The Ice King (The Witch Ways 0.5)(26)

As the Ice Man slept on Vanessa moved about the centre making mental lists, taking stock of what supplies were left and generally running away from the dark patches in her head and heart.

She checked on the sleeping Ice Man. He had been asleep for five hours, she had kept a careful note of the kitchen clock and, once or twice, compared it to her own watch. They were keeping two lines of time, her own watch, she noticed, was once more keeping the unreal time that she had labelled ‘wood time’. By her wristwatch the Ice Man had slept only half an hour.

Despite the differing time zones the Ice Man woke and was hungry and Vanessa was prepared.

“Here.” she offered a bowl and a spoon which he took gratefully.

“Soup.” he said and sipped up a spoonful. “Not from a tin.” he smiled at the flavoursome liquid.

“Brewed from scraps and leftovers.” Vanessa made the short statement. The Ice Man’s eyes drifted up above the spoon to meet hers. There was a moment between them. The makeshift oven cum downcycled woodburner ticked with heat.

“You should have left me in the ice.” he looked away, sipped more soup.

“What is happening?” Vanessa asked. The simplest approach seemed best in the circumstances. All her ideas of reporting and recording, of observing and rationalising weren’t going to work so she reached for the one thing her mother had always relied on. Instinct.

“I must travel to Far North.”

Vanessa felt a spark of anger.

“That’s the future. I want you to tell me what is happening now? What happened here?”

“You must tell me, you bore witness.”

He looked at her once more with his brown and green eyes. Vanessa gathered all her thoughts.

“There was a storm… and some sort of bear attack. My colleagues were killed” there were the bald facts and saying them aloud did not make them any more comprehensible.

“But not you.” the Ice Man finished his soup, wiping the dregs up into his mouth with the stale dog end of the last of the bread. Once again his eyes met hers. Vanessa took a moment to think of this. Had she been in the centre when the first attack happened? Or had she still been trudging back from the hopeless mission to the comms tower? She placed herself firmly in the centre. She had been changing her clothes and then she’d gone to the workroom to continue her notes.

“Whoever, whatever it was that killed my colleagues…it came for you.” the theory had burned into her head.

“Yes.” he did not even try to lie. He looked directly at her, wiped soup from his beard.

“Why not me?” she asked.

“Because you were the one who dragged me out of the ice.” he put the bowl down and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. “I need to travel to Far North.”

“And you need to go before they come back.”

He nodded.

“This last was just the scouting party, riding ahead. Snow will hold them, for a while. They will come with the next storm.”

“Who are they?”

He gave her an assessing look, long lasting, off-putting, but Vanessa Way had grown up with Hettie Way at Havoc Wood, she’d faced down Alizon Wilde. She did not blink.

“The Wild Hunt.” he said. Vanessa heard an echo of Dr Byrne. Hunters.

“These hunters…they lost you in the ice.” Vanessa was trying to find pieces to place in the puzzle. “Sixty years ago?”

The Ice Man nodded. Again their eyes met.

“There’s no time.” he said and this time Vanessa did not question the comment, she merely looked at her own watch, at the way the hands had not moved and yet the kitchen clock ticked onwards. He moved across to her, reached his own arm down so that she could see his pocket watch, it showed the same time as her wristwatch.

“Do you want to borrow the snowcat?”

He shook his head.

“I need you to take me to the inlet. Back to where you found me. I can find my way from there.”

“Why did you come here?” Vanessa asked “Back in 1925.”

Ice Man looked at her.

“It’s a long story.”

“We’re snowed in.” Vanessa stood her ground. Her mother had a phrase she used sometimes when things were going awry and she couldn’t find her way through it, that word was ‘mazed’ as if someone was messing with your personal geography. It occurred to Vanessa that her mother’s word fitted this situation, fitted everything since the out of kilter day at the inlet. As she thought back over those events she remembered the horse in the trees. Transport.

Another, more terrible word wrote itself into her mind. Trap. What’s the difference between a maze and a trap?

“We’re going to be here a while…there’s time before you go on your way.” as the words left her Vanessa recalled her mother saying something similar on the countless occasions when some bedraggled stranger had taken refuge in the kitchen at Cob Cottage. What had her mother always said?

“There’s time enough to tell me.”

At these words the Ice Man, once again, gave her an odd look of recognition. He began to talk, as if reciting something long remembered.

“…There is an enemy… in the Far North. He outlives his time. This king brings conflict of every sort to you. Hearts will clash, bones will break. You will take on the mantle that he ought to have shrugged off. Fate owns you Lachlan so she moves you like her little chess piece into the game.”