by Michael Kerr
CHAPTER SIXTEEN ―
ICEWORLD
Aurora floated down from the pedestal and led them to a corridor that was lined with sparkling glass columns that appeared to stretch forever into the distance.
“This dome is like Dr. Who’s Tardis,” Tommy said. “It’s even bigger inside than it looks from the outside.”
They walked along between mirrored doors that had numbers above them.
“Here we are,” Aurora said, stopping outside one of the doors. “Walk through it, and you will be met by a guide.”
Sam reached out to push the shiny surface, and her hand sank into it. She withdrew it quickly.
“Do not be alarmed,” Aurora said. “These doors are the very fabric of time. Just walk through it. There is nothing for you to fear.”
Sam took a deep breath, stepped forward, and felt a warm, tingling sensation as she passed through the filmy door to find herself standing on what appeared to be a railway platform. In front of her was a track, and on it stood a vehicle in the shape of a giant swan. The others joined her.
“Well, hello there, folks,” a very small, plump man in a clown’s outfit said, appearing from the shadows. His face was white, there were tufts of orange hair on each side of his otherwise bald head, and he had a round, cherry-red nose that glowed like a bright-red stop light above the painted smile on his mouth. “You want to go for a ride in my swan?”
Tommy grinned. The clown wore a baggy silver-coloured silk suit, a big polka dot bow tie that lit up and spun round as he spoke, and white, sausage-fingered gloves of the type Mickey Mouse always wore. In one hand he held a large bunch of rainbow-coloured balloons.
“Are you the guide?” Ben asked the jolly clown.
“Among other things, yes. My name is Rubicon. I no longer work in the circus, but still like to make people laugh.”
“You look really silly,” Ben said.
“Why thank you, young man,” Rubicon replied, producing a cream pie on a cardboard plate and pushing it in Ben’s face. “So do you, now.”
They all laughed, apart from Ben who scraped the mess off his face and glared at the clown.
“Don’t be angry,” Rubicon said. “What do you expect a clown to do, act glum and be serious?”
Ben licked the lemon-flavoured cream from his lips and grinned.
“Aurora told us that you would take us to Iceworld,” Fig said.
“And so I shall,” Rubicon replied. “Please board the swan; pull down the safety bars, and keep your arms inside at all times until the ride is over and the car comes to a complete stop.”
They climbed into the swan, took seats on the two rows, and pulled the bars down. Rubicon took his place in front of them, and belted himself securely to the swan’s neck.
“Hold on tight,” he said. “This is a real white knuckle ride.”
The car accelerated forward at breakneck speed along the track, jerking them backwards in their seats. The swan’s broad wings began to flap as it hurtled down a ramp and soared out into a black velvet sky. Stars twinkled all around them like diamonds, and they looped and spun and flew upside-down on a heart-stopping rollercoaster ride.
Pook scrunched his eyes shut and held on to Tommy. And except for Gorf, Fig and speedy, the others screamed a lot.
“Fun, isn’t it?” Rubicon shouted as they went straight up like a rocket blasting off from Cape Canaveral.
After what seemed an eternity, they stopped as suddenly as they had started.
“Please exit the swan to your left, and make sure you’ve left nothing on board,” Rubicon said, jumping down onto a platform at the side and handing each of them a balloon as they staggered after him.
Even Fig and Speedy felt a little greener than usual, and Pook was so dizzy that he couldn’t walk straight.
“That was great,” Ben said to the chuckling clown.
“Glad you think so. We’ll make the return journey even faster, and by a different route, once you’ve finished your business here in Iceworld, and if you make it back.”
Sam looked around. They were standing in a long shed. It was full of wooden crates, and jackets and trousers made of fur hung from hooks on the walls. There was also a pile of snow shoes that reminded her of tennis rackets.
“What do you mean, if we make it back?” Sam asked Rubicon.
“It’s freezing cold and usually snowing out there,” the clown replied, nodding towards a door. “They don’t call it Iceworld for nothing. Even the sea around it is frozen. And there are packs of polar tigers that will make a hot meal of you, should you be unlucky enough to run into them.”
“How far is it to where we will find the Keeper?” Ben asked.
“Less than a three hour walk by your way of measuring time, boy,” Rubicon said. “There is only one way to go, along the bottom of a split in the glacier. Stop for nothing. You will recognise the Keeper’s hut when you reach it. There are no other buildings in Iceworld.”
They dressed in dusty seal fur jackets, leggings and boots, and all of them – apart from Gorf and Pook – strapped snow shoes to their feet before pulling on thick mittens.
“Ready?” Ben said to the others, pulling the drawstrings together on the hood of his bulky parka and tying them in a bow.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Tommy replied. And to Pook. “You stay here with Rubicon, Pook. There’s no need for you to come. You couldn’t keep up, and it’s a long way for me to have to carry you.”
“No prob’,” Pook said. “I can’t stand the cold, and I don’t want to be blamed for slowing you down. Just be careful, and hurry back. I don’t want to be stuck here forever with only a clown for company.”
Gorf opened the door, and howling wind and stinging snow met him. He led the others out, and they leaned into the gale and made off into a raging blizzard.
After a while, the wind dropped and the snow stopped falling. The grey clouds drifted away, and the frozen wasteland ahead of them was a dazzling blue-white. Only once, well off to their left, did they see puffs of snow that attracted their attention to a pack of large, fast moving, grey-striped animals.
“They’re hunting something,” Gorf said.
“As long as it isn’t us, I don’t care,” Tommy said in a hushed voice.
They hurried on, all relieved that the creatures were preoccupied with some other animal, which would no doubt soon be ripped to pieces and stain the snow red.
“There! Up ahead. I can see a building,” Sam said after they had travelled for three or four miles.
They reached what turned out to be a large hut built from sturdy logs. It was half buried by drifts of snow that the wind had driven up to just below the roof. They had to use the snowshoes as spades, to dig and find the top of the door, and clear it. When they had, it was either locked or frozen in place. Gorf gave up trying to force it open, and hammered on it with his fists. There was no answer.
“I think this place is abandoned,” Tommy said. “It looks like the kind of hut that Arctic explorers use as a base. Not somewhere the chalice would belong.”
Ben wiped more snow off the solid door and found a keyhole full of ice.
“Do you think―?” he started.
“Yes,” Sam said.
Ben was carrying the third and last item that Mephisto had given them. He took off his mittens, found the big key and pushed it into the lock. He jiggled it about to loosen the packed ice, and turned it, but when he tried the handle, the door still wouldn’t budge.
“I think it’s frozen into the frame,” he said.
Once again, Gorf tried brute force. He rammed the door with his shoulder several times, and it finally burst open with a loud cracking sound as the ice splintered and fell away. “I’ll go in first,” he said, entering the dark interior, ready to defend himself and the others against anything hostile that might lurk inside.
It was bitterly cold and eerie. Ben found what looked to be an oil-lamp hanging over a table. He turned
the small wheel attached its side to raise the wick, and it immediately lit without the need of matches, which none of them had anyway. The glow from the lamp drove back the gloom, and Tommy jumped with fright.
“Aaahhh! Look at that,” he cried out, and took cover behind Gorf.
Sitting on a chair, with gnarled hands gripping its arms, was the body of a frozen man. His yellow-white hair reached the floor, and a long beard flowed down on to his lap. His face was wrinkled like a prune, and the skin was blue. He wore a suit of chain mail, and a sword hung in its scabbard from a leather belt at his waist.
“He looks like a knight,” Tommy said. “A little bit like Sir Havalot.”
“We’ve found the Keeper-in-Waiting,” Sam said.
“He isn’t waiting now. And isn’t going to be able to take the chalice from us and guard it,” Ben said. “He’s probably been frozen solid like a chicken in a freezer for hundreds of years.”
Sam knew exactly what she had to do. She took the chalice out of her bag and placed it on the tabletop. It began to ring in the same way that a crystal glass will if you run a fingertip around its rim. The ringing became an almost deafening high-pitched sound, and the gold glowed so brightly that they had to shield their eyes and look away, afraid that the glare would blind them.
“What’s happening?” Tommy shouted. “Why is it doing that?”
Sam knew. The chalice was back where it belonged.
After a few seconds, the ringing quietened, but did not stop altogether. And the brilliance dimmed to a soft radiance.
“Look at the knight,” Fig said.
They all turned to face the figure in the chair. The hands holding the wooden arms trembled, and the fingers began to flex and turn from icy blue to a healthy pink.
“He’s alive,” Ben gasped. And even as he said it the old man’s eyes snapped open and he turned to look in their direction.
“You have brought back the chalice,” he said in a voice that sounded as crackly to Sam as dry autumn leaves being stepped on.
“Yes,” she said. “Are you the Keeper?”
The knight nodded, pushed himself up slowly into a standing position, and grimaced as his bones creaked.
“I am Sir Hector Malory, the Keeper-in-Waiting. And it would appear that my waiting is at an end. You must introduce yourselves to me, and tell me where you came upon the chalice, and what heroic trials you have faced and overcome to reach this desolate corner of existence?”
As they told their story, Sir Hector took a seat at the table in front of the chalice. “Lord! What a mess I am,” he said, looking at his reflection in the polished gold surface. “Pass me those shears from the shelf behind you, if you would be so kind.”
Speedy handed the knight the dusty pair of scissors, and Sir Hector started to cut his hair and beard as they continued with their story, taking it in turn to tell him of the dangers they had somehow survived.
Sir Hector finished with the shears, and once more looked like a noble knight, and not some hermit or mad monk.
“What will you do with the chalice, now that you have it back?” Sam asked him.
“I will show you,” Sir Hector said. “Move the table out of the way.”
Ben and Gorf lifted the table between them, and set it down against the nearest wall. And as they did, Sir Hector drew his sword, to stick its sharp point in a gap between two floorboards and prise up a three-foot-square section that was in fact a secret trapdoor. Beneath it was a staircase cut out of the glistening blue ice, leading around the wall of a circular chamber, spiralling down hundreds of feet to a floor as smooth as glass.
“From what you have told me, it is you, Sam, who was chosen and trusted by the power of the chalice to bring it back here,” Sir Hector said, “So you shall have the honour of being the last person to ever hold it. Pick it up, and let us go down into the chamber.”
Sam lifted the chalice from the table and followed Sir Hector down the steps. The others followed on behind.
“Now place it on the ice and stand well back,” Sir Hector instructed when they reached the bottom of what was little more than a very deep pit with a floor of ice as smooth as a skating rink.
Sam knelt and set the chalice down, and an instant before she let go of it, a voice spoke in her mind: ‘Thank you, Sam,’ it said ‘You and your friends have ensured that evil will never be allowed to reign supreme in Allworlds. I wish you a safe journey back to where you found me. Remember to hold on to hope, and to believe in kindness and all that is good. Dream as if you will live forever, and live as if you might die today. Life is not for looking back on with regrets at chances not taken. Be true to your heart, Sam Craig, and you will find everlasting peace of mind’.
As her hands released the chalice, it became white hot and began to melt the ice beneath it. Sam got to her feet, and with Gorf, Ben, Tommy, Fig, Speedy and the Keeper, formed a circle and joined hands, to watch as the Chalice of Hope burned its way down, deeper and deeper into the sizzling ice, until it had vanished from sight. The ice cooled and froze again, and their quest was finally over.
Sam felt happy and sad at the same time. She was happy that the chalice was locked safely in the glacier for the rest of eternity, and sad in the way it sometimes feels to have finished anything you’ve started. It was as if she had lost something, although she knew that she hadn’t.
“That’s it, then,” Tommy said. “We’ve done it.”
Sam looked up from the ice, to see that Sir Hector had become young. His face was smooth and handsome, and his hair and beard were a lustrous blue-black.
“You look―”
“I know,” Sir Hector said. “The chalice has rejuvenated me. I shall always be this age, now that it is back.”
“I would think that being here alone and guarding it forever will be very boring.” Sam said.
Sir Hector smiled. “Not at all. We all have a purpose to fulfil. Mine is as the Keeper. I am happy to have such an important role to play in the scheme of things.”
“We’d better get back,” Ben said. “It’s time we went home.”
They said good-bye to Sir Hector, and began the trek back to the portal. The sky was clear, and they made good time on the return trip through the valley of ice.
“How’d it go?” Pook asked as they entered the building. “Did you off-load the chalice and make Allworlds safer places to live in?”
“Yeah, Pook,” Tommy said. “We did the business.”
“Okay folks, all aboard,” Rubicon said. “Let’s get back to the Crossroads. I’ve got a date tonight with a girl who really is out of this world.”
“You’re not going looking like that, are you?” Tommy asked the clown.
“Looking like what?” Rubicon said. “This is how I always look. Where I come from, everyone looks like this.”
They all smiled. The thought of there being a world full of clowns who laughed all the time, threw custard pies at each other, and acted as if they were in a circus, was funny and nice.
“Hold tight, here we go,” Rubicon said, once they were all seated and had pulled the safety bars down. The giant swan took off and flew them back to the dome, doing aerial acrobatics that would have impressed the Red Arrows.
Aurora was waiting for them as they walked through the mirrored door into the corridor.
“How is that old goat, Hector?” she asked.
“He’s not old anymore,” Sam said. “Getting the chalice back has made him young again.”
“That’s good to hear. Now all we have to do is send you all back to where you belong, or where you would like to be.”
“We want to go back home to...to Humanplace,” Sam said, looking at Ben, who nodded his agreement.
“And where do you wish to be?” Aurora asked Tommy. “I have the feeling you are not too sure.”
Tommy was having doubts. Staying in this world with Gorf and Pook might be all right for a while. But he worried that as time went
by he would miss his home, his mum, and Sam and Ben. He knew that he didn’t belong here. The only consideration was that he had got used to having good eyesight, and not having to wear a brace on his leg.
“Would I stay as I am now if I went back?” Tommy asked the beautiful Aurora.
“I do not know, Tommy,” she said. “You may. But you should not stay here for the wrong reasons. Doesn’t your heart speak to you? If you think you might be unhappy away from your own world, then you probably would be. All that you truly know is where you come from. With or without poor vision and a withered leg, you are the same person, and are no better or worse for it.”
Tommy knew that she was right. He felt a lump fill his throat at the thought of never seeing Pook, Gorf, Fig and Speedy again, but had to make the hardest decision of his life.
“I’ll go back with Sam and Ben,” he said, his voice cracking as he squeezed his eyelids shut to stop the tears that welled up behind them.
“And what of you two?” Aurora asked Fig and Speedy.
“We both miss home,” Fig said. “We want to regain our powers and be able to fly again. But how can you help us make the journey back? We are from a different land, but still of this world.”
“I’m like a travel agent,” she said, knowing that the human youngsters would understand the term. “I can arrange both faraway and local trips. There is a door leading to everywhere and any place. You shall be returned to Fairyland without having to face the dangers you encountered on the way here.”
Only Gorf and Pook were left to decide on where they would like to be.
“Where would a giant who does not even know what he is, and a little bear that has only recently been brought to life, wish to go?” Aurora asked.
“How about us going to stay with Charlie for a while?” Pook said.
Gorf grinned. “Sounds like a plan. I liked the area, and I’m sure he would enjoy having our company.”
“I will leave you for a while to talk it over and to say your good-byes,” Aurora said. “When I return, then you shall be sent to the destinations of your choice.”
“I enjoyed us being a team,” Gorf said to the others, when Aurora had drifted out of the room. “And it’s a pity that Pook and I wouldn’t fit in your world, or we could have come with you,” he added, smiling at Sam.
“Huggle,” Speedy said, and they formed what looked like a rugby scrum, with arms around each other’s shoulders and heads down.
“We shall have some fine memories of our time together,” Fig said.
“But life will seem a little dull after the adventure we have had,” Gorf added.
They kissed and hugged each other, and forced themselves to laugh and talk of their exploits, so as not to become too unhappy.
“Very well,” Aurora said, returning to stand before them. “Who shall be first to leave the Crossroads of Time?”
Fig and Speedy stepped forward, and Aurora took their hands in hers, as if they were small children, and led them away.
―