Pugs of the Frozen North

by Philip Reeve

  “I’m going to buy Sir Basil’s stately home,” said Sideplate, “and settle down and live there. If Sir Basil grows back to normal size, I shall let him stay on as my butler. If not, he can move into one of the houses on my model train set.”

  “Humph,” said Sir Basil grumpily. (He was sitting on a matchbox on the table, nibbling at a peanut, which was the size of a roast turkey to him.) “If it hadn’t been for you interfering pests, I’d have won the race and been the richest man in the world, not the tiniest.”

  “Oh, but inside, you were always a small man,” said the Snowfather. “You have just shrunk to fit yourself.”

  “The houses on my model train set are very nice,” said Sideplate encouragingly. “You can settle down there, sir. And you’ll certainly be the richest man in that world, so, in a way, you will have gotten your wish.”

  “Well, I’m going to settle down, too,” said Helga Hammerfest, who had talked quietly and seriously with the Snowfather while the others were still eating. “I’m going to stay right here. That’s my wish. It’s the perfect place for polar bears, and for me, too. There was never enough winter in the world for my liking.”

  “What about you, Shen?” asked the Snowfather. “What’s your wish?”

  “I’m going to take all those diamonds back to Snowdovia and buy a fantastic new ship,” said Shen. But now that he had the money to buy a ship, he felt a bit sad about it. He would be sorry to sail away from Sika. And when he looked at Sika he felt even sadder, because although she had a nice new snow-made hat and things, she hadn’t come all this way for those—she had come so that the Snowfather could save her grandpa, and that was the one thing the Snowfather couldn’t do.

  After the feast they slept—a good night’s sleep in white beds as deep and soft as snowdrifts. And when they woke, it was time to go home. Out in the Snowfather’s garden, Sideplate was strapping Sir Basil’s lunch box firmly to his sled, with Sir Basil buzzing inside it like a well-dressed wasp. Shackleton Jones was preparing his own sled for takeoff—he had fitted it with wings and propellers that he had made out of snow, and he was being helped by SNOBOT and by a new robot called SNOBOT 2, whom SNOBOT had made out of snow.

  Helga was walking in the Snowfather’s garden, watching her polar bears play on the lawn. “This is the place for me,” she said happily. “Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to come here, and to stay. No more dreary springs and summers for me. Winter is best. Winter glitters.”

  Shen and Sika went to where they had left Grandpa’s sled. It was looking rather the worse for wear after its long journey. The leashes that tied the pugs to it were tattered and frayed.

  “It’s a long way for small paws,” said the Snowfather, watching while they started arranging the little dogs.

  That was true. The pugs did not look happy at the thought of the long journey that lay ahead. “But we have to go,” said Sika. “It’s lovely here, but we don’t want to stay forever, like Helga.” Then she looked at the Snowfather and said, “I’ve been thinking, about my wish…”

  “You know I cannot give you your heart’s desire,” said the Snowfather.

  “I know,” she said. “But could you maybe give my grandpa his heart’s desire instead?”

  “And what would that be?”

  “To see you, one more time,” said Sika.

  The Snowfather went quiet and thoughtful. While he was thinking, Shackleton Jones’s sled went soaring overhead, with Shackleton and the SNOBOTs waving from the windows. It circled the igloo palace once and roared away into the south-southwest.

  “That’s the only way to travel,” said the Snowfather approvingly, shading his eyes to watch the flying sled as it dwindled among the northern lights. He turned and ran back into his garden, to a fresh fall of anythingsnow that had appeared overnight. Shen and Sika stood watching while he began shaping the snow into six big shapes. When he was finished, six huge elk shook themselves to life and started nibbling the grass while the Snowfather made six red harnesses for them and led them outside to where Shen and Sika’s sled was waiting.

  “Your dogs have run farther than any pugs ever ran before,” he said as he started tying the elk to the sled. “It would be a pity to make them run all the way back again, too!”

  There was barely enough room on the sled for Shen and Sika and the Snowfather and Shen’s snow treasure chest and sixty-six pugs, but they all squeezed on somehow. When everyone was aboard, the Snowfather shouted something to his elk, and off they set, galloping across the snow with the sled rushing behind them, until the hiss of the sled’s runners suddenly faded, and Shen looked over the side and saw that they were flying. The elk had unfolded great tawny wings and were flapping southward. The Snowfather’s palace in its green ring of gardens was falling away below, with Helga Hammerfest waving, and Sideplate looking up and waving, too, as he set out on his own journey.

  Shen waved back, but pretty soon the sled was so high that he didn’t think they could see him anymore. He could see them, though. He could see everything—the igloo palace and the abyss with its broken bridges and the fifty different kinds of snow. He could see, far away, the Lost Hope and, farther still, Kraken Deep and the dark forest, where the pugs’ yipping had shaken down those clumps of snow. He could see all the wideness and whiteness of the frozen north, spread out under the northern lights like a map, or the iced top of a gigantic Christmas cake. And the Snowfather laughed and tugged on the elks’ reins, and the sled flew south, toward the faraway, twinkling windows of Snowdovia.

  It was midnight at the Po of Ice. On the big bed in the room behind the counter, Grandpa lay dreaming. His bed was a sled again, carrying him over the shining ice, under the glimmering green canopies of the northern lights.

  Suddenly, he opened one eye. Was that wings he’d heard? Passing across the sky above the shop, settling on the snow outside…

  Somewhere a door opened, quiet as quiet. A breath of cold stole into the warm room. The tiny sounds of tiptoed feet on floorboards.

  Grandpa opened the other eye. “Oh, hello there. I thought you were a dream,” he said.

  “I’m not,” said the Snowfather, filling the room like a kindly shadow, stooping to fit his bigness under the slope of the ceiling.

  “Then is my bed really a sled?” asked Grandpa. “Am I at the top of the world again?”

  “No,” said the Snowfather. “I have come south for a change. Helga Hammerfest and her bears will keep an eye on things at the Pole while I’m away. Sika tells me that you wanted to see me again.”

  “I wanted to come to you,” said Grandpa. “I wanted to make that journey one last time. But I know I’m too old now for journeys. I will make do with the stories of Sika’s journey instead.”

  “And I’ve got such stories to tell!” she said, and she climbed up onto the bed to put her arms around Grandpa’s neck. “So many adventures, such things we’ve seen, me and Shen!”

  And they started to tell him. The Snowfather stood listening, and after a while Sika’s mom came in, woken by the voices. And there they all sat, the whole night long, while the northern lights shone in very brightly through the windows, and Grandpa and Sika and Shen and the Snowfather swapped their stories.

  And toward morning, Grandpa fell asleep, still smiling at the memories of the things they’d told him.

  Deeper and deeper he sank into his dreams, and the sound of his snoring grew fainter and fainter, until at last it faded altogether, and they knew that he would not wake up.

  They were sad and silent for a while, until the Snowfather said, “Come.”

  “Come where?” asked Sika’s mother.

  The Snowfather opened the door on the far side of Grandpa’s bedroom. The cold came into the room. He went around behind Grandpa’s bed and started to push it toward the open door. Shen and Sika ran to help—they did not know why he was pushing the bed outside, but they were sure he must have a good reason. After a moment, Sika’s mom joined in, too. Together, the four of them ease
d the bed outside. It looked even more like a sled, standing there on the glittering snow.

  The Snowfather stooped and scooped up a handful of the snow. He looked at it and smiled. “I thought so!” he said.

  “What is it?” they asked.

  “It is my favorite of all the fifty kinds of snow,” he said.

  He breathed on the clump of snow that was in his hand, and it came apart in soft white flakes. The flakes drifted into the air like loose feathers from a down comforter. It took Shen a moment to realize what was strange about them.

  “They’re falling upward!” he said.

  The flakes were too light to go straight up—every breath of air blew them off course—but they were definitely rising. And all across the snowy yard outside the Po of Ice, more flakes were lifting, detaching themselves from the drifts and banks and whispering softly up into the night.

  Like a blizzard in reverse, the upward-falling snow poured up into the night, and the snow that was under Grandpa’s bed caught against the slats and the underneath of the mattress and kept rising, so that the bed was lifted with it, turning and trembling like a boat that feels the tug of the tide.

  “Where is it going?” asked Sika.

  “He’s going on that one last journey that he always wished for,” said her mother.

  “That’s right,” said the Snowfather. “He’s going to places even I have never seen.”

  “Goodbye, Grandpa!” Sika whispered.

  Up and up the wild snow fell, a column of dancing flakes like the sparks from a cold fire, with the bed borne in the heart of it. Up and up, slowly dwindling into the heights of the sky, where the northern lights danced so brightly. Shen and Sika and Sika’s mom joined hands and watched it go. The Snowfather watched with them for a little while. Then he went back to where the sled was waiting.

  Shen and Sika and her mom stood and watched the bed as it dwindled into the heights of the sky. Long after it was lost to sight, they still stood there, staring after it. The last flakes of the upside-down blizzard fluttered up around them, leaving the ground around the Po of Ice with only a thin covering of ordinary snow. And suddenly Shen felt very lonely, because he knew that his adventure was almost over and that soon it would be time to leave this place.

  But then, as if she knew what he was thinking, Sika’s mom put her hand on his shoulder and said, “I’ve been thinking, Shen. I think, if you want to, that you should stay here, you and your sixty-six pugs. I mean to open the Po of Ice properly again, and start a hot-chocolate cafe, and rent out rooms to people who come to see the northern lights.”

  Then Shen knew what his heart’s desire had been all along. Not a new ship—a new life, here in this cozy, old, snowy post office.

  “I can help!” he said. “We could start a pug-powered parcel delivery service! And we’ll use the treasure from the Snowfather’s garden to pay for a new roof and a new s and t and f….”

  “Oh!” said Sika suddenly. “The Snowfather!”

  They ran to where the sled had been. On the snow, in a sleepy heap, sixty-six pugs snuggled under furs and blankets. There stood Shen’s treasure chest and the other treasures they had brought back with them. But the sled was gone, and the Snowfather with it, back to his home at the North Pole.

  “He didn’t even say goodbye,” said Shen.

  “He didn’t need to,” said Sika.

  In the silence of the night they heard a soft drip-drip-drip.

  The fringe of icicles that draped the eaves of the Po of Ice were weeping melting tears.

  “There’s a change in the weather coming,” said Sika’s mother.

  “True Winter is going away,” said Sika sadly. “It’ll just be an ordinary winter now, and then spring. There won’t be another True Winter for a whole lifetime.”

  But Shen didn’t feel sad. Because at least he’d seen all those things—the Kraken and the yetis and the fifty different kinds of snow. At least he’d gone to the top of the world and met the Snowfather. And now he was going to live here, in this strange place, among these funny, stilty houses. He was going to come to know these hills and woods and fjords in all their different seasons, all their different moods. And maybe, when a lifetime had passed and True Winter returned, he’d meet the Snowfather again.

  But until then…

  …until then…

  …what a lifetime it was going to be!