The Crystal Rose, page 3
Frowning with concentration, Hanna used her magic to lift the thick sheet of ice above them like a roof.
“Stay down!” cried Magda as the thundering snow swept over the top of them, battering at the sheet of ice and the sides of the boulder. The noise was deafening. She and Ida huddled together, clinging to Oskar as Hanna focused on keeping the roof of ice over their heads, protecting them all from the snow and rocks and ice.
Magda could see Hanna start to shake with the effort of holding the ice there. “You can do it, Hanna,” she urged her sister. “You can save us.”
Hanna’s mouth tightened. She could feel the magic sapping her energy … but there was no way she was going to give up!
Every second felt like an hour but eventually the avalanche passed on, thundering over the glacier, sweeping up the deep snow on the surface and carrying it away. As the noise gradually faded, Hanna lowered the sheet of ice to the ground beside them and collapsed. She was breathing as hard as if she’d just run a marathon and her face was pale.
Ida and Magda hugged her.
“Oh, Hanna, you were amazing!” said Ida.
“You saved us all!” said Magda.
Hanna smiled weakly. “I thought I wasn’t going to be able to hold it.”
“I can’t believe Veronika did that,” said Ida. “She really is evil!”
“She’d do anything to capture the Everchanging Lights,” said Magda with a shudder.
Oskar wuffled in agreement and nudged Magda with his nose. She gave him a small smile and stroked his head.
“You look exhausted too. Here, have something to eat,” said Magda, hurriedly unpacking her bag. She pulled out the bread and cheese they had brought and gave some to her sister, then gave Oskar the strips of dried meat they had brought for him.
As Hanna ate, the colour slowly returned to her cheeks. She sighed in relief. “That’s better,” she said. “You should have some too.”
The sisters tucked into the bread and cheese. Food had never tasted so good. As they ate, the world settled around them and a peaceful silence fell once again.
Ida started to pack away and Hanna tightened the laces on her snow boots. “We’d better get going,” she said.
Her heart sinking at the thought of all the walking they still had to do, Magda stood up. She frowned in surprise. The avalanche had changed the glacier. Most of the snow had been swept away, revealing cracks and crevasses in the frozen river beneath it. More surprising was that near to the boulder they were sheltering behind there was now a dark opening – a cave.
Going over, Magda saw that the cave led into a tunnel that ran down through the ice. Her heart beat faster. It seemed to head in the direction of the ice field. Maybe it led through the ice of the glacier all the way to the other side. If they could go through it, it would be much quicker than walking across the treacherous surface.
“Ida! Hanna! Look at this!”
Her sisters came out from behind the boulder. Magda showed them what she had found. “Do you think we could walk through it?”
“We should try!” said Hanna instantly.
“But we don’t know where it goes,” Ida pointed out. “We could end up wandering around under the glacier not going in the right direction – or we could be trapped by an ice fall. It’s too dangerous.”
“I don’t mind it being dangerous. I’ll go and explore,” said Hanna, heading eagerly towards the entrance.
“No, wait!” said Magda, an idea springing into her head as she saw the same bird they had seen earlier flitting through the sky. “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t I turn into a snow bunting and fly through the tunnel?”
“It might still be dangerous even if you’re a bird,” said Ida uncertainly.
“I’ll be fine,” said Magda. “I can make sure it’s safe.”
She focused on the bird swooping down low over the ice and felt a tingle run through her arms and legs. Wings, she thought, remembering the feeling of flight from when she had turned into a snow hawk on their last adventure. Her whole body tingled and suddenly she realised she was soaring up into the air, wings beating. She was a snow bunting!
Joy rushed through her as she swooped in a large circle. She opened her beak and a whistling, warbling sound flooded out. She swooped into the tunnel. It was dim but not totally dark, the moonlight filtering down through the layers of compacted snow and ice. The tunnel twisted and turned, its blue and silver sides icy cold. The question was: where did it come out? Magda spread her wings and flew on.
Hanna and Ida waited impatiently by the tunnel opening.
“I hope she’s OK,” Ida whispered.
Oskar whimpered and put his paws up on her knees. She scooped him up and cuddled him. He looked anxiously towards the tunnel too. He didn’t like it when the girls were split up!
Hanna was the only one of them who didn’t seem worried. “I wish I could be Magda right now,” she said longingly. “Where do you think she is? Do you think she’s reached the other side?”
“I don’t know but I wish she’d come back,” said Ida. Come on, Magda, she thought. She poked her head into the tunnel. “Magda!” she shouted. “Where are you?”
Only her voice echoed back to her. “You … you … you…”
“Let’s not wait any longer. Let’s go after her,” said Hanna eagerly. She hoisted her bag on to her back again and grabbed her ice pick. “Come on.”
But just then they heard a warbling high-pitched whistle and the next second a snow bunting came flying towards them through the tunnel.
“Magda!” Ida exclaimed.
The air shimmered and then their sister was standing beside them.
“Well?” Hanna demanded, looking at Magda’s shining eyes.
“The tunnel does lead through the ice to the other side!” she exclaimed. “There’s a snow field there with lots of glittering crystal roses.” She grabbed her sisters’ hands. “Come on! There’s no time to waste!”
“This is incredible!” breathed Ida as they made their way through the tunnel of ice. The tunnel’s walls glowed and glittered turquoise and above them was a shining roof of silver.
“It’s like we’re in a magical land,” said Magda, stopping to touch the icy walls. The ice had moulded itself into strange curves and swirls. The floor dipped down a slope. There was a smooth patch of ice running down one side like a playground slide. Hanna couldn’t resist: she sat on her bottom and slid down it.
“Wheee!” she cried.
Oskar leapt after her. His feet went in all directions and he ended up sliding down it on his tummy. Magda and Ida giggled and followed on their bottoms.
“This is much better than trudging across the surface!” said Hanna, jumping to her feet.
They hurried on. Round the next corner the tunnel opened into a huge cavern. Thick columns of ice – stalagmites and stalactites – stretched from the ceiling and floor. The girls gasped in wonder.
Hanna dashed behind a stalagmite “Can’t catch me!”
Magda grinned and chased after her. “Bet I can!”
Oskar gambolled between them and tripped them both up. They laughed as they both slid over the ice.
“Come on, we’d better get a move on,” said Ida. “We still have to find the crystal rose and the orb and get back before Madame Olga realises we’ve gone!”
The thought made Magda and Hanna jump to their feet. They all ran as quickly as they could through the rest of the tunnel until they saw a hole with moonlight shining through it.
“That’s the way out!” said Magda.
Hanna broke into a run. “Last one out is a rotten tomato!”
CRACK!
A wide crevasse suddenly opened up right in front of her.
“Hanna!” shrieked Magda and Ida.
Hanna tried to stop but her feet skidded from under her and she tumbled over the edge of the crevasse. As her sisters screamed she twisted round in mid-air, grabbed the edge and hung on by the tips of her fingers.
Magda and Ida were beside her in an instant. They threw themselves to the ground, and Magda grabbed Hanna’s wrists.
“Hanna! Hold on!” Ida urged.
“I’ll help you up!” Magda gasped. She leaned over the crevasse to try to pull Hanna up. But Hanna lost her grip and slithered down the side of the ice. Her weight took Magda with her. For one heart-stopping moment Ida thought both her sisters were gone for ever, but thankfully they landed on an icy ledge a few metres down.
“Are you all right?” Ida cried.
“Yes,” said Hanna, glancing at Magda, who nodded. “Just a bit bruised. But how are we going to get back up to you?”
Ida looked around desperately. How could she help them? She needed a rope but they’d left theirs back on the surface of the glacier. Then Ida smiled. Of course! She could draw one! Grabbing a shard of stone she used the pointed end to scratch a drawing of a rope into the ice. She drew the rope looped round a nearby rock and then drew more and more coils of it. She swallowed nervously – she knew she had to get this just right. If it was too thick, it would be too heavy for her to carry, and if it was too thin, it might not hold the weight of her sisters. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she felt a familiar tingling run through her body as she drew.
Finishing the drawing, she sat back on her heels. The air shimmered and suddenly a rope appeared just as she had drawn it. One end was tied securely round the pointed rock; the other was coiled up.
Ida whooped. She’d done it!
“Ida! What are you doing?” Hanna cried impatiently from the crevasse.
“Trying to rescue you!” Ida shouted back. Grabbing the free end of the rope she hurried to the edge of the ice. Her sisters were looking up.
“Here,” Ida called, throwing the end of the rope over. “You can use this to pull yourselves up.”
Hanna climbed up first, holding on to the rope as she scrambled up the icy sides. Ida held on tight to the other end of the rope to keep it steady as Hanna clambered over the edge of the crevasse. “We need to help Magda!” she panted.
Together they helped Magda climb up. At long last, all three of them were back on solid ground. Oskar gambolled around them, rubbing his head against their legs.
“Thank you!” Magda said with a shiver, looking back into the deep, wide crevasse. “That was really scary.”
“How did the crevasse open up as quickly as that?” Hanna wondered.
“It must have been caused by the avalanche,” said Ida.
“It’s so wide. However can we get across it?” said Magda, frowning.
Oskar grew to his full size and then galloped up to the crevasse and leapt through the air, landing safely on the other side. He turned to them and barked as if to say, “I can do it!” and then leapt back over, nuzzling each girl in turn with his nose and looking pointedly at the crevasse.
“We can’t jump like you can, Oskar!” Ida said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Magda had her head on one side and was studying Oskar closely. “I think he’s saying he’ll carry us!” she said.
Oskar stood on his hind legs and made a happy wuffling noise before dropping to all fours again.
Magda smiled. “Well, here goes!”
She climbed on to Oskar’s back and held on tightly to his soft fur. With a tremendous bound he cleared the crevasse.
Magda climbed off and Oskar jumped back over and repeated the leap, first with Hanna and then with Ida. The sisters gave Oskar a huge hug once they had made it over, and he shrank once more. They knew it took a lot of Oskar’s energy to grow to full size, and they were very grateful that he’d managed to get them over the crevasse!
“We did it! Ice field, here we come!” Hanna cried.
Moonlight shone through the round opening at the end of the tunnel. Holding hands, they ran towards it and burst into the open. A vast ice field filled with hundreds of glittering crystal roses was spread out before them. The roses grew out of the snow and there seemed to be hundreds of them. A family of Arctic foxes with large pointed ears, snowy-white fur and coal-black eyes and noses were playing between the flowers.
“It’s so beautiful,” breathed Ida, immediately wanting to draw the scene.
Hanna started to search for the orb, carefully pushing aside the translucent leaves of the flowers and checking around the plants. The ice field was massive but the snow was so white and untouched she hoped it would be easy to spot a sparkling blue glass orb. However, as she began to make her way across the field, she paused. Something was happening! The ground was moving!
Dark vines and thorny brambles started to push up through the snow. They twisted round the crystal roses, spreading between the stems and covering the pristine snow. As they grew, the vines made horrible crackling sounds, which sounded to the girls like mocking laughter.
“What’s going on?” Hanna heard Ida say. Swinging round, Hanna saw that the same thing was happening all over the ice field.
Ida tried to pull the brambles to one side. “Ow!” She gasped as the thorns stabbed her fingers, despite her thick gloves.
Magda’s mouth tightened. “All these brambles must be Veronika’s doing. She can’t come here herself to stop us because she can’t leave Mother’s side for long, but she’s using her magic to make it impossible for us to take the orb.”
“What shall we do?” said Hanna.
The girls felt stunned. They’d come so far and overcome so many obstacles. Were they really going to be defeated now they had finally reached the ice field? But how could they find the orb when there were so many thorny brambles?
“OK, let’s think about this,” said Magda, her mind whirring. “Can any of us use our magic to help?”
“I don’t think so,” Hanna said.
Ida shook her head, there were just too many of the horrible vines.
Magda looked at the foxes now sniffing at the brambles and an idea suddenly came to her. “Maybe I could change into an Arctic fox and see if I can sniff it out? They’ve got really sensitive noses.”
“Try it!” urged Hanna.
Magda focused on a nearby Arctic fox with a particularly fluffy coat. He looked at her with his sparkling dark eyes. As their gazes met she felt the tingling and the next moment she had transformed into a fox just like him!
She spun round, yapping happily. She felt the urge to run and bound and smell … oh yes, definitely smell. The air and the ground were full of subtle scents she hadn’t noticed when she was a human. There was the musky polar bear scent of Oskar, a sweet rose-scented smell that seemed to be Ida and a scent of new grass and fresh air that was Hanna. She thought she could also smell a family of jack rabbits and… She breathed in deeply. Yes. Magic! She was sure she could smell magic. The scent was like nothing else, it made her nose feel tingly and sparkly. She looked at her sisters and whined, hoping they would guess she meant them to follow her, and then putting her muzzle to the ground she followed the trail. Luckily she could place her small fox paws between the brambles and thorns. She glanced back to see Ida, Hanna and Oskar carefully treading a path between the brambles behind her.
The trail led across the field, the scent getting stronger and stronger until Magda reached a rose that was slightly taller than the others. Its flower was still a perfect bud, its petals tightly closed. Here, she thought instinctively. The orb is somewhere here.
Standing up on her back legs, she sniffed the flower. Yes, the smell was strongest by the bud. The orb must be inside its petals!
Hanna and Ida reached her.
“Where’s the orb?” asked Hanna.
But Ida was looking at the way Magda was sniffing at the bud. “I think it’s in the rose!” she said. “Is that right, Magda?”
Magda nodded and sat back, looking expectantly at her sisters.
Ida pulled off her gloves. “I’ll try to take it out.” When she touched the flower she gasped. “The petals are like ice!” She tried again but pulled her hands away, shaking her fingers. “Ow! I can’t touch them. They’re too cold.”
“This must be part of the crystal roses’ magic,” said Hanna. “If we can’t touch the petals, how can we get the orb out?”
Magda willed herself to turn human again. The tingling feeling whooshed through her body and she changed back into a girl. “Your magic, Hanna,” she said quickly. “Could you use that to open the petals without touching them?”
“I can try!” Hanna said eagerly. Taking a deep breath, she drew on her magic and felt it welling up inside her. Focusing on the rose, Hanna willed the petals to open. Magic surged through her, strong and powerful, and the petals slowly started to peel back one by one, the bud opening and blooming into a perfect translucent flower. The orb glittered in the centre of it – a shining, sparkling ball of blue light.
The girls looked at each other, thrilled. “You’ve done it, Hanna,” said Ida, tentatively reaching out towards the orb. She tensed as her fingers closed round it, waiting for the bite of ice on her skin, but all she felt was a soft, gentle warmth. She lifted the glowing orb and the blue light inside it swirled and twirled. It was absolutely beautiful.
Magda and Hanna hugged each other as Oskar barked in delight.
“We’ve got the orb at last! Now we can take it home and put it safely in the snow globe,” said Ida happily.
Hanna bent and picked up a single crystal petal that had fallen when the rose had bloomed. It was so cold it made the tips of her fingers tingle. “I’m going to take this petal to remind us of our adventures.” She undid her bag and put it safely inside.
“We’d better hurry home now,” said Magda, glancing at the first traces of dawn light creeping across the sky. “We have to get back before Madame Olga discovers we sneaked out of the castle.”
“We should keep a lookout for Aunt Veronika’s magic on the way,” added Hanna. “We know she’s been spying on us, so when she discovers we’ve found the orb she’ll be really angry. She might use her magic to try to stop us.”
