Ethan shrugged. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he muttered, but followed along behind them.
The frosties led the way past their igloos. Then they all fluttered down and brushed a layer of snow away to reveal a large door set into the ground. It was a bright, shining, golden colour, with a glittering handle. It took five of the frosties to drag the door back with a thud. The explorers craned forwards to see a set of steps disappearing into the darkness.
Perhaps it was Ethan putting doubts in her mind, but Stella suddenly felt unsure. After all, walking blindly into a hole in the ground did seem a bit on the risky side.
‘What’s down there?’ Ethan said in a suspicious tone.
‘A dungeon,’ the frosty replied.
‘A what?’
‘I’m joking!’ the frosty said. ‘Really, there’s no dungeon. Who ever heard of a dungeon with a golden door? The steps lead down to the goose garden.’
‘Is that a code word for dungeon?’ Ethan said.
‘No, it’s where we keep our geese. You’ve got to see them. They’re quite extraordinary.’
‘Extraordinary geese,’ Ethan repeated in a flat voice. He shook his head. ‘I’ll be laughed out of the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club. Guffawed out, probably.’
Privately, Stella also thought there was probably a limit to how extraordinary geese could be. When she’d dreamed about the kinds of discoveries she might make in the Icelands she’d had marvels and wonders a little larger in mind. Like a giant dinosaur frozen in a block of ice, or a lost city, or a strange beast no one had ever heard of before. But sometimes an explorer just has to take whatever discoveries they can find, and Stella figured that a goose garden was better than nothing, and would at least give them something else to put in their Flag Report when they got back to the club. Besides, they’d already discovered a new type of fairy, which was sure to count in their favour even if Stella didn’t intend to take one back to be pinned to a board in a display case. She resolved to keep a close eye on Ethan – in case he tried to stuff one of the frosties into his pocket for the sea fairy cabinet back at the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club.
‘Thank you very much for the offer. We would love to see your incredible geese,’ she said, and stepped down to the underground staircase.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The frosties led the way, followed by the explorers and the shadow wolf. Ethan was the last to step through the door and he deliberately left it open behind him. No matter what the others said, he still had a bad feeling about this, and wanted to be able to make a quick getaway if the frosties suddenly turned nasty.
The staircase curved round and round in a spiral that made the explorers feel dizzy after a little while. It was damp and very, very cold. When Stella put her gloved hand on the wall to steady herself, her fingertips left trails in the frost that coated the stones. Finally, the staircase came to an end, and Stella was surprised to step through an archway and find herself blinking in the sunlight once again.
‘How have we ended up back above ground?’ she asked. ‘The stairs went down the whole way.’
‘Sometimes if you go down for long enough in the Icelands, you start to go back up,’ one of the frosties said with a shrug.
The explorers squinted for a moment as their eyes adjusted to the light, and then Stella gasped as she took in the goose garden around her. They were in a walled space and there was no snow on the ground, but everything sparkled in a silver coat of frost. Colourful bunting hung from the branches of leafless trees and a blue pond glittered in front of them. Geese paddled in the water, sunned themselves on the banks, and waddled amongst the trees – but they weren’t entirely white like normal geese. They were covered in little gold spots.
‘Aren’t they fine?’ one of the frosties said proudly. She might have been the frosty who first landed on Stella’s shoulder, but they looked so much alike that it was hard to tell, especially without clothes to distinguish them. ‘We purchased them at the Goose Fair last year. They had all kinds of geese there: dragon geese, barking geese, hollow geese, raspberry geese—’
‘There’s no horned geese here, are there?’ Beanie demanded. ‘Because, you know, they can be extremely dangerous. Extremely.’
Beside him, Ethan snorted. ‘Doubtful.’
‘Seven explorers from the Jungle Cat Explorers’ Club have been gored by horned geese in the last fifty years,’ Beanie said.
Ethan shrugged dismissively. ‘Jungle Cat explorers are buffoons,’ he said. ‘Most of them probably perish falling on their own spears.’
‘Twelve Jungle Cat explorers have died falling on their own spears in the last one hundred years,’ Beanie said promptly. ‘Another sixty-three have injured themselves, including Sir Hamish Humphrey Smitt, who lost an eye.’
Ethan frowned at him. ‘How do you know all this stuff? It’s not normal.’
‘I like facts,’ Beanie replied. ‘You know where you are with facts. Besides, if we don’t take the trouble to learn about the mistakes of past explorers then we’re more likely to make the same mistakes ourselves.’
‘Sixty-three explorers poking their own eyes out with spears,’ Ethan said, shaking his head with a smirk. ‘What a hopeless bunch.’
One of Stella’s adopted cousins belonged to the Jungle Cat Explorers’ Club and, feeling offended on his behalf, Stella said, ‘Beanie, why don’t you tell us how many Ocean Squid explorers have died from eating too many eels in the last century?’
‘Forty-three,’ Beanie replied promptly.
Ethan’s smirk vanished. Stella stuck her tongue out at him.
‘Excuse me for interrupting,’ one of the frosties cut in, ‘but if we can get back to the subject at hand, I can assure you that
