by Ruth Eastham
Skuli gingerly touched his head where Lukas had smacked him. “He shouldn’t have said that about your dad.”
“Let’s get home, I said.”
They walked together in silence along the track, Jack tensed up for any sign of trouble. They passed the end of Church Lane and saw the first few houses at the end of the main street.
“Look, Jack.” Skuli took a paper bird from his pocket – one of those ridiculous things he’d been making in class. He pulled the tail, and the wings flapped so delicately that Jack couldn’t keep himself from grinning. “You try.”
With a sigh, Jack took the bird. Up and down the wings went, in jerky little movements. Skuli burst out laughing, nodding his head, and Jack found himself laughing too. Something about Skuli reminded him of Vinnie.
“You should tell your dad what happened,” said Jack. “Maybe he’ll want to have a word with Lukas’s dad or something.”
Skuli’s face fell. “My dad’s away,” he muttered. “But you won’t tell anyone, will you?” he added quickly.
“Why? How long’s he been away for?”
“Only since two days ago. He’s got a mountain rescue conference in Oslo. It’s really big; they only have it every two years. And then he’s going to talk to some restaurants there – see if he can sell his catches to them. We really need the money.”
A mountain-rescue fisherman? Jack frowned. “So who’s looking after you then?”
“No one.” Skuli tugged at a lock of hair. “I’m old enough to look after myself for a few days! Dad thinks so too. Anyway, he left me money, and loads of food in the fridge and…”
“OK, OK,” said Jack. A kid at home alone. Big deal. It happened all the time. It wasn’t as if Skuli was five. “Your dad shouldn’t have left you though.” He thought about his own dad and there was that familiar little stab in his chest so he had to turn away. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Thanks.” Skuli gave a laugh of relief. “I knew I could trust you. I could tell. Soon as I saw you.”
Skuli paused and his face went all serious. He was staring intently at Jack again, and then he looked worriedly along the empty street. He unzipped the front pocket of his coat and took something from it. Something wrapped in newspaper. Jack got glimpses of headlines. FREAK WEATHER CONTINUES. COLDEST SUMMER ON RECORD.
Skuli hesitated, then held the bundle out. Jack took a step back, almost stumbling. “What is it?”
“Take it!”
There was something in Skuli’s voice; something urgent, pleading almost. Jack breathing speeded up without him having any idea why. He looked at the bundle in Skuli’s hand. Somewhere overhead there was a flurry of wings.
“Take it,” whispered Skuli.
Jack curled his fingers round the bundle. He lifted it into his palm.
The breeze tugged at the cuffs of his jacket, strong and raw, but the wrapping was warm, as if there was something alive underneath. Jack slowly peeled away the layers, the newspaper dropping to the ground.
Inside was a piece of golden metal. It fit his palm exactly, and was strangely warm against his skin. Heavy too. Maybe it was real gold? He lifted it to the light, his mouth dropping open. “Amazing,” he heard himself say. The gold had a brilliant sheen. Delicate patterns curved across its surface, the twisting lines fusing so you couldn’t see the start or the end.
A pattern of tiny lines was engraved around its edge. Jack couldn’t take his eyes away. It looked like old Viking writing. Runes. He ran a finger over them.
“Careful,” said Skuli. “It’s dangerous.”
He showed Jack the line of a half-healed wound on his hand. “I got cut the first time I held it. Really deep, though it healed super fast. I think it’s from an arrow – though it’s pretty weird to use gold for something like that.”
Nodding, Jack peered at the engravings on the golden arrowhead, nicking his skin as he turned it over. Scarlet beads of blood trickled in a line along his hand, but he hardly noticed. He liked the way the warm gold felt, and his fingers curled over it protectively…
Then the church bell struck. A single dull clang that quivered through the air, pulling Jack out of his trance.
“Half past five,” Skuli said to himself.
“Here,” said Jack, “take it back.” He tried to hand the glinting triangle to Skuli, cutting himself again in his haste, deeper this time. Dark red blood oozed across his wrist, smearing over his skin as he tried to wipe it away.
Skuli shook his head.
“I don’t want it…” said Jack. His heart hammered with panic, but a weird kind of thrill too. He found himself putting the arrowhead into the chest pocket of his jacket and zipping it up. “Where did you get it from anyway?”
Skuli leant close and spoke in a whisper.
“In the ice.”
Jack blinked at him. “The ice? What do you mean?”
Skuli’s voice was hard to hear. “Yes. The ice. And there were other things too.” Then there was that troubled look on his face. The wind pulled his hair into thick black tufts. Overhead the cables between telegraph poles were jumping tautly from side to side, like whips. Skuli looked Jack straight in the eye.
“The plague of air will be the start.”
He looked away. “Sorry. Something from that stupid poem again. Can’t get it out of my head.” He was looking past Jack, down the street, then suddenly he spoke right by Jack’s ear, his voice curious and afraid. “But you do look just like him.”
“Who?” asked Jack.
Skuli eyed some kids hovering at the far end of the street. “Can’t talk here. Come on. I’ll show you.”
“Wait,” called Jack, but Skuli was already moving fast, turning up the steep lane that led to the church.
Jack stared after him. Half five. He should be tucking into cake and hot chocolate at Gran and Gramp’s kafé by now. Sno, his dog, would be waiting for him, and there’d be nobody spouting creepy poetry.
He felt the arrowhead, heavy by his chest. From the ice. But where? What was the big mystery?
“I have to show you – now!” Skuli called back without stopping, bending his head into the wind.
“Wait!” shouted Jack. “Skuli!”
And the cloud shadows slipped along the pavements after them, slick as mercury, and the tiny shadow of a raven circled high up in the sky.
2
THROUGH THE GRAVEYARD GATE
There’ll be wild weather, with windstorms dreadful.
The Great Lacuna
“Skuli!
Wait, can’t you?”
Why couldn’t he have put on this kind of speed when the mob was after him?
The plague of air will be the start. No wonder he was Skuli-no-mates, going on like that!
Jack had to sprint to catch up. As he turned up Church Lane, he saw colourful bunting strung between telegraph poles and a ragged poster flapping on a lamppost:
ISDAL’S WORLD FAMOUS
FESTIVAL OF THE MIDNIGHT SOLSTICE
STARTS IN JUST TWO DAYS!!!
HOT FEAST, BONFIRE, FIREWORK SPECTACULAR
GO BACK IN TIME…
Where was Skuli taking him?
“Wait! Skuli!”
The lane wound up to a few parking spaces on the edge of a graveyard, which was spread over a saddle of land attached on the base of the Brennbjerg mountain. The dark wood walls of the stave church loomed over the cemetery, crosses and dragonheads jutting from its roofs.
Jack followed the path as it weaved between the gravestones. He thought about the arrowhead. Maybe it was stolen? Maybe Skuli was scared of being caught with it? If it was real gold it must be worth a lot. Jack veered past an angel with a missing wing, shuddering as he brushed against its cold stone. Where were they going?
Skuli paused at the far end of the graveyard, glanced back at Jack
, then disappeared into a knot of spindly trees.
Jack pushed his way through the rough branches and spiky leaves after him.
“Skuli?” he called, struggling to see ahead as he stumbled on. His hands batted something spongy but solid. An overgrown wall, crawling with moss and ivy. He heard Skuli call to his right and followed the wall to a rusty gate with bars and spikes, half hidden by thorny stems. Skuli stood on the other side, holding the gate open. Once Jack had passed, the wind swung the gate closed with a drawn-out whine and a click.
Beyond the gate was a standing stone higher than Jack’s head, completely covered with lichens. Skuli turned away and started to climb a narrow snaking trail. Jack followed him, stepping carefully through the gully of loose rocks.
After a while, the track opened out into a steep-sided, shadowy valley, fringed with immense, grooved granite boulders. Behind them the church bell clanged, and there was the sound of rushing water, getting louder as they picked their way upwards.
They were right at the foot of the mountain now. Jack caught his breath as he stared at the jagged rock cliffs above him. They walked on, finally coming out on a wider path he recognized. There was a splintering wooden board with a date, 1870, and the words EDGE OF GLACIER. Every so often there was another board with a date, marking the shrinking edge of the ice. 1880, 1890… The date boards got closer and closer together, so you could see how much the melting must have speeded up.
The sound of water turned into a rumbling growl. They rounded a bend and came to the bank of a river, racing dark past them and down the valley. The melt river of the Brennbjerg glacier.
The glacier. Ice. Hadn’t Skuli said he’d found the arrowhead in the ice? Jack shuddered, but he didn’t have time to stop. Skuli was walking fast and he’d lag too far behind if he did.
And anyway, how would he explain how he was feeling to Skuli? What would he say? Sorry, Skuli, I don’t do ice. Can’t stand being anywhere near it. Can’t even bear ice cubes in my Coke. Which one of them would seem the total loony then?
But he felt the strange heaviness of the arrowhead pressing against him through his chest pocket.
Jack cursed under his breath and hurried on.
The melt river ran fast beside them. Floating chunks of ice swept past. Jack tried to squeeze out the rising panic and recall facts; a lesson with his geography teacher back home.
A glacier is a river of ice, flowing slowly down the mountain…
Ice can stay in a glacier for more than a thousand years…
Pressure compacts the ice and turns it blue…
And then they rounded another bend and Jack stumbled to a stop, caught his breath. There was the glacier, stretching up the mountain and out of sight.
It wasn’t the first time Jack had seen the Isdal glacier, but it was more spectacular than he remembered. It was the angle of the sun maybe; the way the pale light was seeping over it, making the gashed sheet glow silver and sapphire.
Skuli turned to him, beaming, and Jack forced a smile in return. He felt the glacier towering over him as they approached; the immenseness of it. They were right up close to the frozen ridge now. Water thundered from the dirty hem of ice at its base. The streams flowed into the wide melt river that slicked away.
The rope barrier that separated the path from the cliff lurched in the wind like a manic skipping rope. A metal sign had been driven into the rock: DANGER . There was a picture of a stick figure falling amid jagged tumbling shapes.
Skuli dodged under the barrier and made his way towards the side of the main face, where the ice was buckled grey against the polished rock. He began to climb the high, jumbled pile of boulders, like they were giant steps.
Jack stayed at the bottom, cupping his hand to shout to Skuli. “What, we’re going on to the glacier?”
“Yes. Come on!” Skuli beckoned him impatiently. He stood waiting on a thin ledge of rock, his face pinched with cold.
“You can’t be serious!” He must be mad. You didn’t walk on glaciers. Not without the proper equipment; not without a guide. The same way you didn’t run across motorways. No way.
“We won’t be on the actual glacier,” called Skuli. “Not really. Anyway, I’ve been up here loads of times. It’s safe. Well, kind of.”
Stop being feeble, Jack told himself. Rather sip cocoa with your granny, would you? Skuli says its OK. His dad does mountain rescue, so he should know, right? Don’t you want to find out where he found the arrowhead?
He stepped slowly past the wooden DANGER sign with its falling stick figure. He eased himself under the twitching rope barrier and started to climb the rock slope.
What’s the worst that can happen anyway? He smiled to himself grimly. You step on a crevasse hidden by a thin layer of ice and fall hundreds of metres to your gruesome death. Nothing much to worry about really.
“Follow where I put my feet,” Skuli called back. “Keep to the rock.”
Then he was gone, dropping suddenly over the top of a slanting crest of ice.
“Skuli?” called Jack, his stomach turning over with fear. “Where are you?”
Skuli’s face bobbed above the white slope, then disappeared again. Jack scrambled up the snowy incline after him.
He found himself on a wide platform of granite jutting from the valley wall into the edge of the glacier. The flat area had been shielded from view from below by a bulge in the wall of rock. Skuli was crouched at the far side of the platform, and as Jack approached he saw what Skuli was staring at. An opening in the ice.
Jack knelt beside him and looked down.
The hole was maybe a metre across. Inside was a kind of tunnel with an ice slope slanted like a giant slide, downwards and out of sight. Skuli pointed to where footholds had already been gouged for climbing down. Jack saw the same sort of set-up used by rock climbers: a thick red rope down one side of the slope, the top end looped through a metal peg fixed in the granite.
“I put the rope there,” said Skuli. He got a head torch from his pocket and fixed it on. “I told you – I’ve been up here loads.” He took another head torch out and handed it to Jack. “You’ll need this. Watch me first.” Skuli held the rope with two hands and began to climb down.
“Hang on!”
But Skuli was already a way below him. His eyes glinted up at Jack from inside. One hand still holding the rope, he crouched against the ice wall, straightening one leg, and then the other so he was sitting. Then, with a slight sideways grin back at Jack, he let go of the rope and slid away out of sight.
Jack gasped. The rope wobbled, limp. He twisted on his head torch and stared down into the hole. There was no sign of Skuli. Jack’s chest squeezed tight. He must have fallen. Misjudged it. Maybe the ice gave way…
“Come on!” Skuli’s muffled voice echoed up.
“The idiot!” Jack muttered. He hesitated, then took hold of the rope. What am I doing? Breathing hard, he gripped the rope in both hands and pressed a foot into the first toe-hole.
Hand over hand he climbed down. The gaps were well spaced and just the right size for the front of his foot to hinge into. Ice crystals reflected back the yellow beam of his head torch. He reached the place where Skuli had sat down. He waited a few seconds to get his nerve, then took a breath and eased himself round, keeping his heels pressed tight into the footholds. Then he slowly straightened one leg…
Jack looked down. Big mistake! He still couldn’t see the end of the ice tunnel, even with the torch beam shining right into it.
“Skuli!”
Troll Boy Skuli, a voice inside him taunted. Skuli Isaksen is half troll! That’s why he likes being under the ground…
“I’ve had enough of this!” Jack swung himself round to climb back up, but realized too late that he was sliding forward. He let out a stifled cry and clawed at the glassy surface, desperate to get a hold on the ice he hated…
&nb
sp; But it was too late. He was travelling downwards, gathering pace through the tunnel, slipping faster and faster over the ice. Over and through and under.
3
ICE CAVE
Bark of rivers
and roof of the wave
and destruction of the doomed.
The Icelandic Rune Poem
Fast and faster went Jack, a human bobsleigh propelled by the slip of the ice. The cold took his breath away so he couldn’t even scream. Light from his head torch skimmed the curved, racing tunnel; shadows flapped round like inky wings. Then the head torch was ripped off, plunging him into darkness. Icy spray stung his eyes as he fought and failed to find any kind of grip. He careered downwards, his face pulled taut by the speed, his body braced for impact.
There was a bump in the ice. Jack was flung up into the air and landed with a thud. The surface under him levelled and he slowed, finally spinning to a stop in a pitch black nothing.
Gradually his blinking eyes adjusted to the gloom. He had landed on his knees on a solid, cold surface. Light leaked from the tunnel he’d slid through, and there were thin shafts of sunlight from scattered openings in the roof.
He gazed at the enormous icicles hanging in jagged clusters, realizing that he was in some kind of cave. Columns sprouted from the floor, their glassy rounded tops glinting. There were strange sculptures everywhere: folds of blue ice streaked with pearly bubbles and silver veins; large blocks like tombstones jutting up from the cave floor.
Jack scrambled to his feet. I’m under the ice. He hugged his arms tight round his chest.
“You OK?” Skuli was by him, holding his arm to help him up. “Here’s your torch.”
“You could have warned me,” Jack muttered.
“Sorry.”
There were noises; creaking, dripping sounds that vibrated eerily around the chamber. A drop struck Jack’s cheek and ran down his collar.