“What are you doing?” Emmeline fought the pull as hard as she could, but the pain was too much. It spread around her heart like a crushing bruise. “Stop! You’re hurting me!”
“A sad but necessary side effect,” said the Northwitch. “The less you struggle, the less pain you will feel.”
Emmeline looked down at herself, and what she saw made her brain spin. She was vanishing, like someone had taken a giant eraser to her chest. Tiny shards of her were flying toward the Northwitch, becoming part of her, making her more solid, less like ice and more like flesh and blood.
Emmeline looked back up at the Northwitch. To her horror, the face she saw gazing back at her was her own, right down to the eyelashes.
Didn’t you hear me, you ignorant lump? Get up there now, or feel the back of my hand!
“But, Dad,” gasped Thing. “I can’t—”
You can’t? More like you won’t! What’s the use of ’avin’ an ’igh-wire boy who can’t even catch ’is breath, eh? I should sell you, I should! You’re not worth the food I pay for!
“I’m sorry! I—whoop!—I’m sorry, Dad! I’m doin’ me best!”
Yer best ain’t good enough! Yer nothin’ but a clod! Yer mother’d die all over again, this time out o’ shame, if she could see you now!
“Mum…,” whispered Thing.
I should sell yer—I think I will, an’ all! I think I will, an’ all….
“No,” sobbed Thing. “I can do it, Dad! I can! I can!”
His heart thunk-thunk-thunked. His breaths boiled. He dug his fingernails into wood. “Don’t sell me, Dad. I’ll try ’arder, I swear.” Then he blinked and looked around, and realized he wasn’t in the big top and his dad was gone and the stink of greasepaint in his nostrils wasn’t actually real. Not anymore.
He dropped the globe and rubbed gently at his chest, feeling a hollowed-out sort of pain.
“Don’t sell me, Dad,” he whispered to himself. He closed his eyes again, and an image of the farmer who’d paid his dad ten shillings for him washed over his memory like a wave of dirty water. He saw himself, a sniveling child of six, watching the gaily colored circus caravan, the only home he’d ever known, rolling and rocking its way down the muddy lane as it left him behind. He’d shouted for his dad, but all he’d gotten was a clip around the ear and a snarled reminder that he had no dad now and would do well not to forget it. He remembered the fists, and the barn he’d had to sleep in, and the cold….
G-R-E-E-N! Can’t you even read a simple word?
“Quiet, Dad,” said Thing, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He rolled expertly to his feet, half hearing applause in his ears. The heavy, clinging weight in his lungs shifted, and he took a deep breath, and then another.
One more fumble, an’ I promise you—
“I said quiet!” yelled Thing. He stumbled toward the control panel, blinking the memories away. The screen with the red horizon line showed the ship listing at an angle, and something was flashing like a warning. The screens with the wavy coastlines—which were gradually becoming clearer to Thing’s eye—showed him he was drifting too far to the east, the archipelago of Ireland and Britain far behind him. Dead ahead lay open water and emptiness.
And to the northwest Thing saw his destination light up like a beacon, drawing him on. That word—g-r-e-e-n—yelled up at him in his long-gone father’s voice. He adjusted the ship’s course, watching as the screens settled and the warning lights all went out. The ship knew where to go, he thought. Good ol’ Monsieur Pichon. If it hadn’t been for me flingin’ it about the place, we’d prob’ly be there already.
“I’m comin’, Ems,” he whispered, leaning on the lightning bolt button once again.
He was too distracted to notice that the ship didn’t leap forward as much as, all things considered, it really should have.
“What are you doing?” screamed Emmeline. Already her mouth felt strange, like it was numb and not entirely under her control. “Leave me alone!”
“I’m afraid not,” came the Northwitch’s reply, her voice a shimmering copy of Emmeline’s own. “I can feel the ice stirring. It won’t be long now until the Kraken wakes, and I intend to be there to greet it.” The Northwitch stretched her new body. From the chest up it looked human, if a little dusted with frost. The rest of her was still cold and sparkling, but traces of Emmeline were making their way down into the ice shards with every heartbeat. “I’m sure the meddling man with the clever machines will be so glad to have you returned to him; he must have missed you terribly. Won’t he get a surprise when you turn out to be me! By the time he figures it out, of course, it will all be too late.”
“Who?” whispered Emmeline. She wondered who’d turned the lights out, and why the room was tilting to one side. “Figures out what?”
“Why, the white-faced man who thinks he can steal away the power of the Kraken from under my nose, of course,” replied the Northwitch. “But don’t you worry about that.”
The Northwitch smiled with Emmeline’s face—red-cheeked and dark-haired—but her eyes remained her own, a cold and slushy blue, like two holes cut into an iced-over lake.
The pain in Emmeline’s chest gave another feeble throb as the Northwitch drew more of her strength. “No! Leave me alone!” she groaned through gritted teeth.
“You don’t like making things easy for yourself, do you?” said the Northwitch. “Believe me, it will be so much easier if you don’t fight.”
Before Emmeline could summon up the strength to reply, she noticed a reddish glow flickering in the corner of her vision. The Northwitch hissed, her head whipping around to face it, just as the wall of the cell exploded inward. The thick, ancient ice shattered into freezing powder, and the shock wave knocked Emmeline to the floor. She felt a tingling warmth, like pins and needles, fizzing right through her. Flipping herself onto her back, she watched in amazement as the Northwitch—still Emmeline-shaped, but now made of crystal-clear ice again—splintered neatly into billions of tiny shards, like a cloud of priceless diamond dust. They hovered in the air for a second or two before tumbling to the ground, gathering in piles like a small snowdrift.
Emmeline didn’t even have time to catch her breath before her horse, magnificent in the gloom, its mane glowing like a forest fire, was standing over her. With a single whuff of breath from its nostrils, the icy powder that had been the Northwitch went skittering out between the bars of the cell door and off down the ice corridor outside, screaming all the way.
“Critical fuel failure,” said a pleasant-sounding voice from somewhere close by. Thing hadn’t minded the first time the announcement had come on, or even the second or third. But this disembodied warning had begun to grate on his nerves after its twentieth repetition. “Cloud cover needed,” the voice added.
“All right, all right, all right!” Thing muttered, slapping buttons here and flicking switches there, trying to keep the Cloud Catcher steady and upright. The ship needed clouds in order to draw the wind and lightning out of them, Thing had figured out, just a little too late; he’d been flying through clear skies for ages, and he’d used up so much power in messing about that it was no wonder things were getting desperate now.
He was over the sea. There were no clouds to be seen anywhere, besides some wispy ones high up. He didn’t have enough power to reach them, he felt sure.
Something appeared on the central screen of the control panel, flipping in and out of view as the power dimmed and flared.
“ ‘Greenland,’ ” he read, knowing he was right. The jagged coastline of the massive country—the massive country where Emmeline had been taken, and where goodness knew what had happened to her—was looming just a couple of inches away from the bleeping red dot that was his ailing ship. “Come on! Jus’ a few more miles, and we’ll be there. Come on!”
“Critical fuel failure,” the ship informed him again. “Please maneuver to intercept cloud cover. Engine can no longer fire. Cloud cover needed. Please refuel. Critical fuel
failure.”
Thing watched the horizon finder. For every foot the ship traveled, it dropped three; it would be coming down hard, and there was nothing he could do about it. His stomach felt like it was being held in an iron clamp, and he clutched the edge of the control panel, his knucklebones sticking up. He bit his lip, hung on for dear life, and hoped that somehow the ship would glide far enough to crash-land on the ground.
If not—he gulped at the thought—not only would he fail to save Emmeline, but he’d go to a freezing (if mercifully quick) death beneath the frosty waves of the far north.
“Hyup!” came a cry. In their harnesses the dogsled team yipped and howled, delighted to be out on the trail. The sled they pulled was light, even though it was laden with furs and clothes and drinks kept hot in insulated flasks and as much food as could be tied on, and the snow was smooth and crisp underfoot. The going was good.
A sudden crashing, thundering noise from the sky made the driver of the sled turn in his seat and crane his neck. A massive object was careening through the air, trailing flames, its engines screaming as it went. As the driver watched, part of the strange ship exploded with a bright orange light, the boom that followed it a second later making his dogs thrash and howl. His breath caught in his throat as he watched the object come rocketing toward the frozen ground. The driver waited, knowing what he had to do but not liking it very much.
Then, with a whistle, Igimaq steered his team toward the stricken vessel, hoping Emmeline would forgive him for the delay.
“I won’t be long, little girl,” he muttered as his sled team picked up speed. “I let you down once, and I don’t intend to do it again.”
Emmeline clutched the horse’s mane, trying to catch her breath. Her heart was thumping so hard her whole body was shaking, almost like it was making up for all the beats it had lost while the Northwitch had been busy turning it to ice. The pain in her chest was easing, but a thought floated across her mind: If she steals your life, even a bit of it, are you hers forever? These words rolled around inside her as the horse flew over the ground, its hooves barely making an impression in the snow. Emmeline told herself she didn’t care where they were going, as long as it was away from that tiny cell far beneath the ice.
Somewhere in the distance, faint as a match flare in a cave, Emmeline saw a bright orange light. They were headed right for it. A fire? On a glacier? she thought, squinting at it, before realizing that it was one of the least unlikely things she’d seen lately. I’m on the back of a horse that just walked through a wall of solid ice like it was water, she told herself, feeling dizzy. And I’m trying to save my parents from a Kraken that’s been sleeping in the center of this glacier for who knows how long. How much odder can things get?
Thinking of her parents made her mind start to settle, and the reality of her situation weighed on her again like a heavy cloak. She blinked away from the flames of the far-off fire and looked to the sky, where the iridescent glow of the northern lights was bathing everything around her in eerie green—yet it still seemed they were being pulled by an unknown force. Her gaze followed the lights to her left. It looked like something was forcing them downward, and they struggled like an animal caught in a trap. Almost, Emmeline thought, like they’re being sucked into the middle of the glacier. As she watched the swirling aurora, she felt, in a corner of her heart, the sharp, pinching words of Dr. Bauer: I’ve kept them for you—not exactly safe….They’re in the ice, my dear.
“Hey, boy,” she called, her voice cracking slightly. “Hey. Whoa there.” She pulled, as gently as she could, on the horse’s mane, and after a few head tosses and splutters, it came to a halt. It tottered about on the spot as she patted its neck, its breaths deep and rasping, its chest heaving. “We can’t keep running forever, you know,” she whispered, leaning against its trembling neck. She squeezed her eyes tight and took three deep breaths, then tilted her head back and stared at the sky again. The light of the aurora filled her mind, and she remembered how Igimaq had also said that something was wrong with the lights; his people had seen it. There must be a connection to Dr. Bauer, Emmeline told herself. I need to find out.
Gently Emmeline nudged the horse around until they were facing the place where the lights appeared to meet the ground. The horse stamped in displeasure, but Emmeline urged it on with a click of her tongue. They left the distant fire behind them, and before long the horse was up to top speed again, flying across the ice.
As they ran, cold tendrils like icy fingers traced up and down Emmeline’s spine and licked around the inside of her collar. She shrank into her coat, but it didn’t help, and Emmeline felt her heartbeat slow and struggle as the pain in her chest flared again.
The thin wind carried the laughter of the Northwitch to her ears, and with every hoofbeat the inescapable fact drew closer.
The Northwitch was coming to get her, and there was nowhere to hide.
“Balto! Hey!” Igimaq urged his trusted lead dog on, and the sled began to pick up pace. Already Igimaq could hear the hissing of the flames. Whatever this thing had been, it sure was big. Debris was strewn in huge pieces across the face of the ice, and pools of melted snow were dotted all around it. Igimaq’s keen eyes picked out shards of glass and bits of splintered wood, which he was careful to guide the dogs around—but old Balto and his team were clever enough to do that by themselves. Sometimes Igimaq wondered whether he’d trained them too well.
“Hello!” he called. “Aluu!” There was no reply. Igimaq peered into the wreckage as the dogs cantered past, doubting that anyone could have walked away from such a mess, but knowing he had to be sure. “Hello!” he shouted again. “Anyone in there needing help?” The only answer he got was a distant explosion as something—a gas tank, an oxygen canister?—succumbed to the flames.
“What’s this?” he muttered, pulling the sled to a halt. A gigantic chain lay in the snow like an iron snake. A huge piece of wrenched-off metal was attached to it at one end. Igimaq followed the chain with his eyes to where it went into the side of the mangled hull through an aperture, half expecting to see someone come staggering through. Close by, another shattering boom rang out over the ice, and the noise of millions of shards of glass trickling to earth was heard. A fresh flare of leaping flames cracked out, whiplike.
“Aluu!” Igimaq called again, rapidly losing hope of hearing a reply.
Then Kiista—the dog he trusted most behind Balto—started to keen and cry, rattling her harness. Soon her restlessness spread to the whole team, and the others took up her complaint, yapping and howling, throwing glances back at Igimaq.
“Something’s got your nose, eh, Kiista girl? Eh?” called Igimaq, and the dog whirled around as far as she could, meeting his eyes with a pained gaze. That decided Igimaq. His dogs had a scent, and that was good enough for him.
“Hup!” he called, settling his grip on the sled. “Ho!”
With that, the dogs were off. To Igimaq’s surprise, they veered to the right, Balto leading the team away from the stricken ship. The snow all around the crash site was slushy and kicked up, but after a hundred feet or so Igimaq began to see footprints—small footprints—trailing away into the empty wilderness. A child has been here, he thought with a jolt.
“Hup!” he called again, urging the dogs on—not that they really needed it. Their noses were full of the trail, and they raced in silence, intent on following their quarry. The jingling of the harnesses and the dogs’ ragged, excited breathing were the only noises for miles around.
And then Igimaq saw something lying in the snow up ahead.
Within moments the dogs drew up alongside the huddled shape, and Igimaq brought the sled to a jerky halt. Igimaq hauled himself off the sled and quickly made his way, hand over hand, to the small figure lying on the bitter ground.
“Hey! Hey, hey!” he said, leaning close. “Hey in there! Can you hear me?” The person—a young boy, Igimaq saw—made no reply. His face was white and pinched, his hair studded with ice. His arms were
clenched tightly around something that looked like a saddlebag, made of old, bashed-up leather.
With one large hand Igimaq grabbed hold of the child’s collar and slowly but carefully dragged him toward the sled. Soon the boy was bundled up in a nest of warm, dry furs, as far out of the wind as Igimaq could get him, the worn leather bag tucked right in beside him.
With a whistle from Igimaq, the sled was off, flying over the snow as though its newly acquired cargo weighed no more than a feather.
In the depths of the gloomy sky overhead, the black craft flew. Unseen, unheard, it followed the trail left by the crashed Cloud Catcher. Nothing but burning wreckage remained of the White Flower’s finest ship, its fastest and best.
“Such shoddy workmanship,” tutted the woman in the pilot’s seat. “But that’s what comes of employing a renegade to build a skycraft.” She glanced over her shoulder at her passengers—if they could be called that—who were sitting, tied hand and foot, in the seats behind. Two pairs of flashing, angry eyes glared back, and two muzzled mouths worked around their gags, doing their best to loosen them. “Worse than a renegade, one might even say,” she continued, staring straight into Sasha’s face. “A charlatan, maybe.”
Rage filled Sasha, and she strained forward in her seat, forgetting about her injury—and about the thick strap keeping her tied down. Pain flared up her left side and she fell back, moaning. Beside her, Monsieur Pichon trembled, his eyes wide as he stared at her. She turned to him and tried to pretend she was all right, but he wasn’t fooled.
“Well, we’ll see whether we can find a use for you two when we get down there, eh? I’m pretty sure I can think of just the thing.” The pilot settled herself at the controls again, and Sasha’s eyes spat fire at the back of her head.
In the darkness, unseen, Sasha leaned her head against Monsieur Pichon’s. Together they wept for Thing, never dreaming that he could have survived the disaster spread out before them on the face of the glacier.
The Eye of the North Page 18