The Ice King (A Witch Ways Whisper) (5 page)

A matter of days later saw Lachlan engaged in a small poltergeist project at one of the colleges. He was writing up a long night of reporting nothing more supernatural than a saucer falling from a dresser as a truck rolled by.

“You still up there Lach? Only you’ve a visitor…shall I show him up?” Todber called from the bottom of the stairs. Lachlan was glad of the distraction.

The last person that Lachlan expected to see was Professor Folds.

“Lachlan, good to see you.” Professor Folds was warm, effusive, his handshake firm. “How are you?” he cast a glance around the room, noted the research papers on the desk.

“Very well Professor and you? Mrs Folds?”

“Excellent. It is, in point of fact, Mrs Folds who has sent me here Lachlan.” the Professor was eager, bursting to speak.

“Would you care for a whisky?” Lachlan offered. Professor Folds waved the idea away.

“Perhaps, in a moment or two, it depends upon your answer.”

“To what question?” Lachlan felt icy fingers at his chest and a broad smile broke across his mind’s eye.

“Mrs Folds is, as you know, the chair of many historical societies and charities here in Oxbridge.”

Lachlan nodded. Mrs Folds was an intelligent and interesting woman. Professor Folds continued.

“The anthropological society has embarked upon a new project, something quite daring and out of the ordinary Lachlan. Something that Mrs Folds thought you were ideally suited to undertake…”

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.

“She’s not here. Obviously. Can I help you?” she took a step closer to Alizon and was surprised that the woman looked less confident, her eyes slithering for a second to the lake water as if afraid of what might surface.

“Of course not.” Alizon sneered.

“Then leave.”

Alizon didn’t quite manage to hide the flinch and her eyes widened with anger.

“You have no manners to speak of.” she commented without, Vanessa realised, making one move to leave.

“Neither do you. Off you trot.” Vanessa stepped aside on the jetty to let her pass. Once again Alizon did not move.

“I am looking for your mother.” her voice was black shadows. Vanessa was disturbed by it.

“You won’t find her in the lake.” Vanessa could hear the tone in her voice. She felt shaky now and ill at ease, Alizon was staring, cold and hard and Vanessa felt as if they were engaged in a competition of wills. Vanessa opened her eyes wider, angrier. Alizon Wilde dropped her gaze and stepped past her. As she did so Vanessa felt off balance, as if she’d been shoved and had to shift her foot so that she didn’t tumble off the jetty. There was a smirk on Alizon Wilde’s face as she strolled towards the shore which pulled the pin on Vanessa’s grenade of anger.

Three steps brought her to Alizon and she found her hand reaching out, pinching hard at the bony upper arm and it was so tempting to launch her into the water but her mother had always said, no one must go into the water and so Vanessa half pushed, half carried Alizon Wilde towards the shore, her feet almost tripping with every step.

“Watch your step.” Vanessa warned as they continued to stumble towards Alizon’s car, parked behind Cob Cottage.

At the car, Alizon, shaking and rattled, scraped her key along the paintwork trying to fit it into the door. She fumbled at the lock, scuttled inside but as she tried to pull the door shut Vanessa held it fast.

“Don’t come here again.” and with that warning she slammed the door.

Inside the cool interior of Cob Cottage Vanessa’s anger sifted out of her like sand. She put the kettle onto the stove and thought about finding something to eat.

Her mother arrived back an hour or more later. Vanessa was still wired with the encounter with Alizon Wilde and did not notice how tired her mother looked, nor that her clothes were damp.

“Alizon Wilde was here.” Vanessa informed her mother. Hettie Way did not look surprised.

“What did she want?”

“Looking for you. Out on the jetty.” Vanessa looked at her mother and did not see the dark circles beneath her eyes “Just standing out there like she owned the place when I got home.”

Hettie Way gave no answer to this, she waited for her daughter to continue.

“She’s so bloody up herself. God.” Vanessa turned and noticed, at last, that her mother was very pale.

“Avoid her. Just don’t…bother about her…”

Vanessa thought that her mother was worse than pale, she looked greenish as if she might be sick.

“Are you alright?” as Vanessa said it she was already reaching for her mother who was failing on her feet. Her mother’s weight fell against Vanessa and, amidst a flash of fear at what might be wrong, Vanessa helped her to the chair. As she did so her mother gagged violently, throwing up a cascade of lake water, of dead fish and rotting weed. Vanessa’s heart was bursting with terror but she held onto her mother as they rode out a second wave of retching; more water, a long strangling ribbon of weed slithering like a bilious green tape worm. Vanessa was shaking but her brain pushed her into a primal mode and held tight to her mother.

“It’s ok. It’s ok.” she said over and over as if saying it would make it so. An affirmation. A wish.
A spell
. The words printed themselves into her head. “It’s ok. It’s ok. It’s ok.” she stroked her mother’s hair as Hettie sagged back into the chair, drank in great deep breaths of air. Vanessa reached for the blanket from the sofa, wrapped her mother up. Her mother held her hand for a moment, squeezed tight.

“I’m fine. I will be alright. Don’t worry.”

Vanessa did worry. Her brain and heart were misfiring in head and chest as she reached for the mop and for the towels by the washing machine, using them to mop up the surfeit of water on the kitchen floor. Finding the broom and sweeping up the weed, slithering the fish into the dustpan.

Later, she made them tea and they sat together in the falling dark.

“What was Alizon doing here?” Vanessa asked at last, her mind recalling the image of the red woman, staring into the water. Had she pushed her mother in? Her mother looked at her. For a moment Vanessa thought she might not answer.

“Trespassing.” Hettie said and shifted in the chair, pulled the blanket up over her shoulder. “She’s a pain in the arse.”

“I told her not to come back here.”

Hettie took her hand, held it too tightly, her face looking angry.

“No. Don’t have any interaction with her. She’s dangerous. I’m warning you. Keep away.”

Vanessa felt angered. For just a brief moment she had thought that her mother might tell her something, might include her in the idea of her work as Gamekeeper, might reveal the true nature of her relationship with those bitch queens of the WI. She had felt, for just a moment, that she was going to be included and now her mother shut down that moment.

“She came here, onto the property. To our home. What was I supposed to do? Just walk in and ignore her standing out there?”

“Yes. Get inside and lock the door.” Hettie’s face looked strained. There was no give in what she was saying, Vanessa could tell, there was no negotiation possible. Her heart and head had settled into their usual rhythms but this instruction from her mother sent them reeling off again. Vanessa thought of the nights they had spent at the cottage and she had woken and heard voices or noises and always her mother had reassured her and sent her back to her room. She was too big now to be sent back to her room.

“What will she do?”

“Just leave it be. This is my job, not yours.”

“I want to help.” this was all Vanessa had ever really wanted. She thought of all the times she had offered such help and she thought she already knew the response, but, when it came it was not what she had anticipated.

“I know. I know that.” her mother was shaking, her voice barely managing to find its way out “You have to understand… you are not the Gamekeeper.”

“I know, I don’t want to be, I just want…” her mother grabbed at her forearm, held tight.

“No. Listen. You are not the Gamekeeper. Ever. Do you understand? I can’t teach you. It isn’t for you.” her mother’s face was trembling with emotion. Hettie reached for her daughter’s hand. Vanessa wanted to back away, felt more afraid than ever before in her life.

“Remember the pike? Remember?” Hettie’s face was only just holding its foundations against the earthquake of emotion. Vanessa thought, for a moment, that her mother was talking nonsense.

“Pike?” she was confused, afraid, as a memory glimmered strongly, a net, a fish, the snowed-in globe of its eye.
Aurora
. Hettie held her hand painfully tight, her other hand reaching for Vanessa’s face, turning her daughter’s head so that she could look directly into her eyes.

“I did not decide this. The Pike. Remember?” There was no escape, memory surged back, water and weed.

“Esox Lucius.” Vanessa said and Hettie nodded, nodding and nodding, the only way to keep the tears back. She stroked Vanessa’s hair, the way she had when she was small.

“This place…Havoc Wood. Pike Lake. Cob Cottage…This place, is not your place.”

It was so cruel. So definite. Hettie let her daughter go, her hands moving to her own face, covering her mouth, her eyes closing against the tide of tears.

Vanessa walked out through the double doors onto the porch, jumped down the flight of three steps and across the grass. Hettie watched her daughter stride to the lake, pick up pebbles and begin to throw them one by one into the water.

Hettie leant forward in the armchair, resting her head in her hands for a moment. She was tired, the kind of tired you became from having fought hard enough to live to fight another day. She peeled off her sweater, moving her left arm gingerly. The sleeve beneath was ragged and the claw marks had cut deep. She would need to stitch the wound. First she needed a painkiller as her arm was aching from where it had been dislocated and she had been forced to pop it back. She checked the wound, it was cleanish but she needed to be certain. She stood up, making for the sink and her first aid box, the room wheeled around and Vanessa’s arm caught her, steered her back into the chair.

“I can stitch that for you.”

Hettie, eyes filled with tears, nodded.

They were quiet as Vanessa worked to repair the wounds.

Vanessa had understood all her life that her mother’s job was not the usual run of gamekeeping, that that was just a name to pin it with in the world. This fact did not make it any the less disconnecting.

Much later, with starlight sprinkling the lake they sat on the porch, wrapped in blankets against the chill air. “I thought I could use science to protect you.” she confessed “Explain. Measure. Classify.”

Her mother nodded.

“I know.”

They sat together for some time longer, then Hettie hefted herself out of the chair and stepped towards the door. She hesitated.

“Vanessa.” she took a second to gather herself. Vanessa’s heart was pounding again and she felt as tired as if she had run a marathon. “The sooner you can get away from here, the better off you will be.” her mother’s voice cracked with emotion.