The Riddle of the Frozen Phantom by Margaret Mahy

Author:Margaret Mahy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007406876
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-10-16T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Penguins and Ghosts

Outside, above the snow hut, the sun swung itself in its great summer circle, but Bonniface, his three children and Corona Wottley all slept deeply.

Edward was the first one to wake. He looked at the others stretched on their plastic-covered foam-rubber mattresses, all in double-down sleeping bags of the most colourful and cosy designs. Bonniface had a red sleeping bag, Corona a blue one. Sophie’s was a cheerful yellow and Hotspur’s was violet. As for Edward’s own sleeping bag, it was a bright spring-leaf green.

Feeling a little strange because, after all, he had slept overnight in his two layers of thermal underwear, Edward looked for his clothes. As he slid out of the sleeping bag, a huge, dry cold came at him like a ravenous dragon, so he didn’t waste time worrying about washing (and, after all, there wasn’t a bath or a shower for miles around). Instead, he scrambled hastily into layer after layer of clothes until he finally reached his survival jacket, his gloves, his mitts and mukluks, and crawled for the door.

He went down three steps and up three steps, almost as if he were tunnelling under the wall rather than simply going through it, and came out into a scene so white and crisp it was like crawling on to the surface of a newly-iced cake. Blue above – and there in the blueness, the bright button of the circling sun! White below, and white all around as far as the eye could see. But as Edward stared, enchanted, he saw that the white was not merely white. In places it sparkled and shone as if it were set with jewels. The slopes of distant mountains shone back at him as if they were acknowledging him to be every bit as wonderful as they were. Some distant ridges were blue-white, others were silver-white, while still others were shaded with a delicate and watery green. Clefts and rifts were grey: not a dull grey, but bright with a soft and shining silver.

And silence arched over them all. There were no voices… no sound of a single skiddoo… no sound of any distant black planes. There were none of the town sounds of distant neighbours, lawn mowers, roadworks, rustling leaves, birds or passing cars. The flag road was behind them. Edward was surrounded by a stillness so ancient he felt he might dissolve into it and become part of it forever. He kept thinking, Now! Now in this next second I’m going catch this silence. I’m going to take it in properly! But it always slid away from him. It was too huge to be held inside a simple, human head. It could only be felt in the blood, so in the end Edward gave up trying to listen and just stood there in the middle of it all. Later, he might take notes for his science fiction story. But, right then, all that mattered was seeing and feeling.

“Hi!” said a voice behind him, and

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