I was sick with fright, panicking because they were trapping me there. ‘Let me get past,’ I begged, desperate. ‘I’ve got to find Flynn.’
‘Ooh, Flynn! Is he your little teddy bear?’
‘Leave her alone,’ the scarf girl said suddenly. ‘She’s only a kid.’ She walked her bike forward and parked it in front of me, like a shield. ‘What are you doing here?’ She didn’t speak in the brutal way of the others.
‘I’m looking for Flynn,’ I said. ‘He’s my brother.’
‘There’s no Flynn in my gang,’ she said.
‘He’s only five,’ I told her.
‘Five! He’s a dwarf, then! She’s not Goldilocks, she’s Snow White!!’ the hair-tweaker said.
The girl shoved him with her elbow. ‘Think you’re so clever, don’t you? Shut up, the lot of you!’ she snapped, and amazingly they did.
‘I think he’s been stolen by someone,’ I said. I couldn’t bring myself to mention the name of the Snow Queen in front of them, to be taunted again. And I had no idea who she was really. ‘A woman with white hair and a long blue coat.’
The girl whistled slowly. ‘Oh, yes. They came down here all right. Walked right through us as if we didn’t exist. The little boy didn’t look as if he’d been stolen, though. He was holding her hand and smiling up at her.’
‘It’s him, I know it is.’ Why, oh why, does that woman make him happy? I thought angrily. He used to be happy with me; he used to hold my hand like that. I started to move away, but the girl put her hand on my arm.
‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take my bike. Go on. You’ll be much quicker. Go on, take it.’ She helped me to get on it. ‘You’ll have to stand on the pedals, you’re such a titch,’ she told me. ‘Go straight to the hovel at the end of Townhead Lane. You know where that is?’
I nodded. ‘I think I do. I’ve never noticed a hovel there.’
‘Take my word for it.’ The girl was speaking urgently now, as if she knew exactly what I had to do. She suddenly made me think of the Robber Girl in the story. But how could she be? How could these people have come into my life? I had to trust her, though, because I had no idea what else to do.
‘Leave my bike with the old lady there,’ she went on. ‘She’s my grandma, and she’s a strange person, I warn you. But she’ll tell you where to go next. And here, have my scarf. You look freezing. Quick!’ And she pushed me away.
When I reached the end of the alley, I stopped, not sure which way to go. I could hear the gang shouting, ‘Go left! Go right! Go straight ahead! Turn round!’ And then I saw a white cat staring at me with strange ice-blue eyes. It turned and darted across the road and disappeared into a farm track, and I recognized it as Townhead Lane. I had never noticed before how narrow and bumpy it was, how overgrown and snaggly the hedges were. I followed the cat, swivelling into the dark and silence, desperate to find my brother and take him home. I felt as if the real world was slipping away from me. Of course there was no Snow Queen, I kept trying to tell myself. Of course the girl with the red scarf was just an ordinary girl. And yet something made me carry on, as if I was in the grip of a nightmare and couldn’t wake myself up from it. The old woman would tell me what to do, the girl had said. Hadn’t Gerda been helped by an old woman who lived in an igloo?
It was sleeting now. Wet, sharp flakes were bumbling in the light of the bike lamp, making the farm track slithery, pitting into my eyes like wet darts. As I rode, I kept shouting, ‘Flynn! Flynn!’, hoping that any minute I would see a small boy darting towards me. But no boy came. I was alone. The track was getting steeper. The sleet had turned to snow, buzzing relentlessly towards me. There was no sign of the cat. When the track was too steep, the bike wobbled sideways and I fell off, and then I saw a small light that seemed to be set inside a pile of rubble.
I picked up the bike and wheeled it towards the light. I could see now that it came from an old barn of some sort, reeking of acrid woodsmoke. This must be the girl’s grandmother’s place. Not an igloo at all. How stupid I was to have thought that, or to have believed that she could help me. She wouldn’t even know who I was.
A door opened, the pale light flickered and a voice called, ‘You, girl! Here! Here you are!’
An old woman stood in the doorway, arms folded, smiling as if she had been expecting me. The white cat was winding round her boots. ‘Come in, come in, you’ll perish out there! Temperature’s dropping like a stone. Eh, but it’s no place for a child like you.’
I wasn’t cold, though I was exhausted. I’d never cycled so far before. But I had to go on. ‘I’m looking for my brother,’ I said. I was so tired that I could hardly speak.
‘Oh, yes, I know you are. The little boy,’ the old woman said. ‘Come in, come in,’
Thinking for the moment that she had Flynn safe in her cottage, I stepped inside. The heat was almost overwhelming, but the woman drew me closer to the spitting fire. A pot of stew was hanging over it, bubbling like a witch’s brew, and it smelled wonderful.
‘Is Flynn here?’ I asked. I gazed round at the room. It was nearly bare except for a bed of some sort next to the fire, with a bundle of ragged blankets heaped on it.
‘Oh, no, she’d never bring him here! A queen in my hovel?’
I started. So I was right. It was the Snow Queen who had stolen Flynn. The old woman touched my hand. ‘Sit down on the bed and I’ll give you a bowl of mutton stew. It’s all I have, but it’s good and hot and it’ll keep you going. You’ve a long, hard journey ahead of you, if you intend to carry on.’
Once more I felt like crying. Would it never end? Would I never find Flynn? Was he locked in ice somewhere? What on earth could I do if he was? All I had wanted was to get him home. Mum must be in from work by now. She’d have found the house empty. She would be angry with me, and frantic with worry. ‘I have to go on,’ I said wearily. ‘I’ve come all this way, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.’
‘He’s all right,’ she said. ‘For the moment. Believe me. It’s you I’m worried about. You need looking after, you do.’ She stirred the cauldron and ladled out a helping. She sipped a little herself, and emptied the rest into a chipped bowl. ‘Here.’ She held it out towards me. ‘It’s good. I want you to eat before you go on.’
I was so tired. I would have given anything to lie down and cover myself with the stinking pile of rags.
‘Please can you tell me where Flynn is?’ I begged her.
‘I do know, and I will tell you. Eat, go on.’
‘Is he with the woman in the long blue coat? Is she the Snow Queen?’ There, I had said it. Nothing seemed real any more. If I had really slipped into that world of ice and story, what would become of me? What would become of Flynn?
‘Ooh, she’s a beauty, she is! Skin so pale, eyes that shimmer like ice, long white snowflake hair . . . I’ve known her all my life!’ the old woman crooned. ‘If you’re going to find her, you have to be strong. You’re a fine, good girl to have come all this way, but I tell you, you have to be strong. Here. Eat.’
She held out the bowl again. Her eyes were so full of concern and kindness that I took it and ate the stew. It was delicious.
‘Good girl. Now I’ll tell you what I know. She lives up in the castle beyond this house. That’s where she’ll be. That’s where the boy will be.’
I stood up quickly, but she held out her hand to stop me going yet. ‘It’s a good climb up there. You’ll follow this track, but it’ll be rough and stony soon. You’ll lose sight of it, but take my torch and follow the cat. The higher you go, the colder it will be. The snow will soon turn to ice, and those flimsy shoes of yours will never get you there. Take them off, and wear these old boots of mine, and you’ll be quite safe.’
‘And Flynn will be there?’
‘I promise you. Flynn will be there.’
I was afraid, but something even more powerful than fear had taken over. I had no name for it yet. I slipped off my school shoes and wriggled my damp feet into the leather boots the
old woman had been wearing. The white cat stretched himself awake from his nest of rags in front of the fire and sauntered over to the door. He turned his blue-eyed stare towards me, and then scratched open the door with his paw. The blast of icy air nearly drove me back inside again. My only thoughts were that I must go on, whatever lay ahead. I had to find Flynn. There was no going home without him.
‘Keep climbing, my dear. I wish you luck when you get there.’ The old woman closed the door behind me, and there was no more light from her hovel, and no reek of smoke. I was alone again in the swirling snow. The cat had disappeared. I trudged on, thinking how helpful everyone had been to me – the Big Issue seller, the girl in the red scarf and the old woman. I wondered where Mum was now, what she was thinking, what she was doing to try to find us. And I thought about Flynn. He should never have gone off with a stranger. But I should never have left him on his own. I was the only one who could rescue him, and he was somewhere up there in the icy, terrifying darkness.
I tucked the scarf inside my sweatshirt and marched on, head down, following the tiny dance of light from the torch. If there had ever been a track, it was covered now, but what I could see were paw marks, and sometimes they doubled back, as if the cat had run back to make sure I was still coming. I couldn’t see him at all, but then what use was a white cat in a snowstorm? And then suddenly he was there, stopped still right in front of my feet so I nearly tripped over him. He turned his face towards me, and then crouched and let out a low moan. Was he afraid, too? I wondered. Or was he telling me to go on alone? I looked up, and there was the castle looming ahead of me, and slowly, one by one, lights began to flicker in all the narrow window slits.
I bent down and stroked the cat’s wet back. ‘You don’t have to come any further,’ I told him. ‘Not if you’re afraid.’ And instantly, he gave a small mew and scuttled away into the darkness.
I walked slowly and steadily towards the castle, trying to control the pounding of my heart. ‘Keep going, keep going, Orla’, I kept muttering to myself. The steps up to the castle were so slippery that even in the old woman’s sturdy boots I was skidding. My fingers found a railing and clung to it, burning cold though it was, and I hauled myself to the huge oak door and pushed it. It was bolted. I banged on it weakly until my fist hurt, and then I heard laughing, cackling voices behind me and around me. Blue, darting flickers of light danced like small phosphorescent imps.
‘She won’t let you in yet!’ the voices screeched. ‘Not until you give us things!’
‘Give you things?’ I felt like crying with frustration. I was almost too exhausted to speak. ‘But I don’t have anything to give.’
‘Give us your scarf!’ they said, and the red scarf was whisked away from my neck before I could save it. ‘And your torch. Ooh, give us that!’ Again, the torch was snatched out of my hand. ‘What else? What else?’
‘I didn’t give you anything! You just took them!’ I shouted. ‘And they weren’t mine to give.’
‘Oh, that doesn’t matter! What’s theirs is yours is hers is ours! And back again. Ooh, look at her boots!’
Now they were fiddling with my bootlaces, lifting my legs one at a time and tugging off the old grandmother’s boots, and away they went, snickering, and I was left standing in my thin school socks. Desperately, I banged on the door again. It opened immediately.
I walked into a great, lofty hall lit by candles. Their flames flattened like the cowering cat until the great door closed silently behind me. How warm and welcoming it felt now in all that dancing light! This was not at all what I had expected, not a bit like the story of the palace of ice. I tiptoed forward. From behind one of the other doors, I could hear music, and the high laughter of little children, as if a party had suddenly been switched on. Eagerly, I ran to the door and opened it.
I saw Flynn straight away. He was not pushing cubes of ice around like Kay in the story, not wrapped in frozen chains. He was sitting on the floor by a big open fire, playing some sort of building game with other children. They were all laughing. I couldn’t remember when I had last seen Flynn looking happy. The beautiful queen woman was standing near them, smiling, but as soon as I moved from the doorway, she turned, very slowly, and looked at me. The music stopped. The laughter stopped. All the other children stood up quietly and drifted away. Flynn was left, sifting the Lego bricks just as he did at home. He looked up for a moment in my direction, frowned, and lowered his head again. It was as if he hadn’t even seen me. Or hadn’t wanted to.
‘Flynn, Flynn!’ I whispered urgently. ‘Come on! We’ve got to go home!’
‘Home!’ the children moaned. They were walking slowly round the room now, not together but separate and lonely and in different, aimless directions as if they didn’t know each other, didn’t see each other; heads down, hands behind their backs.
‘Home!’ the queen repeated. ‘Home! Do you call that home, when you leave a little child all on his own outside his house?’ She stood in front of me, so I couldn’t see my brother.
‘Who are you, and who are all these children?’ I asked, trying to hide my deep shame at her accusation, trying to be bold and not intimidated by her.
‘These are the lonely children, the doorstep children, the home-alone children. And I am their protector, their queen. I bring them here to be warm and safe. I bring them here to be happy.’
‘They don’t look happy,’ I muttered.
‘Oh, they were until you came, my dear. You have made them unhappy.’
‘But will you never let them go?’
‘Of course. When they have proper homes to go to.’
I tried to get past her. ‘Flynn,’ I called. ‘Come to me. I’m going to take you home.’
‘How dare you?’ the queen shouted, and drew herself up tall and terrifying, eyes hard and cruel. ‘How dare you try to take him away from me?’
I thought of the moment I had walked into the room. I remembered the sound of fun and laughter, the sense of happiness in there. Could I take Flynn away from that? But he didn’t belong there! She couldn’t keep him! ‘You must let me,’ I begged. ‘I’ve come all this way, in all this weather, with no coat on my back! I didn’t take the money for a hot drink, I didn’t run away from the Alley Gang. I went all the way in the snow to the grandmother’s house, and then I climbed up here, and it was bitterly cold and icy, and I let the cat go even though he was my only company. And now I haven’t even got a torch, or a scarf, or boots, and I want to go home. But not without Flynn. Not after all that. You must let him come with me.’ I turned away, not bold any longer. I didn’t want her to see my tears, which were coursing freely down my cheeks. I didn’t want her to see that I was afraid of her. Maybe I could have pushed her aside and grabbed Flynn and made him come with me, but I was too frightened to do that. Besides, what might she do to me if I tried? Turn me to ice?
As if she knew what I was thinking, the queen stepped away so I could see my brother again. ‘Flynn,’ I called weakly, but still he didn’t look up. He just kept playing with the coloured bricks as if he hadn’t seen me, or didn’t know me, or didn’t care that I had come for him.
The queen smiled. ‘Everything you say is true, Orla. Oh, yes, I know your name. And I know everything you have been through to get here. I know you’ve done all these things. But have you learned nothing on your journey, child?’ Her voice was sweet and gentle.
So, it had been a kind of test, I realized. Had she made all those things happen to me? Was it a kind of game to her? And why, and what was I supposed to do, what was I expected to say? I felt small and alone, and far more frightened by her gentle, smiling manner than I had been of her anger.
This time she didn’t stop me when I stepped towards Flynn. I sank down helplessly on the floor next to him, knowing now that I was completely in the queen’s power. Flynn shoved some of the little bricks towards me, and I saw that they weren’t building bricks or Lego, but something like jigsaw pieces made up of fragments of letters. He had stuck several
pieces together to form his name. He sat with his arms looped round his knees, looking at the letters, frowning. I was aware of the queen watching me. I was aware that the lonely children had stopped their restless wandering and formed a silent circle round us all.
I gazed helplessly at the pieces. I had a puzzle to solve, and I would never get home until I had solved it. I concentrated on what I had just told the queen. It was all true, she had said, but what had I learned?
I pictured the Big Issue seller, his raw red hands, his frayed jeans. He was poor, yet instead of asking me for money he had given me some of his own. I thought about the Alley Gang. Instead of attacking me, their leader had given me her scarf and lent me her bike to help me on my way. The grandmother lived in a tumbledown shack and yet she had invited me in. She had hardly anything in her cooking pot, yet she had fed me. Even the cat had brought me as far as he dared towards the castle.
I picked up the jigsaw letters and fitted some of them together. KINDNESS, I wrote.
The queen didn’t even look. I could hear her tapping her foot on the ground. ‘Not enough!’ she snapped. ‘Not enough!’
I felt myself beginning to shiver. I glanced at Flynn. His face was pale. I could see his breath hazing. I could hear, very faintly, the crackly laughter of the imps.
I shifted the jigsaw pieces round again. What was greater than kindness? What more had those strangers given me?
‘I know, I know!’ I shouted suddenly. I fitted the letters together. CHARITY.
The queen laughed. ‘Charity!’ she repeated. ‘Is that what a home needs? Charity? Is that all you’ve learned on the way here?’
My tears were burning on my cheeks, turning themselves into tiny, frozen drops.
‘Look into your heart, Orla, before it turns to ice,’ the queen said. She sat down by Flynn and put her arm round him. He rested his head on her shoulder. His eyes were shining, he was smiling again, but he was pale, paler than ever, he was almost transparent now, a ghostly, still figure.
I remembered how he used to smile at me like that, how we used to play together, draw pictures, make up stories and songs and silly jokes. How I used to read to him at bedtime, cuddle him when he fell over. It wasn’t his fault that Dad had died. It wasn’t his fault that the world had changed, and that Mum was always out, and that I had to take her place and look after him. He was only five years old – how could any of it be his fault? I’m going to lose him. The thought that he was drifting away from me, that he was choosing to stay with the queen, that I would never see him again, was more than I could bear. It was breaking my heart.
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