The Polar Bear Explorers' Club by Alex Bell (books for 8th graders TXT) 📕

Stella was so horrified that she didn’t notice the frosty flying towards her until Beanie – who’d ran out of red jellybeans and moved on to blue – shouted out a warning. She tried to raise the moustache spoon, but could already see that she wasn’t going to manage it in time. The frosty was almost on her, fangs bared – but then the strangest thing happened. When the frosty reached her, it didn’t sink its pointy teeth into her arm, like she’d expected. Instead it gasped and gave Stella a frightened look, as if she’d just done something particularly fearsome. Then it clamped its jaws firmly shut and flew away from Stella as fast as it could.

She didn’t have much time to puzzle over its odd behaviour because just then the wolves arrived. Stella heard them before she saw them: a ferocious mixture of howling, snarling and barking that made the hairs on her arms stand on end. The whisperer’s wolf around Shay’s throat still had its eyes open, gleaming blood red, so Stella guessed that he must be talking to the wolves and telling them to attack the frosties. The wolves did so with a vengeance, snatching the horrible creatures from the air and crunching them up between their teeth. They were still attached to the sled’s harness, and had in fact brought the sled down with them, but it didn’t seem to hinder them much.

The frosties sought the safety of the trees, gathering together on the highest branches and staring in terror at the snapping wolves below. The explorers raced for the staircase – all except Ethan, who was hunched over his injured hand and groaning. Shay grabbed his arm and dragged him along after them, and Stella took the opportunity to snatch up one of the golden-spotted geese as she ran past the pond.

Stella didn’t agree with stealing normally, of course, but if someone bit a member of her expedition and tried to freeze his finger off, then surely that left her perfectly free to steal their magic goose and moustache spoon in return.

The four of them tumbled out of the golden door and into the snow, the wolves and sled close on their heels. With the honking goose still tucked under one arm, Stella leapt into the sled with Beanie. Shay shoved Ethan in too and then leapt onto the back, yelling for the wolves to run as fast as they could. They sped across the snow, with Glacier galloping alongside them, and the frosty igloos growing smaller and smaller behind them.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It started to snow as they raced away from the frosty igloos, and soon the air was thick with swirling flakes that made it hard for them to see where they were going. After the initial panic wore off and they managed to put some distance between themselves and the frosties, Shay slowed the wolves down before they could all go tumbling off the edge of a cliff.

It was just in time, too, because all of a sudden a giant wall of colours loomed up out of the snow before them, soaring straight up into the sky. Stella saw orange and red, yellow and green, blue, indigo and violet, and suddenly realised what they were looking at. ‘It’s a rainbow!’ she cried. ‘A frozen one!’

‘Didn’t the frosties say that the Yak and Yeti hotel was at the end of the rainbow?’ Shay asked, hopping off the back of the sled and coming around the side to join them.

‘Why should we believe a word they said?’ Ethan groaned. His already pale face had gone white as chalk and Stella could see beads of sweat forming at his blond hairline as he hunched protectively over his hand. ‘I told you we shouldn’t trust them! I told you that something wasn’t right. But, no, no, you had to go and see the incredible magic geese and put all of our lives at risk!’

The goose in Stella’s arms honked importantly and Stella quickly shushed it. ‘How’s your hand?’ she said to Ethan.

‘How do you think?’ the magician snarled. ‘It’s frozen! It hurts more than you can possibly imagine!’

‘Let me see,’ Shay said.

Ethan carefully drew his hand out from the folds of his cloak and the others gasped. His index finger had frozen solid. It had turned completely blue and was locked rigidly in place, with frost sparkling across the skin. And, worse than that, the finger next to it had started to go blue as well.

‘It’s spreading!’ Stella cried.

‘That’s what frostbite does,’ Ethan said, through teeth that had started to chatter. ‘I’m going to end up losing all my fingers to frostbite thanks to you lot. Probably my toes as well.’

‘Captain Kieran Caspian Carter,’ Beanie said, ‘succumbed to frostbite in—’

‘Beanie, not now!’ Stella said sharply.

‘Sorry. Let me see if I can help.’ Beanie pulled off a glove, raised his hand and placed it just over Ethan’s. Sparkling gold light shone from his fingertips and washed over Ethan’s frozen skin.

‘Can you cure it?’ Shay asked.

‘There’s no known cure for frostbite,’ Beanie replied. ‘All I can do is slow down the spread of it.’

‘What use is healing magic if it doesn’t cure anything?’ Ethan complained.

‘Magic is useful but it only takes you so far. Science has to take you the rest of the way.’ Beanie drew back his hand and replaced his glove. ‘Besides, healing magic is unpredictable. Sometimes it becomes unstitched. I’ve slowed it down for now, but frostbite is vicious, and there’s no telling how long it will hold.’

‘We’ve got to get help,’ Shay said, running his hands through his long, dark hair. ‘Let’s follow the rainbow to the Yak and Yeti. There might be someone there who knows what to do.’

‘We don’t even know if there is such a place,’ Beanie said. ‘The frosties might have been lying.’

Stella took her compass from her pocket and set it to Food and then Shelter. Both