The Eye of the North

by Sinead O'Hart

  …Stupidest thing I ever saw! You are the stupidest thing that’s ever lived!

  “I am not!” Thing growled. “I am not!”

  Yeah, that’s right. You really think you’re fit to perform, do ya? Well, I’ve got news for you, kid….

  Thing grabbed hold of a bar and made sure his grip was steady. He swung himself out over yawning nothingness before landing securely. He fought to breathe, feeling the roots of his fear begin to lift out of his lungs. I can do this, he told himself. I can!

  …News for you, kid…

  The voice faded, lost beneath the rasping of Thing’s quick breaths, until eventually it was hardly there at all. Thing paused for a rest, his heart thunking calmly and steadily, and listened closely.

  And the voice said nothing at all.

  Three more moves and he’d made it. He couldn’t climb any farther.

  Panting, he clung to a crossbar, his mind boggling at how high up he was. The wind whistled through him as though he weren’t there. He was afraid that if he sat still too long, he’d freeze solid. He spent a few minutes waiting for his lungs to close over like they usually did, but they stayed clear. It felt like something had been unbuckled inside him and he had space, at last, to breathe deeply.

  But that wasn’t helping him help Emmeline.

  “Nothing for it. Come too far to give up now,” he whispered. He wriggled his fingers around inside his mittens, keeping the blood flowing through them, and slid his hand forward along the bar Emmeline was hanging from. It vibrated slightly as she swung, on and on, and he finally worked out what she was trying to do. As he watched, she raised her legs as high as she could, doing her best to grab the chain between her knees. She slipped, but that didn’t stop her from trying again, and again.

  Good girl, Ems, he thought, smiling. Jus’ what I’d do too. He refocused his gaze on his own task, making sure he had his balance. When he was certain of his grip, he slid the other hand along, bringing his body with him. Carefully, hand over hand, Thing edged his way out.

  Ten feet below him, Emmeline was oblivious. Thing could hear her gasping for breath and watched as she finally managed to get her legs right up, displaying a pair of ruffled, long-legged knickers covered in yellow ducks wearing blue bow ties. Her dress and coat hung free, floating in the breeze, and on she swung. Shouldn’t have bothered comin’ up ’ere at all, Thing thought. Five more minutes an’ she’d’ve cracked it.

  “Hey down there! Nice bloomers!”

  Emmeline lost her grip on the chain, and her legs dropped with a jerk. As the chain juddered and shook beneath him, Thing couldn’t help but laugh at her small, sweaty face as she peered up at him like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

  A few minutes later Emmeline was astride the bar, right side up. She sat in stunned silence, getting her balance, quivering with a mixture of shock and cold.

  “Hold still so’s I can cut you out of this contraption,” laughed Thing, sliding Igimaq’s knife carefully under the tight, twisted leather strap. Emmeline’s hands were bleeding and raw, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “What—I mean, how—I mean—what are you doing here?” she finally managed to gasp.

  “Nobody kidnaps my friends and gets away wi’ it,” he replied, rubbing her stone-cold fingers between his own mitten-warmed ones.

  Without warning, Emmeline threw herself forward and grabbed Thing up into a huge hug, almost knocking them both off their precarious perch. Through her coat Thing could feel her body trembling.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Come on, now.”

  “He’s got my parents,” Emmeline whispered. “They’re—they’re in the water. I think he forced them to wake the Kraken. He told them he’d kill me if they didn’t. I have to get them back, Thing. I have to.”

  “Of course y’do,” said Thing in the way that only a person without parents can. He cleared his throat. “We’d better get down, then, before he sees you’re gone. We’ve dawdled too long as it is, don’t you reckon?”

  “D-down?” Emmeline released Thing from her grip and risked a look.

  “It’s okay, right? I got up here. I can get us down.”

  “No—no! What I mean is, we don’t have time. The Kraken—it’s literally coming any minute now. We’ll be too late if we go back down.” A light popped on behind Emmeline’s eyes, and she raised them to stare at Thing. “At least, we’ll be too late if we go back down the way you came up.”

  “What on earth are you babblin’ about?” Thing’s mind burst with images of falling hundreds of feet into a freezing pool of water, just in time to be snapped in half by a giant sea monster—or, worse, falling hard onto the cold ground and ending up as little more than a splat. He wobbled a bit on the bar.

  “Just—come on. Trust me. Can you trust me?” Emmeline’s smile was a bit manic.

  “Um—”

  “Come on! Please. Just scoot back the way you came. Go on!” Reluctantly Thing started easing his way back, and Emmeline hopped her way forward, until soon they were hidden in the shadow of the mirror, clinging in relative safety to the bars all around them. The low whir of the machinery controlling the mirrors set Thing’s teeth on edge, and the light, passing just feet from them, was bright and dizzying.

  “Right. Now what?” Thing’s heart was beginning to thunk.

  “Give me your hand. No, your other hand. Brilliant.” Emmeline rummaged in her pocket and drew out her length of rope, which she tied in a knot around Thing’s wrist. Then she tied the other end securely around her own, using her teeth to pull it tight. As she did this, her eyes fell on the shining surface of the mirror, and she watched it carefully, counting under her breath as it moved forward, then back. Forward, then back…She shuffled herself around so that she was facing its concave face.

  Its concave face, which reached nearly all the way to the ground.

  “No,” said Thing, his mind suddenly running into a brick wall. “You’re not—”

  “What? Are you afraid?”

  “Afraid? Don’t be daft!”

  “Well, come on, then. If a girl can do it…”

  “Oh, for the love of…Right. Go on, then.”

  “You ready?”

  “As I’m goin’ to get.”

  “Okay. One, two—”

  Before she’d reached three—and before she had time to think things like What if I’ve timed it wrong? What if we hit the mirror too hard? What if we get smashed to bits?—Emmeline gave Thing a shove between the shoulder blades. He had no time to suck in a lungful of air before they were free-falling. A thick green-blue beam of auroral light enveloped them as they fell, and in it Thing heard overlapping voices, hissing like the whispers of giants.

  …Betrayed we are betrayed she has betrayed us all…The Creature must remain at rest…None shall disturb it…Betrayed betrayed…no loyalty…we no longer serve she who calls herself the Northwitch…

  Then the bowl of the mirror, polished smoother than any piece of glass Thing had ever seen, caught them. Within seconds they were flung off at the other end. They fell about six feet through empty air and came to rest just beside the edge of the huge, bubbling lake.

  Dimly Thing thought he heard Emmeline yelling, a mix of triumph and relief in her voice. He just moaned, wiping the snow off his face and wondering how you could tell whether you’d broken a bone if your body was too numb to feel anything.

  “Did you—did you hear ’em?” he asked, cracking open an eye and gazing up at the light overhead. Explosions of color sparkled inside it, and strange-looking shapes, almost like beings with long, stretched-out limbs, moved within the beam.

  Or at least he thought so.

  “Hear what?” said Emmeline, already up on her knees. She brushed the snow off her front as she spoke.

  “The voices. The voices in the light,” muttered Thing, his eyes drifting closed again.

  “Thing? Come on!” His face burned with sudden cold, and he sat up quickly as a trickle of freezing water snaked d
own his neck. “Wakey, wakey!”

  “Oi!” He spluttered. The handful of snow Emmeline had smacked against his cheek slithered off as he moved. “What’s the hurry, eh?”

  “Just come on. We’ve got to find the controls for the cage,” said Emmeline. “Which means we’ve got to get to Bauer. And we’ve got to rescue Meadowmane.”

  “Who’s Meadowmane?” Thing got to his feet and loosened the knot at his wrist. Emmeline wound the rope up and put it back into her pocket.

  “Never mind. I’ll explain later,” she said, waving a hand in the air. “Let’s worry about first things first. Any ideas on saving my folks yet?”

  “Nope. But I know a guy we can ask. Come on!”

  “You know someone? Up here?” But Thing didn’t take the time to answer. He turned and started running, leaving Emmeline to shrug, gather her long coat in her wounded hands, and race after him as fast as she could.

  She followed Thing toward the nearest strut and saw him stop short. The confusion was clear on his face as he looked all around the structure, not believing his own eyes.

  “But…,” said Thing, turning around to stare at her. “They should be here.”

  “There’s tracks,” Emmeline pointed out, nodding toward the ground. “Pretty messy, but we could follow them, maybe.”

  As Emmeline spoke, a tiny pop of purple, like a distant star, flared into life over to their right, followed quickly by another. Emmeline frowned at them as Thing took a couple of running steps in their direction, letting loose a yell of triumph, the words to explain what the lights meant already on his lips: Purple flares mean we’re winnin’!

  But before he had a chance to speak, a light exploded across the surface of the ice, bright enough to make them both wince, and yellow enough to drown out the green beam bouncing between the mirrors behind them.

  “What’s that?” called Emmeline, squinting into it and trying to shade her eyes with her hand.

  “How’m I s’posed to know?”

  Silently Emmeline and Thing drew closer to one another. The light increased with every second, and above the gentle thrumming of what they took to be an engine, they could hear faint hallooing and the sharp yip-yip of dogs. Thing squinted into the murk and saw the smudged shapes of several dogsleds peeling off to the left and right, vanishing into the darkness around the lake. Another purplish flare exploded in the sky, and Thing couldn’t help but grin.

  “Siegfried Bauer!” A huge voice boomed through the air. Thing yelped in surprise, quickly turning it into a cough. “Face us, and account for your crimes!”

  Emmeline took off running toward the light, Thing hot on her heels, as an airship hovered into view, floating with a sort of grace above the glacier. Slung beneath the balloon was a large-windowed cabin surrounded by a balcony. As Thing watched, a rope ladder was thrown over the side of it, unrolling faster and faster until it slapped down on the ice.

  On the prow, bright and proud, was a hastily completed painting of a white flower.

  “You lot took your sweet time gettin’ here,” called Thing as Edgar landed heavily on the sludgy ground.

  He laughed, taking them in with a relieved gaze. “Well, you know. We wanted to take the scenic route.” Thing snorted, shaking his head slowly.

  Emmeline grinned as she flung herself at Edgar. “It’s great to see you,” she whispered. Edgar hugged her with his good arm, smiling down at her messy hair. “Where’s Sasha?” She looked up into his face in time to see a dark frown cross it.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing,” said Edgar to Thing.

  “Listen, she’s hurt—” Thing began, but he was cut off by an unearthly howl. It rippled through the air, coming from behind them like a storm-force wind. Emmeline was almost knocked off her feet as it passed over the dirigible, rocking it from side to side on its moorings. Distantly she heard yelling and raised voices as the people yet to disembark were thrown around inside the cabin. Thing grabbed her arm to steady her as the gust died down, but she didn’t have a chance to ask what had happened before a second bloodcurdling yell was heard from beyond the airship.

  “Get off! Come on!” roared Edgar, running back toward the dirigible’s moorings. “Now!” Emmeline saw panicked faces around the cabin railing, and a clamoring queue for the rope ladder. “Make way for Madame, please! Let Madame Blancheflour off this ship!” A scuffling at the top of the ladder drew Emmeline’s eye, and to her utter amazement, she saw a tiny, elegant old lady being led toward the ladder by a large, stiff-collared gentleman—a gentleman whose familiar face was the most welcome thing she’d seen for days.

  “Watt!” she cried, tears springing to her eyes as the butler she’d known all her life searched for her, finally locking on to her gaze. “How are you even here?” Watt carefully handed Madame Blancheflour onto the ladder before straightening up and saluting Emmeline.

  “Miss Widget! A joy to see you so well,” he called. He was still wearing his crisp black-and-white uniform, and every thread of it made Emmeline think of home.

  “Get off the ship! That thing—whatever it is—it’s coming back!”

  “Not while there are ladies aboard, lass,” he replied. “I’ll be with you presently!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Watt!” shouted Emmeline. “Come on! There’s no time—” But her words were swallowed by a third terrifying shriek, and the wind rose again. This time it felt like it was full of blades. Emmeline yelped, her eyes watering. She tried to huddle into her coat, but she might as well have been standing on the ice dressed only in her underwear, for all the good it did.

  The nightmarish sound passed over their heads again, whipping around the dirigible so hard it almost knocked it out of the air entirely. Emmeline forced her eyes open, hoping to see Watt safe and alive, but instead her gaze was dragged to something floating in the air high above her head.

  Something that sparkled like freshly fallen frost. Something hard and sharp and beautiful. Something cold as a distant star. It was looking down at Emmeline, and at all the people below it, with an expression of pure hatred on its strange, familiar face. Its eyes, too large to be human, were a dark, slushy blue.

  “Sasha?” gasped Emmeline. “No!”

  “Sasha!” shouted Edgar, his voice like a twig underfoot. “What on earth?”

  “It’s not Sasha!” Emmeline shouted, her heart throbbing. “It’s—I think I know what it is!”

  “What’s happened to her?” Edgar’s eyes were filling with tears in the freezing air, and he blinked them away, never dropping his gaze from the glittering figure above.

  “It’s the Northwitch. She’s taken her,” said Emmeline.

  “What?” shouted Edgar, his eyes wild.

  But the creature wearing Sasha’s body didn’t give Emmeline time to answer. It swooped through the air toward them, bringing a freezing wind with it. The snow was kicked up all around Emmeline, Thing, and Edgar, and even as they watched, the dirigible was ripped right off its moorings. Madame Blancheflour slid down the last few feet of the rope ladder, rolling herself away across the ice once she landed.

  The Northwitch swooped once, twice, around the stricken airship before making her move. Like an arrow, she flew straight for the balloon, putting her—putting Sasha’s—arms out in front, pointed perfectly, as though she were a diver about to enter the water, and burst right through it like a needle jabbing through a piece of cloth. With a huge whumpf the balloon exploded, and Emmeline felt Edgar’s arm go around her as he pulled her to the ground.

  “This is unbelievable!” shouted Thing over the roar of the flames. Overhead the balloon kept exploding, boom-boom-boom, until eventually the whole thing was one ball of fire. It began to sink to earth, prompting the last few remaining passengers to fling themselves off in an attempt to roll clear of the debris.

  “Just stay down!” called Edgar. “Don’t look at it!” But it was impossible not to. Emmeline felt a small hand wiggle its way into her armpit as someone tried to drag her farther away fro
m the fire. She turned to see the face of the tiny old lady Watt had helped to disembark.

  “Wh-where’s Watt? Where is he?” Emmeline asked, even as she was pulled backward.

  “Do not fret, ma chérie,” murmured the old lady. “All is well.” Just then a huge crump sounded out as the ship finally crashed to the ice.

  “No, it’s not! Don’t lie!” shouted Emmeline. The lady frowned down at her.

  “Perhaps not right at this moment,” she conceded. Emmeline was barely able to listen. Her head was thumping as hundreds of thoughts jostled for position inside it. Save Mum and Dad, save Sasha, see if Watt’s all right, what’s happened to Thing, where’s Meadowmane, get away from the Kraken….She didn’t know which one to listen to first.

  “What?” she said rather rudely, realizing that Madame Blancheflour had asked her a question.

  “Your parents, poupette. Where are they?”

  “In the—in the water. They’re waking the Kraken. He forced them! Honest! He—”

  “Hush.” Madame Blancheflour stroked Emmeline’s cheek. “Je comprends.”

  “She all right?” came a voice to her left. Thing, skidding to his knees, landed on the ground beside her. “Ems?”

  “I’m fine. I’m fine!” She sat up, shaking off hands and concerned looks. “Come on! We haven’t time to sit about!” She struggled upright, wobbling a bit.

  “Yeah, all right, keep your wig on,” said Thing, rolling back up onto his feet. “What’s first, then?”

  “Hey,” said Edgar suddenly from a few feet away. “Do you hear that?” Over the dull roaring of the flames, and the thumping of her own heart, Emmeline realized she did hear something out of place—a tiny, shrill voice, screaming as loud as it could. This wasn’t the howling of the Northwitch or the noise of the burning dirigible all around them, but something different.

  “Help me!” the voice shouted. “Please!”