by Sean Cullen
“The boy who is not a boy … What does that even mean?”
“Hey, I’m the She-Wolf. How should I know? I do know one thing though …”
“What’s that?”
“I’m freezin’. Get back to bed before the She-Wolf bites ya on the butt.”
Hamish X laughed and stood up. Mimi did the same. Suddenly, Hamish X crushed her in a powerful hug. “Thanks, Mimi.” Their breath puffed out and mingled, a cloud of mist in the cold night air. He released her and went back towards the ice hut. Mimi stood for a moment on the moon-drenched ice. She looked up at the stars and smiled.
Amanda suddenly snorted.
“Same to you!” Mimi scowled and followed Hamish X back into the cabin.
The next morning at dawn saw the little band climb up onto Amanda’s broad back and set off across the ice for Snow Monkey Island.
Chapter 23
Mrs. Francis woke up, forgetting where she was. She reached for her robe and wrapped it around her chubby frame.
“What time is it? The porridge must be boiled. The whey must be strained. The …”
She stopped short when she realized she was no longer in the cheese factory. She was in a rough stone cell with a cot against the wall and a small wash stand in the corner. A little keyhole set low in the metal slab of a door let in a weak flicker of torchlight from the corridor outside.
She was a prisoner.
It all came flooding back. The airship had arrived two days before at Snow Monkey Island, a cone of black rock jutting out of the frozen sea. When the ship glided over the lip of a large crater she’d seen a scattering of rough buildings. After they docked above a large square structure she and the children were led down through the building, a warehouse of some kind, across the crater floor and into a system of caves. The children were led away to a separate place and Mrs. Francis locked in the cell she occupied now.
A huge, dark-skinned pirate with a high-pitched voice and a cloud of puffy black hair had locked the door. He laughed when she demanded to see the children. “Don’t you worry, darlin’,” he said as he turned the key in the lock, “they’ll be treated as good as they deserve.” He ignored her demands to speak to the Captain, laughing harshly as he walked away. Mrs. Francis had slumped onto the little cot and exhaustion claimed her.
When she woke the next day Mr. Kipling was standing at the open door of her cell. In one hand he held some flowers, in the other a plate of steaming bacon and eggs. “You are awake,” he said. “I’ve brought you some breakfast.”
Mrs. Francis didn’t know what to make of the aloof Mr. Kipling. All through the journey he’d been solicitous of her health, mannerly and decent where the rest of the crew were miserable, rude, loutish, and mean. Still, she had the children to look out for, so she maintained her distance from the tall man. “I can’t eat until I see that the children are being properly cared for.”
“Madam, you must maintain your strength or you will be no good to anyone.”
“Nevertheless, I demand to see the children.”
Mr. Kipling sighed, placing the plate of food on a crate by the bed. “Mrs. Francis. I admire your tenacity. However, the Captain is a brutal and ruthless man. The children are beyond your power to help. You must do as you are told. That is the only way to survive. The children will work as they have always done, only now for a harsher master. If you want to have any chance of softening the harshness to come, you must co-operate. Do you understand?”
She thought for a moment.
“What are those?” she asked suddenly.
“What?” Kipling noticed the flowers he was carrying in his hand. He blushed. “What, these? Oh, I, uh … thought you might like some flowers. Brighten up your cell a bit. I grow them in a little greenhouse. Hobby of mine. Helps me through the long winter nights. You’ve noticed that the climate is milder here than one might expect?” Mrs. Francis had noticed: the rock itself was faintly warm to the touch. “The whole island is a volcano. Dormant, thankfully. It provides a natural heating system and natural hot springs. Very handy for horticulture. Yes.” He stopped babbling and held out the flowers. She looked at them: forget-me-nots, a burst of tiny blue flowers, delicate and sweet.
“What are you doing here, Mr. Kipling?”
“Bringing you breakfast. Please eat.”
“No, I mean, what are you doing in this place with these awful pirates? You don’t seem to fit in somehow.”
Mr. Kipling shrugged. He looked down at the flowers he still held in his hand. “I have nowhere else to go,” he said finally. “I owe Cheesebeard my life. Ten years ago, in another life, I was Captain of a ship in the Royal Navy, the destroyer Duke of Wellington: lovely ship, excellent crew. We were on a tour in the North Atlantic watching for submarines and what have you. Routine, except for one small thing: my daughter Sarah was on board. She had decided to follow in my footsteps, join the navy, and make me proud. You know how children can be. She was a navigation officer.”
He slowly turned the flowers this way and that, studying them minutely.
“To make a long story short, a storm came up, as happens often in those seas. We were sore pressed with fifteen-metre waves sweeping over the bow. I decided we would ride into the storm in hopes of coming out the other side. I could have tried to run before it, head for port, but I chose not to do so. The ship lost power and we were left at the mercy of the sea. We took water and capsized. The ship went down with all hands. I searched frantically for Sarah but eventually succumbed to the icy cold of the water.
“Next thing I knew I was dangling at the end of a rope, being winched up into the pirate ship. They’d found me bobbing in the water, barely alive.
“That day, I became a new person. I am one of the pirates, loathsome and cruel. I owe them my life, such as it is.”
He looked up and smiled his sad smile. “Do you want these? I’m fifty-two years old but I feel like a nervous schoolboy.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “Please take them. I shall have to throw them out otherwise.” He held them out to her again.
Mrs. Francis looked at the tall man with his sad eyes, so lonely and broken. She reached out and took them from his pale, elegant hand.
“They’re lovely,” she said.
“Yes, they are,” he answered, looking her straight in the eye, “Now, eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”
He turned on his heel and left.
SNOW MONKEY ISLAND first appeared on the horizon as a shimmering black speck. As Amanda’s huge, swaying strides ate up the distance, the speck resolved itself into a black finger of rock jutting up from the plain of ice.
“How long until we get there?” Hamish X asked Aglucark.
“We should arrive in the late afternoon, which is just as well. I am sorry, but when we reach the base of the cliffs that is where we shall part ways, Hamish X. There is no road for Amanda to climb and we must get home to our families.”
“You’ve done more than enough already, Aglucark. We’ll have to do the last bit on our own.”
Mimi punched Aglucark on the shoulder. “Yer all right, Aggie!”
Aglucark smiled and rubbed his shoulder.
Over the next three hours the island loomed larger and larger. The swinging motion of Amanda’s walk lulled the children into some much-needed sleep. When the hunters roused them, the island was much closer. The cliffs soared up into the sky, towering over the little party in an awe-inspiring shimmer of black basalt.60 White smoke rose lazily from the crown of the island, drifting away on the breeze.
“It’s a volcano,” Parveen said. “The entire island is the cone of a semi-active volcano!”
The sun was just dipping below the horizon when Amanda finally stopped at the base of the sheer black cliff that was Snow Monkey Island. The fading sun shimmered like oil on the glassy rock. Amanda ponderously lowered her vast bulk until the riders could safely clamber down from her massive back. Hamish X, Mimi, and Parveen caught their packs from the hunters who tossed them down. With
majestic slowness, Amanda raised herself back up to her feet.
Aglucark and his companions waved to the children. “Be careful,” the Innu hunter said, his black eyes crinkled in his leathery face. “She-Wolf! Guard your pack! Beaver! Trust to your clever brain! And Black Boots! Be true to your friends and to your own heart!” With a final wave, the great mammoth and her riders turned away from the black cliff and set off across the ice. The three children watched them go.
“I’d still rather be something other than a giant rodent,” Parveen said, polishing his glasses.
“Don’t worry, little beaver!” Mimi smacked Parveen on the back. He stumbled under the force of the blow. “You got the She-Wolf watchin’ yer back!”
“Breaking it, more like!” Parveen grumbled. “Enough, you guys,” Hamish X interrupted. “We’ve got a long way to go and it’s all in a vertical direction. I suggest we start looking for the easiest way up this thing.” They stood back and looked up at the cliff. Three hundred metres of sheer rock face stared back down on them.
“Where do we start?” Mimi asked.
Parveen pulled off his mitten and fished in his pocket for a scrap of paper. He took the stub of pencil from behind his ear and quickly began drawing on the paper as his friends crowded around.
“I’ve been studying the cliff walls as we approached. Since the island is a volcano, much of the surface will be brittle, volcanic rock. But when a volcano erupts, the lava must flow down channels or chutes. They exist all across the face of the cliff. Our best bet would be to find one of these chutes and use it as a sort of pathway to get up the cliff face.”
“Good thinking, Parveen,” Hamish X said.
“Do not be having any illusions, Hamish X. It will still be a most treacherous climb. I suggest we rope ourselves together. That way, if one of us should slip, the other two might have a chance of saving such an unlucky person.”
“Good idea.”
Hamish X quickly fashioned a rope harness that could join the three climbers at the waist, while Parveen, sketched map in hand, set off to locate a suitable chute to climb.
Mimi sat on a stone watching Hamish X craft the sturdy knots he would need. “I can’t believe we made it this far,” she said.
“We’re a great team,” Hamish X said. Mimi didn’t meet his golden eyes, staring instead at the ground. “What’s the matter, Mimi?”
Mimi kicked at some snow. “It was you who got us all this way. And Parveen. I ain’t done a single useful thing this whole trip. I ain’t been nothin’ but extra baggage.”
“Mimi! Don’t say that!”
“’Strue! I ain’t done nothin’ good. Without you, we’d be in the pirate dungeon right now, sure as shootin’. And ya saved us from those poachers. Parveen built the flyer and the snow thingy. I ain’t done nothin’ to help. I’m just a waste o’ space.”
Hamish X laid the rope aside. “Never talk about yourself that way. Never,” he said angrily. “If you don’t believe in yourself, how can I? I need you to be tough, Mimi. I need you to be strong. If something happens to me then it’s up to you to make sure the kids get out of there.”
“Nothin’s gonna happen to you.”
“Anything could happen,” he said. He sat down beside her, lowering his voice. “You’ve got to believe we can do this. Parveen is a good guy, but he looks up to you. He needs you to be strong. Can you do it?”
Mimi looked into his strange eyes and then nodded.
“Good.”
“Hey, come on,” Parveen’s shout broke in, “I think I’ve found a way up.”
Mr. Candy and Mr. Sweet
Mr. Sweet squatted beside the frozen bear carcass, his head cocked to one side. “It would appear to be Ursus Maritimus.”
Mr. Candy stood by the tent as it shuddered, buffeted by the rotating blades of the helicopter. “Polar bear?”
“Indeed.” Mr. Sweet rose to his feet. “They ran into some poachers, it would seem. An altercation took place.”
The shattered ice had frozen again into a jagged circle where Hamish X’s boots had smashed it. Mr. Sweet looked off to the northwest. “The heat signature is very confusing, but they went that way. They were accompanied.”
“He is very resourceful, Mr. Sweet.”
“As he was designed to be, Mr. Candy.”
“Indeed. Shall we continue?”
“Let’s.”
They climbed back into the cockpit and the helicopter rose above the ice.
Chapter 24
Their ascent was slow. Hamish X led the way, followed by Parveen in the middle and Mimi bringing up the rear. As they carefully picked their way up a narrow funnel of rock the aurora borealis blazed across the night sky above them, obscuring the stars. Moonlight reflecting off the ice field below helped light the way.
They carried only essentials, having left the bulk of their supplies at the foot of the cliff for the last leg of the journey. It was all or nothing from now on. If they weren’t successful they’d end up as prisoners themselves, providing they survived the ascent.
The climbing was difficult. The stone was glassy, sharp, and brittle, tearing their clothes and shredding their mittens. But to their surprise, the rock was faintly warm to the touch, allowing them to use their bare hands for climbing. Parveen suggested it was the volcanic nature of the rock that accounted for its warmth. Here and there they saw water gushing out from the rock face, steaming in the cold air. “It comes from hot springs deep in the earth,” Parveen explained. They laboured upward, hand over hand, foot over foot. Parveen had the hardest time, being the smallest of the three, but Hamish X and Mimi supported him with the rope and they made progress.
Halfway up the face, they reached a very difficult part of the climb, and stood on a metre-wide shelf gazing up. Directly above them and blocking their way was an overhanging ledge. Hamish X called for a halt. “We can rest here for a few hours. That ledge is going to be hard work and we’ll need all our strength.”
No one objected. They sat on the slim ledge, legs dangling as they munched on strips of jerky supplied by Aglucark and his cousins. The mountain blocked most of the wind. Their exertions had kept them sweating in their heavy clothes, leaving them moist and uncomfortable, but the rock was warm. They were too tired to talk and merely sat chewing and staring at the seemingly endless sheet of ice stretching away fifty metres below. The ice glowed in the moonlight, perfect and clean.
“Whatever happens,” Mimi said suddenly, “I’m glad we saw this together.”
Hamish X smiled. “Me too.”
When Parveen didn’t answer they looked over to find his head tipped back against the rock, fast asleep. Mimi and Hamish X smiled at each other and snuggled in on either side of their friend, immediately falling asleep.
When they woke, stiff and sore, it was still dark. The moon hung low in the sky. The aurora flickered overhead. They ate a quick breakfast of jerky and some seal broth from a flask. Seal broth is extremely salty, and carries a strong taste of seal.
Hamish X studied the seemingly endless ledge of rock that jutted out and blocked their way. They would have to reverse their progress back down the slope before they could shuffle sideways around it.
“It’ll take too much time to go back down and around. We’ll have to try and climb here,” Hamish X pronounced. “I’ll go first while you two hold the rope. You’ll have to give me plenty of slack. I’ll pick my way out and over and I’ll find something to fasten the rope onto so that you only have to swing out and climb up.”
Mimi and Parveen braced themselves as best they could. When they were ready, Hamish X reached out and grabbed hold of a knob of rock with one hand, then reached out with his other hand and pulled himself out under the rock shelf. He swung his right foot and wedged it in a crack. The soles of his boots seemed to mould themselves to the surface of the rock. Soon, he was clinging like a spider to the underside of the ledge with the rope dangling from his waist. Slowly but surely, he made his way until he reached the lip of th
e ledge.
Hamish X wrapped his fingers carefully around the rock and let go with his feet. For a moment he was dangling from his fingers alone, looking down through the toes of his black boots at the long drop below. Straining with every fibre of his body, he hauled himself slowly up until he could swing his boot up onto the ledge. He heaved himself up and rolled onto his back, panting and blowing. After a minute of just staring up into the sky, he pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked around.
The ledge he found himself on was about ten metres wide and ran out of sight in both directions. On one side was the vast drop to the ice. On the other was a rock face that looked easier to scale than the one they’d negotiated so far. It was honeycombed, with each opening about a metre across. A path cut through the rock face, sloping up towards the lip of the volcano, their final destination. Hamish X grinned with relief.
He turned his attention back to the strange holes. They were black and impenetrable. A foul stink hung in the air. Hamish X couldn’t place it, but it was definitely an animal smell, pungent and rank. And the more he looked at those dark holes, the more a feeling of danger started to grow.
“Hey!” Mimi called. “You all right up there?”
Hamish X wrenched his gaze from the holes and shouted back. “I’m up! There’s lots of room here and the climbing looks easier. There’s a sort of path that leads to the top.”
He scanned the ledge for a good place to attach the rope. “There doesn’t seem to be a rock big enough to secure the line. I’ll have to hold onto it and brace myself while you climb.” He planted his feet and grabbed the rope in both hands. “Okay, come on up. I’ve got it.”
Hamish X felt a tug on the rope and dug his boots into the rock. A few moments later, Parveen scrambled up onto the ledge. He and Hamish held the rope together as Mimi followed. Soon they were all standing on the ledge looking up at the series of holes in the cliff face.