The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom. Margaret Mahy

ago.

      Sophie had patiently worked her way right through that jam-packed, higgelty-piggelty, mishmash of Antarctic photographs until she had entirely emptied the drawer… or at least, she thought she had. Yet here she was, touching this clicking, cold shape; this whatever-it-was which must have been left and lost for years and years. Scrabbling busily, she got a grip on it. Gently, she drew it out into the light of day.

      Dangling from her dusty fingers was a yellowish-white pendant – a milky tear carved from a bone. Whalebone, perhaps, thought Sophie. It was threaded on a thin strip of leather rather like a long bootlace. The greenish light, filtering through the ivy that half-covered the upstairs window, seemed to love this pendant, stroking it, then sinking into it. Sophie loved it too – loved it so much that she immediately hung it around her neck and then, leaping across the room, stared at herself in the dusty mirror above the old dressing table.

      How strange! The pendant had changed her. She had suddenly become a girl with a secret. She touched it wonderingly. It must have been shut up in the drawer for years and years, and during that time no one had worn it or warmed it or wanted it. It’s meant for me, thought Sophie. Even though Christmas was a whole five days away she felt that the house had given her a sort of early Christmas present. “It’s meant for me,” she repeated aloud, and nobody argued or contradicted her. However, just to be on the safe side, she slipped the pendant down under her T-shirt. For some reason she felt certain that, although it wanted to be worn, it also wanted to be hidden. Perhaps there was something it needed to hide from.

      As it slid down over her heart, stroking her warm skin, Sophie gasped, for it still felt as cold as – no! even colder than ice! She clapped both hands against her chest as if she were in pain. But within a second or two the pendant began to feel a little less cold. Sophie’s skin was working on it.

      Aha! I’m the boss! thought Sophie, and began packing photographs back into the drawer, but neatly this time. She looked at the photographs of her mother all over again.

      We do look alike, she thought. That means she’s still here in a way I’m watching the world for both of us. And this thought made her happy.

      She leaped up, made for the door and pounded down the stairs on her way out to play with her brothers on the family trampoline.

      There was no way that Sophie could have known as she hopped from one step to another, with the pendant slowly warming up against her skin, that far away in a lost part of the wild Antarctic coast, a pair of eyes that had been closed for a long, long time were opening. Someone – someone who had not moved for the last seventy years – had begun to stir.

       CHAPTER 2 A Strange Awakening

      “Cold!” that someone muttered, hugging himself. “I’m so cold!”

      Although he was in a cold place, it wasn’t the cold around him he was feeling. The cold about which he was complaining seemed to be welling out of his very heart. At first that was the only thing he really knew. He certainly wasn’t sure who he was or even what he was (though a lot of people feel like this when they wake from deep sleep). He struggled to open his eyes properly and, at long last, he did open them, looking out into a deep and ancient darkness stained with strange blue light. When he turned his head, this light turned too, as if it were somehow watching him. And horrakapotchkin! What was that directly above him? Long teeth, preparing to bite him in two? The fangs of a ferocious beast?

      Frozen with cold! Frozen with terror! the waking man thought. But is the world freezing me or am I freezing the world?

      But the faint blue light seemed to be soaking into those teeth. Of course! They were not really teeth. They were icicles. The man took a deep breath.

      “Who am I?” he asked aloud. “Where am I? What am I doing here? And why?” He shook some of these questions out of his spinning head. “Pull yourself together!” he told himself sternly. “One thing at a time! Now! Who am I? I am… I am!…”

      “The Captain!” said a voice in his head – his own voice. “You are the Captain!”

      “Right!” he said aloud. “I remember now! I am the Captain! Well, if I’m the Captain I should be up and doing, not lying around in the dark.” And, flattening himself, he began sliding out from under those glassy teeth. To his amazement, he felt, as he wriggled and slid, that he was much lighter than he had somehow imagined he would be. Indeed, it was as if he weighed nothing at all. This unexpected lightness unbalanced him. He wobbled! He swung one arm into the air. Immediately, the longest tooth of ice plunged greedily into it. The Captain screwed up his eyes, expecting blood and pain, but there was no blood, and no pain either. He lowered his arm and the glassy tooth slid out of it without leaving a single mark even on the sleeve of his heavy jacket. Flattening himself once more, he wriggled out from under the toothy icicles, swung his legs sideways, stood up carefully and looked out into the darkness.

      The strange blue glow was slowly eating into the shadows around him. It seemed to be coming from him, seeping out of the folds and wrinkles of his clothes. And suddenly the Captain knew exactly where he was. He had been lying on his very own bunk, in his very own cabin, on his very own ship – the gallant Riddle.

      His fingers, muffled in three pairs of fine woollen gloves, crept across the fur collar of his great jacket. Horrakapotchkin! His ears had disappeared. But then he realised he was wearing his balaclava and two knitted hats, and that his ears were tucked quite safely beneath them. He fingered the high collar of his natural wool jersey and below that his shirt, the top of his long johns and then not just one but three layers of underwear. He was searching for his whalebone good-luck charm – a charm he had carved and polished himself during his very first Antarctic winter night, back before he rose to the rank of captain. He had shared many adventures with that charm and believed it had carried him safely through many dangers.

      “Where’s my pendant?” he asked aloud. The sound of his own echoing voice frightened him. “Hang on! You’re going too fast!” he told himself in a stern whisper. “Begin again! Now, I’m the captain. Right! I’m in my cabin. Right! There’s my captain’s desk! What’s that lumpy thing sitting on it? Oh, it must be the ship’s logbook. But what’s happened to it? Oh, I see! It’s covered with ice. And it’s very thick ice. I must have been asleep for ages.” He puzzled for a moment, then shrugged and went on. “Never mind! What really matters is that my memory is rushing back safe and sound from wherever it has been.”

      But this was where the Captain’s memory stopped rushing back. He found he had absolutely no idea of where in the Antarctic The Riddle might happen to be. “Look around!” he told himself sternly. “Work it out!” So he peered this way and that into the gloom, noticing there was ice underfoot and ice overhead, and at last he stood up and made for the cabin door which he tried to open. The blueish light moved with him.

      But the door was iced shut. Why, he could not even turn the door handle! The Captain pushed hard. Nothing moved. He put his shoulder to the door and tried to jolt it open with good old-fashioned sailor-power.

      Almost at once, he found himself standing on the other side of the door, looking back at it in surprise. Had it opened? No! Somehow, he seemed to have gone straight through it, ice and all. Odd! Very odd! He thumped it experimentally Bang! It seemed quite solid. He thumped harder and this time his hand sank deep into the ice and wood. The Captain pulled his hand free and frowned down at his faintly glowing, gloved fingers.

      He shrugged. “Perhaps all doors are like that,” he murmured (though deep down he knew they weren’t). “I might have forgotten,” (though deep down he knew he hadn’t). “I’ve been fast asleep, and now it’s taking me a minute or two to remember the way things ought to be.”

      Ahead