The Polar Bear Explorers' Club

by Alex Bell

  In the end, it was the dolls’ house version of the castle that gave Stella the idea. As it seemed to be an exact replica of the real castle, right down to the items inside the various rooms, Stella decided to study it in order to get an idea of the layout. If an opportunity for escape were to arise, the last thing she wanted was to go charging down a corridor into a dead end, or find herself trapped in the pantry, or wasting time strumming at lutes in the music room.

  She’d got quite excited when she’d spotted a little room with a plaque that said ‘Armoury’ on the door, imagining that it would be full of swords and maces and axes that might help them escape. But when she peered into the room, she found only spinning wheels, and shiny red apples, and jewelled hair combs – ideal weapons for evil queens to use, but not much use to a junior explorer.

  The dolls’ castle even had its own dungeon, hidden beneath the floor, and Stella spent some time working out the quickest way to get down there, even managing to plan out a route that would avoid going past any of the magic mirrors.

  At the top of the staircase that led down to the dungeon was a huge library. Stella peered at the minute books on the bookshelves and saw that they all seemed to be fairy tales. With the edge of her thumbnail, she pulled out one of the books to see if it had actual writing inside, but when she removed the book, the entire bookcase swung open to reveal a secret passage hidden behind. Stella was delighted. All castles ought to have secret passages, and this could provide them with their means of escape.

  On the morning of the third day, Stella had decided she couldn’t wait any longer and would have to risk using her ice powers. When the two trolls came to deliver her breakfast, she concentrated really hard on turning them into ice, and to her relief it worked exactly the same as it had with the candelabrum. The trolls were quite a bit larger than the candelabrum, though, and Stella felt even more of a chill this time, as if a bucket of icy water had been thrown in her face. She shivered, shook it off and concentrated her thoughts on what she needed to do: get down to the dungeon, find her friends, escape.

  She tried to tiptoe along the corridor, but chunky snow boots aren’t designed for tiptoeing and so she was forced to take them off and carry them in her hand as she went along the corridor and down the stairs. Following the route she’d memorised from the dolls’ house castle, Stella swiftly made her way down to the dungeon, taking care to avoid any corridors with magic mirrors hanging in them. This meant she had to take a rather roundabout kind of route, which led her past a vast fish tank that took up an entire wall and was filled with drifting pink jellyfish, and also through rooms that stored some more of her mother’s collections, only these objects were not as nice as the jewelled eggs and music boxes she’d seen upstairs. The huge collection of iron slippers was particularly horrible. They were all sizes and shapes, to suit all different types of creature including – from the look of some of them – frosties, and even yetis.

  Finally, Stella reached the staircase that led down to the dungeons, diving into it quickly in order to avoid two trolls who were clumping along the corridor towards her. She put her boots back on then because the steps were wet with condensation, and she wanted to be able to run away very fast if she needed to.

  The stairs were lit by flickering sconces but, as Stella went further down, it started to feel darker and darker. She hoped her friends were all right and that they hadn’t been chained to the wall or anything uncivilized like that. Stella knew from studying the dolls’ castle that the dungeon was a warren of cells, and she expected to have some difficulty locating the right one. But in fact, she heard Ethan’s loud, carrying voice the moment she reached the bottom of the staircase.

  ‘—is nothing to do with any of us,’ he was saying. ‘We’re not ice princesses, for heaven’s sake!’

  Stella peered around the corner and saw a troll holding up a mirror and facing it towards a cell. She could make out Ethan, Shay and Beanie stood on the other side of the bars, and was just about to wave to try to catch their attention when the magic mirror spoke. ‘So you’ll go?’ it said. ‘You’ll agree to return to your own people and leave the ice princess behind?’

  ‘We can’t leave Stella behind,’ Beanie said. ‘We just can’t.’

  Stella felt a surge of affection for Beanie, but the next moment, Ethan grabbed the front of his cloak and slammed him up against the wall of the cell. ‘We can leave her behind, and we’re going to!’ he said – in fact he almost snarled the words at the smaller boy. ‘I am not going to spend the rest of my life locked up in this foul place for anyone – not for anyone, do you understand?’

  Beanie shoved the magician away and turned to Shay. ‘You don’t agree with him, do you?’

  Shay shook his head and said, ‘Look, I don’t want to leave Stella here any more than you do. But we have a responsibility to our clubs. And there’s no point in all of us staying locked up. That isn’t going to help anyone, including Stella.’

  Stella could hardly believe what she was hearing. She supposed Ethan and Shay were right, in a way, but she’d never thought that they would agree to abandon her so easily, especially when she was on her way to rescue them. Had they even tried to escape? Had they at least considered a rescue attempt before deciding to leave her to her fate?

  Beanie tried to argue with them a little more, but it was a bit half-hearted and he was outnumbered. In no time at all, it had been agreed that the three explorers were to be set free, taking with them the sled and wolves and unicorn.

  Stella turned and raced back up the stairs the way she’d come. If she wasn’t on that sled when it left then she’d have no way of getting home and no way of surviving out in the frozen wilderness by herself. She would be trapped here, maybe forever. No doubt Felix would try to rescue her, but Stella knew it was no good sitting around and waiting to be rescued. No one ever got anywhere that way.

  She took the stairs two at a time, dived into the library and hastily ran her eye down the spines of the books in the far corner of the room until she found the one she was looking for. She yanked it from the shelf, and to her relief it worked just the same as it had in the dolls’ castle – the entire bookcase swung open to reveal a hidden passage behind.

  Stella hurried through, drawing the bookshelf door closed after her. As with the rest of the castle when she’d first arrived, the secret passageway seemed to come to life in her presence: the sconces on the walls lit themselves, although the passage remained dusty and cobwebby – perhaps because secret passageways were supposed to be dusty and cobwebby.

  Stella didn’t know where the secret passage led – she just hoped it would get her outside the castle, and she wasn’t disappointed. Soon enough she walked up some steps, opened a sliding door and found herself in some kind of garden shed, filled with skates and sleigh blankets. She opened the door and stepped outside into the cold, frosty air, squinting in the sudden bright sunlight, and the twinkling glow of the starflakes. Gazing around, she wondered what had become of their sled and animals. Perhaps there was a stable in the grounds somewhere and everything had been put there?

  Stella kept re-hearing the conversation in the dungeon over and over again in her mind, and it was giving her the most terribly hollow feeling. Even Beanie hadn’t tried all that hard to stand up for her, and that stung worst of all.

  She told herself to get it together. She couldn’t be thinking about such things right now. She had to find the sled and somehow hide herself on it before it was too late. She had no idea how she was going to do that, seeing as there wasn’t much room to hide on a sled, but she had to at least try concealing herself under a blanket or something.

  But then she saw the sled itself, heading away from the castle with all three explorers on it, the wolves panting and huffing, the unicorn trotting along behind – and her heart sank like a stone into the pit of her stomach.

  They had left her. They had really left her at the snow queen’s castle.

  She was alone.

  CHAPTER TW
ENTY-TWO

  For a long moment, Stella simply stood there, not knowing what to do. Then she became aware of some kind of activity from within the castle, and dozens of stone trolls came swarming through the front doors, heading off in all different directions. Stella guessed they were looking for her. They must have discovered the two trolls she’d turned to ice outside her room, and raised the alarm.

  She turned and stumbled back towards the shed she’d just come from, thankful that her boots didn’t leave footprints in the starflakes. Perhaps she could hide in the secret passage for a while, until she figured out what to do. Part of her wondered whether there was even any point. Perhaps she should just turn herself over to the trolls right this moment. After all, she couldn’t leave the castle now. Not without a tent or a sled or any supplies at all. Ice princess or not, she’d freeze to death during the first night for sure. And yet, just returning meekly to the castle with the stone trolls would be giving up. There had to be some way out of this, something she hadn’t thought of …

  So Stella ran back into the shed and through the hidden door in the wall. She dragged it closed behind her and then sat down in despair to think on the floor of the secret passageway. And that was where she stayed for the rest of the day. Several times she heard trolls clumping into the shed to search it but they obviously didn’t know about the secret passage, and her hiding place remained undisturbed.

  At one point she rummaged in her bag for her little igloo of penguins and felt profoundly sorry for herself when it occurred to her that these were the only friends she had left. The little penguin family didn’t seem like their usual cheery selves either. In fact, when Stella peeked inside, she saw they were all gathered around a framed photo of a rather grand-looking penguin, shaking their heads and blowing their noses into spotted handkerchiefs. Stella thought that maybe the penguins had a friend who’d deserted them, too.

  Finally, once evening arrived, everything seemed to quieten down and Stella risked creeping back out into the shed. The trolls had left everything in a bit of a mess and Stella started sorting through it all – looking for anything that might be helpful. She would just have to start building her exploring supplies up again from scratch. There were blankets in the shed but Stella would need a lot more than that to survive on her own in the Icelands. She would have to sneak back into the castle to look for the rest of her supplies, but music boxes and jewelled eggs weren’t going to help her much, nor were poison apples and spinning wheels. And she’d have to be pretty lucky to find a magic goose or a baby volcano in there.

  Stella shouldered her bag and opened the door of the shed, intending to have a poke around the grounds in search of anything that might be useful. The sparkling starflakes coating the snow and castle turrets continued to give off a soft, silver light, so she could see perfectly well.

  And then she saw it. There, over on the other side of the castle, clear as anything in the bright moon and starlight, was the explorers’ sled. There were no people in it, but she could see all the wolves, and even Glacier the unicorn stood nearby.

  Stella had heard that explorers from the Desert Jackal Explorers’ Club sometimes saw mirages – things that weren’t really there at all – when they ventured out into the desert, but she’d never heard of this happening to polar explorers before. But she didn’t waste any more time thinking about it, and hurried straight over to the sled.

  The cold wood certainly felt real enough beneath her fingers, and so did the warm coats of the wolves, who greeted her happily and tried to lick her hands. As Stella stared at them in wonder, she heard the sounds of a squabble behind her.

  She turned back towards the castle and her eyes widened at the sight of Ethan, Shay and Beanie, all suspended from a rope they had managed to throw over the turret roof. They appeared to be slowly climbing up towards the nursery window by bracing their boots against the wall and using the rope to haul themselves up. Ethan had reached the window and was staring through it.

  ‘But she must be in there,’ Shay was saying. ‘The trolls said she was being held prisoner in the nursery.’

  ‘I am not blind,’ Ethan said coldly. ‘I tell you, she’s not there.’

  ‘Tap on the window,’ Beanie suggested. ‘Maybe she’s hiding under the bed.’

  Ethan snorted. ‘That doesn’t sound like Stella.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ Stella said from the ground.

  The other three all jumped – and Ethan almost let go of the windowsill. They stared down at her with shocked faces.

  ‘We’re … we’re rescuing you,’ Ethan said at last.

  Before, that would have given Stella a nice warm glow, but it didn’t have quite the same effect when she knew they’d gone off and left her earlier in the day.

  ‘Oh, so you changed your minds and thought you’d better come back for me after all, then?’ she said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Shay said, staring down at her.

  ‘I heard what you said in the dungeon,’ Stella said, crossing her arms. ‘And I saw you drive off in the sled.’

  ‘You idiot!’ Ethan hissed. ‘That was just for show! We planned the whole thing so they’d let us out. It’s pretty hard to rescue someone when you’re locked up in a dungeon!’

  ‘Personally, I thought you over-acted it a bit,’ Shay said. ‘All that snarling, and slamming people up against walls. It was a bit much, Ethan.’

  ‘Beanie didn’t mind,’ Ethan said dismissively. ‘And, anyway, someone had to sell it.’

  ‘But why were you arguing about it if it was your plan all along?’ Stella asked.

  ‘We thought it would look a bit suspicious if we agreed to leave too easily,’ Shay replied.

  ‘How could you hear us in the dungeon, anyway?’ Ethan said. ‘What were you doing down there?’

  ‘I was coming to rescue you,’ Stella said.

  ‘Couldn’t you have waited until night?’ Ethan replied. ‘Everyone knows the best rescue plans take place at night.’

  ‘The best rescue plans do all take place at night,’ Beanie said. ‘But we’re here now, so it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Stella said. ‘Get down from there and let’s go.’

  ‘Just because you’re a princess doesn’t give you the right to be bossy,’ Ethan grumbled.

  ‘Surely being a princess gives me every right to be bossy,’ Stella shot back.

  ‘Well, I’m not calling you “your highness”,’ said Ethan. ‘I’m not bowing, either – magicians don’t bow.’

  The boys hurriedly climbed back down the rope and then Beanie rushed straight over to Stella, took the pom-pom hat from his head and put it straight onto hers, which Stella knew meant he was very pleased to see her.

  ‘I can’t believe you actually thought we would leave you here!’ he said. ‘There’s no way we were ever going to do that.’ He glanced back at the other two and said, ‘Was there?’

  ‘Not a chance,’ Shay replied, walking over to them.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Ethan agreed. He gave Stella a sudden smile – the first time she had ever seen him do so – and said, ‘After all, we’re the first joint expedition in history. We can’t have one of our members getting locked up in a tower by trolls, even if she is a princess. That would be difficult to explain back at the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club. They frown on that sort of thing.’

  Stella grinned back at them. She didn’t think she’d ever been happier to see anyone, and the fact that they’d never really meant to leave her behind made her feel ridiculously happy.

  ‘It’s a shame Ethan’s first plan didn’t work,’ Beanie said as they walked back to the sled. ‘He magicked up some polar beans to see if they could pick the lock on the cell door but they just got stuck in there and waved their arms and legs around, yelling.’

  ‘Let’s not talk about that,’ Ethan said hurriedly.

  They were almost safely back at the sled – when one of the castle doors burst open and a stone troll came stomping out,
shining silver in the moonlight. ‘There she is!’ it shouted. ‘I told you I heard something!’

  The next thing they knew, trolls were running out of every door and jumping out of every window – an entire army of trolls charging straight towards them.

  ‘Run!’ Shay yelled.

  The four of them ran the last few steps. Ethan vaulted up onto the unicorn and Shay leapt onto the back of the sled, leaving Stella and Beanie to tumble into it in a tangle of arms and legs. Unfortunately Beanie landed on Dora, who honked indignantly – but the next moment the wolves were racing off along the snow and starflakes, Ethan and the unicorn galloping along beside them, and the angry yells and shouts of the trolls became nothing more than faint echoes in the distance.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The delay at the castle meant that there was no time to lose in getting back to the meeting point. It had been a fine expedition, but no one wanted to miss the Bold Adventurer and get left behind in the Icelands. So Stella set the compass for Home and they raced across the snow, pausing only to eat and sleep. The compass led them back a different route than the way they had come, and it was very frustrating to everyone that they didn’t have any time left to explore their surroundings, especially when they passed by – in quick succession – an enormous snow shark skeleton, a cottage in the shape of a mushroom and, finally, an entire colony of polar beans industriously building an ark.

  ‘Do they know something we don’t?’ Shay asked as they sped by.

  ‘Who cares?’ Ethan replied. ‘I’ve had enough polar beans to last me a lifetime. I’d never magicked them up before Dad said we were going on a polar expedition.’

  ‘What did you produce when you got your spells wrong at sea, then?’ Stella asked.