Explorers on Witch Mountain

by Alex Bell

  ‘Oh dear,’ Stella said. ‘Ethan, you should stand back before—’

  But that was as far as she got before Gruff let out a gigantic sneeze that absolutely covered Ethan in bear slobber, liberally dotted with biscuit crumbs. It was on his shirt, and dripping down his face, and there was even a little bit of it caught in Ethan’s hair, causing it to stick out at the side.

  Gruff snorted, turned away and lumbered back to his spot by the fire. Even though the bear and biscuits had gone, Ethan remained rigid, his hands stuck out in front of him. Stella couldn’t help noticing that quite a few strings of drool hung down from his fingers too.

  ‘Gruff isn’t the tidiest eater,’ she offered. ‘Sometimes he sneezes after having his biscuits. Sorry.’

  ‘Stella,’ Ethan said between gritted teeth, ‘I am having the worst time of my life right now.’

  ‘Oh, you can be so boring sometimes,’ Stella said with a sigh. ‘If Shay were here he would love Gruff.’

  Stella had met Shay, her wolf whisperer friend, on the expedition too, and he had been very impressed when she’d told him she had a polar bear as a pet.

  ‘I am not Shay Silverton Kipling,’ Ethan said in his haughtiest voice. ‘Magicians do not mess around in kennels with wolves, and we do not enjoy being covered in slimy drool. Please show me to the nearest washroom at once.’

  Stella sighed again but took Ethan to the bathroom, and after much fussing and splashing around he came out looking perfectly neat and tidy once again.

  ‘So, why has your father come to visit Felix?’ Stella asked as they made their way to the kitchens.

  Ethan shrugged. ‘I was hoping you might know. You don’t think they’re planning an expedition without us, do you? I caught Father studying a map for the Lost City of Muja-Muja the other day.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Stella replied. ‘Felix is too concerned with the witch to be planning expeditions right now.’

  She proceeded to tell Ethan about the bone-eating vulture attack and the witch on Witch Mountain.

  Ethan frowned. ‘Yes, Felix sent word about the vulture before we arrived. We saw it circling the house when we got here but it didn’t come after us.’

  ‘Felix thinks it wants me,’ Stella said glumly. ‘To carry off back to the witch. That’s why I’m not allowed to go outside.’

  ‘This is bad,’ Ethan said. ‘Bone-eating vultures are extremely dangerous. Father says the only way to control one if you’re not a witch is to fasten a magical cuff around its leg. Then it will do everything you tell it to.’

  ‘But that sounds perfect!’ Stella said. ‘We just have to find one of these magical cuffs and the vulture problem is solved.’

  ‘Father had one once; I remember him showing it to me. But it wouldn’t really solve the problem, would it? The witch could just send another vulture, or come after you herself. And the difficult bit would be actually getting the cuff on the vulture in the first place. Father says only an absolute madman would even think of attempting it. You’re likely to get your face ripped off in the process. Those talons are sharp.’

  Stella remembered Felix’s bloodstained clothes and shuddered. He’d fully recovered now, but she knew well enough how dangerous the bone-eating vulture was.

  She sighed. ‘So, I’m doomed then,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll think of something,’ Ethan replied. ‘You can’t stay cooped up in here for the rest of your life, can you? It would be awful if you couldn’t go on the next expedition with us.’

  Stella gave him a smile but, before she could say anything, they both clearly heard the silvery jingle of sleigh bells.

  ‘Are you expecting visitors?’ Ethan asked.

  Stella shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  They walked a little further down the corridor to the nearest window and peered out. A magnificent sleigh had stopped beside the front entrance and they could clearly see the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club crest stamped on the side. Four beautiful zebra unicorns, with bells on their harnesses, stood before it, tossing their heads and snorting in the frosty air.

  ‘There’s only one person who has a sleigh like that,’ Ethan said.

  And, sure enough, a moment later Algernon Augustus Fogg, the president of the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club himself, stepped down from the sleigh, assisted by his liveried chauffeur. Stella had met him before when she took the explorers’ pledge at the club and was initiated as a junior member. He looked just as she remembered: plump, portly and sporting an impressively whiskery moustache that still made her think of walruses. As they watched, Felix appeared on the steps to welcome his guest and usher him into the house. Stella noticed that the president kept glancing fearfully up at the sky so she guessed that Felix had warned him about the giant vulture.

  Her heart sank. ‘Perhaps they are planning an expedition to the Lost City of Muja-Muja,’ she said, though she couldn’t believe Felix would really go off and leave her now, but why else would the president be here?

  It wasn’t unusual for the president to be invited to dine at the homes of private members, although he had never been to Stella’s house before. She knew that the dinners were usually grand affairs, but Felix said the real purpose was always to butter up the president whenever an explorer wanted something from the club. What could Felix want?

  ‘I have no idea,’ Ethan said when Stella voiced the question. ‘Perhaps we’ll find out what’s going on at dinner.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The dinner took place in the grand dining room that Felix only used on special occasions. A long table took up most of the space, and a chandelier sparkled from the high vaulted ceiling. The sun was low in the sky and light poured through the vast stained-glass window that filled almost an entire wall. It depicted a glorious map of the known world, the various lands coloured in jewel-bright glass. Monstrous whales and sea monsters joined the sailing ships on the sparkling blue seas, while hot-air balloons, airships and dirigibles adorned the corners.

  Stella had always adored maps and globes and compasses – pretty much anything to do with navigating, really – and had spent hours staring up at this window when she’d been little. Sometimes Felix would join her and point out the different lands he had been to, and the adventures he had had there.

  Stella had always rather thought that he’d made some of it up (or at least embellished it) in order to entertain her – like when he said he’d had a stint as a boxing champion in the Mysterious Orient in his youth. During the course of the last expedition, though, she’d learned that Felix could, in fact, box, and now she glanced at the window and wondered what else might have been true. Perhaps Felix really had accomplished the tricky skill of eagle-taming in the Stone Mountains, and mastered the art of ice-cream making while apprenticed with a famous ice-cream family in the Marzipan Islands.

  Stella was pleased to see that Ethan looked quite impressed by the window, even if he had been inexplicably unimpressed with Gruff, and even less impressed with Buster who’d bitten him – rather hard – on the finger the moment he was introduced. Stella therefore kept a tight grip on the tiny dinosaur when she presented him to the president of the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club.

  ‘This is Buster,’ she said proudly. ‘He’s the naughtiest pygmy dinosaur in the Orangery.’

  ‘Great Scott, how extraordinary!’ the president exclaimed, and leaned forward for a closer look.

  Stella was pleased that the president seemed impressed by her pet, although she was a little confused by the way he looked at her. When they had met at the club before the last expedition, the president had been reluctant to initiate a girl into the membership, but had not seemed to think very much of Stella apart from that. And after the expedition he’d been too excited and distracted by all the discoveries to pay her much notice, beyond congratulating her on the discovery of the moustache spoon. Now, though, he looked at her with an expression that was almost … well … almost fearful. She did hope he wasn’t going to make a big fuss about the whol
e ice princess thing.

  ‘Dinner is served,’ Mrs Sap announced, and they all took their seats at the table.

  The president sat at the head, as was his right, and the others – Stella, Ethan, Felix and Zachary Vincent Rook – took their places on either side. Stella put Buster on her lap so that he wouldn’t run around irritating everyone under the table. She couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be quite a strained atmosphere between the adults. Felix was quiet and withdrawn, not at all his usual cheerful self, and Zachary Vincent Rook seemed distracted, cold and superior (though that was nothing out of the ordinary). President Fogg looked like he’d rather be anywhere else.

  As the main course was served, Stella caught Ethan’s gaze across the table and raised her eyebrow. The magician shrugged back. Then he put down his fork, cleared his throat and said abruptly, ‘Have we got the wrong end of the stick, Father, or are you planning an expedition to the Lost City of Muja-Muja and completely failing to include us?’

  Zachary put down his fork with a clatter. ‘I’ll have none of your cheek, Ethan!’ he said in a sharp voice.

  The light in the room flickered into shadow suddenly and Stella frowned and glanced towards the window.

  ‘There is no expedition being planned,’ Felix said. ‘For the simple reason that we have been denied permission to mount one.’

  ‘Witch Mountain is not a suitable place for exploration,’ President Fogg said, scowling at Felix. ‘Besides which, it has already been discovered and put on the map.’

  ‘But no one has ever explored it properly, have they?’ Stella asked.

  ‘That’s because it’s terribly dangerous, girl!’ President Fogg replied. ‘Only witch hunters dare venture there, and they bring back the most terrible reports. Full of murderous witches and bone-eating vultures and argumentative mushrooms. No person in their right mind would want to explore such a place. When Captain Archibald Primrose Perkins first discovered the mountain, every single one of his team met with a sticky end before they could reach the summit. It was only a lone jungle fairy who returned to tell the tale, as I understand.’

  ‘Well, the last expedition to the Icelands was pretty dangerous too,’ Ethan pointed out. ‘What with the rampaging yetis and carnivorous cabbages and frostbiting—’

  ‘I’m sorry, but it’s out of the question,’ the president snapped.

  The room briefly flickered into shadow once again, too quickly for it to be a cloud passing the window. Stella couldn’t help fearing that it was the vulture, swooping overhead, hoping that she would be unwise enough to stick her head out of the window to be bitten off.

  ‘My daughter can hardly stay a prisoner in this house for the rest of her life, sir,’ Felix said, interrupting her thoughts. ‘Something must be done.’

  ‘But be reasonable, man,’ the president insisted. ‘No one comes back from Witch Mountain alive. No one except witch hunters!’

  ‘Since its discovery, no explorers have been to Witch Mountain,’ Felix pointed out. ‘And if they do not venture there then they cannot come back alive, dead or anything in between.’

  The door opened just then and Mrs Sap arrived, tottering under the weight of a massive pudding presented on a grand silver plate. Felix hurried to help her and, together, they set it down in the middle of the table. Stella was delighted to see that Mrs Sap had constructed a woolly mammoth entirely from chocolate, complete with a fudge tail and magnificent white chocolate tusks. Her mouth watered at the sight of it.

  Buster also seemed interested, and dragged himself up the tablecloth and onto the table before Stella could stop him. He didn’t seem to quite realise that the mammoth was not a real creature, because he ran right up to it and started roaring ferociously.

  ‘It will be frowned on, Pearl, frowned on most severely by the club if you organise an independent expedition,’ the president said, raising his voice to be heard above the roaring pygmy T-Rex. ‘Besides, I’m sure you’re overreacting. This brain-eating vulture will soon lose interest and fly off, and then everything can go back to normal.’

  ‘It’s a bone-eating vulture,’ Stella felt obliged to say, because she couldn’t bear it when people got animal facts wrong. ‘Perhaps you’re thinking of the zombie vulture of Dry Gulch Valley,’ she added, so as not to seem rude. ‘They eat brains.’

  The president gave her another one of those odd looks, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to say to her.

  ‘The vulture will not simply fly away,’ Felix said. ‘It won’t leave until it has what it came for.’

  Stella shuddered because she knew that Felix meant her.

  ‘Are we going to eat this woolly mammoth cake or is the dinosaur going to demolish it all by itself?’ Ethan complained.

  Buster was, indeed, busily taking a big bite out of the mammoth’s leg, but no one else seemed particularly interested in dessert just then.

  ‘Look here, Pearl, just because you once dabbled in a spot of wild-eagle taming in the Pebble Mountains, or wherever it was, doesn’t mean that you’re suddenly an expert on every large bird of prey in existence,’ President Fogg said. ‘The bird will lose interest and fly home, you mark my words. Birds don’t have the brains to be determined; chances are you’ll never see it again as long as you live.’

  Once again, the room suddenly went into shadow, only this time it was not there and gone in an instant but the gloom stretched on and on. Everyone else noticed it too and looked towards the window.

  ‘Merciful heavens!’ Felix gasped. ‘Everybody, duck!’

  He spoke mere seconds before the beautiful stained-glass window shattered in an explosion of flying pieces as the bone-eating vulture burst through it in a shrieking tangle of feathers, talons and claws.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Enormous dark wings spread in the now-open space where the window had once been. The bone-eating vulture was an appalling sight; it had cut itself when it smashed into the window but didn’t seem bothered by the injuries. It opened its beak and gave another ear-splitting shriek before swooping into the room.

  Zachary Vincent Rook and Ethan both began hurling magic spells at the vulture; Felix leaped to his feet; Buster charged down the length of the table roaring his tiny head off; Stella lunged after Buster; and the president of the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club hid under the table.

  The vulture must have had an anti-magic enchantment on it – just like the carnivorous cabbage plant Stella and her friends had faced in the last expedition – because the spells just bounced off it, seeming to have no effect at all.

  The vulture headed straight for Stella, its tiny eyes fixed on her with a terrible focus. Buster now charged directly in front of her in an attempt to protect her from the huge monster. His roaring would, no doubt, have been extremely effective had he been a full-size T-Rex but, given that he was actually no larger than a kitten, it really wasn’t achieving anything. And the fact that he had dark chocolate smeared all around his mouth ruined his attempts to be ferocious anyway.

  Stella snatched up the tiny dinosaur in her hands seconds before the vulture lunged, snapping its beak where the T-Rex had just been standing. She shielded Buster with her own body as she ran, but turned around in time to witness an astonishing sight.

  While Ethan and Zachary continued to mess about with spells that were clearly doing no good, Felix leapt onto the table and ran down the length of it, china plates smashing under his boots as he headed straight towards the vulture. Stella watched in astonishment as he took a flying leap and landed squarely on the giant bird’s back. The vulture screamed in protest, but Felix ignored it as he reached into his waistcoat pocket and drew out a shining silver cuff. In one quick movement, he reached down and fastened it firmly around the vulture’s bony leg with a snap.

  Stella knew at once that this must be the magical cuff Ethan had mentioned earlier – the one that would allow you to control the vulture. She realised Zachary Vincent Rook must have brought it – that this was the reason for his visit. Relief washed over
Stella as she was sure that Felix was going to hop off the vulture’s back at any moment and send the giant bird away.

  But then Zachary Vincent Rook spoke from across the room. ‘Don’t do it, Felix, I urge you.’

  Stella looked at Felix in alarm and saw that he was gazing straight at her, and she knew – she knew without him even saying anything. She remembered how Ethan had said that getting rid of the vulture wouldn’t solve the problem of the witch, and then she thought of Felix arguing with the president about organising an expedition to Witch Mountain, and she knew he was going to leave.

  ‘Take me with you,’ she said, already starting forwards.

  But Felix was shaking his head. ‘Not this time, Stella,’ he said. ‘Be good and do as Mrs Sap tells you. I’ll be back before you know it.’

  And, with that, he wrapped his arms round the vulture’s scrawny neck and leaned forward to whisper something in its ear. The giant bird turned awkwardly in the room, flapped up onto the windowsill, spread its wings and took off into the sky.

  ‘No!’ Stella cried, dismayed.

  Still clutching Buster, she ran to the window and scrambled over the sill, pieces of broken glass tearing at her dress. The snow compacted beneath her slippers when she leaped outside; the cold air soothed her skin and filled her lungs and it was glorious to be out of the house for the first time in weeks. But Stella couldn’t enjoy it because she was too busy searching for Felix in the sky. Suddenly, a tile fell from above and landed with a soft flump in the snow. Stella looked up and realised that the giant vulture was perched on the roof, waiting patiently as Felix retrieved a bag from one of the chimney pots. He must have hidden it there earlier. It probably had witch-hunting supplies in it. A great wave of anger surged through Stella and she balled her hands up into fists.