The Ice King (The Witch Ways 0.5)(27)

He paused. “You will be lost and she will find you.”

The little dark patch of fear on Vanessa’s heart was taking on new depths, soot, carbon, sinking deep into her fibres.

“My name is Dr Lachlan Laidlaw and I came here, for the same reason as you Miss Way…” he waited.

“Which is?”

“To fulfil my destiny.”

It was as though he had leant across and swiped all the scientific equipment from the countertops, set all the Bunsen Burners aflame and Vanessa could not speak. Dr Lachlan Laidlaw’s eyes, intense as ever, softened their gaze but did not look away.

Vanessa thought of a day, a long time ago, of Pike Lake and the speckled skin of Esox Lucius, his teeth sinking into her skin, the small snowglobe of his eye and a vision of her, walking, walking, walking away in a snowstrewn, bronze skied landscape. She thought of her mother, of Havoc Wood, of gamekeeping.

“What about the wolf?” Vanessa threw the morsel into the mix. She remembered the wolf at the edge of the landscape. Dr Lachlan Laidlaw took in a breath, gazed at her as if she might be a miracle.

“You saw it too?”

“Yes. Once. A long time ago. And I dreamt of your eyes….” Vanessa wanted to hold onto her thoughts, to not be distracted or stray, to have focus. “…They’re odd.” she looked back into them and pushed back thoughts of the dreams she had had in the last few nights. smokey honey lanolin leather the warm sweet scent of his breath across her skin.

“Heterochromia Iridium.” the Ice Man, Lachlan Laidlaw, informed her, the Latin reaching out to her in a way he was oblivious to. Was he though? Vanessa searched his eyes, there was something in them, something familiar, she was reminded of her recent dream, or was it a memory? She was puzzled at the drift her mind was undergoing, as if it was trying to be in two places at once, like the day at the inlet and the lost ten minutes. Without thinking she leaned forward to look deeper, as she did so the Ice Man turned his face away, took in a deep breath.

He cast his gaze slowly to the window, there was nothing in the whiteness outside. They spread out the maps and charts from the comms room and Lachlan Laidlaw shook his head, traced his finger across the emptiness, the contour lines of ridges, the crosses of forest and the blue of the lake.

“Where I have to go isn’t on this map.” he confessed “It’s out there.” he gestured to the window “If I can get to the inlet, if you will take me there, I can get to Far North.”

“Can you return from Far North?” Vanessa asked the question. Dr Laidlaw looked at her and after a moment’s pause shook his head.

“I doubt that.”

“Hearts will clash…bones will break…” Vanessa recalled.

“Not a great forecast is it?” Lachlan smiled.

“What if you give yourself an exit route?” Vanessa asked, her mind was already sorting the problem into solutions. “You don’t have a map to get you there…you’re relying on other forces…dimensions…Leave yourself markers, small signposts….”

He nodded, understanding.

“You mean a trail of crumbs, a thread through the labyrinth?”

“Yes. We could pull together a map of what we know about here, about the inlet. When you’re returning from the other side of it…from the other direction…”

“…I will be able to link the two.”

“Once you get yourself back to the wood at the inlet.”

Dr Laidlaw considered for a long moment.

“I will wait there for you.” Vanessa offered. “Keep watch for you. Time works differently there. I understand that much. I’ve experienced it.”

She was moving quickly now, rearranging the maps they had, turning a fresh page in the notes they were making. Vanessa tapped at the face of the company compass. “I’ve got True and Magnetic…” she mused. Dr Laidlaw shook his head.

“Far North is not on that compass.”

Vanessa waited for a moment more before reaching into her sweatshirt pocket. She checked the face of her own compass, the one from home, before placing it on the map.

“But it is on this one.”

He looked at it for a long moment.

Dr Lachlan Laidlaw had been alone for a long time, not counting the sixty years trapped in the ice. His journey Far North had dropped off any map he’d had in his possession and now he reached into his inside pocket for a small black cloth covered notebook. Apart from some foxing at the edges and small water stains, it appeared to have survived all its ordeals.

Lachlan opened it. Inside were his sketches of the route he had taken North as far as the inlet. He and Vanessa worked now to copy those maps and try and place them within the charted landscape they occupied. The compass disliked all the routes they tried to map, none married with the geography.

They worked for several hours, by the time on Vanessa’s wristwatch. The time on the kitchen clock seemed to halt and Vanessa made a note of it in her book. As they worked Lachlan told her of Todber and Murnhull, of a leather armchair by an Oxbridge window, the amber light of evening whisky. A black dog.

“Now Vanessa…” he said “Tell me about Pike Lake.” he looked very directly into her face. Vanessa’s breathing shallowed.

“How do you know about that?” Vanessa had been reticent. The most information she had given away was only the ‘Way’ part of her name. She had said nothing of her origins or history before her arctic internship. Vanessa was aware of the intense shafts of light coming in and casting shadows. The light seemed to reflect more than its necessary brightness, diamond white, as she looked down the shadows were waiting for her, branching and breaking up the surface of the concrete, reaching across the floor. The shadows were complex, intricate, once again the ghosts of the leaves fluttering and brittle. She took a step backward, the vertiginous feeling sweeping across her, she was awake and yet she was in her dream, Lachlan Laidlaw’s hand on her hip, his breath against her cheek. Memory. Dream. Memory. It was a zoetrope flickering in her head. She did not need to look at her watch to know that it had stopped. Lachlan Laidlaw’s hand reached for hers.