The Polar Bear Explorers' Club by Alex Bell (life changing books to read txt) 📗

whoever had packed the map tube had done so in some haste, or perhaps they had just grabbed the first maps that had come to hand, but either way, most of them were completely useless.

‘This one is a map of the Scorpion Jungle,’ Stella said, wrinkling her nose in disgust. ‘That’s miles and miles from here. And this is a map for the Land of Pyramids, which is even further away.’

By the time she’d pulled out maps for the Sapphire Desert, Volcano Island and the Lost City of Muja-Muja, Stella was beginning to think that they had brought no maps of the Icelands with them at all. But then she found one, right at the bottom of the tube. The Polar Bear explorers’ crest was stamped at the top of the map, and a snarling yeti drawing in the bottom right-hand corner held a box that contained the key to all the different symbols. Only a small proportion of the map had been filled in. The rest was left blank for the part that hadn’t been discovered yet.

‘Okay,’ Stella said, smoothing the map out on a box of moustache wax, enjoying the way the thick paper crinkled beneath her fingers. ‘So the Bold Adventurer dropped us off here.’ She pointed to the edge of the filled-in section. ‘And we set off north towards the ice bridge. Which means we’re probably somewhere around here.’ She pointed at a blank spot and then passed the pencils over to Beanie, who was very good at art and quickly drew the broken ice bridge and mountain onto the parchment.

There was then a brief delay whilst they tried to decide which direction they should head in next. They all agreed that their most important issue was food. The salted beef and iced gems were for the unicorn and wolves, which only left the Spam and mint cake for the young explorers. And, as Ethan pointed out, those supplies wouldn’t keep them going forever. Plus, no one wanted to eat Spam for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Stella set the explorer’s compass to the Food heading, and waited whilst the arrow spun around in circles a few times before finally pointing straight ahead. Ethan was obviously still sulking and refused to get back in the sled with them, saying he’d ride the unicorn instead, which suited Stella just fine as she’d had more than enough of the magician’s bony elbows sticking into her ribs.

They set off across the snow, with the wolf sled following Stella’s compass and leading the way, and Ethan riding Glacier a few yards behind. The cold air stung their faces as they moved along, forcing them to wrap their scarves up almost to their eyes. Stella pulled her hood back up over her head, and Beanie produced a striped knitted hat his mum had made for him, pulling it down low over his pointed ears. It had a narwhal stitched on the front and a pom-pom on top, and it clashed horribly with everything else he wore, but it was his favourite hat in the world, and Beanie refused to be parted with it.

Ethan had been right about there being nothing to see. So far, at least, it really did look like there wasn’t anything there but snow and ice. Stella hoped it was going to get more interesting up ahead. It would be pretty disappointing if she returned from her first solo expedition without making any fantastic discoveries or collecting any curiosities, grotesqueries or rarities to put on display in the wooden cabinets Felix had had specially made for that purpose back home.

They’d been travelling for a while – and the frozen landscape racing by had started to seem like one endless white blur to Stella – when, suddenly, Shay gave a shout of alarm and brought the wolves to such an abrupt halt that both Stella and Beanie slid right out of their seats and ended up sprawled on top of each other in the foot compartment.

‘What did you do that for?’ Stella complained, trying to disentangle herself from Beanie.

But Shay wasn’t listening. He was looking back at Ethan and yelling for him to stop. The magician was cantering straight towards them on the unicorn, a puzzled frown on his face. It didn’t look like he was going to slow down any time soon. Stella heard Shay say a bad word under his breath and then scramble off the back of the sled, his boots crunching in the snow as he ran straight into the path of the oncoming unicorn. For a horrible moment Stella thought he was going to get run over and be trampled into the snow, which was bound to be a pretty messy affair, but Ethan dragged on the reins just in time, and the unicorn reared up on its hind legs, one pearly hoof narrowly missing Shay’s head.

‘Have you gone quite mad?’ Ethan gasped, staring down with a shocked expression. ‘I might have bashed your brains in!’

Shay didn’t reply, but reached up for Ethan’s cloak and dragged him from the saddle, ignoring his indignant cries of protest. ‘Look!’ he snapped, forcing the magician around to face the direction they were travelling in.

‘There’s nothing there but ice, you fool!’

‘Look properly!’

Stella gasped as she noticed what had been invisible to her before. Dozens and dozens of tiny igloos were spread out before them. Camouflaged against the endless white snow, Stella hadn’t seen them to begin with, but if the wolf sled and the unicorn had carried on they would have surely smashed the miniature homes to pieces.

‘Well, how was I to know?’ Ethan said, shaking Shay off. ‘I’m a magician, not a psychic. And don’t ever touch me again!’

Shay turned away from him, shaking his head in disgust, his long black hair brushing against the shoulders of his cloak as he returned to the wolf sled.

‘What do you think could be living in them?’ Stella asked. The igloos were a bit bigger than the penguin one Felix had given