“Æsirsmount. A horse of the old gods. My grandad used to tell us stories about these guys too. This one’s great-great-great-something ancestor would’ve been ridden by Odin, or someone like that, way back.” Igimaq, hardly daring, reached out a hand to stroke Meadowmane’s side. “I never thought I’d see one of these guys in the flesh, but I sure am glad our Emmeline found one. He probably didn’t want to see the Kraken woken either, poor fella, no more than any of the creatures on the ice did, but at least he kept her safe as long as he could.”
Before Thing had a chance to ask who Odin was, a boom rang out and everyone looked at the Kraken again. Most of its body was now out of the water. There was no sign of Bauer—the Kraken’s gleaming belly was rolling its way heavily across the place where he’d last been seen, coming fast and crushing everything in its wake. Thing counted six flailing tentacles, each of them monstrous in its own right. He shrank against the side of the sled, wishing it had wings so that they could all clamber into it and get away. But where’d we go? he wondered despairingly. There ain’t goin’ to be any place on earth safe from this thing. He blinked, watching Igimaq as he turned too. Emmeline stirred in the sled, taking in the scene before her.
“Oh, no,” she moaned, a tear escaping. “We’re too late.” She wiped at her face, her skin red with cold. Her other hand fell on a familiar object—her long-lost satchel, half-buried amid the furs in Igimaq’s sled. Like it was the face of an old friend, she ran her fingers over it.
“Ain’t you goin’ to open it?” asked Thing, hope flaring in his chest. “Maybe there’s somethin’ in there that’ll help.” Emmeline turned to him, smiling sadly.
“Nothing that’ll help against a Kraken,” she said, and his face fell as he realized she was right.
“Who made the sacrifice?” said Igimaq suddenly. Everyone looked at him, eyes wide. Madame Blancheflour slithered across the ice and gripped the edge of his sled.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Nobody has sacrificed to the beast.”
“Somebody must have,” said Igimaq. “He’d have long made us into fish food by now if he weren’t waiting for his command.” Madame Blancheflour looked stunned. She sought out Edgar and Sasha, who stared at her with huge eyes. Edgar shrugged, one-shouldered.
“Anyone?” shouted Madame. “Does anyone know who sacrificed to the beast? Are they still living?” Madame’s eyes roamed through the crowd: what was left of the members of her beloved Order of the White Flower, pinched and shivering; Watt, her great friend, who had guarded Emmeline so faithfully and well; and, wrapped in whatever clothes could be found, near the back, Emmeline’s parents, lying still and cold. Nobody spoke.
Behind them the Kraken thrashed, waiting. It let out another roar that blew the hair back on everyone’s heads. The ice around the pool cracked and smashed, the pattern radiating out under their feet, as the beast lifted itself farther out of its prison. A tentacle landed heavily, too close to their dirigible for comfort.
“It’s not going to wait forever,” said Igimaq pleasantly.
Even though it was hopeless, and they knew it, those who could run, ran. Those who couldn’t did their best to walk, or hobble, or shuffle, supported by anyone who had an arm to lend. Igimaq piled Madame Blancheflour and Emmeline’s parents into his sled, much to the dogs’ dissatisfaction, and off they went. Thing jogged beside them, casting worried glances up at Emmeline every few paces. She was mounted on Meadowmane, her face creased with pain. Behind her, stark and horrifying against the starlight, was the Kraken.
Yowling like ten thousand hellcats, the creature finally pulled its last tentacle free. Raised straight up into the air, it went so high that Thing couldn’t see its tip. Had the mirrors still been standing, the Kraken would have dwarfed them.
Meadowmane was having a hard time keeping his footing. The ice was splintering so fast that Emmeline knew, in the pit of her heart, that before too long they’d all be swallowed by the glacier. She started to imagine how it would feel to fall into a never-ending crevasse, and she shuddered.
From behind her came a shriek so angry, so otherworldly, that it made her want to curl up into a ball and hide, and she felt the vibration, the thunderous shaking underfoot, that let her know the beast was coming fast. Meadowmane cried out, stumbling with every step.
Who made the sacrifice? Emmeline fought for breath as she remembered Igimaq’s words.
It didn’t eat my parents, she thought, throwing a pained glance toward Igimaq’s sled, where their silent forms lay, wrapped in furs. Her heart was too full to think about them, and she hoped there’d be a chance to see them properly one last time, before the end. It didn’t eat me, or Sasha. Monsieur Pichon and Xantha died in the fall—so it didn’t eat them. She swallowed. And surely Dr. Bauer was squished as the Kraken hauled itself out of the pool. He was right in its way, and it’s not like he was able to run. She racked her brain. And everyone else is here. She shook her head, leaning into Meadowmane’s neck. His familiar warmth, and his scent, filled her mind. Come on! Think!
With a start Emmeline realized it had begun to snow. Tiny, crystalline flakes were tumbling out of the pitch-black sky, gentle and delicate as lace. Emmeline held out her hand, bloodied and bruised, and a miniature snowflake fell on her raw skin. It sparkled, just for a second, before it melted away.
Something at the base of her brain gave a kick, and she blinked as she tried to keep hold of the thread of thought.
Sparkling.
Ice.
The Northwitch.
The Northwitch! She went into the lake, and she didn’t come out! Emmeline caught her breath, her heart clanging like a handbell. Does she count? It needs a living sacrifice…
“But who put her there?” She scrunched her eyes shut and tried to think. Xantha had bashed the pipe against the structure, and the noise had paralyzed the Northwitch, but was that it? Was Xantha the one who had made the sacrifice? In that case, there was no hope—she was dead now too.
But was that it? Wasn’t there something else?
Then, suddenly, Emmeline remembered, like a dream, how it had felt to pull the heavy stolen spoon out of her pocket. How she’d balanced it in her fingers. How she’d flung it, and how it had swooped through the air and smashed straight into the Northwitch’s face—shattering her into a million pieces.
All of which had fallen into the Kraken’s pool.
She blinked once and made her decision.
“I’ve got to go back, boy,” she murmured, leaning forward to grip Meadowmane’s neck, her every muscle tight and urgent. “Will you help me?” Meadowmane whinnied, and the sound of it made Thing turn, almost tripping over an opening in the ice. The look in Emmeline’s eyes scared him.
“I’ll see you later!” she called, raising her hand.
“Oi! No you bleedin’ don’t! Where you off to now?”
Emmeline just shook her head and pulled Meadowmane around.
“Emmeline!” yelled Thing. She didn’t stop. “Blast it!” he muttered.
The snow fell on Thing as he ran, flickering into his eyes and getting stuck in his mouth. Meadowmane’s tail stood out like a burst of flame. Then Thing realized he could see, out of the corner of his eye, other flecks of reddish orange, like a load of distant campfires—but all of them were moving. The air was full of thumping hooves and whinnies.
Exhausted and confused, Thing ran on.
The Kraken roared into view like a giant tidal wave, slick and oily and horrifying. Its beak was wide open, and its huge eyes—big as planets, big as Thing’s imagination could go—were fixed on the horses, and the girl, running toward it. Its tentacles seemed miles long. Somewhere he heard the cry of an animal in pain as a barbed sucker lashed out among the red-maned horses. Still, Thing kept running. Emmeline was somewhere ahead of him, but in the sea of white and red he was finding it hard to keep up, and almost impossible to keep track of her.
Then he heard her voice, a clear note amid the tumult.
“Go back!”
she was shouting. “Go back into the ice! I command you!” He saw Meadowmane rearing up and smashing his front hooves down on the ice. A huge crack opened between the horse and the Kraken, a shivering yawn in the ice. Soon all the horses were following suit, rearing and stamping in unison, their hooves sparking off the ice and causing a multitude of wide, weeping cracks to open up, as though a giant knife had slashed at the glacier’s face. Over and over they did it, making the ground in front of the Kraken begin to collapse into itself like a sinkhole into darkness. They burned, blinding white and fire red, and Thing felt awed by their power. Watching them, it was easy to believe they’d galloped straight out of a legend.
They’re trying to make a new hole for it, Thing realized. A new prison! The Kraken seemed to realize it too, and it roared again, lashing out at the horses with renewed energy. Thing ducked as a tentacle whipped over his head, dripping and glistening and muscular and vicious, and he stayed down for a long time after that, trying to catch his breath. I hope those ol’ stories were right, he thought, his eyes on Emmeline’s tiny frame.
“Go! Leave us in peace! I made the sacrifice to you, and I am telling you to return to the ice and never bother us again! Those are the rules!” Emmeline’s voice sounded so insignificant amid the roaring of the beast and the whinnying and stamping from all around. Thing rolled himself to his feet and watched as, leaning on Meadowmane’s patient neck, Emmeline stood up as high as she could.
“Didn’t you hear me, you giant piece of fish bait?” screamed Emmeline, shaking her fist at the Kraken. “I told you to go back into the ice!”
At that the Kraken released a bellow so gigantic it left Thing’s knees knocking. A stinking, wet wind filled with rage sprayed all around. All Thing wanted was to throw himself on the ice and beg for mercy, but Emmeline wasn’t having any of it.
“I’m not going to tell you again!” she shouted.
As she spoke, the Kraken whip-cracked a tentacle in Emmeline and Meadowmane’s direction. It was tipped with sharp hooks that looked like bone, each of them longer than a man’s body. With a bloodcurdling shriek the beast swept Meadowmane off his feet. Thing blinked wildly as both the horse and Emmeline disappeared from sight and the Kraken itself tipped sideways like a giant tree being felled.
Finally Emmeline’s command had been heard. The Kraken started to slither slowly back into the ice, seeming none too happy about it.
Not that Thing cared much, right then, about anything but Emmeline.
He flung himself forward, crossing in three huge leaps the distance between where he stood and where Emmeline had fallen. He slid to his knees just in time to stop himself from spilling headlong into the crevasse, within which he could see the Kraken struggling to gain purchase on any bit of ice it could reach. Its tentacles were flailing, and one giant eye rolled to face him. It saw Thing and bellowed.
“Get out! Go on!” he yelled at it. Creeping to the edge of the cracking, growing crevasse, he forced himself to look down.
He couldn’t see any trace of Meadowmane or Emmeline, just a few drops of what appeared to be blood on a jagged lump of ice about ten feet from the lip of the crevasse. His heart punched against his rib cage.
Then a tiny noise—barely more than a whimper—drew his eyes to a ledge a few feet to his left, where a small figure lay curled up. He couldn’t see Emmeline’s face, but he knew it was her, all right.
“Ems! Hang on, mate! I’m comin’!” Thing slithered to his feet and raced toward the spot, then flung himself down into the crevasse. The ice was shifting and moving all around them, creaking and cracking and booming as it went, and Thing had a terrible feeling this ledge wouldn’t be a ledge for much longer. He spared a second to look around for Meadowmane again, but there was no sign of him, and Thing hoped he’d somehow scrambled to safety. He wouldn’t leave Ems, though, would he? “Come on, Ems,” he said, slapping her face lightly. “Come on! You’ve got to wake up. Please, mate! We’ve gotta move!” Thing watched her eyes flickering, and a tiny frown appeared on her forehead.
“Maybe you’d like me to dance a jig,” she said, her voice cracked and hoarse. Her mouth curled up into a tiny hint of a smile.
“Nah. Not a jig,” said Thing, grinning through his tears. “A Highland fling, maybe.”
“Not a chance,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck.
Thing had just managed to climb out of the fissure, Emmeline clinging to his back, when the ledge they’d been on collapsed into the chasm. With one final roar the Kraken slid down, deep into the huge crack in the glacier, and the Æsirsmounts watched it go, standing around the hole like a troop of fiery sentinels. Emmeline clambered down from Thing’s back, looking around, as the horses began to disperse.
“Meadowmane,” whispered Emmeline, turning back to face her friend. “Did you see him?” Thing just shook his head, and Emmeline crumpled as she stared down into the darkness that had swallowed the Kraken—and, presumably, the gentle horse who had given his life to save hers.
She grabbed Thing’s hand, and he gripped her fingers tightly.
Thing shoveled another grilled kipper into his mouth, grinning happily—if a little greasily.
“I could get used to this, y’know,” he informed the table. “Just sayin’.” Mr. Widget lowered his newspaper and twinkled across at him.
“It’s nice to have some life about the old place, right enough,” he said, glancing at his wife. Mrs. Widget, her broken arm still strapped to her side, chuckled as she spooned up another mouthful of porridge. It sat grayly on her spoon, quivering slightly.
“This really isn’t the same without Mrs. Mitchell,” she sighed. “The new cook just doesn’t have her knack.”
“Well. She’s not a traitorous tattletale, either,” Mr. Widget pointed out, folding his newspaper and putting it to one side. Emmeline still couldn’t quite believe Mrs. Mitchell, the permanently floury cook, had been the one intercepting telegrams and passing details to Bauer, but looking back, she saw it made a sort of sense. Few other people were trusted enough to have access to the Widget family. It had simply been a happy accident that Mrs. Mitchell had also been extremely good at the job the Widgets had been paying her to do. Mrs. Widget looked at her husband and grimaced before digging into her porridge with fresh enthusiasm.
“Come on, darling,” said Mr. Widget, turning to Emmeline. “You know the rules now. No working at the table.” She whuffed out an impatient breath and placed her pencil between the pages of her notebook, marking her place.
“We’re going to carry on later, though, aren’t we?” She closed the notebook carefully. A label on the front of it said THE OSCAR FILES in Emmeline’s handwriting. “We’re just getting to the good bit on that last case.”
“The one with the unicorn?” said Mrs. Widget thickly, swallowing her porridge. “Or the one with the griffin? I can’t remember where we’d got to.”
“The unicorn, Mum,” Emmeline reminded her. “You were telling me about how you found it, up on that mountain in Peru.”
“Ah, yes. We missed your fifth birthday because of that expedition,” she replied, blinking slowly as she gazed at her husband.
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t remember it anyway,” said Emmeline, not quite truthfully, reaching for a nearby plate piled high with toast.
“That’s not going to happen again,” said Mr. Widget, covering Emmeline’s free hand with his own. “No more missing birthdays. No more lying—or not telling the truth, at least. No more trying to keep you safe by keeping you afraid.”
“It’s all right, Dad,” she said quietly. “Really.”
“It’s not,” he said. “But we’re going to change all that now.”
Emmeline smiled and took a huge, buttery mouthful as she met Thing’s eye. He grinned at her.
“And what about the name question, young man?” said Mrs. Widget, turning to him. “We can’t very well tell people our new family member is simply called Thing, can we?”
“Nothin’ wrong with it,�
� retorted Thing. “Done me well so far, it has.”
“That’s true,” agreed Mrs. Widget. “But still. I’d prefer you to have a public name, if you know what I mean. A name for your passport for when we visit Igimaq and Qila, and Madame, and Sasha and Edgar.”
“Like the Queen an’ her two birthdays,” said Thing happily, before burping. “ ’Scuse me,” he added quietly.
“Exactly.” Mr. Widget smiled.
“And you’re sure you don’t want us to make any more inquiries into the whereabouts of your family—I mean, your birth family? It’s up to you, of course—”
“Nope. Plus, I’m happy right ’ere.” He sliced a glance across the table at Emmeline. “Ain’t you happy to have me ’ere?”
“Don’t ask ridiculous questions,” sighed Emmeline, returning to her toast.
“That’s settled it, then,” said Mrs. Widget, looking at her husband. “Perhaps we should have Watt bring in the paperwork, darling. What do you think?”
“I have it ready, madam, in the drawing room. It is laid out on your writing table, as neatly as I could manage.” Watt leaned over to Emmeline and ruffled her hair, causing her to shoot him a look of exasperation.
“Thank you, Watt,” said Mr. Widget. “Excellent work, as always.”
“A pleasure, sir.”
“Hey—you know this name thing?” said Emmeline, wiping butter off her face with the back of her hand. “Well, how would you feel about Michel?”
“Michel,” said Thing, feeling a sudden need to blink. “Not sure I’m big enough to fill out a name like that, t’be honest.” He cleared his throat quietly.
“I think it’s extremely fitting, young sir,” said Watt. “If I may say.”
“Michel,” repeated Thing, considering. “Michel T. Widget. Sounds sort of important, yeah?”
“You’ll grow into it, you know.” Emmeline shoved in another mouthful of toast. “Give it time,” she muttered crumbily.
Thing looked at her and grinned. “Yeah,” he said, settling himself more comfortably in his chair. “Michel. I like it.”
The Eye of the North Page 24