The Notherland Journeys, Episode 6

Jun 26, 2016 | Notherland | 0 comments

Chapter 4: Ghosts on the Ice

“MORE CREAM, MY DEAR?”

The woman, wearing a high-collared dress with a wide, billowy skirt, held out a delicate china creamer to the white-haired man in the military uniform sitting across the table from her.

“I daresay, my dear, these crumpets are your best yet.”

It was strange, he knew, to be here, having tea on the ice like they had so many times before. In fact, everything that had occurred since the little one had somehow brought them here had been exceedingly strange – a fact which he appreciated far more than his wife. For he understood perfectly well that they weren’t really here at all. They were dead. Utterly, absolutely dead. But the little one had been insistent that they were the ones who could show her the way to the Shining World, and somehow the sheer force of her belief had conjured them up and brought them to her. Now that she was gone, he had fully expected that their sojourn here would come to an end, that this world of ice and boundless sky, so familiar to him from his long exile, would dissolve into the mists of time and return him and his dear wife to their places in Eternity. But, mysteriously, this had not happened. Something was keeping them here, though he had no idea what it was.

As he reached for yet another crumpet his thoughts were interrupted by sounds which seemed to be coming from some distance away.

“Listen,” he said to his wife.

They looked out on the surrounding ice and saw a small figure racing towards them. They watched with bemused curiosity as the figure came closer and the shouts grew louder. Finally the running figure, a short, stiff-limbed creature wearing a black patch over one eye, stopped dead a few feet from where they sat.

“It is you!” she exclaimed. “I knew it!”

§§

Everything had happened so fast that Peggy barely had time to take it all in. She had groggily opened her eyes, at first thinking she was back in planting camp. Then she felt some feathers brushing the top of her head and remembered where she was.

She rolled over and saw another pair of legs stretched out near hers.

Jackpine?

She felt a ripple of excitement, feeling him lying there, so close she could hear the rhythm of his breathing. He was sound asleep, his head at the centre of the star-formation across from Gavi’s.

What was he doing here after he’d been so adamant about not wanting to get drawn in. How did he end up sleeping so close to her and the others?

Not that it mattered. As she looked around it was clear to Peggy that nothing had happened. They hadn’t gone anywhere. There had been no shared dream. They were still in Notherland.

Then the shouting started.

“Peggy! Peggy, wake up!”

It was Molly. She was standing by the shore of the lake.

“You won’t believe it!”

Without warning Molly bolted out into the water. Peggy started to shout at her to be come back, then realized there was a reason why there was such a chill in the air, and why the lake seemed so calm.

“Peggy, look! It’s ice!”

Something must have happened during the night after all. They were still in Notherland, but they’d somehow moved farther north.

Peggy watched as Molly streaked out onto the ice. Her shrieks had roused Gavi and Jackpine.

“What’s going on?” said Jackpine.

Peggy squinted, straining to see something moving far out on the ice.

“It is the Everlasting Ice!” Gavi suddenly burst out.

“Yes, and Molly’s taken off after something out there.”

“What?”

“Don’t know. I’m going to go find out.”

She bolted out onto the ice, followed by Jackpine and Gavi, furiously flapping his wings across the smooth surface of the Everlasting Ice.

§§

The white-haired man got up from the table and rushed over to the odd-looking child, enveloping her in a bear-hug of an embrace.

“Molly! Captain Molly!”

“Sir John! Lady Jane! I thought I’d never see you again!”

Molly was choking back tears of joy. Here they were, the great nineteenth-century Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin and his wife Lady Jane Franklin, sipping tea on the vastness of the Everlasting Ice, just as they had once before. Franklin, her beloved mentor, who had taught her the ways of the sea and bequeathed her his very own ship the Terror, re-christened the Resolute by Peggy. Molly was so overcome she barely noticed Peggy and the others racing across the ice a short distance behind her.

As they approached the table, the older couple greeted them warmly.

“I am so glad to finally meet you,” the woman said to Peggy. “My husband has spoken to me many times of your bravery.”

Peggy was completely taken aback. It was strange enough to find Sir John and his wife out here on the Everlasting Ice again, as if they’d never left. But even more disconcerting was Lady Jane acting as though they’d never met before this moment.

“I know that you were instrumental in releasing him from his lonely captivity and helping him find a sense of purpose again,” Lady Jane went on. “You restored my husband to me, and for that I am forever in your debt.”

As she spoke, it became clear to Peggy that the older woman was utterly sincere, and completely unaware of Peggy’s confusion. It dawned on her that this was not the Eternal who had assumed the form of Sir John Franklin’s wife in their adventures the previous year. This woman was Lady Jane Franklin herself.

“It is wonderful to see you all again,” Sir John was saying to the group. “And now I understand what has brought you here, and why we have been kept here to greet you.”

“What do you mean?” Gavi asked.

“The little one,” replied Sir John. “You have come looking for her, have you not?”

“Little one?” Peggy eyes widened. “You mean Mi?”

“Is she here?” Molly asked.

“She was. But not anymore.”

“Why not?” Molly cried.

Sir John shook his head sadly.

“Because we could not tell her how to reach the Shining World.”

§§

Mi had been right. There was a Shining World that existed beyond the clouds, beyond the stars, beyond the RoryBory itself.

“But what she did not know,” Lady Jane was saying, “is that no one can enter there until their time has come to do so.

“You see,” she went on matter-of-factly, “Sir John and I are dead, and the dead exist in many dimensions at once. We are here and not-here. We are in Notherland and in the Shining World at the same time. But this was not possible for Mi.

“Nevertheless, she did succeed in drawing us all together again,” Sir John pointed out. “It was sheer delight spending time with the little one. She loved to laugh and tease us and play games like hide-and-seek. We tried our best to keep her amused. But we were too old and set in our ways to make good playmates, and after a time she began to grow restless. That was when all the talk of pirates began.”

Molly was aghast.

“Pirates?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Sir John. “Mi was very much inspired by you. She would say, ‘I want to be a pirate and have adventures just like Molly!’ She took to whittling an old piece of wood in the shape of a sword and brandishing it about. ‘Show me a sea monster,’ she’d cry, ‘and I’ll slay it!’“

Lady Jane picked up her husband’s train of thought.

“It was quite a marked change from the way she was when she arrived here. At first she had a very quiet, gentle demeanor and spoke often of how things must always be beautiful and everyone must be happy all the time. We tried to explain that even in the Shining World, life was not like that. Happiness and beauty cannot be willed into being, but only accepted with gratitude when they come our way.

“At first she was very disappointed to learn that she could not simply enter the Shining World at will. But gradually it seemed to assume less importance for her. She began to talk about how she wanted to have adventures, to taste life in all its excitement and danger. We came to understand that she was young and unformed, and would have to find these things out for herself. So we were saddened, yet not really surprised, to discover one day that she had gone.”

“But where?” Peggy insisted. “Where could she have gone?”

“We cannot be sure,” Lady Jane said hesitantly. “But we believe she may have gone to another world – a world in which she could live out her desire to be a pirate.”

§§

For hours they sat around the table on the Everlasting Ice, talking and sipping tea. Peggy noted with relief that the terrible melancholy Sir John had carried with him for so long was gone, that the guilt he bore for the agonizing deaths of his crew seemed to have been lifted from his shoulders. He now exuded a deep, glowing happiness, and Peggy understood, without a doubt, that this woman was truly Lady Jane, the wife with whom he had longed to be reunited through all those years of wandering and waiting.

As the conversation stretched on into the evening, Peggy began to notice a strange phenomenon. At first she thought her eyes might be playing tricks on her. But as dusk began to settle on the Everlasting Ice, the Franklins, along with their clothing, the china, the very table they were sitting at, became hazy and insubstantial, as if they were dissolving into thin air. Peggy could see that, little by little, Lord and Lady Franklin were literally fading away.

She looked over at Gavi, and realized that he had noticed it, too. Molly was deep in animated discussion with Sir John, but the growing look of distress on the doll’s face told Peggy that Molly also knew that her beloved mentor was slipping away. For their part, the old couple radiated such an air of quiet serenity that Peggy was uncertain whether they were aware of what was happening.

Peggy felt herself falling into a deep well of sadness. She didn’t want the Franklins to fade away. She wanted time to stop. She wanted them all to stay here, enfolded in this circle of love and friendship.

The time came to say good-night. As darkness settled no one spoke, but they all knew that, come morning, Lord and Lady Franklin would be irrevocably gone. They would not see them again.

Peggy’s thoughts returned to Mi. They had to look for her. “What should we do now?” she asked the others. “Dream about pirates?”

“Not just pirates,” Gavi replied. “But a pirate world such as Mi might create.”

“Everything she knew about pirates she would have learned from you, Molly. What’d you tell her about them?”

“All kinds of things,” the doll replied. “That pirates were bloodthirsty, and wore bandannas around their heads, and stole whatever they wanted.”

Peggy smiled to herself, remembering how, years ago, she had christened Molly a pirate doll, by way of explaining the fact that she was missing one of her eyes and had to wear a patch over it. Of course, everything Molly knew about pirates came from the books and old movies of Peggy’s own childhood. So, she reassured herself, Mi’s pirate world was just an adventure story, holding out no real threat or danger.

As they all lay down again in the star-formation, Peggy turned to Jackpine.

“I’m sorry you got caught up in this. What happened? I warned you to keep a bit of distance . . .”

He cut her off.

“It wasn’t an accident. I changed my mind.”

Peggy was flabbergasted.

“Why?”

He shrugged.

“I couldn’t leave the job of rescuing Mi to the three of you. You need someone who knows what they’re doing.”

Peggy turned away, seething with barely-contained fury. Every time she started to feel the slightest bit of warmth toward Jackpine, he had to go and say something completely arrogant like that.

He hadn’t changed a bit!

Chapter 5:  The Pirate Queen

PEGGY ROLLED OVER and opened her eyes. In her half-awake state she saw a sky full of ridges in a deep, burnished brown. She looked at Gavi and Jackpine, both sound asleep, and Molly, lying motionless with a faraway stare in her eyes, appearing as close to asleep as a doll could. All three of them were still huddled together in the star-formation.

Go back to sleep, she told herself. It was dark. There was still time for the dream to come.

A sudden thought made her snap awake: That’s no sky!

She sat up. Just above her head was a low ceiling made up of rows of wooden planks. In the dim light she looked around at what seemed to be a large cavernous space. She could feel the gentle bobbing of water underneath the floor where they lay.

They were in the hold of a ship.

Carefully, so as not to wake the others, she slithered out of the star-formation and walked around the hold, crouching low to avoid banging her head on the planked ceiling. All around her lay a confusing jumble of cables, ropes, poles, musty-smelling sheets of canvas and stacks of wooden crates. Most of the crates were empty, but through the bars of one she could make out a pair of chickens clucking to one another. Beyond the crates was a collection of wooden barrels. She went over to one and peeked inside. The stench of strong beer made her turn away. She shut it and looked in another, which contained slabs of what looked like dried meat. The other barrels were filled with various things – salt, flour – but when she opened the last she gasped out loud.

The barrel was filled to the brim with coins, mostly silver, some gold, all of antique vintage, marked with strange writing and unfamiliar images. She rooted down beneath the top layer and found still more coins, along with what looked like bricks of solid gold and silver.

So the dream had worked. They’d pulled it off! She felt an initial sense of elation, until the thought struck her: what have we gotten ourselves into? This looked to be an authentic pirate ship, and real pirates weren’t known to be the friendliest people in the world. Particularly not to stowaways they found on board.

She closed the lid of the barrel. A muffled murmur of voices seemed to be coming from the deck above her head. A shudder went down her spine. She stood barely breathing, straining to hear. Loud footsteps thundered over her head, then faded away to nothing. For a few moments everything was quiet. All Peggy could hear was the sound of Gavi’s light, whistling snore and the rhythmic rise and fall of Jackpine’s chest as he slept.

All she wanted to do at that moment was crawl under something and hide. Why hadn’t she gone back to her own world when she’d had the chance? Planting trees in frozen, rocky ground, even staring down a bear was preferable to coming face-to-face with pirates.

But it was too late. The dream had brought them here. She had to find out who and what they were dealing with.

She walked stealthily past the sleeping trio and began making her way up the narrow stairway that led out of the hold. There were only a few steps to the top, and she found herself at one end of a corridor lined with cabins on either side. She stood, listening, but she could hear nothing behind any of the closed cabin doors. She ventured further, tiptoeing along the hall to the foot of another stairway that led up to the ship’s deck.

Peggy paused a moment, took a deep breath and began to mount the stairs. She found herself on an open deck that was wider and flatter than that of the Resolute. The ship had three masts, also much shorter than the Resolute‘s, each bearing square-shaped sails. The first sail was stamped with a black skull-and-crossbones. The one in the middle had a crest, drawn in red, of an animal that looked like a boar. On the third sail was an inscription in black lettering, in a language unfamiliar to Peggy.

When she looked down again, Peggy understood why the sails were so small. Both sides of the deck were lined with benches, with long oars resting on them. Clearly, rowing was the main way of propelling this vessel. Though now, in the predawn hours, there was a light breeze filling the sails and driving the ship, which was why all the benches were empty.

She decided to see if any of the others were awake and turned to go back down the stairwell when a voice startled her.

“Halt!”

She whirled around to see a man in a ragged tunic with a bandanna wrapped around his head. He was moving towards her, brandishing a dagger.

“What d’ya think you’re doing?” the man snarled at her. He lunged forward and grabbed her by the arm, twisting it painfully behind her back.

“Wait! I can explain.” Peggy began.

“Save your breath! You’ll get what’s coming to ya!”

The man lifted his dagger and held it to her throat as several other men came running along the deck towards them.

“Peggy!”

Molly’s voice broke through the pounding of their feet on the deck. Peggy saw the doll standing at the top of the staircase, a look of horror on her face.

“Let her go!” Molly screamed as she ran to Peggy. One of the men grabbed her and she snarled like a wild animal trying to get free.

“What the . . .?”

Jackpine raced up from the hold just behind Molly. Two of the men pounced on him, pushing him face down on the deck while a third man stood over him, pressing one foot roughly into his back.

Now the three of them were surrounded by a swarm of men in bandannas, many with tattoos on their arms. One had a scar that ran diagonally across his lips and down his neck. Another had a peg leg from the knee down. Even in the heat of danger Peggy couldn’t help thinking that this crew looked like they had just come from the set of a pirate movie.

“Look,” she finally managed to spit out. “If you’ll just give us a chance to explain what we’re doing here…”

“We know what you’re doing here!” cried one of the men. “You’re trying to steal our booty!”

“We’re not,” Peggy insisted.

“We’re just looking for someone . . .” Molly started to say, but one of the men clapped a hand over her mouth and tied a strip of cloth around it.

“That’ll take care of your lies!”

The men all shouted as they gagged Peggy and Jackpine too.

“Let’s keelhaul ’em!”

“Throw ’em overboard!”

“Make ’em walk the plank!”

The men dragged the three of them over to the side of the deck, while a couple of others pushed a long wooden plank out over the water. Peggy watched in horror as two of the men grabbed Molly, still struggling mightily, and started pushing her out onto the plank when shouts brought them all to a halt.

“Look!”

At the head of the stairwell stood Gavi, looking bewildered and utterly terrified. The men all turned to look at him.

“A bird!”

“Never seen one like that before.”

“Think he’s fit to eat?”

“We’ll find out after we deal with this bunch.”

Laughing, the men resumed trying to force Molly onto the plank but she put up a fierce struggle.

“Just toss ‘er overboard!” one yelled.

“She’s light enough!”

Two of them took Molly by her arms and were about to fling her out into the water when they were brought up short by Gavi’s high pitched wail.

“Pleeeeeeeeeease Nooooooooooooooo!”

They looked at one another quizzically.

“What was that?”

“Dunno.”

“It was I!”

Gavi’s voice wavered at first but as he spoke he became clearer and more confident.

“I beg you, please do not hurt my friends! We have not come to hurt you or steal your possessions. We only seek to find a friend of ours.”

There was utter silence when he stopped speaking. The men gaped at him, stupefied. Then an outburst of panicky shouts rang out.

“It talks!”

“Is it a changeling?”

“Must be some kind of witchcraft!”

The man gripping Peggy whirled her around, grabbed her by the hair and pulled her face to his.

“Who are ya?” he screamed, his expression a mixture of fury and terror. “Some kind of sorcerers?”

“Toss ’em overboard before they start turning us into birds!”

The men pulled Peggy over to the edge of the deck, while they dangled the shrieking Molly dangling over the side. Suddenly a voice came thundering from the other end of the ship.

“Avast!”

The men froze on the spot. All eyes swept down to the foredeck, in the direction the voice had come from. There stood another of the pirates, this one exuding an air of powerful charisma, wearing a long cloak bearing what looked to Peggy like a family coat of arms. The cloak had a gold background embroidered with the image of a large red boar, along with an inscription similar to the one she’d noticed on the sail earlier. The cloak swirled in the air as the figure strode toward them, and Peggy was struck by how the men, so fierce only moments before, now seemed to be cowering in fear. This air of authority, it was clear, had nothing to do with physical stature, since the captain – for who else could this be but their captain? – was actually quite a small person.

“What’s going on here?”

“We found stowaways, ma’am.”

Ma’am?! Peggy was flabbergasted. The captain of this pirate ship was a woman!

“Stowaways?” the captain repeated. “Or English spies?”

With that the men all tried to speak at once, bombarding her in a confused babble about the evil sorcerers and the strange talking bird. The captain heard them out for a few moments, then threw her head back and let out a hearty laugh.

“You’re telling me you’re afraid of a bird because it talks?”

“But ma’am, the bird might be a changeling.”

“Who knows if they have the power to turn us into birds!”

“Or worse!”

She cut them off and laughed again.

“What’s a little sorcery? Anyway, look at this bunch! They barely have the power to pull their own boots on!” She turned to Jackpine and yanked the cloth away from his mouth. “What are you doing on my ship? Who sent you?”

Jackpine glowered back at her.

“No one.”

The woman grabbed him roughly by the collar and drew his face to hers. “Don’t play with me, boy!”

“I told you, no one sent us!” Jackpine spat out the words in a fit of defiance.

“What’s your clan? Even that English scum Bingham wouldn’t be so stupid as to send a motley bunch like you against Grania O’Malley!”

Before Jackpine could retort again Molly began to grunt fiercely under her gag. The captain wordlessly signaled the men to remove the cloth around her mouth as well.

“You’re Grania the Pirate Queen?” Molly burst out, looking at the captain in wide-eyed amazement.

The woman went over to Molly and stared her down with a penetrating glare.

“Are you trying to play with me too, little lass? You know perfectly well who I am. Now, are you going to stop this foolishness and tell me who you are? Or would you rather I tie a stone to your feet and toss you into those waves?”

“We come from a place you’ve never heard of,” the doll said in a frightened whisper.

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Go on,” she continued. “Try me.”

Molly swallowed hard.

“We come from another world.”

At that the men burst into boisterous, mocking laughter. But the captain remained stone-faced.

“Quiet! All of you!” she commanded, then turned back to Molly. “What do you mean? What other world?”

“It’s hard to explain.” she began haltingly.

In an instant the captain’s expression changed. All the color drained out of her face.

“Now I know why you’re here,” she said, speaking barely above a whisper.

“You’re looking for that little fairy-creature, aren’t you?”

§§

The swiftness with which the Pirate Queen’s attitude towards them changed was nothing short of astonishing. Only moments after they narrowly avoided being tossed overboard, the travellers found themselves sitting down to dinner in the captain’s quarters. All of it resulting from the mention of Mi, who clearly had made a deep impression on Grania.

“I’ve been visited by otherworldly spirits before,” she told them. “But never one quite like that little sprite.”

The same words, Peggy noted, the Franklins had used about Mi. Which meant, she could see all too clearly, that Mi was no longer here.

“She just turned up one day,” the captain went on. “We found her clinging to one of the masts. It was like she’d been asleep and had just woken up but didn’t know where she was. I suspected right away she was some sort of fairy-creature. When we asked her where she come from, we couldn’t make head nor tail of her answer. Something about another land with lights in the sky.

“Then she began to sing and I knew for certain she wasn’t of this world. A sweet and glorious voice, like the music of the heavens. Even my most hardened sailors were reduced to tears.

“She became a kind of mascot to the crew. She was all over the ship, always asking questions. ‘Tell you for a song,’ the boys would say, and she’d always oblige – even when they didn’t know the answer to her question!”

“But what happened to her?” Molly asked. “Where is she now?”

The captain shook her head.

“She just disappeared one day, as mysteriously as she arrived. Though I think our last raid might have had something to do with it.”

“Raid?” Peggy asked. “What kind of raid?”

She thought she spied a fleeting look of sorrow in the captain’s eyes. Now, for the first time, Peggy noticed the lines in Grania’s handsome face, which made it clear that she was no longer a young woman. A scar ran almost the entire width of her forehead. This was a woman, Peggy realized, who had seen much hardship and trouble in her life.

“It was a Spanish ship,” the captain replied. “The Santa Lucia. Things weren’t supposed to go like that. We thought we’d get out of there, quick and dirty. But the fools put up a fight, and things got ugly. Blood was spilled. The little one was frightened and upset by the whole thing. I think it finally dawned on her that being a pirate wasn’t a game.

“That night she came to me, wanting to know why such things happen. I tried to explain that life has its dark side. There’s pain and death and destruction and it can’t be helped. We all have to eat from the tree of good and evil in order to live in this world. She was quiet for a long time. But then she said the strangest thing.”

“What?” asked Gavi.

“She said ‘I want to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil, too.’

“The next day she was gone.”

§§

All through dinner Molly had been itching to tell Peggy, Gavi and Jackpine about the Pirate Queen. As it turned out, she’d learned about Grania O’Malley from one of the crew of the Resolute, who told her stories of famous pirates to pass the time while they patrolled the Great Polar Sea.  Later that evening, when they were finally able to get some time alone, Molly filled their ears with her encyclopedic knowledge of the life and times of the Pirate Queen. Of how Grania, as a child, had begged to be allowed to sail to Spain with her father, Black Oak O’Malley. When her mother objected that young ladies did not go to sea, Grania donned boys’ clothes and cut her hair short, which was how she got the nickname Grania the Bald.

Molly told them of how, as a youth, Grania climbed a high cliff to chase after an eagle carrying off one of her family’s sheep. Grania managed to rescue the sheep, but the talons of the great bird made a deep gash on her forehead, leaving the scar which Peggy had noticed earlier.

Molly told them of how Grania’s ship was attacked by Spanish pirates the day after she gave birth to her son, Tibbot. Hearing that her crew was losing the battle and she was in danger of losing the ship, Grania stormed on deck in her blood-stained nightgown, hair flying in the wind. Waving a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, she shouted “Curses on you who can’t do without me for a single day!” The Spaniards, convinced that she was a fiend from the Underworld, immediately surrendered.

Grania, Molly told them, had four children by two husbands, both of whom she’d outlived. The family of her first husband, Donal O’Flaherty, had cheated her out of her inheritance after his death. Her second husband, a notorious pirate known as Richard-in-Iron, headed a fleet that reigned supreme over the coast of Connaught. After his death, Grania assumed command of the fleet under the O’Malley crest with the motto Terra Marique Potens, which meant, according to Molly, “power by land and sea”. It was this ship on which they now found themselves.

From the glow in her eyes, the intensity in her voice as she recounted the tales of Grania’s exploits, it was clear that Molly had met her idol. Here before her was this fierce, magnificent figure – the famed Pirate Queen herself.

“But what I can’t quite figure out,” she confided to the others, “is just how Mi ended up here. I’m sure I never told her about Grania O’Malley.”

“I believe you have the answer right there on the tip of your tongue,” Gavi said with a twinkle in his eye.

“I do?”

The loon nodded excitedly.

“’O’Malley’,” he pronounced the name with deliberation. “’Oh Molly.’ Do you see?”

Molly shook her head.

“What are you getting at?”

“I used the wrong word,” Gavi said. “What I meant to ask was ‘Do you hear?’ Listen again: ‘O’Malley’. ‘Oh Molly’. Do you hear?”

“They do sound pretty much the same,” Jackpine said.

“Exactly,” Gavi responded enthusiastically. “My best guess is that, in trying to conjure up a pirate world in her imagination, Mi would of course have been thinking a great deal about you, Molly, and your own pirate fantasies. She may even have called out to you in a dream: ‘Oh, Molly!’“

“That makes as much sense as anything else,” said Peggy. “As usual, Gavi, you’ve got it all figured out.”

The loon beamed with pride.

“Thank you. It feels wonderful to use my brain again!”

Grania had been eyeing them curiously as they huddled together on the deck, talking in low voices. Now she came over and caught the tail end of their conversation.

“I haven’t got the slightest notion what you’re all on about. But you amuse me. Especially you,” she said, turning to Gavi. “You bird-full-of-words. That’s what I’m going to call you: Bird-full-of-Words!”

§§

It was going to be hard to get Molly off this ship. Peggy could see that clearly enough.

Grania gave them the run of the place, and made clear to the crew that they should welcome the strange visitors. But these gruff men were understandably wary of the two young people from another time and place, not to mention the odd-looking, garrulous bird who used words bigger than they’d ever heard before.

But Pirate Molly was another story.

By the middle of the next day, she’d gotten to know all the crewmen by name. There was Grania’s second-in-command, Conor the quartermaster. There was young Rory, a boy barely older than Molly herself. There was the old man with the peg leg who gave his name only as Blackthorn (“for the stick where a leg used to be”).

They weren’t all Irish clansmen either, Molly soon realized. Quite a few were seamen from elsewhere who’d joined Grania’s crew for their own reasons. Like Fernando, from Portugal, and Mustapha, an Arab from Spain who’d managed to escape a British raid on his vessel. When Grania’s ship came upon him several days later, he was floating in a lifeboat on the verge of starvation. He decided to join her, he explained to Molly in fragmented English, “because these Irish are the enemy of my enemy. And they don’t try to make me worship their Christian god.”

There were even two sailors – O’Boyle and McDermott – who wore black patches just like Molly’s. The three of them spent the afternoon swapping stories about how they lost their eyes. Clearly, for a pirate, losing a body part was a badge of honor.

Molly was in heaven. No, it wasn’t going to be easy to persuade her to move on and look for Mi. But for the time being it was just as well, Peggy figured, since they had no idea where to look next, or how to get there when they did.

“Ship ahoy!”

One of the crew was pointing to a ship in the distance.

“Keep her to,” Grania ordered.

The helmsman shook his head.

“Wind’s gone down, ma’am.”

“All hands at the oars,” Grania called out with authority. “Don’t give them a chance to put distance between us.”

As they approached the other ship, she called out.

“Strike sail or we’ll send you to the bottom!”

“Who are you to order us?” a voice from the other ship challenged.

“These are the waters of Clan O’Malley. You must pay a fee for safe passage through them.”

“We sail under the flag of her majesty, Elizabeth of England. We know of no such passage fee,” the man shouted back.

“Then as of this moment, you have been so informed.”

The men on the other deck conferred. After a few moments one of them called over.

“We’ll pay your fee, provided it’s reasonable.”

“I’ll determined what’s reasonable,” Grania shot back. “What cargo are you carrying?”

“Just some barrels of cod, salt and alum.”

“We’ll come aboard and see for ourselves.”

“That’s not necessary.” said the other captain.

“We have to inspect your cargo to determine your tariff. Are you refusing us permission to come aboard?”

The captain hesitated a moment.

“Permission granted.”

The quartermaster ordered the men to row up alongside the English ship and hoist the heavy plank between the two decks. Grania moved towards the deck and gestured to Peggy and the others to follow her.

“Now you’ll get a real taste of the pirate’s life.”

Still agile for a woman in her mid-fifties, Grania scampered across the plank with confidence. Peggy shuddered as she mounted it, recalling how close they’d been a short time ago to walking this same plank to their deaths. She turned to see Molly and Jackpine following her, but Gavi held back, reluctant to leave the ship.

“What’s the matter?” Peggy asked.

“I feel unaccountably anxious,” he replied. “I fear something will happen once they are aboard the other ship.” He lowered his voice. “They are pirates, after all.”

Gavi, she realized, had just given voice to the same anxiety she was feeling. She would rather not board the British ship either. But she felt that not doing so would look like an insult to Grania.

“It’s okay, Gavi,” she called to him. “We’ll go. You stay there.”

Grania looked back as the three of them mounted the English deck.

“Where’s your friend, Bird-full-of-Words?”

“It’s hard for him to cross the plank on his belly,” Peggy explained.

This set Grania roaring with laughter.

“A bird that’s afraid of falling into the water. Now I’ve heard everything!”

She ordered Conor to take some men below to inspect the various barrels and bundles. While she and the others waited up top, the officers of the English ship glared at one another, angry and impatient.

“Why are we doing the bidding of bandits?” one of them complained, but the captain quickly cut him off.

“Just be good little sailors and you’ll be on your way soon enough,” Grania taunted them.

Finally Conor and the men returned to the deck.

“Nothing but more barrels of salt, cod and alum down there, ma’am.”

Grania nodded.

“A rare thing – an Englishman who tells the truth. You’re not carrying anything else, are you? No gold or silver stashed away under all that salt?”

“Do I look like a fool to take such a chance as that?” the English captain asked her.

Grania smiled approvingly at him.

“You have excellent judgement, sir. Good. Our standard passage fee is fifty pounds.”

“Fifty pounds!” he objected. “That’s outrageous.”

“When we encounter difficulties we sometimes have to raise it. You don’t want that, I’m sure.”

The captain didn’t reply, but sullenly nodded to one of his officers to pay the fee.

As they prepared to return to their own ship, Grania noticed a pile of loose canvas stowed under one of the gunwales.

“Not the best place to store your spare sails, is it?” she mused to the captain. “Don’t you find they get wet?”

“Those are ones awaiting repairs,” he replied. “We’ll be storing them down in the hold when we’re done.”

“Perhaps you could let me buy some.”

The captain shifted uncomfortably for a moment.

“I’m afraid we have none to spare.”

“Is that right? Looks to me like there’s near enough to replace every sheet on your masts,” said Grania pointedly. “You won’t mind if I take a look for myself, will you?”

The air crackled with tension as both crews watched Grania approach the pile of canvas.
She poked it with her cutlass several times, finally striking something hard.

“Well now, what’s this?”

She tore away the canvas. Hidden in its folds was a padlocked wooden box. Grania motioned to her men to pry it open.

The English captain stepped forward.

“Wait, let me explain.”

Grania held up her hand to silence him as the sailors struggled with the chest. Finally they lifted the top. An audible gasp swept the length of the deck.

The box was filled with precious stones and jewels.

“Ho!” cried Grania. “Strangest batch of salt cod I ever laid eyes on.” She turned to the English captain. “You know this is going to cost you a bit extra.”

“Of course,” he stammered. “We’ll pay extra. We didn’t intend to deceive you.”

“Don’t insult me, British scum!” Grania lashed out at him furiously. “Yes, you will pay! With the entire contents of this chest!”

As she gestured to her men to close the box, the captain stepped forward.

“What do you say we divide it up, half and half?”

Grania threw her head back and let out a full-throated laugh.

“You really must take me for a fool! Why would I settle for half a chest of loot when I can have the whole lot?” She looked the captain fiercely in the eye. “You stole it, didn’t you? You were going to keep it for yourselves. So why don’t we just take it off your hands and keep you out of trouble with your superiors?”

Grania nodded to her men to take up the box. Without being told the rest of the men all took out their swords and formed a phalanx as Conor and another man hauled it to the plank. A tense silence covered the entire deck.

Just as the men were about to hoist themselves up onto the plank with the chest, Peggy noticed the English captain give a furtive signal to one of his men. Crouching, the soldier held up a knife, poised to throw it in Grania’s direction.

“Look out!” Peggy called out. The Pirate Queen ducked just in time as the knife whizzed past her head.

“Get ’em!” Grania shrieked.

Fighting broke out all over the deck, as some the men took out swords and daggers, and others went at it with fists. Peggy watched in shock as Molly pulled out her own cutlass, the one bequeathed to her by Sir John.

“Molly, are you crazy? They’re more than twice your size!”

“I don’t care!” Molly said as she bounded into the fray. “Finally I’ve got a chance to use this thing!”

Peggy looked over. Jackpine had picked up a dagger from a fallen sailor and joined the melee. He was going at it hand-to-hand with one of the English soldier.

“Jackpine, what are you doing?”

“What’s it look like?” he retorted.

“You! Take this pike!”

She whirled around to see Grania thrusting a long-handled spear at her. Peggy shook her head.

“No. I don’t want to fight.”

“You want to die? Take it and defend yourself!”

Reluctantly, Peggy took the pike from Grania’s hand and looked around in horror. Everywhere there was fierce fighting. A trickle of blood was leeching down the slashed neck of one sailor, lying pale and glassy-eyed on the deck. Another was gripping his thigh, trying to stanch the flow of blood where he’d been stabbed. In the bloody chaos one thing was clear to Peggy: the English sailors, outmatched by the fierce Irish pirates, were losing badly.

Piercing shouts drew Peggy’s attention to the foredeck. Grania was there, holding a sword to the neck of the English captain.

“Surrender!” she shrieked at him. “Or I’ll finish off every last one of you!”

The captain’s chest heaved with the effort of shouting.

“Stand down!” he called to his crew.

The English lay down their swords and daggers. But it was too late for many of them. Grania surveyed the deck, now strewn with the wounded and the dead.

“Where’s Flynn?”

One of the pirates turned a body face up.

“Here, ma’am. Dead.”

“O’Boyle?”

“Dead, too.”

“Blackthorn?”

“All dead.”

Grania’s eyes looked hard as flint as she turned to the English captain.

“Three good men dead. Even more of yours. Why were you so stupid? If you hadn’t lied to me none of this would’ve happened.”

She turned and made her way to the plank.

“Bring the bodies,” she ordered. “We’ll give them a proper burial at sea.”

§§

“I do not understand,” Gavi was saying, “how they can be so wild and boisterous after the loss of their own comrades.”

He was huddled with Peggy in the small quarters Grania had given them below deck. Earlier they had stood at solemn attention with the crew, as the bodies of the three slain pirates were tossed overboard to their watery graves. Now, above them, the shouts and singing of the Pirate Queen’s crew, including Molly and Jackpine, was going on far into the night.

“I don’t think it means they don’t care, Gavi,” Peggy said. “It’s what humans call a wake. Sometimes people go on for days, drinking, eating, singing. It’s a way of coping with the sadness. You go to the other extreme and celebrate.”

The loon shook his head.

“No matter how thoroughly I study them, the ways of humans will always remain a mystery to me.”

Peggy winced as yet another jug went crashing to the floor above their heads.

“I just wish they’d quiet down,” she said. “I’d like to get a bit of sleep.”

“I fear that even quiet would not bring me rest,” Gavi said. “I simply cannot get the sight of all that bloodshed out of my mind.”

The two of them lay in the dark room for awhile without speaking. Finally Molly and Jackpine came in, tired but still exhilarated from all the carrying-on above deck. They leaned on one another, laughing and singing at the top of their lungs.

What shall we do with a drunken sailor? /  What shall we do with a drunken sailor?

What shall we do with a drunken sailor? /  Ear-lie in the morning?

Finally Gavi could stand it no longer.

“How can you two carry on like this? It was bad enough that you participated in their bloody exploits. Now you sing and laugh about it, too.”

Molly turned to him, livid.

“What were we supposed to do? Let them kill Grania? They had to defend themselves.”

“Molly, they are pirates. They steal what does not belong to them and kill those who get in their way.”

“It’s not like that!” she fired back. “They have a code.”

“A code of violence and thievery.”

“It’s their way of life,” she insisted. “If they don’t steal, others will.”

Peggy broke in.

“Look you two, it’s late.”

Molly whirled around to face her.

“I suppose you agree with Gavi?”

She sighed.

“I don’t think we should judge them by the ways of our time. I like Grania. But she can be ruthless.”

“When she has to be!” Molly broke in.

“You’re right, Molly. She has to be true to herself. We all do. And I couldn’t make myself kill someone in cold blood.”

Jackpine had kept silent through the heated discussion, but now his voice drifted from the upper bunk.

“It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve had that problem.”

Peggy sprang to her feet and faced him.

“And just what do you mean by that?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“You mean last year, when we were on the Terror with Sir John? When I couldn’t pull the trigger against the sea-monster? I thought you didn’t remember any of that!”

Now he looked her back in the eye.

“I doesn’t matter what I remember or don’t remember. All I’m saying is there are times when you have to fight back.”

“I’ll decide for myself when that will be!” Peggy shot back.

Her flinty determination rattled him a bit.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I see your point.”

Finally they all lay down to go to sleep.

That’s about the closest I’ll ever get to an apology from him, Peggy thought as she drifted off.

§§

She was glad to get away from that dark street full of shadows and strange noises.

The Stranger had brought her to this place, where there was a warm fire and more of the sweet things that made her tongue tingle.

She was sitting in a chair. Before her was a box with a glass screen on the front. There were moving pictures on the screen. One was of a girl, not much bigger than Mi herself. She looked right out from the screen at Mi, almost as if she was right there, within reach. But Mi knew it was only a picture of a child.

Now the girl on the screen wasn’t alone. Someone moved out of the background and loomed over her. A man who looked like the Stranger. He pulled the girl close to him..           

Mi turned away from the box with the glass screen.

“Is the music going to start soon?” she asked the man.

Chapter 6:  The Whale Requiem

WHEN PEGGY WOKE UP her mind was a jumble of dream-images from her restless sleep: Mi climbing up a tree, sitting on a high branch, laughing. She seemed playful and happy, yet the image left Peggy with a feeling of dread, as if some unseen menace was lurking just out of view.

Grania’s words came back to her:

“She said ‘I want to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil’.”

Mi was in trouble. Peggy knew it in her bones. They had to stop dallying here. They had to somehow find the way into the next world and get to Mi before it was too late.

She looked out the small circular window in the tiny cabin. It was still dark. She rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but it was no use. She got up and felt her way through the darkness out of the room and down the narrow passage to the stairwell.

Up on deck, she looked out on the vast ocean. A gorgeous pale-orange sliver of sun was just beginning to edge its way up onto the horizon.

“Early riser, are you?”

Peggy was startled out of her reverie by Grania’s voice.

“Oh! I didn’t know you were there. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.

“I have that problem myself sometimes,” said Grania. “The crew? They sleep like babies. But we who have responsibilities don’t have that luxury.”

She leaned over the rail beside Peggy and gazed out at the sea.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said dreamily. “No matter how many times I see the sun come up over that vast watery horizon, it always fills me with wonder.”

They fell silent for awhile, watching the orange crescent grow larger and larger. Finally Grania spoke again.

“You don’t think much of me, do you? You and your friend, Bird-full-of-Words.”

Peggy shook her head. “It’s not that,” she replied haltingly. “But all that bloodshed yesterday . . . Gavi just couldn’t stomach it, and neither could I.”

“Out here on the high seas you do what you must to survive,” Grania said grimly.

“I guess that’s true. But I find it hard to accept. All the more because I do admire you.”

The Pirate Queen sighed heavily.

“You know, I wasn’t always so hard-hearted,” she said. “Unlike your spirited friend, Molly, I didn’t become a pirate because I wanted to go to sea and have adventures. I became one out of necessity.”

“How’s that?” Peggy asked.

“I was the good wife and mother, until my first husband Donal passed away. As his widow I was entitled to a portion of his estate. But those rotten no-goods, the O’Flahertys, said the laws didn’t apply to their clan. They robbed me of my rightful inheritance. They treated me and my children like beggars, and acted like we should be grateful for their charity. I put up with it for as long as I could stand, till finally I went back to my own clan. When Black Oak, my father, died, they transferred their loyalty to me, and named me their chieftain. Once I took command of his fleet, I knew that I would always be able to provide for my children, come what may.”

“By stealing?”

As soon as the words were out of Peggy’s mouth she wished she could take them back. But to her surprise, Grania’s reaction was calm and measured.

“I take payment from those who pass through my domain, in whatever form I can get it. Those fools yesterday tried to deceive me. They knew the chance they were taking. I don’t like killing, but they took the first shot.

“Call it stealing if you like. As I see it, theft is a matter of who owns and who takes. Like what the English are doing to my people. Bingham calls it diplomacy. I call it robbery.”

“Who’s that?” Peggy asked.

“Sir Richard Bingham, the lackey the English appointed to run Connaught. He’s already tried to put me away in prison once, but I escaped – right from under his nose! He’s still steaming mad about that. But he hasn’t heard the last of me, and he knows it. He’s stolen my land and my cattle but I’m going to get them back.

“What Bingham is doing to me is bad enough, but it’s happening to all the clans. The English are taking our land, trying to make us slaves in our own country. If we didn’t spend so much time squabbling amongst ourselves, we’d do a better job fighting them off. But we still have our language, our way of life. They can take our land and possessions, but they can’t destroy that.”

Don’t be too sure about that, Peggy thought to herself.

Grania look at her oddly, almost as if she could overhear her thoughts.

“You know things, don’t you?” she said to Peggy. “Things I don’t know, things that none of us here know. Just what is this world you come from?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Peggy began. “I’m not sure you’d understand.”

“Try me,” said Grania briskly.

“My world is . . . actually, it’s your world. But in another time.”

“What do you mean? What other time?”

“The future,” Peggy replied. “Almost five hundred years in the future, to be exact.”

Grania let out one of her throaty laughs.

“The future? You mean the time yet to come?”

Peggy nodded.

“That makes no sense!” Grania roared. “I can believe you’re from the spirit world. There are other realms, other worlds all around us, I know that. But a time that hasn’t happened yet? You’re fooling with me, girl!”

“It might seem that way,” said Peggy. “But what I’m saying is true.”

Grania stared hard at the sea, as if she were trying to grasp the startling newness of what she was hearing.

“Imagine,” she said. “To know the time beyond my death. To know the world long after the world I know is gone. It’s more than the mind can grasp. I’m not sure we are meant to know such things.”

She turned back to Peggy with a look of urgency.

“But I do want to know! Tell me about your time. Is life easier?”

Now it was Peggy’s turn to be startled.

“I suppose you could say that,” she replied. “We have machines that do a lot of work for us.”

“That’s not what I mean!”? Grania interrupted her testily. “I want to know if there’s less pain and suffering. Do people have to fight as hard to survive as they do now?”

“Some do. If they’re poor.”

“So there are still rich and poor?”

“Oh, yes,” Peggy replied. “But where I live there are a lot more people we call ‘well-off’. They’re almost as comfortable as the wealthy.”

“Are they happy? Those well-off ones?”

“Some of them are. Some aren’t,” Peggy said. “What is happiness, anyway? Who’s happy? Are you?”

Grania fell silent again and turned back to the sea.

“An easier life, eh? I wouldn’t mind living in your time, being one of those well-off people.”

Peggy shook her head and smiled at Grania.

“I can’t see it. You’re a clan chieftain, a pirate queen. I think you’d be bored.”

“Don’t be so sure, lass. I’m ready for a more peaceful life. I’ve seen over fifty winters pass by. My three sons and my daughter Margaret are all grown.”

“Margaret?” said Peggy. “That’s my name too. Peggy is my nickname.”

“Is that so?” Grania looked at her with a softer smile than Peggy had seen before.

“Soon I’ll be giving up this pirate’s life,” she went on. “Once I take back what’s rightfully mine from that blackguard Bingham, I’ll go home to Clare Island. There I’ll settle down and live the comfortable life.”

The sun was now well up over the horizon. Peggy felt a quiet kinship with the Pirate Queen as they stood looking out on the sea. She reminded herself that they still had to find Mi, and that she was no closer to figuring out how to do that. Her thoughts were interrupted by shouts from the foredeck.

“Small craft ahead!”

Grania looked out where the sailor was pointing.

“That’s one of the boats from Clare Island,” she said. “Something’s wrong!”

She raced along the deck, followed by Peggy. The crew was already clustered together by the time the smaller boat pulled alongside with two men in it.

“Ma’am!” one of them called out to Grania.

“Finbar! What happened? Why are you here?” Grania’s voice grew more frantic with each phrase. “Where’s Owen? Where’s my son?”

“Back on Clare Island. Bingham’s men arrived yesterday, demanding to be put up for the night. Owen was worried. He sent us to get you, just in case he needed reinforcements. Got here as fast as we could, ma’am. We rowed right through the night.”

The Pirate Queen swung around and bellowed the length of the ship.

“All hands on deck! North to Clare Island! Row, I say! Row!”

§§

All through the journey to Clare Island Grania frantically paced the deck, pumping Finbar with questions.

“What was happening when you left?”

“Owen played them like a harp master. He wined and dined them, acting humble, calling him ‘my Lord’. Bingham fell for it!”

“Did Bingham’s men see you leave?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. We were very careful about that.”

“But they knew Owen had very few men with him. That’s why they showed up when they did. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”

“Don’t worry, ma’am. You raised Owen to be smart and tough. He can handle Bingham. He’ll be all right.”

A shout came from the foredeck.

“Land ho!”

They looked out. In the distance Peggy could make out the heather and bracken-covered hills of Clare Island.

“We better come round from the west side,” Grania said. “That way we’ll be hidden, they won’t see our approach. I want to take Bingham completely by surprise. I’ll make him my hostage. Another weapon in my war to get back what he’s stolen from me.”

By now Gavi, Molly and Jackpine had come up on deck with the others. Gavi was even more perturbed than he had been the night before.

“I am fearful there will be more bloodshed,” he said.

“That’s not what Grania wants,” Peggy told him. “I had a long talk with her. She says she wants peace and I believe her. She’s going take Bingham hostage, that’s all.”

Gavi remained unconvinced and Peggy didn’t know what else she could say to calm his worries.

As the ship approached Clare Island and dropped anchor, Grania motioned them to follow her into a dinghy.

“Come along,” she whispered. “I want you to see Clare Castle, the home of my ancestors. If we handle this right and take them by surprise, there will be no bloodshed, not on our part. I promise you.”

The small boats set out, and they all filed out quickly and quietly when they reached shore. As they approached the estate from behind, they looked out on the dock in front of the manor. Finbar gasped in shock.

“It’s not here!”

“What?”

“Bingham’s ship. It was anchored there when we set out. They must be gone.”

“God knows what Owen had to give them to make them leave,” Grania said testily.

They approached the manor and entered. Inside there was an eerie silence.

“Owen?” Grania called out. “Owen? Where is everyone?”

They entered the empty Great Hall. Peggy saw the look of taut worry on Grania’s face and knew the Pirate Queen was bracing herself for the worst.

“They’ve kidnapped him. They’ve taken my son hostage! If they so much as harm a hair on Owen’s head . . .”

There was a piercing scream. One of the crew came out of the chamber just off the Great Hall. Grania ran to him.

“What is it?”

“Ma’am, don’t go in there.”

“Get out of my way!”

“No, please . . .”

They all raced into the chamber. The body of a young man lay in a pool of blood, his clothing torn with stab wounds.

Grania dropped to her knees next to him.

“Owen. No. Not my beautiful Owen. No. No. No.”

The Pirate Queen fell on his body with a shrieking sob which dropped to a low keening, then rose to a terrible crescendo of wailing.

§§

Clare Island rang through the night with the heart-rending sound of Grania keening over the body of Owen. When anyone tried to approach her, she tore into them with savage fury.

“Leave me alone! Go away!”

Molly, especially, was distressed to see the great Pirate Queen brought so low.

“What can we do?” she asked the others.

“Nothing.”

Finally, at dawn, the keening stopped.

The chilling silence that followed was almost worse. It went on so long Peggy and the others began to fear for Grania herself. Finally Grania emerged from the chamber, bearing the bloodied body of her son. The men rushed to help her, but she motioned them away with a tilt of her head.

Without uttering a sound, she carried Owen through the Great Hall and laid him on the long wooden banquet table.

“Begin the preparations for burial,” was all she said.

All the next day they worked feverishly. Grania had decided that Owen would be buried at sea, in the way of her ancestors. His body would be placed in a wooden casket with his sword and pulled by sledge up to the great cliff of Clare Island. There it would be pushed off to plunge into the roiling waters of the Irish Sea.

Overseeing the burial preparations seemed to take Grania out of her grief. She bustled about, barking orders, pronouncing a piece of wood too warped for the casket, an article of clothing not majestic enough for the burial robes of a clan prince. She seemed almost like her old self, but Peggy could see an emptiness in her eyes, as if she was present in body only.

There was no reaching her now, Peggy knew. The bond of familiarity that had begun to form between them was gone. The Pirate Queen had descended to a place of grief where none choose to go, and from which few return.

At sunset everything was ready. A huge bonfire was built on the cliff and the men bore the casket up the path, followed by a procession led by Grania. At the cliff’s edge, one of the pirates sang a haunting requiem in Gaelic. When he finished, Peggy instinctively reached into her pocket, pulled out the bone flute and began to play. However the little flute might have let them down up till now, at this moment it made an achingly beautiful sound that seemed to carry them all to a realm beyond time and space.

As the men prepared to release the casket, their attention was drawn to a strange sound far out on the water.

“What’s that?” Jackpine asked.

“It sounds like singing,” Gavi offered.

Peggy continued to play the bone flute, but stopped after a moment.

“It is singing,” she said. “And I could swear they’re trying to sing along with me. They’re following my melody.”

“Look!” one of the pirates cried, pointing out into the water.

Large grey mounds, perhaps two dozen in all, dotted the surface of the water. They approached closer and closer to the cliff, until Peggy thought she could make out eyes on either side of each one.

“Humpbacks!”

She resumed playing, and the voices grew louder and louder. No one said a word, but they all seemed to grasp what was happening at that moment.

The whales were singing. Not just calling. Not just making sounds. Singing.

It was like the sea itself was offering up a requiem for Owen.

The men hoisted the casket out to the edge of the cliff, pushed and watched it plunge through the air as the chorus of whale voices rose to a crescendo. Finally the casket hit the water with a powerful spray in all directions.

At that moment, the whale song stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Silently, the great mammals swam off into the night.

Through it all, Grania the Pirate Queen stood tall, silent, still as a stone, her face a hardened mask of grief.

§§

That night, around the fire, the men could talk of nothing else but the remarkable visitation by the whales.

“Twenty years at sea and I never seen anything like it.”

“Never heard anything like it neither.”

“Must’ve been fairies.”

“Or water sprites.”

“Selkies, maybe.”

“Whatever they were, they couldn’t have been ordinary humpbacks.”

“Nope. Whales don’t sing.”

“But they do,” Gavi broke in.

“Naw!”

Some of the men laughed while others sputtered in disbelief.

“It is true,” Gavi assured them. “The instinct for music exists throughout nature. Humpback whales, in particular, have a highly evolved musical sense. You might say they have a ‘good ear’. That is why they came. They were drawn by the music of the bone flute.”

Peggy couldn’t help smiling as the men’s eyes widened in amazement. They couldn’t get over this learned creature, this Bird-full-of-Words.

Peggy glanced over at Grania as she stood by herself, looking out over the water. She thought about what she’d heard the men saying – that once Grania was back to being herself again, Owen’s death would be avenged and blood would run like water through Connaught. But to Peggy, the blazing light of the fire only highlighted the deeply-etched lines of sorrow on the Pirate Queen’s face. Until now she had exuded a fearsome air and everyone had kept out of her way. But at this moment she seemed softer, frailer, as if she had, at least in some small measure, returned to the land of the living.

Peggy knew that at some point soon she’s have to tell the older woman that they must be on their way, and continue their search for Mi. But now was not the time, she decided.

She got up from the circle around the fire and walked over to Grania, who fixed her with a penetrating gaze.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” she said.

Taken aback, Peggy could only nod.

“Where will you go?”

Peggy shrugged.

“I keep having dreams about Mi, and I’m worried she’s in more danger as time goes on. But I don’t know how we’re going to find her. I can’t figure out where to go next.”

“You’ll find the way,” said Grania. “Because you have to.”

“Just as you have to avenge Owen?” Peggy asked.

Grania nodded, a faraway look in her eyes.

“I have outlived parents, brothers, and two husbands. But to outlive your own child is death-in-life. Bingham can take nothing more from me. I have nothing left to lose. But he will pay. I vow it.”

She turned back to Peggy.

“As for your little one, she must be saved. You must find her.”

To Peggy’s surprise, the Pirate Queen lightly touched her on the head.

“Now go, Margaret,” she said.

Peggy felt the warmth of Grania’s hand ripple down the back of her neck. It had been a long time, she realized, since she’d  been called by her full name, the way her own mother used to.

§§

Peggy told the others they would have to leave the Pirate Queen’s world.

“When?” Molly asked anxiously.

“Tonight,” Peggy said firmly.

Molly looked stricken at her reply.

“Molly, I know how you feel about Grania and being a pirate. But we can’t stay here any longer. Mi’s in trouble, I’m sure of it.”

“How can we go,” Gavi said, “when we do not even know where we are going?”

“We may not know exactly where we’re going,” Peggy admitted. “But I have an idea of what we should be looking for.”

“What?”

She took a deep breath.

“The Tree of Good and Evil.”

“The Tree of Good and Evil?” For once Gavi was caught completely off guard. “I have never heard of such a thing. What is it?”

“I don’t know, exactly. I’m not even sure there is a Tree of Good and Evil. But Mi thinks there is, and I suspect she’s gone off to find it.”

“But why?”

“It’s just a hunch. Remember what Grania said about Mi just before she disappeared? That she said something about wanting to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil?”

“But that is not enough for us to go on! I need more time to figure the rest of it out properly.”

“There isn’t time, Gavi. Mi’s in trouble. Anyway,” said Peggy. “It’s not really up to you to figure everything out.”

Gavi look at her, nonplussed. “Really?” he asked. Clearly this was an idea the philosopher-loon had never seriously considered.

“Yes, really,” Peggy replied. “All you can do is your best. That’s all any of us can do. “

He continued to ponder Peggy’s response.

“Something in me resists admitting you might be right,” he said. “Yet at the same time I feel oddly comforted by the thought that I am not responsible for solving every problem.”

“So,” Peggy said. “Are we going to dream ourselves off this Island and go look for the Tree of Good and Evil?”

She was careful to appear to be speaking to all three of them. But in truth, it was Jackpine to whom she was directing the question. Given all his initial anger and reluctance, she was amazed he’d come this far with them. She realized that she’d been bracing herself all night for the likelihood that he’d decide not to continue on, and go back to his own life.

So she was caught off guard when he responded with a casual “Sure.”

Peggy looked at him.

“Really? You’re not going back?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I have no idea how to get back on my own. I’ve come this far. It looks like I’m along for the whole ride.”

“That’s great,” she said, still disconcerted that he was staying, that her fears weren’t coming to pass.

“Excellent!” Gavi echoed her. “Let us make our star-formation and see where our journey takes us.”

As he and Jackpine prepared to lie down, Peggy noticed Molly hanging back.

“What’s wrong, Molly?” she asked.

The doll turned to face the three of them with a strained expression.

“I’m not going.”

“Molly, what are you talking about?” Gavi sputtered.

“Just what I said. I’m not going with you tonight.”

“But why?”

“I’m staying here,” she replied. “With Grania and the crew.”

“How can you even thinking about that?” Gavi demanded. “There will be a bloodbath and you will be caught right in the middle of it!”

Without answering, the doll did something that made them all reel in shock. Lifting her eyepatch, she plucked her own eye out of its socket and held it out to Peggy.

“Here,” she said brusquely. “You’re going to need this more than I will.”

Peggy shook her head in a fierce refusal.

“No,” she told Molly. “I won’t take it. I can’t. “

“Don’t be stupid,” Molly insisted.

But Peggy was adamant.

“The Aya is yours.”

“If that’s the way you want it,” said Molly, pulling her hand back, “fine. But I’m staying.”

“Why, Molly? It’s not your fight!”

“It is now,” she replied. “Don’t you see? Ever since you told me I was a pirate, I’ve been looking for a way to really experience life as one. Now I’ve found it. Grania is everything I’ve ever wanted to be. I want to stay here and fight by her side.”

She turned to Gavi.

“You went off to experience life as a flesh-and-blood loon. Is it wrong for me to want to live out my dream, too?”

“Even if it means shedding blood, taking the lives of others?”

“I’m not the only one who’s taken life!” Molly retorted.

Gavi turned away, a look of deep shame on his face.

“Just how long do you plan to stay here?” Peggy asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? What does that mean? Are you ever going back to Notherland? What about the Nordlings?”

“I don’t know the answer to that! I wish I did!” the doll cried impatiently. “All I know is what I have to do right now.”

Jackpine, who’d been silent till now, spoke up.

“She’s right. Sometimes people have to do what they’re called to do. Even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else. We don’t have the right to judge Molly. She’s our friend. We just have to stand aside and let her do it.”

Listening to Jackpine, Peggy wanted to scream, and the fact that she knew in her bones that he was right only made her frustration worse. Molly had been her doll when she was a little girl. When Molly’s eye had gone missing, she’d covered it with a black patch and pronounced her a pirate. Then, when Peggy found the eye that strange day in Green Echo Park, she’d discovered that it had acquired remarkable powers. It had become an Aya, an all-seeing eye, which had lit their way through the darkness of the Hole at the Pole, and ultimately destroyed the evil Nobodaddy. The last thing Peggy had done when she departed Notherland the year before was to press the Aya into Molly’s hand.

After all they’d been through together, how could Molly do this? How could she abandon them?

“It won’t be forever,” Molly said, looking at her pleadingly. “At least I don’t think it will. I just want to stay as long as Grania needs me.”

“Then I guess there’s nothing more to say,” Peggy said coldly.

“Good-bye, Molly” Gavi said in a mournful tone. “Till we meet again.”

The doll hugged Gavi and Jackpine. But Peggy turned away.

“Please, Peggy,” Gavi pleaded. “It is never good to part on bad terms.”

Reluctantly she held out her hand and gave Molly’s a cursory squeeze. But she couldn’t bring herself to say good-bye. As she watched the doll walk away alone, Peggy had the fleeting impression that Molly looked slightly taller than before.

As they all lay down to sleep, Peggy’s heart was still heavy with bitterness.

If she doesn’t care about us, then I don’t care about her.

 §§

She didn’t like this place. The Stranger didn’t seem so nice anymore.

Mi wished she had never left Notherland.

She thought of Molly, who had always been fiercely protective of her and the other Nordlings, and of Gavi, whom she missed with a terrible ache since he’d left to go to the land of the Creator. In her mind, she fought to keep the image of their faces, the two people she loved most in all the universes, to try and drive out the pictures she was seeing on the screen.

The Notherland Journeys, Episode 5

Jun 20, 2016 | Notherland | 0 comments

BOOK II: The Shining World

Prologue

AS SHE STOOD near the entrance to Green Echo Park singing at the top of her lungs, it occurred to Mi the Nordling that it might not be a good idea to call too much attention to herself in this unfamiliar world.

But it was so exhilarating to break free of the confines of Notherland, to at last find herself in the world of the Creator! True, Mi had passed through several realms in her quest to find the place known as the Shining World. But here in the realm of Pay-Gee the Creator, she sensed with a mounting excitement that she was drawing nearer and nearer to her destination.

Only a little while earlier, Mi had noticed sounds coming from a building with tall stone spires and stopped to look inside. There was a group of small beings like herself – “children” as they were called here in this world – sitting in a circle. In front of them stood a woman, singing and moving her arms rhythmically, urging them to sing along with her.

All night, all day,  Angels watching over me, my Lord

All night, all day,   Angels watching over me.

Ever since she’d discovered she could sing many more notes than the one she was created for, Mi had been eager to learn more of these melodious collections of notes that people in this world called “songs”. The music these children were making was so sweet and soaring it made her tiny heart feel like it would burst. She resolved that she would learn this song, right here, right now! She would not leave this window until she knew every word, every note of it.

Now here she was, a short distance away from the building with the tall spires, at the entrance of the large green place known as a “park” in this world. She could see many trees and wondered if one of them could be the Tree of Good and Evil – not that she had any idea how she would be able to tell. Just inside the gate, she noticed a statue of an Angel, with great stone wings draping from its shoulders and running down to its base. What a wonderful thing! Mi thought to herself – to learn a song about Angels and then to immediately encounter an Angel. Almost involuntarily, the notes of the song burst out of her and she felt a deep, transporting joy as she sang.

After a few moments she noticed that a group of children in the park had stopped what they were doing and were looking at her strangely. Reluctantly, she stopped singing and began walking towards the children. They had resumed their game. It looked like fun and she hoped maybe they would invite her to join in.

She stood off to one side, watching shyly for a few moments, till one of them ñ a boy ñ raced over and poked her on the shoulder. Mi shrunk back at first, thinking he intended to hurt her. But then he called out, “Tag!” and she could see from his expression that it was just part of the game and now it was her turn to go find someone else to poke on the shoulder. She ran after the others, laughing. This game wasn’t so different from the game she used to play with the other Nordlings back in Notherland, when they pretended they were being chased by swarms of flesh-eating bugs.

Mi almost caught up with one of the others and was about to poke her on the shoulder when the girl slowed down momentarily and looked over toward the street. A man was standing there watching them. The girl sped up again, but Mi managed to get close enough to touch her.

“Tag!” she shouted triumphantly.

She was worried the girl might be mad at her, but she just shrugged good-naturedly.

“Now I’m it.”

Mi stood facing the girl, whose attention was drawn again toward the street. Now the man was walking towards the park entrance.

“Is that your dad?” Mi asked the girl, proud that she knew the casual word for “father” in this world.

The girl shook her head.

“That’s not my dad,” she said emphatically. “I thought he was yours.”

Mi almost started to explain that she didn’t have a dad, that where she came from there were no fathers, but stopped herself.

“If he’s nobody’s dad, then he’s a Stranger. You should never talk to Strangers.”

“What’s a Stranger?” Mi asked.

“A person you don’t know and your mom and dad don’t know either,” the girl replied.

“Why can’t you . . .?” Mi started to ask, but the girl had resumed running.

Mi looked over at the entrance. Now the Stranger was walking past the statue of the Angel, and was heading right towards her.

“Hello, little girl.” said the Stranger. “Would you like to go for a ride with me?”

Chapter 1: The Petroglyphs

PEGGY FELT THE TIP of her planting shovel hit it with a sharp metallic thunk.

She bent over, rooted around in the damp ground, pulled out a mottled-grey hunk of rock and flung it away in disgust. This whole patch of land was chock-full of stones, not to mention the tangled piles of stumps and slash left behind by the chainsaws. It was all she could do to find decent spots to put in her trees.

She looked down at the handful of saplings left in the bulky planting bags that encircled her waist. Six hours she’d been working this crummy, rock-infested plot and all she had to show for it was five hundred trees. Five hundred trees at nine cents apiece. She was well on her way to netting a grand total of 45 dollars for the whole day.

After all she’d heard about how treeplanters made such good money. After all the trouble and effort she’d gone to get on this crew. After all the money she’d spent – on the bus ticket, the shovel, the bug shirt and all the other equipment. Just to come up here to work her butt off in the middle of nowhere with blackflies swarming around her head.

Forty-five lousy dollars!

At this rate she’d never have enough to move out on her own in the fall. Another school year in the same house with her mother – Peggy didn’t know if she could take it. It seemed like they couldn’t be in the same room for five minutes without getting into a fight. Her mom had hit the roof when she’d left school early to go planting, accusing her of using it as an excuse to drop out altogether, which Peggy thought was totally unfair. She’d been responsible. She’d put in the application and gotten the job. She’d arranged with her teachers to make up her schoolwork work before the end of the summer. All things for which her mother gave her absolutely no credit.

She’d had no choice, really. Her sanity depended on making enough money to move out on her own. It was either this job or go begging to her father. Oh, he would’ve loved that. To have her beholden to him. No way that was going to happen. She’d stay up here and plant trees for the rest of her life before she’d take another penny from him.

She bent down to dig in the last of the saplings in the bag and prepared to load up again. As she stood up she heard a rustling behind her. Simmie again, she wondered? Coming back to stock up from her cache?

She turned around to see a full-grown black bear, reared up on its hind legs, staring at her from no more than 20 feet away.

“Well, hello, there . . .”

Later, when she finally stopped shaking and could think clearly again, Peggy wondered what in the world possessed her to say such a thing at that moment. A quiet, almost casual hello instead of screaming or running – neither of which she’d done, thank God. She stood there, her heavy work boots fixed on the spot, trying to recall all the stuff they learned in orientation about what to do if they met up with a bear: Drop your bags. Bang your shovel on a rock. Talk loudly. Act big, so the bear will think you’re a threat.

And most important: Never, ever try to run away.

She didn’t move, didn’t do a thing except stand there looking at the bear with a strange mixture of awe and disorientation. Things could get ugly, she suddenly remembered, in an encounter with a mother bear and cubs. But as far as Peggy could see, there were no cubs around anywhere. There was nobody, nothing else. For a few moments she had the feeling that all movement in the world had stopped, that time itself had stopped. There was nothing except this moment, the two of them standing stock-still, Peggy looking at the bear, the bear looking at her.

Then another memory came back to her: That night around the fire, Zak telling the new planters about the notorious incident two years ago: a planter working her plot, listening to music on her headphones, carrying a chocolate bar in her pocket. A chocolate bar! How dumb was that? Peggy thought, remembering how the planters had been warned not to carry food that might attract bears.

When the bear attacked her from behind, the girl panicked and ran. The bear gave chase, knocked her down and lit into her. She was lucky a ranger heard her screaming and shot the bear. But by then it had gnawed off half her leg, which had to be amputated.

Remembering the story, Peggy felt her stomach turn over in nausea and fear, as the bear began to move slightly.

Is it going to charge me?

Then, in a smooth, quiet motion that seemed all the more remarkable given its massive bulk, the bear dropped back on all fours, turned away and ambled off towards the thick brush at the edge of the clear-cut. Peggy watched it move away and grow smaller, its black fur making sinuous ripples down its back with every lumbering step. When the bear was finally out of sight, she let out an enormous sigh and realized that her body had been so rigid during the whole encounter that she’d barely taken a breath.

She heard the rumble of a motor off in the distance. She turned around and saw a van heading down the dirt road towards her.

Zak was at the wheel. He stopped and waved her over.

“That’s it for today, Pegs. We’re pulling out early. There’s been a bear sighting in these parts and we don’t want any planters meeting up with it.”

“Too late,” she said. “It’s already been here.”

Zak looked at her quizzically.

“What are you talking about?”

“The bear,” Peggy said as she climbed into the passenger seat. “It was just here.”

§§

“What did you do?”

Simmie, one of the other planters, was riding in the back of the pickup next to Gisele, the assistant supervisor. From the moment Zak had picked them up they’d been riveted by Peggy’s tale of her bear encounter. Now they were plying her with questions.

“Did you remember to bang your shovel on your hard hat?”

“Didn’t you freak?!!”

“Actually, no.” Peggy replied, with a slight hint of boasting. Though she was still shaking inside, Peggy could hear an edge of excitement, even exhilaration in her own voice. She was already, she realized, embellishing the account into a story, one that she knew would be making the rounds of the planting camps for weeks to come: “Did you hear about the new girl over in Zak’s camp? She came face-to-face with a bear right on her plot.” “O my God, what happened? Is she okay?” “Yeah, she’s fine. It just looked at her and walked away!”

“Well, at least that bear got us off that crummy plot of land for the rest of the day,” Gisele was saying. “What say we stop in town for a quick beer?”

“Right,” said Zak, grinning at Peggy. “We can drink to Pegs and her nerves of steel.”

Peggy smiled back. She liked Zak, one of those terminally upbeat people whose good nature was redeemed by a sardonic sense of humor. But she was thinking, here we go again. They’d go to the pub and the others would order beers. Meanwhile, she’d order a soft drink, saying she didn’t feel like a beer, when the truth was she didn’t want to have to show ID and put Zak in the awkward position of finding out that she was only sixteen, that she’d lied and said she was eighteen on her application.

She looked back at Zak, unsure of what to say about the pub stop. But his attention was on something else now. His hands gripped the wheel tightly as he listened to a news item on the radio. Something about a manhunt for a missing child – a little girl who’d been abducted from a park in the city.

“Whenever I hear about one of these perverts, it makes me feel like tying him by the you-know-whats and dragging him over a bed of nails.”

Simmie and Gisele looked at one another.

“Whooooa…”

“Not you, Saint Zak!”

“We thought you lived only to do good deeds!”

Zak grinned.

“You two are just jealous,” he shot back. “While you’re sitting around drinking lattes planning your pathetic weekends, I’ll be doing something worthwhile with my time.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Peggy piped up.

“Don’t you know?” Gisele said. “After planting season Zak’s leaving for a year in India.”

“Really?”

Simmie poked Zak from the back seat of the van and giggled.

“Yep. He’s gonna save the children from evil slave owners.”`

“Pay no attention to these idiots, Pegs,” said Zak. “I’m going there to volunteer with a group working to help child laborers in the rug factories.”

“That sounds great, Zak,” said Peggy.

“Forgive us, Saint Zak,” Gisele teased. “We’re not worthy to be in your presence.”

Peggy looked ahead as the van sped down the highway. They were approaching the sign at the turnoff for the Lake Keewatin Reserve, the one they’d passed every day this week. Suddenly she had an idea.

“Hey, guys!” she blurted out. “Let’s go see the petroglyphs.”

“Right now?” said Simmie.

Peggy nodded eagerly. It would be a great way, she realized, to avoid stopping at the pub altogether.

“What about our beers?” Gisele chimed in. “We won’t have time to do both, and if we’re not back for dinner the others’ll scarf down all the good stuff and leave us with a pot of cold rice.”

“Come on, it’ll only take a few minutes,” Peggy persisted. “We’ve been talking about it for days and we’ll be leaving this area at the end of the week.”

Zak was already slowing down the van and signalling for the turnoff.

“Pegs is the hero of the hour,” he said cheerily. “If she wants rock carvings, she gets rock carvings.”

The entrance to the reserve was a short distance off the highway. There was a small cabin with a sign that said, “All Visitors Must Check in at Office.” They parked the truck and went in.

Inside was a girl who looked to be not much older than Peggy, sitting at a desk.

“Can we go see the petroglyphs?” she asked.

The girl shook her head. “Too late in the day.”

“Please,” Peggy pleaded. “It’s our only chance. We’ll be quick, I promise.”

The girl looked at her a moment, then turned and shouted out the back door of the cabin. “Gary? Can you take these folks to the site?”

“Now?” the voice shot back testily, followed by what sounded like the whack of an axe on wood. “It’s almost closing.”

“They say they won’t have another chance,” said the girl.

“Okay, okay.”

A dark-haired youth poked his head in the doorway.

“But you better make it quick.”

Peggy opened her mouth to reply, but stopped, dumfounded when she saw his face.

“Jackpine?”

§§

Her mind raced back to the events of the previous year – how she’d first encountered the Jack pine tree standing mysteriously alone in the middle of the treeless tundra. How she’d heard a voice from within the tree calling out for help. How her touch had made the tree fall away, and how a young man appeared, who had no idea who he was, but to whom Mi had given the name Jackpine.

She thought back to that cold December day when she’d walked out of Green Echo Park, her mind a confused jumble of emotions. The strange journey to Notherland, the imaginary world of her childhood, had abruptly ended. She felt like she’d lived several lifetimes and yet, when she was cast back into the park it was like hardly any time at all had passed . . .

Only moments before she and Jackpine had been pulling the loon across the ice, finally watching it soar off into the sky. Their hands had touched briefly as the loon took off, but then she’d looked at him. He wasn’t Jackpine in this world, she realized. He was Gary. It was almost as if she was really seeing him for the first time – his grubby clothes, his ashen-grey pallor. Something in her recoiled, wanted to turn away.

So she hurried out of the park. But just as she was passing the Angel statue that stood at the entrance she had a change of heart. She stopped and turned around.

But he was gone. Nowhere to be seen. He’d disappeared into thin air.

She’d let him get away.

Then, as the days and weeks passed, the whole experience receded from her mind, till it seemed like little more than a barely-remembered dream . . .

§§

“What did you call me?”

Peggy looked into the young man’s eyes to see if there was a flicker of recognition. It was him, no question: Gary the homeless kid, the one she’d left behind in the park that day. The one who’d mysteriously turned up in her imaginary world. What had happened to him that day, she wondered. How did he get here? Was this reserve the place he’d originally come from? Whatever he’d been doing for the past year, Peggy thought, it had certainly done him good. He still looked lean but more vigorous, with a healthy glow to his face.

“What was that you called me?” he asked again. The question seemed less a challenge than a genuine query.

“Sorry,” Peggy stammered. “I thought you were somebody else.”

He looked at her oddly for a moment, then seemed to make up his mind.

“Well, if we’re going to do this, let’s get going,” he said, motioning them to follow him out the back door of the cabin. He paused in the doorway and turned to the girl.

“You still be here when I get back?” he asked her.

“Sure,” she nodded.

It seemed to Peggy that the girl gave her a hostile glare as they went out, but it was hard to tell, since she hadn’t been overly friendly from the start.

Outside, Gary stuck his axe into the stump he was using for a chopping block.

“This way,” he said, leading them across the small parking lot to a path that led through a treed area, ending at the tall, smooth face of a large boulder.

“This is it?” Simmie asked.

“Nope,” said Gary. “We have to get past this to get to the lake.”

He pointed to a narrow gap between the boulder and another, smaller rock and began to scramble through it. The others followed, and found themselves snaking around more boulders of varying size and shape. Finally the rocky path opened out to reveal Lake Keewatin. They walked a short distance until they came to a steep cliff that angled out from the shoreline.

There was a narrow ledge lining the cliff partway out over the lake, then nothing but the sheer face of the cliff plunging down into the choppy water below. Gary pointed out toward the cliff face.

“There they are,” he shouted over the pounding waves.

“What?”

“The rock carvings you came to see.”

Simmie shook her head.

“I don’t see anything.”

From where she was standing Peggy could see some faint markings on the cliff face.

“They’re hard to see from here,” Gary said. “To get a good look you have to go out on the ledge a ways.”

“That thing?” Gisele almost shrieked. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

“No way I’m going out there!” Simmie added.

“There must be a rope or something to hold onto.” Peggy said.

Gary shook his head.

“The only way to rig up a rope would be to drill into the rock. That would damage the site.”

“It’s not that bad if you’ve done climbing,” Zak spoke up. “There’re some spots where you can grip the rock.”

Peggy was nearest the ledge. She began to gingerly step out onto it.

“Wait!” Gary said. “I don’t think you better . . .”

“But you just said . . .”

“We allow people to go out at their own risk,” he said. “But only when conditions are right. The lake’s rough right now. Those waves are hitting high up on the rock. It’s too slippery.”

“But I can barely see them from here!” Peggy objected. “I just want to go out a little ways.”

Before Gary could say anything else, Peggy moved several steps farther out onto the ledge, beyond his reach. He watched her with a look of mild irritation, but said nothing as she made her way along the ledge.

“Look! Out there!”

Simmie was pointing out into the lake beyond the far edge of the cliff. Peggy looked over to see a single loon swimming on the surface of the water. They all watched as the bird moved closer to the cliff and released a tremolo call.

A loon, probably one of the hundreds that used this huge lake for a nesting ground, Peggy thought. But she couldn’t help smiling to herself as she thought of the loon she knew as Gavi – a very singular bird, to say the least, who fancied himself a philosopher and sometimes thought so hard about the true nature of things that he gave himself a headache.

“AHHH!”

She tightened her grip on a jutting section of rock as her right foot slipped off the ledge and dangled limply in the air.

“Watch it!” Gary warned her. “I told you it was slippery!”

Carefully, Peggy lifted her foot back onto the ledge. She resolved to be more careful and not let her attention wander again. She didn’t want to give Gary another opportunity to yell at her and make her feel like a bumbling idiot. Slowly, with measured steps, she moved farther along the ledge to a spot a couple of feet from the first of the rock carvings.

Now, up close, she could see it was the outline of some kind of large animal, perhaps a bear. A little farther along was another carving of a snakelike creature with a tiny head atop a thin squiggly line. There were at least half a dozen more, but from that distance Peggy couldn’t make out what they were. Thinking she’d be able to get a better look by leaning out a bit over the water, she found a crevice in the rock where her left hand could get a solid grip, checked to make sure both her feet were firmly planted on the ledge, then carefully angled her body away from the cliff face.

“Whoa!” Zak and Simmie shouted in unison.

“Don’t worry, I’m okay,” she reassured them. “I just want to see if I can get a better look.”

She looked over her shoulder. Gary was scowling but said nothing. She turned back toward the petroglyphs and craned her neck to see what she could make out ñ a tree, some birds in flight, something that looked like a canoe with two stick-figures in it.

One of the carvings in particular drew her eye – a human figure holding a tube-like object in its mouth.

“That one looks like it’s playing a flute,” she said aloud.

She was surprised to hear Gary’s voice in reply.

“It is. It’s called the Flute Player.”

“Makes sense,” Peggy said wryly.

She was intrigued because she was a flute player herself. But there was also something distinctive about the figure that set it apart from the others.

“There’s a story about that one,” Gary volunteered. “I’ll tell you about it after.”

Then it dawned on Peggy: the Flute Player was the only image that wasn’t already familiar to her. Painted Rock, the portal between the universes in Notherland, the world she had created out of her imagination when she was seven, bore the same images she saw here, with the exception of the Flute Player.

The thought unnerved her. For the past year it had taken all her energy just to cope with everyday reality – the demanding grind of schoolwork, her tense relationship with her mother, the constant drive to earn money so she could break free and live on her own. The last thing she needed now was to be thrown back into the tumultuous emotions her strange sojourn in that long-forgotten world had stirred up in her.

She began to feel lightheaded, slightly dizzy. Better get off this ledge and back on solid ground, she told herself. She hugged the cliff face and slowly began to make her way along the ledge, back to where the others were standing. But the feeling of lightheadedness grew stronger, a sense of spinning inside herself, like vertigo.

The waves were beating against the cliff just beneath her feet.

Don’t look down, Peggy told herself. Just take it slow and steady.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw she was only a few steps away from where the ledge began to widen to meet the path. But just at the edge there was a gap, one she hadn’t noticed earlier, when she’d made her way out to the petroglyphs. Now, in her state of disorientation, the gap looked wide and intimidating.

“I hate to ask this,” she said, “but could one of you give me a hand over this gap? I’m feeling a bit dizzy.”

Gary thrust a hand out towards her.

“Here,” he said. “Grab hold.”

Peggy ran her hand along the cliff face to meet his. As soon as her skin touched his, she had an intense flash of memory: the last time they’d clasped hands like this was when she and Jackpine had entered the fissure in Painted Rock, leaving Notherland behind and re-entering their everyday world.

Suddenly Peggy felt her whole body lurch backward. Gary – Jackpine – instinctively pulled on her arm to try and keep her from falling off the ledge. But his jerking motion threw both of them off balance. The others stood aghast as the two of them tumbled down the cliff face and into the choppy waters, still clutching hands.

No sweat, I’m a good swimmer, Peggy told herself as they both hit the water full force. As long as I don’t crack my skull on a rock, I’m okay. But instead of rising back to the surface, she felt herself being pulled down deeper and deeper. She felt a rising sense of terror and looked frantically at Jackpine. Their faces were nearly pressed against one another in the dark water, and she could see that he was on the edge of panic, too.

The thought struck her with sickening force: If we don’t get back up to the surface soon, we’re going to drown.

But still they continued to be pulled inexorably downward. Peggy thought she noticed a flash of something white shooting through the dark, murky waters just above them. Was it one of the others, diving down after them? Then she saw that it was the white underbelly of a water bird – a loon – probably the one they’d seen earlier.

It began to dive into the surrounding depths like a missile. Then, strangely, terrifyingly, the bird came right up next to Peggy and peered into her face with one red eye. The loon lifted one wing upward through the water and seemed to be extending it toward her, almost as if it were trying to wrap its wing around her . . .

§§

The Stranger was nice and friendly. He offered her something called “candy” that made a sweet, tingly sensation on her tongue. Mi wondered why the girl in the park had warned her not to talk to him.

She followed him out of the park. As they walked past the Angel statue she thought she saw one of its wings move slightly, almost as if it were stretching out to block her way. But she forgot about it when she spied the large metal box atop a set of four wheels.  Mi had never seen anything like it. The surface was so shiny she could see her face reflected on it. The Stranger opened the door of the “car” as he called it, let her climb in, then got in himself through a door on the other side. He took out a key, put it in a lock and turned it. The car shook slightly and began to move forward. To Mi, it was like magic.

Chapter 2:  The Return of the Creator

AT FIRST, DARKNESS. Complete darkness, along with a feeling of utter blankness, a not-knowing where she was, who she was, what she was. Then glimmers of awareness, the sensation of something soft touching her cheek . . .

I am. I am human. My name is Peggy. I fell in the water.

Am I dead?

When she opened her eyes, she was aware of something black, dotted with flecks of white, moving rhythmically in front of her. Some kind of feathery object stroking her face. It took some seconds for her brain to fully recognize the object, to put a name to it.

It’s a wing. A black-and-white wing. A loon’s wing.

“Gavi!”

No sooner had she spoken the name than the sound of another voice pierced her ears.

“You both made it!”

Peggy and the loon turned in the direction the voice had come from. They saw a creature about the height of a seven-year-old girl, somewhat stiff-looking and sporting a black patch over one eye.

“I wasn’t sure I could pull it off all by myself!”

Peggy looked to the left of where the small creature stood. There was the smooth rock face dotted with primitive drawings. Things were becoming clear now. The visit to the petroglyphs, the terrifying fall through the water ñ all these things had happened for a reason. Namely, that Molly, her old childhood doll, had called her back. Now, as Peggy stood near Painted Rock, the entrance to Notherland, she could see Molly wasn’t alone. Her other imaginary childhood friend was here, too: Gavi the loon, who had miraculously found a way to cross the threshold into Peggy’s world.

The three of them practically fell on top of one another, shrieking with happiness. Peggy threw her arms around the doll while Gavi’s large wings encircled them both.

“But how did you . . .?”

Peggy only got a few words out before she was interrupted.

“What the . . .?”

They whirled back to see where this new voice was coming from. In the rush of the moment Peggy realized she’d forgotten all about Gary – or rather Jackpine – for now that they were back in Notherland there was absolutely no doubt it was him.

“Jackpine!” Gavi exclaimed. “It is marvellous to see you here, too!”

The young man turned to Gavi with a harsh expression.

“What did you call me?”

“Why, Jackpine, of course. The name you were given by the Nordling Mi.”

“My name’s Gary.”

“You mean you do not remember,” Gavi asked, “that you have been here in Notherland before? That you . . .”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he cut the loon off with disdain.

A chorus of voices like a bubbling brook drifted towards them.

“Gavi! It’s Gavi! Our Gavi is back!”

The voices came in a rolling cascade of different tones – some high, some low, some in-between, but all of them punctuated with giggles. As the loon looked at the mass of fairylike creatures flocking around him, his red eyes brimmed with tears.

“My dear, dear Nordlings,” he said haltingly when he was finally able to speak. “How it fills me with joy to see you all again. And look! See who has come with me!”

He gestured towards Peggy, setting off another burble of delight among the Nordlings.

“Pay-Gee! The Creator! You’ve come back to us!”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” Peggy laughed and shot a quizzical glance at Molly, as if to ask, “What’s up?” But the doll avoided her eyes and Peggy turned her attention back to the Nordlings, who were still crowded around Gavi. It was true she was Pay-Gee, the Creator of Notherland and everything in it. But it was Gavi who had cared for them their whole lives, Gavi  they had so deeply missed since he’d left just over a year ago to experience life in the world of flesh-and-blood loons. They were glad to see Peggy, but they were overcome with joy to have Gavi back with them.

Out of the corner of her eye Peggy could see Jackpine glowering. Did he really not remember being trapped inside the lone Jack pine on the barren tundra? Peggy shivered recalling the sensation of her fingers meeting his at the moment of his release, when the woody branches that encased his arms dissipated into the air at her touch.

Did he truly have no memory of being in this place the year before? If so, it was no wonder he was acting the way he was. He must be feeling frightened and angry.

She walked over to him, trying to think of something reassuring to say. But before she could open her mouth he spoke up in a fierce, cutting tone.

“Why did you drag me into this? I should never have tried to save you back there. I should have let you sink!”

“I didn’t do anything!” Peggy retorted. “I haven’t got a clue how we got here either!”

“Well, you better figure out how to get me back!” he said, stomping away.

“I will!” Peggy called after him in a voice edged with sarcasm. “As soon as I possibly can!”

She walked back towards the assembled Nordlings, who were still chatting animatedly with Gavi, and tugged at Molly’s sleeve.

“I’m not even going to ask how you managed to bring all three of us here,” Peggy began. “It’s great being back, but Jackpine’s not too happy about it, so we probably shouldn’t stay long.”

The doll looked away, refusing to meet her gaze.

“What is it, Molly? Oh, no. Please, tell me this is just a visit.”

“Well, not exactly.”

“What do you mean?” Peggy demanded. “Is something going on?” She looked around. “Everything looks fine to me.”

Now Molly visibly stiffened.

“If the great Creator of Notherland would bother to look a bit more closely, maybe she’d notice that everything is not fine!”

“What? I don’t see anything out of the ordinary,” Peggy insisted. “Lake Notherland is fine. The Great Skyway looks just like it did when I left. The Nordlings seem like their old bubbly selves.”

“Oh, do they?” Molly shot back. “All of them?”

Peggy looked over at the group of Nordlings clustered around Gavi. They were peppering the loon with questions about his life in the physical world, and as he responded he addressed each one of the sprites by name: Do, Fa3, his onetime star pupil Re9 . . .

A sudden shiver of dread went through Peggy. Where’s Mi?

She looked back at Molly, knowing she didn’t even have to speak the Nordling’s name out loud.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know,” the doll replied, looking at the ground.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“Just what I said!” Molly exploded. “Mi’s gone missing and I – Molly, the guardian of the Nordlings – don’t have any idea where she is! Why did you ever leave me in charge? I’m useless. I’m just a stupid doll!”

She threw her stiff body onto the ground. Molly, the brave pirate doll who never cried, wept bitter tears.

§§

“It all started when Mi discovered she could sing all those other notes.”

Re9 was talking, almost shouting to be heard over the frantic chatter of the other Nordlings, all of whom wanted to weigh in with their version of the events surrounding Mi’s disappearance.

Peggy was mystified. After the defeat of the malevolent Nobodaddy, the Nordlings had been restored to their rightful place in the RoryBory. Notherland was a safe place, or so she’d thought a year earlier, when she left her imaginary world under Molly’s guardianship.

“But who could have taken her away?” she asked no one in particular.

The Nordlings all piped up together.

“No one did!”

“She wasn’t taken away!”

“She left by herself!”

“What do you mean?” Peggy asked. “Where would she go? Where could she go?”

Molly, calmer now but still struggling to maintain her composure, spoke up.

“To the Shining World.”

Peggy thought she must not have heard right

“Where?”

“We truly do not know where Mi has gone,” Re9 replied solemnly. “But we are fairly certain that she went off in search of a place she called the Shining World.”

“What Shining World?”

“It was a name we gave to the other realm,” Re9 continued. “The place beyond the RoryBory, where Lord and Lady Franklin went when they left Notherland and ascended the Great Skyway.”

The mention of the old explorer and his wife brought a flood of memories back to Peggy.

“They entered that place with such looks of peace and joy on their faces that we often wondered what it was like,” Re9 went on. “With her love of naming things, Mi took to calling it the Shining World, and began to spin stories about it. She imagined it as a place full of beautiful things – flowers, stars, butterflies – all bathed in a golden light. A place where everyone is happy all the time. After a while Mi could talk of nothing but the Shining World. She became . . . I do not know the word.”

He paused a moment and looked in the direction of his former teacher.

“Obsessed?” Gavi offered. He had been listening quietly, but with growing concern to Re9’s account of Mi’s disappearance.

“Yes, that is the word I was looking for!” the Nordling said with satisfaction. “Mi became obsessed with going to the Shining World and seeing for herself if it was as beautiful as she imagined it. We began to realize that there was something,” Re9 paused a moment before continuing, “something unusual about Mi. Some ability that set her apart from myself and the other Nordlings.”

“What kind of ability?” Peggy asked.

“After you left, Mi was always talking about you and how, as Creator of Notherland, you have the ability to dream things into existence with your imagination. It is possible that Mi has somehow developed the same ability.”

“What makes you think that?”

Now Molly stepped forward.

“Mi can sing.”

Peggy was left more puzzled than ever by Molly’s cryptic statement.

“So? All the Nordlings can sing.”

“Not like Mi,” Molly said firmly. “The other Nordlings have always been content to sing their own singular notes. But not Mi. She wanted to sing notes other than her own. And somehow, she managed to teach herself to do it. At first she kept her new ability a secret. Then one day I heard her.”

“Heard her what?”

“Singing a song.”

Peggy was intrigued, but before she could say anything Gavi burst out with a resounding tremolo call.

“Now I understand!” the loon said triumphantly.

“Hold on, you’re way ahead of us,” said Peggy. “So what if Mi’s learned to sing a few more notes? What’s the big deal?”

“That is just it,” replied Gavi, looking as if he was ready to burst with excitement. “It is a very big deal! Mi’s ability to sing, to learn new and more complicated melodies, has brought about profound changes – in her and in the very makeup of Notherland itself. Mi was created – programmed if you will – by your imagination, Peggy, to carry out a certain limited function within the workings of this world. It is very much like an actor, who carries out a particular role in a play. An actor does not, indeed cannot, play the other roles too.”

Peggy was itching for Gavi to get to the point, but she knew enough to keep quiet and not interrupt his train of thought.

“But Mi has, so to speak, gone beyond her programmed function,” Gavi went on. “She has burst the confines of her definition and thus has – to carry through with the dramatic metaphor – ‘rewritten’ her own part, not to mention the script, so to speak, of Notherland itself. What I believe has happened is that Mi’s greater singing ability has created new pathways in her mind, pathways that give her new powers of imagination that she did not have before.”

“Yes!” Re9 burst out. “That makes perfect sense!”

“Not only that,” the loon continued excitedly, for nothing gave him greater pleasure than solving a philosophical puzzle, “Mi’s enhanced imaginative powers may have opened up new portals into and out of Notherland.”

There was silence while everyone pondered the impact of Gavi’s words.

“Out of?” Peggy said finally. “Into Notherland I can see – that could be why we were able to get here by a different way than last time. But out of’? Even if there was a way Mi could leave Notherland and go somewhere else, how could she? Notherland is the only world in which she exists.”

The loon shook his head.

“That may no longer be true. There must be a new realm, perhaps several, which Mi has become able to enter. A world or worlds created by Mi herself.”

“Created?” Peggy said, dumfounded. “How could Mi create a new world?”

“The same way you do,” Gavi replied. “By dreaming it into existence.”

§§

Night had come. They were all tired. Even the Nordlings had barely enough energy to make their way up the Great Skyway to take their appointed places in the RoryBory, where they would pass the night in a trancelike state, singing their notes.

Peggy’s head ached. It was too much to take in, too much to make sense of in too short a time. She wished she could make it all go away and flee to her normal, everyday life. Here she was, back where she’d found herself the year before, faced with the same choice: stay or go?

Was it really such an emergency that Mi was gone? she wondered. If the Nordling truly had developed these new abilities, maybe she could take care of herself just fine. Maybe she’d come back on her own. But Peggy knew these were all evasions and excuses. Even with her supposed new powers, Mi was still a small child – curious, impulsive, ready to throw herself into new experiences. It was Mi, Peggy reminded herself, who’d gone up into the crow’s nest on the Terror – after she’d been expressly forbidden to do so – and been snatched away by the Nobodaddy. The Nordling had almost brought about the annihilation of Notherland then, and her disappearance might have even worse consequences this time. Somehow, in the vast sea of possible universes, Mi would have to be found. Peggy knew she’d get drawn into helping look for her, no matter how much she might try to avoid it. No, she wouldn’t be going back home anytime soon.

And then there was the small problem of Jackpine. He’d sat off to one side, sullen and remote, throughout the whole discussion of Mi’s disappearance. He pretended to not be listening, but it seemed to Peggy that he was being deeply affected all the same. Perhaps, she thought, he was remembering what Mi had meant to him – the little one he had carried on his back when he was first freed from his tree-prison. She was the one who had bounced around, giggling, as they walked, and had given him the very name that had allowed him to feel human once again.

But when Peggy approached him he just glowered angrily, like before. This time she couldn’t avoid admitting to herself just how hurt she was by his rejection. But the only thing to do was to leave it alone for now. It was all too much for one night.

Molly lay down looking forlorn and sad. Peggy had the impulse to go to her, to reassure her that Mi’s disappearance wasn’t her fault, that she wasn’t a failure as a guardian. But she had the feeling that right now Molly was beyond comforting.

She watched Molly lying quietly, with her one good eye wide open since, being a doll, she didn’t actually sleep. Peggy could swear the doll’s body seemed less rigid than before, as if the intensity of her emotional outburst had somehow softened the material she was made of.

Gavi turned toward the lake, preparing to pass the night sleeping on the water. Peggy softly touched his wing.

“Gavi, what are we going to do?”

The loon shook his head.

“I do not know yet. I must figure it out and unfortunately,” his voice trailed off momentarily. “I am somewhat out of practice in that department. And so I suggest we all sleep on it.”

He mouthed the last phrase with satisfaction, as he always did when he managed to find an opportunity to use a figure of speech in exactly the right way.

“I’ll second that,” Peggy agreed.

She lay down on the soft juniper boughs she had gathered for a bed, pulled her jacket over her, and drifted off to sleep. The hum of the RoryBory pulsated in the night sky above her.

Chapter 3: The Flute Player

“WELL?”

At first there had been a long silence, as Peggy, Molly and Gavi sat down together the next day. Finally Peggy spoke up.

“How are we going to find Mi? Where do we begin looking?”

Gavi looked at her with mournful red eyes.

“I do not know.”

Peggy could see that Gavi was still berating himself for not being able to figure out what to do. The whole of Gavi’s life in Notherland had been devoted to understanding this world and the laws that governed its workings. Which was why Peggy had dubbed him the Philosopher-Loon when she was younger.

Now, looking at his and Molly’s drawn faces, Peggy saw that they were both weighed down with discouragement.

“Hey, you two, buck up,” she said. “It’s not like we haven’t come up against the impossible before. Remember how we managed to get Franklin’s ship through the Everlasting Ice? We can do this.”

But their expressions remained unchanged. Peggy realized she wasn’t being very convincing.

I sound like Molly, she thought. But without her conviction.

“Okay,” she said finally. “Let’s think. What kind of world would Mi bring into existence? And how can we find our way into it?”

She was surprised to hear another voice speak up.

“The Flute Player.”

She looked over. Jackpine, whom she hadn’t seen since last night, was standing some distance away. He walked slowly towards them, giving the impression he was joining the conversation with reluctance.

“The way in,” he said, “is through the Flute Player.”

“We’re thrilled you’ve decided to break your lofty silence and help out,” Peggy said drily. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You of all people should know exactly what I’m talking about,” he replied.

“Me? Why?”

“Because you are the Flute Player.”

“I play the flute. So what? How does that help us find Mi?” Peggy said testily.

“Remember when you were looking at the petroglyphs? Right before we got dragged here?”

She nodded.

“You noticed one that looked like a person playing a flute and I said I’d tell you about it later?” he continued. “The images on that rock are all typical of other paintings and carvings made by my ancestors – except for that one. There’s nothing resembling a flute player on any other sacred rocks in the north. According to the old stories, the Flute Player wasn’t drawn by the ancestors. It came from somewhere else.”

“What do you mean?” Gavi asked, intrigued. “Where did this creature come from?”

Jackpine shrugged. “Another tribe, another continent, maybe from another world altogether. The stories all say different things. But there’s one detail they do agree on.”

“What’s that?”

“The Flute Player sang our whole world into existence.”

Suddenly Molly jumped up.

“The bone flute!” she cried. “Mi was always playing it. That could have had something to do with her ability to create other worlds.”

“The bone flute,” Peggy echoed her. “I gave it back to Mi after we left the Hole at the Pole and then forgot all about it.”

“Mi may have somehow discovered that she could sing new worlds into existence, just like the Flute Player,” Gavi said with mounting excitement. “Does it not make sense that playing those same notes on a flute might allow us to follow her trail?”

“You’re right, Gavi,” Molly cried. “Let’s try it!”

“Fine,” Peggy agreed. “Only one problem: no flute.”

They were momentarily deflated. Then Jackpine spoke up again.

“That shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll make one.”

They all looked at him curiously.

“How can we do that?” Gavi finally asked.

“The same way the ancestors did – carve one. All we have to do is find a nice, hollowed-out bone.”

Re9, who had been listening to their discussion, called out excitedly.

“I know where to get one!”

He went over to a cluster of Nordlings nearby. After a hurried conversation, he rushed back holding up a small animal bone.

“The other Nordlings were always asking to play the bone flute, but Mi would never let them. So they all began collecting bones and pretending they had their own flutes.”

Re9 handed the bone to Jackpine, who reached into his pocket and took a small carving knife.

“All it needs is some nice clean gouges for the holes.”

“Yes!” Molly shouted. “Then Peggy can play it and we’ll go look for Mi!”

“You can go look for her,” Jackpine corrected her. “But before that you better figure out how to get me back to where I came from. Because as soon as I’m done carving this thing, I’m out of here.”

“You mean you’re not going along?” Molly said plaintively. “I thought we’d all go together, like before. After we freed you from the tree? You remember, don’t you?”

Jackpine shrugged and turned away. Peggy had the distinct feeling that he did remember, try as he might not to let on. After a moment he looked at Molly again.

“I’ll do what I can to help you find your little friend. But I can’t stay here. I’ve got to go back to my own people. If I stay away too long I’m afraid I’ll just lose my way again.”

His voice trailed off. He walked a short distance away, sat down on a rock and began patiently gouging a hole in a section of the bone.

Things were starting to become clearer to Peggy. Jackpine wasn’t being difficult for no reason. He really didn’t want to be here in someone else’s imaginary world. He felt his place was back in his own world, living on the reserve, taking people to the petroglyph site.

She couldn’t help but wonder, too, how much his desire to go back might have to do with that girl in the band office. She felt a twinge of jealousy recalling how the two of them had look at one another.

Whatever was going on between the girl and Jackpine had nothing to do with her, Peggy decided. He had his own life, she had hers. The feelings that had been growing between them the last time were gone. It was like they were strangers again.

Anyway, he was going back. There was no doubt about that.

§§

While Jackpine worked on carving the bone flute, Peggy asked Gavi about his experiences in the world of flesh-and-blood loons.

“I thought you would never ask!” he responded brightly. “I have had many new experiences and I have been – what is the human expression? – itching to tell about them. Which, of course, I have not been able to do in my other life, since loons in the physical world do not have the power of speech or, for that matter, of thought.”

“Gavi, please get to the point!” Molly pleaded. The bickering between the doll and the loon was all too familiar to Peggy. She turned to Molly with a shrug. They both knew they might as well settle in for a long, detailed narrative, of a kind that only Gavi the Philosopher-Loon was capable of.

“I can still vividly recall my first physical sensations,” he began. “The cold slickness of the icy pond in Green Echo Park, where I first landed after passing through the portal at Painted Rock. Then the touch of human flesh! Yours, dear Peggy, and Jackpine’s as you both propelled me across the ice to enable me to take flight for the first time. And oh, the exhilaration of that flight! I had flown numerous times in Notherland, but the sensation of sheer abandonment, the untrammelled joy of physical flight!”

Gavi’s voice rose to a pitch, then stopped abruptly.

“I simply have no words to describe the feeling,” he finally said.

“That’s a first,” Molly muttered under her breath, but Gavi, completely caught up in his recollections, took no notice.

“Nor can I adequately convey the thrill of making full-bodied loon calls. I discovered the true nature of singing, of sound itself. It is not simply to mark territory or to convey warnings of danger to others of my kind, though that is very important. No, the fundamental purpose of singing is to announce: Here I am. I exist. And now, after what Jackpine has told us about the Flute Player, I have an even deeper understanding of this simple truth which underlies Notherland and indeed all universes: We all sing ourselves into existence. Is this not a momentous thought to contemplate?”

Gavi’s red eyes widened as the words tumbled out of him in an excited rush.

“It sure is, Gavi,” Peggy was quick to agree, hoping to nudge him back to talking about specifics. “Now tell us more about your life in my world. What happened that day when you flew off from Green Echo Pond?”

“Not all my experiences were exhilarating, of course,” he replied. “At first I was overwhelmed by each new sensation. The first time I dove into deep water, for instance, was terrifying. I was enveloped in complete darkness; I could see nothing. Gradually my eyes adjusted and I was able to see what I needed to see and do the things I had to do.”

Gavi fell uncharacteristically silent for a few moments. Peggy saw a look in his eyes she’d never seen before.

“What kind of things, Gavi?” she asked. “You mean, like catching fish?”

He nodded wordlessly and looked away. Peggy realized that what she was seeing in his eyes were feelings of shame and embarrassment. Gavi, like any other living creature, had to eat in order to survive in the physical world. For a loon, that meant killing and consuming fish – other living creatures – a fact that was profoundly disturbing to someone of Gavi’s sensitive nature.

“I discovered that life in the physical world could be very harsh, even brutal at times,” he said, as if picking up Peggy’s thoughts. “But over time I came to understand that one cannot deny one’s true nature. I, too, was a part of this world and I had to accept things the way they were.

“There were other difficulties, too,” he went on. “The other loons I encountered were wary of me. They could sense, of course, that there was something different about me, that despite my appearance and my ability to sing the same calls I was not quite the same as they were. It was very lonely at times. I feared that I had made a terrible mistake, that I had crossed over into an alien world in which I had no place. But over time, as I stopped speaking and even thinking altogether, I became more like them – a creature of flesh and instinct and sensation. My former life became a distant memory. I could barely recall Notherland and the people in it. Until I began to have dreams that brought it all back, dreams in which you, Molly, seemed to be calling me. But at first I was not sure I wanted to come back. I felt torn between my old life and my new life, old friends and new friends. And one friend in particular.”

“Oh? Who’s that?” Peggy asked.

“Yeah, tell us about him,” Molly piped up.

Gavi said nothing, and for a moment it almost looked to Peggy as though the red of his eyes was reflecting onto the glossy black of his face, giving it a flushed quality. A thought occurred to her.

“Or should we say: ‘tell us about her’?”

Peggy realized that the flush on Gavi’s face was no reflection. He was blushing.

“Gavi!” she burst out. “Have you found a mate?”

“I have indeed met another loon whom I would like to be my mate, whom I hope will one day become my mate.”

Both Peggy and Molly hung on his words.

“But . . .?”

“My attempts at mating rituals are so pathetically clumsy, I fear she will never want to have anything to do with me!” he cried.

They insisted he tell them everything – who she was, how they met.

“I had not entertained any hopes or aspirations of finding a mate because, for a long time, as I told you, other loons kept their distance from me. But as I made my way north in the spring, flying over the vast boreal landscape, I found myself curiously drawn to a rather large lake below. I descended for a landing and was quite astonished to find myself facing a smooth rock carved with images much like those on our beloved Painted Rock here in Notherland.”

“That’s where you saw me and Jackpine – where we fell in the water.” Peggy broke in.

“Yes, indeed,” Gavi replied. “No doubt it was those rock carvings that somehow drew us all to the spot. But I did not realize there was something else drawing me to that lake. It was the home territory of my beloved Nor.”

“Nor?”

“That is the name I gave her, because she stirred feelings I had not experienced since leaving Notherland – a longing to bond, to take care of someone besides myself, the way Molly and I cared for our beloved Nordlings. Of course, being a physical loon, she knows nothing of human speech and is not even aware that she has a name. But that does not matter. In my eyes, “ his voice trailed off dreamily, “she is perfect.”

“Gavi, you’re in love!” Peggy exclaimed. “You’ve found your mate!”

“Ah! If only that were true!” he sighed.

“What’s the problem?”

“The problem is my rival!”

“Rival? What rival?” Peggy asked.

“Another loon who is much more experienced at courtship than I could ever be.”

Uh-oh, Peggy thought. This doesn’t sound good.

They were interrupted by a shout from Jackpine.

“Here it is!”

§§

Jackpine held up the freshly-carved bone flute for them to see. Peggy was relieved that the dour expression he’d been wearing since they arrived in Notherland was gone, for the time being, at least.

“Looks good, eh?” he said, showing it to her with a grin.

“Very nice,” Peggy nodded. “The distance between the holes looks about right. But the true test is in the playing.”

As she lifted the bone to her lips Jackpine clapped his hand over hers.

“No!”

“Why not? I want to hear how it sounds.”

He shook his head emphatically.

“You have no idea what’ll happen when you blow into that thing. And I have no intention of ending up in some other crazy universe I didn’t choose to go to.”

Peggy shrugged and handed it back to him. She had to admit he had a point – not that she was about to let him know she thought so. But it was true. They could all be catapulted to some other realm before they’d worked out a plan.

Molly spoke up.

“I don’t know where that flute’s going to take us. But wherever it is, I’m going there to look for Mi.”

“As am I,” Gavi echoed.

They both looked at Peggy expectantly. It dawned on her that up until this moment, being back in Notherland had been an enjoyable lark. Now she had to make a decision: was she really going to join her two friends and head off on a journey into the unknown, searching for a spirit–creature who could be anywhere? Or was she going back to normal life, to the world on the other side of Painted Rock, as Jackpine was clearly determined to do?

There really seemed to be no choice. She had to stay. She was the Creator, after all. She couldn’t just shirk off her responsibility for this world and its creatures. And yet something was holding her back – feelings that she was reluctant to admit to herself.

Why does he have to be so stubborn? Why is he so eager to go back? Is it that girl???

After all this time she’d found him again, and now she was about to let him slip away one more time. Probably, like Gavi’s Nor, into the arms of a rival!!

This is pathetic, she chided herself. Am I going to let my friends down on account of him?

“I’m going, too,” she finally announced.

“Ya-hoo!” Molly cheered.

“It will be like – what is the phrase? – old times!” Gavi added jubilantly.

“What about the Nordlings?” Peggy asked.

“They’ll be all right with the more grown-up ones like Re9 in charge,” Molly replied. “I’ve been training them to be more on their own, towards the day when . . .”

“When what?”

The doll shook her head. “Nothing in particular,” she said. “I just think it’s good for them to learn to be more independent. I’m their guardian, but I can’t look after them every second.”

“Indeed,” Gavi nodded in agreement. “It stands to reason that Notherland is perfectly safe, now that the evil Nobodaddy is no more. And self-sufficiency is always a good thing, even for spirit-creatures.”

Listening to him, Peggy had a thought.

“What about you and your new friend, Gavi?” she asked. “Aren’t you worried that if you go with us, you might lose her to that rival you mentioned?”

“I would be lying if I said I was not,” Gavi replied. “But finding Mi is more important. And if your previous sojourn is any guide, our lives back in the physical world are in suspension, so to speak. When we return, it should be as if hardly any time at all has passed. So perhaps I need not worry about anything happening in my absence.”

“I guess that settles it,” Peggy said, turning toward Jackpine, who wordlessly handed her the bone flute. “I suppose you want us to wait until you’ve gone back through Painted Rock.”

“Not necessarily,” he replied. “I’m curious to see what happens when you blow into that thing.”

“But I thought you were worried about . . .”

“I’ll plug my ears and watch from a distance,” he interrupted. “Don’t worry, I’ll be okay. Now go find that little sprite and bring her back where she belongs.”

He spoke quietly, and his expression softened at the mention of Mi. As he turned and started to walk away from them, Peggy felt an ache, a deep melancholy. They were leaving. He was going back to his other life. There was nothing to be done. She might never lay eyes on him again.

Molly was speaking to Re9.

“Now remember all the things I’ve taught you.”

“I will,” the Nordling replied in a sprightly tone. It was clear he was proud and excited to be charged with such a grown-up responsibility.

“Are we ready?” Peggy asked. She looked over at Jackpine, who was watching them from a distance. As she raised the flute to her lips, he clapped his hands tightly over his ears.

She covered both holes with her fingertips and blew into the bone.

Do . . .

She uncovered one of the holes and blew again.

Re . . .

Taking a deep breath, she uncovered the other hole and blew a long, sustained note.

Mi . . .

Nothing happened.

She looked at Gavi.

“Try again,” the loon said calmly.

She repeated the sequence: Do, Re, Mi . . .

Still nothing.

§§

Night was coming on. The Nordlings stood in a cluster at the base of the Great Skyway. One by one they approached Molly for a goodnight hug before they made their ascent up into the RoryBory for the night.

Molly was doing her best to be her usual upbeat self, but it was difficult. They were all feeling the strain and frustration of trying the bone flute again and again, the discouragement when they finally abandoned the attempt altogether. Now what were they going to do? Where could they even begin to figure out a way to find Mi?

“I must think. I must think,” Gavi kept saying over and over. But Peggy could see that repeating the words like a mantra was having the opposite effect, making him more anxious, less able to concentrate. Even Jackpine, for all his efforts to keep his distance, looked glum and downhearted.

As usual, Peggy thought, I’m the one who has to hold it all together. But she was fighting to keep her own feelings of despair at bay. Jackpine’s story of the Flute Player had seemed to hold out so much promise, and even now she couldn’t let go of the feeling that the bone flute was the key to finding Mi, if only she could figure out how to use it properly.

Her attention was drawn to the Great Skyway. Some kind of commotion was going on.  Molly was glaring at two of the smallest Nordlings, Ti and So2, who stood before her with their eyes downcast.

“Why didn’t you tell me all this sooner?” Molly said as the two little ones shuffled their feet wordlessly. Finally So2 spoke up.

“Because we were afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid you would be mad.”

“Well, you’re right! I am mad!” Molly shouted in frustration. “Way madder than I would’ve been if you’d told me sooner!”

“Molly, what’s up?” Peggy asked as she and Gavi approached them.

“According to these two, Mi went up in the RoryBory one night and boasted that she was going somewhere they couldn’t go. And next morning she was gone. We’ve been wasting our time with the bone flute.”

“Maybe not,” Peggy said. “Maybe we’ve just been barking up the wrong tree.”

“What a delightful metaphor,” Gavi exclaimed. “I must find a use for it sometime.”

“What are you getting at, Peggy?” Molly asked.

“Learning all those new notes must have helped Mi expand her imagination. But maybe it took something more for her to actually travel to this other world. I mean, how did I first start coming to Notherland? In my daydreams. Mi just took it one step further. She used the bone flute to help her sing a new world into existence, then dreamed herself right into it.”

“Excellent!” Gavi cried. “I should have thought of it myself.”

“So what do we do?” Molly asked. “Just lie down and go to sleep?”

“Sometimes creatures are able to influence their dreams,” Gavi pointed out. “By forming an intention before they go to sleep. That is what we must do. We must ask for dreams – no, a single dream, shared among us – that will take us to this Shining World Mi was so enthralled by.”

“But what about me?” Molly was near tears of frustration. “You know I don’t sleep. I’m a doll! I’ll get left behind!”

“I do not believe that will happen,” Gavi said calmly. “As Peggy has shown us, dreaming is just another form of imagining, which is an ability you certainly have. If Mi could dream her way to another universe,” he said with finality, “I am convinced you can, too.”

§§

Peggy looked up at the RoryBory, tonight pulsating with a pale green aura, listening to the Nordlings’ haunting song. She, Molly and Gavi were lying in a star-formation, with their heads together, their bodies radiating out in a circle. They’d decided this was the best way to encourage a common dream. Some distance away, Jackpine lay by himself.

As she drifted off to sleep, Peggy wondered why Jackpine was still so determined to see them on their way. After all, he was heading back to his own world. It didn’t matter to him what happened to them.

Did it?

§§

After a while he stopped the car, opened the door and motioned for her to get out. He asked her if she wanted to go to a beautiful place, a place where there were other children.

Mi hesitated.

“Is there music in this place?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Very beautiful music. You’ll like it.”

He took her firmly by the hand and they started walking. Soon they arrived at the top of a dark street dotted with pockets of light and shadow.

The Notherland Journeys, Episode 4

Jun 13, 2016 | Notherland | 0 comments

Chapter 10:  The Hole at the Pole

SIR JOHN STOOD ON THE DECK of the Terror, looking at the great gaping Hole as it spewed what looked like smoke into the air.

“There it is,” he said quietly, “the destination that I have spent a lifetime striving to reach. I thought I would feel triumphant when this moment finally arrived. But without my Jane at my side, I …”

The other three looked at one another in silent sympathy. Peggy, weighed down by the crushing disappointment of finding the rowboat but no sign of Jackpine, understood how the captain was feeling. Finally, she spoke up.

“Someone has to be first to set foot at the Pole. Would you like to do the honors, Sir John?”

Gavi surveyed the expanse of smooth coal-black terrain that surrounded the rim, where the ship had run aground.

“I cannot tell what the surface is made of,” he said dubiously. “Perhaps someone smaller than Sir John should test it out first.”

“Me!” Molly piped up. “I’m the lightest.”

“That’s exactly why you shouldn’t go first,” Peggy said firmly. “Just because it holds you doesn’t mean it will hold us.”

“A brilliant piece of reasoning,” Gavi said. “I should have thought of it myself.”

Before anyone could say another word, Peggy hoisted herself over the side of the deck and down the rope. The others all sucked in their breath, fearful that it would break, that she would go crashing into the frigid waters of the Polar Sea or whatever else lay beneath the forbidding shelf.

There was an audible sigh of relief as she landed with a thud.

“It’s solid, all right.” She slammed one foot hard on the surface. “Solid as a rock. It’s ice.”

“Of course!” Gavi blurted out. “Ice so black that none of us recognized it as such. Black ice is the hardest, most unforgiving kind. It makes sense that we would find it here

at the Pole. But right next to open water? How can that be?”

“Another of the Pole’s mysterious reversals, no doubt;” offered Sir John. “Hopeless to try to explain such things.”

“But it does suggest an explanation for this mysterious vapor,” Gavi went on, as one by one they hoisted themselves onto the black ice. “That smoke we are seeing is not from fire but from ice. The Hole must consist, at least in part, of what is called ‘dry ice’ in your world,” he said, nodding in Peggy’s direction. “So there is no inferno in there. Just more cold. Dark, unutterable cold.”

Peggy strode purposefully across the ice towards the rim of the Hole, followed by the other three. As they approached it, great swells of vapor grew thicker and thicker around them, like a fog. At times they could barely see one another. But they groped their way to the very edge of the Hole and peered down into it.

Sir John spoke first.

“It looks like a bottomless pit.”

“Every hole has a bottom,” Gavi pointed out. “A bottomless pit is a physical impossibility, even in Notherland. Now, of course, there might be other universes where such a thing …”

“It’s just an expression, Gavi,” Peggy stopped him.

“Yes, of course. I knew that,” Gavi said sheepishly.

“But where is everybody?” Molly interrupted. “Where are all the Souls Jackpine talked about?”

And where is Jackpine? Peggy added silently to herself. Is he down there? How will we find him?

“I’ll bet he’s got them all stirred up!” Molly answered her own question. “I’ll bet right now they’re all way down there, crushing the Nobodaddy!”

”Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Peggy said, as she began to lift one leg over the rim. “Who’s going with me?”

“Me!” Molly declared firmly.

“And me,” Gavi added, with somewhat less conviction.

“This is my great adventure!” Molly cried. “I can’t wait!”

Peggy looked at the old captain. “What about you, Sir John?”

He shook his head.

“It appears I am the only member of this crew who is of truly sound mind, because I have no desire whatsoever to descend into that forbidding pit. My life’s goal has been to reach the Pole, and now I have achieved it.”

Peggy grinned at him. “That’s good, because someone ought to stay with the ship. If we do manage to get out of here with the Nordlings and Jackpine and all those other trapped Souls, you’d better have the Terror ready to sail out of here like a bat out of hell.”

“A most colorful, if slightly blasphemous, simile,” Sir John observed. “I assure you I will be thoroughly at the ready. When the time comes, the Terror will show that she can fly more swiftly than any bat.”

Molly looked up at Sir John with concern. “Are you sure you don’t mind being left alone?”

“My child,” he said, addressing her with that term of endearment for the first time, “being alone is a thing with which I am very familiar. Do not worry about me. When you return, I will be here to welcome you.”

Peggy looked at Molly and Gavi. “Well?”

Molly peered into the Hole.

“It’s pretty dark. But I’m not afraid!” she added quickly.

In the dim light Peggy was able to make out a narrow ledge along one craggy wall, which seemed to be a pathway down into the Hole. She took a deep breath.

“Let’s go.”

As the three of them prepared to scramble over the rim of the Hole and onto the upper reach of the ledge, they bade Sir John farewell. Gavi and Peggy shook the old man’s hand, and Molly flung herself onto Sir John’s chest. He wrapped his arms around her, and they embraced one another tightly for a moment. Watching them, Peggy suddenly recalled reading in Our Wondrous North that when he’d embarked on his last, fateful Arctic expedition, Lord Franklin had left behind not only his wife, but a daughter as well.

§§

Their descent, initially at least, was uneventful. The air was bitingly cold, but not unbearable. Once their eyes adjusted to the darkness of the Hole, they found they could see well enough to make their way – especially Gavi, whose red eyes were adapted for seeing through dark waters at night. Not that there was much to look at. As far as they could make out, the Hole was little more than a dark, craggy, funnel-shaped cavity that extended deep into the earth.

The three of them walked mostly in silence. After a while Peggy began to wonder if things were going a little too smoothly. Where was the Nobodaddy? Did he know they were there? Why was he letting them go on unimpeded?

Gavi’s voice broke in on her thoughts. “What was that?”

“What?”

“I thought I heard something,” Gavi replied.

“There!” Molly volunteered. “I hear it, too. It sounds like voices farther down. Do you think they’re Souls?”

“It seems likely.” Gavi turned to Peggy. “What do you think we should do?”

She shrugged. “Let’s go see. It’s about time we came across some signs of life down here.”

As they made their way farther down the ledge, the voices grew louder, shouting angrily, in barely coherent outbursts.

“– all your fault!”

“If you hadn’t been so stupid – !”

“I hate you!”

After a few moments, Peggy began to call out.

“Hello? Hello!”

She could barely hear herself over the noise. She tried again.

“Hello? Hello down there!”

A volley of shrieks echoed off the walls of the Hole.

“What’s that?”

“Did you hear something?”

“No, you idiot.”

“I heard it!”

“Oh, great. Another one!”

Peggy shouted, “Could you all shut up a second and listen?”

“We’ve come to help you!” Molly added.

“There’s more than one of them!” one of the voices shouted to the others.

Peggy began to yell over the voices, trying to explain who they were and why they had come to the Hole. But it was difficult. After every few words, a volley of shouts would go up – arguing, accusing, insulting.

“Just hear me out!” Peggy tried again. “I’m trying to tell you that we’ve come to rescue you. All of you.”

At that, a roar of bitter laughter rose up from the darkness of the cavern.

“Rescue? Ha! That’s a good one!”

“That’s what the last one said and look what happened!”

“What last one?” Peggy feared they might be referring to Jackpine. “Who are you talking about?”

“The one who came through earlier.”

“He was the stupidest of all!” said one bitingly. “He escaped the Hole once, and he came back.”

“Where is he?” Peggy demanded. “What happened to him?”

“Who knows?” shouted one.

“Who cares?” yelled another.

Listening to their harangues, Molly grew more and more angry. She began shouting at them at the top of her lungs.

“You’re all idiots! We come here to help, and all you can do is blame us, or one another. You’re either completely crazy or completely stupid!”

Gavi was becoming more and more disheartened by what he was hearing. He winced at the volley of shouts, as if they were slaps in the face. Such meaningless, self-destructive behavior shocked and distressed him. He turned to Peggy.

“What is the matter with them? Why are they acting this way? Do they not want to be rescued?”

Peggy shook her head.

“Maybe not. It must be like Jackpine said – they’ve gotten so used to being miserable they can’t imagine anything else.”

“But that makes no sense!” Gavi cried. “Heaping scorn on people when they try to help you makes no sense at all. And listen to them – they are cruel to one another when they should be kind, and help one another, and make the best of their situation. They only make it worse. I do ‘not understand this behavior at all!”

Peggy was troubled by Gavi’s extreme distress. She’d never seen him in a state like this. She decided they’d better move on before these raging Souls threw him into an even darker mood.

“Let’s go.”

“But we must try to talk some sense into them!” Gavi said with an air of desperation, as if his own mental well-being depended on getting them to listen to reason.

“Gavi, there’s nothing we can do for them. You can see for yourself. They just won’t listen.”

“Yeah!” Molly agreed. “They’re not interested. So long, idiots!”

The three of them continued down the path, the angry shouts growing fainter and fainter in their ears. When they were finally out of earshot, Peggy breathed a sigh of relief. Hopefully, now, Gavi would calm down and regain his sense of perspective.

Peggy turned to look at him. There was an odd look in the loon’s eyes, and his beak appeared to be stuck in a half-open position. He seemed to be trying to speak, but nothing was coming out.

“Gavi? What’s wrong?”

He looked at her with a panicked expression. She could see that he was indeed having difficulty speaking, and the prospect was terrifying him.

He continued to strain, trying to form some words and get them out. Then suddenly a great rush of sounds came out of his beak. At first, it sounded like nothing but gibberish.

Little by little, Peggy was able recognize words in the babble.

“… no, no … terrible … makes no sense … cannot …”

“You can’t what, Gavi?”

“Cannot … go … on!”

Peggy was stunned.

“What are you saying?”

“No sense … If I go on … lose my mind!”

He looked to be in the grip of a nameless terror, and it was clear to Peggy that he was in no condition to continue their journey.

“It’s all right, Gavi. You don’t have to go any farther.”

Molly looked at her, aghast, but before the doll had a chance to object, Gavi collapsed into loud wailing.

“Soooorrryyy! Let you doooowwnn!”

Molly tugged at Peggy, trying to make herself heard over Gavi’s cries.

“We can’t just leave him here, Peggy! What’ll we do?”

For an instant, Peggy felt like she was going to explode. She was the one they turned to every time! She was the one who supposedly had all the answers. She didn’t know how long she could stand it!

But she knew she couldn’t afford to give in to her frustration. She had to somehow get Gavi calmed down. They had to keep going. What should she do?

A thought came to her. She went over and softly touched his feathers.

“Gavi? You know Molly and I have to go on. Do you think you can make it back to where the Mad Souls are?”

“Are you crazy?” Molly exclaimed. “He can’t go back there!”

“He’ll be worse off staying here, all alone,” Peggy replied. “He’d lose his mind for sure. Gavi?” She moved closer to him. “I think you should go back and try to talk to the Mads. I think they might listen to you.”

Gavi looked at her long and hard.

“But you said yourself that they are not interested in anything we have to say.”

Peggy didn’t believe for a minute that the Mads would change their behavior. But she figured it would be better for Gavi to have a task, something to focus his mental energies on.

“I was wrong. I think they would be interested, if somebody got to know them and took the time to explain things to them. You’re just the person to do it, Gavi. If anybody can talk sense into those Mads, it’s you.”

The loon’s red eyes began to grow a bit brighter.

“Yes, I think I see what you are getting at. It makes sense.”

Peggy and Molly both nodded vigorously.

§§

Gavi insisted that he could find his way on his own, that his red eyes could see well enough in the dark. But the other two wouldn’t hear of it, and they backtracked with him up the path. When they got within earshot of the Mads, Gavi indicated that he wanted to go the rest of the way by himself.

“I believe that I can startle them into attention with my tremolo call. And I think they will be more open to my presence if they sense I am alone.”

Peggy immediately agreed. She recalled how Molly had only egged them on with her taunts, and she saw that Gavi didn’t want to risk setting them off again.

For a moment, Molly stood stubbornly, unwilling to part from Gavi.

“Go on,” he said to her. “Go with Peggy. You wanted to live out your adventure to the very end, remember? We will see one another soon.”

It was wrenching for Molly to say goodbye to the loon, and watching his black-and-white body lumber up the path and disappear into the darkness was almost unbearably painful. She and Peggy resumed their descent in silence.

“Do you think he’s all right?” Molly asked anxiously after a short time.

“He’s okay, Molly. You know Gavi. Once he gets going, they won’t be able to shut him up. He can debate his way out of anything.”

Though Peggy felt keenly the loss of Gavi’s company, she realized that, with his sensitive nature, he was better off staying behind. Whatever awaited them down below would probably upset him even more than the Mads had. But Molly was different. Her faith never flagged. Peggy knew she could count on the doll.

Molly spoke up again. “Did you hear something?”

“No,” Peggy replied. “What was it?”

“I’m not sure …”

They both listened as a faint crescendo, like some drawn-out wail, rose up from the great cavern.

“Strange,” said Peggy. “If I didn’t know better I’d say it sounded like Gavi.”

“But Gavi’s back with the Mads.”

They moved farther down the path, then stopped in their tracks as a new volley of wails and anguished cries began to rise up, reverberating from deeper in the Hole.

“That’s for sure not Gavi,” Molly said with some relief.

As they descended farther it became clear that they were approaching another colony of Souls. Peggy felt her hopes rise again, wondering, Is Jackpine with them?

These voices contained no hint of anger or accusation. Instead, they filled the atmosphere of the Hole with unrelenting echoes of anguish, pain and sorrow.

“They’re sure not Mads,” the doll’s voice broke in. “Sads is more like it.”

They moved closer to the voices, and as she had with the Mads, Peggy called out to explain who they were and why they had come. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, a mournful cry rose up.

“Not another one!”

This time, Peggy knew who they were talking about.

“Who? What happened to him?”

More cries.

“He left to find the Nobodaddy.”

“But it was no use!”

“He got our hopes up for nothing.”

“Now things are worse than ever!”

“We’re doomed to languish here.”

“No love, no hope, no love, no hope.”

Peggy had never heard such utter despair. She looked at Molly, who was now trying to call out over the Sad Souls’ din.

“Don’t give up hope! If you just give up you won’t be able to get yourselves out of here when the time comes!”

“Go back where you came from!”

“While you still can.”

“You can do nothing for us.”

“No one can.”

Their cries managed to completely drown her out.

Peggy put her hand on Molly’s stiff shouder. She could feel the doll fighting back angry tears.

“What’s the matter with them?” Molly cried out. “Can’t they see that giving up is the worst thing they can do? I never give up hope. I never stop trying.”

Peggy saw that the Sads’ despair was having a powerful effect on Molly. The Mads had brought out her natural feistiness: they had dished out abuse, and she’d dished it back. But the unrelenting anguish of the Sads was something Molly had never witnessed before. Such extreme suffering frightened her. She shut her eyes tightly and covered her ears, trying to block out their cries. She looked so upset that Peggy figured they had better get out of earshot of the Sads quickly, before Molly broke down completely.

With difficulty, she pulled the doll along the path. Molly steadfastly held her hands over her ears. When they had gone far enough that Peggy could barely hear the Sads, they stopped, and she gently uncovered Molly’s ears.

“There. Isn’t that better?”

She was shocked when the doll shook her head. Molly’s eyes brimmed with tears.

“I can still hear them!”

“You couldn’t, Molly. They’re way behind us.”

“You don’t understand. That’s not it.”

“What?”

“I can’t get the sound out of my head. It’s like they’re crying inside me!”

“Maybe it’s an echo,” Peggy offered anxiously. “Give it time to die down.”

The doll shook her head more vigorously.

“It’s not an echo. I told you, it’s inside me.”

“Then the best thing is to put more distance between them and us,” Peggy said, and she started walking again. But Molly pulled on her arm.

Peggy looked quizzically at her.

“What is it?”

“I can’t,” Molly said.

“You can’t what?”

“I can’t go any farther,” responded the doll, tearfully.

“But Molly, we have to keep going.”

“You go on without me,” she said solemnly. “I’ll go back to the Sads.”

“What?” Peggy burst out. “Are you crazy?”

“It’s just like you said to Gavi. I’ll talk to them. If they get to know me and hear me out, maybe I can help them find some hope again.”

“But, Molly …”

“I have to,” she said insistently. “It’s the only way I can think of to stop this awful crying in my head! Because if I don’t do something soon, I’m afraid I’m going to become … just like them!”

Peggy was devastated. She couldn’t imagine having to go on alone. She counted on Molly to have courage enough for both of them. It felt to Peggy as though half of her very self was being ripped away.

But she could see there was no arguing with Molly about this. The doll had seized on this idea to calm her inner turmoil, and her mind was made up.

“Okay, if that’s what you have to do,” she finally said.

“Will you be all right?” Molly asked.

“Sure.” Peggy affected a breezy tone. As horrible as she felt, she was determined not to let on to Molly. “Don’t worry about me. Go on. I’ll be fine.”

Molly threw her arms around Peggy’s neck and hugged her tightly, something she hadn’t done since Peggy was little. Then she pulled away quickly and disappeared into the darkness on the path.

§§

Peggy found herself singing some of the sea shanties Sir John had taught them back on the Terror. It helped take her mind off the biting cold as she made her way down the spiralling path. She told herself it was easier having only herself to worry about. But she kept finding herself turning to make a comment to Molly or Gavi, momentarily forgetting they were gone.

The sense of crushing aloneness grew more intense as she descended deeper into the cavern. She felt tears burning in her throat as the images of Mi, Gavi, Molly and Jackpine floated through her mind, and then, more dimly, of her mother, her brothers, her room at home – scenes from her other life, which now felt unbearably distant.

How long had she been walking? How far had she gone? She had no idea. She was only aware that the spiral path seemed to be growing smaller, and that the walls of the great Hole felt closer together. But where did it end? How far was the bottom of the funnel?

She became aware of a feeling of overwhelming dread, which seemed oddly familiar, as though it had been lurking inside her all along, underneath her other emotions.

Then she saw them.

It had been so long since she’d been able to see anything clearly in this godforsaken Hole – other than jagged walls and the narrow path – that she didn’t trust what she was seeing. But it certainly did look like a pair of glowing eyes peering at her out of the pitch-blackness.

They were eyes, but they weren’t looking at her. They didn’t even seem to see her, or anything else. They were blank, hollow-looking.

She called out. “Who’s there?”

No response. Not so much as a flicker of awareness of her presence.

She tried calling out again, introducing herself and explaining what she was doing there. Still no sound. She realized to her astonishment that there were many other pairs of eyes scattered all through this zone of the Hole. But all, without exception, exhibited the same blank stare. As she was able to make out more of the faces, she could see that all their mouths were frozen in an open position, but no sound came out.

She tried calling out again, but her voice caught in her throat.

These poor Souls were beyond ranting or crying out in pain. It was as though they were frozen in a state of terror. Now Peggy was gripped by a nameless dread for her own soul. She felt a desperate longing to flee the Hole, to go back to her old life, to wipe Notherland and everything that had happened there from her memory.

It was all over. Their grand effort to save Notherland had come to nothing. Now she, Gavi and Molly were all in the Hole at the Pole. The Nobodaddy had them exactly where he wanted them. They’d walked right into his trap, just like Jackpine before them.

She fell on the path and cried out.

“Let me out of here! I want to go back to my life! I want to go home!”

Exhausted, she collapsed against the walls of the cavern. They felt oddly yielding, as if they were made not of ice but of soft earth. She noticed that the terrain underneath her had the same earthy, yielding quality.

Then something strange happened. Deep in the Hole at the Pole, in the completely soundless zone of the Frozen Souls, she heard a voice, an ordinary-sounding human voice.

Peggy opened her eyes. She wasn’t in the Hole anymore. She wasn’t even in Notherland. She was sitting on a small grassy hill surrounded by trees. The sun was shining on a nearby pond, and a short distance away from her there were people walking, talking, feeding the ducks …

She was standing in the middle of Green Echo Park.

Chapter 11:  Reluctant Hero

AT FIRST SHE THOUGHT she must be hallucinating. She was sure any second now the park, and everything in it, was going to disappear. But the trees stayed firmly rooted to the ground and the gentle breeze made ripples on the surface of the pond.

Is it possible? Have I come back? Just like that?

She was overcome with joy. But that quickly turned to unease. Something was not quite right …

It’s … warm!

She was in Green Echo Park all right. But there was water on the pond, not ice. The trees were in full leafy bloom. It had been a winter day when she’d left, and now it was summer. What was happening? Could she have been gone that long?

What is going on here?

She tried to calm her growing sense of anxiety. Everything would get back to normal soon, she told herself. She just had to find out what day it was, what time of year, to somehow place herself in reality, this reality.

Don’t freak out. Don’t attract attention. Just act normal.

She noticed a man standing nearby. She decided to ask him the time, then go and see if she could find a newspaper with the date. She went towards him, trying to act casual.

“Excuse me …”

He ignored her and threw a stick high in the air. His dog raced to fetch it, barking excitedly.

“Excuse me, I was wondering if you could tell me the time.”

The man still took no notice of her.

Weird, she thought. Maybe he was deaf. She tried placing herself right in his line of vision, but he seemed to look right through her, as if she weren’t there.

Finally the man turned and whistled to the dog, who bounded over to his side. They both brushed right past Peggy.

“Hello?” she said.

Now she was annoyed. He seemed to be pointedly ignoring her. She called after him even more insistently.

“Mister! Hello?”

She ran over to the dog and bent down, looking right into the animal’s eyes.

“Hey there! Hey!”

Nothing. Not a flicker. A shudder went through her. The dog does not see me.

Something was horribly wrong. This world in which she found herself now looked like her world, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Could it?

She thought of her flute. Was it still there on the mound? She felt desperate to find something the way she’d left it. If she found the flute still there, maybe things would start making sense again.

She raced towards the ring of trees. But as she approached it she stopped dead in her tracks.

A little girl was sitting on the ground. Peggy didn’t want to frighten her, so she held back, straining to see if there was anything that looked like her black flute case on the ground nearby. Then an eerie feeling crept over her again.

There was something familiar about this child.

What is she doing?

The girl was holding what looked like a doll in her lap. She appeared to be fidgeting with something on its head.

Oh my God ...

Now the little girl stood up, clutching the doll. Just as she was stepping out of the ring of trees, something fell to the ground. The girl didn’t notice it and ran off.

“Wait!” Peggy couldn’t help calling after her. “You dropped something!”

But the little girl didn’t seem to hear her. She kept on running, heading out of the park towards the houses on the other side of the street.

Peggy went over to the mound to see what the girl had dropped. Near the trunk of one of the trees was a tiny ball, like a marble. She picked it up and held it to the light.

It was a doll’s eye.

She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. It was like in a dream.

I’ve got to get out of this park. It’s making me crazy!

She raced towards the park gate. As she passed under the stone arch at the gate she thought she heard her name called.

“Peggy!”

She whirled around.

There was no one nearby. The park was nearly empty.

“Peggy!”

“Who said that? Who’s calling me?”

“You still don’t know?” the voice replied.

Peggy saw no one.

“Where are you?”

“Right in front of you.”

Just before her was the statue of the angel. She realized with a start that she recognized the angel’s face. Now she recognized the voice as well.

“Lady Jane? Is that you? You’ve got to help me! All these weird things are happening. What’s going on? Why can’t people see me?”

“They cannot see you,” the voice said quietly, “because you are not here.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are nowhere. You are suspended between universes.”

“That’s crazy!”

“But it is true.”

“Why?”

“You are not quite ready to leave Notherland, nor are you ready to return fully to your own world. You are here, but not here.”

“But none of that was real! There is no such place as Notherland. It’s just some place I made up when I was a kid! This is where I belong.”

“Little fool!” the voice now took on the hard-edged quality that Peggy remembered from earlier encounters with Lady Jane. “Have you learned nothing yet? Stop carrying on like a baby! Accept your responsibility for Notherland. What happens there affects countless other worlds and other lives, not just yours.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“When you created Notherland, you tapped into a well much deeper than you could possibly know. Gavi is right – there are many universes. Notherland is only a small part of a vast realm beyond time and space.”

“So? What does all that have to do with me?”

“You are the Creator.”

“I am so sick of hearing that!”

Now the voice softened a bit. “Yes, I know you are. But you can defeat the Nobodaddy, and you must.”

“That’s fine for you to say! Who are you, anyway? I can hear that your voice is like Lady Jane’s, but you’re not really her. You’re Sedna, the sea monster, aren’t you? You broke up the Everlasting Ice.”

“It is true that I assume many guises, but in all of them I am a Resolute Protector of Souls.”

Peggy felt her voice grow suddenly small.

“What did you call yourself?”

“I am an Eternal. I have always been and always will be. Did you not know that? Could you not feel my presence?”

Peggy shook her head.

“Well, here I am.”

“Fine, if you’re a protector, then why don’t you protect me? Why are you trying to make me go back to that place?”

“You still do not see, do you, what I have tried in so many different ways to show you. You have created a great and wonderful story! And the hero of that story is you.”

“What if I don’t want to be a hero!” Peggy cried.

“But you cannot give up now! You have just found the very thing you need to defeat the Nobodaddy.”

“I have?” said Peggy. “Where?”

“There, in your hand.”

She was still clutching the doll’s eye.

“What, this? It’s just an old doll’s eye. It was Molly’s. She lost it years ago. I just found it … over there.”

“Once a lost thing has been found,” the voice said, “it is transformed. It has new properties it did not have before. Molly’s eye has become an Aya, an all-seeing eye. Used properly, it can disable the Nobodaddy. Light that is swallowed up in his Hole cannot escape, but an Aya is different. It will retain its illuminating powers even in the darkness of the Hole. And the one thing the Nobodaddy cannot tolerate is being seen as he really is. If you shine the Aya on him, he will be overcome with terror. That should be enough to release the inward pull of the Hole long enough to let the Nordlings and the other Souls escape.”

“Oh, great. I go down into his Hole, where he’s all powerful, and this is all I’ve got to fight him with?”

Peggy’s sarcasm was lost on the Eternal, who continued speaking with utter seriousness.

“Yes. If you beam the Aya at him long enough, you might even be able to burn through his heart of ice, the true source of his power.”

“Look, you can give me all the good-luck charms you want. It’s not going to make any difference. I’ll never be able to stand up to him. I don’t have it in me.”

“No one is truly powerless in the face of evil. Not if we choose to fight it. The important thing is to be ruthless in the service of good.”

“Even if I could, what if I don’t want to? What if I just want to go back to the way things were before?”

“Then you are free to do so.”

“You mean that?”

“If that is your choice, you may return to your life as you knew it.”

“I’m sorry to let you down. But yes, I want to go home.”

Suddenly Peggy felt a sharp swish, like a paper fan whipping through air. Until now the statue had stood utterly immobile, but she watched in amazement as one of its wings, then the other, lifted up in a grand swooping movement. The two huge, magnificent wings slowly came back down and enveloped her within their folds.

For a moment she was too astonished to speak, or even move. Then she realized that the wings felt soft, and she began to lean forward, burrowing into them. The sensation of being cradled in the wings gave her a deep feeling of safety that seemed to reach right to her very core. She wished she could stay there forever, in that place she had so longed to be.

After a few moments, the wings began to move away from her, lifting upward and sweeping down again to the angel’s sides. Peggy looked up. The face was impassive again, a statue’s. She reached over and touched one of the wings. It was stone hard.

Suddenly she felt a rush of cold air. In front of her face she could see her own breath in swirls. There were shouts, laughter and a familiar swoosh.

She looked out on the pond. It was frozen solid.

Skaters!

Was she back? Was it possible? Was the nightmare really over?

Yes!

Peggy burst out laughing with joy. Some people lacing up their skates by the pond looked over at her.

They can hear me!

Now she laughed even louder. She didn’t care if they thought she was crazy. And she remembered something.

My flute!

Was it still there? She ran to the mound. There, lying on the ground at the base of one of the trees, was the black flute case. She picked it up and started waving it jubilantly in the air.

“Woo-hoo!”

She felt as though she’d been snatched from the jaws of hell! Her life had been given back to her. Now she could pick up where she’d left off. And for starters, she was going to head straight back to Around Again with the flute!

She headed out of the park. It was growing dark. Though it had been mild during the day, the temperature was rapidly dropping. Just outside the gate she passed someone huddled in a sleeping bag on top of a sidewalk grate.

“Spare change?”

Peggy looked down. It looked like the Native guy she’d seen earlier, the one the kids had called Scary Gary. In her state of heightened joy and relief, she felt a deep pity for him. She reached into her pocket to fish for some change to throw into the cap he’d set out on the sidewalk in front of him.

She felt something smooth and round among the coins. It was the doll’s eye. Strange. How could she still have it, if everything had been put back to the way it was before? Peggy willed herself not to think about it.

Everything’s fine now. Everything’s back to the way it was.

The young man looked up at her as she dropped a couple of quarters into the cap. His skin had turned an ashen grey in the cold, and his lips were swollen and bluish. He mumbled a faint thank-you. For a moment Peggy met his gaze.

It was the face of Jackpine.

He began to curl back into the sleeping bag. On one of his hands Peggy could see a whitish area, the beginning of frostbite.

He might not make it through the night.

She knelt down next to him. “Do you know me?”

He looked away listlessly, as if he hadn’t heard. She reached out and took his face in her hands.

“Do you know me?” she asked again, looking right into his eyes. “Gary? Jackpine?”

For a moment she thought she saw a flicker of recognition cross his face. Then the light seemed to go out of his eyes altogether. Nobody home. Peggy knew instantly where she’d seen eyes with that terrifying emptiness: deep in the Hole, in the zone of the Frozen Souls.

She began to shake him by the shoulders.

“Talk to me! Say something!”

When she let go, his body slumped back into a heap. A cold fury surged through her.

“Don’t give up!” she shouted. “Don’t you dare give up on me!”

She left him and raced back through the darkened park, to the ring of trees. She stepped onto the mound and began shrieking at the top of her lungs.

“I changed my mind! I’m going back! Do you hear me? I changed my mind! I want to go back!”

Nothing happened. What to do? On impulse, she put the flute case down on the ground, in the same spot she’d found it a few minutes earlier. Maybe if she left things exactly as they were before, she’d be able to go back. The flute had been sitting there waiting for her just now. She’d just have to trust that it would still be waiting when she got back next time.

With a jolt she felt the earth give way beneath her. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she was kneeling on the spiral ledge, in the very spot she had left a short time ago.

The air around her was bitingly cold. She knew she’d have to move fast and keep moving, just to stay alive.

She began to race down the path. After only a few steps it came to an abrupt halt. That was it. No more ledge. Now what was she supposed to do? There was no way to go any farther into the Hole.

No way, except …

Peggy took a deep breath, stepped off the ledge and plunged into the blackness below.

Chapter 12:  The Bottom Below

“WHERE IS SHE?”

“Why doesn’t she come?”

“What good can she do anyway?”

“Pay-gee is the Creator!” Mi fought to make herself heard over the chorus of grumbles. “She is the one who can defeat the Nobodaddy! And she will come! I know she will! But in the meantime we have to keep singing.”

“Why?”

“Why bother?”

“What difference does it make whether we sing or not?”

“Because our voices are all we have left!” Mi countered firmly. “Wouldn’t you rather fight back than just give up? Sing!” she commanded. “Sing and don’t stop!”

Slowly a chorus of notes began to echo through the dark. The Nordlings’ voices were weak and dispirited, but at least she’d managed to get them singing again.

Mi was exhausted. She was beginning to wonder how much longer she could keep them going. Even as she put on a brave face for the rest of the Nordlings, inside she felt embattled. She was on the edge of being swamped by dark feelings, the same overwhelming sense of despair that had washed over her as she was wrenched away from the mast of the Terror.

But she had to fight those feelings. She couldn’t let the others see that she was plagued by the same doubts and questions they were: Where was Pay-gee? Why hadn’t she come yet?

Would she ever come?

§§

Peggy felt herself falling, falling. There seemed to be no end to it. She was beginning to wonder if maybe there really was such a thing as a bottomless pit.

As she tumbled downward she began to hear faraway sounds, voices. She wondered if they were the cries of still more Souls trapped deep in the Hole. But as the voices grew louder and louder, she realized that they weren’t crying, they were singing.

She landed with a thud on a solid surface. She stood up quickly and was relieved to find she wasn’t hurt at all But the singing had ceased. What happened? Had she just imagined it?

A collective gasp seemed to come right out of the walls of the Hole.

“Light!” She heard voices whispering all around her.

“Light!”

“Light!”

Peggy looked down. The doll’s eye, the Aya, was emitting a beam of light in between the fingers of her clutched hand. The Eternal had been right about that much, at least.

Gradually, her eyes adjusted and she began to make out the tiny spirits. They were Nordlings. Some she could see, many more she could only hear, but they were numerous. They had been in complete darkness for so long they could only gaze at Peggy and the light of the Aya in utter amazement.

Excited cries went up.

“Mi was right!”

“The Creator!”

“We are saved!”

“Mi said she’d come!”

“Pay-gee!”

“Pay-gee, the Creator, has brought Light!”

Then they all gathered round her and started speaking at once.

“Hey, hey! One at a time, please!” Peggy asked.

“Let Re9 speak,” a voice called out. “He understands more than any of us.”

“Yes, Re9!” several others agreed as one of them stepped forward.

“We are overjoyed,” Re9 told Peggy. “When Mi came with the news that Pay-gee the Creator was on her way to rescue us, we were afraid to get our hopes up. But she promised us that you would come, and now here you are.”

“Mi! Where is she?”

A tiny voice spoke up eagerly. “Here I am.”

Mi bounded out of a cluster of Nordlings and rushed over to Peggy, throwing her arms around her.

“We were so worried about you!” cried Peggy, hugging her tightly.

“I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have gone up in the crow’s-nest by myself.” Mi pulled away and looked around. “Where are Gavi and Molly?” she asked anxiously. “Aren’t they with you?”

Peggy reassured her they were farther up in the Hole, that they were all right and she’d be seeing them soon.

Re9 broke in. “What is that, in your hand? How does it emit light down here?”

“No time to tell you now,” Peggy replied briskly. “But if I can just get close enough to shine it on the Nobodaddy, I think it might weaken him long enough to get you all out of here.”

“Yes!” said Re9 excitedly. “That would work. Now we just need to figure out a way to get it down into the Bottom Below.”

“Isn’t this the bottom?” Peggy asked.

“Oh, yes,” Re9 replied. “This is the bottom, but there is a Bottom Below the bottom.”

“Well, that makes about as much sense as anything else in this place,” Peggy said. She was starting to feel re-energized. She’d made it this far. She’d found Mi and the rest of the Nordlings. She was ready for anything the Nobodaddy could throw at her.

“How do I get down there?” she asked.

Re9 gasped. “You are not thinking of going down there yourself!”

“Sure. How else am I going to shine this thing on him?”

“But the Bottom Below is the source of the Hole’s inner pull, the seat of the Nobodaddy’s power. To go down there is to risk total obliteration. No one has ever dared enter the Bottom Below.”

“Well, guess it’s time somebody did,” Peggy replied. “Unless you’ve got some other bright idea for how I can get close to him.”

Re9 shook his head slowly. “I am afraid I do not …”

Suddenly they heard a kind of swishing noise, accompanied by waves of bitterly cold air.

“Shhh!” Re9 hissed. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We must be very quiet so he does not suspect anything. There is an opening …”

“Where?” Peggy whispered back. “How do I find it in the dark?”

“Just follow the trail of the cold.”

As he spoke, another blast of cold air began to circulate through the cavern. It seemed to go deep into Peggy’s bones.

“There is one thing that worries me …” Re9 said hesitantly.

“What’s that?”

“If you are successful and the pull of the Hole starts to lessen, the Hole itself may start to contract. The opening at the top might begin to seal off.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have had a long time to study the physics of the Hole,” replied Re9. “According to my theories …”

“That’s okay, I’ll take your word for it.” Peggy smiled to herself. No wonder Gavi called Re9 his star pupil. “I’ll just have to work really fast. As soon as you feel the pull start to let up, even a little bit, you’ve got to go scrambling up the Hole as fast as you can. All of you. And tell the others farther up!”

“We will,” he said firmly. “But what about you?”

“Wish me luck,” she said as she slipped off into the darkness.

§§

The thrill of finding the Nordlings had encouraged her for a time. But now, as she set off alone, Peggy felt a terror in the pit of her stomach.

She tried to make out where the opening was. She knew she didn’t dare use the Aya to find it. As she moved through the cavern it became clear to her what Re9 meant by the “trail of the cold.” She crept stealthily in what she hoped was the right direction, while the great swirls of frigid air around her grew more and more biting. Finally she reached down and her nearly numb fingers curled around the edge of some kind of crevice in the cavern floor.

She’d found the opening.

She had to move quickly. The crevice seemed so narrow she wondered how she could get through. She leaned forward a bit more and found herself being pulled downward as she tumbled through the opening head first.

The surface she landed on was oddly soft and yielding, with a rippled texture that seemed to quiver and vibrate, almost like living tissue. It made a strange, unsettling contrast with the stone-cold hardness of the rest of the Hole. The quality of the cold was different here, too – a clammy dampness that threatened to send her into uncontrollable shivers.

So this was the core of the Hole at the Pole, the source of its implacable inner pull. No creature, other than the Nobodaddy himself, had ever come down this far before. She held her breath a moment. Had he sensed her presence yet? she wondered. What would he do? How would he react?

Work fast, she reminded herself. She reached into her pocket and felt around for the Aya. Odd. She’d put it right there. She rummaged around, jamming her fingers into every corner.

Please God, make it be in here somewhere!

All she could find was the little bone flute.

The Aya was gone! It must have fallen out when she tumbled down into the Bottom Below.

What’s the matter with you? she berated herself. How could you be so stupid? Can’t you do anything right?

She began to look for it on the ground. She figured that she ought to be able to make out at least a tiny beam of its light. She prayed the Nobodaddy wouldn’t notice it first.

Desperately she scanned the darkness, until finally she thought she could make out a faint pinpoint of light a short distance away. Oddly, it wasn’t low down, but more near her own eye-level. Maybe the Aya had fallen onto some kind of ledge that she couldn’t make out in the darkness.

She moved towards the source of the light and reached out, and she felt a surge of relief when her hand made contact with something hard. But as she ran a finger along the surface of the object, she realized that it was larger, rougher than the Aya.

Suddenly a harsh, rasping laugh rose up in the cavern and echoed inside her head.

“HAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Peggy quickly pulled back her hand. It wasn’t the Aya she had touched, it was ice – the ice of the Nobodaddy’s frozen heart.

Now she’d given herself away. The advantage of surprise – the only one she’d had – was gone. The echoing laughter rose up again, accompanied by a cascade of harsh, spiteful words that sounded as though they were right inside her head.

“Some Creator! You’re pathetic! You’re nothing! You’re worse than nothing!”

She remembered what Jackpine had said about the Nobodaddy – that being in his presence was like being invaded, that you heard his voice as if it were your own. Was

this was what he was talking about? Were those her thoughts or the Nobodaddy’s?

“You’re nothing! Nothing! NOTHING!”

Now the words were all garbled together, a terrifying roar inside her. For a moment the only thing she could think of was getting away, out of range of the horrible voice. She wanted to race back and find the opening, to claw her way out of the Bottom Below. But she couldn’t give up. She’d fight the voice by sheer force of will. She had to find the Aya!

Don’t listen! she told herself.

She thought she could make out a tiny glint of light, just below where she had reached out. It could be his icy heart catching the reflection of the Aya, she reasoned. Maybe the Aya was hidden somewhere in the soft, rippled ground near where she was standing.

Her eyes scanned the darkness. It had to be just below her somewhere! But she still couldn’t see it. She decided she’d have to go down on her hands and knees and grope around until she found it.

She knelt down on the soft, yielding surface of the Bottom Below and stretched out her hands as far as she could reach. A swirl of cold air hovered over her for a moment, then began to envelop her like a cold, clammy mouth. The sensation was repulsive.

She forced herself to keep looking for the Aya. But she began to feel a profound exhaustion wash over her. She tried to shrug it off but it grew stronger. It felt as though her spirit, the very thing that gave her the will to keep going, was slipping away.

The Nobodaddy was sucking the life right out of her.

She felt herself growing weak and listless as her hands scrambled frantically. She was desperate to find the Aya before all energy was drained out of her.

Then the harsh laugh began again, along with the volley of words, now so loud they felt like a continual pounding inside her head.

“YOU ARE NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING …”

It was too much. Why had she come here? Why had she been foolish enough to believe that she could stand up to something so powerful?

“Give up. It’s useless to keep fighting. Just give up.”

Maybe this is what dying is like, she thought. Or something even worse than dying. Death-in-life. She collapsed to the ground.

Something momentarily jolted her – a sensation of something small and hard, right under her left hip. Was it the Aya? A pebble? A chunk of ice? She had no idea. By an enormous effort of will she shoved her hand underneath her hip and grasped the object. Then, using all the strength she had left, she flipped onto her back and held it out above her.

The Nobodaddy screeched in agony as a blast of light hit him full in the face.

”AAHHHHHHH!”

He sprang backwards, out of the range of the Aya’s beam, shrieking with rage.

She sought out his position in the darkness, shining the Aya in the direction of the roaring voice. But every time the light caught him, he managed to jump out of its range.

He began to recover his forces and laughed his cruel, taunting laugh again.

Peggy realized with a growing sense of panic that there was no way she could hold the light on him long enough to get a clear picture of what he looked like. All she could make out were snatches – an arm, a tuft of hair, a flash of eye. And if she couldn’t keep him in the Aya’s beam long enough, what good was it? Without a steady, strong source of light, how was she supposed to weaken him?

The laughter roared around her, ricocheting off the walls of the cavern. Then a terrible thought occurred to her.

How long would the light of the Aya last?

What was she supposed to do now? Things were at a standoff. The Eternal had promised her the Aya would do the job. Why hadn’t she warned Peggy about this?

She decided she had to do something else to try and keep him off balance. But what? The only other thing she had with her was the bone flute.

She remembered what Gavi had said when they had first set out on their journey: “He does not hear it as music at all, the way we do, but as a horrible, grating noise.”

She’d dismissed it as more of his empty theorizing. But what if he was right? Could this primitive little flute be a weapon she could use against the Nobodaddy?

At this point, anything was worth a try. She reached into her pocket and pulled it out. She lifted it to her mouth with one hand, still aiming the Aya with the other. She covered the holes with her fingers and blew, holding the note long and steady.

Do …

She uncovered one of the holes and blew again.

Re …

Then she lifted her finger from the other hole and blew.

Mi ...

As the notes resounded through the Bottom Below, a terrible screeching rose up. At first Peggy had no idea what it was. She kept on playing, worried that the flute’s notes might not cut through the volley of sounds.

Do … Re ... Mi …

The more she blew, the more intense the screeching became. Finally, she realized it was the Nobodaddy himself making the sound. He was wailing and groaning, like someone crying out in intolerable pain.

It was so terrible listening to his agonizing moans that for a moment she was tempted to stop playing. But she recalled Jackpine’s words: “You can’t hesitate … You have to go after him ... Maybe hatred is something you could use a bit more of ...”

She blew into the bone flute with renewed intensity. The screeching turned almost plaintive, like a child’s piercing wail. Was it working? Was the Nobodaddy growing weaker the longer she played? She didn’t dare stop, even for a second. How long could she keep it up? Would the Aya hold out? If only she had more light!

She thought she could hear another faint, faraway sound – not the bone flute, not the Nobodaddy’s screeching, but something else. Whatever it was, it was growing louder, and now she could tell it was coming from above her.

A sudden blast of light hit her in the face. She looked up to see the Nordlings flooding into the Bottom Below, one after another. Peggy shone the Aya on each one as it entered the cavern, which seemed to have the effect of intensifying their light, making each one even brighter.

Soon the Bottom Below was flooded with light. Peggy could scarcely believe what she was seeing. Then more words of Gavi’s popped into her head: “Light increases light. That is one of the basic laws of Notherland.”

She swore she’d never doubt him again!

Still singing, the Nordlings boldly formed a circle around the Nobodaddy. As Peggy flashed the Aya around the cavern, it began to produce an almost kaleidoscopic effect. As each one of the Nordlings grew brighter, it was as if the RoryBory itself had been brought right into the bowels of the Hole at the Pole.

For the first time, Peggy managed to get a glimpse of the Nobodaddy’s face: it bore an expression of pure terror. The Nobodaddy was paralyzed, overwhelmed by the light.

She aimed the Aya right into the centre of his heart of ice, and the intense beam began to burn a hole right through it. He let out a piercing howl, and for a moment she turned the beam away. Her momentary hesitation allowed him to snap him out of his paralysis. He began taunting her again.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Now she recalled the Eternal’s words: “The important thing is to be ruthless in the service of good.”

She lunged forward and stabbed the Nobodaddy in the heart with the jagged end of the bone flute. And the heart began to shatter, tossing shards of ice everywhere as a hissing sound rose up from it. She lunged at him again and again with a seething fury that grew more frenzied with each thrust of the jagged bone. So this was what hatred felt like – a coldness, a hardness gripping her own heart, almost as though it were turning to ice, like the Nobodaddy’s.

Finally she felt a hand on her arm. It was Mi.

“Peggy, stop.”

“Look!” some of the other Nordlings shouted.

They all stood and watched in amazement. The Nobodaddy was finally fully visible. It was a strange sight, and Peggy finally understood why she hadn’t been able to make out any of his features with the Aya. For he seemed to have no single form. His shape was constantly changing. Sometimes he had an ugly, even monstrous, aspect; then he would take on the appearance of an ordinary human – sometimes male, sometimes female. Peggy realized that as they looked on, the Nobodaddy was taking on the form of every loved one he had assumed in his lifetime as a soul-stealer.

It was then that Peggy realized that the hissing sounds were no longer coming just from the disintegration of his icy heart. Before their eyes, the Nobodaddy was shrinking, losing form, collapsing into himself. The hissing was the release of all the energy that had been trapped inside him. Peggy and the Nordlings watched, aghast, as the once-powerful entity grew smaller and smaller, compressing into a ball, until it was no more than a tiny, nearly invisible, speck of matter.

The Nobodaddy was returning to his original essential form: Nobody.

Just at the point where his features began to dissipate into utter formlessness, the Nobodaddy released one final, horrifying, vengeful roar that shot up from the Bottom Below and echoed through the great cavern of the Hole at the Pole.

§§

Gavi had managed to get the Mads to stop yelling at one another long enough to hear the great roar.

“What was that?” they asked each other. They all turned to Gavi.

“I am not sure …” he said slowly. “If it is what I hope it is …”

Lower down in the Hole, the Sads, at Molly’s insistence, were all huddled together, both for warmth and to help bolster their spirits. Some were whimpering softly. A few had stopped crying altogether when the great roar resounded.

They were frightened but curious, and they showered Molly with questions.

“What was that noise?”

“Why did it stop?”

“Is it a bad sign?”

Molly’s voice came back firm and confident in the darkness.

“Of course not, it’s a good sign! It means we’ll be getting out of here any minute now!”

Even farther down, none of the Frozen Souls reacted to the great roar, except for one, a young man. At first, as the fierce noise resounded through the Hole, his eyes, like the others, registered nothing. But something, perhaps snippets of images that felt like memories – a tree, a young woman, a bird, a ship – stirred his consciousness. As he began to blink his eyes, the sound finally registered in his brain.

His tears began to flow, and for the first time ever, a cry rose up in that part of the Hole, so searing and heartfelt that it even managed to rouse the other Frozen Souls out of their barely alive state.

§§

The reverberations of the great roar finally died away. For a moment there was an eerie stillness in the Bottom Below. Then, like an elastic band pulled taut until it finally snaps, the walls of the Hole began to vibrate and shoot inward.

The Nordlings screamed, terrified that they would all be crushed to death. But just before the walls around them collapsed, Peggy and the sprites, suddenly released from the Hole’s downward pull, felt as though they were being propelled upwards. They were pulled through the opening of the Bottom Below and up into the main part of the Hole. As they careened through each zone, they were joined by the other prisoners – the Frozen Souls, the Sads and the Mads – till they were all shooting upwards in a great mass. Behind them, the walls of the Hole continued to collapse and snap together, pulling the Hole into itself, making it narrower, shallower.

Peggy kept looking up anxiously. Could the opening of the Hole have already sealed shut? If so, they would all be crushed when they reached the top. She thought she could make out the opening above her, with a spot of blue sky showing through. But she could see that, as the crowd of Souls drew nearer the top, the opening was growing smaller and smaller.

The top of the Hole was closing, just as Re9 had speculated it would. She could only pray they would all get out in time.

First out of the opening were the Nordlings, the lightest and fastest, even though they’d had the farthest to go. They shot through the rim in a cluster, and as they landed on the perimeter of the Hole, they began to dance and shout with wild abandon. The rest of the Souls came spilling out in a great mass, whooping Mads mixed in with laughing Sads, trailed by the still-stunned but awake and aware Frozen Souls.

The last out were Molly, Gavi and, finally, Peggy. The three of them fell upon one another, laughing and hugging. Molly and Gavi started to ask Peggy how she’d managed to overpower the Nobodaddy, but she pulled away, her eyes frantically scanning the crowd.

“Where’s Jackpine? Do you see him anywhere?”

Molly looked. “He must be around here somewhere.”

“Then why can’t I see him?” Where is he? Maybe I was too late!”

“Too late for what?”

Peggy didn’t answer but called out into the crowd.

“Jackpine? Anyone know him or where he is? Jackpine!”

Most of the Frozen Souls had been huddling off to one side. After being trapped so long in the Hole, they were frightened by the expanse of open space around them, and their eyes weren’t used to the brightness of the sun. Out of their midst a young man emerged. He looked weak and walked slowly, but he had a mischievous grin on his face.

““Who’s looking for him?”

Peggy let out a gasp. “There you are!”

They ran towards one another, and Peggy impulsively threw her arms around him.

“I’m so glad you’re okay!”

“Me too!”

He lifted her up and swung her around joyfully for a moment. Their faces touched and their lips nearly brushed against each other’s. As he put her back on her feet they both looked down, slightly embarrassed, and out of breath.

“We did it,” Peggy said.

“You did it,” he corrected her. “I gave him a pretty hard time, but you’re the one who got us all out of there.”

She looked into his grinning eyes, relieved to see that the light had come back into them. A shudder ran through her as she thought back to the sight of Gary – his stricken expression, his ashen-grey face, his frostbitten fingers. Jackpine had no idea just how close to death he’d come in the world on the other side of Painted Rock.

He looked at her and seemed to be on the verge of saying something more. But they were distracted by a loud rumbling behind them. Everyone turned and watched as the uppermost walls of the Hole at the Pole finally collapsed in on one another. It vanished, leaving no trace except a kind of circular scar on the hard black ice where the rim had been.

There was an eerie silence as the Souls took in the enormity of what had just taken place. Then a huge, prolonged cheer rose up.

The nightmare was over. The Hole was gone.

Chapter 13:  The Shining World

AS SIR JOHN HAD PROMISED, the ship was “at the ready.” Now the old captain watched with growing excitement as the great mass of Souls, led by Peggy, made their way across the ice shelf to the Terror.

“Well done!” Sir John effused, as they streamed onto the ship. As Peggy, Jackpine, Molly and Gavi boarded, he beamed and saluted each of them in turn.

“This was among the most dangerous missions I have ever commanded. If we were heading back to England – which we are not, a fact with which I am now fully at peace – I have no doubt that Her Majesty would be decorating you all with medals of the highest order! Very well done!”

When the last of the Souls had finally boarded, Sir John gave Molly the order to pull up anchor. The Terror began to inch forward out into the open water, its sails billowing in the wind.

“Excellent,” he said to his newly augmented crew. “The winds are favorable. Let us be on our way.”

But the Souls just stood in clusters, staring back at him.

“Well? What is it?”

“Where are we going, sir?” ventured one.

“We want to go back to the lives we had before,” said another. “Will this ship take us there?”

Sir John was flustered.

“I … I’m not entirely sure …”

Peggy bounded up onto the foredeck.

“We’re heading south to a spot called Painted Rock. There’s a very thin border there between Notherland and the other world. That’s how you’re all going to get home.”

“Are you sure?” someone called out. “Has anyone ever crossed that barrier?”

“I have!” she replied with conviction. But she could see some of them were skeptical. Before they could ask any more questions, she heard Molly’s voice.

“Look!”

Huge, jagged columns and boulders of ice were slowly moving through the Great Polar Sea, right in their direction.

The icebergs. Of course. They should have been ready for them!

“Molly! Take the helm!” Sir John called out, gearing up for another round of frantic maneuvering. But when Peggy looked out over the Terror’s bow, she was astonished to see that none of the huge ice-forms was in the ship’s path. They had completely moved out of the way, forming a long line on either side of the ship.

The icebergs, it appeared, were letting the Terror sail through unharmed, as if offering a kind of silent homage.

The ship continued on, flanked by the icebergs, until it was evening. Awaiting them at the end of the formation was an even more wonderful sight – the Great Skyway.

All the Nordlings burst into joyous song at the sight, which none of them, save Mi, had laid eyes on for a long time. One by one they eagerly bounded up the slide and sought out their familiar places on the RoryBory. When they were all in place, the RoryBory became a spectacle of light, the intensity of which had rarely been seen before.

“It looks like a stairway to a shining world,” said one of the awestruck Souls watching from the deck of the Terror.

 §§

All through the next day, the Terror made its way through the Great Polar Sea, laboring mightily under the weight of its human cargo. Gavi, Peggy and Molly were concerned about Sir John’s reaction to this unaccustomed activity, but he patrolled the ship beaming with pleasure.

“It does my heart enormous good,” he told them, “to see the Terror once again put to good service.”

As they sailed, Gavi eagerly delivered explanations for the events they’d witnessed and expounded on other matters of philosophy. Most of the Souls didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but they listened with rapt attention. How brilliant he was! Molly and Peggy smiled at each other; Gavi had found a fresh audience for his theories.

There was a great deal of merrymaking above and below deck – singing and dancing to tunes played on homemade instruments, which seemed to appear out of nowhere. At times things got a bit rowdy, especially among the Mads. Some of them fell back into their old combative ways, and it took stern words from Gavi and the captain to bring them into line. Even worse were a few of the Sads, who began to wonder out loud if they would ever get back home.

“Have we been freed only to wander aimlessly on this enormous sea?” they asked.

Molly gave them a stirring pep talk.

“Listen to yourselves! You sound as if you were still down in the Hole!”

Secretly, Peggy worried – what if the Sads were right? Could she get them all back to the other world? She’d failed once before. What would be different now?

And there were other, more immediate problems to deal with – namely, what to do about the Frozen Souls? Most of them were very young children, and their adjustment to life outside the Hole was proving more difficult than anyone had anticipated. They tended to huddle in small groups in the darkest areas of the ship’s hold, afraid to believe their ordeal was really over. Molly and the others tried to coax them to come up on deck, to dance and sing, or just listen and be part of things. But they held back.

“What are we going to do?” Peggy asked the others. “It’s like they won’t let anyone get near them.”

“They’ve got their reasons,” Jackpine volunteered. “Leave them alone. They’ll come out when they’re ready.”

Later that evening, the Nordlings were playing and scurrying around the deck, trying to avoid their bedtime ride into the night sky. The Great Skyway hung suspended, reaching right down to the deck of the Terror. Some of the bigger Nordlings would pretend to start up the Skyway, only to slide back down again, giggling. Because of all they’d been through, Gavi and Molly just smiled at their hijinks. Soon all the Nordlings had joined in the silliness, starting up the Skyway and sliding down again, most of them laughing uproariously.

Finally, Molly put her foot down.

“That’s it. Playtime’s over.”

“Awwwww,” they chorused, but they were soon distracted by Mi, pointing in the direction of the stairway to the hold. A few of the rescued Frozen Souls had poked their heads through the opening, and were watching the goings-on intently.

“Would you like to play with us?” Mi asked.

Molly began to object, but Peggy stepped forward and gestured to Molly to leave them be.

The little Souls looked at one another silently for what seemed like a long few moments, until at last one of them nodded.

“Come on,” said Mi, holding out her hand.

They crept out from the stairway and walked over to the Great Skyway, eyeing it warily. Then they clambered on and started upward, imitating the Nordlings. One of them, a tiny, wide-eyed boy, finally stopped, turned around and slid down the Skyway, laughing all the way. The others followed his lead, and giggled softly as they tumbled downward.

Drawn by the sound of their laughter, the other Frozen Souls began to stream up from below deck. They, too, began to scamper up the great slide and tumble down, whooping and laughing. The Nordlings, perched at various points on the Skyway, watched the whole drama with keen interest. Then they all joined the throng of little Souls sliding down the Skyway.

Molly groaned. “How are we ever going to get them to go back up?”

§§

The next morning they reached the Everlasting Ice. Sir John and Molly steered up and down along the edge of the ice shelf several times, hoping to find some pathway through it. But there was no trace left of the Warm Line, nor any other broken-up patches. As far as they could see, there was nothing but a vast expanse of solid, unbroken ice.

“I believe it will be necessary to moor the Terror here and continue on foot,” observed Sir John briskly. But Peggy could see they’d come to a point in the journey that Sir John had privately been dreading. The prospect of leaving behind his ship – his long-time home, his last link with his beloved Jane – filled the old seaman with an overwhelming sadness.

Peggy watched Sir John with unease. Even if they did manage to get back to the other world, what would become of him once they were gone? Gavi, Molly and the Nordlings would all stay behind, too, of course. But Sir John needed a focus, a sense of purpose. Where would it come from now that their mission was complete?

“Look!” one of the Nordlings suddenly called out, pointing out on the ice. “What’s that out there?”

Everyone on deck turned to see an astonishing sight.

Out on the Everlasting Ice sat Lady Jane Franklin. She was seated on a chair, beside which was a small table and another chair. The table was set with a full tea service, and Lady Jane was serenely pouring tea from a fine china pot.

No one uttered a word as Sir John walked slowly over to the edge of the deck and looked out over the ice. After a moment, Peggy and Jackpine went over and gently helped the old man climb down. They watched as Sir John walked slowly and gingerly, so as not to trip on the slippery surface.

When he reached the table, Lady Jane looked up at him and smiled warmly. She nodded to her husband to sit down, and leaned across the table to pour tea into his waiting cup. For a long time, the two of them sat drinking tea and conversing, their voices carrying in a low murmur across the expanse of ice to the ship.

Night began to fall. When the Great Skyway made its appearance and touched down to the edge of the deck, the Franklins stood up. Sir John leaned over to pick up a small object from the table, then took his wife’s hand as they slowly walked back to the Terror.

The Nordlings were uncharacteristically quiet and solemn as they gathered at the base of the Skyway, readying themselves at last for the trip upward. As the old couple approached the ship, Lady Jane raised her hand, gesturing to them to hold off their departure. The two of them stood near the Skyway, and Sir John turned to Lady Jane with a look of rapturous happiness. Then, unexpectedly, he broke the silence, calling out Molly’s name.

The doll bounded quickly over the side of the ship and went hurriedly to the old man. He smiled and saluted her.

“Ensign Molly,” said Sir John, “in the name of Her Royal Majesty, I hereby promote you to the rank of captain. You shall now take command of this vessel.”

Speechless, Molly could only salute back. The old captain leaned forward and gave her a great bear-hug. Then he held out the object he had picked up off the table and handed it to her.

“So that you will remember me. So that the world will remember Franklin.”

He turned to Peggy, Jackpine, Gavi and the great gathered mass of Souls on the ship and raised his arm in a long, heartfelt salute.

Lady Franklin gestured graciously to the Nordlings to start up the Great Skyway. She took Sir John’s hand, and the two of them also began to ascend, surrounded by the shining beams of the Nordlings’ light. Even before they had assumed their places in the RoryBory, a great chorus swelled to fill the night sky.

Peggy watched the old couple grow smaller and smaller as they made their way upward. She knew that in the morning the Nordlings would, as usual, make their way back down to earth, but that this was the last they would see of Lord and Lady Franklin.

They had gone up to the Shining World.

“Look.” Molly was holding out the object Sir John had given her.

Peggy stared at it, amazed. It was a silver teaspoon – the same one she’d found in the park, the one from the picture in Our Wondrous North.

“I found that spoon in the park!” she told Molly. “But that was before I came here. So how come you …?” But her voice trailed off as the memory of the Eternal’s words came back to her: “You tapped into a well much deeper than you could possibly know. There are many universes.”

 §§

What to do about the Terror?

Peggy slept fitfully during that night, wrestling with the question. In the morning she felt no closer to a solution. But it soon became clear that Molly had been doing some thinking of her own.

“The Terror is my responsibility now,” she informed Peggy. “What kind of captain would I be if I abandoned her?”

Peggy looked at her quizzically.

“What are you saying? That you’re not going on with us? That you’re staying behind?”

“No,” Molly was quick to reply. She wanted to finish the journey with the others. But once they arrived at Painted Rock and passed through into the other world, she would return to the Terror with her crew and take up her new mission – to patrol the Great Polar Sea and.safeguard Notherland from evil entities.

“Wait a minute.” Peggy stopped her. “Crew? What crew?”

Molly, it turned out, had spent much of the night seeking out recruits from the ranks of the Souls. There were quite a few who, on reflection, decided they didn’t want to even attempt to return to the other world, who felt their lives and futures were here in Notherland. Captain Molly had given them a sense of purpose, a reason to remain, and so they’d readily agreed to serve under her on the crew of the Terror.

“I’ll whip them all into shape in no time,” she said firmly. “There won’t be any lollygagging on my ship!”

Once she’d had a chance to get used to the idea, Peggy had to admit that it made some sense. But she had one big concern.

“What about Gavi? What does he say about all this?”

“I haven’t told him yet,” Molly admitted.

“It’s a little hard to picture Gavi living out his days on a ship,” Peggy said. She could see that the same thing weighed on Molly’s mind, too. “Let’s not say anything to him just yet.”

“Okay,” Molly agreed. “But won’t he figure something’s up when …?”

“When what?”

Molly swallowed hard.

“When we … rename the ship.”

Now Peggy was really taken aback.

“Rename the ship? Why would you want to do that?”

“I know you don’t just go changing a name for no good reason,” Molly replied hastily. “And I wouldn’t dream of insulting Sir John’s memory. But he made it clear that I was to take command. It’s my ship now. And I think … the name Terror is too much of a reminder of what this ship has been through, what we have all been through. I want to start fresh.”

Peggy listened to Molly’s passionate argument. Clearly the doll was abrim with energy and fresh resolve. And it was true that the name Terror didn’t seem terribly appropriate anymore. Now that Sir John had himself passed on into Eternity, maybe it was time to let go of the past. Maybe it would help them all step back into life.

“Okay. But what will you call it?” Peggy asked.

“Naming things is your job,” Molly replied. “You’re the Creator, remember?”

As they prepared to leave the ship, Molly called everyone together. One of the Souls retrieved an old bottle made of thick, heavy glass from the galley below. Peggy filled it with water from the Great Polar Sea and held it out to Molly. But the doll shook her head.

“Have you chosen a name?”

Peggy nodded.

“Then you do the honors,” said Molly.

They all stood facing the great ship.

“I hereby rechristen this vessel Her Majesty’s ship … Resolute.”

She smashed the bottle against the side, and it shattered into tiny glistening shards, which showered onto the ice below.

§§

Now they had to make their way across the Everlasting Ice on foot. But as soon as they began to work up a brisk pace, they found themselves slip-sliding on the slippery surface. Molly called to Peggy and Jackpine.

“Come on. Let’s show them how to do it!”

She grabbed each of them by the hand, and the three of them broke into a sprint, which sent them into a long skid across the ice. Others followed suit, and soon the air was filled with laughter as more and more Souls began racing across the ice in long, sliding strides.

“Yipppppeeee!”

Soon Molly broke away to join some of them in a game of crack-the-whip. Peggy extended her arm and felt ripples of excitement when Jackpine took her hand in his. They moved side by side in silence.

Some Souls picked up the gliding movement easily, but Peggy looked back and noticed that a few were having difficulty. She reluctantly dropped Jackpine’s hand to see if they needed help. They were grumbling that it was too hard to cross the ice, that Peggy was making them do it. Peggy was taken aback. It drove home to her the uncomfortable fact that, though she was surrounded by all these Souls, she was really alone. The Eternal had told her that being the hero would be hard; what she hadn’t told Peggy was that it would, at times, be crushingly lonely as well.

She was seized with an intense longing to just be herself again. She was weary of all this responsibility, of carrying all the weight on her shoulders. She didn’t care about being the Creator. She was tired of being a hero. She wanted her life back – she wanted to see her mom, her friends at school, even her annoying brothers. She ached to go home.

She remembered how she’d felt that night before her journey into the Hole, and how she’d cried out her sadness on the bone flute. She felt for it in her pocket; it was still there. And for the first time since that strange, brief trip back to Green Echo Park, she thought of her other flute, the one she’d been so eager to get rid of. Was it still where she’d left it, waiting for her?

§§

When Molly spied the shimmering waters of Lake Notherland in the distance, she let out a whoop of joy and dashed ahead. Gavi, however, was distant, subdued. He lumbered to the shore, slid his black-and-white body onto the surface of the water and swam out into the middle of the lake, seemingly lost in thought.

For Peggy, the sight of Painted Rock as they rounded the shore of the lake stirred up a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. This was the moment of truth. She’d saved them all. Now, would she be able to get them all back home?

As they approached the rock, Peggy looked back at the Souls following behind her. They were all waiting for her to say or do something. She hoisted herself up onto a nearby rock and began, awkwardly, to speak, gazing at her friends.

“I guess this is goodbye. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of coming to Notherland in the beginning. But now I’m glad. Because I might not have gotten to know any of you.” She was afraid to look in J ackpine’s direction as she said this. “We’re about to go our separate ways now. But I hope none of you forget who you are and what we’ve been through together. You’ve been down to the bottom of the Hole at the Pole and come back out again. I hope that, if any of us manage to meet up in the other world, we’ll somehow just know one another. Now – let’s all go home.”

She jumped down, stood squarely in front of Painted Rock and concentrated. In her mind’s eye she tried to picture the surface of the rock growing transparent, so that she could make out the landscape of the park on the other side. But when she opened her eyes nothing had happened. She closed her eyes and tried again.

Panic rose as she opened her eyes and realized there had still been no change. After all she’d done, all they’d been through, was this how it was going to end?

Make it work this time, please!

She tried again.

Nothing.

Peggy turned to them all, defeated.

“I’m sorry. It’s not working. I don’t know what else to do.”

There were angry shouts from some of the Mads.

“I knew it! I knew we’d never get out of here!”

“We should never have trusted her!”

Then another voice pierced through the angry shouting.

“Quiet!”

Peggy turned. It was Jackpine.

“Good thing she didn’t rely on the likes of you, or you’d all still be down in the Hole!” he chided them. “Now shut up and give it a chance.”

Jackpine walked over and stood up close to Painted Rock.

“What are these?” he asked, pointing to the red markings on the rock.

“I don’t know,” Peggy replied. “They’ve always been there.”

He stood pensively, running his fingers over the markings.

“What is it, Jackpine?” Peggy asked.

“I can’t explain it, but these markings look familiar somehow. Like I’ve seen them before.”

He traced one dark red line with his index finger.

“Right, of course. See? This is a drawing of a tree. And over here. That looks like a canoe with two people in it. This one is strange. It looks almost like an eye.”

“An eye?” Peggy said.

Jackpine was right. Though some of the outline of the drawing had faded with time, it clearly depicted a single disembodied eye. The dark-red markings on Painted Rock had always looked to Peggy like smudges, discolorations in the rock. But as Jackpine carefully traced their outlines, she saw for the first time that they were patterns, pictures …

Now Mi piped up.

“That one looks just like Gavi,” she said in her tiny voice.

“This one?” said Jackpine. “You’re right. It looks just like a loon.”

Peggy was struck by a thought.

“Wait a minute! One of them looks like a loon and one looks like an eye? Maybe …”

Jackpine seemed to know immediately what she was thinking. “Maybe they all mean something? Like the tree! Don’t you see? That’s me!”

“And the loon is Gavi,” cried Peggy, “and look! These two people – one is taller than the other. That could be me and Molly. And the two people in the canoe? That’s Sir John and Lady Jane! Yes! See? It’s all of us! I can’t believe I didn’t see it before!”

“But that was not possible!” Gavi broke in excitedly. “Do you not see? Our whole adventure was foretold right here on Painted Rock, before it ever began! But you could not understand the story until you had lived it!”

“These here look like tiny birds,” Jackpine pointed out. “They could be the Nordlings. And this looks like a snake. That’s got to be the Nobodaddy!”

“Or it could be the sea monster that attacked the ship!” Molly added.

It could even be the Resolute Protector of Notherland, Peggy thought to herself.

They were all startled by the sound of a great crack! They watched in amazement as a deep fissure appeared in Painted Rock. It widened until it had almost the appearance of a pathway, beckoning to them.

Peggy turned to Gavi.

“What’s going on?”

“My best guess,” he replied, “is that this is no longer just a pathway into your park. There are so many Souls preparing to cross over, heading for so many far-flung places throughout your world, that something more is needed.”

“Do you think it’s safe for them to start passing through?”

“We have come this far, I cannot believe we will be thwarted in our mission now.”

Peggy sighed with relief. In letting the drawings speak to him, Jackpine had found the way to their freedom. The responsibility for Notherland was no longer solely hers; it wasn’t all up to her anymore.

She signaled to the Souls nearest the rock to begin their journey. A small group started through the huge fissure until, at what seemed like a point deep inside the rock, they simply vanished. The rest followed in twos and threes.

Peggy turned to Molly, but the doll was talking to Gavi. She was telling him breathlessly of her plans for the Resolute and her fears about his reaction.

Gavi stopped her. He seemed not in the least perturbed, or even surprised.

“Of course you will want to stay with your ship. I would not have expected anything else. But I have something to tell you, too.”

“You do?”

The loon looked intently at her, then at Peggy.

“Well? What is it?”

“I am not going to stay on the Resolute with you.”

“Oh? Where will you go?”

“That is … I am not going to stay in Notherland.”

“What are you talking about?” Molly demanded.

“I am going to try and pass through into the other world.

“Gavi, no!” Peggy said. “You’ve never tried to cross over. You have no idea what will happen to you!”

“But now that so many appear to be crossing over without difficulty, there is no reason why I should not attempt it, too,” Gavi replied calmly.

“But …!” Molly sputtered. “You’re not from that world! You belong in Notherland!”

“I know, I know. Everything you are saying I have told myself. I have thought it all through. The truth is, I am tired of thinking. I am tired of having to figure everything out. I want to experience life as a flesh-and-blood loon does! I want to bond with a mate. I want to father a loon chick. I want to fly north in the summer and south in the winter. I don’t want to just think about life. I want to live it.”

“But Gavi!” Molly cried. “What about the Nordlings? We’ve always looked after them together.”

“With you and the new crew of the Resolute to look after them, I know they will be in good hands, as will Notherland itself. But I cannot live on a ship. There will be nothing for me to do.”

Peggy gave him a penetrating look.

“Gavi, it’ll be very different for you in my world. Things are in constant change there. Everyone grows older. Here in Notherland, you’re protected from all that. You’re immortal. If you cross over with us …”

The loon nodded.

“I will die one day, like any ordinary loon. Yes, I have considered that, too. But if death is the price of fully experiencing life, it is a price I am prepared to pay. After seeing Sir John and Lady Jane pass over into Eternity, I have no fear. I am ready to dive headlong into the great pool of existence.”

Molly tried to stifle a sob.

“But … you might never be able to come back,” she finally said. “We might never see one another again.”

Peggy’s eyes, too, were starting to burn with tears. With all that had been on her mind the past few days, she’d managed to block out all thought of saying goodbye to these two, but now the reality of it was finally coming home to her.

“I do not wish to leave you, any more than you wish to leave me,” Gavi said gently, tears filling his eyes. “We are being called to different paths, in different worlds. But we will always carry one another in our hearts.”

At that moment, Peggy looked out over Lake Notherland and saw a column of silvery-blue light. It grew brighter and brighter as it settled right over the Nordlings, bathing them in its glow. Then it spiralled out and formed an enormous ring encircling them.

“I have always been and always will be. Could you not feel my presence?”

“Peggy remembered the Eternal’s words, and now knew for certain that Notherland still had its Resolute Protector.

Molly’s voice broke in on her thoughts. “It’s time!”

Peggy turned back towards Painted Rock. Jackpine was standing alone at the entry to the passageway; all the other Souls had passed through.

Gavi reached the opening first. As he started to move his cumbersome body into the passageway, he looked back at them.

“Do not be surprised to find a loon swimming on your pond when you arrive on the other side,” he said to Peggy.

Swimming? Peggy abruptly stopped “him. “Gavi, wait! It’s winter back in my world. There’ll be ice on the pond.”

“Then you must help me take off, so I can migrate south.”

“But you’ve never migrated anywhere! How will you find your way?”

“I will follow my …. my instinct!” the loon said with pride.

Then he turned to Molly.

“Take good care of our beloved Nordlings, Molly. Goodbye.”

Biting her lip, the doll walked hesitantly forward and held out one stiff arm. Her hand grasped one of Gavi’s wings and squeezed it hard. She was determined not to let herself start crying again.

Silently, she mouthed one word to Gavi: Goodbye.

Then he disappeared into the passageway, releasing one last tremolo as he went.

“Till we meet agaaaaiiiiinnn …”

Once he was gone, they heard a low rumbling in the earth around them.

“What’s that?” asked Jackpine.

“My best guess, as Gavi would say,” said Peggy, “is that the opening between the worlds is starting to become unstable.”

“We better get going before it gets any worse!”

As they turned to say goodbye to Molly, Peggy suddenly thought of something. She reached into her pocket. Nestled in a corner next to the bone flute was the Aya. She took it out and quickly pressed it into Molly’s hand. The doll looked at it in amazement.

“What … But this is … How did you find it?”

Peggy grinned at Molly.

“It’s a long story,” she replied.

Peggy wanted to say more, but the rumbling was growing louder. There was barely time for Peggy to give the doll one last hug as Molly pushed them both towards the opening.

“You two get out of here!” yelled Molly. “Now!”

Jackpine grasped Peggy’s hand. In the narrow passageway their bodies were pressed close together, their faces so close they could feel the warmth of one another’s breath. What would happen when they crossed over? Would he even remember her? Would she remember him?

This might be my last chance! she thought.

She leaned over and pressed her lips to his for one long moment.

As they both went tumbling through the passageway, she could swear she heard Jackpine’s voice, saying her name.

“Peggy, I …”

Then everything went dark.

Chapter 14:  Lift-off

ALL THROUGH THE DAY Souls had passed through the portal. The fissure in Painted Rock had narrowed but not yet closed up completely. Now, with night falling, Mi discovered that, from her spot on the RoryBory, she could watch everything that was happening on the other side. She suddenly thought again of Sir John talking about the parting of the Red Sea. She realized, with regret, that she’d never gotten around to asking him how a sea could be red.

She had to fight to stay awake. But seeing into another universe was so exciting!

There was a crowd of people gathered in what Pay-gee had called a “park.” They were talking animatedly and pointing towards a body of water much smaller than Lake Notherland, but with a smooth surface of ice.

“Can you beat that?” Mi heard one of them say.

“Yeah, it’s something, isn’t it?” said another. “A loon, here, in December.”

A bird was slapping its wings on the surface of the ice with a restless, fevered motion.

“Maybe it was too stupid to fly south for the winter,” said another, and laughter rippled through the crowd.

“Now what’s that girl up to, do you suppose?”

A young woman was striding purposefully out onto the ice. She looked a lot like Pay-gee herself, but with a difference that Mi couldn’t quite put her finger on. She walked right over to the bird, put one arm around it and started to gently pull it along the ice. The bird made no effort to resist or escape her; it seemed to grow oddly calm at her touch.

“Is she crazy?” someone in the crowd exclaimed. “She’s liable to scare that bird half to death.”

“Maybe not,” said another. “Looks like she’s trying to pull it to the far end of the pond, so it can have more room to take off. That’s why the poor thing’s flailing around like that. It can’t take off. Loons are like big planes – they need a long runway to get up enough speed.”

There was a minor commotion in the crowd as the girl was joined by someone else, a young man who reminded Mi of Jackpine. But she thought she might be mistaken when one of the people on shore pointed at him.

“Hey, there’s Gary, that Native kid who hangs around here.”

“Now y’know they’re both crazy,” chuckled someone else.

It wasn’t clear to Mi whether the girl who looked like Pay-gee and the boy who looked like Jackpine knew one another or not. But together they tried pulling the bird backwards, then vigorously pushing it forwards, away from them. The loon’s wings began to flap furiously. The bird managed to propel itself partway across the pond, then its momentum slowed. The two young people ran over to the bird and repeated the same action, pulling it backwards with a running motion, then thrusting it forwards even more vigorously.

This time the loon skittered across the entire length of the pond, picking up more and more speed as it went along. Just as it approached the opposite bank, its black-and-white body finally began to lift off the surface of the ice.

The crowd watched the loon pass over the edge of the pond and begin to gain altitude, until it was soaring in the sky over their heads with long, steady wing strokes. Spectators broke into spontaneous applause as the loon soared higher and higher, until it was little more than a tiny black speck on the horizon.

Mi watched the boy and girl walk off the ice together. At the edge of the ice, the girl picked up an oblong black box. She opened it, took out a long silvery object and began blowing into it. The crowd stood listening, enraptured by the sound, as Mi was, too. She had never heard anything quite like it: music, but not like that which Mi and her companions sang in the RoryBory. Beautiful music, full of energy and delight. The music of another universe.

Finally the fissure in Painted Rock closed up completely and Mi couldn’t see anymore. But she could still hear the music from the strange silvery instrument as it trailed off into a faraway echo.

From her place in the blazing RoryBory, Mi looked down from the sky over the vast sweep of Notherland. In the distance, off to the north, she thought she could make out the Resolute moored at the edge of the Everlasting Ice.

Maybe tonight, she thought as she drifted off to sleep, I will dream a new universe into existence.

End of Book I

The Notherland Journeys, Episode 3

Jun 6, 2016 | Notherland | 0 comments

Chapter 7: The Great Polar Sea

FROM THE DECK of the Terror, Mi looked out in all directions. The Great Polar Sea was so vast, its waters seemed to go on forever and ever. Mi was used to Lake Notherland. It had always seemed big to her, but at least you could see across it to the far shore. The Great Polar Sea was of another order altogether. Mi couldn’t imagine that it had an end. And even if it did, she found it difficult to believe that they would ever reach it.

It had been more than a day since the remarkable phenomenon Gavi had christened the Warm Line. Mi recalled how she’d stood with the others on the deck, watching in amazement as the long gash opened up before them, releasing what felt like pulsing waves of warm air from underneath the ice. The entire crew had cheered with each loud crack! as the solid sheet of ice split in two and the ship slowly inched its way through the opening.

Gavi assumed that it was the power of Peggy’s mind that brought the miracle about, that she had imagined a current of warm air under the ice. “That, combined with the ship’s weight, could very well have made the ice give way underneath us,” he said.

Peggy shook her head. “It just happened. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“But it is possible that your powers could be working without you being aware of it. What is that phrase? ‘Your imagination is working overtime’? That could explain it,”

Gavi said, proudly parading his knowledge of the minutiae of everyday human speech.

“Perhaps it’s a miracle, like the parting of the Red Sea,” Sir John suggested.

None of them except Peggy knew what he was talking about. Sir John briefly told them the story, which he said was a miracle from a book called the Bible. Mi wondered how a sea could be red. As far as she knew, water was always blue. But she was too shy to ask Sir John about it.

Gavi would know. She reminded herself to ask him about it, and about her lucky bone, as well.

She took out a small cloth pouch and surveyed what was left of her “treasure.” In the mad scramble onto the Terror, she had lost track of most of the stones. But a few of the prettiest ones remained, along with the smooth and slender tube that Peggy had said was a piece of animal bone. Gavi had told her once about how humans sometimes carried animal bones or teeth for good luck, and Mi decided that this would be her “lucky” bone. Why did it have holes? she wondered. Were they from the teeth of a bigger animal who’d tried to eat this one? She’d have to remember to ask Gavi how the holes got there.

Now they had finally left the vast plate of Everlasting Ice behind them and reached open water. So Jackpine had been right all along about the Great Polar Sea. Mi wondered how they could possibly tell which way the ship was going. Surely they would get lost! She was relieved to learn that experienced seamen like Sir John could steer a ship and chart a course using something called navigation.

In fact, Sir John was spending most of his time instructing Molly, on whom he had bestowed the rank of ensign, in the principles of navigation. He regretted having no uniform of the proper size for her, but he did bestow on her his very own, rather large, cutlass. Molly was thrilled, and promptly threw away the stick she’d been using as an imitation sword for so long.

Molly tried her best to follow Sir John’s instructions, but she was finding the knots difficult for her stiff fingers. Then there were instruments like the compass and sextant, which were utterly baffling to her. And the ship’s rigging looked like a chaotic mass of ropes and chains, no matter how carefully Sir John explained their organization and function. She tried to tell him that Gavi would be a much better navigator. But Sir John insisted that, much as he had become fond of Gavi and had come to respect his mental abilities, a loon was simply not fit to serve as an officer in the Royal Navy.

Sir John was also teaching Molly about the various signal flags that could be used to communicate with other ships. Molly found this a monumental waste of time, since everyone knew their chances of encountering another ship in the Great Polar Sea were virtually nil. But Sir John told her firmly that knowing about signal flags was an important part of being a well-rounded sailor. Worst of all for Molly were the drills, which he had her carry out several times a day. She had to march up and down the ship, deliver a proper salute, swab the deck and await Sir John’s careful inspection. None of the others had to do any of these things, and Molly was beginning to resent it. Her initial excitement about learning to sail a real ship was slowly ebbing away as Sir John persisted in his attempts to mould her into a “model of military discipline,” as he put it.

Mi watched Molly’s growing disenchantment and frustration. The Nordling was so tiny and quiet, they often forgot she was there, but she noticed everything that was going on around her. The captain’s efforts to bend Molly to his will reminded Mi of the way Molly herself had sometimes treated the Nordlings. Mi could understand Molly’s resentment; it was how she felt when Molly tried to make her do something she didn’t want to do. Though she saw some justice in Molly having to swallow a dose of her own medicine, the little Nordling still felt sympathy for the doll.

There was another relationship on board that intrigued and puzzled Mi. Did anyone else, she wondered, notice how Peggy and Jackpine always seemed to be watching one another? How they would stare at each another, then look away as soon as they’d notice the other watching? How they sometimes seemed to make excuses to be near one another? How they would speak to one another with a certain nervous excitement in their voices?

Mi sought out Gavi to ask him about it.

“Now that you mention it,” he said, “their behavior does remind me a little of mating rituals.”

“What does that mean?” Mi asked him.

“It is something creatures do when there is a special bond between them, when they wish to spend time together and their feelings for one another are stronger than their feelings for others.”

“Are Sir John and Lady Jane mates?”

Gavi smiled. “Yes, though they would not put it like that. Humans are not comfortable using the same terms for themselves as they do for animals – even though they are animals. The Franklins are husband and wife. Those are the human terms for mates.”

“Yes,” Mi said thoughtfully. “I can see that Sir John and Lady Jane have special feelings for each other.”

“They are devoted to one another,” Gavi agreed. “Lady Jane takes such good care of her husband. And when she is gone, he seems lost without her.”

Mi was suddenly reminded of another question that had been weighing on her mind.

“Where does she go?”

“Who?” Gavi asked.

“Lady Franklin. Sometimes she just seems to disappear for awhile. Then she comes back again. Where does she go?”

“I do not know,” Gavi replied. “I have wondered about that myself. But I suppose there is a simple explanation. Perhaps she goes below deck and carries out her wifely duties – cooking, mending, that sort of thing.”

It occurred to Mi to ask Gavi why cooking and mending were considered a wife’s duties and not a husband’s, but her curiosity about such things was outweighed by the mystery of Lady Jane’s absences.

“I wander about the whole ship,” she told Gavi, “and I never see her below deck doing any of those things. I think she must go somewhere else.”

Gavi shook his head. “That is impossible. How could she leave the ship? Where is there for her to go? Anyway, Sir John does not act as though there is anything unusual about her absences, and he is her husband. So we need not concern ourselves with it either,” he said with finality.

It wasn’t like Gavi to shrug off a mystery, to not probe more deeply until he found the solution to a puzzle. But Mi knew it was hard for him to admit when he didn’t know the answer to something, so she changed the subject.

“Lord Franklin is trying very hard to make Molly into a good sailor.”

“Yes,” Gavi agreed. “But he does not seem to be having that much success. And frankly, I am amazed that she has gone along with it as far as she has. I have never been able to get Molly to do anything she did not want to do. She is the most stubborn creature I know.”

“If she doesn’t want to do those drills, why does he keep making her do them?”

“That is the problem,” Gavi sighed. “Sir John has only one thing on his mind, making Molly into a good sailor, and he thinks she must try harder. He does not see that it is making her unhappy.”

“If she’s so unhappy, then why doesn’t she just refuse to do it?”

Gavi smiled again. “Humans can be very hard to figure out sometimes.”

“But Molly’s not human.”

“No,” Gavi admitted. “But she would like to be. It adds up to the same thing.”

They both stood silent for a few moments, staring out at the vast ocean.

“Gavi?” Mi said finally. “What will happen when we get to the Hole at the Pole? How will we set the Nordlings free?”

“Do not ask so many questions,” Gavi replied brusquely.

Mi gazed at the water lapping at the side of the ship. It seemed to calm her mind, and she hoped it might be doing the same for Gavi.

She noticed something odd in the distance.

“Look!” she shouted.

Way off the starboard side of the Terror, something very large was rising slowly out of the water.

§§

Peggy’s moods had been shifting wildly back and forth. She was constantly restless and found she had little appetite for the wonderful meals that magically appeared from the ship’s galley. Sometimes she felt exuberant, elated. At other times the smallest thing would cause her to plummet into despair. At first she didn’t want to admit to herself that Jackpine was the focus of her moodiness. The longing to be near him. The constant thoughts of him when he wasn’t around. The tingles of excitement she felt whenever she heard his voice or caught sight of his dark eyes and wiry, muscular body.

Okay, so she liked him. What good was that? He couldn’t possibly feel the same way about her. Could he?

She watched him now, across the deck. He had that dark, faraway look in his eyes again. Was he brooding about the Hole? she wondered. Did she dare approach him in this mood? Would he open up to her?

He caught her gaze and nodded. Emboldened, she went over to him.

“Hi, what’s up?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Just thinking.”

“We’re really on our way, aren’t we?” she offered, trying to make conversation.

“Yeah,” he said pensively. “But I wonder if things are getting a little too easy.”

Peggy let out a quizzical laugh. “What makes you say that?”

“You don’t know the Nobodaddy,” he replied. “You don’t know what he’s capable of. All I know is, we have to be ready for anything.”

She opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted by shouts from the other end of the ship.

“Look!”

It was Mi’s voice, followed by Gavi’s.

“Peggy! Come quickly! There is something out in the water!”

Peggy raced towards the foredeck of the ship, followed by Molly, Sir John and Jackpine. They all looked in the direction Mi and Gavi were pointing. Sure enough, there was something very tall and slender sticking up out of the waves.

They all stood with their mouths open.

“What is that?”

“I cannot tell yet,” Gavi said.

“It could be a fallen tree that somehow got washed out to sea,” Jackpine speculated.

“Impossible,” Gavi replied. “How could a tree stick up so high in this deep water, and what would it be doing so far beyond the Tree Line?”

“I’ll wager it’s an old mast,” said Sir John briskly. “Perhaps from a ship that sank after an unsuccessful attempt to reach the Pole.”

“It doesn’t look smooth enough to be a mast, Sir John,” Peggy pointed out. “It’s hard to make out at this distance, but I can see some kind of ripples or bumps on the far side of it.”

“Well,” said Sir John, “we shall be able to tell better what it is when we get up closer. Ensign Molly!” he barked. “To the helm!”

“Not now. I want to watch from here,” Molly objected.

“To the helm with you, on the double!”

“No!” said Molly defiantly.

Sir John’s face was flushed with anger.

“This is rank insubordination!” he sputtered. “Do you have any idea of the penalty for …?”

But screams from the others interrupted Sir John’s tirade.

“Look!”

The thing bent over, then reared up even higher out of the water. Far from being an inanimate stump of wood, it appeared to be a living creature with a tremendously long neck, like some gigantic serpent. As it rose higher out of the water, great gushing whirlpools formed on either side of it. The protrusions Peggy had noticed looked to be scaly points, almost like sharp fins, which became progressively larger as they jutted out along the creature’s neck and back. Before they had a chance to get a better look, it took a sudden dive and disappeared under the water, creating huge waves that crashed against the sides of the ship.

“What is it?”

“Some kind of sea monster!”

“Monster?” Mi whimpered, clutching Gavi’s wing and burrowing nervously down into his feathers.

Jackpine turned to Sir John. “What kind of weapons have you got on this ship?”

Before Sir John could answer, Peggy broke in.

“Weapons? Why are we talking about weapons? We don’t have any reason to think it wants to harm us.”

“Whatever that thing is,” Jackpine said grimly, “we’d better be ready if it shows up again.”

“And if it attacks, we fight back!” said Molly excitedly, brandishing her cutlass. “I’m ready!”

“Oh Molly!” said Gavi, shaking his head. “What good would that sword be against a creature so large?”

Peggy interrupted them all.

“Shhh! Did you hear something?”

The others strained to listen. It sounded like a deep rumbling from the surrounding depths. They all stood frozen on the spot. It seemed to grow louder and louder. They could feel a vibration under their feet, and as the rumbling grew more intense the ship began to list sharply from side to side.

“Lord help us,” Sir John prayed under his breath.

Suddenly a great wave spilled over the deck as the creature’s head and long neck burst out of the water.

“Look out!”

The creature suddenly reared back, then snapped its head forward, its mouth sending out huge sparks the size of lightning bolts. Amid screams of fright, they all dove onto the deck to avoid the hot fiery sparks, which luckily seemed to dissipate in the air just above the ship.

“It’s going to kill us!” Jackpine yelled as the ship continued to list perilously and the air around them crackled with flames.

“The musket!” Sir John shouted. He had been thrown back from the prow by the tossing and rocking of the ship, but now he grasped a cleat on deck and yelled to Peggy.

“There! Right beside you! The musket! Get it!”

Peggy looked around. There was a thick-barrelled rifle mounted just underneath the gunnel. She pried it loose, then held it out towards Sir John.

“No. You must do it! Raise it to your shoulder,” he ordered her.

Peggy did so, awkwardly.

“Now aim!”

She pointed it upward towards the creature’s head.

“Ready …” Sir John called out, “… aim …”

Before she could fire, Peggy lunged back onto the deck to avoid another volley of flames. The creature was now directly over her. She could practically see into its huge, snarling mouth. She scrambled onto her knees and lifted the gun back up to her shoulder. Aiming the barrel straight at the creature, she cocked the trigger.

“Hold it steady as you can while you release the trigger. Ready … aim … fire!”

She heard Sir John’s voice, but her finger remained frozen on the trigger.

“Fire! Now!” Sir John bellowed. “What’s the matter?”

Peggy took a deep breath.

Come on, pull the trigger.

But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She heard Molly calling to her.

“Go on, Peggy!” she shouted fiercely. “Blow its head off!”

She looked at the creature’s head and imagined its flesh ripping apart at the shell’s impact. The image sent a surge of adrenaline through her and she tightened her grip on the musket.

I can do this, she told herself. I can do it!

But something in her still held back.

Suddenly a loud blast sounded. Peggy watched as a shell went careening towards the monster’s head. But her finger was still planted on the trigger of the musket. What happened? She hadn’t fired!

She looked up, expecting to see the creature’s flesh torn apart by the impact of the shell. But as soon as it was hit, the monster seemed to dissipate, like a puff of smoke into the air. After a moment there was nothing left of it, except for a strange band of light looming over the spot where it had been thrashing around seconds earlier.

Peggy heard a commotion on deck and turned to see Sir John and Molly rushing over to Jackpine, wide grins on their faces. What was going on? Then she noticed that another musket was cradled in Jackpine’s elbow. He lifted it over his head jubilantly.

“Did you see that? One shot!” he shouted. “I nailed it my very first shot!”

So it was Jackpine who’d fired at the monster, not her.

She looked out over the sea. The strange ring of light now seemed to be moving along the surface of the water towards the ship. It hovered over the deck not far from where Peggy stood, and she watched in amazement as it lengthened to form a kind of column.

She tried to alert the others to the strange phenomenon, but they were busy congratulating Jackpine. When she turned back towards the shaft of light, she saw what appeared to be a solid form taking shape within it.

Then, abruptly, the light vanished altogether. There, on the exact same spot, stood Lady Jane Franklin.

Chapter 8:  Gone

PEGGY WAS SHOCKED, not just by the eerie way in which Lady Jane had materialized on the deck, but also by the way she looked – weak, pale, almost ghostlike. She rushed over to her but was greeted with a dismissive wave.

“Go! Leave me alone! I am fine!”

Stung, Peggy started to back away, then looked straight at Lady Franklin.

“Sir John may pretend not to notice,” she said, “but it’s obvious to the rest of us that something pretty strange is going on here.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Lady Franklin answered.

“The way you come and go so suddenly. How do you do it? Where do you go?”

The older woman shrugged. “Where is there to go? About the ship, below deck …”

“No! It’s like you disappear into thin air. Where were you when we were fighting that sea monster? You had something to do with it, didn’t you?”

“I?” Lady Franklin’s laugh had a sarcastic edge. “Do I look like a sea monster to you?”

“I should have known better than to try and get a straight answer out of you,” Peggy said testily. As she turned to go, Lady Franklin’s voice brought her up short.

“You couldn’t do it, could you!”

Peggy turned to face her. “Excuse me?”

“You didn’t have it in you!”

“What are you talking about?” Peggy demanded.

“You should have fired the gun!” Lady Franklin said icily. “You should have destroyed the monster! Why didn’t you do it?”

“What does it matter?” Peggy shot back. “The monster’s gone, isn’t it?”

“How can you prepare yourself for what lies ahead if you fail a simple test like this?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about!”

“You will find out soon enough,” Lady Jane said curtly.

Peggy was about to demand an explanation. But she saw a look of such overwhelming fatigue on Lady Franklin’s face, that she thought the older woman might faint. Then she seemed to gather her forces, and marched over to her husband with a determinedly cheerful smile.

They were all still clustered around Jackpine. Though they found the monster’s abrupt disappearance curious, it was clear to Peggy that she was the only one who had witnessed Lady Franklin’s sudden, bizarre reappearance.

“I still can’t believe that thing went down so easily!”

Molly was saying, as she slapped Jackpine heartily on the back. “I was sure you’d have to shoot a bunch of those shells.”

“Yes, the whole thing was a bit strange,” Gavi allowed. “Do you have any idea what that thing was, Sir John?”

“There is a creature the Eskimos call Sedna,” said Sir John. “A sea goddess. They call her the guardian of all the creatures of the sea, and say she is more powerful than our

God. Which I dismissed as more mythical nonsense, of course. But I am no longer so certain of things as I was once. The important thing is,” he said, patting his wife’s arm reassuringly, “we are safe now.”

Watching them all, Peggy felt a sudden surge of anger.

Hey, what about me? she wanted to shout. I would have shot it if I’d had the chance! Of course, she was being ridiculous, she told herself. She’d had her chance. She had frozen up, and Jackpine had moved into the breach. After all, somebody had to do something.

Lady Franklin’s words burned in Peggy’s brain: You failed the test. You should have fired the gun. Why didn’t you?

Why didn ‘t I?

 §§

“Gavi, do you know how these holes got into my lucky bone?”

Gavi was so obsessed with understanding the mysterious creature and how it fit into the cosmology of Notherland that he barely took note of Mi’s question, and lumbered off muttering to himself: “A monster? A sea goddess? How could I have not known about it?”

Mi started to run after him, but Molly held her back. “Better leave him alone for now. You know what he’s like when he gets in one of his thinking moods.”

Reluctantly, Mi admitted that Molly was right. Gavi was in no mood for questions.

“I’m going below deck to find Sir John,” Molly told her. “I think you’d better come with me. Somebody should keep an eye on you all the time.”

But Mi didn’t want to go below deck. It was dark down there. There wasn’t any place to play.

“I want to stay up here,” she told Molly.

The doll hesitated on the stairway. “All right,” she said finally. “I’ll only be gone a few minutes. Be careful. Keep out of sight. And whatever you do – no singing! Not a peep! Understand?”

Mi nodded solemnly and watched Molly go below. She began skipping along the deck towards the stern. As she sprang past the main mast, she stopped suddenly. Up ahead were Peggy and Jackpine.

They seemed to be having an animated discussion, perhaps even an argument, Mi couldn’t be sure. But she was struck by how the air around them seemed to crackle with currents of excitement. They seemed completely caught up in one another and oblivious to everything else.

Fine, she thought. Everybody’s busy with their own things. She’d just play by herself. She was tired of them hovering around, constantly watching her. And she was sick of having to be so careful all the time. Right now, she was free to do just what she wanted.

Her eyes ran up the tall mast. It would be fun to climb up to the crow’s-nest and look around. Maybe she, could see all the way to the Hole at the Pole!

She began climbing up the shrouds, the way she’d seen Molly do under Sir John’s tutelage. There was a bit of a wind up, but she’d be very careful not to get blown away. She’d hold on tight.

§§

Molly wondered why Sir John was taking so long below. She noticed that the door to his quarters was slightly ajar. Gingerly she approached it, and when she looked inside she could see Sir John from the back, slumped over his desk. The ship’s log was open in front of him, and at first she thought he must be recording an entry. But then she saw a great shudder run through him, accompanied by a low moan, like weeping.

She wondered what to do. Did he wish to be left alone? Did she dare say anything, or even let on that she had seen him in this state?

She decided to tiptoe away quietly, but as she turned she brushed the door handle lightly, making the door knock gently against the jamb. Sir John raised his head and turned towards her. His eyes were swollen and red, and tears streamed down his cheeks.

Molly was overcome with embarrassment and immediately stiffened herself into a salute.

“Excuse me, Captain, sir. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

She turned, intending to rush away, but Sir John called after her.

“Molly!”

She immediately noted that he hadn’t prefaced it with “Ensign,” as he usually did.

“Don’t go,” he pleaded, in a tone very different from the one Molly was used to hearing. “I cannot bear to be alone right now. Please … stay.”

“Sir?” Molly stood stiffly at attention at the end of the desk. “Would you like me to go fetch Lady Franklin?”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Lady Franklin is … gone!”

Molly watched transfixed as the great Franklin was overcome by racking sobs. He seemed to be in the grip of a terrible grief.

“Gone, sir? But I saw her only a short time ago …”

He looked up, composed himself and pushed the log across the desk towards her. Molly looked at the latest entry, and, putting to use all of Gavi’s painstaking instruction in reading, she managed to decipher the words.

Dearest,

I must be away for some time. But I shall do everything in my power to return to you. Our time together has been a great unexpected gift for both of us. Now the final phase of your great quest beckons. Do not lose heart! Know that I love you now and in eternity.

Yours, Jane.

“She is all I have, Molly. Now I am losing her. She is being wrenched away from me. Our life together is at an end.”

“But Sir John, how could she leave the ship? Where would she go?”

Lord Franklin looked down and shook his head mournfully, as if he hadn’t heard her.

“I knew it would come to this, one day. I knew it could not last forever. I am no fool. I knew she could not really be my Jane. She knew that I knew, but we never spoke of it. And I truly felt that a part of Jane’s spirit somehow lived within her.”

Finally he looked up and saw the look of bewilderment on Molly’s face. He took a deep breath and began again in a calmer, more measured tone.

“You see,” he went on, “I am perfectly well aware of the strangeness of my situation here. I know that my Jane passed on to her eternal rest many years ago, as did Crozier and Gore and the rest of my crew. I watched as they grew more hollowed-out and wasted with each passing day, their fingers and noses blackened by the freezing cold. I have seen such unimaginable horrors, Molly …” He paused a moment, unable to continue.

“Dead. All of them. One after another. Because of my pig-headedness!”

“You? What do you mean, sir?” Molly asked.

“How many times I’ve castigated myself! If only I had not ordered the ships to turn south near Beechey Island, where we became trapped in the great ice stream that flows down from the Beaufort Sea! The Eskimos warned us against it, but stubbornly I clung to my planned route.

“I could not understand why I was being spared, why I had not passed on with all the others. I decided that was to be my punishment – doomed to stay alive, to live with the guilt of having caused so many to die. As the days and months passed, I grew more and more desperately lonely. To ease my loneliness I would speak with Jane, as if she were here with me. Gradually, I became aware of an uncanny feeling that I was no longer alone, that some other presence was nearby.

“Then one day, I woke up to find my beloved Jane sitting on the deck, calmly pouring morning tea. I thought she must be some kind of hallucination, that my thoughts of her had become so powerful that they had somehow conjured up her image. But as we spent time in each other’s company, I could tell she was no mere figment of my imagination. She had a reality separate from mine. So I decided to accept her presence, without question, and to accept my fate, which is, apparently, for me to remain in this realm until I am called to meet my Maker. As long as I had someone so dear to pass the time with, it was all so much easier.

“I truly do not know whether I am living or dead, whether I am human or pure spirit. I only know that something is keeping me here, some force beyond my control or understanding. But now that I am faced with the prospect of losing my Jane for a second time …”

Here Sir John’s voice began to break, but he summoned his resources and went on.

“I no longer wish to remain here. I long to pass over into Eternity, so I can be with my Jane and find my final resting place. I cannot bear the thought of life without her!”

Molly listened, mesmerized, to every word of Sir John’s tale. She feared that he would break down sobbing once again, but he simply sat with a look of unutterable sadness as a single tear made its way slowly down his cheek. Molly was overcome with pity. She had had no inkling of the trials Sir John had been through, or of the deep well of feeling that lay beneath his stem military demeanor. What could she possibly say that would begin to offer him any comfort?

“But Sir John …” Molly began, haltingly. “What about your great mission? The Pole … we are .so close!”

“I no longer care about reaching the Pole. Without the love of my life, nothing matters.”

“If it would be of any help, sir,” she added softly, “I will stay with you.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Molly felt like kicking herself. What an idiotic thing to say at a time like this! As if her companionship could in any way begin to make up for the loss of the most important person in Sir John’s life!

Yet it made her realize that, however much they clashed with one another, she had become very attached to this man. Finally she had found someone in her life who took her seriously, who did not treat her like a mere plaything but demanded things from her, things that would help her live out her dreams! She wanted to plead with him not to pass over into Eternity, wherever that was, but to stay and keep serving as her Captain, her mentor, her teacher.

To her surprise, Sir John did not dismiss what she said. Indeed, he seemed to consider it quite seriously.

“It’s true that you seem to have come here at an opportune time,” he said. “Your presence here has given me a renewed sense of purpose, and one cannot live without a sense of purpose, any more than one can live without love and companionship. The Terror has once again set sail, and she has a new crew. All this is good. Still …”

He lingered on the last word, and Molly saw the pain flow back into his eyes.

“Sir John?”

“Yes, Molly?”

“Lady Jane did plead with you not to lose heart. And she promised to return – if she could.”

Lord Franklin got to his feet, and for the first time since their conversation began, Molly saw a spark of the old, familiar Captain.

“You’re right, of course. Here I am, moping about, when I should be making the best of things, as my Jane always counselled me to do. Thank you, Molly, for bringing me back to myself. You’re a wise young girl.”

§§

Mi looked out over the vastness of the Great Polar Sea from her perch on the mast. The wind whipped her around as if she were a piece of cloth, but she held on tight. To be up so high, to be part of something so unfathomably huge – Mi found it all exhilarating! Even being part of the RoryBory on a clear night was nothing like this. Now she was wide awake, and she was free! No RoryBory to fit into, no Gavi or Molly to tell her what to do. She felt like singing out her joy, but she reminded herself of Molly’s warning.

She took out her lucky bone and waved it in the breeze. She was seized by an impulse to blow into it to see if it would make a noise. When she did, she was startled to hear how hauntingly familiar it sounded. This was not noise. It was music!

She blew into the bone again. Yes, it was unmistakably music. Not only that, it was her music, her note. It truly was her lucky bone! She couldn’t wait to tell Gavi about this fascinating discovery.

A sudden chill coursed through her small body. She decided to scurry back down to the deck, before any of them realized where she’d gone and scolded her. As she began making her way down the shrouds, the wind grew stronger, and she had a sensation of some kind of force pulling on her, as if trying to wrench her away from the mast. Then she felt the dreadful chill again, and she thought she heard a sound like harsh laughter off in the distance.

She held on for dear life.

Chapter 9:  The Bone Flute

JACKPINE WAS STILL EXHILARATED from shooting down the sea monster.

“Now I’m really going to take on the Nobodaddy. I can’t wait to get back down in that Hole. I’m going to finish him off once and for all!”

“Listen to you,” Peggy teased him. “The way you talk, you’d think you were going down there on your own.”

“That’s exactly what I plan to do.”

“What are you talking about? I thought we were in this together.”

“You don’t think I’m going to let you go down there, do you?”

“Let?” Peggy sputtered. “Excuse me? Who are you to ‘let’ me do anything?”

“I’ve been down there. I know what to expect. You won’t be able to handle it. He’ll just eat you alive.”

“Well, thanks for your concern,” said Peggy sarcastically, “but I’ll make up my own mind.”

“Come on. You couldn’t pull the trigger on that musket.”

“I was about to!”

“Look, you don’t know what you’re dealing with here. It’s like he gets right inside you and messes up your head. You can’t tell his thoughts from your own. You’ve got to be tough with a creature like that. When the time is right, you have to go after him. You can’t hesitate. Not for a second! I honestly don’t think you’ve got what it takes.”

“Why? Because I’m not all eaten up with hatred inside like you are?”

He looked into her eyes with a cold, hard stare.

“Maybe hatred is something you could use a bit more of.”

They were interrupted by the sound of a prolonged tremolo wail.

Peggy felt a shiver run down her spine: the tremolo was the call Gavi used only in dire emergencies. They spied the loon at the base of the main mast and raced over to him.

“Gavi! What is it?”

But the loon continued to wail, utterly despondent.

Finally Peggy reached over and touched his wing.

“Gavi, stop! You’ve got to use words and tell us what’s wrong.”

“She is gonnne!”

Before Peggy could say anything more, they heard Lord Franklin’s voice behind them.

“Yes, we know!”

They turned to see the old captain and Molly emerging from the top of the stairs.

“Yes, she is gone, dear boy,” Sir John continued. “But we must keep a stiff upper lip and make the best of it.”

As though he hadn’t heard a word Sir John said, Gavi commenced wailing again.

“Gonnnne!”

“Who’s gone?” Peggy demanded.

The old man looked as though he were fighting back tears as he handed her the ship’s log with Lady Franklin’s note.

“I’m afraid it’s true. My dearest Jane has left us.”

“Left?” Peggy and Jackpine both looked bewildered. “How?”

“She is gonnnnnne!”

They were all becoming exasperated trying to make themselves heard over Gavi’s persistent wailing. Then a terrible thought gripped Peggy.

“Gavi! Where’s Mi?”

Now the loon lapsed back into his incoherent tremolo.

“Gavi! Speak words!” Peggy insisted. “Where’s Mi?”

Gavi lifted one wing and seemed to be pointing to something near the bottom of the mast.

“I was with her just a few minutes ago!” Molly cried. “Maybe the Nobodaddy took her!”

“No way,” Peggy said firmly. “She wouldn’t have been stupid enough to sing, and that’s the only way the Nobodaddy could have found her. She must be hiding somewhere.”

Gavi gestured again towards the bottom of the mast, more insistently this time. Finally Peggy looked where he was pointing, and saw something lying there. She went and picked it up.

“It’s one of those treasures she carried around – the one she calls her lucky bone.”

Finally Gavi’s speaking voice came back to him.

“Blow into it.”

“Huh?” Peggy thought she couldn’t have heard him right.

“Blow into the bone. You will see.”

“See what?”

Peggy lifted the bone and placed it between her lips. Automatically, her fingers moved to cover the holes and suddenly, it was clear to her what Gavi was talking about.

She lowered the bone and looked at him.

“It’s not, is it?”

“Yes,” the loon replied quietly. “It is.”

“What are you two talking about?” Molly cried impatiently.

Peggy raised the bone to her lips again, pressed her fingers over the holes and blew through it.

As air flowed through the bone, it released a distinctly musical tone.

Do …

She moved her fingers, leaving one of the holes uncovered this time, and blew again.

Re …

Then she blew a third time, leaving both holes uncovered.

Mi …

“So that’s how the Nobodaddy discovered her!”

“The bone is a kind of flute. I was trying so hard to figure everything out,” Gavi cried bitterly, “but I was not paying attention to the most important thing of all! Mi tried to show me, but I kept ignoring her. And now she has been snatched away. The last of the Nordlings is gone! We are all doomed. Notherland is dooooommed.”

“It’s my fault!” Molly burst out. “I shouldn’t have left her alone on the deck!”

And Gavi wailed as if his heart would break: “Gonnnnne! Dooooommed!”

 §§

For the next few hours they all worked furiously, trying to sail the rest of the distance across the Great Polar Sea as quickly as possible. Molly took the helm, and Peggy and Jackpine trimmed the sails, while Sir John scoured the hold of the ship for fuel, hoping to get the Terror’s old coal-fired engine going again. But it was no use. The entire store had been used up long ago.

Gavi racked his brain, going over every conceivable possibility, trying to corne up with a plan. Maybe if he thought hard enough, if they could sail the Terror fast enough, they’d somehow find a way to reach the Pole before nightfall. As long as there was daylight, there was still hope.

But as darkness descended, though the Great Skyway sloped out of the sky as it always did, there was not a single Nordling to make the journey upward.

On the deck of the Terror, the gloom was almost palpable. Gavi began to berate himself.

“How stupid I am! I thought I knew so much, but I know nothing!”

To complicate matters, Sir John was still overcome with grief at the loss of his wife. Molly ran back and forth between Sir John and Gavi, trying to comfort and reassure them both. But Peggy could see that underneath the doll’s frantic efforts to raise their spirits, she was waging a fierce battle to keep from crying herself.

The spectre of almost certain failure only made Jackpine more furiously determined to make the ship go faster. But as he worked, he had a hollow look in his eyes, one that reminded Peggy of the odd feeling of familiarity she’d had when she first met him.

Peggy felt the gloom seeping through the pores of her own skin. She looked around. The Terror was now drifting aimlessly in the open sea. They had given up. It was all over. Notherland was doomed to extinction.

She was the Creator, but never had she felt so utterly powerless. The darkness deepened around her. It was as if the Hole had already swallowed them up.

She took out Mi’s bone. It felt strange to hold a flute in her hands again, even one as simple as this. Her fingers spontaneously cradled around the holes in the bone, as if they felt completely at home there. She lifted it to her lips and blew a sustained, unadorned note, sending out her sorrow in a deep, mournful cry over the vast ocean.

Then she tucked the little flute into her pocket and fell into an exhausted sleep.

§§

It wasn’t lost after all!

She was standing in front of a store, holding her flute case. There was a sign in the window: Used Musical Instruments Bought and Sold. She went inside. It wasn’t a brightly lit store like Around Again, but a small, dingy pawnshop. She walked over to the counter and laid her flute case on it. But when she opened the case, the man behind the counter laughed out loud.

“Honey, this is just an old bone!”

She looked and saw with a shock that it wasn’t her silver flute, but a plain bone flute with jagged ends.

She looked around. The pawnshop was filled with other customers, and they were all laughing heartily and pointing to the bone flute. Humiliated, she rushed to the door, leaving the case sitting on the counter.

Someone was coming in the door of the pawnshop. It was Lady Jane! No one in the shop seemed surprised by the strange way she was dressed. In fact, no one seemed to notice her at all.

“You must go back and get your flute, “ Lady Jane said.

“Why? It’s just a worthless hunk of junk!” Peggy said bitterly.

To her surprise, Lady Jane put her arms around her and began to murmur comfortingly.

“You must not be discouraged, child. It’s a long day. A very, very long day.”

 §§

When she jerked awake, Peggy felt a momentary sense of comfort from the dream. Maybe it was a sign that things really would turn out all right. But then she could hear the man’s mocking laughter in her ears. And what did Lady Jane mean by that odd phrase “It’s a long day,” instead of “It’s been a long day”?

She realized that she’d only drifted off for a short time, since night hadn’t yet come. As she watched the sun drop lower and lower on the horizon, she felt sure that the dream was nothing but wishful thinking, an attempt to give herself one last thread of hope. One thing was certain: that thin crescent of sun was about to disappear. Strangely, her terror of night had receded. Now she was only aware of a feeling of detached curiosity.

What would happen at the moment the sun was swallowed up completely? Would Notherland itself instantly disappear? Would it grow smaller and smaller, or slowly fade away, like a scene in a movie? What would happen to Peggy herself? Would she be annihilated, or abruptly thrown back into her other life in the “real” world? How strange – just as Notherland sat poised on the edge of total extinction, it seemed far more real to her than that other life.

The tiny crescent hung there, as if in suspension. Any moment now …

Peggy blinked her eyes, and it seemed in that fraction of a second that the crescent had grown slightly larger. Were her eyes playing tricks on her?

As she watched, the sliver-sized sun did seem to be growing larger, even moving back above the horizon. But how? It couldn’t be …

“It’s a long day.”

A long day.

”A very, very long day …”

“Gavi!”

The loon lumbered across the deck towards her.

“What is it?”

“Gavi!” Peggy was so excited she could hardly speak. “Do you realize what day this is?”

Gavi stared at her, uncomprehending.

“Look!” she said, pointing to the horizon. “The sun didn’t set! I swear it didn’t! It’s rising again!”

Roused by the commotion, the others came running, too.

“The Solstice!” Gavi cried. “The endless day! The one day of the year when the sun does not set in Notherland! What a dummy I am for not thinking of it!”

He let loose with a wild, ringing loon-laugh. Sir John, Molly and Peggy looked at one another, then suddenly began to jump up and down, screaming and hugging.

“We’re saved!” Molly cried.

“Saaaaaved!” Gavi chimed in.

“Not quite,” Sir John pointed out. “But at least now we’ve got a fighting chance.”

“Not much of one,” Peggy added. “The days start getting shorter now. Without the RoryBory, as soon as that sun drops below the horizon, even for half a second, Notherland is history. That means we’ve got less than twenty-four hours to get to the Pole and figure out a way to free the Nordlings.” She called over to Sir John. “What’s our position?”

“Thunderation if I can tell!” the old captain said with exasperation. “The farther north we go, the worse havoc that blasted Pole plays with my instruments!”

“Can you figure out how soon we’ll arrive at the Pole?”

Sir John shook his head. “Not precisely. But it can’t be far.”

“True north, full speed ahead!” Molly called out heartily.

“That’s what I like to hear!” replied Sir John.

Peggy looked around. “Wait a minute! Where’s Jackpine?”

They looked at one another. In all the excitement, they hadn’t even noticed his absence.

“Jackpine?” Peggy called out. “Jackpine?”

“Look!” Molly gasped as she pointed up ahead.

The Terror’s lifeboat, which had been lashed to the side of the foredeck, was missing. On the same spot there was a single sheet of paper, tacked down with a nail. Molly retrieved the paper and handed it to Peggy. She read it quickly, then silently handed it to Sir John, who read it out loud.

Dear Peggy and crew of the Terror –

I’ve gone on by myself. I can get there faster in the small boat. This way there’s a chance I can still get to the Pole in time to get the Souls out of there, and the Nordlings, too. At least this time I don’t have to swim! Turn back while you still can. Don’t worry about me. Whatever happens, it was worth it to be free for a while, and to know you. Farewell.

Your good friend, Jackpine.

As he read, Peggy fought to control the confused jumble of emotions washing over her. Giddy excitement, that he’d addressed her by name and not the others. Anger, that he was shutting her out, trying to do it all himself. Anguish, that he’d left so abruptly, without saying goodbye, even though she might never see him again.

When Sir John finished, Molly was the first to speak. “He wants us to turn back!”

Gavi shook his head sadly. “Jackpine is very brave, but very foolish. He was defeated by the Nobodaddy once before. Alone, he may not survive a second attempt.”

“Yeah, he needs our help!” Molly declared. “I want to keep going! Don’t you, Peggy?”

Before Peggy could answer, Sir John’s booming voice broke through.

“Ahoy! Ahoy!”

They all looked in the direction he was pointing. Off in the distance was a huge, white, irregularly shaped object.

“What is it?” Molly cried excitedly. “Land? Are we at the Pole?”

The object was tearing towards the ship at great speed. As it grew closer, Peggy could make out sharp, jagged points of ice jutting out at its base, like the blades of an enormous jigsaw.

“Iceberg!” she yelled. “Dead ahead!”

Now it was headed straight for the Terror.

§§

It was only Molly’s quick thinking and skillful work at the helm that prevented the iceberg from taking a deep gash out of the ship. She swerved the Terror sharply to port just as the iceberg was bearing down on it, causing the ship to list badly.

It happened so quickly that the others barely had time to react. They all watched, with gaping mouths, as the huge hunk of ice barrelled towards them, and they grabbed on to whatever they could as the ship leaned perilously to one side. As soon as Sir John saw that the iceberg had bypassed the ship and they were out of danger, he called out to Molly.

“Hell of a steering job, Ensign Molly!”

But it quickly became clear that their relief was premature.

“Look!” Peggy pointed off in the distance.

There were more icebergs, perhaps dozens more.

“They must be breaking off from the ice around the Pole!” Gavi said.

“Good heavens! How are we going to steer around all of them?” Sir John cried.

He had barely finished his sentence when his voice was drowned out by a cacophony of smashing, scraping and grinding noises up ahead of them.

“They’re crashing into each other!” Peggy shouted, barely making herself heard. “Here they come! Look out!”

Two icebergs were coming at the Terror, one on either side. It seemed certain that the ship would be crushed between them. Sir John grabbed the helm as Molly dove for the mainsheet, pulling at it and catching a strong gust of wind that propelled the ship forward with such force it almost lifted it out of the water. They all looked behind and saw the two icebergs collide, creating an explosion that sent shards of ice spewing into the air around them.

As more of the huge ice-forms swarmed around the ship, sometimes looming right above their heads, Molly took the helm and steered like an experienced sailor. Her reflexes seemed almost supernaturally sharp. With Sir John at her side, guiding her every maneuver, even her blind eye caused her no problem.

Just when Molly’s concentration was beginning to give out, the sea around them grew calmer and quieter, and the icebergs began to recede behind them.

The great rim of the Hole, with billowing puffs of smoky vapor rising out of it, appeared before them.

“It looks as though Hell has frozen over,” Gavi said.

“Is that what I think it is?” Molly cried, pointing ahead.

Peggy’s heart leapt when she saw the Terror’s lifeboat, along with a pair of oars, lying beside the rim of the Hole.

The Notherland Journeys, Episode 2

May 29, 2016 | Notherland | 0 comments

THE NOTHERLAND JOURNEYS, BOOK I: The Nordlings

Chapter 4:  Jackpine

HOW THEY MANAGED to outrun the NoSeeUms, Peggy wasn’t sure. All she knew was that, having run almost to the limit of her endurance, she stopped and realized, with enormous relief, that the swarms of bugs were no longer following them. Instead of the low drone of their incessant buzzing, there was silence.

At least I managed to keep Mi from getting eaten alive, Peggy thought as she sat scratching at the bites.

“Another few moments and I would have been nothing but a pile of bones and gristle!” Gavi declared with high drama, rolling around on his back in a vain attempt to relieve the nagging itch. After Molly had scooped Mi out from under his wing and scurried away with her, Gavi had managed to get away from the NoSeeUms by diving into the middle of the stream, where the water was just deep enough to cover his body.

Peggy looked over at Molly, who was sitting comfortably a few feet away. Not a bite on her! Peggy thought enviously. Being a doll had its advantages.

“If only,” Gavi went on, moaning, “you had thought to try imagining them away!”

“I did,” she replied sourly.

“What?”

“I tried imagining them away.”

“Oh.”

“Some Creator, eh?”

Gavi thought a moment.

“Perhaps, like everything here, your powers have undergone changes and are of a different order than when you were younger. It might take some time before you rediscover how to use them.”

Molly called over to them. She was pointing to something in the distance.

“Look. Is that a tree?”

“It couldn’t be,” said Peggy. “Not here.”

“Then what is it?”

“Let’s go see,” Peggy replied. Anything to get her mind off the insane itching!

As they got closer, it became clear that it was, indeed, a tree.

“A jack pine,” Gavi said. “To be precise.”

“But what would a jack pine be doing so far above the Tree Line?” Peggy asked, walking up to it and fingering one of its branches.

“Well,” Gavi speculated, “the jack pine is a very hardy species. A seed, perhaps even a whole pine cone, could have gotten blown this far by the wind …”

“What was that?”

“Molly,” Gavi sighed, “must you always interrupt people when they are speaking?”

“But I heard something. It sounded like a voice.”

“But we’re the only ones here,” Peggy pointed out. She turned back to Gavi. “Even if a seed could have travelled this far, how could it have grown? It’s so barren here.” She absentmindedly touched the branch again.

“I know it seems unlikely, but it is the only explanation I can …” Gavi was distracted by Mi tugging at one of his wings.

“I hear something, too,” she said in her sweet, high voice.

“I heard it again! When you touched the branch!” Molly blurted out.

Peggy looked at Gavi. “Did you hear anything?”

“I might have heard something, but …”

“Touch the tree again!” Molly commanded.

“Why?”

“Just see what happens!”

Peggy reached over and touched the needles of one branch.

“Yessss!”

She looked around. This time she had distinctly heard something, too.

“A talking tree? Of course. Why should I be surprised?”

“I’m not a tree!”

They all gasped. It was unmistakable this time. It was a voice, and it was coming from the jack pine.

“Don’t pull away!” the voice said urgently. “Touch me again.”

They all looked at one another.

“Please. It’s my only chance!”

Peggy hesitantly reached over and touched the branch once more.

“Hold on this time. Please! Don’t let go!”

Almost involuntarily, she tightened her grip. As she held on, they all stood, gaping in amazement, and watched the tree become transparent, its branches fading into pale wisps, as the outline of a solid form appeared to emerge from it. After a few moments, Peggy realized with a shock that it was not a branch she was holding onto but a human hand.

The jack pine had disappeared completely. In its place stood a young man.

§§

For the longest time, Peggy couldn’t take her eyes off him. Who was he? Where did he come from? How did he come to be here in Notherland? And most unnerving of all, why did he look vaguely familiar? She had the nagging sense that she’d seen him somewhere before.

At first he stood stock-still, his feet rooted to the ground, his legs straight like a tree trunk, his arms stretched outward, like pine branches. His eyes were the first to move, shifting back and forth warily. He turned his head side to side, slowly lifted one foot off the ground, then the other. Realizing that his arms were no longer encased in branches, he began to move them, wiggling his fingers in front of his face with a look of utter amazement. Then he began touching his face again and again, as if to assure himself that he was really there. At first his movements were stiff, like Molly’s, but gradually they became easier, more fluid.

Finally he jumped into the air and let out a whoop. “WHOOEE!”

The others were startled, but Mi laughed with a sweet, bubbling lilt. The young man looked around, agitated.

“What was that?”

“It’s just Mi,” Molly said, pointing to the little creature peering out from inside the knapsack.

“That voice … it’s just like the others …”

Gavi sprang towards him. “Others? What others?”

“Never mind,” the young man said.

“Have you heard others like her?” the loon persisted. “Where? You must tell us.”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” the young man said angrily. He turned away.

Gavi and Peggy looked at one another, uncertain whether to press him further. Gavi spoke softly.

“Perhaps I should explain why we want to know. You see, we are on our way to the Hole at the Pole because we think that the Nobodaddy might have …”

“The Nobodaddy?” The young man turned on Gavi with a dark look. He suddenly grabbed the loon by the neck.

“What about the Nobodaddy? Did he send you after me? Is that why you’re here? To do his dirty work?”

Gavi let loose with a high, fearful tremolo. Molly pounded the young man angrily on the back and Peggy grabbed his arm. “Leave him alone! What’s the matter with you?”

“If you’re with the Nobodaddy, I swear I’ll kill you right now!”

“He’s not with the Nobodaddy! None of us are! We’re on our way to the Pole to stop him!”

The young man let go and looked at them long and hard, breathing heavily. Peggy could see how much effort it took for him to contain his rage.

“Sorry,” he finally said. “Just hearing that name after all this time …”

“Maybe you’d better begin at the beginning,” Peggy said. “Just who are you?”

The young man looked her right in the eye.

“I have no idea,” he replied.

§§

The young man’s story was so fragmented, and he became so agitated while telling it, that it was a while before they could make much sense of it. But the source of his fierce hatred for the Nobodaddy quickly became clear. According to the young man, the Nobodaddy had robbed him of his most precious possession.

“I look like I’m standing right here before you, don’t I? But I’m not. Part of me, the part that knows who I am, that has a name and a life and a memory – that part of me is off in another world somewhere.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Peggy asked.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” he shot back impatiently. “I’m a Soul.”

“A Soul?”

“The Nobodaddy stole me. That’s what he does. He steals Souls!”

“You mean there are more like you?” Gavi asked.

“Are you kidding?” the young man said with a bitter laugh. “The Hole at the Pole is filled with more Souls than you can count!”

“But what about her?” Gavi pointed to Mi. “You said there were other beings like her at the Pole, too.”

The young man nodded gravely.

“The little ones who sing? Oh, they’re there all right. And they sure must have something special, because the Nobodaddy keeps them way down in the deepest part of the Hole. The rest of us could hear them from time to time. I swear, hearing those little voices was all that kept me going sometimes.”

“But how does he keep them all as prisoners down there?”

“That’s the mysterious thing. The Hole exerts some kind of powerful inward pull that traps you and keeps pulling you down, no matter how hard you fight it.”

“Then how did you get out?” Peggy asked.

“He let me go. I was always stirring up the other Souls. 1’d try to convince them we should stand up to him. There were so many of us, and only one of him. I thought if we all pulled together we could find a way to get free. But the people in the Hole are so frustrating! Once they’ve been down there a while it’s like they just give up. They don’t believe they can ever be free, so they stop trying.

“Then, one time I was on the ledge of the Hole, right near the outer rim, and just for a moment I could feel the inward pull of the Hole easing up. I quickly slipped out over the edge and yelled to the others around me to come, too. But they wouldn’t. They were just too afraid. I couldn’t believe it! They could’ve made a break for it, and they all just froze!

“Then the Hole started to pull in again. They all began shouting at me. ‘Go! Get away! We can’t get free, but at least you can!’

“So I made a mad dash for the open water that surrounds the Hole and jumped in. I swam for I don’t know how long. The water was on the edge of freezing and I didn’t know how long I could last. Somehow I kept going, till I got to the big ice field on the other side and started running again. When I got to the tundra I suddenly just stopped. I realized I had no idea who I was or where I was going or how to find my way back to the life I had before. I was free, but …”

“But what?”

“I played right into his hands!” he spat out bitterly. “The Nobodaddy had deliberately let me go. I was a troublemaker and he wanted to get rid of me. He knew 1’d get completely lost or die trying to escape. So it didn’t matter that I was free, because either way, he’d won. I was so angry, I grabbed what I thought was a rock and started pounding the tundra with it. But it wasn’t a rock, it was a pine cone. The ground was so hard the cone exploded and a shower of seeds came shooting out. They seemed to surround me like a mist, which grew thicker and thicker, until finally I realized it was wood. A tree, a full-grown jack pine, had instantly taken root right on this spot, and I was trapped inside it.

“I have no idea how long I was in there – days, months, years? I was in this slowed-down kind of half-awake state. It wasn’t until you came along that I started to come out of it. The instant you touched me,” he turned to Peggy, “it was like I was jolted awake. My voice came back, I could feel my body again. But then you pulled your hand away and I could feel myself falling back into a stupor. That’s why I had to make you hold on,” he said, grabbing her hand, “to give me time to fight my way out of the tree.” He dropped her hand again, suddenly embarrassed.

“My worst fear has come true!” Gavi burst out.

They all looked at him.

“What’s wrong?” Peggy asked.

“Just as Notherland has taken on a life of its own, so has the Nobodaddy. Just as Notherland has gone beyond its boundaries, so has he.”

“Stop talking in riddles!” Molly said impatiently.

Gavi burst out with a long wail.

“How could I have made such a terrible mistake? How could I have done this to my Creator?” He turned to Peggy. “We should never have brought you here! The Nobodaddy is not just abducting Nordlings. He is stalking the world on the other side of Painted Rock, stealing Souls from there! We thought you were the one who could save us, but now I see that we have put you in grave danger!”

The young man broke in.

“He’s right. They haven’t got souls,” he said, pointing to Gavi and Molly, “but you do. You’re a sitting duck for the Nobodaddy. If you’re smart, you’ll get out of here as fast as you can.”

Gavi agreed. “You must go straight back to Painted Rock! Immediately!”

“We don’t want him to get you, too!” Mi cried.

“But I can’t leave now!” Peggy objected. “I don’t even know if I can figure out how to get back.”

“You must try. At least you will have a chance of saving yourself.”

“I thought saving Notherland depended on me. That’s why you brought me here!”

“We were wrong to do so. I did not realize the danger we were putting you into,” Gavi replied.

“What about going up to the Pole?”

“We will go.”

“By yourselves? No!” Peggy said. “I can’t let you do that!”

“There is no other choice,” Gavi insisted. “You must go back to Painted Rock for your own safety.”

The young man stepped forward.

“Don’t worry about them,” he said firmly. “I’ll go with them.”

They all looked at him, astonished.

“You? Back to the Pole?”

“How can you think of it?”

“So I can get back at him for what he did to me,” the young man said fiercely. “Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to kick the Nobodaddy so far down that Hole he’ll never find his way out again.”

“Wait a minute,” Peggy said firmly. “If you try to go back there, you’ll be in even more danger than I am. What do you think the Nobodaddy’s going to do with you once he finds out you’re still alive? You should come back to Painted Rock with me. I’ll try to figure out how to get us both back.”

The young man shook his head. “Forget it. Why should I go back there? I don’t know if I’m ever going to find out who I am again. Anyway, I won’t be able to live with myself unless I do what I can to free the others in there.”

“So let’s do it!” shouted Molly, who had been growing more and more restless during the whole exchange. “Let’s get going!”

Peggy stood listening as they began to make plans, all talking excitedly at once. It had been bad enough when she thought her worst problem was not being able to get back home. Now it was starting to sink in that there might be real danger for her here. Clearly, there were things going on in Notherland that none of them, even Gavi, fully understood.

This young man didn’t belong in “her” Notherland, but here he was. And his warning … What if her soul was stolen? What if she got trapped down in the Hole like the others?

Gavi was right, of course. The sensible thing to do was to go to Painted Rock. Maybe she just needed to keep at it. Maybe if she’d kept trying long enough her powers would have driven back the NoSeeUms. There was certainly no point sticking around here. She’d done all she could to help. Notherland would go on without her. It was time to go back to her own life …

Molly was speaking.

“You can carry Mi for us!”

“Sure, no problem,” the young man replied.

“He can use Peggy’s knapsack!” the doll exclaimed. “It’s perfect.”

They‘re talking about me like I’m already gone! Peggy thought.

Gavi, as if sensing her dismay, looked at Peggy. “Will you be all right?” he asked. “Can you find your way back on your own?”

“Sure, I’ll be okay,” Peggy replied.

She slid the pack off her back but stood holding it for a moment.

“Hold on a sec. Why should I go back now? You said the Nobodaddy doesn’t know about Mi. He doesn’t know I’m here either.”

“You cannot take the risk!” Gavi objected.

“How’s he going to find out?” Peggy insisted. “I’ve come this far. I don’t want to go back. I created this place, and if anybody’s going to save it … “she said, taking a slow, deep breath, “it’s going to be me!”

§§

As they prepared to set off, Peggy scooped up the knapsack with Mi in it.

“Let me take that,” the young man offered.

“It’s okay …” Peggy protested, but he hoisted the pack onto his back anyway and began walking.

Peggy caught up to him.

“Why don’t we take turns?”

“Okay.”

“What’s your name?” Mi asked the young man brightly as they walked along.

He shook his head. “Don’t have one.”

“No name!” she exclaimed. “Everyone’s got a name!”

“I must’ve had one before. I just don’t remember it.”

“Tell you what!” said Mi. “I’ll think of a name for you until you remember your real one!”

“It’s a deal.”

She considered a moment. Since he was not a Nordling, she decided it should be a name with two sounds. Suddenly her head snapped up.

“I know! How about ‘Jackpine’?”

They looked at the young man to see his reaction. He squinted thoughtfully for a moment.

“In a way, I owe my life to that tree. It kept me hidden all that time,” he said. “Sure, why not? Jackpine it is.”

“Jackpine! Jackpine!” Heartily pleased with herself, Mi kept chirping the name.

Peggy wasn’t sure how she felt about having this stranger along. His presence added a new, unstable element to the journey. Still, as she watched him walking, bouncing Mi in the knapsack, she had to admit that it was refreshing to have another person around, someone her own age, someone with a recognizably human face and body …

Her thoughts were interrupted by a familiar loon call.

“Look!” Gavi cried.

Up ahead of them was a vast, smooth, seemingly endless sheet of unbroken ice.

§§

“Now I know why they call it Everlasting. It goes on forever and ever!” Molly said peevishly.

“Actually,” Gavi pointed out, “the word ‘everlasting’ refers not to the distance but to the fact that the ice never melts.”

Peggy smiled to herself. Neither of them knew that “Everlasting Ice” was a term the Arctic explorers had used for the polar ice cap. She’d found it in Our Wondrous North and borrowed it for Notherland because she loved the sound of it. And instead of the craggy white terrain the explorers had found, she’d imagined the Everlasting Ice as a great glassy skating rink. Now, here she was, laying eyes on it for the first time.

As they gazed out over the huge ice field, another uncomfortable fact was becoming evident: it was getting colder. They were fine in the daylight, while the sun still warmed the air. But if they started their crossing now, what would they do come nightfall? Neither Gavi, with his feathers, nor the plastic Molly would be bothered by the cold, and Mi, of course, would spend the night in the RoryBory. But Jackpine and Peggy would have to find some way to shelter themselves while they slept.

Jackpine’s proposal was to get across the ice as quickly as possible, to reach the open sea surrounding the Pole.

Molly thought this was ridiculous.

“How can there be open water up there?” she challenged him.

“There is. I swam across it.”

“But it’s even colder than here!”

“No, it’s warmer. I swear it is!”

“That makes no sense!” Molly said firmly, turning to Gavi for confirmation. “Does it?”

“No,” he replied. “But then again, we are encountering many things that do not make sense.”

“Maybe it’s like you said – the Nobodaddy is the opposite of everything that’s true in Notherland. So as we get nearer the Pole, more opposite things are going to happen,” Peggy offered.

“That could be,” Gavi agreed. “But then we will have a whole new problem on our hands: how to get across the open water. It will be no problem for me, of course. And if Jackpine was able to swim across it before …”

“But I can’t swim!” Molly burst out. “What do I do?”

Gavi assured her they would come up with a solution, but there wasn’t a lot of conviction in his voice.

Jackpine was getting impatient.

“Let’s figure it out when we get there! I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t want to turn into an icicle while I sleep.”

He strode purposefully out onto the Everlasting Ice and began to propel himself across it, alternately running and sliding. The others followed him, moving more gingerly. The ice was very slick, and at first they just skidded around, pitching sideways and backwards, sometimes tumbling down. Their progress was frustratingly slow, and soon Jackpine was well ahead of them, with Mi in the knapsack.

“How does he do that?” Molly asked.

“He’s had a chance to get used to it,” Peggy replied, watching his taut, wiry body as he glided across the icy surface. “He almost looks like he’s skating. That’s what we have to do!”

“What?”

“Pretend we’re on skates!” she said with conviction.

“What are skates?” Molly asked.

Gavi began to launch into one of his elaborate explanations of a human invention. “It is a pair of metal blades, worn on the bottom of the feet in order to …”

“Just watch me,” Peggy broke in. “Both of you. Watch the way I move.”

She began to shift from foot to foot, pushing herself forward with a smooth gliding motion.

Molly tried. At first it felt awkward. For a doll, this kind of fluid movement didn’t come easily. But gradually she began to get the hang of it. She limbered up and zipped away as fast as she could, bolting far ahead of the others. The sound of her laughter rang through the crisp, cold air.

“Wheeeee!”

Gavi decided that he would prefer to fly, which surprised them. He wasn’t very good at it, so he flew only rarely.

They realized he’d need help taking off, since loons normally need to skitter over a long expanse of water in order to work up enough speed. They decided to race ahead of him, pulling him along the ice atop Peggy’s jacket while he flapped his wings enough to get airborne.

“This is fun!” Molly shouted as they whizzed along. Peggy pulled one sleeve of the jacket, Jackpine the other. They watched the loon hover, his wings whirring rapidly.

Then he began skimming along the surface of the ice.

“Yippee!” Mi cried as Gavi finally soared into the air above them.

Now they all felt as though they were flying. Peggy suggested they form a chain and play crack-the-whip. As her fmgers curved around Jackpine’s, she felt a buzz of excitement, almost like an electric current, run through her body.

Suddenly they heard a tremolo call above their heads.

“Gavi? Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he called down. “I see something on the ice up ahead of us.”

“What is it?” Jackpine asked.

“I’m not sure,” Gavi replied hesitantly. “It looks like some kind of … ship.”

Molly whirled around and looked up at him.

“Ship?” she yelled. “Did you say ship?” And she took off in a mad dash across the Everlasting Ice.

Chapter 5:  Lord and Lady

SIR JOHN SURVEYED THE VAST EXPANSE of ice with his spyglass, as he was accustomed to doing several times a day.

“My dear!” his wife, Lady Jane, called to him. “Your tea is getting cold.”

At the mention of tea, Sir John collapsed the spyglass and crossed the deck to join her. She handed him a small plate, slightly cracked with a faded blue flower design, bearing a crumpet with Devon cream. He took it from her eagerly.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “I will certainly have one of these.” He dipped it in the cream and took a bite. “Mmm. Delicious. However do you do it, my dear?”

“As I always say, Sir John, a true lady knows how to make the best of her circumstances. You have been gazing out on the ice more than usual today, my dear. Are you feeling all right? Is your gout acting up again?”

“No, no. I feel in the best of health. It’s just that …”

“Yes?”

“The past while, I swear I could hear … sounds in the distance.”

“The usual cracks and shifts, no doubt. You know how the ice seems more restless some days than others.”

“No, my dear. This is different. Almost like … voices. Oh, but I know that’s preposterous, though sometimes I …” Sir John’s voice trailed off.

“What, dear?”

“Sometimes I wonder if I am going mad out here.”

“You mustn’t talk that way, Sir John. Everyone faces difficulties in life. But we must have faith that things will turn out for the best.”

Lady Jane picked up her embroidery hoop as Sir John sipped his tea and fell silent. He did not want to distress his beloved Jane with this cockeyed talk of voices out on the ice. Indeed, he believed he would undoubtedly have gone mad long ago were it not for the calming influence of his beloved Jane. Jane, who had steadfastly believed in him through so many years of this Arctic imprisonment. Jane, who had commissioned search party after search party, refusing to believe what the rest of England maintained: that all hope was lost, that her husband and the gallant crews of both his ships, the Erebus and the Terror, were all dead. Jane, who had one day suddenly, miraculously, appeared here on the vast Arctic ice, ending his long, lonely vigil. At first he’d been unable to believe his own eyes and thought that he, too, had finally followed his crewmen into Eternity. But no, here he was, still on the Terror, with his wife, as ever a vision of comely womanliness, her smile radiating warmth and love.

And so they had settled into life together on the ship, keeping to a routine of daily walks on the ice and afternoon tea – mysteriously, the ship’s stores had not been exhausted. Sir John, out of delicacy, did not inquire how Lady Jane had managed to make her way, apparently alone, to this remote part of the Arctic, which no search party had ever succeeded in reaching. Nor did he ask about her strange, periodic absences. After the first time she disappeared, which caused him unutterable anguish, Lady Jane apologized profusely, saying she did not realize she had been gone long enough for Sir John to notice.

“Never fear, my darling,” she had comforted him, touching his tear-stained face. “I shall not leave you. If I go, I shall always return, I promise you.”

And she had kept her promise all these years – Sir John had long ago lost count of how many. What did it matter? He had his darling Jane’s company and they were happy together. They wanted for nothing. Why should he worry about …?

“There!” Sir John leapt to his feet, spilling his tea in the process. “Did you hear it?”

Lady Jane looked up from her embroidery.

“Hear what, my dear?”

“Voices! I swear that’s what it is!”

He grabbed his spyglass and ran to the edge of the deck. Lady Jane looked after him with concern.

“My dear, you know it’s not good for you to get overexcited.”

He looked out across the ice. Suddenly his knees began to buckle. He felt faint.

“Jane! Come quickly!”

She rushed to his side and grabbed his arm. He clutched the side of the ship to steady himself and handed her the spyglass.

“Look! See for yourself! They have come! The rescue party. Our exile in this godforsaken land is over, my darling. We are saved!”

Lady Jane lifted the spyglass to her eye. Possibly Sir John was seeing a mirage, one of the visual tricks the Everlasting Ice was prone to play on clear, bright days like this. But no. There indeed seemed to be several tiny figures far out on the ice, moving unmistakably towards the ship.

“Can you make out anyone yet?” Sir John quizzed her. “Could it be Richardson, do you suppose? Or McClure?”

“I don’t think so, my dear,” Lady Jane said. “I must say they are moving in a most peculiar fashion. Not quite running, more like sliding along. And one of them appears to be …”

“What?”

“A female.”

“A female? That’s impossible!”

“Another is … I can’t tell if it is male or female, but it appears quite short. Not much bigger than a child.”

“Let me see that!” Sir John seized the spyglass. “What in blazes has gotten into the admiralty? Sending out a search party in such a state! Why, not one of them is even in uniform! It’s a disgrace! And … oh goodness! No. It can’t be!”

“What is it, my dear?” Lady Jane grew alarmed at his tone.

He handed her back the spyglass. “Either I have gone completely mad, or they are being accompanied by a … a bird!”

Lady Jane surveyed the party, now looming larger in the spyglass.

“You have not gone mad, Sir John. A bird it is. A loon, I believe.”

§§

Molly arrived at the vessel well before the rest of them.

“It is a ship!” she cried. “The most wondrous ship I’ve ever seen! Now I can fulfil my destiny! This ship belongs to me, Pirate Molly!”

“Pirates! Great Caesar’s ghost!”

At the sound of the deep male voice Molly whirled around. She thought it might be Jackpine, playing a trick on her. But the others were still some distance away.

“You! Knave! Don’t move!”

Molly froze. The voice was coming from the deck of the ship!

“Turn around slowly with your hands above your head,” ordered the voice. “Or I’ll fire!”

Molly lifted her arms and slowly turned around to find the stout, grey barrel of a musket pointed right at her head. Staring at her from the ship’s deck was a stocky, white-haired man who, despite his military dress and gruff tone of voice, appeared to be quaking with fear. At his side was a woman, only slightly younger, with large, warm brown eyes, dressed in an old-fashioned high-waisted gown. Molly watched as the woman calmly put her hand on the barrel of the musket.

“No need for alarm, my dear.”

“You heard them! They are pirates!” the old man said insistently.

Molly feared that in his skittishness he might accidentally fire. But the woman gently nudged the gun aside.

“You can see she is only a young girl.”

“Molly!”

Peggy’s voice came out of the distance, startling the old man, who swiftly turned and pointed the musket at the oncoming party.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!”

“No, Sir John!” the woman cried out.

“We’re not pirates!” Molly finally had the presence of mind to call out. “I swear! I was only pretending!”

The white-haired man slowly lowered the gun. Peggy, Gavi and J ackpine, still carrying Mi on his back, hesitantly approached the ship.

It was impossible to say which group was more dumbfounded at the sight of the other. Peggy and her companions could only wonder what on earth these two old people, dressed in quaint costumes, were doing on this ship sitting in the vast landscape of the Everlasting Ice.

For their part, the old couple were aghast at the motley crew before them: a young man and woman, a rather strange-looking, stiff-limbed young girl, accompanied by a lumbering avian creature with black and white feathers. Then, to their utter amazement, a tiny head poked out from inside a sort of sling on the young man’s back. It was a child – a little girl so fragile and delicate she seemed to have no more substance than a wisp of hair.

Molly finally broke the silence.

“You see? We’re not pirates. We mean you no harm.”

Sir John managed to collect himself.

“Yes, of course. Please forgive me. How could I have been so wrong? Welcome, welcome. We are so glad to see you!”

He briskly made his way down to the ice on the makeshift rope ladder that hung off the side of the deck. “You, sir … “he said, striding over to Jackpine and saluting him, “I take to be the officer in charge. I see that you have had to discard your uniforms in the face of this land’s hardships. Understandable, perfectly understandable. And you, sir …” he turned to Gavi and saluted him, too, “you have no doubt donned this feathered suit as protection against the unforgiving cold. Ingenious solution, that! Difficult to maintain proper military decorum in such a get-up, but ingenious nonetheless! And you, madam …” he gestured towards Peggy, “You must be exhausted from your long journey, and bringing along your children, no less! Highly unusual, sending women and children along on a search party! But the Royal Navy has its reasons, I suppose. Now,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “you must come aboard and have some tea. My dear Jane, can we find some more cups for tea?”

“Yes, I’m sure we can,” the woman replied. She turned to the group of them. “Please excuse me while I go below a moment.”

“You’ll have to forgive us, my friends,” the old man went on. “It is so long since we have had visitors. But now sit down.” He gestured to them eagerly as they made their way up the ladder. “Sit down and tell us all the news.”

They were still too flabbergasted to speak, and they were still trying to make sense of the man’s ramblings. Navy? Search party? Finally Peggy found the presence of mind to speak.

“News? What news?”

“Why, news of England, of course! We are starved for news of home!”

Molly piped up. “Oh, I see. You think we’re from England. But actually we’re from right here, in Notherland.”

“Actually, from a bit south of here,” Gavi added with his customary precision. “Below the Tree Line.”

As the two of them spoke, a shadow seemed to cross the old man’s face. For a few moments he was silent. Then he began to speak haltingly.

“I don’t quite … I’m afraid I … You mean …?”

Suddenly, without warning, he leaped towards Jackpine and grabbed him by the collar.

“You have come from England!” he screamed into Jackpine’s face. “You are a rescue party sent by Her Majesty the Queen! Some calamity must have befallen you which has made you lose your wits. Now speak up! Who are you? What is your rank?”

The more the old man shook him, the more rattled Jackpine became. Finally the woman, who had just returned from below with more cups, stepped forward and lightly touched the old man’s back.

“Please, my dear. Let the poor man go. You must not overexert yourself.”

The old man slowly loosened his grip on Jackpine. The woman continued to speak in her calm, measured tones.

“You must consider the possibility that they are telling the truth, dearest.” She turned to the others. “Please forgive us. Living in this land has been a terrible strain, and that, combined with Lord Franklin’s bitter disappointment that you are not the rescuers for whom we have been waiting so long …”

“Did you say Franklin?” Peggy suddenly burst out. “Franklin, the Arctic explorer?”

“There, you see?” Sir John gestured triumphantly to his wife. “She knows who I am! They are from England! They must be the ones!” He turned to Peggy. “My apologies, madam. I realize now that you must be the one in charge. When I left England, you see, women were not even permitted into the military. Times have changed, I daresay!”

Peggy cleared her throat nervously. “Actually Lord, I mean, Sir, we’re not from England.”

“But if you’re not from England, how do you know who I am?”

“Oh, well … everyone knows about Lord Franklin.”

“You mean my reputation extends beyond England?”

“Oh, definitely,” said Peggy. “Your fame has spread throughout the world.”

“Really?” said Sir John eagerly. “You don’t say! Did you hear that, my dear? Why, that makes our long exile here almost worth it, doesn’t it? I say, let’s have that tea now. They may not be our rescue party, but we must still be hospitable!”

Lady Franklin began pouring the tea.

“Yes, Sir John, we must make the best of things, as we always have. Now, please,” she said, turning to the others, “tell us about yourselves. What brings you to this lonely land?”

Molly and Gavi began to tell the Franklins about their journey to the Hole at the Pole, but Peggy’s mind buzzed with questions. She knew she was the only one who fully realized the strangeness of what they’d encountered here. Sir John Franklin was a real-life, historical figure. His exploits – the voyages to the Arctic, his disappearance – had all taken place over a hundred and fifty years ago. How did he come to be here in Notherland? As for Lady Jane Franklin, Peggy clearly recalled that, according to Our Wondrous North, she had never come to the Arctic, indeed had never seen her husband alive again. So what was she doing here?

Gavi had said Notherland was changing, evolving more and more into an independent entity. Peggy couldn’t wait to see what kind of explanation he would come up with for this latest wrinkle.

Molly was lifting Mi’s face to show her to the Franklins.

“See? She’s the last of the Nordlings – the only one not stolen by the Nobodaddy. We have to get to the Hole at the Pole and rescue the others before … before it’s too late!”

Sir John had listened to Molly’s breathless tale with a certain skepticism.

“Well, I certainly have never heard of there being any sort of hole up at the Pole.”

“There is!” Jackpine assured him. “I’ve been there!”

“As for this Noba … this monster you speak of,” Sir John went on, “that is news to me as well. Though it sounds a bit like that dreadful creature the Natives warned us about when we started up the Coppermine River years ago.” He turned to his wife. “You remember my telling you that story, don’t you, my dear? What was it called again?”

“A Wendigo.”

“Yes, that was it, a Wendigo.”

Jackpine suddenly snapped to attention. “That word sounds familiar to me. What’s a Wendigo?”

“Well, according to the old legends, it is a monster with a heart of pure ice,” began Sir John.

“Just like the Nobodaddy!” Jackpine exclaimed. “He has a heart of ice! What else do you know about this creature?”

Sir John hesitated. “It has a taste for … well, it is something that really shouldn’t be spoken of in polite company.”

“A taste for what?”

Lady Franklin suddenly spoke up in a more definite tone of voice.

“Flesh. They have a ravenous craving for human flesh. But eating flesh, terrible though it is, is not the worst thing a Wendigo does. Some are tormented by an emptiness that can never be filled, but which they try to relieve, temporarily at least, by consuming the spirit, the living light of a human being. Stealing a soul, leaving a person a hollowed-out shell of his or her former self: that is the greatest evil. If your Nobodaddy is such a creature, he is a fearsome one indeed.”

“But, my dear, those are just stories,” scoffed Sir John. “You know perfectly well there is no such creature.”

“There is,” Jackpine said quietly. “I know.”

Peggy could feel the simmering rage underneath his words.

Jackpine turned to Lady Jane. “You almost sound as though you’ve met the Nobodaddy yourself.”

“Yes, my dear. I had no idea you were so familiar with Northern lore,” said Sir John, looking curiously at his wife.

Lady Jane said nothing but stood up and briskly began to collect the dishes.

“You must all be exhausted,” she said. “We insist that you accept our hospitality and spend the night here on the ship, before you continue on your journey.”

“Yes,” added Sir John. “You will need to be rested. Tomorrow you’ll have to set your minds to figuring out a way to get across the Great Polar Sea.”

They all gaped at him.

“You mean,” Gavi cried, “there really is a Great Polar Sea?”

“See? You didn’t believe me!” Jackpine said curtly.

“Mind you,” Sir John said. “I have never laid eyes on it myself. Naturally, we have never ventured far from the ship, in case a rescue party should arrive. But all the great Arctic explorers, among whom I count myself, have proceeded on the assumption that beyond the Everlasting Ice lies a sea of open water, where the air is milder and the skies are free of icy blasts. By sailing across this Great Polar Sea, one might reach the Pole.”

To Peggy, this was sheer wishful thinking, and she fully expected Gavi to dismiss it as such. But to her surprise, the loon’s red eyes blazed with excitement.

“That means we can go to the Pole and not worry about freezing. Marvellous! Now all I have to do is figure out a way to navigate this Great Polar Sea. An enormous challenge, but I will rise to it!”

“Too bad we can’t use your ship, Sir John,” said Jackpine. “She’s a beauty.”

“Yes, that she is -” Sir John began, but he was interrupted by Molly. .

“That’s it!”

The others ignored her, but Mi piped up. “What, Molly?”

“Why not sail the Terror to the Hole at the Pole?”

Gavi shook his head. “Molly, do not be ridiculous.”

“What’s ridiculous about it?” Molly demanded.

“How would we get it there?” Gavi asked impatiently.

“We’ll pull it!”

Gavi rolled his eyes. “Oh, Molly, there you go again …”

“We could!” Molly insisted. “This ice is so slick, all we’d have to do is give the ship a good push and get it to glide along, like a sled!”

Sir John spoke up with a note of enthusiasm in his voice.

“It’s not totally farfetched, you know.”

“What?”

“The young lady’s idea. When we got trapped here in the ice, we tried to make our way out with enormous sledges piled up with rowboats, food, whatever would fit. We managed to pull them quite a ways. I’ll wager one or two of those sledges were nearly as heavy as the Terror. Of course, there were more of us then. Many, many more of us. Then, one by one …” His voice began to break.

Seeing his distress, Lady Jane rushed to his side.

“It’s true there aren’t many of us, my dear. But it’s worth a try.”

Sir John made an effort to collect himself.

“Before, there were only the two of us,” Lady Jane went on. “We could not contemplate such a thing. But with their help,” she gestured towards the others, “it just might be possible to move the Terror. And if we succeed, you might finally achieve your life’s dream of reaching the Pole.”

As Lady Jane spoke, Sir John’s spirits gradually rose, until at last his eyes lit up with excitement.

“Yes!” he cried. “Yes! We’ll try it first thing in the morning.”

Molly was exultant. “Hurray! I can’t wait!”

Even Gavi was warming to the idea.

“Who knows?” he said to Sir John. “Maybe, if we can get the Terror to the Great Polar Sea, from there you can find your way back to …” he had to pause a moment to think of the name, “England!”

Peggy couldn’t contain herself any longer.

“What’s the matter with all of you? The whole idea is crazy. Look at this ship. Look at us. We’re not going to be able to move it an inch!”

“Ah, yes!” Sir John retorted, bristling with indignation. “That’s just what all those nay-sayers tried to tell me when I left England: ‘There is no such thing as your Northwest Passage, Franklin! You’ll never reach the Pole in that ship! The whole undertaking is impossible.’ Well, I didn’t listen to it then, and I won’t listen to it now.”

Right, and look where it got you, Peggy almost said, but she kept quiet.

Molly stepped forward and gave the old man a snappy salute.

“We’ll do it, sir. We’ll give it our best shot!”

“That’s the spirit,” Sir John said firmly. “That’s the kind of attitude I like to see in a sailor. Now, what say we all turn in, so we’ll look sharp first thing in the morning!”

Gavi turned to Sir John as he prepared to go below.

“What has become of Lady Franklin? Has she retired for the night?” he asked.

Sir John looked around and suddenly seemed flustered, for indeed Lady Jane was gone, though no one had noticed her leave.

“Yes, she ah … I expect she has.”

“Then please wish her goodnight for us.”

“I will do so. Please, all of you, make yourselves comfortable.”

And with that he disappeared down the narrow stairway.

§§

Sir John had offered them their choice of the officers’ sleeping quarters below. But they wanted to keep an eye on Mi, and so they watched until she’d ascended safely into the

pitch-dark sky. As they all sat huddled in blankets on the foredeck of the Terror, Peggy filled them in on what she knew of Lord Franklin’s explorations. Molly was enthralled by the adventure of the story. But one thing mystified her.

“If he left England with two ships and a whole crew, what happened to all those men?”

Peggy looked at Gavi, who, of course, had already figured out the answer.

“The history books don’t say,” she said quietly to Molly. “They all must have starved or frozen to death. Or a combination. Nobody knows for sure.”

“And where’s the other ship? Why isn’t it here, too?”

“There is much about this place, said Gavi, returning Peggy’s look, “that is difficult to explain.”

Jackpine had been sitting by himself, brooding. What Lady Franklin had said about the Nobodaddy had clearly stirred up memories of his time in the Hole, which he had thus far managed to keep at bay. Now, Peggy’s account of the tragic outcome of the Franklin expedition seemed to make his mood even darker.

After a while he fell asleep, and Molly also snuggled up in her blanket, saying she’d had enough talking for one day.

Gavi and Peggy were left alone.

“What do you make of it all?” Peggy asked him.

“I must admit I am somewhat mystified,” the loon replied. “All I can say with certainty is that the relationship between Notherland and your world – past, present, perhaps even future – is even more complex than I thought.”

“What about Lady Franklin? Do you think she’s some kind of spectre, conjured up by Sir John’s mind to fill the loneliness?”

Gavi shook his head. “I think she is too much her own person to be a mere spectre. But I certainly agree that her presence here is mysterious.”

“Did you notice how she seemed to vanish all of a sudden? And how she knew all about the Nobodaddy, even though Sir John had never heard of him?”

“I do not believe,” Gavi said wearily, “that we will be able to solve all these mysteries tonight. I, for one, have done all the figuring-out I can do for one day.”

The loon closed his eyes. As Peggy watched his head nod slightly forward, she brooded about the latest turn of events. What had started out as an adventure had become a much darker, more forbidding journey. The atmosphere on the ship seemed fraught with the suffering its former inhabitants had endured. No matter how feisty Sir John appeared, Peggy knew he had witnessed and lived through terrible things. Whether the Nobodaddy existed or not, real-life tragedy had invaded her world.

She felt a keen loneliness. She was the Creator, the one they believed had the power to save Notherland. But the longer she was in it, the more mysterious the workings of this world became, and the less able she felt to affect what happened to it.

She looked over at Jackpine, at his chest rising and falling softly with each breath as he slept. His arms were stretched out over the top of his blanket. As she drifted off, she had a fleeting moment of wondering how it would feel to be enfolded in a pair of human arms.

Chapter 6: The Good Ship Terror

WHEN PEGGY WOKE the next day, the sun was already high in the sky, and the others were up, bustling about the ship. Jackpine was attaching lengths of heavy rope to the ship’s bow. Under Sir John’s tutelage, Molly was tying the ends of the rope into a series of sturdy nautical knots, making huge loops into which the crew members – as they now fancied themselves – could insert their bodies. With luck, they would pull the ship forward until it built up enough momentum to skid across the ice. Even Mi was eager to help out, holding an end of rope that almost looked heavier than she was.

To Peggy it all seemed like so much wasted effort. The prospect of actually moving the enormous ship seemed even more ridiculous now, in the clear light of day. But she could see the others were oblivious to the folly of their plan. Somehow Molly’s enthusiasm, combined with Sir John’s wishful thinking, had swept them all along into believing it was possible – even Gavi, who should have known better.

Jackpine called over to Peggy.

“Morning! Sleep well?”

She just shrugged.

He looked at her quizzically. “Anything wrong?”

“Nothing, just … This is crazy,” she said grimly.

“What?”

“You know it can’t work. That ship’s never going to budge.”

“Sir John said they did it before.”

“There were a lot more of them! Look at us. What a crew! This whole thing’s just a huge waste of time.”

“You remind me of the people in the Hole,” Jackpine told her. “You don’t believe things can ever get better, so they don’t. Well, give up if you want. I’d rather do something than sit around complaining.”

As he stomped off, Molly let out a whoop of joy.

“Look! I did it!”

She pointed to a large knot that joined the two ends of the hauling ropes. Sir John came over and examined it with keen interest, joined by Gavi and Mi.

“Hmm, that’s a pretty fair reef knot you’ve got there.”

Molly beamed with pride.

“Next we’ll move on to the bowline, one of the most important of all nautical knots.”

“Yes, sir!” Molly gave him an eager salute. “I want to learn everything I need to know to make this vessel seaworthy! I can’t believe it. For so long I’ve dreamed of being a pirate, and here I am, on a real ship!”

“You’re becoming something far better than a lowly pirate,” Sir John retorted. “Keep up the good work and you shall be a sailor in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy!”

Peggy watched Molly stir with excitement at Sir John’s words. She wondered why she was the only one lacking enthusiasm. Whatever the outcome, the others at least had a mission, a shared sense of purpose. She wished she could just forget all her doubts and join the hubbub of activity. The crushing sense of loneliness she’d felt last night swept over her again. She longed to be relieved of the burden of responsibility, to just go back to her old life and forget all this.

“Jackpine is right.”

Peggy was startled to hear a voice behind her. She turned to see Lady Jane.

“Were you talking to me?”

“It is far better to act than to complain.”

Peggy was taken aback. Lady Jane’s voice was sharp and brisk, much in contrast to the gentle, almost murmuring tones she used in speaking to her husband.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied.

“Why do you just sit here like a bump on a log?” Lady Jane moved closer and her tone became even more combative. “Go out there and help them!”

“Why should I bother?” Peggy retorted. “You know as well as I do it’s hopeless.”

“I admit the prospect looks awfully daunting. But this is a strange land. Unusual things happen.”

“Even if by some miracle we can move the ship, how far is this Great Polar Sea?” Peggy pressed her. “How do we know it even exists?”

“The unknown is always a frightening prospect,” Lady Jane replied. “But we must step into it if we want to move forward.” Her tone softened a bit. “I know you are feeling downhearted at the moment …”

She reached her hand out to Peggy, who abruptly turned away.

“How do you know what I’m feeling? Who are you, anyway?”

“Who do you think I am?”

“You’re sure not Lady Jane Franklin.”

“Oh?”

“You know what I’m talking about,” Peggy continued. “You know perfectly well this ship’s been stuck here for more than a century. What, is the old man some kind of ghost, hanging around the ship, refusing to admit he’s dead? And how do you fit into the picture? Lady Franklin never came to the Arctic. She never laid eyes on her husband after he disappeared. So what gives? Who are you?”

Lady Jane opened her mouth, but before she could speak they were both distracted by shouts from the others.

“That’s it!”

“We’re ready to go!”

“Peggy! Come on over!” Jackpine called to her.

From the ship’s great bow several loops fell, one for each of them except Mi, who was too small and light to be of help. Sir John’s plan was that they would actually insert their bodies, one within each loop, which he believed would give them the most traction and power as they pulled forward on the ice.

Molly, Gavi, Sir John and Jackpine had each positioned themselves in one of the big loops. Only one remained unclaimed. Jackpine pointed to it and called to Peggy again.

“Come on! That one’s yours!”

Peggy stayed where she was. Lady Jane spoke again.

“You must go and help. They cannot do it without you.”

“All hands on the ropes,” Sir John upbraided her mildly. “We need everybody we have.”

Peggy shook her head sullenly.

Now Lady Franklin’s tone was as cold as the surrounding ice.

“Stop acting like a spoiled child! Get out there and do your part!”

“Fine!” Peggy snapped. “I’ll show you just how ridiculous this is.”

She vaulted down the rope ladder and out onto the ice, where she took up the last remaining loop and stepped inside it.

“When I give the signal,” Sir John shouted at them, “pull with all your might! Ready, now? Heave, ho!”

For a few moments they all groaned and strained and pulled. But the ship didn’t budge.

“Now let’s not get discouraged,” Sir John began.

Molly piped up. “Who’s discouraged? Not me!”

“Let’s try again. Everybody ready? Now! Heave, ho!”

“I thought I felt her give a bit that time,” Jackpine said with forced optimism.

They all pulled with tremendous effort, once, twice, several times more. But nothing. The Terror was absolutely immovable.

Mi, sensing everyone’s growing disillusionment, began to whimper quietly. Molly snapped at her.

“Stop carrying on! We have work to do!”

It was growing more and more obvious that the task was impossible. The ship was simply too huge, too heavy for the small group of them to move. Peggy turned and looked over her shoulder, ready to scream at Lady Franklin in frustration. But Sir John’s wife was nowhere to be seen.

They made one or two more half-hearted tries. Finally Sir John let out a despairing sigh.

“I’m afraid that we …” he began, but was interrupted by an outburst from Peggy.

“Whooooa! What was that?”

They all turned and looked at her.

“What was what?” Gavi asked.

“I felt the strangest sensation under my feet just now.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, like …” A surge of resolve shot through her, and she began to shout at them all. “Everybody pull! One more time! Pull!”

They looked at her, too mystified at first to move. Then they galvanized themselves and Sir John began his familiar refrain.

“Heave, ho! Heave, ho!”

Suddenly a tiny break appeared in the ice underneath Peggy. It felt to her as though a blast of warm air was shooting up through it.

“Look!”

The crack grew wider, and now the rest of them began to feel strange movements in the ice underneath their feet. Cracks were beginning to appear all over, accompanied by the same blasts of warm air.

“The ice!” Jackpine yelled. “It’s breaking up!”

“Everyone on deck!” Sir John ordered.

They abandoned the ropes and began to scramble up the side of the Terror.

Peggy raced towards the ship, then suddenly remembered Mi. But Jackpine had already scooped the little sprite up and was carrying her onto the ship’s deck.

Water started to gush up through the widening cracks, flooding the surface of the ice with great pools.

“We did it!” Molly shouted jubilantly. “We’ll sail this channel all the way to the Great Polar Sea!”