They reached the front, and Stella knew Shay was whispering to the wolf on his side because she could see the flash of red from the open eyes of the whisperer’s pendant at his throat. Stella spoke to the other wolf – which she saw was Kayko, the reddish female she had rescued from the storm – in a voice that she tried to make as low and soothing as possible. She saw a dark blur from the corner of her eye and realised that Shay’s shadow wolf, Koa, had appeared, and was racing along, keeping pace with her. She felt comforted by Koa’s presence, and the other wolves must have felt so too because their running slowed until it became a trot, then a walk, and then – finally – they stopped altogether, panting hard with their tongues hanging long from their mouths.
Stella’s hands were trembling as she buried them in the lead wolf’s fur. ‘Good girl,’ she said as the wolf tried to lick her face. ‘Good girl.’
‘Good girl?’ Ethan repeated as he scrambled out of the sled. ‘They almost got us all killed!’
‘And whose fault is that, I wonder?’ Shay snapped. ‘They haven’t been trained properly. These wolves aren’t ready for polar exploration!’
Ethan glared at him. ‘How do you know they’re Ocean Squid wolves?’
‘Look at their harness, you fool.’
Sure enough, the harness was black for Ocean Squid, and had the club’s squid insignia stamped along the leather.
Stella ignored their arguing, whispered her thanks to Koa – who’d calmly sat back on her haunches and was regarding the explorers with a placid look – and then skated around to check on the unicorn at the back.
The unicorn was white from nose to tail, with a thick coat and feathered silky hair above her pearly hooves. She snorted at Stella in greeting, and didn’t seem too shaken up. The pale blue halter marked her as a Polar Bear unicorn, and therefore she would have been properly trained for expeditions like this. Her name – Glacier – was stitched in silver thread along the side of her harness. Stella fished in her pocket until she found some iced gems, and then held them out on her flat palm. Glacier took them gently and munched happily, spraying multi-coloured crumbs on the ice below.
Beanie had stopped reciting morbid facts, but both his hands gripped the edge of the sled as if he’d never let it go. Stella walked around the side of the sled and looked at him. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’
He nodded at her wordlessly, but Stella couldn’t help noticing that he’d turned an unhealthy shade of green. Stella skated over to where Shay and Ethan were still arguing over the wolves. ‘Would you two stop that bickering?’ she said. ‘It’s getting on my nerves. And we need to work out what we’re going to do.’
Beanie looked up. ‘We should turn around and go back to the others,’ he said.
‘We can’t,’ Shay replied. ‘The bridge collapsed.’
Beanie turned pale. With his eyes screwed up tight during the wolves’ flight, he’d been blissfully ignorant of this important fact until now.
‘We’ll just have to stick to the plan,’ Stella said. ‘If we head towards the coldest part of the Icelands then we’ll probably meet up with the others along the way anyway.’
They all peered at the ice tunnel twisting around a corner in front of them. For the first time, Stella noticed that it wasn’t as dark in the tunnel as it should have been. The entire place was filled with a cool, blue light, as if the sunlight from above was getting through somehow.
‘I can’t carry on with you lot!’ Ethan exclaimed. ‘I’m not part of your club – I have my own!’
Shay clapped him on the back and said, ‘Well, I guess that’s just tough luck for all of us, Prawn. First rule of exploring: don’t go wandering off by yourself. Not unless you want to fall into a ravine, or get washed over a raging waterfall or some such, and never be seen or heard from again. We’re stuck with each other for now.’
Ethan shook his head and kicked the side of the sled. ‘This is the worst expedition ever!’
‘We’re not exactly thrilled about it either,’ Stella told him.
‘If we’re the only explorers who made it across then it’s up to us to explore the area and see if there’s anything worth discovering,’ Beanie said. ‘Mum told me I have to prove to Uncle Benedict that I can be an explorer, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ Shay said cheerfully.
‘I wish I was at sea,’ Ethan groaned.
‘If it helps at all, we wish you were at sea too,’ Stella told him. ‘I wish you were at the bottom of the sea, actually.’
Ethan’s Ocean Squid cloak didn’t help, either. Whilst the other three all wore pale blue cloaks that blended nicely with the ice and snow, Ethan’s black one made him stick out like a sore thumb. Any passing yeti would spot them a mile away, and they’d probably all get eaten as a result.
Stella sighed and said, ‘Let’s look and see what provisions we have.’
Although they’d lost a couple of bags at the ice bridge, there was still a pile tied to the sled, and Glacier carried several more. The explorers emptied out their pockets too and counted up what they had between them. There was an assortment of telescopes, Stella’s compass, some gloves and blankets, a travel journal, a tripod camera, a top-hat box
