The Eye of the North

by Sinead O'Hart

  “Your parents are human too, hmm?”

  “Well, of c-course!”

  “Human like the white-faced man?” Suddenly the cavern seemed a lot more crowded than before.

  Emmeline flailed for words. “I—no, he kidnapped me. He took my parents. He’s not—”

  “Silence!” said the creature. “This is not a matter for one so lowly as me. We are summoned to an audience—kobolds, Icewalkers, Æsirsmounts, all who dwell in or on the ice. Let the god-horse explain why it has seen fit to bring you here.”

  “God-horse?” echoed Emmeline. Quickly she unraveled her fingers from her horse’s mane, wondering if she should slide off its back in case it was impolite to ride it like it was just any old horse, even though it hadn’t seemed to mind up to now. “What’s that?”

  The creature stared. “You ask me to explain Æsirsmount, as though their fame and repute were not sung throughout the world?”

  “Is it? I’ve never heard of them,” said Emmeline. The creature blinked at her, incredulous. “Sorry,” she added.

  “The god-horses? Sons of the sons of the steeds who bore the old deities into battle and carried our greatest heroes unto death?” The creature paused, considering. “And unto other places besides death?”

  Emmeline’s face remained blank, and the creature’s shoulders slumped a little. “Bred to pass between Above and Below with ease? To fly across the face of the ice faster than even the wind itself? Sworn to serve and protect the frozen lands with their very lives? The guardians of the glacier?” It looked pained. “No?”

  “That bit sounds a bit more familiar, all right,” said Emmeline, remembering the journey she’d taken to get here.

  It sighed. “Dismount and follow me.” It turned away, gesturing to the hordes of creatures all around. As one, they began to move.

  “No—wait! Please!” Emmeline called, but her only answer was an impatient gesture from the creature and a soft whinny from the horse.

  Wondering what “audience” the creature had been talking about, she swung her aching leg over the horse’s back and slid, more heavily than she intended, to the ground. Her knees cracked. Step by creaking step, Emmeline followed the tiny figure deeper into the heart of the cavern, surrounded in every direction by things too inexplicable to look at. She kept her hand on the horse’s warm flank, and—god-horse or not—it never left her side.

  “Well, well, well,” whispered Thing. “What ’ave we ’ere?”

  The doors closed behind him, and he was standing in the exact center of a large room paneled in highly polished wood. The walls to either side were covered in floor-to-ceiling shelves stuffed with books, papers, and rolled-up scrolls. A chart was pinned to a stand in one corner. Three leather chairs stood on a raised dais directly in front of Thing, and they looked out through a window as long as two train carriages and easily as tall as a house. This window followed the curved sweep of the room and would have given a panoramic view to whoever sat in the seats—but at the moment it was entirely dark. In front of the window, facing the chairs, was a huge control desk filled with buttons and levers and switches and lights.

  “Yeah,” muttered Thing. “Anythin’ else would’ve been too easy, o’course.” He hurried to the chairs and settled himself into the one in the center, flinging Emmeline’s satchel into the seat beside him. On the nearest control panel dials and gauges labeled with things he couldn’t read met his gaze. Buttons with arrows on them, pointing every which way, sprouted from it. Controllin’ direction? Thing asked himself, shrugging.

  In the middle of the panel he saw a button with a lightning bolt on it and, beneath that, a button embossed with a soft-cornered rectangle. A rectangle that, come to think of it, looked a lot like the window in front of him.

  Biting his lip, Thing pushed it and flung himself back in the chair as if the control panel had given him an electric shock.

  Before his eyes a bright white line formed down the center of the window and widened as the shield that had been covering it slowly opened. Thing held his breath as he sat forward a little and peered curiously out. At first all he could see was the swirling gray mist of the clouds, and then his heart skipped a beat.

  Over to his left a huge black aircraft appeared out of the clouds and hovered, its sleek lines the same as those of the vehicles that had pursued them here. It had four flat propellers and a round body with a tail sticking out the back. Thing squinted as he tried to see it clearly, but it was smooth and featureless, its windows dark, giving nothing away.

  The next thing he knew, bright yellow flashes erupted from the front of the hovering black aircraft, and a soft pattering sounded as white splashes, like tiny explosions, began to bloom all over the window before him.

  He gaped, confused, for a few seconds, and then it all became clear: this black aircraft, whoever was manning it, was firing at the Cloud Catcher.

  Push the lightnin’ button! screamed his brain, and without another thought Thing smacked it with his clenched fist. An almighty roar sounded from somewhere deep inside the ship, and a surge of power like nothing he had ever felt rocked the craft on its moorings, shaking it slowly from side to side. From all around he heard groaning and creaking and snapping noises, none of which sounded good.

  Then, with a noise like a herd of elephants all trumpeting at once, the right-hand side of the Cloud Catcher started, quite suddenly, to rise. Thing lost his balance as the control cabin tipped alarmingly upward, flinging him—along with a rumbling tide of books and knickknacks—to the floor. He skidded along the highly polished surface, finally stopping his slide by bracing his feet against the base of the leftmost chair. Scrabbling to keep his grip, he used the chair like a ladder, climbing back into the center seat.

  “Chains’re still attached!” he muttered, quickly searching the control panel for anything that looked like it could release them. Sparks flashed outside the window as a fresh barrage of bullets hit the ship. At last Thing’s eyes fell on a button that didn’t look like too much of a risk, and he felt his pulse flicker as he pressed it.

  The chains on the left-hand side released, and the ship righted itself so suddenly that Thing was flung across the room again, skidding along the floor and bashing, headfirst, into the wall.

  Emmeline followed the wrinkled creature’s rolling gait down a tall, roughly carved tunnel. The ground was slick underfoot, but she seemed to be the only one having difficulty keeping her balance.

  “Will you please tell me where we’re going?” she asked.

  “None of your concern,” replied the creature without even bothering to turn around.

  “It is, actually,” Emmeline muttered before she could stop herself. The creature whirled on its heel and stared at her like she was something it’d found lodged in the drain.

  Emmeline’s horse let out a loud whinny, and it lifted its front leg. When it brought its hoof down again, the crash it made echoed around the icy passageway. The creature watched as the horse shook its mane, which started to glow just like flames licking their way up its proud, strong neck.

  “We are—ah. We are approaching the halls of the Northwitch,” the creature muttered, keeping its eyes fixed on Emmeline’s horse. “She has summoned us to her presence, and your arrival here, at this time—well. That is a matter for her.”

  “Wait—who’s the Northwitch?” Maybe she can help! thought Emmeline. If she’s summoning people here and there, maybe she’s in charge?

  “You will see,” the creature said before turning back around. Emmeline wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw a peculiar trembling in its step, and a doubt crept into her heart.

  They walked on without speaking, the only noise the booming and cracking of the ice all around. Beside Emmeline the horse was warm and reassuring.

  Then the corridor opened up into a chamber, the ceiling of which stretched away and was lost in the deep darkness overhead, and the floor was vast and covered with a fine, delicate layer of freshly fallen snow. Their feet whished and whi
spered as they walked, and their breath hung in the air like tiny clouds.

  Their guide stopped walking and dropped to its knees in the snow. It turned to face Emmeline, its face an impatient, red-glowing mask.

  “How dare you! No one stands in the presence of the Northwitch!” it said. “Kneel!” Emmeline’s mouth fell open as she glanced around the empty-seeming cavern.

  A frigid wind began to slice through the chamber, and the creature flung itself headlong onto the snowy floor, trembling from head to foot. As Emmeline watched, the air began to thicken and solidify, becoming a tall, thin column that swirled gently.

  The whirling air started to crystallize, forming itself into shards as clear as diamonds. Before Emmeline’s eyes they arranged themselves into an angular, refracted face with a long nose and eyes set so deep, and so darkly blue, that they seemed black; then came a slender neck and a narrow body and legs as thin as ribbons. From all sides more and more ice particles flew, organizing themselves into crystals of every imaginable shape and size, slotting themselves together like a giant puzzle, until finally a tall, cruelly beautiful woman stood before her.

  She was made entirely of ice.

  She was the Northwitch, and she was staring right at Emmeline.

  “Ow,” moaned Thing. He opened his eyes, but all he could see was blackness in every direction, and his head was splitting with the worst ache he’d ever had. It throbbed behind his eyes as he noticed that the ground beneath him seemed to be vibrating.

  “This ain’t happenin’,” he muttered. “I’ve been asleep for the past four days, and this has all been a dream, every last rotten minute of it.” Thing waited for several heart-thumping seconds, but nothing changed.

  “Argh!” he finally yelled, sitting up. As he moved, he felt something slither off his face and hit his knees with a thump a second later. He blinked and looked down at his lap, where a large, brown-bound object gazed sheepishly up at him.

  “Not the first time a book’s got the better o’ me,” he said, laughter bubbling up inside him. He picked the book up and kissed it before chucking it on the floor, where it lay, along with most of its shelf mates, in a huddled heap.

  Thing glanced up at the window and saw that it was very dark—the sort of dark you get on nights when there’s no moon. A few far-off sparkles made him think of stars.

  “Couldn’t be,” he murmured, confused. “It was broad daylight a few minutes ago….” Slowly—because his head was still spinning—he pushed himself up off the floor, realizing as he did so that it seemed to be at an angle. Walking to the control desk was almost like walking uphill with a heavy weight tied around his waist, and Thing was breathless by the time he reached the chairs. He had barely settled into the middle one when something grabbed his attention.

  A strange rattling, like the sound of hailstones battering a metal roof, filled his ears—and it was getting louder, and louder, and louder. He searched the control panel, but nothing made sense to him. The dials had lit up, he noticed, and in the largest one a thick red line, near the bottom of the screen, was dropping rapidly and tilting quite badly to the right. He didn’t know what it meant. The screens were bright but full of nothing.

  The rattling got so loud that it drowned out his thoughts. Finally his eyes went to the window.

  “No!” he gasped, his mouth falling open. The entire pane was shaking in its frame, and small cracks were creeping out from the bullet holes like questing fingers, seeking one another out.

  He raked his eyes over the control panel, searching for anything that looked like a stop button or a down button, because—as he was beginning to realize—it was dark outside, and it was growing harder to breathe, and the window was shaking itself to pieces because—

  “We’re too high,” he said, battling for air. “Too high!” Gasping, he started bashing at buttons, but nothing seemed to work.

  Then one of the instruments on the panel started beeping, which pierced through Thing’s skull like red-hot pincers. The red line on the screen had pretty much disappeared, and a warning light beside it was flashing on and off.

  “I know, I know!” he growled. The ship’s vibration was so bad that Thing’s teeth started to clatter, and he found it hard to move.

  Just when he was on the point of blacking out, he saw something he hadn’t noticed before. Right above the main screen, and covered with a clear plastic box, was a plain black switch. Beneath the switch, barely visible, was the symbol of a lightning bolt with a line through it.

  With every muscle screaming, Thing raised himself on tiptoe, flipped up the box, and smashed his fingers down on the switch.

  A split second later he smacked hard against the ceiling.

  “Well, now. And who have we here?” The voice was light, like wind sighing through the branches of a snow-laden forest, and the words tinkled at the edges. Emmeline couldn’t answer. She just stood gaping at the woman, too stunned to move, and watched as the Northwitch blinked with her ice eyelids. Why does she bother? It’s not like she can’t see through them, Emmeline thought, and fought hard not to shiver. The witch wore armor, of a sort, that was jointed at the elbows, shoulders, and knees, and carved with an intricate pattern across the chest. Both woman and armor seemed part of the same organism somehow, and the light bouncing off her multifaceted face and body was mesmerizing.

  After a few moments of silence the Northwitch moved slightly, coming to stand a little closer to Emmeline. The ice crystals that made up her body clinked very softly as they slid and slithered over one another, and they were never still, not even for a second—they were constantly moving, over and under and around, melting and reforming, shifting with as little effort as a human would use to move their muscles. The Northwitch smiled, putting her diamond-bright head to one side as she gazed at Emmeline, which made Emmeline feel, suddenly, as though she were walking along the edge of a very high cliff, with a hungry drop right beside her. Despite this, she couldn’t tear her eyes away, and her brain kept trying to figure out what she was seeing, doing its best to find some sort of taxonomic or scientific classification for this new creature.

  Without warning, the Northwitch took two rapid steps in Emmeline’s direction, clicking and tinkling and scraping as she went. A flourish of icy air surrounded her like a miniature whirlwind, and when it settled, she had changed, transformed somehow into the shape of a small child, a little ice boy with a crystal-clear scarf and hat. He wore old-fashioned clothing and had a dimpled smile, but his eyes were the hollow blue of the Northwitch’s, as dark as the deep sea. He was standing so close to Emmeline that they were practically nose to nose.

  Stifling a small yelp, Emmeline staggered backward, smacking straight into her horse.

  “I am not accustomed to those who do not kneel before me,” said the Northwitch in a voice that sounded like a thousand whispering echoes, made even more terrifying by the fact that it was coming from a small boy’s mouth. Even as Emmeline tried to work out what had just happened, the Northwitch’s voice sucked at her like it wanted to strip Emmeline of all warmth and turn her into a solid thing, cold and dead.

  “I—I’m sorry—” Emmeline began. The Northwitch held up one small finger and placed it on Emmeline’s lips.

  “I am also unaccustomed to being studied as though I were a curiosity,” the Northwitch continued. The place where her finger was touching Emmeline’s skin felt like it was burning, and a terrible, inescapable, horrifying cold flowed from the Northwitch’s body like water. Emmeline felt it start to bite her ankles, and then her legs, and then her knees, where it stayed long enough to freeze them solid.

  The ice boy who was the Northwitch smiled, shining dimples deepening.

  Emmeline tried to speak but found her mouth was frozen shut, and her tongue was frozen solid, and her heart was like a bird trapped in a tiny crystal cage.

  Thing’s entire world was beeping, and lights were flashing from every corner of the control panel. The ship was falling far too fast. This wasn’t helped by
the fact that the chains were still dragging it down on the right side. Thing couldn’t think of anything to do about that, so he shoved it into a corner of his brain. The screens were all lit now, and the largest one—the one with the thick red line, which Thing had worked out was supposed to be the horizon—was more or less stable. The others showed wavy lines, like coastlines on a map, and Thing felt pretty sure they were monitoring his position.

  If only he knew where he was supposed to be going.

  Wincing in sudden pain, he raised his hand to the bump on his skull caused by his tumble a few moments before. It didn’t seem to be bleeding, but it hurt just enough to be a distraction.

  “Gotta get ’er to stop fallin’,” he muttered. He’d already pressed the lightning bolt button again, which had given the ship some upward momentum and slowed its descent for a while, but Thing knew he wasn’t going to get very far if all he could do with the Cloud Catcher was to bounce it up and down through the atmosphere.

  “There has to be a way to get her to turn,” he said. His eyes fell on the buttons marked with directional arrows he’d seen before. Left an’ right, he thought, his brain finally starting to tick over.

  “Nothin’ for it,” he said as he scrambled across to the desk and hit the button marked with an arrow that faced slightly up and to the left. The second it was pressed, the ship jolted back and to the right. Thing yelped and pulled his hand off the button. The movement stopped, and the ship kept falling.

  His fingers trembling, Thing slid his hand to the button beneath the one he’d just pressed, which was marked with an arrow pointing slightly down and to the left—but this time he braced himself. “Here goes nothin’,” he said, taking a deep breath as he jabbed at it. The ship juddered forward and shot to the right, just as Thing had expected.

  “Fantastic,” he muttered, his heart quickening. He glanced at the other side of the control desk, which was too far out of his reach. “But you can’t get nowhere, always goin’ in the same direction.”