Pure Dead Frozen Read online

  “Out?” Titus waved a hand in the direction of the open door to the kitchen garden. “It’s blowing a blizzard out there. We’ll freeze to death. That is, if the wolves don’t get us first.”

  “We’re going to die, aren’t we?” Pandora whispered, her voice kitten-weak and shaky. “If not with the wolves, then we’ll die out there in the snowstorm. No one will find our deep-frozen bodies until—”

  “What a dear little ray of sunshine you’ve turned out to be, girl,” muttered Tarantella. “I’m so glad to be on your team. With your kind of positive attitude on board, I just know we’re bound for victo—” The tarantula broke off in mid-sentence as Pandora scooped her off the cupboard and transferred her to a perch on her shoulder.

  “There, pet lamb,” she said inaccurately, tenderly stroking the spider’s furry body with a trembling hand. “Now you can nag me in comfort. You won’t even have to raise your voice beyond a shrill cackle.”

  Tarantella peered at Pandora with new respect. “My, my, my. Who’s been sharpening their razor tongue, then? Tell me, O Snark Queen, which of the multiple options open to us are we going to select, hmm?”

  Before Pandora could compose a suitably acid reply, the sound of many scuffling, skidding claws came from the kitchen garden; the door to the corridor shuddered, as if something heavy was being repeatedly flung against it; and, to Pandora’s horror, another frosted muzzle poked through the broken window over the sink. With Ludo bringing up the rear, they fled through the wine cellar to the dungeons, not daring to look behind and see if they were being followed in case they slipped and fell down the mossy stairs into the depths of StregaSchloss.

  “Dark,” complained Pandora, groping her way hand over hand along a cold stone wall.

  “Observant, huh?” remarked Tarantella to no one in particular, her many eyes fixed simultaneously on the gloom ahead, the darkness behind, and the velvety black above and below.

  “Wait up,” Ludo called, some distance behind the children, his voice bouncing off the walls to be immediately swallowed by the silence.

  “Sssspoook-eee,” hissed Tarantella, clinging to Pandora’s collar and hastily spinning a length of spider silk for extra anchorage. “Just think of that immense weight of soil right above our heads…and while we’re at it, let’s hope your forebears knew what they were doing when they built this place….”

  “Can’t you make her shut up?” Titus said through gritted teeth, already unnerved by having to grope his way along a particularly slimy section of wall. “This is bad enough without having to put up with that spider’s doom-laden obs—”

  “Shh,” Ludo commanded. “Listen. Can you hear that?”

  “What? Hear what?” Pandora spun round to face where she imagined Ludo’s voice had come from. Disorientated by the oppressive darkness, she realized she’d let go of the wall that had been her only means of navigation. Fumbling blindly, pawing the darkness, she reached out a hand to try and reorientate herself with the wall, but groped only air. The first sour mouthful of terror rose to the back of her throat, forcing her to swallow hard. “Er…,” she managed, both arms windmilling in slow motion as she tried and failed to find the wall again. “Titus?” she whispered, struggling to make her voice sound normal, desperately striving to breathe with lungs that were failing to draw the thickening air into them. “Titus? I’m very scared, Titus. Hello? Please?” And then the fear was all over her, uncontrollable—clabbering at her throat, her mouth; crushing her chest and squeezing the breath from her lungs. As she twisted round in a slow, collapsing coil of her own limbs, her nostrils suddenly filled with the resinous scent of pine sap, and her last conscious thought was a confused sensory-impression of dappled light and voices rushing toward her.

  “Where? What?” Pandora struggled to sit up, but something was keeping her pinned to the ground. Overhead, sunlight winked through a mesh of tree branches, sunshine so dazzlingly bright that she had to close her eyes against the glare.

  “Pan?” Titus’s voice was close to her ear. “I seem to be making a habit of telling you not to panic, but we’re not in the dungeons anymore. I don’t know where we are, but you’ve got to wake up and get moving nowwww—”

  There was a blast of intense heat, followed by a vaguely familiar thrumming, beating sound. Where had she heard that before? Pandora opened her eyes and rolled from her back onto her side. Beneath her lay a thick carpet of leaves and pine needles. Raising her head, she saw several things in quick succession: Titus’s face, pale as milk; tree trunks stretching into the distance behind him like an infinite bar code; and finally, worryingly, a vast, scaly pillar of a leg, terminating in a paw the size of a car tire—a paw that was drumming its deadly talons on the ground in front of Pandora in a decidedly tetchy manner.

  Another blast of heat, this time close enough to set fire to a large swath of forest floor and confirm just what exactly was towering over both her and her brother. A vast dragon peered down at Pandora, visibly confused by a repeat appearance of this dwarfish snack. Months ago, Pandora had borrowed Mrs. McLachlan’s Alarming Clock and had found herself traveling back to a time when dragons roosted in Argyll. Back then, she’d narrowly escaped being toasted by this particular specimen of dragonhood; somehow she doubted whether her luck was going to hold for an encore.

  “Mair bluidy stunted DWARVES!” the dragon roared, its tone indicating just how exceedingly delighted it wasn’t.

  Pandora craned her head back, squinting against the sunlight, all the better to see the owner of the roar.

  “AYE. And twa WEE ones, at that. No’ a SCRAP of meat on eithera rem, I’ll warrant….” And with another incendiary snort, the monstrous dragon turned its back on Titus and Pandora to address its complaints to someone as yet unseen. “HOW am I supposed tae keep body and SOWL together if you keep sending me MALNOURISHED DWARVES? Twa wee skittery mouthfuls of skin and bone won’t go far in my roost. I tell you, crone, we DRAGONS are headet for EXTINGUISHMENT if THIS is the best you can do….” Muttering to itself and emitting small snorts of flame, it rummaged behind a tree, producing a lethal assortment of kitchen implements that looked as if they’d been hewn out of granite by a homicidally inclined Neanderthal. It rattled these in a menacing fashion and continued, “I could shave them very thinly over ma GRUEL, but frankly they’re hardly worth the effort. They’re not RIPE yet, so they’ll not taste of very much at all. See, what I NEED, crone, is something SUBSTATIONAL to feed my family. A nice fat baawool, or an UDDERMOO—och, we could even make do with a RAMBLEAT if we hadty. A few dozen cluckstones or a flocka GOBBLEHISSES…even a maiden would do at a pinch, but only a PLUMPTIOUS one, mind, not a gaunt wee GOBLINETTE like this one here….” And to Pandora’s horror, the dragon turned round and plucked her off the ground, clasping her in its scaly paw for a heart-stopping moment before thrusting her toward a figure that stood some way off in the deckled shadow of the trees.

  The figure came toward her, moving slowly as if it feared that too sudden a movement might make it shatter into a thousand pieces. It raised an arm, and in a quavery voice as familiar to Pandora as her own breathing, said, “Stop drooling, dragon. What you clasp in your paws is not a posset or a breakfast. This human child is my kin. Or…at least, she will be. Several hundred years from now, she will be my great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. Therefore I command you to put her down at once.”

  “Your kin? Why didn’t you say so BEFORE?” the dragon gasped, carefully depositing Pandora in front of her great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Strega-Nonna.

  Pandora blinked. Although she was deeply grateful to Strega-Nonna for saving her from being turned into a blackened crisp, she was completely confused by finding her great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother popping up in the middle of the forest. What was the old lady doing here? For all of Pandora’s life, Strega-Nonna had lived in the freezer at StregaSchloss; only on special occasions would she appear, defrosted and dripping, ready to pull crackers or blow out cake candles
before tottering back to her icy bed. Fortunately for Pandora, this was not a special occasion, and Strega-Nonna appeared to have no intention of returning to her freezer.

  “Quiet, beast,” the old lady snapped, turning away from the dragon to peer at Pandora as if she couldn’t quite believe what she saw. “You? Here? Both of you?” Her voice had dropped to a whisper as she gazed beyond Pandora to where Titus stood, rubbing at his eye while trying to keep as much distance as possible between himself and the dragon. “You cannot be here,” Strega-Nonna mumbled to herself. “Cannot. The children of the future have no place here in the past.”

  Titus stepped forward, still keeping as much air between himself and the now unashamedly dribbly dragon. He rubbed his eye and squinted at Strega-Nonna, as if unable to see her clearly.

  “Nonna? You’ve lived round here for centuries, haven’t you? I mean, if anyone knows StregaSchloss, it’s you, isn’t it? Reason I’m asking is that I’m beginning to think that there have always been…sort of…holes—holes in time here at StregaSchloss.” Titus shook his head and rubbed his eye again. “Uh, I’m not explaining this very well—”

  “Telling me!” muttered Tarantella, emerging from the collar of Pandora’s shirt and opening her mouthparts in an exaggerated yawn. “Do go on,” she said, waving a hairy leg in Titus’s direction.

  Titus’s mouth shut with a snap. He glared at Tarantella, then hissed through clenched teeth, “Right, spider. If you’re so damn smart, you take over. You explain it for us all.”

  Tarantella sighed. “Dear boy, metaphysics never was my strong suit. In my humble way, with my teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy arachnid brain, what I think you’re trying to describe are StregaSchloss’s time portals. Yes?”

  “Whatever,” Titus mumbled, somehow managing with just one word to radiate complete and total lack of interest, coupled with deeply contemptuous teenage disdain.

  “Thank you, thank you for being such a great audience here today.” Tarantella arranged her mouthparts in an approximation of a leer. “As I was saying before I was deafened by your applause, time portals are like doors leading to the past or the future. What has happened here is that you and your sister have accidentally blundered through a portal. How, when, and if you return to your own time is another matter completely….” She heaved a theatrical sigh and batted her many eyelashes at Titus. “I suppose you’ll simply have to thrash around here in this limitless forest until you either accidentally stumble back out the way you came in or get eaten up by one of our friend here’s less biddable friends and relations….”

  Titus paled and edged further away from the dragon.

  “Enough.” Strega-Nonna wagged her finger in rebuke at Tarantella. “You’ll scare the boy half to death. I will lead the children back to their own time. I know the way.”

  It was Pandora’s turn to blanch as she remembered the invasion of wolves that had made them flee to the dungeons in the first place. “We can’t go back.” She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself for comfort. “The house is full of wolves—we came down here to the dungeons to escape them.”

  “Wolves?” The old lady smiled. “I haven’t seen a wolf at StregaSchloss for hundreds of years. I hadn’t thought to see them ever again….”

  “I like WOLFIES,” the dragon said thoughtfully. “Providing they haven’t suffered too lean a winter before I sling them in ma casserole.”

  Titus gazed up at the giant beast with revolted admiration. “You…you eat wolves?” he managed at length.

  “Not raw yins,” the dragon snorted. “PERSONALITY, I like them spit-roasted. Not like your sister, who seems tae prefer them drippin’ wi’ gore.”

  Pandora closed her eyes and swallowed. The smell of wolf blood rose up from her clothes and nearly made her gag as she remembered the wolf Ludo had shot—She turned to Titus and gasped, “Mr. Grabbit! What happened to him? Oh God, Titus, we left him behind, on his own, with the wolves…. We have to go back.”

  A View of the Island

  Intent on rescuing Damp, neither Mrs. McLachlan nor Minty was aware that Titus and Pandora were in immediate danger as well. Oblivious to the wolves closing in on StregaSchloss, Minty ushered Mrs. McLachlan and Latch into her bedroom and closed the door behind them. Over the months she’d been employed at StregaSchloss, Minty had grown accustomed to the weirdness of using the Ancestors’ Room as her bedroom. In turn, the ancestors had learned to live with Minty in their midst. After a month, their painted heads barely turned when she entered the room. Chivalrously, all eyes in the portraits would simultaneously snap shut when she disrobed at bedtime. Minty no longer awoke feeling unaccountably ravenous in the middle of nights when the long-dead ancestors decided to throw a party and roast a boar, and her sleep was untroubled by nightmares, even when men in armor reached out of their frames to switch her bedside light on and off, simply because such electrical wonders hadn’t existed in their lifetimes. Therefore she was perfectly at ease as she stood in front of the portrait of Malvolio di S’Enchantedino Borgia, Strega-Nonna’s long-dead grandson; and Malvolio, in turn, responded to Minty’s attentions by bestowing on her, Latch, and Mrs. McLachlan a smile that would have been dazzling had twenty-first-century cosmetic dentistry been available in the sixteen hundreds. As it was, Latch shuddered at the sight of the ancestor’s dreadful brown teeth, shuddered at the impossibility of witnessing an oil painting come to life, and shuddered at the sure and certain knowledge that he was hearing a dead man speak.

  Behind Malvolio’s grinning head lay a window framing a birchwood beyond. In the painting, even though the window was barely the size of a hardcover novel, the painter had captured every detail of the view beyond: the pale green of the first leaves of spring, the dazzling shimmer of sunshine glinting off the loch behind the trees, and the crisp silhouette of the little island set in the distant water. It was, Mrs. McLachlan decided, too far away to see whether the island was currently inhabited by a pregnant dragon in the company of a little girl, but she had her suspicions. Taking a deep breath and knowing that Latch was going to be severely ticked off at her, Mrs. McLachlan stepped forward.

  There was a sensation like spiderwebs brushing across her face; then she found her way blocked by a heavy oak table. She looked down at a pewter plate, on which lay the remains of lunch, seventeenth-century style.

  “Very nice, dear,” she managed. “Roast swan, was it? You must get your cook to give me the recipe sometime….”

  Latch stood on the other side of the painting, his expression unreadable. What was she thinking of? She was supposed to be recuperating, not off gadding about with people who shouldn’t, couldn’t exist. Hitching up her skirts and climbing into paintings was just one of the many things he’d never suspected the outwardly respectable Flora McLachlan might be capable of doing. He’d hoped their life together would be less…unpredictable. He’d even allowed himself to fantasize that one day they might retire together to a wee cottage somewhere on the StregaSchloss estate; raise chickens and roses; plant a vegetable garden; sit of a summer’s evening in their garden, shelling peas and planning…planning what? Which painting to invade next? Bleakly, Latch imagined the sheer impossibility of ever visiting an art gallery with Flora McLachlan. Ever. It simply didn’t bear thinking about. He turned to share this thought with Miss Araminta, only to discover that she’d gone too. Into a different picture—stepping into the huge battle scene that hung over the fireplace, her blond hair like a burning candle in the middle of the smoke-blackened gloom of The Battle for Mhoire Ochone, 1675.

  Unwilling to be outdone by the two women, Latch steeled himself to follow Flora into her painting—follow her and try to persuade her to return to the land of the living. Then came the sound of gunfire from downstairs, followed by a scream of terror. Torn between love and duty, he spun round and caught sight of movement outside, in the real world beyond the real windows—the dark shadows of wolves coursing across the snowy lawn toward StregaSchloss. From downstairs came more gunfire and, with a single
backward glance—

  Flora and Malvolio at the window; Miss Araminta talking intently to a mounted man in armor—

  Latch ran to help.

  S’tan’s Deepest Fear

  From: dutydemon@deeppit

  To: S’[email protected]/totallytoast

  Hi Boss

  Sorry 2 interrupt yr prog o igenous One but things are getting realie bad here. The furrnaces have all gone out, there are rumurs of angels ice-skating on the Hades Orbital, and the volcanic slopes of Mount Heinous are 100s of feet deep under snow. At this rate we’re going to have 2 use fossle fules by the weekend if we want to keep on toasting sinners as per u.

  Note: do we have any fossle fules?

  Qestions are being asked at meetings of the Hadean Execyutiv——questions like what the H**ven is happening to Hades? Has S’tan lost it? (Begging your pardon, Your Gastly Gruesomeness, this is them, not me.) Should we elect another First Minster? Is the Boss groing soft? O Your Imperial Inflammablness, I beg U, come home. Your Empire needs U.

  Grovle, grovle,

  D. Demon 666

  “Ready in five, Stan baby.”

  The Devil’s head snapped upright and He spun round to face the young assistant producer, unfortunately forgetting to compose His features beforehand.

  “Oh my God!” she shrieked, covering her eyes in horror. “We need to get makeup in here right now. What have you been up to, my darling?” Without waiting for a reply, she spoke into her headset, her voice urgent, her expression remarkably calm considering the monstrous vision in front of her: S’tan unmasked, His yellow teeth bared in a frozen snarl, His awful eyes—

  “You’ve been painting the town red again, haven’t you, you naughty boy?” Clucking, the makeup artist grasped S’tan’s chin in her hand, turning His face this way and that under her critical eye before pronouncing, “You’re a mess, me old duck, but no matter—that’s why I’m here with me powders and paints at the ready: to repair the damage and plaster over the rest….” As she talked, she was already smearing pale green gloop across S’tan’s face, spreading every inch of His outraged red skin with the color-corrective paste, hardly pausing to draw breath before inviting the Arch-Fiend to pop a pair of green contacts into His crimson eyes and simultaneously persuading Him to tuck His tail into His chef’s trousers.