Pure Dead Frozen Read online

  “Pardon?” Pandora frowned. “What bet? What is going on?”

  The tincture squaddie put his finger to his lips and motioned Pandora to follow him over to the window, out of earshot of the rank and file. Framed by a wintry view of the meadow and Lochnagargoyle, he whispered so quietly that Pandora had to practically invite him to crawl into her ear to make himself heard.

  “My men are losing the will to live, Your Towering Immeasurability. They gamble from dawn to dusk, but lacking money with which to gamble properly, they use their lives as currency instead. It’s…ochhh—” Here he appeared to struggle to explain himself. Then, inspiration dawning: “They play a form of Russian roulette. Only we’re not Russians, we’re Celts. And it’s not roulette we’re playing, it’s Cluedon’t. So, in short, we play Celtic Cluedon’t, and losers lose all.”

  Pandora was aghast. “WHAT?” she squeaked. “But…but that’s sick! You play to the death? Urrrghhh. That’s horrible. No game is worth that.”

  “But war is a game, Your Whopping Extensiveness,” the tincture squaddie interrupted, his face arranged in a sad little smile. “A game we play for the highest stakes, but a game nonetheless.” Seeing Pandora’s face, he continued, “Imagine: one day you see your opponents as your worst-ever enemies. You are determined to destroy them—their wives and children; their homes, lands, and oceans—as they are determined to destroy yours. Time passes and now you’re trading with them, marrying their children with yours, and fighting alongside them against another, newer enemy. If you think about it, Your Gargantuan Jumboness, warfare and games have the same objective in mind—the purpose of both is to win. Once you have won, you shake hands, draw up treaties, execute a few scapegoats, and then your leaders sit down together and drink a toast to the health of your nations. If that’s not a game, I’ll eat my shield.”

  Pandora shook her head. For once, she had nothing to say. She loathed war; to her it seemed like a vast adult conspiracy designed to propel a nation’s teenagers out of their beds and off to foreign lands from where, all too frequently, they would return in plastic bags. She gazed at the little warrior in dismay: war was too visceral, too bloody, and far too dangerous to be likened to a game.

  Seeing the girl’s obvious distress, the squaddie leaned in close to her ear again. “I don’t mean to say that war is for fun, Your Himalayan Hugeosity. My men regard going to war as the highest calling; they believe it to be a sacred duty to protect and serve our masters and”—he bowed deeply, the hem of his kilt sweeping across his bare toes—“our Mondo Mistresses.” Crossing one of his arms diagonally across his chest, he leaned back to stare into Pandora’s eyes and said, “We pledge ourselves to protect you to the death, Your Ultimate Thuleness. To. The. Death.” Then he lowered his voice and added, “So, if you could possibly pick a fight quite soon with some neighboring giants, my men and I would be awfully grateful.” And using his pickup-stick spear as a pole, the warrior vaulted off Pandora’s shoulder, ran across the floor, and, in seconds, had vanished down a crack in the floorboards.

  In the End, a Beginning

  Wrapped in their separate miseries, Damp and Ffup leafed through the book of fairy tales, barely aware of what they were looking at. Every illustration of mothers and babies caused Damp’s emotional barometer to plummet still further; each tableau of loving couples united in the happily-ever-after made Ffup literally incandescent with rage. Thus, when Damp finally turned the last page, Ffup reached out a talon and said, “There. Let’s go there.”

  The illustration she indicated was a black-and-white woodcut depicting an island. It was no more than a tailpiece, a little decorative squiggle included as more of an afterthought than an illustration of any of the stories in the book. Under the island was the word

  finis

  but since Damp couldn’t read yet and Ffup had no understanding of Latin, neither of them knew that what they were looking at was “The End,” written in an obsolete tongue.

  Moments later, as the dragon and child paddled ashore to the island, it wasn’t toward The End, but toward a new beginning. A new game to distract both of them from the betrayals they’d left behind at StregaSchloss. The water lapped round Damp’s knees, wavelets soaking the hem of her down-filled jacket, turning its pale outer fabric transparent and exposing the curled feathers within. Beside her, Ffup’s talons left crescent-shaped gouges on the sandy seafloor. Their progress was somewhat erratic, the dragon pausing occasionally to remove entangled seaweed from her feet or flail ineffectively at the clouds of midges hovering around her head. The air felt balmy and the water barely cool; on the island, the few trees were shyly leaved in pale green, as if spring had arrived that day. Ffup spun slowly in a circle, taking in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view before concluding that wherever they were, it wasn’t StregaSchloss.

  “I mean, think,” the dragon squeaked. “We left a blizzard behind. Last time I looked out of a window, it was dropping flakes as big as prawn crackers and it was freezing cold. Er…talking of prawn crackers…”

  Paying no attention to this, Damp plodded ahead, wishing she’d thought to remove her Wellies before attempting to wade ashore. Her feet made revoltingly slurpy sucking noises until she finally reached the high-tide mark and sat down to remove her Wellies and empty them out. Ffup slumped on the dry sand beside her, moaning fitfully.

  “I wish we’d thought to pack some food. Don’t suppose you’ve got anything to eat in that jacket of yours? I’m ravenous.”

  Damp plunged her hands into her pockets and shook her head. She wasn’t ravenous. She was sad. Damp felt as if a huge hole had sprouted in the middle of her body, a huge hole that couldn’t ever be filled up again. Every time she thought about the new baby, the hole grew bigger and bigger. Staring at nothing, she imagined that by the time her parents came home from hostiple with that baby, there would only be a huge hole left to remind them that they used to have a daughter called Damp. This thought made her feel even more sad and cross, so she thumped the heels of her Wellies in the sand and frowned like a gargoyle.

  Just like Damp, Ffup felt as if she too had a huge hole in the middle of her body. However, unlike Damp, Ffup knew exactly how to fill it up again. For the dragon, food was the most important reason for getting out of bed in the morning, and thus its absence on the island was a cause for major upset.

  “We have to go back home immediately,” she decided, heaving herself upright and glaring down to where Damp sat propped against a gnarled blade of driftwood that was poking out of the sand like a broken tooth.

  “Well, come on,” Ffup insisted. “Stir your stumps, girl. The longer we wait, the less chance there is that your beast of a brother will have left us anything decent to eat….”

  Unfortunately, this only served to remind Damp of her other brother: the small, newly born one. The one who had stolen her mother away and sent her to a hostiple. Damp’s brows plunged.

  “Not wantit, lunch,” she stated. “Not want beastie brother. Not go home.”

  “What?” Ffup squawked. “What’s this ‘Not wantit go home’ rubbish? ’Course you want to go home.”

  “Not wantit, home,” muttered Damp, snatching a pebble and glaring at it before hurling it at the incoming waves.

  “Come on, kid. Get a grip,” Ffup snapped.

  “Not get grip,” Damp insisted. “Want to stay here.”

  “Give me strength,” Ffup snarled. “Of all the places you could have chosen, you had to pick this desolate lump of godforsaken rock to stage your big I’m-leaving-and-I’m-never-coming-back drama. Why here? Why now? Why not wait till we’re within walking distance of my lunch, and then go for it?” Seeing Damp’s locked-and-shuttered expression, Ffup stamped her feet and immediately gave a deafening shriek. Toppling sideways, she fell onto the sand, howling in agony.

  “Whatsamatter?” Damp was by her side in a flash. “Where’s it hurty at?”

  By way of an answer, Ffup wailed even louder, clutching one of her feet and rocking from side to si
de.

  “Poor toes?” Damp guessed, trying to see if there was sufficient blood to justify the volume of the dragon’s complaint. The pads beneath Ffup’s talons were so wrinkled that it would have been impossible to see any evidence of a cut or tear, but the pebbles beneath her were smeared with red. At least, most of the pebbles were. Damp caught her breath. In the middle of a long line of bloody stones, one of them was glowing a dazzlingly bright neon pink.

  “Pretty…,” Damp breathed, reaching out to pick it up.

  Through her histrionics, Ffup sensed that despite her best efforts, she was no longer center stage. Snapping her mouth shut, and thereby prematurely stifling a particularly fine example of a low and quivering moan, the dragon sat up, slitted her eyes, and peered at the radiant pink stone in Damp’s hands.

  “Wow,” she gasped, not yet comprehending what a terrible find they had stumbled upon. It would take a seawater douche to remove the traces of dragon’s blood that had caused the stone to fluoresce. It would also take a few seconds thereafter for Ffup to recognize the stone as being the diamond from the center of her missing engagement ring. When Ffup and Damp triumphantly made their way back home for lunch, it would be too late to undo the dreadful harm done by their unwittingly returning the Chronostone to StregaSchloss.

  X Marks the Spot

  In Mrs. McLachlan’s bedroom, the nanny and Latch were having a cup of tea. A lingering smell of singed carpet hung in the air, overlaid with the tarry aroma of Lapsang Souchong wafting out of the teapot that steamed gently by the fireplace. Serene and permanently unflappable, Mrs. Flora McLachlan was enjoying the ritual of morning tea, a habit that Latch suspected she wouldn’t break even if the barbarians were sailing up the loch, the turrets of StregaSchloss were tumbling to the ground, and the world was due to end at lunchtime. Even then, Flora would still be sipping Lapsang at precisely eleven-thirty, come Hell or high water.

  “A wee date scone, dear?”

  Latch frowned. How, he wondered, could she do this? He’d just given her an edited version of what Mr. Grabbit, the lawyer, had told him in the privacy of the Discouraging Room. Subsequently, it hadn’t been the damp chill in that room that had caused Latch to shiver. If what Mr. Grabbit said was true, the entire family were in deep peril. And here was Flora, offering him a scone? Of course, that would come in really handy during the threatened invasion by Don Lucifer’s hired assassins. As if reading his mind, Flora McLachlan smiled and reached forward to pat his hand.

  “I wasn’t suggesting you use my date scone as a weapon, dear. Armies march on their stomachs, I’ve been led to believe, and if Mr. Grabbit is correct, we adults must behave like an army to protect the three children in our care. Eat up, do.”

  Obediently, Latch took a bite. Warm, chewy, and deliciously sweet, the date scone immediately made him feel better, despite the fear clawing at his stomach.

  “Now, then,” Flora continued, topping up both their cups and adding two lumps of sugar to Latch’s. “We can’t leave. At least, not by road. Ffup couldn’t carry us all and, lacking wings of our own, our only other means of escape would be young Titus’s boat. With four adults and three children on board, I fear it would be so low in the water that it would capsize immediately.” Having delivered this rather gloomy assessment of their current situation, Mrs. McLachlan briskly stirred Latch’s tea and fixed him with a hard stare. “Dear,” she began, “until the snow melts, we are effectively under siege. We must defend ourselves as best we can. Without knowing from where the first attack might come, or indeed when, I suggest that we prepare ourselves to hole up in the map room for a while.”

  Latch felt his stomach plummet, and his heart clenched with fear. “I loathe the map room,” he whispered, taking a deep and scalding swallow of tea to fortify himself.

  “There is no other room as easily defended,” Mrs. McLachlan reminded him. “Stone walls, no windows, one small door; the corridor leading to it is too narrow to allow the passage of more than one person at a time….”

  “Dark, claustrophobic, tomblike…” Latch shuddered. “I’m a Highlander by birth, Flora—my kin are allergic to wee dark cavey things. I want to meet my end out in the open air—”

  “We are not going to be meeting any ends, dear,” Mrs. McLachlan interrupted. “And your lovely open air currently has a blizzard blowing in it, in case you’d forgotten. Historically, even the most claustrophobic members of your clan were forced into wee dark cavey things in the winter, were they not?” She reached out and grasped both Latch’s hands, and he found himself reminded that for all her enormous courage, she was still the selfsame Flora he had asked to marry him all those months ago….

  “Dearest…,” he began, just as there came a tentative knock on the door. Their eyes met, locked, and, just as quickly, disengaged. Latch stood up and crossed the room in three strides, opening the door to reveal Miss Araminta standing outside.

  “We have a problem,” the young nanny said. “Damp has vanished.”

  Now Latch noticed that Minty was ashen-faced, and as her words sank in, he felt his heart kick hard against his breastbone.

  “You’ve looked in…?” he started to say, on the point of running through a checklist of places where a determined toddler might hide herself, but then he stopped. Minty was shaking her head.

  “We’ve really lost her this time,” she whispered, looking past Latch to where Mrs. McLachlan was, halfway out of her chair.

  “Gone?” she demanded, her gaze raking Minty like a searchlight. “And I imagine Ffup as well?”

  Minty nodded, biting her bottom lip. “I…ah…” She took a deep breath and continued, looking from Flora to Latch and back again. “I’m pretty sure that they’re not out in the snowstorm. I checked for footprints in the snow all round the house and there are none, nor are there any signs of dragon droppings, so they haven’t gone out via the doors. Which means…” Minty frowned and shook her head in bewilderment. “I know this must sound mad, but I think Damp has found a portal.” And here she paused, partly to give Mrs. McLachlan and Latch time to absorb this statement, and partly to allow them to run screaming from the room to escape the ravings of the lunatic in their midst. To Minty’s relief, they held their ground, blinking slightly, but both wearing similar expressions of faint encouragement.

  “Go on, dear,” Mrs. McLachlan said mildly, her knuckles white as she clasped her hands together.

  “I don’t know if you’re aware that this house—actually, the entire StregaSchloss estate—is riddled with portals. It’s got so many, it looks like a Swiss cheese….”

  Despite everything, Mrs. McLachlan nearly smiled: Minty’s choice of a culinary metaphor was refreshingly down-to-earth, considering she was trying to describe something beyond the realm of the senses.

  “I stumbled through one in my bedroom when I’d only been at StregaSchloss for a few days,” Minty continued, causing Latch to frown and hold up a hand to halt the flow of what was, to him, incomprehensible gibberish.

  “Forgive me if I’m being a bit dense,” he said, “but what is a ‘portal,’ exactly? I know what the word means, in the sense that a portal is a gateway, but—”

  “You’re quite right, dear,” Mrs. McLachlan interrupted. “They are gates of a sort. I prefer to think of them as points where worlds meet and merge, places where one can cross between.”

  Latch looked, if anything, even more confused. Seeing this, Minty tried to help.

  “To give you an example”—she smiled—“the portals in my room are in the oil paintings. They look like perfectly ordinary oil paintings: old, dark, full of chaps and battles and dinners….”

  The Ancestors’ Room had never been a suitable bedroom for the fainthearted, Latch thought, distracted from Minty’s words by a wave of guilt. He remembered the day the young nanny had first arrived at StregaSchloss. He’d been instructed to put her in the Lilac Room, but he had decided to find out what she was made of, see how she responded to a challenge and thus discover if she really wa
s suitable to be caretaker to the toddler witch Damp. Minty, to her credit, had passed Latch’s test with flying colors—a test that Latch would rather have eaten slugs than take himself. Truth was, the Ancestors’ Room gave him the creeps, but he wouldn’t have admitted that to a living soul. It was lined with ancient portraits of long-dead Borgias, and every time Latch had been in the room for longer than five minutes, he’d been sure that the painted heads behind his back were coming to life. Here, now, was evidence that he’d been right all along, although this knowledge came freighted with deep shame for his part in putting Minty through what sounded like a terrifying ordeal.

  “…When the picture came to life and spoke, I thought I was going to pass out,” she continued. “Then I climbed into it, into a hot-air balloon flown by Apollonius ‘The Greek’ Borgia, a man who died hundreds of years ago; then I was sure that I was definitely going to pass out.” Minty gave a most unladylike snort of laughter and added, “And that was before I looked over the edge of the balloon gondola and saw how terrifyingly high up we were….”

  Latch cringed inwardly. This had all been his fault. If Minty had been given the Lilac Room as Signora Strega-Borgia had intended, none of this would have hap—

  “I suppose I’m too curious for my own good,” Minty admitted. “But having found one portal, I thought there might be more.” She bit her lip again and took a steadying breath. “My bedroom—the Ancestors’ Room—it’s absolutely riddled with them. All the portraits of long-dead ancestors are portals. That made me wonder if every single picture hanging at StregaSchloss was a portal as well, but I was wrong. I’ve only found one other, and that’s the reproduction of the Mona Lisa in Damp’s old bedroom. However, no two portals are the same, nor are their passengers; portals come in different sizes, as if much smaller creatures use them as well….”