The door, a giant cube of ice, was smashed to pieces. Objects flew through the air. A small knife nearly missed Honey’s ear, while Erasmus was knocked over by a hunting mechanism looking strangely like a bird in flight, and Fern had warm seal fat spluttered all over her face.
“What’s going on?” Johann shouted, spitting ice.
“It’s a cyclone!” answered Clementine from under him.
“Blbrblumrkap,” mumbled someone whose mouth was full of snow.
“It’s an earthquake!”
“Inuit attack!”
“Snædis!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
Honey’s head spun. Her skin prickled and her feet tingled and the blood rushed madly around her body, pumping in her chest like furious drums.
THOOMP. THOOMP. THOOMP.
She blinked back tears. She should be in bed now, snuggled up in her duvet, looking out over the desk with the pool of light on a book left open, at the halos of the lamps in the park. She missed that simple life of a million years ago. Had it really only been a few days since her only bedtime worry was forgetting to put out the ceiling lamp? How wonderful to wake up to the glitter of those tiny silver bulbs, like the buds of a spider-shaped plant growing upside down through the roof.
But now…Honey blinked at the wedge of the Arctic landscape sparkling in all its glacial beauty.
She blinked at the sky full of stars, where a wisp of purple-greenish haze floated like the bright mist of a magic potion.
She blinked at the ice cones jutting over the dark and distant sea like fangs of some underwater demon.
And she blinked at a large shadow looming over her – something white and huge – and for a moment it felt as if the snow itself had come alive. Honey knew, of course, that many Arctic animals camouflage themselves in the snow, either to escape predators or to hunt.
The snowy owl, for instance, also known as the ghostly hunter, it sleeps at night and hunts in daytime, not because it’s been infected with the trypanosomiasis, a very nasty tropical virus that damages your body clock, but because it can camouflage in daylight thanks to its sparkling white plumage. The stoat, often called an ermine, is a small white rodent that could pass for a harmless pet cat, disguising its ruthless nature through cuteness.
Honey knew that just because something is small, this doesn’t mean that it’s not worthwhile, or dangerous, or brave, but she also knew that if you are small you are more likely to be drowned in an avalanche, or be hunted down by something big.
POP. POP. POP.
As the deafening explosions of champagne corks made her wonder if New Year was celebrated early at the North Pole, and the blanket of snow thickened around her, she knew that there was another predator who liked to camouflage.
A predator whose sharp sense of smell served as a GPS through the wide, white tundra towards its next meal.
It was a relief to find that all the information in her brain, collected through hours of ravenous reading, had not been altered by the shock of falling through ice. But even so, Honey was being buried alive. Snow filled her nostrils, spicy like beer bubbles. She’d read that people dying from asphyxiation often felt like chopped chilies were being forced up their noses. The hum of the children’s voices was growing weaker, the words a meaningless buzz.
“Run!”
“Don’t worry about Sugar! She’s already dead!”
“Her name is Honey!”
“No, it’s Hannah!”
“Help! I’m stuck!”
“I’m not helping you! You’re already dead!”
“No I’m not! I’m breathing!”
“Not for long!”
“Ahhhh!”
And the spitting and choking Honey emerged from the pile of rubble. For a moment, she felt relief, but only briefly. She stood up to face the most unexpected sight, and yet a sight that she was prepared for ever since she had detected the first faint sounds from the igloo. As if the claws, fangs and bloodshot eyes weren’t enough to make the animal just the most repulsive beast on the planet, the bear had the worst breath in the world, too. It blew over Honey like a whiff from the putrid food compost box Dad kept in the kitchen.
Even worse, something hung from the bear’s teeth. A limp human body.
The victim’s face was covered in the bear’s saliva, her empty eye hole staring blindly in Honey’s direction like a reflection of the gash in the honeycomb wall.
POP. POP. POP. POP. POP. POP.
“Rong!” Honey leapt to her feet to the sounds of more champagne bottles popping open. From the corner of her eye, she saw the children running for their lives, back to the barracks.
“Hang in there, Rong! I got you!”
A grunting sound came from the strangled throat. Honey knew she had seconds until Rong died strangled by her own hair, which was coiled around her neck. She pulled and yanked, and after a rather perilous jump her efforts were rewarded with the trophy of Rong’s boot. But it was hardly a victory. Uncovered, Rong’s toes would be dead in a matter of minutes.
For a moment, Honey and the bear stood watching each other. Honey tried to imagine what it felt like to be swallowed alive. The insides of the bear’s belly must be a stinky cave, hot as hell. Hot. Something like molten lava splashed on her face, almost at the same time as she heard the thunderous bang.
CRACK. CRACK.
“What!” Honey wiped her face, only to find a black eye staring at her from a gooey puddle of blood in her palm.
The same eye that was watching her from a different height only seconds back.
Rong dropped down.
Then the bear fell. The ground shuddered. Honey watched the empty sockets, like two hollow scoops where two balls of red berry ice cream had been eaten rather messily. The bear’s face looked oddly like a meal left unfinished. With a crackling crash, the igloo fell apart, surrounding Honey with a pile of snow-crumbs.
CRACK.
Fridrik fired another bullet, this time straight into the bear’s head. Honey stepped away from the sinister tomato soup growing around the fallen beast. It froze and glimmered in the starlight. But the bear’s blood wasn’t the only thing that sparkled in the nocturnal rainbow of the Aurora Borealis. Fridrik’s head, Honey saw, was covered with a thin film of ice. Delicate ice patterns connected the golden hairs together, like the web of glossy strands Mum spun from caramelized sugar.
“Sometimes, doing illegal things is necessary,” he said, his voice high against the wind.
The next hour was enveloped in the surreal fog of a dream. It was like the waking up moment, when the world of dreams seeps into reality, and wakefulness disentangles itself from the claws of sleep. Honey wondered if it was really her working with such efficiency, as if disposing of a dead body was something she’d done many times before. As if she wasn’t inside her own body but somewhere above, she watched herself attach the bear’s lifeless body to a snowmobile. She followed the engine-powered sledge to the stables. The husky dogs, keen to tear the unexpected feast apart, were forcibly removed by a few sleepy dwarves after stunning them with taser guns. Was it really her, who couldn’t stand the look of Mum chopping raw chicken, who held the bear’s belly tight so Fridrik could snip it open with a pair of ghastly scissors? Did she really hold the buckets so the steamy insides could flop inside them? When everything was removed from the bear’s belly, and the dogs were given their share, Fridrik Helgarsson hung the skin in the barn to dry.
“An Inuit tradition says that the bearskin must hang to dry for a few days, to honour the animal’s soul,” he explained, washing his hands in a basin of warm soapy water.
“Is everything edible?” Honey was beginning to feel nauseous as the scent of blood rose from the bucketfuls of meat. The organs were still hot, making the air around them steam. The intestines were coiled like dorm
ant snakes, while the heart and kidneys throbbed slightly, still pumping the blood that no longer flowed around them. YUCK. Surgery was certainly not Honey’s academic ambition. Nor was butchery.
“All except the liver. It makes you ill. Even the dogs hate it.”
Honey sat back to admire the skin. A splendid thing, the hairs long and shiny, thanks to the bear’s fresh meat diet. Naturally, Honey had seen polar bears before. Picture books, Christmas cards and posters were jammed with drawings of them, but she’d never imagined they could be that big. Besides, in the illustrations, polar bears smiled, something you certainly couldn’t say about this particular beast, unless the death snarl, the bear’s last, counted for a smile.
Later that night, despite the clock ticking close to midnight, everyone huddled together in the canteen with cups of hot seal milk, all apart from Rong, who was recovering in the dormitory. She’d suffered no major injuries but was still in a state of shock.
Fridrik Helgarsson was wearing a change of dry clothes, and the comforting aroma of fabric conditioner hung around him. His hair was held back in a ponytail, swinging at the back of his head. “What an end to the day, eh? Sometimes the best stories end with murder.”
“Or they start with murder,” Honey smiled, and Fridrik tipped his head to the side, as if this girl was something more than he anticipated.
“Indeed,” he replied, dreamily.
The children were defrosting from their run without parkas and face masks, soaking their aching feet in bowls of warm water. To them, Honey had suddenly become a sort of national hero.
“Did the bear really die?”
“What did it look like on the inside?”
“Was it a boy or a girl?”
“Did you shoot it yourself?”
“Are you hurt?”
The questions were hurled at her quicker than she could answer them. Honey could barely hear them.
“We’re now even,” she told Erasmus, who was slightly embarrassed to have been seen running from the face of danger.
“We sure are. We saved your life, and you saved ours.”
“Hardly. I was trying to help Rong.”
“You’re brave for a city girl.”
Honey smiled. “Crazy is the word. At least that’s what everyone says.”
By the time they went back to their suspended bunk beds in the freezing dormitory, they were all half asleep, muscles aching and eyelids drooping heavily. But they were nicely full, and cheered up by the hours spent in the warmth and the unexpected events that followed, whispering excitedly about the shooting of the bear.
“Now there’ll be bear meat at the Reindeer Barbecue!” Jerry cried excitedly.
Honey watched him, her eyes narrowed. Then she said: “He’s a missing person. From England. I saw his picture on a milk bottle.”
“I guessed so from his accent,” nodded Erasmus.
Jerry frowned. “No, I’m not.”
“Ignore him. He’s suffering from Stockholm syndrome. He’s in love with his kidnapper.”
“Eeew. You love Santa.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Jerry said.
“I want the paw,” Fern interrupted. “Can I have the paw, grilled and wrapped in bacon?”
“I want the heart and kidneys!” yelled Johann. “It’ll make me a warrior!”
“I’ll have the eye,” said Rong, and everyone laughed.
Climbing up the knotted rope to her den, Honey was struck by the realisation that, twice that day, she had found herself in mortal danger. With a sinking feeling, she knew that the saying was true. Just because you were lucky enough to escape from a peril doesn’t mean that you won’t perish in the next one.
Drifting into sleep in her narrow coffin-bed, Honey couldn’t help but wonder what tomorrow might bring. Before her eyelids fluttered the snapshots of this extraordinary day, until at last she was snoring as loud as her roommates.
18. The Mighty Mermaid
A loud knock reminded Greg Raymond where he was, if the awful place he’d been dragged to against his better judgment needed any introduction. He’d retreated to the bathroom to check his Fantasy Chess, hoping Anaconda wouldn’t hear his inevitable exclamations, only to find his pockets empty. The sleek, slippery object he loved so much was missing. Greg cursed under his breath. Of course, he had to give his mobile phone for safe keeping to the stupid hotel manager. This was supposed to be a peaceful retreat in a period inn where everything was just like a hundred years ago.
Zut Alors! The engraving on the wall plate – clearly a Victorian decoration – read Zut Alors, which Greg was sure was an ancient French term for ‘Damn.’ In the picture, a crinoline-clad lady who’d dropped her hat in a chamber pot opened her mouth in the shape of an ‘o’. In the next picture, the glove had turned into a dove, and was perched on the side of the chamber pot like the god of pee.
Greg huffed. Maybe the owners of this creepy hotel thought their jokes were funny. They weren’t. This was going to be the worst holiday of his life.
Not even important phone calls were allowed. POST only. He groaned at the thought. The door shook, the handle twitching left and right. The forceful pounding resumed.
“Greg? You all right?”
He composed himself. Bent over the sink, he splashed some cold water on his face. The reflection in the mirror looked back at him with Al’s eyes, those witch eyes the colour of unripe apples, almond shaped and fluid like mountain lakes. The eyes drilled into him accusingly, and he broke into a cold sweat. He blinked, and she was gone.
“Get a hold of yourself, Greg.” Wiping his hands on a towel with the letters The Mighty Mermaid embroidered on it in gold thread, he was amazed at how hard they were trembling. “She’s dead. Dead. Dead.” He clutched the edge of the sink until his knuckles turned white.
“Greg! Open the door now!” The handle was moving so rapidly it had the effect of a hypnotist’s pendulum, unleashing something in his brain. Greg wished he could stop the memories from flooding his mind…but the forbidden door had opened. They came, unstoppable like cramps, and the next time Greg blinked, it wasn’t the ornate lemony door or the rich flowery wallpaper that came into focus, but his own bedroom, with the creamy curtains Al had made herself and the floor littered with his smashed chess trophies.
He had been there, at the top of the house, awake, watching Al from the window, but he wasn’t going to tell the police that. They’d had a row the previous evening, but he wasn’t going to tell them that, either. She was leaving, leaving them all, on Christmas day. Greg closed his eyes, tasting, once more, that moment’s relief, sweet like fresh water. He remembered smiling at the desolate ribbon of road, where the streetlamps still flickered frailly in the dawn light. This was the moment he had been waiting for all along. Put simply, it was an opportunity he wasn’t going to miss.
Smiling, Greg opened the door to see his girlfriend kneeling on the floor, clearly eavesdropping through the keyhole. He smirked.
“Sorry. Don’t think my guts are the best choir singers, but there you go.”
Anaconda straightened up quickly, scrambling to her feet. Around her, the wooden floor was covered in scratches.
“Do you have to wear these inside?” Greg exploded, recognising the stiletto-heeled boots as the hideous footwear he’d been forced to purchase at the gothic shop in Camden.
“Jesus. That took a while. I thought you’d fainted in there.”
“No I hadn’t,” snapped Greg, coughing madly as he entered the smoke filled lounge. “Not yet anyway.”
Sitting on the bright green Victorian sofa, he swore under his breath when the skinny armrests proved too narrow for his chess magazine. And, if that wasn’t enough, he saw with horror that Anaconda had dressed for the night in a bloodstained basque, and those freaky vampire dentures were in a glass of whisky on the p
hoenix-bird painted cabinet. They made a hair-rising clacking sound when she tried them on, so Greg didn’t feel guilty when he’d taken care of the other pair, flushing them down the toilet. He was privately amused when they got stuck in the pipe, flooding Anaconda’s flat with a gush of caramel water. Sometimes, Greg felt as silly as his eldest daughter.
How could Anaconda stand on those heels, let alone walk? She might as well have brought her stilts – another stupid item procured from the Camden shop via his credit card. Her hips popped through the fabric of her dress, sharp, he thought, as the tip of the umbrella he was carrying on that doomed December morning.
Anaconda White was watching him through a cloud of smoke, her eyes narrowed to slits. She was smoking a cigarette with a carved holder – another present from Santa Raymond – an antique he had purchased at an auction in Devon. With her red lipstick, velvet gloves and a necklace of fake diamonds, it was clear she’d tried her best to appear as the femme fatale, an effect she had failed at miserably. On the coffee table behind her, Greg saw his chessboard had been snapped shut, the arrangement of the pieces in the match he’d been playing by himself, practising a new strategy, entirely ruined.
“What did you do that for?” Greg roared.
“We’re on holiday, darling. No more chess, remember? You promised.”
Greg rolled his eyes.
“That was a present from Honey.” He pointed to the ripped glittery wrapping in the paper bin.
“Don’t you have enough chessboards? This isn’t even an expensive one. All the fuss she made about getting it in the car, at the last minute. If you ask me, she did it on purpose, so that you’d spend your time playing chess, rather than entertaining me.” Anaconda clicked her tongue with distaste. “Anyway, what were you doing in there for so long?”
“I was attending to my physiological needs,” Greg answered, wishing he hadn’t given Anaconda his credit card the week before. She’d been the one to book The Mighty Mermaid for five nights and, since then, she always found one excuse or another not to return it. And in the last days he’d seen more outfits on her than in the three years they had worked together at Cuckoo School. He also wished he hadn’t told her about the insurance money, or the decent amount he’d gotten from the recent sale. Now she thought him rich and she seemed to be on a spending spree. “I was using the toilet. That OK?”
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