“Is that for real?” asked Lucas, looking at the pamphlet, astonished. He pulled out his lucky quarter, which changed with each leap, to make sure he had it right. “We’ve landed in 1889!”
“Now this is worth the leap!” said Edge, looking at all the activity that was buzzing around them. His face was beaming.
* * *
“Get off the ice!” one person yelled, booing. Several more cried out, too, and soon the rest of the audience had joined them. The four Ice Chips had heard that there was a hockey game taking place in one of the buildings, and they’d happily moved with the flow of the crowd into an ornately decorated rink. But they hadn’t noticed that the people they were following—all dressed in black pants, white shorts, and sweaters with Vs on the front—were actually players!
“Why are we always in everyone’s way here?” Lucas yelled to his friends over the booing. “These are players? How could we know? They don’t even have any padding!”
“Must be what players wore back then—back now,” said Swift.
“They’ve got sticks,” said Bond, her voice sounding worried. “They’re definitely players. We’d better leave before they make us leave!”
As quickly as they could, the Ice Chips slid off the ice and pushed their way through the crowd until they found somewhere to stand.
“What is this? The first hockey game ever played?” Lucas asked jokingly. There were referees on the ice, but once the game had started, they didn’t seem to do a very good job of stopping the players from fighting.
“No francophone players can fight like THAT, I tell ya! Look at those Irishmen go!” a man standing in front of them shouted. He was cheering on the players, who were yelling at each other in English, as two penalties were finally given. He’d obviously been enjoying the fighting. “But then again,” he said, winking at Lucas, “there ain’t many French Canadian players of class, you know.”
The game was between the Montreal Victorias—the players with the Vs on their sweaters—and the Montreal Hockey Club, whose sweaters were decorated with either flying wheels or bunnies. Neither Edge nor Swift could decide.
It was supposed to be a hockey game, but to the Ice Chips, it felt like what they imagined a night at the opera would be! There were large fancy sheets draped from the rafters, and flags hung from above; boughs of pine trees had been stretched over the ice like garlands! At rink level, people were standing to watch the game, even though there were no boards. And on a level above that, in what looked like balcony seats, the spectators were dressed like they were attending a royal dinner.
“Edge! Over there!” Swift said, nudging him with her elbow. She was nodding her head toward a couple who could, in fact, be royalty. They had special seats with the best view of the game. Even their children—several boys and one girl—were attracting attention.
At least, they seemed to be admired by the people around them on the upper level. The guy standing in front of the Ice Chips—the one who didn’t like French players—kept calling them foreigners.
“The Queen’s representative is not Canadian,” the man explained in a rude tone when he caught Swift giving him her best side eye. “Not everyone can play this game. The Irish Canadians are wonders. The French are too slow. And the British . . . well, this game is too rough for them. They shouldn’t even be here.”
The man motioned toward the “royal” family as he said this last sentence. And then, a second later, he was cheering on the Victorias again.
That is not true. Everyone can play hockey, Edge thought to himself angrily. Anyone from any country, any background. And French players are some of the greatest. Even the British sometimes have—
The British!
That’s what Swift’s nudge was telling him!
Up on the second level, the “royal” couple’s daughter was transfixed, as though she’d never seen a game of hockey in her life. Edge could tell that she was falling in love, just as he had, while the game unfolded before her eyes. She was grinning. She was cheering.
This was the girl who’d appeared on the ice back in Riverton!
* * *
As the hockey game came to an end—the final score was 2–1 for the Victorias—the four Ice Chips decided to push their way through the crowd. This was why they’d leaped, after all: to give this girl and her family back their silver bowl!
The hockey players moved off the ice, and the rink was flooded by people in costumes and masks—partiers who’d come out for the carnival’s ice ball. The Chips were soon within just a few feet of the girl—so close they could almost toss her treasure to her.
“Excuse me! Hey, you!” Lucas called, realizing they didn’t even know her name.
Swift tried to grab the girl’s skirt, but she was sandwiched between two costumed partygoers and couldn’t quite reach.
“Miss? Miss!” shouted Edge, trying to get her attention.
The girl turned and seemed to see the Chips, but she was simply pulling a feathered mask over her face as part of her costume. She took a few steps away from them and then disappeared into the crowd.
“You’re not allowed to disturb the governor general’s family,” a man with a stern voice said, looking down at the Chips. Then he giggled. He looked like a guard, but a strange guard. More like a soldier in costume.
“Can we just—” Swift started, confused by the guard’s smile.
“The governor general will be out watching the fireworks with everyone else,” the guard said, motioning toward the door with a big grin. “If you go now, you can get a good seat. And you won’t miss the surprise!”
* * *
It wasn’t until the first spray of lights exploded above the ice castle that Lucas, Bond, Swift, and Edge realized their mistake. They’d squeezed through the outdoor crowd, still trying to make their way to the governor general’s family, until Bond had decided they were too squished by all the people in winter costumes. They needed to catch their breath.
“We can’t see anything from here!” she’d called out to her friends. “Follow me! There’s an opening up ahead!”
That opening was the reason the Ice Chips now found themselves in the middle of what they could only describe as a snowy battlefield. To their right, red-jacketed soldiers were marching through the snow; blue soldiers were coming in on the left. The two groups of soldiers were marching toward each other—almost running—with angry looks on their faces, their bayonets out in front of them.
And the Ice Chips were smack dab in the middle of the fight.
“What is with this leap?” Lucas called as he crouched down in the snow, looking for a way to escape.
“This is way worse than being trampled by snowshoers!” Edge said, looking up at the wall of audience members closing in behind them. He sounded scared. “They’re going to kill us with those pointy thinga-ma-whadayas!”
It was an act. Of course it was an act—the battle was a play. But with the audience caught up in the dramatic scene before them, and with the display of booming fireworks above, no one would move to let the Ice Chips back through.
“We need to get out of here!” screamed Swift. “Are you sure this is all pretend?”
The soldiers were advancing on either side. They were concentrating so hard on their hatred for each other—or at least their make-believe hatred—that they didn’t even see the four Ice Chips crouching in the no man’s land that lay between them in the snow.
“If that crowd keeps pushing,” said Bond, “even the actors pretending to be soldiers are going to get hurt!”
“Where do we go? Quick!” asked Lucas, panicked.
“The only place we can go is—” said Edge, oddly calm. This was how he’d always heard his grandfather had been when he was in the army in India. “Guys, we’re going to have to storm the castle before they do!”
* * *
The inside of the ice palace was even more impressive than the outside. There were chairs and tables, vases and sculptures—all made of ice. There was also an
elaborate transparent staircase that curved up toward the second floor and then the third.
“What do we do now?” sputtered Lucas. What if those soldiers are the ones who tried to steal the bowl in the first place? We still don’t know who that girl was running from!
“I think we’ve got only one choice here—we go up!” said Edge, trying to sound confident. “Then we hide. We don’t want to get into trouble for being here.”
The Ice Chips climbed the icy palace staircase as carefully as they could. Swift had wanted to put her skates back on, but the others thought they were safer in boots. They slowly made their way up, passing room after room of ice sculptures and icy furniture, breathing in the frozen air.
“This is the one!” said Bond finally. They’d reached one of the towers and a small room that had a rectangular ice bed covered in furs. In the corner, there was a gigantic (and obviously pretend) fireplace. “We’ll hide in there,” she said, pointing confidently to the fireplace as though hiding in castles was one of her hobbies.
“Do you think they’ll try to burn down the castle?” Lucas asked, clutching the bag with the bowl as a burst of white twinkling lights exploded with a crack and a fizzle outside the window.
“You mean melt it?” asked Edge, trying to keep his voice down. A burst of yellow fireworks lit up the room with a bang, then a whirling blue hue. “That’s scientifically impossible—well, almost.”
“This is just a play, remember?” said Swift as the crowd outside suddenly grew quieter.
“Hello, everyone! Can I please have your attention?” an actor’s voice boomed. “We hope you enjoyed our fireworks tonight—and our battle. Now, before the costume ball continues, we’re going to hear a few words from Canada’s governor general. Ladies and gentlemen, Lord Stanley of Preston!”
This is Lord Stanley’s silver bowl?!
Edge and Lucas looked at each other, their eyes wide . . . just as the ice block at the back of the fireplace gave way!
Chapter 9
Swift, Edge, Lucas, and Bond had fallen through a trap door in the back of the icy fireplace, and they were now turning and rolling as they slid down some kind of icy chute, like a twisting slide at a waterpark.
“Nooooo!” cried Lucas as he reached out and tried to grab on to the slippery surface.
They were picking up speed.
And the light surrounding them was growing brighter . . .
“We’re leaping again!” Bond called, but she wasn’t sure the others could hear her.
Soon there was a flash and a sudden feeling of weightlessness.
Edge wondered how this could be happening. He wondered where the wormhole was taking them and when it would stop.
But Lucas’s mind was on something else: If that was Lord Stanley, and he’s the owner of the silver bowl, then could this really be . . . ?
* * *
The white light in front of the Chips’ eyes seemed to be moving—almost stuttering, like Scratch had before the leap. This has to be a glitch!
The Chips felt the warmth before they saw the light. There was a flickering—a soft glow from a fireplace. And soon the room they’d landed in came into focus.
They were in a house, or maybe a cabin, standing in the shadows just beyond the semicircle of light cast by the fire. There was a woman seated in front of the fireplace, her shoulders covered in a multicoloured blanket made of yarn. In her hands, she held two long wooden sticks that she was moving and clicking together. She was knitting. And so was the young boy beside her. She was teaching him while they listened to a radio in French.
That accent—we’re in Quebec, thought Lucas. Is this the home of a hockey player?
“There are goalie pads by the door,” Swift whispered, elbowing Edge and Lucas, who were on either side of her. “They’re made from potato sacks—look! They’re the same as the ones we saw when we met Gordon in Saskatchewan.”
“In 1936,” added Edge.
The boy, who was knitting a toque for himself, looked up at the sound of the Chips’ whispers. He had a cut on his right cheekbone—maybe from a puck?—and another above his left eye.
The boy gasped, as if he was surprised, and then continued wheezing.
Does he have trouble breathing? Have we scared him into hyperventilating? Swift wondered.
Without looking up, the woman called out: “In your beds, children!”
She was keeping her eyes on her son—and on his heaving chest—but it seemed that this had happened many times before. The Chips’ goalie wondered if the mother thought they were her other kids, sneaking out of their rooms to snuggle by the fire. She must have.
The boy, however, was looking straight at the four strangers from Riverton, his eyes wide.
Nervous, Swift opened her mouth to say “Bonjour,” but the Chips had already disappeared.
* * *
The hospital gurney came at the Chips so quickly that none of them even had time to move their toes.
“Sorry!” the nurse yelled as she pushed her empty hospital bed into a room down the long corridor.
Lucas checked his lucky quarter—it said 1961!
There’s snow outside. It could be December, he thought, trying to put the clues together. No, the Christmas decorations on these white walls are torn and falling off. It must be closer to the end of January.
“We leaped into a hospital?!” Bond asked in shock, pushing her teammates up against the wall as a group of student doctors bustled their way past. “What are we doing here?”
Soon there were cries coming from the room the nurse had entered—a baby’s cries.
A baby? Being born? Edge couldn’t figure it out, either.
A man with a gruff voice—maybe the doctor?—cleared his throat and said, “Watch out, Brantford! This kid’s going to be a hockey player!”
Then a woman’s voice, slightly out of breath, laughed. “There you go, Walter. Someone to skate on your rink once we move into the new house!”
Lucas’s eyes started to water. 1961? Brantford? A backyard rink? And a dad named Walter? This could only be—
But the Chips were already travelling again.
* * *
Sunlight stuttered like an old movie that had been loaded into the projector wrong.
Are we just changing channels on some giant TV? Is the wormhole breaking? Or coming apart? Edge didn’t want to say it out loud, but that didn’t stop him from wondering.
Bond could feel her stomach rising into her chest as the lights around them grew brighter again, faded, and then grew brighter still. The Chips were falling—fast.
They felt branches brushing against their arms and legs, and soon they were breaking through a gathering of trees—a forest—and crashing into the snow. They’d landed in the woods, on a snowy hill, and they were now rolling down it. They were out of control!
When they finally came to a stop—Lucas having lost his helmet and Edge a glove—the young hockey players found themselves lying in a soft snowdrift beside one of the biggest outdoor skating rinks they’d ever seen! On it, a game of shinny was underway.
“Oh, wow—now it’s 1892!” said Lucas, who’d checked his quarter as quickly as he could. His hand was icy because of the cold, but he felt around in the snowbank anyway to make sure his backpack and Swift’s purple bag had come with them.
“What does that mean—that it’s 1892? That’s before everything!” said Bond, standing and brushing the snow off her sweater.
“You’re right-a-roni,” said Edge. “There’s no National Hockey League yet. Not even a Winter Olympics!”
“But those are girls playing hockey. Did you see? In dresses!” said Bond, looking around. “And there’s some guy taking their picture. Is that why we’re supposed to be here?”
“Aha, YES! I know this one!” said Swift, her cheeks turning rosy as she squinted at the scene in front of her. All the women on the ice, playing with no equipment and no protection, were wearing black old-fashioned dresses—except for one. “Do yo
u see that girl in the white dress?” she asked, pointing excitedly.
“Yeah,” said Edge. “Is that—? Is that the girl from the Winter Carnival?!”
Bond’s mouth dropped open as she realized who they were looking at once again: The British girl with the bowl who crossed our centre line!
“YES!” said Swift, her eyes growing wet with excitement. “I know who she is now. And what this is.” She swept her arms wide to indicate the scene in front of them.
The hair on her friends’ arms and necks suddenly felt charged with electricity.
“That, my dear hockey lovers, is Isobel Stanley,” said Swift, grabbing Bond’s hand and squeezing it tightly. “And this is the first photograph ever taken of a women’s hockey game.”
* * *
“Oh, goodness. You’re early!” said the woman in the white dress, covering her windswept hair in embarrassment and pulling on a knitted hat.
The Ice Chips had walked over to the side of the rink, where Isobel was sitting in the snow, taking off her skates. They could finally give back the bowl she’d left in Riverton!
“Early for what?” Bond asked, playing along as she watched the other skaters push their feet into their old-fashioned leather boots. They’d all played well, but none of them were dressed like hockey players. I’d say we’re more than a hundred years too early, the Chips’ defender was thinking, but she didn’t dare say it out loud.
“Why, early for the tour!” Isobel said cheerily. “The woman who normally gives it has taken ill for the day and I promised to assist her. She said there would be some children in the group. I know I’m a little young, but I know plenty about Rideau Hall. I do live here!”
Lucas shot a look at Edge, then Swift, then Bond. She thinks we’re here for a tour?
They couldn’t give Isobel her precious silver bowl if she didn’t remember them—or how they’d got her bowl in the first place. Maybe the wormhole had erased her memory? Or maybe . . . Had they landed before she took her trip to Riverton? None of the Ice Chips knew, but they knew enough not to ask.
They couldn’t risk it.
The Ice Chips and the Stolen Cup Page 5