Emmeline kept walking, following the tracks of the giant creatures whenever she could, but she knew that it was hopeless. There was no way she could cross the glacier, not alone. It went on for hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles, and there was no food or shelter anywhere. She felt the needling pain of the cold start to burrow its way into her skin, and not even touching her tools—her rope, her fishing line, her spoon, her piece of greased paper, and her dinged metal cup—could make her feel better.
“But I can’t stop now. My parents might be out there,” she said, squeezing her eyes tight. “And they’re mine, and I want them back, and I’ve come all this way already—I can’t give up now, can I? I won’t leave them here.” She opened her eyes again and wiped them dry, then peered out over the ice sheet, wondering if there was a way around it, or if she could build something that could take her over it, or if she should go back to Igimaq’s village and beg for help, even from the council if she had to—and then something caught her eye.
“What on earth…,” she began, before her breath dried up inside her lungs.
Far out on the surface of the glacier, something was moving. In fact, Emmeline realized as she looked more closely, it was several somethings, all of them large and fast and inexplicable. She took a couple of nervous steps and then started to jog, her movements made awkward by her unfamiliar snowshoes.
Eventually she flopped down, belly-first, onto the hard ground, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
“Horses!” she breathed, trembling from head to toe. They spilled up out of the crevasses on the face of the glacier in front of her, their flame-red tails and manes rippling as they moved. Their bodies shone white, and their hooves threw up sparks, like they were running on lightning. Even from Emmeline’s perch several hundred yards away, she could hear their joyful, wild whinnying as they started to canter and then gallop, heading in the same direction as the vanished giants Emmeline had seen falling from the sky. There has to be a reason they’re following, she told herself, her excitement building. There’s something important over there. I have to find out what it is! As she watched, the horses leaped effortlessly over the ice, never missing a step, and a little voice in her head shouted: Go after them!
She hesitated, just for a second, before picking herself up off the ground.
“Sasha! C’mon! Talk to me!” Thing felt his voice snap and shatter inside him, and his words came out all stretched. She put her bloodstained right hand back on the steering wheel.
“Nearly there now,” she gasped, yanking hard. The truck turned, heading straight for the huge metal structure. Thing glanced up at the doorway, and he noticed that the small figure was now scrambling down a ladder to the ground. Please have a first-aid kit, he begged inside his head. Please be a doctor or somethin’! He turned back to Sasha and saw her gritting her teeth before finally bringing the truck to a stop. She cut the engine and slumped in her seat, her skin looking dull, its luster gone. Her hand found her wound again, and she squeezed it tight.
“Go,” she whispered. “You have to go. Get to Pichon and tell him—tell him…” Her voice faded out as her eyes slid closed, and Thing grabbed Sasha’s left hand, lying weakly in her lap. She grimaced as he did so, but her eyes flickered open again.
“Tell ’im what?” said Thing. “Come on! I need you, Sasha. Don’t be doin’ crazy things now, like dyin’ or what have you. D’you hear me?”
As Sasha tried to reply, her eyes rolled back into her head and she fell silent. A grinding screech told Thing that someone—Monsieur Pichon, he hoped—had yanked open the door on Sasha’s side, and a sudden gust of cold wind across his face confirmed it.
“What is going on here?” came a strange and unfamiliar voice. “Parlez-vous français? Spreekt u Vlaams?”
“Stop babblin’ nonsense and see to her!” yelled Thing. Sasha’s head lolled to one side. He squeezed her hand again, as hard as he dared, but she didn’t stir this time.
“Quoi?” muttered Monsieur Pichon, scrambling into the lorry. “Natasha, what have you been up to, hein?” Quickly he checked Sasha’s pulse. “She is still with us,” he said, glancing at Thing with wide eyes. “But, I fear, not for long.”
“Come on, then!” Thing clambered out of the lorry and raced, slipping in the muck, around to the driver’s side. Together, they carried Sasha from the cab. Thing found it hard going, weighed down on one side by Emmeline’s satchel and on the other by Sasha, but he didn’t falter.
Distantly he was aware of crashing noises, loud beeping, and angry voices, but he didn’t look behind him.
High above his head the unseen object attached only by chains rattled and settled in the breeze, straining to be free of its moorings, but he didn’t look up to see it, either.
All Thing could see, and all he cared about, was Sasha’s rapidly graying face.
The red-maned horses were still spilling out of the ice, and Emmeline’s heart was thudding as she ran.
“Come on, come on!” she muttered to herself as her feet went sideways for the hundredth time. The ground was rockier now, and she realized the snowshoes were slowing her down. With a whispered apology to Qila, she unfastened and kicked them off as quickly as she could. She blinked the coldness out of her eyes and frowned as she gazed across the acres that stood between her and where she needed to be.
“No,” she breathed. The flow of horses had slowed, and now only a few stragglers—smaller ones, younger ones maybe—were struggling out of the crevasses. In the distance, way off over the top of the glacier, the others were disappearing, their red tails like flashes of fire. This is your last chance, whispered her brain.
She crossed the rocks in the space of ten heartbeats, and the glacier loomed ever closer, big enough and terrible enough to fill up the whole world. The nearer she got, the better she could hear it groaning and shifting, cracking and booming as it moved, like a huge animal breathing.
A loud whinny made her look back toward the horses, and she realized one of them had lost its footing and was sliding sideways across the glacier. The horses near it were wild-eyed, clattering around their fallen friend for a few moments before tearing off after the rest of their herd. As the trapped horse flailed on the ice, Emmeline felt her already racing heart start to thunder even more loudly.
“Don’t be injured, don’t be injured, don’t be injured,” she chanted under her breath as she ran. Nimbly she hopped from rock to rock, crunching her way through undisturbed snow, her breath slicing its way down into her lungs. She glanced up again and saw the horse still struggling to get to its feet. Another horse, the smallest yet, burst its way out of the ice and galloped off without looking back, and after that there were no more. The last of the disappearing herd was a reddish blur on the horizon.
Emmeline dropped her eyes from the glacier just in time to watch her feet reach the end of the rocky plain. They skidded sickeningly on the ice-logged ground. Her toes poked out over a pitch-black chasm, her heels barely hanging on to the solid surface. Without thinking, she threw herself backward, ignoring the pain as her elbow got bashed on a hidden rock. After a couple of seconds she opened her eyes again and sat forward, just enough to look down—and down.
A dark gap between the earth and the glacier’s edge yawned before her, an unknowable and never-ending drop—and it was a gap she had to cross.
If I fall, she thought, her mind sluggish, they’ll never even know I was here.
“Vite! Quickly, boy!” gasped Monsieur Pichon. Thing heaved the heavy steel door closed, and it sealed with a loud, echoing clang. He’d barely done this when he heard an irritated “Come, come!” and he turned to see Monsieur Pichon, Sasha draped in his arms, standing in a small chamber with a thick glass door, which was open, ready for him. He hurried in, not waiting to be told to close the door behind him, and Monsieur Pichon slapped his hand down on a large button embedded in the metal wall. Thing felt his stomach lurch, very slightly, and the view outside the glass door went black. A few seconds later
they came to a halt with a tiny jerk. The door unsealed with a hss, and next thing, they were clanging down a walkway suspended in midair, right across the heart of a giant, spherical room. Vaguely Thing realized they must be at the top of the tower he’d seen from outside, but his worry about Sasha kept him from nosing about or taking much in besides her barely conscious face. He focused his attention on helping Monsieur Pichon get her to a large platform in the middle of the room, where they laid her down with as much care as they could. They removed her coat, tossing it to one side, and the extent of her wound became clear.
“Ain’t you got a bed? Or a couch, even?” said Thing. “She can’t be left lyin’ here!”
“This is a research station,” muttered Monsieur Pichon. “And underfunded, at that. It was never designed to be a field hospital or a convalescent home.” As he spoke, he got to his feet and crossed the platform to a desk standing in the far corner. Beneath it was a set of drawers, through which he began to rummage. Thing gaped helplessly at Sasha. Her eyes flickered behind her closed lids, and a small frown dimpled her forehead. He willed her to keep breathing.
“It’s not perfect, but this will have to do,” said Monsieur Pichon, lowering himself to his knees. He had a small box in his hand, which he placed on the ground beside Sasha’s head before clicking it open. Thing could see a pair of scissors, a rolled-up bandage, a couple of glass bottles with stoppers in their necks, and several thick pads of cotton wool. As he watched, Monsieur Pichon reached into the box.
“Do you have steady fingers, boy?” he asked, holding out the scissors to Thing. “We need to cut away her clothing, expose the wound. Then, if we can, we must remove the bullet.”
“What d’you mean, do I have steady fingers?” said Thing, his heart pounding. “I can’t do it!”
“So I must do everything, oui?”
“But I—”
“Enough,” Monsieur Pichon interrupted, slapping the scissors into Thing’s hand. “Begin.”
Thing stared down at them, wondering why it felt like the room was slowly spinning.
“Come on,” Emmeline told herself. “You have to move.”
She shuffled away from the chasm. A whinny from the fallen horse made her look to the glacier, her blood jumping. It hadn’t quite found its feet yet, but it wouldn’t be long about it. Once it did, Emmeline knew it would be off after its herd mates, and that would leave her here, trapped and alone, with no way of ever helping her parents, or finding out what was going on at the heart of this glacier.
Not happening.
Emmeline got a foot beneath herself and pushed up and away from the ground. She took a few steps back from the dark hole. Impatiently she rubbed at her eyes with a frosty mitten and blinked a couple of times. The horse was nearly on its feet, a sparkling white blur against the grayer, dirtier white of the glacier. Its bright red mane and tail were like splashes of blood on a handkerchief.
Emmeline stopped thinking and, with light and sure feet, started to run as fast as she could on the slippery earth.
Just before she reached the lip of the chasm, she leaped, high and hard, her eyes and every inch of her body focused on the glacier, and on landing safely, and on getting home.
She flew through the air so fast that she didn’t even have time to cry out.
Thing was sure his fingers were made of lead as, gently, carefully, he eased the blade of the scissors into the fabric of Sasha’s dress. He tried hard not to listen to his thoughts, which were, just then, screaming things like Careful! You’re goin’ to cut her!
“Quiet,” he growled through clenched teeth.
“Pardon?” asked Monsieur Pichon.
“Can’t talk jus’ at the minute,” muttered Thing. “Busy.”
“Pay attention, boy. We must hurry!” Thing stared at Monsieur Pichon, the scissors quivering between his fingers.
“If you’d like to take over, I’ll be more’n happy to step aside,” he said in a quiet voice. Monsieur Pichon just sat back, frowning, and studied Sasha. She lay completely still, and her breathing was slow and regular. Monsieur Pichon had knocked her out with a few drops of sweet-smelling liquid from one of his stoppered bottles, and she seemed peaceful. Her blood had soaked through the fabric of her dress, and it was darker and more frightening than Thing had imagined anything could be.
As quickly as he could, he kept cutting.
“Bon,” said Monsieur Pichon as Sasha’s wound grew clearer. “Now some pressure.” He knocked the scissors, and Thing’s hand, aside as he began to pack the wound with cotton, which soon grew red. “Can you sew?” he asked.
“Do I look like a seamstress to you?”
“Your attitude is not helping, young man,” said Monsieur Pichon without looking up.
Thing stared at the top of Monsieur Pichon’s head and felt his chest tighten. “This is wrong! Everythin’s goin’ wrong!” He threw the scissors to the ground, where they landed with a bang. “It’s my fault, all of it! I got Emmeline kidnapped, and now I’ve got Sasha shot, an’ it’s all wrong.” He scrunched his eyes shut, and his nose started to run. In his ears a faint voice chuckled. Typical, it whispered, before Thing quenched it out.
“Emm-Emmeline?” said Monsieur Pichon, his tiny, frightened voice making Thing look back at him again. “Kidnapped? By whom?”
“Some bloke. Bauer or somethin’,” replied Thing, sniffling. “Sasha was comin’ to you—well, and Edgar, too, ’cept he stayed behind to help Madame Blancheflour fight the mercen’ries. Sasha said you could tell us what to do to get ’er back. Emmeline, I mean. She said you had a plan. To get to Greenland.” As Thing spoke, Monsieur Pichon’s eyes grew round.
“You really should have told me this before,” he said after a few seconds.
“I was sorta distracted, y’know?” said Thing, wiping his nose on his sleeve and nodding down at Sasha’s sleeping form.
“Even so. If I had known—”
The words were interrupted by a large boom from outside. Thing’s eyes met Monsieur Pichon’s, and all he could see was his own terror reflected back at him.
Emmeline hit the glacier so hard that the breath was knocked right out of her lungs. She scraped across its surface, the ice scratching and biting at any exposed skin it could find. She rolled and slithered, slid and skidded, until gradually—and painfully—she came to a halt. She pushed herself over onto her back and, as quickly as she could, opened her eyes.
“Hello there,” she said. Her voice sounded like a feather floating to earth.
“Fmmffff,” replied the horse. It stood over her, gazing down with a curious expression in its huge, dark eyes. Up close Emmeline could see just how luminous its white coat was, and how vivid its tail and mane. It glowed like a pearl. Besides that, she had no idea what she was looking at. She’d never been a horsey type and had never regretted it—until now.
“You’re a beautiful boy, aren’t you?” she breathed, raising one hand to stroke the horse’s nose, hoping she was being gentle enough. With the other she felt around inside her pocket until she was sure she had a good grip on her rope.
“Steady, little horse,” she murmured, keeping a soothing hand on the animal’s face as she slowly got to her feet. The horse, looking entirely calm and confident, was standing on the ice as easily as another, less extraordinary horse might lounge about in a meadow. “That’s it. Good boy!” She ran her hand down the side of the horse’s neck, and it started to prance about, throwing its gaze toward the horizon.
“Yes, yes—I know. You want to be off after your friends. That’s fine. You just need to bring me with you. All right?” The horse tossed its head and gave a sort of scream, baring its teeth a little, and Emmeline took a step back. Her rope hung from her mittened fist.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, reaching out her hand to the horse again. It nudged her with its nose, as if it understood. Emmeline slipped the rope around the horse’s neck, and—hoping the rope wasn’t digging in—she used it to pull herself up and over.
This took a while, and Emmeline was sure it didn’t look at all dignified. The horse, to its credit, stayed quite still and just let her get on with it.
“This is—wow. This is so high up,” she said once she was settled. The ice beneath the horse’s hooves looked like it was miles away, and she tried to ignore the thought of how much it would hurt to fall off.
She didn’t have a chance to think another thing because, without warning, the horse reared. Emmeline grabbed her makeshift reins, and it took off over the ice like a flaming cannonball, its hooves barely touching the ground as it went.
Emmeline clung on, her eyes squeezed shut. She tried to imagine she was safely at home in bed, Watt outside her door with a steaming bowl of porridge heaped high with honey and cinnamon and raisins. However, she soon found that the burning cold air and the bouncing rhythm of the speeding horse made it impossible to imagine she was anywhere else.
Mile after mile of glacier spooled out behind them, crevasses crossed in single leaping bounds, and on they ran.
“We must get her away from here!” rasped Monsieur Pichon. “Quickly, boy. The cotton!” Thing leaned across Sasha and did as he’d seen Monsieur Pichon do, terrified that he was making things worse—but she didn’t stir. With shaking, hurried fingers Monsieur Pichon fetched the bandage from his first-aid box and began to wrap it around her torso. Thing did his best to help, and somehow Monsieur Pichon managed to tie off the flimsy-seeming gauze. Just as he did so, another booom split the air. He struggled to his feet, looking exhausted. “They will be upon us soon. We must get to the ship,” he told Thing.
“What are they doin’?” Thing rolled to his feet and leaned against a nearby handrail. He stared toward the door but couldn’t see any movement.
“Trying to break into my workshop,” said Monsieur Pichon sadly. “I knew the day would come eventually.”
The Eye of the North Page 14