The Forbidden Expedition

by Alex Bell

  “It’s all right, Jezzybella,” he said. “Just slow down for a moment. Take a breath. Now, look at me. Have you hurt yourself anywhere?”

  The witch shook her head as Felix helped her back to her feet and offered her his arm. She moved the puppets to one hand, placed her gnarled hand in the crook of his elbow, and allowed him to help her hobble the rest of the way down the path to the explorers.

  When she stopped in front of them, Stella saw that her eyes were full of tears, which ran freely down her wrinkled cheeks—only they didn’t appear to be tears of anger, as Stella had first thought, but some other emotion that she couldn’t quite identify yet. And then she saw the charm bracelet and sucked in her breath in shocked recognition. She had seen it before, a long time ago, on the wrist of someone who’d been reading her a magical bedtime story about unicorns.

  “Princess,” the old witch said, making a clumsy attempt at a curtsy.

  Stella actually heard her knees pop and was glad when Felix hurriedly raised her back up and said, “There’s really no need for that, dear. Stella doesn’t expect anyone to stand on ceremony.”

  “I’ve kept them safe for you, Princess,” the witch said, holding out the tangle of puppets with her shaking hands.

  Stella looked at Felix, who nodded, so she cautiously reached out and took the puppets from the witch. They were handmade, and just like the witch puppet, they were magical. As soon as Stella touched them, they came to life and untangled themselves, the strings stretching upright as the puppets moved around of their own accord.

  First there was a polar bear, covered in soft white fur, with bright blue eyes, that padded around, roaring, at Stella’s feet. Then there was a unicorn, with a pearly horn and a silky smooth mane and tail, which pranced happily in the snow. The third puppet was a yeti covered in bobbly white wool, which beat its huge fists against its chest and stamped back and forth. There was also an ice dragon puppet made of smooth white wood, which flew around Stella, blowing out little plumes of steam. And, finally, the last puppet was obviously an ice princess. She was made from polished gold wood, just like the witch, and wore a powder-blue dress with a puffed-out skirt. A long white braid trailed down her back, and a sparkly tiara sat on her head. She curtsied to Stella and then went running after the unicorn.

  Stella frowned down at the puppets, feeling a strange tug of memory. She could see herself playing with them when she was a little girl in her nursery.

  “I left the witch puppet in the nursery,” the witch said. “To watch out for you. In case you ever came home. I kept this for you too, Princess.” Jezzybella dropped the silver charm bracelet into Stella’s hand.

  Stella stared down at it for a moment before looking back up. “But … I don’t understand … ,” she began.

  “Jezzybella didn’t kill your parents,” Felix said. “In fact, she’s the one who took you from the castle and placed you in my path.”

  “But why did she send the vulture after me, then?” she asked.

  “Ah, the vulture,” Felix said. “That’s Oswald. He’s not a bad old thing, really. He wasn’t trying to attack you, Stella. She sent him to bring you back to Witch Mountain to check that you were safe. It seems the puppet caught sight of you and Gruff playing in the backyard, and Jezzybella mistook it for an attack. She was afraid you were going to be gobbled up by a polar bear if you stayed at home. When I tried to stop the vulture, he thought I was a threat. Jezzybella was your nanny when you were small, you see. She cares for you a great deal.”

  “But then … who really killed my parents?” Stella asked.

  The witch burst into tears again then. “The magic mirror,” she sobbed. “Oh, the mirror, the mirror! It ruined everything!”

  “Magic mirrors can be tricky like that,” Cadi said, patting her on the arm sympathetically.

  “The Collector came, and he killed everyone and he took everything,” Jezzybella went on. “He even took the Book of Frost. I could do nothing to stop it and saved only these poor trinkets.”

  She gestured at the puppets, and the yeti immediately roared in outrage at being called a trinket.

  “You saved the princess’s life,” Felix said, squeezing the witch’s bony old hand. “You were completely heroic, my dear.”

  The witch gave him a wobbly smile, but then her mind seemed to wander away from the conversation because she suddenly said, “I must go and count the cabbages.”

  She hobbled away, her huge rain boots shuffling a trail through the snow.

  “Felix, I don’t understand. What’s going on here?” Stella asked.

  “Excuse us for a moment, would you?” Felix said to the others, before drawing Stella to one side. “You know, I’m a little confused myself, since I distinctly remember telling you to stay at home and wait for me to come back,” he said.

  Stella lifted her chin a little. “Yes, but you might never have come back,” she said. “I wasn’t about to take that chance. And I don’t think you can really tell me off for that, seeing as I only did exactly what you would have done. Besides which, President Fogg had a report that Jezzybella had been bringing poisonous rabbits onto the mountain—he told Ethan’s father, but he never got the chance to tell you about them.”

  “Oh, those.” Felix sighed. “Yes, Jezzybella bought them as treats to feed to her ice spider. She put on her gloves and threw him the last one just yesterday. You know, I really feel I ought to be angry with you, but I suppose I have only myself to blame for setting a bad example. How on earth did you get here?”

  “Oh, we … We kind of stole a dirigible,” Stella said.

  “A dirigible!” Felix exclaimed. “Who from?”

  “The president of the Jungle Cat Explorers’ Club,” Stella said in a small voice.

  “That’s … not particularly good timing,” Felix said. “He’s a little nervous about you at the moment.”

  “I know, but we had to get here somehow,” Stella replied. She decided that now probably wasn’t the time to mention that they’d also broken into the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club, stolen some things, and been chased out by guards.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked instead. “We followed your trail to get here and it was all bloody.”

  “Oh, that was Oswald,” Felix said. “We got a bit lost in Witch Village, and I’m afraid he found something dead and horrible in one of the back alleys there and insisted on dragging it home with him. I think it might once have been some kind of swamp rat, but it was quite hard to tell—” He broke off as the jungle fairies suddenly started tugging at his sleeves. The fairies back home absolutely loved Felix, and it seemed these were no different.

  Stella introduced them, and Felix looked delighted. “I’ve never met a jungle fairy before,” he said. “What marvelous fellows, and equally marvelous ladies. Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  The fairies flew off to investigate the sugar scarecrow, and Felix turned back to Stella. “Listen, I arrived here yesterday all set to capture the witch and drag her back to the Court of Magical Justice for a trial, but she was absolutely delighted to see me, welcomed me into her home, and has been making me little ice-cream houses ever since I arrived. She didn’t kill your parents. I don’t think she’s ever hurt anyone in her life. But she’s extremely old now and doesn’t seem to quite have all her marbles left, I’m afraid. It took a lot of rambling, roundabout conversations, but I think I’ve got the gist of it.

  “The magic mirror you described isn’t actually a mirror at all, but an enchantress. Your parents trapped her in the glass for some reason. Jezzybella thinks she displeased them in some way. But this enchantress was able to communicate with another magic mirror on the other side of the Black Ice Bridge. It belongs to someone the witch knows only as the Collector. She coaxed him to the castle, thinking that he would free her, but he killed your parents and stole this Book of Frost instead.”

  “What’s the Book of Frost?” Stella asked.

  “You know how witches have a Book of Shadows?” Felix
asked. “A book that contains all of their spells? Well, it seems that snow queens have something similar, only it’s called a Book of Frost. He took this book with him and left the mirror behind. She didn’t realize that the castle would shut itself down if there was no snow queen or ice princess there. Jezzybella seems to think that snow queens and ice princesses have their own intrinsic magical powers that can be used even without the tiara. That’s why ice princesses normally have witch nannies—albeit they’re treated like wretched slaves—so that they can help young ice princesses master their magic.

  “Your parents used the iron slippers on her because she tried to run away one time, many years before you were born. Apparently Jezzybella had been with your family for generations. She knows all kinds of things about snow queens, and if I’ve understood her correctly, this inner magic won’t run the risk of freezing your heart like the tiara would. It seems to be something to do with the difference between ice magic and frost magic.”

  Stella felt a growing sense of excitement. “I think I’ve already done a bit of frost magic,” she said, and then proceeded to tell him about the snow unicorn back home, the yeti guard on the dirigible, and the snow trolls in the magic fort.

  Felix grinned at her, sharing her excitement. “How absolutely smashing,” he said. He gestured at the charm bracelet in her hand. “This is magical too, apparently. You touch the different charms for different spells.”

  Stella glanced at the silver bracelet. There was a yeti charm there and a unicorn, a sleigh, a fairy, an ice goblin, and more.

  “You have a lot to learn,” Felix said. “The study of magic is quite involved, from what I hear. I’ve asked Jezzybella if she’d like to come and stay with us for a while. She will be able to help you master your frost magic.”

  Stella could think of nothing she’d like more, but a dark fear niggled away at her. “Do you think I should?” she asked.

  “Don’t you want to learn magic?” Felix asked, looking surprised.

  “I would love to,” Stella replied. “But people won’t like it, will they? Those people who wrote those horrible letters and the president of the Jungle Cat Explorers’ Club. President Fogg left all these papers on your desk at home before he went—a whole load of reports about evil snow queens. If I start learning how to do magic, it’s probably going to upset people even more, isn’t it?”

  Felix gave an easy shrug. “My darling thing, if we spent too much time worrying about what narrow-minded people thought, then we’d really never get anywhere at all.” He crouched down in front of her and took her hand. “You mustn’t ever let anyone stop you from feeling like you can be yourself, you know. So if you would like Jezzybella to come home with us and help teach you your ice magic, then that’s certainly what we shall do.”

  “But the President of the Jungle Cat Explorers’ Club—”

  “The President of the Jungle Cat Explorers’ Club can go and jump in the Tikki Zikki River for all I care,” Felix said cheerfully. “This has got nothing whatsoever to do with him, so he can keep his overlarge nose out of it.”

  Stella grinned at Felix. “I love you so much, Felix,” she said.

  Felix wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug. “I love you too, sweetling,” he said. “More than anything.”

  They were interrupted then by Jezzybella wandering over to them with a huge basket full of ice-cream cabbages.

  “Cabbage?” she said, thrusting one out to them. “You must each take a cabbage with you. Cabbages for everyone!”

  “They’re not biting cabbages, are they?” Ethan demanded, as the others joined them. “Because I was attacked by one of those on the last expedition, and I don’t care to repeat the experience.”

  “I don’t think so.” The witch stared down anxiously at the bundle of cabbages in her arms. “They’ve never bitten me, at least.”

  “Of course they’re not biting cabbages, Ethan—they’re made of ice cream,” Stella said. She took the cabbage the witch held out to her and said, “Thank you very much. That’s very kind.”

  Jezzybella squeezed Stella’s arm tightly, emptied the rest of the cabbages onto the ground, and then proceeded to climb into the basket. She whistled through her teeth, and instantly a broomstick flew out of the house, hooked under the basket handle, and lifted it right up off the ground.

  “Jezzybella is ready to go,” the witch announced, beaming at Stella.

  Felix scratched the back of his neck. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Well, the problem now is how are we going to get home? Oswald can’t carry all of us.” He glanced at Stella. “Can we use the dirigible?”

  Stella shook her head. “We traded it back at Weenus’s Trading Post,” she said. “But Cadi is a hunter and her father has a ship that she says we can travel back on.” She quickly introduced Felix to her new friend.

  “We should press on,” Shay said. “It’s a long trip back down the mountain.”

  “Not long,” Jezzybella said cheerfully. “There’s a witch hole in the tunnel that’ll take us to the bottom. I’ll show you.”

  They made their way back through the shattered ruins of the ice web, hurrying quickly past the flying sharks, which were feasting on what remained of the ice spider. Remembering what the shopkeeper had said about it being Jezzybella’s pet, Stella was suddenly terribly worried that the witch would be heartbroken. In fact, she didn’t seem to notice and just called out a cheery good-bye to the spider.

  “So long, Marvin,” she said. “I’ve found my Stella, and I’m leaving for good.”

  When they squeezed back through the gap in the rock, Gus gave a great bellow and practically flattened Cadi in welcome. Nigel tried to pretend that he didn’t care whether they’d come back or not, but Stella noticed that he nibbled affectionately at Ethan’s hair when he thought no one was looking.

  It didn’t take long for Jezzybella to locate the entrance to the witch hole. This time they made Nigel go first, since no one fancied having their heads bashed in by a flailing camel hoof. They gave him a little bit of a head start, and then the others followed one by one. Stella jumped in last and immediately discovered that this witch hole was even steeper than the first one. Her skirts and petticoats puffed up around her as she slid downward, and she couldn’t help laughing, for it really was tremendous fun. Besides which, she was so relieved that they had found Felix unharmed, that the expedition had been a success, and that the witch wasn’t actually evil at all. Everything had gone far better than she could have hoped, and in no time at all she’d be safely back home with Gruff, learning how to practice frost magic. …

  But the thought was too soon. She flew out of the end of the witch hole, her boots landing with a crunch in the snow. Then she looked up, and fear turned her blood to ice.

  They were surrounded on all sides by witch wolves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE EXPLORERS FOUND THEMSELVES on a snowy shoreline. There was even a little pier made of frozen wooden planks, stretching out into the sea. Stella saw that Cadi had already released the flare to call her father’s ship. The glittering red light still fizzed above them like a dying firework, calling the witch-hunting vessel that, even now, was turning in the water and sailing slowly toward them.

  But between the explorers and the pier was an entire pack of witch wolves, and they were monstrous. Far bigger than any ordinary wolf, they were at least as large as Koa herself, and their coats were entirely white, from snout to tail. There must have been a dozen of them, and they all had ghostly silver eyes, frozen solid and coated in frost, giving them a look of blindness. Their frosted eyes reflected the light back strangely, making it hard to meet their gaze. When Stella tried, a throbbing started in her temples, and she had to look away, confused.

  Shay was on his knees, both hands clutching his head, with the others grouped around him. Koa stood in front—a lone dark shadow wolf facing the white witch wolves—her hackles raised, her lips pulled back in a ferocious snarl. But the witch wolves were not in the least bit
afraid of her and padded closer and closer, their strange, silver eyes shining with cold, murderous intent.

  Ethan threw a spell at the nearest one, but it bounced off harmlessly, and Stella remembered what Drusilla had said about how it was impossible to change a witch wolf’s form. The wolf briefly bared its teeth at the magician, but Ethan wasn’t the one it was interested in. It only had eyes for Koa, and the next second, the witch wolf took a flying leap toward her.

  Stella whipped the tiara from her pocket and put it on just in time to throw out her hand and freeze the witch wolf mid-jump. It was much, much harder than she was expecting—and she felt the wolf’s magical resistance shudder all the way up her arm at the same time that the ice magic chilled her from the inside, pushing away thoughts of warmth and love and friendship. Stella snatched off her tiara, and the frozen witch wolf fell to the ground with a thump, one of its paws snapping off on impact.

  The other witch wolves all attacked at once then, and the expedition fell into position around Shay and Koa to try to ward them off. An awful sound of howling carried through the air, which suddenly seemed full of teeth and silver eyes and iced fur and frost-tipped fangs. Cadi produced more spell bottles from her bag, which she threw to the ground in front of the wolves, but they just created a thick fog that slowed the wolves down only for a few moments. Felix had a crossbow tucked away in his cloak, with which he managed to take down one of the wolves, but this used up every single one of his arrows. Beanie, as usual, was not much use in a crisis and only tugged at his pom-pom hat, muttering unhelpful facts. And Shay had his boomerang gripped in his hand but didn’t seem able to use it. In fact, he didn’t appear to be able to do anything other than hunch in the snow and gasp for breath as the wolves closed in.

  Stella saw immediately that their only hope lay with the ice magic of her tiara. All that mattered in that moment was saving Shay, Koa, Felix, and the rest of the expedition. Even if she froze her own heart solid in the process and became the evil snow queen everyone said she was destined to become, it would be worth it if she could save her friends.