The Ice King (A Witch Ways Whisper)

by Helen Slavin

  Professor Folds voice cut through the air.

  “It is nonsense…”

  Lachlan was disappointed. He had talked over various aspects of his research at several meals and teatimes at the Folds home to what had appeared to be a receptive audience.

  “You know that is not so Professor Folds. You understand something of what I hope to achieve here. What I hope to bring to light.”

  Professor Folds was shaking his head at every word. Lachlan fell silent.

  “Possibly, there are reasons that such things have been locked away in the darkness, Laidlaw.” he looked more serious than Lachlan had ever seen him.

  “Possibly.”

  They were reaching their stalemate.

  “You will not concede?” Professor Folds asked in the tone of a man who knew the answer.

  “Not ‘will not’ Professor… I cannot.”

  Dr Lachlan Laidlaw’s standing invitation to Thursday tea at the Folds residence was duly rescinded as Lachlan loaded his boxes into a wheelbarrow he’d borrowed for the purpose and moved in above Todber and Murnhall.

  It was Todber who first noticed the black dog.

  “Whose is the dog?” he asked, clearing the supper things into the kitchen one evening. Lachlan had been working on a haunting at a local pub, writing a report on the changes in temperature he had recorded on a recent field trip and researching the history of the building which was long and complicated. He was hoping to find where lines of time might cross.

  “Mm?” Lachlan was only half listening, thinking of the lure of a whisky glass and wondering if tonight he would fall asleep in the chair again. Todber emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dishcloth “The big black dog in the yard. Did you let it in?”

  Lachlan looked out of the window and down into the twilight below. As he did so a vast black dog lifted itself from the shadows and nosed its way out through the gate.

  “Murnhall’s left the gate open again…that’ll be it. Murny?” Todber turned out of the kitchen, his voice echoing down the hallway as he headed downstairs. There was chatter and a few moments later Todber and Murnhall entered the yard, clattered about by the bins and could be seen arguing over the security of the gate.

  The next morning, as Lachlan waited for the kettle to boil he glanced down into the yard. Once again the big black dog lifted itself from the shadow of the wall and, nudging gently at the gate, padded off. From his vantage point Lachlan could follow its progress down the back lane. He was wondering which other gate it might turn in at but it did not turn in, at the end of the lane it halted, looked back for a moment at Lachlan before turning into the street. The kettle whistled, insistent.

  The next morning Lachlan was heading back to the haunted pub. He had suspected that the only reason the young landlady had called him in was because she rather fancied him. He had no proof other than an instinct but his field studies had yielded nothing useful. He had another new commission in place and he could not afford to waste his time. He was interested in the idea of the history of the place perhaps knitting incidents and memory into the fabric of the building, but he was not interested in the landlady and so, his studies there would have to cease. He was going to go over there and tell her so. There would be no more ghosthunting, at least not in that particular place. It disappointed him.

  It disappointed her. Where Lachlan thought he was being polite and careful in his dealing with this matter, the landlady, Milly, was insulted and embarrassed.

  “You calling me a liar?” she bellowed “How dare you?” the tirade went on, the landlady’s face growing redder and redder. If there had been no ghosts in the pub before then Lachlan felt sure she had certainly raised some with the sheer force of her outrage.

  He returned his books to the library and after a desultory hour or two with his head in other volumes Lachlan was tired, packed up his notebooks and decided to head home.

  He saw the black dog first in the reflection in the butchers shop window. He had glanced at the array of chops and joints on the white marble display and seen the black dog printed onto the glass. He turned. The street was busy, people crowded past on their way. There was no dog.

  At the furniture shop the black dog’s reflected image was standing, ghostly, by an occasional table. Lachlan looked round. The street once again, was crowded with shoppers and passers-by, he watched and he waited for the crowd to thin but, there was no dog.

  He didn’t eat his supper, instead he stood vigil by the kitchen window. Todber came up to clear the dishes.

  “You not hungry?” he asked. Lachlan shook his head.

  “You expecting someone?” Todber asked moving to stand on the opposite side of the window. He glanced down. “Only I’ve locked the gate.”

  He looked at Lachlan, Lachlan nodded.

  “Was it locked the other evening?”

  Todber looked at him for a moment and before nodding.

  “I could fetch you a dram while you’re waiting?” he suggested.

  “I rather think I need a clear head tonight.” Lachlan confessed. Todber agreed and made a move to the kitchen door.

  “You need anything, you give me and Murny a shout, eh?”

  Lachlan listened to Todber’s footsteps as he made his way downstairs. At the last footstep the black dog lifted itself from the shadows below.

  When Lachlan arrived in the yard, the gate was locked, and the black dog was gone.

  The following evening Lachlan Laidlaw was waiting in the lane, hiding in the shadows himself. When the black dog emerged from the back gate of Todber and Murnhall, he followed it.

  It was an interesting creature, the size of a wolf or a deerhound, it padded through the gate like an apparition and yet its form was solid in appearance, a muscular, meaty black hound, the sound of its breathing carrying back along the lane to Lachlan. At the end of the lane it turned left into the street as before. Passers-by stepped aside from the hound’s path without paying much attention. It was, to Lachlan’s eye, as if they did not see the dog. Lachlan hurried along on the opposite pavement, half running to keep up and then breaking into a run at the corner of The Close by the thin parish church of St Margaret Martyr. The dog trotted up the path and paused. As the doors opened to allow out a crack of light and the sound of the choir practising, the dog slipped into the church and out of sight.

  Inside the old building Lachlan felt the chill of the stones. The church was lit by yellow lights in cheap-looking elaborate sconces. The organist was repeating a phrase of the psalm and the choirmaster sounded half despairing as he addressed his singers.

  “Can you hear it? Reaching up to that last third before the step-and-step down to the minor key…?” at the back a young boy yawned and two of the older choristers had their heads bowed, chatting. There was no sign of the black dog.

  Uncertain what else to do, and aware that he had been brought here, Lachlan took up a pew. He was once again, he knew, that boy perched on the five bar gate at the Goose Fair and as the thought struck him so his mind’s eye flew a pennant, a black wolf on a white ground. Lachlan knew, he must wait to see what would happen.

  The man stepped out from behind the pillar and walked towards Lachlan. He was tall and broad shouldered, his hair slicked back and was wearing a heavy black woollen coat. He moved with confidence and purpose, sliding into the pew beside Lachlan. For a moment they listened to the choir until the psalm collapsed on itself and the organ ground to a halt. The choirmaster gave up at last and dismissed everyone. As the choir bustled out through the vestry and the organist put his music away Lachlan waited. The man in black leaned back into the pew, lifted his gaze to the lights. As he did so the choirmaster clicked several rows off, leaving just one, golden, glowing, enough to illuminate the man in black’s face.

  It was squared, strong and masculine, the jawline stubbled with bristle, the eyes now staring at Lachlan Laidlaw, a green like a pine forest at midnight, the intelligence keen, the smile broad.

  “You people are very ti
resome. You have moved away from here…” he reached to touch Lachlan’s chest, Lachlan felt an icy cold fingerprint press itself into his skin beneath. “And now you exist too much in here…” the icicle fingers tapped at Lachlan’s temple. “But for all that, you cannot alter what is.” the man in black gave Lachlan a direct stare.

  “Your dog is a splendid beast.” Lachlan spoke up out of his unease, trying to seem everyday and matter of fact and keep the waver out of his voice. The man in black laughed, a low, sad sound.

  “Ha. Yes. My beast.” he gazed up into the golden light shed by the sconce above. “You understand, Lachlan Laidlaw, that there are no choices here. There is only what is?” Lachlan had felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise at the mention of his name. He nodded.

  “There is an enemy in the Far North who outlives his time. This king brings conflict of every sort for you. ”

  “Conflict?”

  The man in black turned and looked at him full in the face. “Hearts will clash, bones will break.” he spoke in a matter of fact manner.

  “Why is he my enemy?” Lachlan didn’t know anyone in the North, far or otherwise, the only people he knew who lived vaguely Northward were his mother and his aunt in Cumbria.

  “Because you are his enemy, fated to take his time. You will take on the mantle that he was meant to have shrugged off. Fate owns you Lachlan.” the man in black made a little movement with his fingers, smiled his wide smile. “So she moves you like her little chess piece into the game.”

  “I don’t understand.” Lachlan’s heart was pounding so hard he was certain that the man in black could feel it knocking against the wooden pew.

  “Yes. You do. You have looked outwards all your life and this, Lachlan, is what you have been looking for. You must travel North.”

  The thoughts lingered at the edge of Lachlan’s head. Aurora borealis. Recognise him?

  “I don’t have any resources. It will take me some time.”

  The man in black smiled once more.

  “There is no time.”

  Lachlan’s mind roared like a storm and his heart felt cold without the benefit of the man in black’s hands so that it was some few moments before he realised that the man in black was gone and he was alone and the church was in darkness.

  A matter of days later saw Lachlan engaged in a small poltergeist project at one of the colleges. He was writing up a long night of reporting nothing more supernatural than a saucer falling from a dresser as a truck rolled by.

  “You still up there Lach? Only you’ve a visitor…shall I show him up?” Todber called from the bottom of the stairs. Lachlan was glad of the distraction.

  The last person that Lachlan expected to see was Professor Folds.

  “Lachlan, good to see you.” Professor Folds was warm, effusive, his handshake firm. “How are you?” he cast a glance around the room, noted the research papers on the desk.

  “Very well Professor and you? Mrs Folds?”

  “Excellent. It is, in point of fact, Mrs Folds who has sent me here Lachlan.” the Professor was eager, bursting to speak.

  “Would you care for a whisky?” Lachlan offered. Professor Folds waved the idea away.

  “Perhaps, in a moment or two, it depends upon your answer.”

  “To what question?” Lachlan felt icy fingers at his chest and a broad smile broke across his mind’s eye.

  “Mrs Folds is, as you know, the chair of many historical societies and charities here in Oxbridge.”

  Lachlan nodded. Mrs Folds was an intelligent and interesting woman. Professor Folds continued.

  “The anthropological society has embarked upon a new project, something quite daring and out of the ordinary Lachlan. Something that Mrs Folds thought you were ideally suited to undertake…”

  Lachlan could hear his heartbeat, the way it sounded like footsteps crossing snow. He looked into Professor Folds’ animated face.

  “It’s an anthropological study to research and record the vanishing folklore and culture of the Sami people. ”

  As Professor Folds continued Lachlan was silent, his thoughts clear. Far North. A snow globe white out landscape. A flaw in the glass. A man. Walking. Walking. Know him now?

  “Mrs Folds has had no compunction in recommending you to the committee and they have approved the motion. So? What do you think? What’s your answer man? Are you up for a challenge?”

  They celebrated Lachlan’s forthcoming adventure with single malt.

  A week later Lachlan was making his farewells at the Folds home. Professor Folds had arranged for a cab to take him to the station and they had finished their evening meal. Mrs Folds had made a special presentation of his ticket North.

  “I could make a joke here, Lachlan and say that this is ‘just the ticket’ for you…” Mrs Folds smiled as she handed over the thickly laid cream envelope bearing the tickets and the first instalment of his funds. Lachlan remembered to smile but his mind had been distracted all evening by a memory of funeral plumes, of hats, of earth on a young woman’s coffin. Now, as he took his leave, icicle fingers reached into Lachlan’s skull to pick out the thoughts like lice. The bright white wording of them glittered in the air. “You will be lost Lachlan, but she will find you.”

  Mrs Folds leaned in to hug him.

  “May good fortune follow you North, Lachlan.”

  The doorbell tolled the arrival of the cab.

  The train would take Dr Lachlan Laidlaw a considerable way North, beyond that, there was a boat and beyond that, where the snow lay white deep, was a sled and dogs and the starlit night.

  *

  The wolf had followed Dr Lachlan Laidlaw for days. At first he had assumed it was interested in this intruder into its territory. Now, he knew it was laughing at him, at his efforts to outrun the hostility of this landscape. Lachlan halted in the snow and breathed hard. Icicles formed in his beard at once making a dissonant but magical chinkling sound as he moved his face.

  This, he thought, is the music I shall die to. Above his head the skies were no longer darkening. They were flared and shot through with the aurora. He took a moment to watch it alter from an acid green to a softer blue. He ought to be able to list the reasons why it changed, his brain stored the science of it somewhere but out here the world was elemental. All you really knew was that Odin owned the aurora and that whilst others looked up into a night sky blotted by street-lighting, out here, in the silence, there was nothing between you and the Gods. Here, Lachlan Laidlaw had reached the edge.

  He understood, at last, that the wolf was watching its next meal, that he himself was down to his last thought.

  Good. Now that his mind was clear and empty as a goldfish bowl he could regroup, push on with his task.

  The wolf was disappointed as its snack gathered renewed strength to push the sled forward and his meal slithered further northward.

  The wolf did not follow, for where this meal was headed was black ice country, a place for Gods and monsters.

  PART THREE

  Coming of Age

  Vanessa Way: 1984

  Vanessa had walked home to Cob Cottage after a long shift waitressing at the Castle Inn. Her legs were tired but the muscles stretched out as she cut up through the wood rather than walk the long way round on Old Castle Road. As she walked the smell of chicken kiev and beer drifted away from her and she inhaled deeply the scents of leaf mould, fox and of the cool water of Pike Lake and felt better. She was not going to work at the Castle Inn pub restaurant forever although she understood, Jim Crake, who ran the place, rather wanted her to.

  She thought she might while away a moment or two at her favourite spot, a little curved inlet at the edge of the lake where once she had fished out the monster pike but, as she drew near to the lake itself she could see on the Cob Cottage side, a figure dressed all in red standing on the jetty. All the tiredness fled from her body and Vanessa Way began to run.

  The woman on the jetty was Alizon Wilde one of her mother’s WI friends. Vanes
sa disliked the WI and was uncertain why her mother bothered with this small group of unpleasant women. Their relationship seemed fraught at best, it never felt like a friendship. The least friendly of all was this scarlet woman. Vanessa had never seen her dressed in any other colour and her hair had always been ice white.

  As Vanessa ran up the shoreline she watched Alizon Wilde looking down into the water as if searching. Vanessa half hoped she’d lost something valuable.

  “What are you doing out here? Have you lost something?” Vanessa could hear how loud her voice was, how angry and now the pebbles crunched under her feet and then the boards of the jetty knocked and banged as she walked along them, all reflecting the anger she felt. She felt no compunction to be polite to Alizon, her childhood was peppered with many unpleasant encounters with her, both in and out of the company of her mother.

  “I asked you…what are you doing out here?”

  Alizon Wilde looked at her, very direct and, Vanessa was irritated to see, slightly smug looking. An impression of a smile was pasted across an essentially sneering expression.

  “Looking for your mother.” Alizon’s voice was low and Vanessa felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle almost to the point of sparking. Vanessa found a small grenade of anger form inside her.

  “She’s not here. Obviously. Can I help you?” she took a step closer to Alizon and was surprised that the woman looked less confident, her eyes slithering for a second to the lake water as if afraid of what might surface.

  “Of course not.” Alizon sneered.

  “Then leave.”

  Alizon didn’t quite manage to hide the flinch and her eyes widened with anger.

  “You have no manners to speak of.” she commented without, Vanessa realised, making one move to leave.

  “Neither do you. Off you trot.” Vanessa stepped aside on the jetty to let her pass. Once again Alizon did not move.

  “I am looking for your mother.” her voice was black shadows. Vanessa was disturbed by it.

  “You won’t find her in the lake.” Vanessa could hear the tone in her voice. She felt shaky now and ill at ease, Alizon was staring, cold and hard and Vanessa felt as if they were engaged in a competition of wills. Vanessa opened her eyes wider, angrier. Alizon Wilde dropped her gaze and stepped past her. As she did so Vanessa felt off balance, as if she’d been shoved and had to shift her foot so that she didn’t tumble off the jetty. There was a smirk on Alizon Wilde’s face as she strolled towards the shore which pulled the pin on Vanessa’s grenade of anger.