The Ice King (A Witch Ways Whisper) (2 page)

“Larus Marinus.” Vanessa said. Hettie turned.

“What’s that?”

Vanessa looked up into the sky.

“Great Black Backed Gull.”

Hettie nodded, and with a tight squeeze of her hand she half lifted Vanessa up the path so that she would be in front of her.

“Come on…this way…” they moved quickly along the path heading deeper into the wood. Her mother held tight to Vanessa’s hand.

“Oh…look at the lichen.” her mother stopped, panting now, by a fallen log “What’s that one called? Do you know?” she placed herself behind her daughter, her arms softly on Vanessa’s shoulder. Hettie cast a glance back the way they had come but Vanessa looked down at the lichen. She didn’t know its name and she was distracted too by a moss nearby that was like tiny green stars and then there was a patch of toadstools, red capped spotted white exactly like the fairytale pictures.

“Oh, toadstools…” Vanessa picked her way towards them, her mother held her back a little.

“Careful sweetheart, those are Fly Agaric.” as her mother spoke the air seemed very still and Vanessa thought that Havoc Wood was suddenly very quiet, a cushiony silence held the air, even the birds had stopped singing.

“
Fly Agaric
.” Vanessa said the name over to herself and loved it at once.

“Deadly poisonous.” Her mother held her hand very tightly and they began to walk onwards, her mother careful to keep Vanessa just ahead of her. “Tell you what…why don’t we go into Castlebury tomorrow and find you a book about mushrooms?”

“And lichens?” Vanessa asked.

“Yes. Definitely. A good idea… very useful…Who wants spaghetti for their tea?”

Back at Cob Cottage they began their usual kitchen bustle, Vanessa, allowed to use the big knife because she was careful, chopped onions and squidged the garlic as the rain came in sheets rattling at the windows.

That night Vanessa heard noises and woke from edgy dreams to hear a man’s voice. It sounded as if he was crying and he was certainly frightened. It was answered by her mother’s voice, the harsh one she used when she was dealing with trespassers and poachers. Vanessa opened her door and stepped out into the hallway. There was a cold wind blowing through the cottage and she could tell now that the voices were real and were outside.

She was not yet tall enough to see through the kitchen window so she tiptoed towards the open cottage door.

Outside, towards the track, her mother was talking to a man and a woman. Vanessa couldn’t quite make them out in the dark and the mizzly rain. The man wiped at his face, sobbing and the woman was silent, head down and nodding. After a few moments they moved off, up the track and towards the road.

“What’s happening?” Vanessa asked as her mother stepped inside and closed the door. Her mother was not surprised to see her. She smiled.

“Nothing sweetheart, they were just lost, had taken a wrong turning from the road…” Hettie hugged Vanessa, kissed her hair “Come on, back to bed. School in the morning.”

*

“My dad says he can catch that monster pike.” Wilson Taylor was making little punches at Vanessa’s arm.

“Go away.” she said, trying to sound like her mother’s trespasser voice. Wilson wasn’t hurting her but he was annoying, with his fists and his little reddish face, his crooked teeth biting at his bottom lip.

“Yeah.Yeah.Yeah, my dad says he can go to Pike Lake anytime he wants and kill that pike.”

Vanessa felt a little blue flame of anger spark up inside her.

“He can’t.” she stated “Pike Lake is private property.”

“My dad says that monster pike is older than the castle and fair game.”

Vanessa glared hard, trying not to blink so she could stare down Wilson Taylor. He bobbed about in front of her, his fists still making little soft jabs at her.

“He is not going to kill that pike or any of the fish in my lake.” Vanessa threatened. “It isn’t allowed.”

Punch punch punching pound. “ ‘Tis.”

Vanessa growled and moved her arm out of the target zone. Wilson moved forward.

“ ‘Tis, ‘Tis, ‘Tis.” punch punch PUNCH.

*

Her mother was grinning and not cross at all as they left the headmistress’s office and did not go back to class but instead, walked out through the playground, heading homeward.

“So, how does it feel to punch someone then? Haven’t ever done that myself.” they were walking up through town towards Old Castle Road.

“Crunchy.” Vanessa said after some thought. It had been annoying and frustrating too with Wilson crying and whining and the teacher, Miss Marlow, not listening to her reasons for hand to hand combat.

“Why does everyone want to kill the monster pike?” Vanessa asked.

“Not everyone. Just stupid people.”

After today at school, Vanessa was beginning to see that stupid people seemed to outnumber other kinds of people.

“Oh Good god.” Vanessa grumped and her mother laughed at the serious manner of her cursing.

“Don’t worry about it sweetheart. It’s my job to keep them away. I’m the Gamekeeper. It isn’t a problem.”

“You didn’t keep those men away yesterday. They threw the can in the lake.”

Her mother looked very serious and stopped walking.

“You saw what happened to the can?” her eyebrows were wiggled into question marks. Vanessa thought her mother looked prettiest with her wriggly eyebrows.

“The lake threw it back.” she replied. Her mother nodded.

“Precisely. Don’t worry about the monster pike, he can take care of himself.”

But Vanessa did worry about the pike and about her mother having to confront stupid people who were, as far as Vanessa could assess, cruel bullies. She recalled too often the ugly and dangerous look on Stocky Mike’s face and that her mum had no one to help her in her job as Gamekeeper.

“Are you done? Shall we go?” at the sound of her mother’s voice Vanessa flipped the encyclopaedia closed. It made a satisfying thomp which echoed around the round domed central room of the Castlebury library. Vanessa flapped shut the top of her schoolbag and picked up the library books from the table. She hurried to close up her notebook and catch her pen which was rolling off the table onto the floor.

She had constructed a good plan and she would be able to put it into action on Saturday. She would be useful, helping her mother in her work and she would also, above everything else, be helping save the life of the monster pike from all comers.

She had looked up Pike in the encyclopaedia, a book too heavy to sneak into her schoolbag. She already loved the pike, his mysterious lake existence and now, of course, his Latin name
Esox Lucius
. The books she had managed to borrow in secret were one on fishing and another on identifying freshwater fish. She needed her reference points so that she could take her measurements and make an accurate biological survey.

She had sort of stolen the books because they were in her bag and not on the counter, with her other choices, being stamped. This was ok for two reasons; one; she needed them for the plan and two; she was going to return them, not keep them, hence she termed it secret borrowing. Not stealing. Not at all.

Back at Cob Cottage Vanessa dropped her coat on the back of the kitchen chair and scooted down the short curved corridor. Round in shape, Vanessa’s bedroom was a small short tower of a place, nestling into the east side of the cottage. It was insulated with her bookcases made from curving branches of oak and alder with a long thin window set up in the wall just below the thatch. Although she could not see the lake she could see sky and treetops and the rookery. It was like living, Vanessa thought, in a small mud castle. She shut the gnarly oak door behind her and unloaded her school bag secrets. Yes, she felt confident of her plan to help her mother.

She was busy over the next few days assembling things she needed for the fishing aspect of her plan: twine, wire, wool, string, which she wove and twisted. She made good progress because her mother was suddenly busy too, there had been several more fishermen sneaking to the lake and some traps that her mother had found in Havoc Wood that made her very angry indeed.

“Do people want to catch the animals for food?” Vanessa asked as they ate bacon sandwiches on the front porch on Friday night. Her mother laughed.

“Ha. No sweetheart. They want to catch them because they can. They won’t eat a fox or a falcon. They do it to be cruel and feel powerful.” she kissed Vanessa’s forehead and her mother’s gaze drifted out across Havoc Wood. “They don’t understand, there’s nothing more cruel and more powerful than this wood.”

*

It was cold on Saturday. After breakfast her mother wrapped up in her old black waxed raincoat and pulled on her battered boots ready for her usual Patrol.

“There’s sandwich stuff in the fridge.” she was giving instruction. “I won’t be late. If you get bothered or need me, just light the lantern on the porch…ok?”

“Can’t I come with you?” today Vanessa had no wish to go with her mother but she wanted to make it seem like a normal day, one in which she would read books and do homework and whinge about missing out on Patrol.

“No sweetheart. Not today. Another one, ok?” they hugged and Hettie headed off towards the North of the wood.

Vanessa had stashed her equipment in a small canvas rucksack under the porch, now she simply collected it and started her own short trek to the particular curve of the lake where she thought her plan would work best.

At the shoreline she placed her notebook on a big round rock and glanced over the instructions she’d written down for herself. She had them memorised from reading and re-reading and rewriting them, but it settled her mind to read the words and feel the notebook paper under her tracing finger. She had made a fishing net from twine, string and wire and it was woven around a wide plastic ring she’d taken out of the frame of her washing basket.

So, prepared, she fished.

A few hours drifted by slowly. It was pleasant on the bank and Vanessa had found a smooth stone worn down into a bowl and was sitting in that feeling the coolness of it. She had tried reading a book but there was something about the lake today, it was almost like an electricity, that distracted her. She found her gaze drawn to the glassy grey surface where she could see the perfect reflection of the crowds of jackdaws and rooks taking off from the trees on the opposite shore, the image as clear as if she was looking down into a reversed world. She thought of the cities of birds above her, the nuthatches and treecreepers. Somewhere a woodpecker was knocking. There must be, she thought, yet another world still, in the water.

There was a rippling plash. Vanessa looked up, her binoculars lifted to check out the disturbance in the water. Was that a fin? She jumped down from her stone and took a step closer to the water, scanning with the binoculars. The clouds had thickened and so where Vanessa now stood was darker and more shadowed, the trees leaning in closer. The water looked silken, the ripples rolled towards her and she was tempted to take off her shoes. Her mother gave strict instruction at all times; she was never to go swimming in the lake. They had rowed out in the boat but not ever, not once, even so much as dipped a toe in the steely grey water.

It could not hurt to paddle today, could it
? Yes. She would get into trouble. She thought of the prickle of heat she’d felt from her mother when the gull attacked and it seemed like a warning. Vanessa’s mind ticked. She reached into her bag for a jam jar that she had filled with her mother’s homebrewed blackberry squash and, unfastening the lid, drank the squash.

Perhaps there was a way to examine the water without actually getting into it. Vanessa, sitting on her stone above the lake, watched the water. Looked at the empty jar.
Of course. That was what she could do. In her pencil case she had a little stash of litmus paper from school. Acid. Alkaline. PH
.

There was no way she could fill the jar from the shore without getting her feet a little bit wet but the taboo placed on the lake prickled at her so she climbed quickly back up onto the bowled stone and lay down flat.
Yes. Look
. If she just reached her arm down like this the jar would…yes… As she was contorting her small frame across the front edge of the stone there was another, heavier splot. Vanessa looked out across the water. From her stony perch she could see, just beneath the surface, a long dark shadow, a flick of fin. A waterboatman was paddling his legs across the lake until, with a glint of sunlight, the insect was gone, vanished into the dimple of water where the pike’s mouth had snapped at its small feast.

Vanessa paused. Her heart was beating fast. She was so very, very close. Now the shadows of the clouds were playing tricks. Was that the pike? That. There? If she just shifted a little bit…further…and if she just angled her shoulder. She watched as a little puddle of water gushed into the jar. Vanessa pulled her arm back, shunted down into the bowl of the stone to look. The water was a soft brownish colour, and there were tiny splashes of green and the flimsy miniature form of a baby fish. There was a word for small baby fish but she couldn’t think of it, she looked at his tiny body, he looked made of glass. What was the word for baby fish? Once more, a deep ploshing sound caught at her. She looked up to see a single rolling ripple expanding out from just below the stone. Speckled. Green. Something skulked. Vanessa sat back.

She wasn’t scared. No, not at all. She was scientific. She opened her black notebook and made a drawing of the tiny fish, listed information about the water, the colour, the smell. She sniffed at the jam jar. It was confusing because it still had a whiff of blackberry squash. Vanessa put her book down and shifted herself once more into jar-filling pose. Her arm reached downwards, downwards making an arc, exactly like swimming.

The water was deliciously cold on her fingers and, as she fell from the bowled stone the water was cool and clear against her face, her eyes blurring as her feet kicked against it and she sank deeper and the water closed over her. Blinking, she could see beneath the water, to where her hands, reaching down, still holding the jam jar, were distorted and interesting looking. A shoal of small fish, ‘fry’, she found the word at last, flittered around her legs and they were so pretty, these baby fish in their lake world with their red fins. Were they tench? Or was it roach? She rolled and yawed in the water but she would not catch them. She should look them up but not now, later, much later, because there was so much more water to fall down into and look how the weed waved and beckoned and ravelled her up.