“Hmff?” Thing snorted awake, wondering why he felt like he was on fire. For a horrible moment he thought he hadn’t made it out of the ship, and his mind filled up with crashing, cracking, screens flashing, alarms calmly announcing that the Cloud Catcher was in “critical failure” and that “emergency touchdown” was inevitable. “Prepare for crash landing,” a voice had said. “How do I do that?” he’d roared, just before the ship had started to come apart.
But he didn’t hear anything now. Everything seemed quiet and peaceful, besides a strange panting noise coming from somewhere close by. If this is heaven, thought Thing, I want me money back.
“Eh? Hey up there?” The voice barely touched the edges of Thing’s hearing. Faintly he was aware that he was moving—cold air was flowing over his exposed nose and cheeks, and a gentle rocking motion made him think of a baby being put to sleep in a giant cradle. Then he tried to sit up.
The banging, throbbing agony in his head quickly put an end to that.
“Whoa, whoa!” Thing felt a juddering vibration, and the rocking motion came to a stop. A few seconds later he felt strong hands—big hands—on his shoulders and upper back.
“Hey. Boy! You awake? You all right?” Thing’s eyes could barely focus. Above him all he could make out was a pair of half-hidden eyes and a lot of hair. No—fur, he corrected himself after a few seconds. A fur hood.
“What? Who’re you?” His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. He tried to clear his dried-up throat.
“Igimaq,” said the stranger, and Thing saw him grinning. “And you?”
“M’name’s Thing,” he said. “ ’S a pleasure or whatever.”
“Sit tight, then,” said the man in the hood. “The wife’s going to make me sleep in the outhouse if I bring another of you strange kids home, but I can hardly leave you here, eh? You’ve had quite the adventure.” Thing’s eyes started to close, and he was almost asleep again when he suddenly jerked awake, looking around in a panic.
“No!” he called. The man paused and glanced back at Thing’s face with wide, concerned eyes. “No way! Lemme out o’ these—whatever they are!” He tried to struggle, but it felt like his arms were lashed to his sides with iron ropes. “I gotta go, right now! She needs me!”
“Whoa now. Who needs you? You’re not in any shape to go anywhere—”
“That’s not important! Ems needs me, and I gotta get to her! Her life’s in danger, and I—”
“Ems?” interrupted Igimaq. “Who’s that?”
“Ems! Emmeline! Look, you don’t know ’er,” said Thing quickly, shaking his head and wincing. “I gotta find ’er. I gotta…” Thing’s voice trailed off as the pain in his body started to wake up and kick him all over. He felt like he’d been wrapped in a carpet and beaten with sticks. Igimaq said nothing for a few moments. Thing thought he heard him chuckling, but told himself he had to be imagining it. What was funny about this situation?
“You’re not going to believe this, eh,” said the strange man eventually. “You an’ me are looking for the same girl.” Igimaq’s gap-toothed smile was broad, and his eyes sparkled as he gazed down at Thing. “You’re looking for Emmeline, right? Small, curly hair, know-it-all nose?” Thing’s eyes flicked back and forth over Igimaq’s face.
“What d’you want with her, eh? If you’ve hurt her, I’ll—”
“Calm down, kid,” said Igimaq, his good-natured grin growing wider. “I saved Emmeline once, and I let her get away, straight back into danger again. Now I—now we—have a chance to make it right.”
“I don’t understand,” said Thing after a moment. “Who are you exac’ly?”
“Hardly matters,” replied Igimaq. “I want to help your friend, you want to help your friend—that makes us friends, right?”
Thing studied Igimaq’s face for several moments and finally barked out a laugh. “Well, what’re we waitin’ for, then? Tell these fellas to mush or whatever!” His head throbbed as he looked around, taking in the sled, the dogs, the flat white landscape, and the oddly greenish light in the sky. It looked like the underside of a river, he thought, swirling off toward the horizon, studded all through with bright, sharp stars. He searched for Emmeline’s satchel and saw that Igimaq had carefully wrapped it in its own tiny fur and placed it securely beside him. Something about it made his heart lift again.
Igimaq watched all this with a grin. “Mush, eh? Maybe you want to drive?”
Within seconds he’d turned the sled around, and they were on their way.
Sasha’s mind flickered painfully as she thought. After all Madame’s years of trying to scrape money together to fund the White Flower, all our attempts to infiltrate Bauer’s gang, all the wasted time and effort searching for him in the wrong places…Despite her best efforts, a hot tear trailed down over her jaw. She glanced at Monsieur Pichon, but he wasn’t looking at her, or at anything. His eyes were shut tight, his forehead was creased in a deep frown, and his cheeks were wet. I never thought I’d be sharing this fate with you, Michel.
“Comfortable back there?” called the pilot over her shoulder. Sasha kicked the back of her seat in reply, hoping to connect the toe of her boot with any part of her captor’s body. The pilot laughed, leaning back to pull Sasha’s gag free.
“Good!” she crowed. “I’m sure the beast likes a bit of sass in his breakfast.”
“So it’s true, then?” said Sasha, hoping her voice wouldn’t crack. “You’re taking us to the Kraken?”
“Now, now. I’m sure you don’t need me to explain all that for you,” replied the pilot, stretching to adjust one of her instruments.
“You’re Xantha, aren’t you?” said Sasha quietly, knowing she was right, even though it seemed impossible. “Xantha Strachan. Bauer’s former partner.”
“Good work, my dear,” sneered the pilot.
Sasha tried to swallow with a suddenly dry throat. “You’re really going to these lengths to get revenge on him? Or—no. Be honest. This is about the Kraken, isn’t it? You want it for yourself.”
“Siegfried Bauer stole everything from me.” Xantha turned to face Sasha, and her voice was low. “We worked together, side by side, for years, and he rewarded me for my labors by stealing all my research. He took credit for everything we did! Every experiment. All my notes on the Kraken, on longevity, all gone, along with every drop of credibility I had.” She turned again to face forward, raising her voice so Sasha could hear. “Nothing would be too much trouble to pay him back for that. And if I can steal his prize before he has a taste of it, all the better.”
“We thought you’d died,” said Sasha, wondering now how they could have been so gullible.
“Of course you did.” Xantha’s voice was light. “I wanted it that way. It’s remarkable how much planning you can get away with when nobody’s on your tail.” She turned around once again and stretched over to replace Sasha’s gag, her fingers strong as a steel trap. Sasha whimpered and gave up struggling.
I’ve let everyone down so badly, she thought, her throat aching.
“Oh, look!” cried Xantha, like a child being given a new toy. She pointed out the front window of the skycraft at something that loomed in the distance like three dark fangs bursting through the surface of the ice, surrounded in a cloak of green light. “My learned colleague’s facility isn’t far away now. Don’t you just love it when you can get someone to do all the heavy lifting for you?”
Despite herself, Sasha couldn’t help but look.
Before them lay the vastness of the glacier.
Behind them lay the wreckage of the Cloud Catcher. Sasha felt something snap inside her heart as she thought about it.
And ahead—getting closer with every moment—lay Dr. Bauer’s headquarters.
The place where I’m going to die, thought Sasha numbly.
Faster! Faster, horse! Please! Emmeline didn’t have enough breath to say the words aloud, but the horse picked up its pace anyway, galloping so hard that Emmeline wouldn’t have been
surprised to see wings sprouting out of its back. Even if Emmeline hadn’t known this horse was…whatever the kobold had called it, she’d have figured out that it was special. No normal horse could run like this. The Northwitch’s hollow laughter was far behind, and they’d passed several groups of men in large, clunky vehicles who’d fled for whatever cover they could find as the thunder of the horse’s hooves drew close. Now all she could see was the glimmering green light of the aurora borealis, reflected in pools and from the broken ice—and straight ahead was something Emmeline hadn’t quite figured out. She squinted up at it once more, but it was too much to take in all at once.
Three frames made of curved metal tubing were sticking out of the ice, standing so tall that their tops vanished into the sky. Each of them held something that looked like a shallow bowl tipped on its side, only on a much bigger scale. The aurora glowed brightest above and around them, its light reflecting back and forth off each of the bowls until it became one thick beam focused on the ice. Underfoot, Emmeline noticed cracks and gaps and wide crevasses in the surface of the glacier and the booming, straining sound of the moving ice made her throat ache with fear. What if the horse misses a step? What if we fall? What if we get swallowed? Emmeline tried to focus on the good stuff instead of the bad. She thought about what the Northwitch had said about Bauer melting the ice to raise the Kraken, and—stealing another glance at their destination—she felt her heart leap at the idea that this was where it was all going to happen. It has to be here, she told herself. And if I’m right, then Mum and Dad…they have to be here. Don’t they? Her mind bubbled with tentacles and teeth and deep, dark water where nobody should ever go, and her tiny spark of gladness sputtered out.
As the horse drew closer to the lights, Emmeline ran through her assets one more time. One tin cup, she thought breathlessly. One silver spoon. One length of fishing line. One length of rope. One piece of greased paper. Her mind stuttered. Wasn’t there something else?
Shrinking against the horse’s back, she tried as hard as she could to wish herself home, but no matter how hard she thought about it, it stubbornly refused to work.
Behind her the Northwitch was a nightmare in the dark, and she was coming.
Emmeline’s horse eventually drew to a skidding, clopping stop, its breath a stream of vapor around its head. Emmeline slid down, landing heavily in the snow, her teeth chattering.
Before them lay a gigantic pool filled with auroral light, gushing, crashing water, and lumps of breaking ice as big as buildings. Thick streams of meltwater flowed out of it, carving channels in the ice as they went. The three bowl-like objects stood above the pool, tall as giants, and Emmeline leaned back to look at them more closely. Now she could see that they were mirrors, brightly polished and flawless, so clear that they seemed transparent. Emmeline felt sick as she watched the northern lights bouncing from one mirror to the other in an unbroken beam and being used somehow to penetrate the heart of the ice beneath her. She studied the metal gantries controlling the mirrors’ direction and gazed at the low, sturdy buildings on the far side of the pool, their windows dark, and wondered who—if anyone—was in there.
Her heart trembled. If this was where the Kraken was going to rise, then she didn’t have long to find her parents, if they were even here. She just had no idea where to start looking.
“I never gave you a name, did I?” she said, gazing into her horse’s face. Its chest heaved as it caught its breath, and it shook with exertion all over. “But what am I saying? You probably have a name, right?” It whinnied, and Emmeline pressed herself against it, taking in a lungful of its scent, like sunshine and flowers. “The kobold said you were descended from someone called the Hoof-Thrower. That’s a good name,” she whispered, thinking of the stumbling fall the horse had taken across the ice when she’d first seen it. “But I’m going to call you Meadowmane, because of how nice you smell. If you don’t mind.” Gently Meadowmane began to nibble at the laces on Emmeline’s boot, and she took that as permission. She wiped her nose and nodded. “Okay. Come on, then. Let’s go find my mum and dad and get out of here.”
Meadowmane allowed Emmeline to lean on him as, together, they started to walk toward the pool, hooves and feet sliding with every step.
A sudden gush of spearlike wind stabbed through the layers of Emmeline’s clothing. She quickened her pace, keeping a fearful eye out for the Northwitch, but all she could see around her was swirling snow and gray, eternal gloom.
“Out,” barked Xantha. “Now!” The craft carrying Sasha, Monsieur Pichon, and their captor had landed several minutes before, but Bauer’s brightly lit site was still a mile or more away. Their gags had been removed, and Sasha worked the pain out of her jaw as she tried to moisten her mouth.
“But it’s too far,” she pointed out. “We can’t walk that distance in this climate! I’m wounded, and Monsieur Pichon is—”
“I am fine,” growled Monsieur Pichon suddenly, his face like a blade in the strange light. “Let’s just get this charade over with, yes?”
“I’m sorry,” Sasha began. “I thought you were—”
“Yes. Indeed. As you can see, I am perfectly well,” he said, cutting over Sasha’s words.
“Such touching concern for your scheming little friend,” said Xantha, her voice mock-gentle as she attached a chain to Sasha’s bound wrists. She slid across to grab hold of Monsieur Pichon, attaching his shackles to the chain with the snick of a lock. “Really, it’s almost enough to make me weep. Get up, please. Daylight’s not exactly burning, not at this latitude, but you know what I mean.” She turned away, the movement dragging Sasha, and then Monsieur Pichon, out of their seats.
“Courage, child,” came the warm, whispered words in Sasha’s ear as she rose unsteadily to her feet. Monsieur Pichon stumbled against her, giving every impression of being a weak old man. “We will prevail.”
As soon as they were outside, Xantha secured Sasha and Monsieur Pichon to the leg of the aircraft before bending to strap long skis onto her booted feet. Within seconds, the cold began to seep into Sasha’s body. Her coat didn’t come anywhere close to being warm enough. Monsieur Pichon said nothing, but Sasha was sure he felt the same.
She swallowed her pain, and her terror, and her heartbreak, as without a word Xantha unbolted the chain from the craft and fastened it to a belt around her waist. She turned and bared her teeth at Sasha before striking out on her skis, and that silent warning was enough to let Sasha know it would not go well for her if she tried anything. I wouldn’t have a hope anyway, she thought. Wounded, and weak, and we’re barely able to walk as it is….
Xantha set a fast pace. Sasha and Monsieur Pichon stumbled behind her through the ankle-deep snow, their eyes firmly fixed on their destination.
Igimaq looked out over the surface of the ice ahead, a worried frown creasing his brow.
“What’s up now?” asked Thing. They’d already seen a red flare in the sky, which Igimaq had told him belonged to one of the other hunters from his village. They’d all set out together, going in different directions, with instructions to find Emmeline and fight whoever tried to get in their way. “That’s probably Umiq,” Igimaq had said as the red flare sputtered to its zenith. “Lily-livered fool.” A red flare meant that one of the teams was returning home. A purple one, Thing now knew, meant that enemies had been kidnapped or neutralized or that a base had been destroyed. They hadn’t seen any of those. Bright yellow meant that Emmeline had been found—they hadn’t seen any of those, either.
But it wasn’t flares, this time, that concerned Igimaq.
“The ice,” he murmured. “It’s—wrong.” Thing glanced out at the landscape around them and went back to chewing on a strip of dried meat.
“Looks all right to me,” he said, his words muffled. “White. Lots of it. What’s wrong wi’ that?”
“No, no,” sighed Igimaq. “Too much water. More water than ice. More chances for—” His words were cut off as the sled suddenly lurched to one side
. Thing felt Igimaq’s strong hand on his shoulder before he’d even realized he was falling. From up front, the dogs started yelping as one of them, near the middle of the team, toppled right into a freezing pool. Faster than Thing could work out what was happening, Igimaq had launched himself from the sled.
“Stay calm, Miki!” he gasped, trying to get a grip on the dog’s harness. “Quiet!” Dumbfounded, Thing watched as Igimaq wrestled with the terrified dog. His voice seemed to calm Miki down enough for Igimaq to help him out, but just as he managed this, a loud, bone-shattering crack, like a gunshot at close quarters, sounded all around them. Thing glanced from side to side, his senses jangling, but all he saw, in every direction, was desertion. On the horizon in front of them was that weird green glow, like a luminous tornado that stretched out across the sky.
“Ice is shifting,” called Igimaq, turning back to Thing. “Got to get ready to move now!”
“Move? Move how?”
“Just help!” Igimaq hurried back to the sled and slung himself into it. “Hyup! Hey, boys! To the right now!” He whistled, leaning to the right to help the dogs as they struggled to get going, and the team instantly obeyed. As soon as they’d reached steadier ground, Igimaq brought the dogs to a halt. He jumped out and hurried to Miki’s side.
“C’mon! Grab a fur. You gotta help me get him warm,” he called over his shoulder. Thing shook off his confusion and hopped out of the sled, his feet splashing on the slushy ice. Within seconds he was beside Igimaq as they battled to undo Miki’s harness straps and release him from the rest of the team. Between the two of them they wrapped up the shivering dog and wrestled him into the sled.
“Can you run alongside? Just for a while, till Miki warms up?” asked Igimaq, slipping back into his seat.
The Eye of the North Page 19