The Big Freeze

The remains of the MidWinter Feast of stewed cabbage, braised eel heads and spicy onions lay abandoned on the table as Aunt Zelda tried to coax some life into the spluttering fire at Keeper's Cottage. The inside of the windows were glazing over with ice, and the temperature in the cottage was plummeting, but still Aunt Zelda could not get the fire going. Bert swallowed her pride and snuggled up to Maxie to keep warm. Everyone else sat wrapped in their quilts, staring at the struggling fire.

"Why don't you let me have a go at that fire, Zelda?" Marcia asked crossly. "I don't see why we have to sit here and freeze when all I have to do is this." Marcia clicked her fingers and the fire blazed up in the grate.

"You know I don't agree with Interfering with the elements, Marcia," said Aunt Zelda sternly. "You Wizards have no respect for Mother Nature."

"Not when Mother Nature is turning my feet into blocks of ice," Marcia grumbled.

"Well, if you wore some sensible boots like I do instead of prancing around in little purple snakey things, your feet would be fine," Aunt Zelda observed.

Marcia ignored her. She sat warming her purple snakey feet by the blazing fire and noted with some satisfaction that Aunt Zelda had made no attempt to return the fire to Mother Nature's spluttering state.

Outside the cottage, the North Wind howled mournfully. The snow flurries from earlier in the day had thickened, and now the wind brought with it a thick, swirling blizzard that blew in over the Marram Marshes and began to cover the land with deep drifts of snow. As the night wore on and Marcia's fire at last began to warm them up, the noise of the wind became muffled by the snowdrifts piling up outside. Soon the inside of the cottage had become full of a soft, snowy silence.

The fire burned steadily in the grate, and one by one they all followed Maxie's example and fell asleep.

Having successfully buried the cottage up to its roof in snow, the Big Freeze continued its journey. Out over the marshes it traveled, covering the brackish marsh water with a thick white layer of ice, freezing the bogs and quags and sending the marsh creatures burrowing down into the depths of the mires where the frost could not reach. It swept up the river and spread across the land on either side, burying cow barns and cottages and the occasional sheep.

At midnight it arrived at the Castle, where all was prepared.

During the month before the advent of the Big Freeze, the Castle dwellers stockpiled their food, ventured into the Forest and brought back as much wood as they could carry, and spent a fair amount of time knitting and weaving blankets. It was at this time of year that the Northern Traders would arrive, bringing their supplies of heavy wool cloth, thick arctic furs and salted fish, not forgetting the spicy foods that the Wendron Witches loved so much. The Northern Traders had an uncanny instinct for the timing of the Big Freeze, arriving about a month before it was due and leaving just before it set in. The five Traders who had sat in Sally Mullin's cafe on the night of the fire had been the last ones to leave, and so no one in the Castle was at all surprised by the arrival of the Big Freeze. In fact, the general opinion was that it was somewhat late, although the truth was that the last of the Northern Traders had left a little earlier than they had expected, due to unforeseen circumstances.

Silas, as ever, had forgotten that the Big Freeze was due and had found himself marooned in The Hole in the Wall Tavern after a huge snowdrift blocked the entrance. As he had nowhere else to go anyway, he settled down and decided to make the best of things while Alther and a few of the Ancients pursued their task of trying to find Simon.

The black rat in the Rat Office, who was awaiting Stanley's return, found himself marooned at the top of the iced-up EastGateLookoutTower. The drainpipe had filled with water from a burst pipe and then promptly froze, blocking his way out. The rats in the Customer Office downstairs left him to it and went home.

The Supreme Custodian was also waiting for Stanley's return. Not only did he want information from the rat - where exactly Marcia Overstrand was - he was also anxiously awaiting the outcome of the message that the rat was to deliver. But nothing happened. From the day the rat was sent, a platoon of fully armed Custodian Guards was posted at the Palace Gate, stamping their frozen feet and staring into the blizzard, waiting for the ExtraOrdinary Wizard to Appear. But Marcia did not return.

The Big Freeze set in. The Supreme Custodian, who had spent many hours boasting to DomDaniel about his brilliant idea of stripping the Message Rat of his Confidential status and sending a false message to Marcia, now did his best to avoid his Master. He spent as much time as he could in the Ladies' Washroom. The Supreme Custodian was not a superstitious man, but he was not a stupid man either, and it had not escaped his notice that any plans he had discussed while he was in the Ladies' Washroom had a habit of working out, though he had no idea why. He also enjoyed the comfort of the small stove, but most of all he relished the opportunity to lurk. The Supreme Custodian loved lurking. He had been one of those small boys who was always listening around a corner to other people's conversations, and consequently he was often able to have a hold over someone and was not afraid to use it to his advantage. It had served him well during his advancement up the ranks of the Custodian Guard and had played a large part in his appointment as Supreme Custodian.

And so, during the Big Freeze, the Supreme Custodian holed up in the washroom, lit the stove and lurked with glee, hiding behind the innocent-seeming door with the faded gold lettering and listening to conversations as people passed by. It was such a pleasure to see the blood drain from their faces as he jumped out and confronted them with whatever insulting comment they had just made about him. It was even more of a pleasure to call the Guard and have them marched straight off to the dungeons, especially if they went in for a bit of pleading. The Supreme Custodian liked a bit of pleading. So far he had had twenty-six people arrested and thrown into the dungeons for making rude comments about him, and it had never crossed his mind even once to wonder why he had yet to hear something nice being said.

But the most interesting project that occupied the Supreme Custodian was Simon Heap. Simon had been brought straight from the chapel to the Ladies' Washroom and chained to a pipe. As Jenna's adopted brother, the Supreme Custodian reckoned he would know where she had gone, and he was looking forward to persuading Simon Heap to tell him.

As the Big Freeze set in and neither the Message Rat nor Marcia returned to the Castle, Simon languished in the Ladies' Washroom, constantly questioned about Jenna's whereabouts. At first he was too terrified to talk, but the Supreme Custodian was a subtle man, and he set about gaining Simon's confidence. Whenever he had a spare moment, the unpleasant little man would prance into the washroom and prattle on to Simon about his tedious day, and Simon would listen politely, too scared to speak. After a while Simon dared to venture a few comments, and the Supreme Custodian seemed delighted to have a reaction from him, and began to bring him extra food and drink. And so Simon relaxed a little, and it was not long before he found himself confiding his desire to be the next ExtraOrdinary Wizard, and his disappointment with the way that Marcia had fled. It was not, he told the Supreme Custodian, the kind of thing that he would have done.

The Supreme Custodian listened approvingly. Here at last was a Heap who made some sense. And when he offered Simon the possibility of an Apprenticeship with the new Extra-Ordinary Wizard - "seeing as, and I know this will just remain between you and me, young Simon, the present boy is proving most unsatisfactory, despite our high hopes for him," - Simon Heap began to see a new future for himself. A future where he might be respected and be able to use his Magykal talent, and not treated merely as "one of those wretched Heaps." So, late one evening, after the Supreme Custodian had sat down companionably beside him and offered him a hot drink, Simon Heap told him what he wanted to know - that Marcia and Jenna had gone to Aunt Zelda's cottage in the Marram Marshes.

"And where exactly would that be, lad?" asked the Supreme Custodian with a sharp smile on his face.

Simon had to confess he did not know exactly.

In a fit of temper the Supreme Custodian stormed out and went to see the Hunter, who listened in silence to the Supreme Custodian ranting on about the stupidity of all Heaps in general and of Simon Heap in particular. "I mean, Gerald -  " (For that was the Hunter's name. It was something he liked to keep quiet about, but to his irrita tion the Supreme Custodian used "Gerald" at every possible opportunity.) " - I mean," said the Supreme Custodian indiginantly as he strode up and down the Hunter's sparsely furnished room in the barracks, waving his arms dramatically in the air, "how can anyone not know exactly where their aunt lives? How, Gerald, can he visit her if he doesn't know exactly where she lives?"

The Supreme Custodian was a dutiful visitor of his numerous aunts, most of whom wished that their nephew did not know exactly where they lived.

But Simon had provided enough information for the Hunter. As soon as the Supreme Custodian had gone, the Hunter set to work with his detailed maps and charts of the Marram Marshes and before long had pinpointed the likely whereabouts of Aunt Zelda's cottage. He was ready once again for the Chase.

And so, with some trepidation, the Hunter went to see DomDaniel.

DomDaniel was skulking at the top of the Wizard Tower, passing the Big Freeze by digging out the old Necromancy books that Alther had locked away in a cupboard and Summoning his library assistants, two short and extremely nasty Magogs. DomDaniel had found the Magogs after he had jumped from the Tower. Normally they lived far below the earth and consequently bore a close resemblance to huge blind worms with the addition of long, boneless arms. They had no legs but advanced over the ground on a trail of slime with a caterpillar-like movement, and were surprisingly fast when they wanted to be. The Magogs had no hair, were a yellowish-white color and appeared to have no eyes. They did in fact have one small eye that was also yellowish-white; it lay just above the only features in their face, which were two glistening round holes where a nose should be and a mouth slit. The slime they extruded was unpleasantly sticky and foul-smelling although DomDaniel himself found it quite agreeable.

Each Magog would probably have been about four feet tall if you had stretched it out straight; although that was something no one had ever attempted. There were better ways to fill your days, like scratching your nails down a blackboard or eating a bucket of frog spawn. No one ever touched a Magog unless it was by mistake. Their slime had such a revolting quality to it that just remembering the smell of it was enough to make many people sick on the spot. Magogs hatched underground from larvae left in unsuspecting hibernating animals, such as hedgehogs or dormice. They avoided tortoises as it was hard for the young Magogs to get out of the shells. Once the first rays of the spring sunshine had warmed the earth, the larvae would burst out, consume what was left of the animal and then burrow deeper into the ground until it reached a Magog chamber. DomDaniel had hundreds of Magog chambers around his hideout in the Badlands and always had a steady supply. They made superb Guards; they could deliver a bite that gave most people rapid blood poisoning and saw them off in a few hours, and a scratch from a Magog's claw would become so infected that it could never heal. But their greatest deterrent was how they looked: their bulbous yellowish-white head, apparently blind, and their constantly moving little jaw with its rows of spiked yellow teeth were gruesome and kept most people at bay. The Magogs had arrived just before the Big Freeze. They had terrified the Apprentice out of his wits, which had given DomDaniel some amusement and an excuse to leave the boy shivering out on the landing while he tried, yet again, to learn the Thirteen Times Tables.

The Magogs gave the Hunter a bit of a shock too. As he made it to the top of the spiral stairs and strode past the Apprentice on the landing, deliberately ignoring the boy, the Hunter slipped on the trail of Magog slime that led into DomDaniel's apartment. He just got his balance back in time, but not before he had heard a snigger coming from the Apprentice.

Before long the Apprentice had a little more to snigger about, for at last DomDaniel was shouting at someone other than him. He listened with delight to his Master's angry voice, which traveled extremely well through the heavy purple door.

"No, no, No!" DomDaniel was shouting. "You must think I am completely mad to let you go off again on a Hunt on your own. You are a bumbling fool, and if there was anyone else I could get to do the job, believe me, I would. You will wait until I tell you when to go. And then you will go under my supervision. Don't interrupt! No! I will not listen. Now get out - or would you like one of my Magogs to assist you?"

The Apprentice watched as the purple door was flung open and the Hunter made a quick exit, skidding over the slime and rattling down the stairs as fast as he could. After that the Apprentice almost managed to learn his Thirteen Times Tables. Well, he got up to thirteen times seven, which was his best yet.

Alther, who had been busy mixing up DomDaniel's pairs of socks, heard everything. He blew out the fire and followed the Hunter out of the Tower, where he Caused a huge snowfall to drop from the Great Arch just as the Hunter walked under it. It was hours before anyone bothered to dig the Hunter out, but that was little consolation to Alther. Things were not looking good.

Deep in the frozen Forest, the Wendron Witches set out their traps in the hope of catching an unwary wolverine or two to tide them over the lean time ahead. Then they retired to the communal winter cave in the slate quarry, where they burrowed into their furs, told each other stories and kept a fire burning day and night.

The occupants of the tree house gathered around the woodburning stove in the big hut and steadily ate their way through Galen's stores of nuts and berries. Sally Mullin huddled into a pile of wolverine furs and quietly mourned her cafe while comfort-eating her way through a huge pile of hazel-nuts. Sarah and Galen kept the stove going and talked about herbs and potions through the long cold days.

The four Heap boys made a snow camp down on the Forest floor some distance away from the tree house and took to living wild. They trapped and roasted squirrels and anything else they could find, much to Galen's disapproval, but she said nothing. It kept the boys occupied and out of the tree house, and it also conserved her winter food supplies, which were being rapidly nibbled through by Sally Mullin. Sarah visited the boys every day, and although at first she was worried about them being out on their own in the Forest, she was impressed by the network of igloos they built and noticed that some of the younger Wendron Witches had taken to dropping by with small offerings of food and drink. Soon it became rare for Sarah to find her boys without at least two or three young witches helping them cook a meal or just sitting around the campfire laughing and telling jokes. It surprised Sarah just how much fending for themselves had changed the boys. They all suddenly seemed so grown up, even the youngest, Jo-Jo, who was still only thirteen. After a while Sarah began to feel a bit of an interloper in their camp, but she persisted in visiting them every day, partly to keep an eye on them and partly because she had developed quite a taste for roast squirrel.



Pythons and Rats

The. morning after the arrival of the Big Freeze, Nicko opened the front door of the cottage to find a wall of snow before him. He set to work with Aunt Zelda's coal shovel and dug a tunnel about six feet long through the snow and into the bright winter sun. Jenna and Boy 412 came out through the tunnel, blinking in the sunlight.

"It's so bright," said Jenna. She shaded her eyes against the snow, which glinted almost painfully with a sparkling frost.

The Big Freeze had transformed the cottage into an enormous igloo. The marshland that surrounded them had become a wide arctic landscape, all the features changed by the windblown snowdrifts and the long shadows cast by the low winter sun. Maxie completed the picture by bounding out and rolling in the snow until he resembled an overexcited polar bear.

Jenna and Boy 412 helped Nicko dig a path down to the frozen Mott, then they raided Aunt Zelda's large stock of brooms and began the task of sweeping the snow off the ice so that they could skate all around the Mott. Jenna made a start while the two boys threw snowballs at each other. Boy 412 turned out to be a good shot and Nicko ended up looking rather like Maxie.

The ice was already about six inches thick and was as smooth and slippery as glass. A myriad of tiny bubbles was suspended in the frozen water, giving the ice a slightly cloudy appearance, but it was still clear enough to see the frozen strands of grass trapped within it and to see what lay beneath. And what lay beneath Jenna's feet as she swept away the first swathe of snow were the two unblinking yellow eyes of a giant snake, staring straight at her.

"Argh!" screamed Jenna.

"What's that, Jen?" asked Nicko.

"Eyes. Snake eyes. There's a massive snake underneath the ice.

Boy 412 and Nicko came over. "Wow. It's huge," Nicko said.

Jenna knelt down and scraped away some more snow. "Look," she said, "there's its tail. Right by its head. It must stretch all around the Mott."

"It can't," Nicko disagreed.

"It must."

"I suppose there might be more than one."

"Well, there's only one way to find out." Jenna picked up the broom and started sweeping. "Come on, get going," she told the boys. Nicko and Boy 412 reluctantly picked up their brooms and got going.

By the end of the afternoon they had discovered that there was indeed only one snake.

"It must be about a mile long," said Jenna as at last they got back to where they had started. The Marsh Python stared at them grumpily through the ice. It didn't like being looked at, particularly by food. Although the snake preferred goats and lynxes, it regarded anything on legs as food and had occasionally partaken of the odd traveler, if one had been so careless as to fall into a ditch and splash around too much. But generally it avoided the two-legged kind; it found their numerous wrappings indigestible, and it particularly disliked boots.

The Big Freeze set in. Aunt Zelda settled down to wait it out, just as she did every year, and informed the impatient Marcia that there was no chance whatsoever of Silas returning with her KeepSafe now. The Marram Marshes were completely cut off. Marcia would just have to wait for the Big Thaw like everyone else.

But the Big Thaw showed no sign of coming. Every night the north wind brought yet another howling blizzard to pile the drifts even deeper.

The temperatures plummeted and the Boggart was frozen out of his mud patch. He retreated to the hot spring bath hut, where he dozed contentedly in the steam. The Marsh Python lay trapped in the Mott. It made do with eating whatever unwary fish and eels came its way and dreaming of the day it would be free to swallow as many goats as it could manage.

Nicko and Jenna went skating. At first they were happy to circle around the iced-up Mott and irritate the Marsh Python, but after a while they began to venture into the white landscape of the marsh. They would spend hours racing along the frozen ditches, listening to the crackle of the ice beneath them and sometimes to the mournful howl of the wind as it threatened to bring yet another fall of snow. Jenna noticed that all the sounds of the marsh creatures had disappeared. Gone were the busy rustlings of the marsh voles and the quiet splishings of the water snakes. The Quake Ooze Brownies were safely frozen far below the ground and made not a single shriek between them, while the Water Nixies were fast asleep, their suckers frozen to the underside of the ice, waiting for the thaw.

Long, quiet weeks passed at Keeper's Cottage and still the snow blew in from the north. While Jenna and Nicko spent hours outside skating and making ice slides around the Mott, Boy 412 stayed indoors. He still felt chilled if he stayed out for any length of time. It was as if some small part of him had not yet warmed through from the time he had been buried in the snow outside the WizardTower. Sometimes Jenna sat with him beside the fire. She liked Boy 412; although she didn't know why, seeing as he never spoke to her. She didn't take it personally, as Jenna knew he had not uttered a word to anyone since he had arrived at the cottage.

Jenna's main topic of conversation with him was Petroc Trelawney, who Boy 412 had taken a liking to.

Some afternoons Jenna would sit on the sofa beside Boy 412 while he watched her take the pet rock out of her pocket. Jenna would often sit by the fire with Petroc, as he reminded her of Silas. There was something about just holding the pebble that made her sure Silas would come back safely.

"Here, you hold Petroc," Jenna would say, putting the smooth gray pebble into Boy 412's grubby hand.

Petroc Trelawney liked Boy 412. He liked him because he was usually slightly sticky and smelled of food. Petroc Trelawney would stick out his four stumpy legs, open his eyes and lick Boy 412's hand. Mmm, he'd think, not bad. He could definitely taste eel, and was there a hint of cabbage lingering as a subtle aftertaste? Petroc Trelawney liked eel and would give Boy 412's palm another lick. His tongue was dry and slightly rasping, like a minute cat's tongue, and Boy 412 would laugh. It tickled.

"He likes you." Jenna would smile. "He's never licked my hand."

There were many days when Boy 412 just sat by the fire reading his way through Aunt Zelda's stock of books, immersing himself in a whole new world. Before he came to Keeper's Cottage, Boy 412 had never read a book. He had been taught to read in the Young Army but had only ever been allowed to read long lists of Enemies, Orders of the Day and Battle Plans. But now Aunt Zelda kept him supplied with a happy mixture of adventure stories and Magyk books, which Boy 412 soaked up like a sponge. It was on one of these days, almost six weeks into the Big Freeze, when Jenna and Nicko had decided to see whether they could skate all the way to the Port, that Boy 412 noticed something.

He already knew that every morning, for some reason, Aunt Zelda lit two lanterns and disappeared into the potion cupboard under the stairs. At first Boy 412 had thought nothing of it. After all, it was dark in the potion cupboard and Aunt Zelda had many potions to tend. He knew that the potions that needed to be kept in darkness were the most unstable and required constant attention; only the day before, Aunt Zelda had spent hours filtering a muddied Amazonian Antidote that had gone lumpy in the cold. But what Boy 412 noticed this particular morning was how quiet it was in the potion cupboard, and he knew that Aunt Zelda was not generally a quiet person. Whenever she walked past the Preserve Pots they rattled and jumped, and when she was in the kitchen the pots and pans clanged and banged; so how, wondered Boy 412, did she manage to be so quiet in the small confines of the potion cupboard? And why did she need two lanterns?

He put down his book and tiptoed over to the potion cupboard door. It was strangely silent considering it contained Aunt Zelda in close proximity to hundreds of little clinky bottles. Boy 412 knocked hesitantly on the door. There was no reply. He listened again. Silence. Boy 412 knew he should really just go back to his book but somehow Thaumaturgy and Sortilage: Why Bother? was not as interesting as what Aunt Zelda was up to. So Boy 412 pushed open the door and peered in. The potion cupboard was empty.

For a moment, Boy 412 was half afraid that it was a joke and Aunt Zelda was going to jump out at him, but he soon realized that she was definitely not there. And then he saw why. The trapdoor was open, and the musty damp smell of the tunnel that Boy 412 remembered so well drifted up to him. Boy 412 hovered at the door, uncertain of what to do. It crossed his mind that Aunt Zelda might have fallen through the trapdoor by mistake and needed help, but he realized that if she had fallen, she would have got wedged halfway, as Aunt Zelda looked a good deal wider than the trapdoor did.

As he was wondering how Aunt Zelda had managed to squeeze herself through the trapdoor, Boy 412 saw the dim yellow glow of a lantern shining up through the open space in the floor. Soon he heard the heavy tread of Aunt Zelda's sensible boots on the sandy floor of the tunnel and her laborious breathing as she struggled up the steep incline toward the wooden ladder. As Aunt Zelda started to heave herself up the ladder, Boy 412 silently closed the cupboard door and scuttled back to his seat by the fire.

It was quite a few minutes later when an out-of-breath Aunt Zelda poked her head out of the potion cupboard a little suspiciously and saw Boy 412 reading Thaumaturgy and Sortilage: Why Bother? with avid interest.

Before Aunt Zelda had time to disappear back into the cupboard, the front door burst open. Nicko appeared with Jenna closely following. They threw down their skates and held up what looked like a dead rat. "Look what we found," said Jenna.

Boy 412 pulled a face. He didn't like rats. He'd had to live with too many of them to enjoy their company.

"Leave it outside," said Aunt Zelda. "It's bad luck to bring a dead thing across the threshold unless you're going to eat it. And I don't fancy eating that."

"It's not dead, Aunt Zelda," said Jenna. "Look." She held out the brown streak of fur for Aunt Zelda to inspect. Aunt Zelda poked at it warily.

"We found it outside that old shack," said Jenna. "You know the one, not far from the Port at the end of the marsh. There's a man there who lives with a donkey. And a lot of dead rats in cages. We looked through the window - it was horrible. And then he woke up and saw us, so me and Nicko went to run off and we saw this rat. I think he'd just escaped. So I picked him up and put him in my jacket and we ran for it. Well, skated for it. And the old man came out and yelled at us for taking his rat. But he couldn't catch us, could he, Nicko?"

"No," said Nicko, a man of few words.

"Anyway, I think it's the Message Rat with a message from Dad," said Jenna.

"Never!" said Aunt Z,elda. "That Message Rat was fat."

The rat in Jenna's hands let out a weak squeak of protest.

"And this one," said Aunt Zelda, poking the rat in the ribs, "is as thin as a rake. Well, I suppose you had better bring it in whatever kind of rat it may be."

And that is how Stanley finally reached his destination, nearly six weeks after he had been sent out from the Rat Office. Like all good Message Rats he had lived up to the Rat Office slogan: Nothing stops a Message Rat.

But Stanley was not strong enough to deliver his message. He lay feebly on a cushion in front of the fire while Jenna fed him pureed eel. The rat had never been a great fan of eel, particularly the pureed variety, but after six weeks in a cage drinking only water and eating nothing at all, even pureed eel tasted wonderful. And lying on a cushion in front of a fire instead of shivering at the bottom of a filthy cage was even more wonderful. Even if Bert did sneak in the odd peck when no one was looking.

Marcia did the Speeke, Rattus Rattus command after Jenna insisted on it, but Stanley uttered not a word as he lay weakly on his cushion.

"I'm still not convinced it's the Message Rat," said Marcia a few days after Stanley had arrived and the rat had still not spoken. "That Message Rat did nothing but talk, if I remember rightly. And a load of drivel most of it was too."

Stanley gave Marcia his best frown, but it passed her by.

"It is him, Marcia," Jenna assured her. "I've kept loads of rats and I'm good at recognizing them. This one is definitely the Message Rat that we had before."

And so they all waited nervously for Stanley to recover enough to Speeke and deliver Silas's longed-for message. It was an anxious time. The rat developed a fever and became delirious, mumbling incoherently for hours on end and almost driving Marcia to distraction. Aunt Zelda made up copious amounts of willow bark infusions that Jenna patiently fed to the rat through a small dropper. After a long and fretful week, the rat's fever at last abated.

Late one afternoon, when Aunt Zelda was locked in the potion cupboard (she had taken to locking the door after the day Boy 412 had peeked inside) and Marcia was working out some mathematical spells at Aunt Zelda's desk, Stanley gave a cough and sat up. Maxie barked and Bert hissed with surprise, but the Message Rat ignored them.

He had a message to deliver.