Explorers on Witch Mountain

by Alex Bell

  ‘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 shaking 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 garden 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 moustache 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 theatre.

  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. Damned 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 had 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.

  ‘Blood-thirsty.’ Lord Rolfingston sighed, noticing the tiny rug. ‘Quite blood-thirsty’ He glanced at Felix, twirled his moustache and said, ‘You used to find singing puppets and dancing puppets and hopscotching puppets most frequently but, these days, I tell you, it’s blood-thirsty 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 grey 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 burnt 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 stayed 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 wa
s 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, intrepid explorer, cherished daughter, expert skater, voracious reader, loyal friend and 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?’

  ‘Puppet experts are known for being maverick eccentrics, but where on earth would we be if we paid too much attention to stereotypes?’ Felix said cheerfully. ‘Thank you very much for your assessment, Sir Rolfingston. Can I offer you some tea before your return journey?’

  Sir Rolfingston glanced at Stella again and said, ‘Thank you, no. There’s a prized collection of Bigfoot puppets awaiting my inspection in the Pinecone Mountains that I must get to urgently.’ He turned back to look at the witch puppet, which had wandered off to sit on her self-made polar bear rug, still watching them with her painted eyes. ‘A word of advice, though,’ he said. ‘Don’t say or do anything in front of that puppet that you don’t want the real witch to know about. You can guarantee she’ll be watching everything.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Stella hardly saw Felix over the next few weeks. After Sir Rolfingston’s visit confirmed that the bone-eating vulture had most probably been sent by the witch, Felix threw himself into a frenzy of activity. The giant birds were found in only one place in the world, and that was Witch Mountain, at the edge of the Icelands. Felix said that the witch must have fled there after killing Stella’s parents, and he immediately began petitioning the authorities to go and arrest her so that she could be brought to justice for murder.

  But as the days and weeks dragged by, it became increasingly apparent that the authorities weren’t interested in travelling all the way to Witch Mountain to pursue a dangerous witch who’d committed a crime in the wilds of the Icelands ten years ago. Stella had a sneaky read of one of the letters left on Felix’s desk while he was occupied with giving Gruff his bath.

  Dear Mister Pearl,

  Thank you for your recent correspondence. Unfortunately, we must inform you that crimes committed within the Icelands are outside the jurisdiction of the Royal Justice Service. Furthermore, the Royal Justice Service will not involve itself in any murderous squabbles that break out between yetis, snow queens, ice monsters, or others of that ilk.

  If you wish to have a magical person tried for magical crimes, we would refer you to the Court of Magical Justice, which is located in the wilds of the Black Spells Forest on the other side of the world. We must warn you that any journey to this court will be a grim challenge, fraught with peril and dangerous unknowns.

  Thank you for your enquiry, and I am sorry that we cannot offer assistance on this occasion.

  Yours sincerely,

  Montague Rawnsley

  Secretary to the Royal Justice Service

  Stella took the opportunity to have a quick rifle through the other papers on Felix’s desk and saw that there were many other letters like the first one. There was even a letter from the Court of Magical Justice, written on a heavy parchment scroll. It looked like it had been hand-delivered by a fire sprite, if the burnt, blackened edges were anything to go by. This one stated that they would certainly be prepared to try the witch for her crimes, but that she would need to be physically present at the court in order for this to happen.

  It all seemed rather hopeless and Stella was starting to fear that she would be kept confined to the house forever. The bone-eating vulture had been spotted circling in the sky several times and, although it never came too close, Felix was sure that the second Stella stepped outside the bird would swoop down to carry her off to Witch Mountain.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to her. ‘I know you want to go outside and skate on the lake and see the unicorns and build snow penguins. But, until we figure out what to do about the witch, it just isn’t safe.’

  Stella knew he was right, but she hated having to stay cooped up in the house. Her hands burned to touch snow, and her skin ached to feel the delicious frostiness of cold, crisp air. She had always spent a lot of time outside, and it made sense that ice princesses were meant for the snowy outdoors, not toasty warm houses.

  The Orangery got very cold at night when the sun went down, so Stella took to spending a great deal of time in there with the pygmy dinosaurs Felix was studying. A tiny triceratops named Toby was new to the group and, although affectionate, he was very shy, so Stella took the time to make friends with him so that he’d feel more at home. And, of course, she paid special attention to her favourite pygmy dinosaur, a T-Rex named Buster.

  But her days quickly became monotonous and this was made worse by the fact that Felix had become very secretive about the witch and had stopped discussing her with Stella. She knew that he must have some kind of plan in mind, because Felix wasn’t one to give up or to be told that something wasn’t possible. She knew that he was applying all his energy to solving the witch problem, so it was maddening that he just brushed off her questions whenever she tried to ask him about it.

  Stella was delighted, therefore, when the magician and Ocean Squid explorer, Zachary Vincent Rook, arrived at their home, accompanied by his son. Ethan Edward Rook had been one of the junior explorers who had travelled with Stella to the coldest part of the Icelands on their first expedition and, although Ethan and Stella had not got on very well to begin with (mostly because Ethan could be terribly obnoxious sometimes), they had become firm friends during the course of their adventures.

  It was the first time Stella had seen him not wearing his black Ocean Squid explorer robes, but he was dressed no less formally in a rather sombre-looking trouser, waistcoat and tie ensemble. His white-blond hair was brushed carefully back from his pale, pointed face, as immaculate as ever.

  ‘Goodness, you look like you’re on your way to the undertakers,’ said Stella the moment she saw him.

  Ethan looked her up and down and said, ‘Well you look like you’re about to be crowned at a prom.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve never seen you look like a girl before. How on earth do you manage with all those petticoats?’

  During their expedition Stella had dressed the same as the boys, in trousers, cloak and snow boots, but now she wore a blue dress with sparkly unicorn-shaped buttons. Her long white hair was tied back in a high ponytail and decorated with matching unicorn hair clips. The dress did have quite a few layers of petticoats because Stella enjoyed the rustling sound they made when she moved, as well as the way they puffed out around her when she spun in a circle.

  ‘You can do absolutely anything in petticoats that you can do in trousers,’ she said firmly.

  ‘I don’t see how,’ Ethan replied dubiously, straightening his already perfectly straight tie. ‘Must be a terrible nuisance.’

  ‘No more so than a moustache,’ Stella shot back.

  ‘I haven’t got a moustache,’ Ethan replied. ‘Besides, it’s the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club who are obsessed with moustaches.’

  ‘Oh, let’s not start squabbling about moustaches and petticoats the second you arrive. Come on, I want to introduce you to Gruff.’

  They found the polar bear in the smoking room, lying flat on his back in contented bliss in front of the fire.

  ‘Good god, he’s enormous!’ Ethan exclaimed the moment he saw him.

  Stella was used to Gruff’s size and tended to forget about how huge he seemed to people who weren’t accustomed
to having a polar bear in the house. But, looking at him now she felt a big swell of pride over her pet, and grabbed Ethan’s arm to tug him over to the bear

  ‘For an animal that’s supposed to live in the snow he really likes fires,’ Stella said.

  The bear opened one eye to peer up at her when she stopped beside him, but didn’t look like he planned on moving any time soon.

  ‘You big lazy lump.’ Stella poked him with her toe. ‘Get up and say hello.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Ethan said. Stella noticed that he was hanging back a little. ‘He can say hello from there. I have a history of being bitten by things, remember?’

  It was an unfortunate fact that, during the course of their last expedition, Ethan had indeed been bitten by a frosty, a cabbage and a rather irritated goose named Dora.

  ‘Pecked too,’ Ethan said, clearly thinking of Dora. ‘If the geese, cabbages and frosties are anything to go by, it can only be a matter of time before I’m seriously mauled by something again.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Stella replied. ‘Gruff has never bitten anyone in his life. He would never dream of mauling you.’ She went over to Ethan, grabbed a handful of fish biscuits from her dress pocket and thrust them into his hands. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘These are his favourite.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ethan looked appalled. ‘Oh no, please take them back.’

  He tried to shove them towards Stella, but it was too late. Gruff had already rolled his big body over with a thump and was now standing up and hurrying eagerly towards Ethan. The magician froze as the polar bear pushed its snout into his cupped hands and happily crunched up all the fish biscuits with a lot of grunting and snuffling. Once he’d finished, Gruff gave Ethan a big wet lick on the cheek, and then, suddenly, his nose twitched.