‘I wouldn’t expect a fairyologist to know about such things,’ the hunter said with a curl of his lip. ‘But I intend to kill it with a rifle, not a spear.’
‘You’d never transport it back to the mainland,’ Captain Fitzroy broke in. ‘The average yeti is sixty feet tall. There’s no ship built that can transport a beast of that size.’
‘I would cut off its head,’ the zoologist declared. ‘And take that back. There ought to be a yeti specimen at the Polar Bear Explorers’ Club. It’s shameful that there isn’t one there already, quite frankly.’
‘I must admit I was surprised not to see any snow goblins or ice fairies,’ spoke a voice from the other end of the table. It was Ethan’s father, the magician Zachary Vincent Rook. ‘We’ve got an entire cabinet of sea fairies on display at the Ocean Squid club. Their wings are pinned like butterflies. We keep the live ones in jars.’ He turned to Felix. ‘Really, I should have thought they’d be easy enough to catch. One doesn’t even require a spear, merely a butterfly net. It’s practically child’s play.’
Felix gave a thin smile. ‘The Polar Bear Explorers’ Club used to have a fairy cabinet. At my urging they removed it a short while ago. Pinning fairies, or anything for that matter, is a barbaric practice that ought not to be encouraged. Or, indeed, tolerated.’
For a moment there was a chilly silence. Then Zachary Vincent Rook stood up. ‘Are you calling me a barbarian, sir?’
‘What’s a barbarian?’ Beanie said to Stella, loud enough for the whole table to hear.
‘An uncivilized person,’ Stella replied.
When Felix had taught Stella how to spell he had made the task more fun by avoiding boring words like ‘obedience’ and ‘cabbage’ and ‘chalk’, and had instead favoured interesting words like ‘barbarian’ and ‘tomfoolery’ and ‘peregrinations’. Once Stella learned how to spell a word, he would reward her by teaching her what it meant. She glanced at him across the captain’s table and he gave her a small smile in acknowledgement of her correct description.
‘“Uncivilized”!’ the magician exclaimed. ‘If you really want to see something uncivilized then I—’
‘Don’t be a bore, Zachary, sit down,’ said the captain of the Ocean Squid expedition with a yawn. ‘It’s bad manners to quarrel at a captain’s table. Besides which, you’re spoiling my appetite. And it’s too hot in here for squabbles.’
He was right about it being hot. The number of people in the room, combined with all the hot plates they’d used to keep the food warm, had created an uncomfortably high temperature. Everyone had taken their jackets off and rolled up their shirtsleeves – everyone except Ethan, who looked as starched and smart and stuck up as usual, with his sleeves buttoned at the wrist and his shirt done up right to the collar. Stella could tell he was hot, though, from the way he kept fanning his face with a paper serviette, and she thought he was very silly for not rolling up his sleeves along with everyone else.
Zachary Vincent Rook sat back down but didn’t look happy about being told off in front of everyone. To make up for it he turned to the hunter and said, ‘If I can assist you with the slaughter of this yeti, Jerome, do let me know. I quite agree that a yeti’s head would make an excellent addition to our trophy room. It can hang right alongside the screeching red devil squid tentacle we brought back last time. Nothing more important than trophies when it comes to proving ourselves as explorers. Isn’t that right, Ethan?’
Zachary thumped his son on the back, but Ethan didn’t reply. In fact, Stella noticed that he actually looked rather unwell. The next moment he pushed away his plate and stood up.
‘Please excuse me,’ he muttered, and then left the room without another word. Maybe he’d finally found it too hot in his long sleeves and gone to get some air. Or perhaps throw up over the side of the ship. Stella secretly hoped it was the latter, even if Felix would have chastised her for the uncharitable thought.
She glanced at Felix and was surprised to see him staring after Ethan with a frown on his face. Felix almost never frowned. It was all very strange.
Fortunately, just at that moment the cook brought out an ice cream cake in the shape of a yeti, which immediately cheered everyone up and cooled them all down quite considerably. The yeti’s eyes were made from shards of chocolate mint and the shaggy fur had been piped on with vanilla ice cream. Stella thought that the dead explorer clutched in one of the yeti’s great fists was perhaps a little tactless, but he was made of sugared marzipan, so that made up for it to some extent. Stella adored sugared marzipan.
But the meal came to a sudden end when they heard a shout of ‘Land ahoy!’ from somewhere up above. As one, the explorers all pushed back their chairs, almost falling over each other in their rush to be the first out on deck.
When Stella stepped outside she gasped in shock at the icy air. It had been cold at home, and at Coldgate, but that had been just a normal kind of cold – the kind that brings snow and frost. The cold here, though, was the type that brought snow goblins and ice storms – it was hard and sharp instead of soft and powdery. It was the kind of cold that could rip right through a person. The entire ship sparkled in a glittering coat of frost, and it seemed like there were ten times as many stars as normal – hundreds of tiny little pinpricks of cold, white light, as if someone had scattered a great sack of glitter across the dark night
