The Eye of the North

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The Eye of the North Page 9

by Sinead O'Hart


  “Sorry,” he said. “It’s been a while since my last visit.”

  “Nothing for it,” muttered Sasha.

  On they trudged, the cold evening gathering around them.

  “You’re not going to get anything out of me!” said Emmeline, wondering why her teeth insisted on chattering. “I’m not going to tell you a thing about OSCAR.”

  “Really? I rather imagine that’s because you don’t know a thing about it,” remarked Pale Face.

  “You can imagine what you like,” retorted Emmeline. “But you’ll never find out the truth, will you? I could know everything, but I’m not going to say a word, no matter what you do.” She took a chance then, feeling like she was throwing a stone down a well to hear how long it would take it to hit the bottom. “As soon as my parents discover what you’ve done, they’ll come after you, anyway. You just wait.” She squished back tears, hoping that the man didn’t know—how could he know?—that her parents were…that they were…

  “Your parents?” The man laughed, a hollow sound like a barrel being rolled down a rocky hill. “Your parents, my girl, are the reason you’re here.” Emmeline said nothing as this clanged around inside her, and the man shook his head slowly, like she was something to be pitied. “Why—you poor little thing! You didn’t think they were actually dead, did you? Oh, no! How sad.” He pulled his lips tight in what Emmeline supposed he meant to be a smile, but which instead made him look like an animal in pain. “No, you’ll soon be with them again, never fear. I’ve kept them for you—not exactly safe, I’d say, but they’re alive, all right. Or they were, the last I heard. They weren’t terribly forthcoming with the information I required either. I see now where you learned your helpful, obliging ways.” Pale Face’s deep black eyes twinkled, but not in a nice way.

  “You’re the one,” said Emmeline, feeling like a gear was slowly turning inside her mind. “You’re the one who kidnapped them.”

  “I certainly arranged it, yes,” Pale Face replied, shrugging.

  “But—where did you put them? Where are they?”

  “Right where I need them, of course!” Pale Face sat back, flicking one leg over the other with a deft movement. “They’re in the ice, my dear. Deep within it, if my orders have been followed. They’ve resisted helping me bring my plans to fruition up to now, but I think when they see you, they might change their minds. Not that it matters much, one way or the other,” he continued with a soft sigh. “Once I have what I want, you’ll all be together again.” He turned his unsettling eyes back to Emmeline and gazed at her. “Forever.”

  Emmeline’s whole body—every cell, every hair, every drop of blood—trembled as she stared back at him.

  “Two twenty-two…twenty-three…We’re here! Look! Two twenty-four rue du Démiurge. Finally.” Edgar’s voice was like that of a little boy opening his birthday presents. Thing’s feet felt like they were bleeding. He’d been walking on willpower alone for the past ten minutes.

  “It looks a bit—dark, doesn’t it?” said Sasha, dropping her cases onto the bottom step. She grabbed handfuls of her skirts and hopped up, peering at the house. “Are you sure we’re still using this building?”

  “I haven’t heard anything to the contrary,” replied Edgar, gazing at the house with puzzled eyes.

  “Gosh. Things must be bad for the Order if this is what Madame is reduced to.”

  “If you pair’ve dragged me up ’ere for nothin’, I am warnin’ ya—” But Thing’s dire threat was interrupted by a curtain being twitched in one of the tall, unlit windows beside the large front door. Whether a face looked out through the glass, Thing could not have said. His entire focus was on the door, willing it to open, and for there to be food beyond it.

  “Shhh! Thing. Show a bit of respect,” Edgar whispered. “And get up here.” Every muscle stiff and cracking, Thing clambered up two of the three steps and stuck fast, his feet unprepared to move another inch.

  Before he could ask whether it would be all right, finally, to put the blasted map case down, the door shook as someone struggled to wrench it open from the inside.

  “Just a moment!” called Edgar. Gritting his teeth, he set his good shoulder against the wood and pushed as hard as he could. Sasha hurried up to the door and leaned in beside him, heaving for all she was worth. Thing, for his part, closed his eyes, swayed on his feet, and focused on not falling over.

  After a few moments, with a noise like a tree being torn in two, the door opened. A dark, narrow hallway was revealed, leading to rooms that looked cold and unused—but a powerful aroma of roasting chicken billowed forth, and Thing’s stomach decided to take control of the situation. He took one faltering step toward the scent, and then another.

  “Madame,” said Edgar, bowing quickly, then straightening up and squaring his shoulders. “The—the sun is warm—”

  “Non, mon cher,” a voice interrupted, its accent reminding Thing of polished shoes and well-padded stomachs, gold-topped canes and sparkling jewels. “You do not need to use passwords here, Edgar. Not with me.” The voice warmed as it continued. “Natasha, ma petite. And your guest. Bienvenue à tous. Come.”

  “Ben ven who?” echoed Thing, peeling one eye open to see a tiny woman, barely bigger than he was, wearing a high-necked dress with a shawl around her shoulders—and, of course, a large white flower conspicuously placed over her heart.

  “Welcome,” she said with a small, tired smile. “I am Gramercy Blancheflour. Enchantée.”

  “Chicken,” muttered Thing before fainting at her feet.

  Emmeline hardly heard Pale Face’s explanation of what OSCAR was—an acronym for her parents’ employer, the Office for the Sighting and Cataloging of the Anomalous and Rare, and not a name after all—because one thought kept drowning out everything else. They’re alive. Her parents were not dead. She felt like there were ants under her skin, so strong was the urge to be off, to find them, to tell them—

  “Are you listening, young lady?” Pale Face’s voice was like a needle jabbed into Emmeline’s brain, and she nodded, her eyes squeezed tight. How am I going to get Mum and Dad back? burned across the inside of her mind in red-hot letters.

  “Excellent. Well, since you apparently know so much, maybe you can tell me what your parents have explained to you about the Creature. How to rouse it, perhaps. Methods of extracting its blood, in order to harness its ability to live forever.” Emmeline opened her stinging eyes to see Pale Face gazing at her, a mocking eyebrow raised. “No? Or maybe they’ve discussed the findings of their work looking into ways of controlling it once it’s awoken. Ringing any bells?” None of this meant anything to Emmeline, but somehow, the way Pale Face said the word Creature, she knew it had to take a capital letter. Every muscle in her body tensed as she tried to ask a question that she felt, on the whole, she’d rather not know the answer to.

  “What Creature?” she whispered.

  “What Creature, indeed,” replied Pale Face. “You know, I should just dispatch you now and find another means of bending your parents to my will. I’m sure I need only one of them to get the job done—your mother, I think. She always struck me as the brains of the operation.” He cut a glance toward Emmeline, who was glued into her chair, her eyes steady. “Without her husband she might learn to focus. What do you think, my dear?”

  “My mother would kill you if you hurt my dad,” said Emmeline evenly. “Or me.”

  Pale Face chuckled. “I believe you. So I’d best keep her happy, eh? Bring her back her little girl, and all that sentimental nonsense.”

  “My mother’s not sentimental. Have you actually met her?”

  “That may be,” said Pale Face. “But hearing the cries of a child in distress, particularly one’s own child, is bound to have an effect, wouldn’t you say?” He fixed his gaze on the silently staring Emmeline for several long moments before eventually blinking and looking away. “I should have learned my lesson with the Strachan business. Never work with children, or women,” he muttered, ap
parently to himself. Certainly, the words meant nothing to Emmeline, and she ignored them, clenching her fists in the depths of her blanket instead.

  “Why are you doing this to us? What have my parents ever done to you?”

  Pale Face’s cavernous eyes regarded her coldly, but Emmeline didn’t let her stare drop for a second. “Your parents, with their unparalleled expertise, are the linchpin of OSCAR’s efforts to find, conserve, and protect the beasts that live in the dark crevices of the world,” he finally said, spitting out the words. “Those terrifying, nightmarish, powerful monsters that the rest of the world would like to believe are myths or bedtime stories. It is your parents’ job to keep them hidden from people like me, people who have vision, who crave progress.” He paused, licking his already wet-looking lips. “In fact, no—it is not simply their job. It is their mission. And you ask what they have done to me? They have done plenty.”

  Well, he’s not going to use me for anything, Emmeline told herself. Especially not anything that might hurt Mum and Dad. Let’s see him try.

  Pale Face, as if he’d read her mind, simply smiled.

  “Have you heard a word that anyone has said to you since you set foot in this room?” asked Edgar. He leaned back in his chair and gazed at Thing, whose grease-smeared face shone brightly in the light of Madame Blancheflour’s kitchen.

  “Mmmff?” replied Thing, raising his eyebrows as he chewed. He swallowed hurriedly, then slapped himself on the chest and released a burp so powerful that Sasha felt her eyes water and Madame Blancheflour had to excuse herself momentarily from the table. “What?” he said, wondering why all the adults were staring at him. “Did I do summink wrong?”

  “Before you take another bite, young man,” said Edgar, reaching over to stop Thing’s hand from raising another lump of chicken to his mouth, “perhaps we’d better run through what we know. All right?” Madame Blancheflour settled herself in her chair once more, gazing with pointed eyebrows at Thing; this was disconcerting enough to make him stop eating and sit up straight.

  “So,” continued Edgar. “We know that Emmeline is more than likely being brought north. Judging by Thing’s descriptions of the men who took her, we can safely assume that much.”

  “Alas, we were too slow,” said Madame Blancheflour. Her eyes slid closed, and her head drooped into one elegant hand. “I should have known the instant I did not receive Eloise and Martin’s telegram that their child was in danger. Instead, I waited. It is delayed, I thought. They have forgotten. But they would not forget.”

  “Don’t blame yourself, Madame,” soothed Sasha, placing her arm across the older woman’s shoulders.

  “Wait. What now? What telegram’re we talkin’ about?” Thing fought the urge to pick at a piece of stray chicken caught in his teeth, trying to suck at it inconspicuously instead.

  “You really weren’t listening, were you?” sighed Edgar. “The telegram that Emmeline’s parents sent, every evening without fail, to Madame Blancheflour. It was coded so that she could be certain it was genuine, and it was supposed to let her know that they were safe.”

  “Oh—yeah,” said Thing. “An’ when the telegram didn’t come, the whole emergency backup plan kicked off, yeah? With Emmeline bein’ removed from home and sent packin’ to France?”

  “As you so pithily put it, yes,” said Edgar. “But clearly her captors were somehow monitoring Mr. and Mrs. Widget’s communications with Madame Blancheflour too. They must have seen that the expected telegram never arrived, which meant something had gone wrong and Emmeline was vulnerable. So Sasha and I were alerted.”

  “That worked out well,” said Sasha coldly.

  “So, what do we do now?” asked Thing, looking from Edgar to Sasha and finally to Madame Blancheflour, who—not that he would’ve admitted it to anyone—scared him, just a little. “I mean, sittin’ here jawin’ about it ain’t gettin’ Ems back, is it? Who has the plan?”

  “Well, we think we know where she’s going,” said Sasha carefully. “But really, we’re not sure.”

  “That’s a start, innit? Let’s get on the road before any more time gets wasted, then. Come on!” The adults looked at one another blankly.

  “You can’t just rush into these things, Thing,” said Edgar after a minute. “I understand how you feel, but—”

  “You don’t understand nothin’,” snapped Thing. “I owe her, all right? I owe her. She’s the first person in a long, long time who was nice to me, and that means somethin’. I ain’t leavin’ her to freeze up at the North Pole, or wherever it is she’s gone.”

  “Greenland,” said Sasha quietly, her eyes full of shadows. “Not the North Pole. We think it’s Greenland they’re going to, right into the center of what remains of the ice sheet.”

  “And how d’you know that, then?” He tried to pay close attention, despite something deep in his mind that suddenly sparked into sharp, cruel life. He closed his thoughts against it and focused hard on what was going on in this small kitchen, right now.

  “Because—well, because we’ve finally worked out that’s where the Creature is,” Sasha said, her voice slipping into a whisper. Edgar’s face fell, and Madame Blancheflour muttered something under her breath.

  “What blimmin’ Creature? The Abom’nable Snowman?” Thing tried to laugh, but nobody joined in.

  “No. Something much older than that,” replied Edgar tonelessly. “Something much older, and much more dangerous.”

  Thing’s eyes flicked between the adults for a few seconds, willing one of them to crack a grin, but the kitchen was silent except for the faint ticking of Madame Blancheflour’s clock.

  “Who—who’s taken ’er? I mean—jus’ tell me. Who’s taken Emmeline?” His voice was so quiet that, for a second or two, Thing wondered if he’d spoken at all. Then he glanced up at Sasha and saw her looking back at him sorrowfully, as if she were trying to think of some way to answer him, but her mouth refused to form the words. Thing watched as Sasha glanced over at Edgar, and then as they both gazed at Madame Blancheflour.

  “Dr. Siegfried Bauer is his name,” said Madame Blancheflour after a few long moments. “And he is a lunatic. But he is also, unfortunately, a genius, and even more unfortunately than that, he is extremely wealthy. Rich enough to bribe governments, rich enough to travel where he wants, rich enough to defy us for decades, rich enough to be asked no questions. None of this is enough for him, however. One more thing—the biggest thing, the one he wants most of all—still eludes him. And Emmeline and her parents, les pauvres, are the key to it.”

  “Yeah? And that is?” said Thing, hoping someone would give him a straight answer. Sasha’s eyes were shut, and Madame Blancheflour was clearly unable to say any more.

  “He wants to figure out how to cheat death,” said Edgar eventually. At these words Thing felt his skin prickling all over, like it had been asleep all this time and was only now waking up. “He thinks he has found a way to make himself live forever, in perfect health and in possession of all his intelligence and his strength and his skills, and he wishes to use all this to rule the world. He believes, and he’s probably right, that the Creature in the ice holds the key to this eternal life—that its blood makes a person immortal. That’s not even counting its other powers, which are formidable enough. If he can harness it, he’ll be an unstoppable force. He needs Emmeline’s parents to wake the Creature up.”

  “And he needs Emmeline to make her parents do what he wants,” added Sasha quietly. “All her life they’ve tried to keep her out of their work with OSCAR, make her self-reliant and tough just in case the worst happened, but she has no chance against him. Not really. If Bauer brings her up there, threatening to kill her unless they cooperate, the Widgets’ll have no choice.”

  “Oh,” muttered Thing.

  “Yes. Oh,” sighed Edgar. “The Order of the White Flower was set up a long time ago to thwart people like Dr. Bauer at every turn, as far as it was possible, in conjunction with our allies at OSCAR. We’ve managed to
keep him contained for many years, but this time—”

  “We have not,” Madame Blancheflour interrupted. “We have not managed to keep him contained! We have chased him, fruitlessly, from Antarctica to Siberia, from Alaska to the Northwest Passage, and he has laughed at us with every step. He has caused such damage in his attempts to find the Creature, such trails of destruction, and we have not stopped him. If we had contained him, then he would not be where he is!” Thing saw that the skin around her eyes was wet, and it shone in the gentle light. Her mouth was pursed tight and her whole body quivered, whether with cold or fear or anger, Thing didn’t know. “There has never been enough time or money or people to keep him contained. We have tried. But we—but I—have failed.”

  “Madame, you have not failed,” said Sasha quietly. “We have. We, the people you trained, the people you trusted to take over your work—we are the ones who have let you down.”

  “You, I, the boy—it is all the same,” replied the older woman. “We are all the White Flower, and we will all suffer the same fate if he succeeds.”

  “What—what fate’s that, then?” said Thing.

  “He’ll kill us, of course,” said Edgar. “And he’ll spare no time in doing it.”

  “Dr. Bauer! Sir!”

  Emmeline’s head snapped to face the door as footsteps began to clatter, loudly, outside it and voices started to shout.

  “Idiots!” snarled Pale Face, rising to his feet. “I told you not to use names in front of the prisoner!” He yanked open the door. Crouched outside like so many scolded puppies were three huge sailors, each of them struggling not to be the one closest to the boss.

  “S-s-sorry, sir!” stammered one man, his face a picture of terror. “It’s just, sir, we’re nearly there.”

  “That’s it? That’s what three of you had to barrel down here to tell me?”

  “Sir, it’s not just that, sir,” squeaked another sailor. “It’s just that there’s people on shore, sir, Cap’n, sir, who shouldn’t be there. We aren’t expecting them, is what I mean.”

 

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