The Ice King (The Witch Ways 0.5)(13)

Lachlan could hear his heartbeat, the way it sounded like footsteps crossing snow. He looked into Professor Folds’ animated face.

“It’s an anthropological study to research and record the vanishing folklore and culture of the Sami people. ”

As Professor Folds continued Lachlan was silent, his thoughts clear. Far North. A snow globe white out landscape. A flaw in the glass. A man. Walking. Walking. Know him now?

“Mrs Folds has had no compunction in recommending you to the committee and they have approved the motion. So? What do you think? What’s your answer man? Are you up for a challenge?”

They celebrated Lachlan’s forthcoming adventure with single malt.

A week later Lachlan was making his farewells at the Folds home. Professor Folds had arranged for a cab to take him to the station and they had finished their evening meal. Mrs Folds had made a special presentation of his ticket North.

“I could make a joke here, Lachlan and say that this is ‘just the ticket’ for you…” Mrs Folds smiled as she handed over the thickly laid cream envelope bearing the tickets and the first instalment of his funds. Lachlan remembered to smile but his mind had been distracted all evening by a memory of funeral plumes, of hats, of earth on a young woman’s coffin. Now, as he took his leave, icicle fingers reached into Lachlan’s skull to pick out the thoughts like lice. The bright white wording of them glittered in the air. “You will be lost Lachlan, but she will find you.”

Mrs Folds leaned in to hug him.

“May good fortune follow you North, Lachlan.”

The doorbell tolled the arrival of the cab.

The train would take Dr Lachlan Laidlaw a considerable way North, beyond that, there was a boat and beyond that, where the snow lay white deep, was a sled and dogs and the starlit night.

*

The wolf had followed Dr Lachlan Laidlaw for days. At first he had assumed it was interested in this intruder into its territory. Now, he knew it was laughing at him, at his efforts to outrun the hostility of this landscape. Lachlan halted in the snow and breathed hard. Icicles formed in his beard at once making a dissonant but magical chinkling sound as he moved his face.

This, he thought, is the music I shall die to. Above his head the skies were no longer darkening. They were flared and shot through with the aurora. He took a moment to watch it alter from an acid green to a softer blue. He ought to be able to list the reasons why it changed, his brain stored the science of it somewhere but out here the world was elemental. All you really knew was that Odin owned the aurora and that whilst others looked up into a night sky blotted by street-lighting, out here, in the silence, there was nothing between you and the Gods. Here, Lachlan Laidlaw had reached the edge.

He understood, at last, that the wolf was watching its next meal, that he himself was down to his last thought.

Good. Now that his mind was clear and empty as a goldfish bowl he could regroup, push on with his task.

The wolf was disappointed as its snack gathered renewed strength to push the sled forward and his meal slithered further northward.

The wolf did not follow, for where this meal was headed was black ice country, a place for Gods and monsters.





PART THREE


Coming of Age


Vanessa Way: 1984

Vanessa had walked home to Cob Cottage after a long shift waitressing at the Castle Inn. Her legs were tired but the muscles stretched out as she cut up through the wood rather than walk the long way round on Old Castle Road. As she walked the smell of chicken kiev and beer drifted away from her and she inhaled deeply the scents of leaf mould, fox and of the cool water of Pike Lake and felt better. She was not going to work at the Castle Inn pub restaurant forever although she understood, Jim Crake, who ran the place, rather wanted her to.

She thought she might while away a moment or two at her favourite spot, a little curved inlet at the edge of the lake where once she had fished out the monster pike but, as she drew near to the lake itself she could see on the Cob Cottage side, a figure dressed all in red standing on the jetty. All the tiredness fled from her body and Vanessa Way began to run.

The woman on the jetty was Alizon Wilde one of her mother’s WI friends. Vanessa disliked the WI and was uncertain why her mother bothered with this small group of unpleasant women. Their relationship seemed fraught at best, it never felt like a friendship. The least friendly of all was this scarlet woman. Vanessa had never seen her dressed in any other colour and her hair had always been ice white.

As Vanessa ran up the shoreline she watched Alizon Wilde looking down into the water as if searching. Vanessa half hoped she’d lost something valuable.

“What are you doing out here? Have you lost something?” Vanessa could hear how loud her voice was, how angry and now the pebbles crunched under her feet and then the boards of the jetty knocked and banged as she walked along them, all reflecting the anger she felt. She felt no compunction to be polite to Alizon, her childhood was peppered with many unpleasant encounters with her, both in and out of the company of her mother.

“I asked you…what are you doing out here?”

Alizon Wilde looked at her, very direct and, Vanessa was irritated to see, slightly smug looking. An impression of a smile was pasted across an essentially sneering expression.

“Looking for your mother.” Alizon’s voice was low and Vanessa felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle almost to the point of sparking. Vanessa found a small grenade of anger form inside her.