by Philip Reeve
“I know exactly what I want,” said Sika. “I’ll ask the Snowfather to make Grandpa well again. To let him live another lifetime, so he’ll have a chance to race again next time True Winter comes.”
“Can the Snowfather really do that?” wondered Shen.
“Of course he can! He can do anything!”
Shen looked back and wished that he knew what to wish for. He saw that the fjord and the starting line had already fallen far behind.
Zzzzzzzzzssssssssszzzzzzzzssssssss went the runners, racing over snow and ice. HoooooOOOOOoOOOoOoOO went the wind, whistling around the sled’s carved stern. And the sixty-six pugs went…
They rushed into the Night Forest, following the tracks of the sleds that had gone ahead of them, weaving between the tall dark trees. Far ahead, they could sometimes hear the deep barking of other sled teams, and the pugs lifted up their little heads and answered: YIP, YIP, YIP! They were loving it. They felt like real dogs at last, the sort of dogs that they were in their secret doggy dreams.
But all that woofing and yipping made the dark trees tremble, and down from the branches slid great dollops of snow—
FLUMP,
FLUMP,
FLUMP.
Somehow, Sika steered her way around the snow without crashing into any tree trunks. Other sleds were not so fortunate. They passed two that had been smashed by the snow flumps, and whose grumpy owners were starting the long walk back to Snowdovia. And near the far edge of the forest they found Shackleton Jones standing under the trees, watching while SNOBOT dug his high-tech sled and robot dog team out of a massive snow dollop. Sika slowed her sled to ask if he needed help, but he just grinned and said, “I have all the help I need! SNOBOT is designed to dig a ton of snow per minute! You’ll soon have us out of here, won’t you, SNOBOT?” He beamed at the children again. “So, kids! Next stop, Kraken Deep, eh? What’s supposed to go on there, do you think?”
“They say the Kraken sleeps there,” said Sika. “It’s this ancient sea monster with tentacles and things. When True Winter comes, it rises to the surface. If we’re lucky, the ice will be thick enough to stop it from reaching up and grabbing us.”
Shackleton Jones laughed. “The Kraken? You don’t believe in that old story, do you? It’s just a legend of the sea, like the Bermuda Triangle or the Night of the Seawigs.”
“Idiot,” muttered Sika as they went on. “He’ll be saying next that the Snowfather himself is just a legend.”
“At least we’re not the last anymore!” said Shen, looking back over his shoulder as they left the snow-flumped sled behind. But secretly he was hoping that Shackleton Jones had been right about the Kraken.
They shot out of the forest and went swooshing down a long, smooth slope. They left the land and went speeding over the sea. The ice was smoother here. It was sheltered by high, dark rocks, which poked from the frozen sea in a wide ring. It was as smooth as a skating rink, and all over its surface Shen could see the tracks of the other sleds that had come this way, heading toward the North.
“What a strange place!” he said. “I wonder if the Kraken really does live here.”
The frozen sea was as clear as glass—thick and ripply, like the glass in front doors. Shen looked down through it, and from the cold depths, something looked up at him.
The sled was hurtling above an eye the size of a parking garage.
And all those snaky rocks weren’t rocks at all—they were the tips of massive tentacles, frozen as the Kraken lifted them up out of the sea.
“Er, Sika?” said Shen.
“What is it?”
Shen looked down at the eye again. He was sure that it was staring right at him. And then, as he stared back at it, it blinked.
Crack! The towering tentacles twitched. Cascades of shattered ice came raining down their sides like broken glass as the tips waved, trying to break free and snatch Shen and Sika. Cracks spread across the ice.
“Go faster!” Shen shouted.
But the sixty-six pugs were already running as fast as they could. Their little pink tongues were hanging out, and their hot breath made plumes of steam in the icy air. Their paws skittered on the frozen sea. A crack went zigzagging across the ice in front of them, and they jumped it, the sled bumping behind them. Then another crack, wider this time. The pugs veered away as the crack widened, but now more black cracks were widening all around them.
The ice of Kraken Deep jumped like a drumhead as the huge beast beneath it lurched upward, and all the tentacles writhed and strained.
The cracks yawned wider. The pugs stopped running. There was nowhere to run to; the sled was on an icy island, surrounded by widening cracks. The island began to tilt, and the sled slithered backward. Quickly, Shen leaned over the front of the sled and began unclipping the pugs’ leashes. If the sled slid right over the edge of the ice and down into the dark water, he did not want it to drag all the poor pugs with it.
With a terrible splintering noise, one of the Kraken’s tentacles tore free of the ice and came groping toward the stranded sled, showering Shen and Sika with cold salt water and shards of ice that smashed all around them like dropped windowpanes. The Kraken’s huge eye watched coldly from below. It had been asleep for a long time—ever since the last True Winter, in fact. The runners of all the other sleds had woken it as they went skreeling across the ice. Now it was looking for its breakfast.
But the pugs were not having any of that. They began to yip and yap even louder than before. They bounced about on their short legs, barking and snarling at the huge purple tentacle as it curled above them. One, braver than the rest, bounced so high that he managed to sink his teeth into the tip of it. The startled Kraken lashed its tentacle, but the pug clung on tight.
All the other pugs thought that looked like so much fun that they went charging off to find tentacles of their own to attack. Without the heavy sled to pull, they jumped easily over the cracks the Kraken had opened. Yipping fiercely, they flung themselves at the twining tentacles and bit them, hard.
The Kraken thrashed, trying to shake them off, but they just wagged their tails and snarled. The huge creature stared up through the ice in confusion. It had fought battles with killer whales in the dark blue depths and dragged polar bears down into its chilly lair, but it had never met creatures like these before. Little dark specks, like flakes of windblown fluff…but fluff with teeth!
Ow! thought the Kraken. And one by one, it snaked its tentacles back down into the deep. The pugs let go as the tentacle tips vanished back beneath the ice, but they kept barking and snarling and yipping.
Shen and Sika stared down through the ice. The great eye of the Kraken stared back angrily for a moment. Then it vanished as the Kraken squirted out a huge black cloud of ink to hide itself.
When the ink cleared, the Kraken was gone. It had swum away to find a less dangerous breakfast—maybe a shark or two, out in the deep ocean. In the holes and cracks that it had made, the water was already freezing again.
“Phew!” said Shen. He started gathering the pugs together.
“Wait until I tell Grandpa!” said Sika. “That was as good as any of his stories!”
For the first time, Shen felt that there was a chance they might win. Then, while they were busy reattaching the pugs to the sled, they heard the barking of another dog team behind them. Shackleton Jones and SNOBOT had gotten their sled working again, and they came swooping across Kraken Deep, waving as they zipped past Shen and Sika.
“See?” shouted Shackleton Jones. “There’s no Kraken here! It’s all just a silly superstition!”
“But…,” Shen started to say.
It was no use. Already Shackleton Jones and his sled were just a dot, dwindling into the north.
“Great,” said Sika. “Now we’re last again!”
“But we have the bravest dog team,” said Shen, scattering doggy treats for the pugs.
All through the night and all through the following day, the race ran on, and all sorts of adventures�
�and accidents—befell the other sleds.
Before long there were only five sleds left. Sir Basil Sprout-Dumpling was in the lead, thanks to a map his father had drawn that showed shortcuts between the rocks and islands of the frozen sea. But Helga Hammerfest was not far behind, and Mitzi von Primm and Shackleton Jones were catching up fast. (Shen and Sika were right at the back, of course, so far behind that the others didn’t even know they were still in the race.)
On the third night, when Sideplate stopped the sled, Sir Basil could hear the baying of Mitzi’s team behind him. It sounded as though she had overtaken Helga Hammerfest.
“Those pests are going to catch up to us, Sideplate!” he complained.
“Our lead does appear to be narrowing, sir,” agreed Sideplate.
Sir Basil rubbed his mittens together gleefully. “Well, we’ll soon get rid of them! Time for Operation Detour!”
“Are you sure that’s necessary, sir?” asked Sideplate.
“Of course it is! If I don’t make it to the Snowfather first, my fortune is finished! Get to work!”
Sideplate sighed and did as he was told. Out of the bundles at the front of Sir Basil’s sled he fetched an inflatable signpost, which he pumped up with a bicycle pump.
“There!” said Sir Basil. “That should get rid of the others. You know where that will take them, Sideplate?”
“No, sir.”
“Of course you don’t! That’s because I’ve been studying my dad’s map and you haven’t. It will lead them straight to the Lost Hope. Daddy saw it from a distance when he came this way all those years ago. He told me all about it. A few of the other competitors went to have a closer look, and they were never seen again!”
“How troubling, sir.”
“Not for us it’s not! The more racers we can get rid of, the easier we’ll win. Come on, Sideplate—onward to the Pole!”
“Very good, sir,” said Sideplate unhappily. He turned on the small portable snow machine on the back of Sir Basil’s sled. White flakes covered its tracks as it sped away.
The sign stood where they had left it. Soon Mitzi von Primm’s sled came speeding up, turned sharp left, and followed Sir Basil’s detour. Close behind came Helga Hammerfest, who also turned left. Then a little later, Shackleton Jones arrived.
“Thin ice, eh?” he said. “Better take the detour, SNOBOT.”
“I am not detecting thin ice ahead,” said the robot. “It is safe to proceed due north.”
“Hmm. Still, better not take any chances, eh?”
After that, it was very quiet for a long time. The night grew colder and colder. It grew so cold that pieces of the northern lights froze and fell out of the sky. They lay strewn about on the ice, glowing gently.
At last Shen and Sika arrived at the detour sign.
If Sika had been driving, she would have known at once that the detour was a trick. Her grandpa had told her enough stories of his race that she knew there was no such thing as thin ice, not that far north, not in a True Winter.
But Sika was not driving. Sika was asleep, wrapped up in furs, leaning against one of the sled’s carved totems. And when Shen saw the sign, he turned left at once, following the tracks of all the other sleds.
The paws of the scampering pugs kicked up a mist of powdered ice. It blew into Sika’s sleeping face and woke her. She saw the big gold moon lying on the horizon far ahead and knew at once that they were going the wrong way.
“Why have we turned?”
Shen explained.
“That can’t be right!” she said. “We must turn back!”
Shen tried to turn the sled. But by then the pugs were moving more and more slowly. That last burst of speed that woke Sika had tired them out. The sled came slowly to a halt, and the little dogs flopped down in sleepy heaps.
“We can’t go any farther tonight,” said Shen.
He got down from the sled and started to get food for the dogs. While they ate, he and Sika put up Grandpa’s old tent. They hammered the iron tent pegs deep into the ice in case a storm blew up while they were sleeping. When they had all had something to eat, Shen and Sika crawled inside the tent and called the dogs in after them. They snuggled down in their sleeping bags, the sleepy pugs piled over them, and in a short time Shen was sleeping, too.
But Sika could not sleep. She looked at the embroidered patterns on the walls of the tent. A fallen northern light had wedged in a snowdrift nearby, and it glowed gently through the canvas. And from somewhere not so nearby, very faintly through the frozen air, came singing.
Sika slid out from under her blanket of pugs. (They were so fast asleep that they did not notice her leaving.) She went outside into the glowing night and started walking toward the sound of the singing. If she had looked behind her as she walked, she would have seen that her footprints were quietly closing up, leaving snow that was smooth and white as empty pages. (There are fifty different types of snow in a True Winter, and this was blindsnow—the type that hides all tracks.)
But Sika was not looking behind her. She kept her eyes on a jagged hill of shattered rock ahead. (It would have been an island if the sea had been water instead of ice.) It seemed to her that the singing was coming from behind it. A green glow shone from behind it, too, as if a really big bit of the northern lights had fallen there.
She scrambled up between the rocks and looked. There stood a huge old ship, completely trapped in the ice. The name painted on its rusty stern said Hope, and suddenly Sika remembered something her grandpa had told her, about how a lot of the teams he had raced against had gotten sidetracked somewhere called “The Lost Hope” and were never seen again. She hadn’t realized that the Lost Hope was a ship.
She went a little closer.
Parked beside the ship were three sleds. There was the high-tech sled of Shackleton Jones, with its robot dogs waiting motionless. Next to it stood the ancient bog-oak sled of Helga Hammerfest, and Mitzi von Primm’s pink designer sled. Mitzi’s dog team and Helga’s polar bears snoozed beside them, but there was no sign of their owners.
Above the sleds, fragments of fallen northern lights had been hung up along the Lost Hope’s rusty side. That was where the green glow came from. The lights spelled out three words.
“What a strange place for a noodle bar,” she said to herself. “Who would sell noodles all the way out here?”
A huge, hairy white hand reached out from behind a rock and grabbed her by the hood of her coat. A huge, hairy white voice rumbled in her ear.
No one knew how the yetis had come to that place. Had they arrived with the good ship Hope when it ran aground and was abandoned there? Or had they come loping across the frozen sea one True Winter and decided that the wreck of the Lost Hope would be a good place to live?
As for what had given them the idea to open a noodle bar—well, that was easy. There are fifty different types of snow in a True Winter, and the type that fell on that island was a very special type that could be made into beautiful noodles. (It made very nice spaghetti, too, but the yetis had decided that Yeti Spaghetti Bar sounded too obvious.)
At first Sika was a little bit scared at being captured by a yeti, but when she realized that it only wanted her to come and eat some noodles, she calmed down. She really liked noodles. The yeti took her by the hand and led her across the snow toward the ship. It was a large yeti and looked very yeti-ish, with long white hair, big feet, glowing eyes—you know the type.
As Sika followed the yeti up the side of the ship, she wondered if she should tell it that Shen was nearby and ask it if she could go and get him so that he could have some noodles, too. Then she decided to wait until she had tried them herself. They might be gross, and nobody likes to be woken up in the middle of the night for gross noodles.
The decks of the Lost Hope were glassy with ice, but down inside, in the old ballroom, there was warmth and light. Candles made from yeti earwax flickered there, and a yeti-dung fire burned merrily in an igloo-shaped stove. Long tables had been set up in the mid
dle of the ballroom. There sat Mitzi von Primm, Helga Hammerfest, Shackleton Jones, and a whole load of yetis, all digging into big bowls of snow noodles, while yetis wearing flowery aprons carried yet more noodles in through the swinging doors that led to the kitchen. These doors had round glass windows in them.
Sika peeked through as her yeti dragged her past them. She saw yetis shoveling snow out of big buckets while others packed it into fat snowballs and stuffed them into a mincing machine. They all took turns to crank the handle of the machine, and the long white noodles came writhing out of it like worms. And as the yetis worked, they sang:
Sika’s yeti pulled out a chair for her and sat her down between Mitzi von Primm and Shackleton Jones. From the other table, Helga Hammerfest called, “Yoo-hoo! Welcome to the Lost Hope, Sika! You must try these noodles!”
“They’re delicious!” agreed Mitzi von Primm. “But I mustn’t have any more. I’m watching my figure.”
“Delicious indeed!” agreed Shackleton Jones. “But I’d best be on my way. I still mean to beat you good people to the top of the world!”
But just then, a yeti plonked a big dish of noodles down on the table, and Mitzi and Shackleton took huge helpings for themselves, just like everybody else. Sika took some, too. She was surprised how nice they tasted. She had expected them to be a little…well…snowy, but they weren’t; they were hot and nutty and delicious.
For a while the only sounds in the old ship were of people and yetis chewing and swallowing and saying “Mmmm.” Oh, and one other sound: a small voice, urgently buzzing, like a very polite alarm clock.
“Something’s wrong,” said SNOBOT, looking up at Sika from under the table. “These noodles are a little too tempting. That dummy Shackleton’s been here for hours now, eating and eating them. It’s as if he’s forgotten all about reaching the top of the world. And he doesn’t even like noodles!”