, swooping down on her at once. “What a terrible morning you’ve had, you poor, dear thing.”
She took the hot chocolate from Stella’s trembling hands, then picked her up and settled her down in her lap, just like she used to when Stella was tiny.
“There, there,” the housekeeper said. “You have a good long cry if you want to. Lord knows anyone else would be bawling their eyes out by now.”
“Is … ? Is Felix going to be okay?” Stella asked in a shaky voice.
“Of course he is, my sweet. He’s a tough old stick. This won’t be the first time he’s been attacked by some terrible monster, mark my words, not with all those expeditions he’s been on.” Mrs. Sap sighed. “Why you all want to go tearing off to unknown lands all the time, I’ll never understand, but it’s no use trying to talk sense to an explorer, goodness knows. They’ve just got maps and compasses and adventures on the brain, and that’s that. But he’s going to be absolutely fine. Those scratches looked a bit of a mess, I’ll grant you, but they’ll mend soon enough.”
In fact, Felix couldn’t walk properly for almost a week. Mrs. Sap was all for sending for Aunt Agatha to nurse him, but Felix said that he couldn’t think of anything more appalling, and if the housekeeper had ever had any liking for him, then she would do no such thing.
“I am not an invalid,” he said, “and I do not require nursing by my sister, or anyone else for that matter.”
He confiscated the rifle for Mrs. Sap’s own safety, which she was most put out about, and he also told Stella that she must not, under any circumstances, go outside for the time being—not even to visit her unicorn, Magic. Stella protested keenly, but Felix was adamant. There was no telling if the vulture might return, and they couldn’t take any chances.
“But, Felix, I can’t stay inside forever!” she said. “We’ve never seen one of those vultures in the backyard before, and they don’t live around here, do they? It probably just got lost and is long gone by now.”
Felix sighed. “That vulture came from Witch Mountain in the Icelands, Stella. I’m afraid it was no accident that it was here. Jezzybella must have sent it after you.”
“But how would she know where I live?” Stella asked, shuddering at the witch’s name. “You don’t think it might be something to do with the puppet, do you?”
“It could be. We’ll have to wait until the expert arrives.”
The puppet expert arrived just a couple of days later. His name was Sir Erwin Rolfingston, and he was a tall, thin fellow with a rather startling hooked nose and the pointiest black mustache Stella had ever seen. This was probably due to the fact that Rolfingston had a habit of twirling it constantly—like the pantomime villains Stella had often seen at the theater.
It took them a while to climb the spiral staircase to the top of the East Wing because Felix’s back was still hurting him and he had to pause a couple of times to catch his breath.
“Are you quite well?” Sir Rolfingston asked, peering at Felix dubiously. “This is the second time you’ve stopped.”
“My apologies. I’m afraid I injured my back recently, and stairs are still giving me a bit of trouble.”
Sir Rolfingston sniffed loudly through his magnificent nose. “Hurt my back a few years ago,” he said. “Got tangled up with a giant dancing puppet. Blasted nuisance, what?”
“Quite,” Felix replied.
Stella moved closer to Felix so that he could rest his hand on her shoulder for balance, and soon enough they reached the top room of the turret. Felix drew the key from his pocket and unlocked the door. They all piled into the room before quickly shutting the door behind them in case the puppet tried to make a break for it.
Stella couldn’t see her at first. The small circular space was filled with soft toy polar bears. Felix had ordered one for Stella’s birthday a few years ago, and due to an unfortunate shipping error, had received one hundred bears instead of just one.
Stella was aghast to notice that one of the bears had been ripped open—presumably by the puppet. There was stuffing scattered everywhere and—worst of all—the bear fabric had been fashioned into a rug, stretched out on the floor, just like the skinned bear at the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club.
“Bloodthirsty.” Lord Rolfingston sighed, noticing the tiny rug. “Quite bloodthirsty.” He glanced at Felix, twirled his mustache, and said, “You used to find singing puppets and dancing puppets and hopscotching puppets most frequently, but these days, I tell you, it’s bloodthirsty puppets that seem to be all the rage.”
“Where has she gone?” Stella asked, just before the witch puppet appeared from beneath a pile of polar bears.
The piece of wood her strings were attached to was suspended above the ground all by itself, as if held by an invisible hand. The witch tried to dive back into the mound of polar bears when Sir Rolfingston reached for her, but he moved with surprising speed and grabbed the piece of wood before she could disappear. In his grasp, the puppet had no choice but to dangle helplessly from her strings.
Stella peered at the witch, curious to see her again. From the tip of her pointed hat to the end of her crooked nose, the puppet was every inch the classic witch. She was carved entirely from wood, with real clothes and waves of frizzy gray hair that puffed out from beneath her hat. The strangest thing about her, though—aside from the fact that she could move around by herself, of course—was that both her wooden feet were horribly burned and scarred. At the snow queen’s ice castle, Stella had learned from a magic mirror that a witch had killed her parents, presumably in revenge after they attached red-hot iron shoes to her feet in order to make her dance at their wedding. Even though this was just a puppet, the sight of those scarred feet made Stella feel sick with shame over what her birth parents had done.
Sir Rolfingston took one look at the witch—thrashing, kicking, and struggling in his grip—and said, “No doubt at all, this is an effigy spy puppet.”
Felix sighed. “That’s exactly what I was afraid of,” he said.
“What’s an effigy spy puppet?” Stella asked, although she feared she already knew the answer.
“It’s a puppet version of an actual person,” Sir Rolfingston replied. He sniffed and looked the puppet up and down. “They’re magically linked, you see. Extremely rare. Everything the puppet sees, the real witch sees.” He glanced at Stella. “She appears to be extremely interested in you, what?”
He was quite right. The witch puppet kept twisting and turning against her strings, straining to get a proper look at Stella. When he set her down on the floor and let go, the wood remained suspended in the air, moving all by itself as the witch slowly turned around, her wooden feet clattering on the floor. She then walked straight over to Stella, reached up one gnarled hand, gripped the hem of Stella’s dress, and gave it an insistent tug.
“Most peculiar,” Sir
Rolfingston said. “Where did you find it?”
“A snow queen’s castle,” Stella replied glumly as she pulled her dress free. Why had she brought the dratted thing home in the first place? Why hadn’t she just left it at the back of the wardrobe where she’d found it? Then the vulture would never have come and Felix wouldn’t have been hurt. She couldn’t explain, even to herself, the weird pull that had caused her to put the puppet in her bag.
“Damned inhospitable places, from what I hear,” Sir Rolfingston replied. “Nothing good ever came out of a snow queen’s castle.” Then he did a sort of double take at Stella, seeming to notice her pale skin, white hair, and ice-chip-blue eyes for the first time. “Upon my word, you’re not the ice princess everyone’s been talking about, are you?”
Stella looked back at him miserably, not knowing what to say. She was an ice princess, but she had absolutely no desire to be. In fact, even though she had always wanted to know where she came from, now she almost wished she had never gone into the snow queen’s castle and found out her heritage. Who wanted to discover that their parents had been evil and that there was ice magic coursing through their veins that would freeze their heart solid and turn them cold and cruel if they used it too much?
“Stella is an ice princess, among a great many other things,” Felix said mildly. “First and foremost she’s a remarkable navigator, an intrepid explorer, a cherished daughter, an expert skater, a voracious reader, a loyal friend, and an accomplished maker of balloon unicorns.”
Stella smiled at Felix gratefully. It was comforting to know that he, at least, didn’t see her just as an ice princess. She was also pleased by his balloon unicorn comment. He had been patiently teaching her how to make them ever since they’d returned from the expedition, and although Stella’s initial attempts had borne more of a resemblance to an ugly moose than a unicorn, they were now looking a lot more unicorn-like.
“Hmm.” Sir Rolfingston peered at Stella dubiously. “Snow queens are known for having frozen hearts though, what?”