Suddenly, I knew the word the queen wanted. I knew the word that meant more than the kindness and the charity that the Big Issue man and the girl with the red scarf and the old woman with the hot stew had shown me. I knew the word that had been even more powerful than fear, and that had driven me on to find my brother. I reached out for the jigsaw pieces. I only had to make four letters. With shaking hands, I fitted them together. LOVE.
The queen clapped her hands with delight. Flynn jumped out of her arms and ran to me. He put his arms round me and hugged me just like he always used to, and I hugged him tight, tight.
‘I’ll always look after you,’ I told him.
There was a distant sound like bells peeling, and I realized that it was made up of many voices, many names, over and over again. The children around us were laughing excitedly, hearing their own names called. Then I heard someone calling Flynn’s name, and then my own. ‘Flynn! Orla!’ over and over again. And the voice was Mum’s.
‘It’s Mummy!’ Flynn shouted. ‘Can we go home now?’
The other children were shouting, too, dancing up and down, clamouring to be allowed to go back home because their mothers and fathers were calling out for them.
‘Of course you can go!’ The queen laughed. ‘Everyone’s ready for you now!’ She ran round them all, kissing and hugging them, waving them goodbye as they all ran to a far door and disappeared down a brightly lit corridor.
She turned to me. ‘You’ve learned the most important word of all,’ she told me. ‘Love. Never forget it, Orla.’
‘I won’t,’ I promised.
‘Off you go, then. Follow the children. And don’t come back, ever.’
I took Flynn’s hand and walked along the corridor to a line of many doors. I knew which one to open, because my school shoes were in front of it. I slipped them on. ‘It’s going to be cold outside, Flynn,’ I told him. ‘And we have a long way to go. Are you ready?’
He nodded, too full of happiness to worry about that. He clutched my hand again and we went through the door . . .
. . . and it opened straight into our house. Mum was standing with her back to us, clutching the phone. She swung round when she heard us, dropped the phone, ran forward and knelt on the floor, hugging us both at the same time. Her cheeks were wet with tears.
‘I’ve been so worried about you!’ she said. ‘The door was open, I didn’t know where you’d gone! I searched everywhere, up and down the street, the school, everywhere. I was just phoning the police!’
‘Orla came and found me,’ Flynn said. ‘A lady was looking after me. She was a bit like—’ he looked at me helplessly ‘—a lady in a story.’
‘A bit like the Snow Queen,’ I added. ‘But kinder.’
Mum laughed. ‘The Snow Queen! I’m sure! You’re home, you’re safe. That’s all that matters. Hot baths, supper, bed and a story.’
We sat together when we were ready for bed. ‘This won’t ever happen again, I promise,’ Mum said. ‘I’m going to change my work hours so I can spend more time with you both. Now who’s going to read?’ She put one arm over my shoulder. Flynn snuggled into the crook of my arm. We didn’t need a book, because I knew the story off by heart. And as I told it, I could hear Dad’s voice, from all that time ago.
Would you like to meet the Snow Queen? Maybe you will, one day.
Lauren St John
When Lexie broke her leg in two places – in the first hour of the first day of the school skiing trip to France – she was overjoyed.
Ironically, the accident did not happen on a black run or even a nursery one. She simply tripped over a ski pole in her clunky new hire boots and fell down the sports-shop stairs.
A great deal of drama followed. A mountain-rescue helicopter airlifted her to the nearest big town to have the fracture properly set. Along the way the distraught teachers accompanying her argued over who was responsible and whether or not they could have foreseen that Lexie would pole-vault onto a concrete walkway, snapping her fibula (a fancy name for calf bone).
Through a haze of painkillers, Lexie heard them marvelling at her bravery.
‘Any child who can still smile after being traumatized and having their holiday ruined before it has even begun is a hero in my book. Incroyable! cried Miss Hannah, who wasn’t French, but employed French words at every opportunity because she found them romantic.
‘She’s an absolute trooper,’ enthused Mrs Woodward, keen to keep Lexie sweet in case her banker parents withdrew their generous financial support for the new school gymnasium. ‘We must do everything in our power to make it up to her.’
Unbeknown to the teachers, Lexie had good reason to smile. She hated sports, especially vigorous, death-defying ones like skiing. The mere thought of spending hours trudging up slopes in freezing gales or swinging above an abyss in a flimsy chairlift, for the dubious reward of racing head first down a mountain, was enough to bring her out in a rash.
She’d begged her parents to take her with them to Barbados, but they’d already booked their flights.
‘Sorry, hon, our hands are tied,’ her father said, lifting those same hands to the heavens. ‘It’s an adults-only resort. We would far rather have had you with us, but we assumed you’d want to go on the school trip with your friends.’
‘Besides, it’s so much nicer for you to be with children your own age,’ added her mum. ‘Just think how much fun you’ll have learning to ski. If you master the basics, we might think about buying a chalet at a resort. That way, we could hit the slopes several times a year.’
Faced with yet another reason to avoid skiing at all costs, Lexie had in the weeks leading up to the school trip prayed fervently for a volcano or similar disaster that would give her the excuse she needed to get out of it. Relatively speaking, she’d got off lightly with a broken leg. With any luck, she’d now have hours and hours to read mystery novels.
Prone in the hospital bed, she beamed up at Miss Hannah. Mrs Woodward was in conversation with the doctor.
‘Mon dieu!’ The teacher clasped her chest in sympathy. ‘We will salvage this situation if it’s the last thing we do. Don’t worry, Lexie, I’ll call your mum and dad as soon as we get to the resort. I’m sure they’ll want to rush back from the Caribbean to be with you.’
‘NO!’
Lexie’s smile vanished. Her parents were lovely, but they’d forgotten what it was like to be eleven and have a head full of crazy dreams and whole months when you couldn’t stop obsessing about a character from a novel who seemed to be the only person on the planet who understood you. Their primary concern was her far-distant future. They were already squabbling about which university was better, Oxford or Cambridge.
Lexie’s home life was an Excel spreadsheet of post-school activities such as Mandarin, violin and extra maths. Even sleep was scheduled. If they turned up in France, they’d hire a local tutor and have her studying round the clock until her leg healed.
‘Please don’t bother them, Miss Hannah. They need a holiday.’
‘Yes, but this is so much more important. They would want to be with you.’
‘What I mean,’ said Lexie a little desperately, ‘is don’t you remember what it’s like to lose yourself in a book?’
A spark fired in Miss Hannah’s green eyes. A former librarian whose library had been shut by the local council, she understood better than anyone the magic of losing oneself in a story.
‘Mais oui, ma chérie. Indeed I do. I have a duty to inform your mum and dad that there’s been an accident, but Wi-Fi can be so unreliable, don’t you find? When an email does reach them, it’ll say that all is well now and you’re keen to stay on with your friends and use this week to brush up on your French and do some studying. Would that make you happy?’
Lexie almost cried for the first time that day. She’d known the teacher for less than twenty-four hours, but already she was warming to her. ‘Thanks, Miss Hannah. Yes, it would.’
Lexie and the teachers arrived back at the Beau M
ontagne Resort in a taxi to find a gigantic silver tour bus blocking the driveway. Their driver wasn’t pleased. Just as he was adding some colourful new phrases to Miss Hannah’s French vocabulary, the bus door hissed open. Out swaggered a woman wearing a motorbike jacket and a scowl that matched her snarling tiger tattoos.
Next came five nimble dancers in fake furs, feather boas and shiny tights. They were laughing and joking and shoving each other playfully. A muscular black man did a handspring on the icy tarmac just because he could.
‘No prizes for guessing that this is the circus we were told about,’ said Mrs Woodward in annoyance just as Lexie was thinking how thrilling it would be to share the hotel with such exotic performers. ‘Trust them to arrive at the very time we needed to get our patient as close to the front door as possible. They’ll be ages, no doubt. Nothing for it except to push her there.’
Lexie had been given crutches, but wasn’t allowed to use them until she’d practised in the safety of her hotel room. She felt self-conscious being helped into a wheelchair in front of the finely honed acrobats and dancers.
‘Don’t worry, Lexie, you’ll be fit and tearing down the slopes in no time,’ said Mrs Woodward, wrongly reading her thoughts. Lexie shuddered and thanked her lucky stars again that her leg was in plaster, even though it was starting to throb. She was glad when Mrs Woodward went on ahead to reception to organize a new room. Another benefit of the catastrophe was that Lexie would no longer have to share a dormitory with seven other girls. Six of them were skiing and fashion fanatics, with whom Lexie had absolutely nothing in common. The seventh was one of those boisterous, permanently chipper types. Whenever Lexie saw her, she felt an overpowering urge to hide under the duvet and devour an entire packet of chocolate digestives.
The tour bus was still disgorging fascinating characters. Out came a woman in a red Stetson and fringed tan chaps. She was followed by a man with shoulders as wide as barn doors and another who was pale, fair-haired and gangly. The latter was carrying a bucket.
Lexie gasped. A snow queen was stepping out of the bus. That was the only way she could think to describe the woman. She had long blonde hair that reached almost to her ankles and shone like white gold in the light. As she moved, her cream coat fell open to reveal a blue silk dress.
The most handsome man Lexie had ever seen outside of Hollywood joined the snow queen on the step. Miss Hannah’s mouth fell open and she involuntarily squeezed Lexie’s hand.
‘I believe that’s Sofia Fontaine and Ricardo Rossi. They’re like the Brad and Angelina of the circus. I recognize them from the poster I saw at the hospital. Ricardo is a world-famous Italian acrobat and Sofia is his partner. Sofia’s French. She’s a gold medal-winning Olympic gymnast who became fed up with the discipline of training and literally ran away with the circus.’
Ricardo flashed a startlingly white grin and waved to the fast-gathering crowd. A cheer went up. He swept a hand through his lustrous black hair and helped the snow queen down the bus stairs, like a prince assisting his bride. There was a collective sigh from every woman watching, including Miss Hannah.
Lexie couldn’t understand his appeal. The man seemed more in love with himself than he did with Sofia. He was a show-off, too, and not in the fun way of the dancers. Perhaps that’s why Sofia’s smile faded as soon as she turned away from the crowd.
‘Move along,’ grumbled the car park security guard, shooing the loiterers as if they were geese. ‘Allez, allez.’
Miss Hannah opened the boot of the taxi and took out a magnificent bear that was nearly as big as Lexie, two boxes of chocolates and an enormous candy-striped bag of old-fashioned sweets. The sweets were from Lexie’s classmates and teachers. The bear was a gift from the owner of the sports shop, who was hoping her parents wouldn’t sue.
‘I do hope these help cheer you up,’ said Miss Hannah with a smile. ‘Mind holding them while I pay the taxi driver?’
She piled them onto Lexie’s lap, adding a fresh layer of embarrassment. Quite apart from the fact that Lexie could hardly see over the top of the bear, she didn’t want to appear childish in front of such confident artistes. Fortunately, they were too busy playing to the crowd to notice her. She watched between the bear’s ears as the young man with the bucket dipped a loop of rope into it and began to blow bubbles. These were no ordinary bubbles. They were enormous ones shaped like moose and polar bears. They sailed across the car park, each a shimmering miracle with its own rainbow.
Lexie was entranced until Red Stetson lady bounded over with a whip and started popping them.
To Lexie’s surprise, it was Ricardo Rossi who rounded on the woman. ‘Oh, why do you always have to ruin everything, Bianca?’
‘Please don’t worry, Ricardo,’ interrupted the bubble-blowing man, attempting to head him off with a smile. ‘It really doesn’t matter. I was just having a bit of fun.’
The circus ringmaster barrelled past him. He confronted Ricardo and Bianca. ‘Why are the two of you always at each other’s throats like a cobra and a mongoose?’ he demanded. It was a peculiar thing to say, but then, Lexie supposed, a great many peculiar things went on in circuses.
‘You’re driving me insane,’ the ringmaster barked. ‘Go into the hotel before someone videos you on their iPhone and puts it on social media.’
Miss Hannah came hurrying up. ‘Lexie, I’m so sorry, but I’m going to have to run into the hotel to get more money for the taxi driver. The wretched man is asking for an outrageous sum. I’ll park you over here by the hedge. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.’
The circus crowd had dissipated. Lexie was able for the first time to take in the scenery. The main hotel was a grand wooden chalet, with pale blue shutters and alpine flowers in tubs at the entrance. Behind it were two modern blocks that were less appealing, but had big glass windows so that the guests would be distracted by the view.
To be fair, the view was stunning. A pristine fall of snow had blanketed the valley. Beyond the resort and village were mountains so perfectly creased, and of such pretty hues of slate-blue, mauve and dove-grey, it was hard to believe they were real. Each fir and spruce tree looked as if it was auditioning for a part as the world’s best Christmas tree.
But the afternoon was more than a little chilly. Lexie was willing her teacher to reappear when a disembodied young voice said: ‘These artistic types are all the same, aren’t they? So temperamental.’
Lexie’s range of vision was limited by the bear, but she was quite sure that the voice was coming from the hedge.
It was. The hedge shook violently, creating a miniature snowstorm, and a boy of about her own age stood up. At least Lexie thought it was a boy. Only after she moved the bear aside did she realize it was a girl. One with short, tousled dark hair and the flushed, nut-brown complexion of someone who spends every waking moment outdoors. Her jacket and trousers were much-mended but practical.
‘Don’t you agree?’ the girl demanded. She had a French accent, but spoke perfect English. ‘What a prima donna that Ricardo is. Bet he spends half the day in front of the mirror.’
Lexie laughed. The girl had echoed her thoughts exactly. ‘Probably.’
‘Nice plaster cast, by the way. I saw you break your leg. It was pretty spectacular. You soared down the stairs like an eagle.’
‘If I had been an eagle, I wouldn’t have ended up in A&E. I was more like a blind octopus. It was my own fault. I tripped over something. I’m a bit clumsy.’
‘Well, anyway, I thought you were very brave. You must have been in agony and now you won’t be able to ski, yet you didn’t shed a tear.’
Lexie was astounded. Her own classmates would never have noticed something like that, let alone praised her for it. In fact, she’d heard some of them laughing at her misfortune even as she was being stretchered away to the waiting air ambulance.
Often shy and awkward around new people, she found herself saying easily: ‘Thanks. To be honest, I’m not that sorry about it. I can’t ski and I wasn’
t looking forward to learning. I’d rather read.’
It felt good to confide in someone, particularly this girl who was nodding as if she completely understood. ‘I love reading too, but it’s fun to have the occasional real-life adventure.’
‘Are you on a skiing holiday?’ asked Lexie.
‘Non, we couldn’t afford one of those. I live here. My dad’s recently become the groundskeeper at the resort. Before this, he spent years working for an English family who have a chateau in Bordeaux. That’s why we speak English as often as we speak French. My mum died when I was three so now it’s just him and me and our dogs – Siberian huskies. There are eight of them so that’s plenty. I’m Natasha, but everyone calls me Nat.’
‘I’m Alexis, but most people call me Lexie. You’re really lucky to have so many dogs. I love animals, but my mum is allergic.’
‘Is that why you have the bear, Lexie? He’s the best bear I’ve ever seen. I used to have one quite similar. He was a present from my mama. Then the removal men went and lost him.’
On the spur of the moment, Lexie said: ‘Would you like him? Have him.’
Nat’s eyes widened. ‘But he’s yours and he’s amazing.’
Lexie thrust him into her arms in response. ‘Now he’s yours. Enjoy. I also have enough chocolate and sweets here to feed an army. You can have it all. I eat far too many chocolates as it is.’
‘Are you sure?’ Nat was invisible behind her load. Her voice was muffled. ‘Wow! Thank you so much. I’d better go – I have to feed the dogs. Nice meeting you.’
Winter Magic Page 17