The Ice King (A Witch Ways Whisper)

by Helen Slavin

  Lachlan liked the village where he had grown up. There was nothing wrong with it, except that it was small and it wasn’t Elsewhere. Now that he had an escape route, that his trunk was packed for his undergraduate studies at Oxbridge University, Lachlan found the place itched at him, from the peeling paint of the Post Office to the sawdust outside the waxy red step leading into the Stafford Bros Butchers shop.

  His mother could not complain, he had, in fact, worked the last two summers with the Stafford brothers and been trained in butchery. He had enjoyed the task, the precision and the skill he’d acquired but his heart lay, as he insisted, Elsewhere.

  Olivia Dashford was very beautiful, but in the way of a porcelain statue. She was delicate and shiny and the light shone through her because, as Lachlan had discovered, there was nothing much inside her. Her voice was a tinkling bell, except when crossed, at which point it became a snarling growl. Her eyes were soft with fluttering eyelashes except when crossed, when those same eyes stared out, hard as stones. She was manipulative and devious, willing to let Lachlan Laidlaw put his hand here, his mouth there, for as long as he would do what she wanted.

  What she wanted to do today was go to the Goose Fair at Hedgeley. The last evening had been spent down under the willow on the river bank where Olivia had let Lachlan ‘go so far and no further’ inside the lacy confines of her underwear, borrowed from her sister; this meant that Lachlan was paying out the fare for the short bus ride. It also meant Lachlan was paying out for the admission fee to the Goose Fair, handing over more coins for drinks that were sticky and fizzing, for sweets that were also sticky and fizzing, for a ride on the Waltzer that left him feeling sick, head whizzing.

  “Oh… A fortune teller…” Olivia took his hand “Don’t you want to know your fortune Lach?” Olivia’s lips brushed at his cheek, hinting at what his fortune might entail if he would just fork out a few more coins to consult the Fates. Lachlan looked at Olivia and then at the fortune teller’s tent. It was a raggedy affair, a sort of turreted tower in striped canvas that Lachlan thought might have been camped out in by Richard the Lionheart at some point in its history. A pennant flew from a carved finial at the top, a black wolf on a white ground.

  “It’s nonsense.” Lachlan reasoned. “No one can read the future, Liv. It’s a con.”

  “It’s fun.” her voice had that insistent tone and she squeezed his hand. Sometimes, in company with Olivia, Lachlan felt like a bullock being switched disobediently through a field. It was a brightly sunny day and he was feeling hot and out of sorts.

  “It’s not.” he matched her insistence.

  “Lach…what is the matter with you? It’s the Goose Fair it’s all nonsense that’s the point of coming, to lose yourself in the fun of…nonsense.” she was snuffling at him again and he found her twinkly tinkliness was like broken glass. He was realising that he wanted to get away from Olivia Dashford, lacy knickers or not. He reached into his pocket for the last of his money.

  “We’ll have to walk home” he looked at her. Walking home was not one of Olivia’s favoured pursuits, in fact, as Lachlan thought about it, she would prefer to ride home in a golden carriage driven by white horses.

  “You can give me a piggy back” she giggled and kissed his cheek. He felt the tug of her hand as she led him towards the fortune teller’s tent. He pulled back.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” Olivia pulled her displeased baby face. Lachlan felt an urge to slap it.

  “Only enough cash for one of us. You want to know the future, I’m going to…”

  Olivia was not dismayed and before he had finished the sentence she was ducking in through the grubby tasselling on the slightly frayed doorway. Lachlan paused a moment, he had been going to sit on the gate and wait, but that seemed like a bore, and he soon wandered off.

  He meandered around the Goose Fair, the sounds clashed at him, each stall and ride seemed to have a different tune playing from it and the effect was a cacophony. The colours of the paintwork on the signage began to nag at him, the distressed gilding, the blood red, the vein blue and bilious green. There seemed to be weapons everywhere from the shooting galleries to the dart games, it was, somehow, a small war zone. Lachlan felt his discontent rise. Roll on Oxbridge, he was no longer part of this, there was something else waiting for him and it was Elsewhere.

  It appeared that Olivia Dashford had an epic future ahead of her as it took her a very long time in the fortune teller’s tent. Lachlan walked the entire Goose Fair and returned to find her still inside. He waited, impatiently, sitting atop the farm gate.

  At last, she emerged, at least, he thought it was Olivia, this young woman seemed smaller somehow and drawn in, her face a pale cross oval. She stepped towards him and offered a wan smile.

  “Shall we head back?” her voice was not tinkling and, he noticed, she did not take his hand.

  They walked through the fair, their silence at odds with the clatter and whirl around them.

  “Was it fun?” Lachlan ventured at last. Olivia turned a harsh glare on him, her eyes like black glass.

  “You think you are very clever don’t you Lachlan Laidlaw. So very, very clever…” there was bitterness and spite in her tone. He shrugged it off.

  “I said it was nonsense.”

  She said nothing, her glare intensifying.

  “Nonsense? Hm. She knew about you.”

  Lachlan could imagine the spiel that Olivia had been spun about her future with her boyfriend.

  “You’re pretty Liv, anyone could guess you had a boyfriend…” Lachlan dug his hands into his empty pockets. Oh, not quite empty, a coin left.

  “Called Lachlan Laidlaw?” Olivia challenged him, folding her arms tightly across her chest, her foot tapping. Lachlan considered this evidence for a good long moment.

  “It’s the Goose Fair Liv, everyone knows everyone around here…” his argument was shaky. The Goose Fair was a travelling fair and none of the stallholders and fairground people were local, but he stuck with his only logic, his possible reasoning. Olivia unfolded her arms and looked impatient.

  “Yes. Well. Whatever you say, clever clogs. Shall we go for the bus?” she managed a sham smile. Lachlan shrugged.

  “I said…if you went in to see the fortune teller…we’d have to walk home.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve no more money, Liv. No bus fare.”

  The furious scream she let out silenced all the fairground clatter and, at the nearby Hook a Duck stall, killed one prize goldfish of a particularly nervous disposition.

  She flounced off and, Lachlan realised, he was rather relieved. He stood for a few moments watching her stride through the stalls, pushing small children out of her path. At the far end of the Goose Fair he could see Doug Kittredge trying his luck at the shooting gallery and Olivia was very careful indeed to barge into him. Doug Kittredge had a motorcycle.

  Lachlan, suddenly, did not want to wander home. He needed to clear his head and so a further round of the Goose Fair seemed a good option. His plan was to look nonchalant and carefree but leave by the far gate near the fortune teller’s tent. This route meant he could cut across the field at Five Bar Farm and avoid the road and any chance of Doug Kittredge’s motorcycle buzzing past him with Olivia riding pillion. Was he hiding? Was he skulking? Yes, Lachlan admitted it to himself. Elsewhere, that was where he needed to be.

  The fortune teller was sitting outside her tent smoking a cheroot. The aromatic smoke curled across Lachlan’s path. She was ordinary looking, dressed in old black clothes, a long skirt and a jumper riddled with holes. Her only concession to classical fortune telling attire seemed to be a black linen scarf that sparkled with beads. Lachlan was aware that she was watching him as he approached. He nodded greeting because she was staring so hard.

  Lachlan put a foot onto the bottom of the five bar gate, his hand reaching, ready to lift himself up and over to freedom.

  “John of Gaunt.” the fortune teller said. Lachlan halted his ascent, one fo
ot on the gate the other still in the Goose Fair. He looked around. The fortune teller puffed out cheroot smoke.

  “John of Gaunt…” she repeated and waited for a response. Lachlan was not much of a historian, his studies had been mathematics, physics, chemistry.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The tent. It didn’t belong to Richard the Lionheart…” she spoke in a matter of fact voice, pinched out the cheroot before putting it into her skirt pocket. “You were wrong…it belonged to John of Gaunt.” she paused, then ducked back into the raggedy tent. Lachlan Laidlaw stood by the gate for several minutes, his hand on the crossbar, his foot perched, ready to go. He could not go. He stepped back from the gate, his mind replaying the fortune teller’s comments and after about five minutes he turned and looked at the tent, the pennant cracked a little in the rising wind. A black wolf. A white ground. Beyond him the fairground music was whiny and discordant.

  Inside, the tent was cosy, a small table dressed with a green damask cloth and two neat fold up chairs. There was a small woodburner chugging out warmth, a kettle sat on the top and the fortune teller was stirring tea in a small, slightly chipped, brown earthenware pot.

  “Are you going to read the tea leaves?” Lachlan asked, lashing out a little in defence of his own unease.

  “No. I’m going to drink the tea.” the fortune teller said and poured two cups, she pushed one across the table to Lachlan. “Take the weight off…” she suggested. Lachlan’s stubborn resolve kept him standing for a few more minutes,

  “Tea’s getting cold.” she advised with a glance to the untouched cup.

  “Is that a prophecy?” Lachlan said. The fortune teller sniffed and reached for a small leather duffle bag. She dug around and retrieved a rather battered parcel of sandwiches. She offered him one.

  “Hungry?” she asked. Lachlan’s stomach betrayed him, growling greedily at the scent of the ham and mustard and possibly, yes, a slice of cheese in there. Lachlan, defeated, sat.

  “Did she go off with the motorcyclist?” the fortune teller asked picking a stray sliver of cucumber off the tablecloth and putting it back into her half of the sandwich.

  “Hm?” Lachlan had never tasted such a good sandwich, he looked up at the fortune teller.

  “Your girlie…she went off with the man on the motorbike I presume?” she sounded weary. Lachlan nodded.

  “She’s not my girlie.” he said and sipped some tea.

  “She’ll be killed on the back of that contraption.” the fortune teller chomped a mouthful of sandwich. “Sometime next week. Thursday I think.”

  Lachlan felt the mouthful he was currently munching dry up in his mouth. The fortune teller stared at him.

  “Oh yes. I forgot. ‘It’s nonsense’.” she said with a wry smile.

  “What nonsense do you want to tell me?” he asked, putting on, he thought, a good show of bravado. “I haven’t any money.”

  The fortune teller gave a short, wry laugh as she turned from the table and bent down. From a rough hessian sack she produced a crystal ball. Lachlan wanted to laugh, but, somehow, an instinct told him this was not funny.

  “There’s a stand here somewhere…” the fortune teller glanced around at the sparse contents of the tent and when no stand became apparent she placed the crystal ball onto the cloth. It did not roll, it was, Lachlan could tell, very weighty indeed.

  “What do you see?” she asked, her eyes glancing at the ball.

  “Isn’t it supposed to be what you see?” Lachlan’s bravado surfaced once more. The fortune teller ignored it.

  “What do you see?”

  Lachlan looked at it, the globe of dense glass was about ten inches in diameter.

  “Nothing much. It’s a good lensing effect on the cloth. I can see the fibres…magnified.” Lachlan sounded braver than he felt. His eyes were finding it quite hard to look into the ball itself. He chanced it, ha, nothing, he was right, except there was a slight flaw.

  “There’s a flaw, look, in the top right here…” his eye was drawn to the flaw, a tiny black speck and then the speck moved, four legged until it became a black wolf walking across snow and more specks, white this time began to flurry and drift.

  “It’s a snow globe?” Lachlan laughed and looked up to the fortune teller, she was not smiling, only waiting. Inside the ball the snow deepened. He could see the landscape now, it was very beautiful, lovely craftsmanship to capture the snowlight like that, the grey, the tinge of bronze “It’s a good one…well ma-.” he stopped talking. Walking across the snowscape, a man. Walking. Walking.

  “Recognise him?” the fortune teller was matter of fact. Lachlan took his turn to stare her down.

  “No.” he lied. The fortune teller shook her head, held her hands up in surrender. She reached a finger and rolled the crystal ball around to a different spot on the table. As she did so Lachlan could see that the only thing that changed within was his point of view of the snowscape. He could see the wolf in the far distance, see the man’s face now, not that he needed to.

  “Know him now?” she sniffed. Lachlan got up from the table, knocking it as he did so that his cup toppled and tea spilled across the cloth.

  “It’s a good trick.” he grinned, stretching his face as hard as he could “Really good…but…as I mentioned…I don’t have any money.” He turned out his pockets and winked before turning to the tattered doorway.

  “You will be lost Lachlan Laidlaw.” the fortune teller said “But she will find you.”

  Olivia Dashford’s funeral, two weeks later, was a bleak affair of black hats and, as he boarded the train for Oxbridge, Lachlan Laidlaw tried his best not to think of it. He tried his best not to think of the tattered tent and the scent of cheroot, of being lost and of being found.

  Dr Laidlaw’s Destiny

  Lachlan Laidlaw: age 25

  Dr Lachlan Laidlaw worked out of a small office, in a Gothic fronted building, down a side street in the university town of Oxbridge. The ground floor was a bespoke tailor and gents outfitters, Todber and Murnhall, of such antiquity it could be considered time travel to step through their double doors. Jeffery Todber and Malcolm Murnhall ran the place and had been there forever amongst the beautifully carved and crafted shop fittings, the counter made from oak polished to a soft golden honey colour and beneath, the glass fronted drawers that held a vivid spectrum of cravats and ties, shirts and socks, handkerchiefs and pyjamas. The Duke of Wellington had bought all his campaign pants there.

  When the great adventurer Henry Fitzharold-Pimm had conquered the Eiger, he had done it in tweeds and a gaberdine mackintosh purchased at Todber and Murnhull.

  Jeffery and Malcolm owned the building freehold and rented out the office space and small flat above.

  “You won’t be blowing stuff up will you?” they asked as Lachlan looked around the small spaces.

  “No. I don’t practice that sort of science. “ Lachlan reassured them. He wasn’t entirely sure what sort of science he did practice these days. Boundaries were becoming smirched.

  It had been a difficult interview, the faculty board room wheezed with beeswax polish and ancient traditions.

  “We do not feel there is a justification for your presence in the university….” Professor Folds’ eyes were invisible behind the thin discs of his glasses, gilded by the afternoon sun.

  “Adequate.” Professor Miflin interjected from his position at the far end of the room. He was perched at the edge of the vast mahogany table barricaded in behind a parapet of paperwork.

  “I beg your pardon?” Professor Folds turned the gilded spectacles towards his colleague. Minion was the word that printed into Lachlan’s head.

  “There is no ‘adequate’ justification. I am certain that Dr Laidlaw can provide his own justifications but we must reiterate the fact that such passions and enthusiasms, theories and methodology as Dr Laidlaw has been pursuing are not, in and of themselves, ‘adequate’ justification for the continuance of his research grant.”

&nbs
p; Professor Miflin looked over his own spectacles, his eyes eager and bureaucratic. There was a prolonged silence and it would not have surprised Dr Lachlan Laidlaw to find a death ray emanating from Professor Folds eyes. It was, after all, rumoured all over the Oxbridge and Camford campuses that that was the ultimate goal of Professor Folds’ own research.

  “You are an inordinately intelligent young man, Dr Laidlaw” Professor Folds looked directly into Laidlaw’s face “I am therefore sure that you can foresee this meeting’s inevitable outcome.”

  An hour or so later and Lachlan was moving his belongings, few as they were, out of the small laboratory and smaller office which he had occupied on the Oxbridge campus since completing his PhD. He was surprised when there was a knock on the door and Professor Folds stepped in.

  “Give this research up Lachlan. ” he was deadly serious “It will be the ruin of what could be a glorious academic career.”

  Lachlan reached for a jar of pencils that wasn’t his and packed them into his briefcase.

  “I can’t relinquish the research Professor. I am too close to finding the edges….”

  “Poppycock.” Folds spoke with emotion “Balderdash. Twaddle. Pass by the English department on your way off campus and I’m sure they can furnish you with further adjectives such as woolly-headed and hare brained and folly-ridden.”

  Lachlan could smell Professor Folds tobacco and the aftershave his wife bought for him at Penhaligon’s.

  “The folly, sir, is to look away. This ancient knowledge has been lost to us, we looked away in the past and that loss could ultimately endanger our very existence. My research has already led me to….”

  “It’s ghost hunting, it’s fairy tales…”

  “It’s the edges of things…it is connection, lines of communication, links and possibilities of time beyond our current plane and exis…”