Thing looked around the room, now topsy-turvy with things on every conceivable surface, and searched for something he could use to help him navigate.
Finally his gaze fell on Emmeline’s satchel, which lay like a beached whale on top of a pile of books, one of its buckles hopelessly dented and a large rip in its side seam.
“Jus’ the ticket,” he said with a grin.
“I require your name,” breathed the ice boy. Emmeline simply stared into the sparkling face in front of her, trying to keep her logic train on its tracks. After a few seconds of silence, Emmeline saw the witch’s upper lip curling—and she heard it too, a gentle rustling of ice particles as they resettled themselves. Her teeth, like shards of sharp diamond, drew Emmeline’s gaze.
“Wh-what for?” Emmeline squished her sweating hands up into balls inside her furry pockets.
“What for? What for, indeed.” The ice boy’s soft, amused voice managed to sound like a bitter wind, the kind that strips leaves from trees. “Why, I simply want it, my girl, because it is my right to have it.” Emmeline took a deep breath, feeling it claw into her lungs, and something popped into her mind like a sudden ray of sunshine.
“I’m—I mean, my name. It’s Drusilla,” said Emmeline, remembering a hideous porcelain doll her mother had forced her to own for a time when she was younger. Drusilla had been its name, and Emmeline had always thought it an entirely perfect match for the ugly thing.
“Drusilla what?” said the ice boy. “I’m given to understanding that your people bear two names. Terribly cumbersome, if you ask me.”
Emmeline licked her dry, cold lips. “Nectarine,” she said, spitting out the first word that came to her. Somehow the thought of a bright fruit was a comfort in this dark place. Beside Emmeline, the horse snickered, and Emmeline turned her head just enough to see it. There was a light in its eyes.
“How…unique,” snarled the ice boy. “And do you come from a long and illustrious line of Nectarines, pray tell?”
“I—um…” As she tried to think, Emmeline felt a sharp pain in her chest, so sudden and throbbing it stole her breath. She coughed, and the pain grew worse.
“Never mind,” snapped the ice boy. He turned on his heel and walked away from Emmeline, and as he did so, the whirling wind of ice enveloped him once more. When it cleared, the Northwitch was standing before the assembled crowd as a fully grown woman again. All trace of the small, scarf-wearing boy was gone. Now the Northwitch was dressed in a high-necked gown, its fabulous skirt flowing out around her like the petals of a flower. With a jerk Emmeline noticed a bright red tinge lingering on the hem of the Northwitch’s dress—a red so bright it could only be blood. Her blood? Her heart thumped slowly, like it was confused and unsure of what to do.
Then she took a deep breath. The pain in her chest lessened, leaving a small, throbbing sensation behind, like a bruise. She placed one mittened hand over the sore spot, but it did no good.
“Kobold!” snapped the Northwitch in a voice like a shower of spiky, icy rain. “On your feet.” Like a rat scrabbling through a sewer, the wrinkled creature on the floor flailed for a moment, eventually managing to stand. Brushing the snow off its clothes, it trembled before the Northwitch.
“My lady,” it whispered.
“You have done well, bringing me this human child,” she said, her neck clinking faintly as she leaned her head to one side.
“Th-thank you—”
“But you did not think to question her?” The Northwitch’s words were like an avalanche just before it falls.
“Not—well, my lady, I felt—that is, we felt it would be best to leave that up to you.” Emmeline saw its fingers flickering as it spoke, like it was trying to restore circulation to them. “In your immense wisdom, of course—”
“Peace, creature,” said the Northwitch, her voice deep and dark, echoing around the cavern. Showers of ice, the slivers smaller than dust motes, started to hiss down from the ceiling. A thrumming quiver filled the air as the columns holding up the roof began to vibrate. In a whirl of frozen wind, the Northwitch vanished, then rematerialized in front of the quaking kobold. “I will deal with you later,” she told it.
“Th-th-thank you—” it began, but the Northwitch reached out her sparkling arm and grasped it around the neck. The kobold’s words faded into splutters as it struggled to breathe.
“Save your thanks for one who cares to hear them,” she growled. Flinging the gasping kobold from her, the Northwitch straightened up.
“Icewalkers,” she called. “Bring this human child to the dungeon.”
“Dungeon? Just a minute!” called Emmeline, but her voice was lost amid the clamor in the cavern. She twined her fingers into the horse’s mane once again as the giant silver-gray creatures, the ones she’d seen sliding out of the sky, stood to their full height. Their upper limbs disappeared into the gloom of the cavern’s high ceiling. Beside her, the horse whinnied loudly, kicking up its hind legs in protest, but the Icewalkers ignored it.
Before she could do anything, Emmeline had been picked up—not ungently, but in a way that made it clear that fighting would be pointless—by a hand with soft fingers longer than her entire body. The Icewalker tucked Emmeline into the crook of its elbow before setting off, its balance seemingly unaffected by its wriggling burden.
Within seconds they were gone.
“Nice one.” Thing grinned, his breath coming in gasps. “Nice one, Ems! I knew that ol’ satchel o’ yours would come to good.” He smacked his hand on the forward propulsion button on the control panel’s left-hand side and used the object he’d found in Emmeline’s satchel to whack the corresponding button on its right-hand side. The object was a long, wooden, brass-bound thing that shone beautifully in the light of the Cloud Catcher’s control room, and that looked quite at home with the fittings and the topsy-turvy books. It was also serving Thing very well as an arm extender at the moment, although that was far from what it had been designed for.
“Now all’s I need is an enemy ship, an’ I can stand on the deck and peer out at ’em. When I’m not bashin’ buttons, that is,” he said, raising the telescope (for that, of course, is what he’d found) to his eye. All he could see were wisps of distant clouds and the bright blue of a jewel-like sky, so he snapped the telescope shut and tucked it into his pocket with a satisfied tap.
For now, the ship was holding steady.
Almost twenty miles away, and far out of the reach of Thing’s telescope, the large black aircraft—the one that had, a short while ago, opened fire on the Cloud Catcher before Thing had managed to shoot it halfway to the moon—was zooming through the bright, clear sky. Its pilot, the dark-skinned woman, smiled as she watched a small red dot bobbing on her screen, a small red dot that she’d been tracking as it shot up into the stratosphere and then fell back down again. When it had reappeared, buttons had been pressed and switches had been flicked, and within a couple of seconds the black aircraft’s trajectory had been trained to intercept.
The commandeered Cloud Catcher, its pilot oblivious to the danger it was now in, lurched on, complete with the unknown, unseen enemy Thing had so carelessly wished for.
As Emmeline looked around her tiny, shimmering prison, barely bigger than Mrs. Mitchell’s scullery back at Widget Manor, she found herself in a dream. A freshly baked scone, dripping with jam and butter, was being plonked in front of her, along with a cup of tea large enough to dunk her entire head into; she heard a merry tune being whistled by the floury-armed cook as she bustled about her work.
A droplet of cold meltwater splashed off the end of Emmeline’s nose, and her eyes popped open. There was no more Mrs. Mitchell and no more scone. The tea vanished like a puff of steam.
Sighing, Emmeline slid across the floor to a low bed, carved out of the ice along one wall, and huddled on it. Some ratty-looking furs had been left out for her, but she shoved them away in disgust and wrapped herself up in her coat instead. Despite its rich thickness, she still wasn’t properly
warm—there was a hollow, sad, and echoing space right at the core of her, where it felt like something important had been taken away. She rubbed at the sore spot just above her heart again, absentmindedly, and looked around. Her cell was completely bare. There was no food, no real furniture, nothing to read, and every single thing was made of ice. Not pretty or delicate or light-filled ice either, but thick and ancient and hard as iron. She might as well have been locked in a concrete box.
So she tucked herself up tighter and did an inventory of the things at her disposal.
“One length of fishing line,” she whispered. “One length of rope. One piece of greased paper. One tin cup. One silver spoon. One thick coat. And this.” She opened her hand to reveal a strange clump of shimmering strands that she’d managed to pull from the pelt of the Icewalker—Widgetosaurus, she corrected herself sternly—who’d brought her here. It glowed like a tiny torch.
She had only just tucked the clump of Icewalker fur into the pocket of her coat when a wind started to howl through the bars of her cell door, picking up speed as it came, spitefully hurling pieces of ice at her exposed skin. She buried her face in her collar and tried to tuck herself up into a knot, but the wind kept coming, stronger and stronger. Just as she was sure she couldn’t take any more, the wind whirled one last time and was still, settling into the tall, solid shape of the Northwitch. She stood before Emmeline like a nightmare made of starlight, faintly tinkling as she moved.
“So, Miss Nectarine.” The Northwitch smiled, and it looked like someone pulling out a knife. “Now that you and I have a chance to be alone, you can tell me what you’re doing here.”
“What does it matter to you why I’m here?” Emmeline asked, trusting her voice to remain steady. The Northwitch’s slushy eyes widened.
“What does it matter?” she asked. “You’re in my territory, child—in my country. On my glacier. I want to know why you’re here, and if you don’t feel like behaving—well, I hope you like starvation, because that’s what will be in store for you. I don’t eat, myself. No need. It’s so easy to forget that others do.” The Northwitch paused, glaring down at Emmeline with those frighteningly endless eyes. Almost like it was waiting for its cue, Emmeline’s stomach gurgled, and the Northwitch smirked. Do not trust her, whispered a little voice in the back of Emmeline’s mind. As if I would! she whispered back.
“I’m just lost,” Emmeline said out loud. “That’s all. The horse found me and he brought me here.” Thanks a lot, horse, she muttered inside her head. So much for my plan to find the Kraken.
“Do you take me for a fool, little girl?” asked the Northwitch, tapping her chin with one long finger. The chink-chink-chink of it made Emmeline’s teeth hurt. “Do you expect me to believe you simply wandered away from the warm, wet world”—she shuddered at these words with a noise like a crystal chandelier being shaken—“and walked here?” Emmeline kept quiet, and kept watch.
“Nothing happens on my ice without my knowledge,” the Northwitch continued. “I know, for instance, that your arrival coincided with the return of the man I have been monitoring. I felt your footsteps across my surface, small as they were. I also know you mounted the god-horse, and it allowed you to. Yes, you’re an interesting creature.” Pausing in her chin tapping, the Northwitch bent at the waist—causing some rapid clashing and crushing of her icy body—and stared at Emmeline as if she were a stain on a carpet. “Aren’t you afraid of me, little human girl?” Her voice made Emmeline think of wolves howling in the distance. Biting winds and long, dark skies. Absolute loneliness. Being lost and nobody knowing. She took a deep breath.
“No,” she lied.
“Remarkable.”
“When are you letting me out of here? You can’t keep me here forever.”
“Oh, can’t I?” The Northwitch smiled. “And why is that?”
“Because I have parents,” said Emmeline, raising her eyebrows. “Who are expecting me, and they’ll come looking.”
“They might, at that,” said the Northwitch, straightening up once more. The ice groaned and complained as it clicked into place. “No matter how hard they look, however, they will not find you here.”
Emmeline felt a painful tightening in her throat. “This isn’t fair! I haven’t done anything to you,” she said.
“You haven’t done anything to me—yet,” said the Northwitch. “But you will.”
“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Emmeline’s heart pattered as she tried to think. Do I have enough fishing line to tie her up? Would she just be able to slide her way around it? If only I had something to make a fire!
“You’re here because of the Kraken, are you not?” said the Northwitch, her entire body flashing golden, like she’d been caught in a sudden sunbeam. “Well, little human girl, that makes you valuable to me.”
Emmeline held her breath and stared into the Northwitch’s frozen face, trying hard not to move a single muscle.
Thing didn’t like thinking overmuch. However, there were times when it became not only necessary, but unavoidable.
“Come on, come on, come on,” he muttered. “Turn on yer brain!” He remembered arriving at Madame Blancheflour’s house, and he remembered the chicken—oh, boy, did he remember the roast chicken—and he remembered talking to the others about Ems, and what was going to happen to her.
But what he couldn’t remember was where Sasha had told him Emmeline was being taken. Go north! Monsieur Pichon had said. But where?
“The North Pole?” he whispered as the name of every place he’d ever heard of started to click through his mind. “Was it the North Pole? Come on, you plank!” But something inside him didn’t seem convinced.
Then there was movement in the corner of his eye. He spun on the spot, his fists held up in a fighting stance—but all he saw was a large wooden globe, broken away from its handsomely carved stand, rolling across the floor. He let his breath out and hurried over to it, dropping his fists as he went. It was beautiful, he saw, covered in drawings of countries that no longer existed and depicting an entirely different landscape from any that Thing had ever seen. The world before the water started risin’, he thought. He ran his hands over the smooth, carefully worked surface, watching the light shimmer on the gold lettering, examining the delicately colored seas, the greenish brown of the land, and the pure white of the ice fields.
The ice fields…
Thing’s eye fell on a large, vaguely triangular country that, on this old globe, appeared to be mainly ice with a little bit of land around the edges. Across it a beautifully drawn word was written. Thing had never had much use for reading beyond a few essential words, like shillings, pounds, police, and prison, but something about this globe, this delicately painted word, grabbed his attention. This white island near the top of the world drew his eye and wouldn’t let go.
Then something wriggled into his brain like a worm, the memory of a scratchy old voice that haunted the corners of his mind, always waiting for its chance to break through. It had found a crack now, and like water hissing through a broken dam, it began to fill him up and overwhelm him.
…Get the face paint now, this minute! It’s the green stuff. Can’t you read? G-r-e-e-n!
Thing’s nostrils filled with the greasy smell of the paint, the heat of the big tent, the stink of the animals, and his body thrilled with the feeling of the high wire….His fingers shook as he gripped the old wooden globe.
Face paint…g-r-e-e-n—that word—it was on this globe. He blinked as he looked at it, but there was no doubt.
And finally, he remembered.
“What?” Emmeline’s pulse throbbed in her ears. “What about the Kraken?”
“I am powerful, my girl,” the Northwitch replied. “Powerful beyond your imagining, I have no doubt.” Emmeline, who had a wide-ranging and well-fed imagination, didn’t bother to correct her. “But the Kraken? It is an ancient thing, old as the ice itself, and powerful even beyond my own imagining. What I could do with power
like that!” The Northwitch paused, her hands clenching into sparkling fists. “But it has long been out of my reach. I have tried, believe me, to wake it, but it lies buried deep in the glacier’s heart, where none may go—or so it seemed.” Her eyes grew darker blue, narrowing as she stared Emmeline down. “Until a human came, with machines and men, and began to succeed where I had failed…” She paused, a look of angry disgust tinkling over her face. “A human will not take my place!”
Emmeline threw her hands up as another whirling, bitter wind began to rip around her cell, taking her breath with it. Every drop of moisture in the air froze, becoming a multitude of tiny, sharp darts that flew to join with the body of the Northwitch. Something—Emmeline couldn’t see what—was happening to the ice woman. She was growing darker and more solid.
Sudden cold soaked through Emmeline, creeping into her skin, and the dull ache in her chest exploded in a bright bloom of pain.
“The Kraken is a creature of the glacier—it belongs to me! And its power belongs to the North, not to the world of flesh and blood,” shouted the Northwitch. “No mortal will steal it away from me by force, through cogs and wheels and metal, things that have no place here.” Her voice made Emmeline’s bones quake. “Its power shall be mine, and I shall use it to turn the world to ice!” The sound of the Northwitch’s roaring words was like a river out of control—it burst over every bank and levee, running rampant.
“But—my parents!” said Emmeline, her eyes watering. “He’s going to kill them!”
“I have no concern for that,” boomed the Northwitch. She stood before Emmeline, no longer sparkling. Shards of darkness made up her body now, gleaming like oil. She reached out a hand, and the pain in Emmeline’s chest grew stronger. Horrifyingly, it felt to Emmeline like something inside her was responding to the Northwitch. Like iron being drawn to a magnet, her body was being dragged up off the icy bed, toward the witch’s dark, beckoning fingers.
The Eye of the North Page 17