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

wood instantly caught fire, giving off smoke that was a little salty and dank, but the warmth of the flames more than made up for that, and Stella and Beanie hurried to settle themselves beside it.

‘Hi, folks,’ Shay greeted them. ‘I went down to feed the animals and found us some breakfast.’

He gestured at the little pile of speckled goose eggs on the deck beside him. ‘Thank you, magic goose,’ he said, handing them around.

‘Where’s Ethan?’ Stella asked.

Shay shrugged. ‘He wasn’t here when I woke up. That was about an hour ago. I was going to look for him but I haven’t had time.’

Stella couldn’t help feeling a little bit worried, despite the fact that she was still angry with the magician – but then a scraping sound made them all turn around in time to see Ethan scrambling over the side of the ship. He looked rather like he’d been rolling around in the snow. His black sleeves were wet, the front of his explorer’s cloak was all dusted with white, and there were even clumps of it in his pale blond hair.

‘We thought you’d gone,’ Shay remarked. ‘Taken yourself off to die in peace and quiet somewhere.’

Ethan ignored him and walked straight up to Beanie. ‘I’m sorry for throwing your narwhal away. And for calling you bait. That was … unnecessary. And cruel. I am cruel sometimes. I’m sorry.’

They all stared at him for a moment. Ethan had not struck any of them as the apologising type. Fortunately, though, Beanie was definitely the forgiving type, so Stella wasn’t surprised when he said, ‘That’s okay. You’re right, anyway; I should never have let go of the ladder and dragged you off in the first place.’ He paused, then added, ‘Look, I know I’m not like other people. I know some of the things I do might seem odd to you. Uncle Benedict says I’m enough to drive anyone round the twist, and that it’s no wonder I only have one friend in all the world, and that no one ever wants to come to my birthday parties. Even my cousin, Moira, said she would never come again, no matter what her parents said, because I’m a weirdo, and she doesn’t like me, and she wishes we weren’t even related.’

‘Moira really is such a snot!’ Stella said, hating Beanie’s cousin all over again. ‘It’s her loss, anyway. More cake for us, Beanie.’

At the mention of that cake, they both immediately winced at the memory of how many jellybeans they’d eaten.

Ethan looked taken aback for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Be that as it may. I shouldn’t have done what I did. Perhaps this will help make up for it.’

He reached out his hand and opened his gloved fingers to reveal a wooden narwhal – frozen solid, but otherwise quite unharmed.

‘Oh!’ Beanie scrambled to his feet and snatched the narwhal from Ethan’s hand. ‘Oh, you found him!’

He stared down at the narwhal for a moment before carefully putting it in his pocket and placing his hand on Ethan’s arm – which surprised Stella because it was highly unusual for Beanie to touch another person of his own free will. ‘Thank you so very much,’ Beanie said.

‘Forget it.’

Beanie removed his hand, looking puzzled. ‘How can I forget it? It only just happened.’

Ethan sighed. ‘I mean: you’re welcome.’

He peeled off his wet gloves and turned away to shake them out over the deck, but before he could finish doing so, Stella had got to her feet and thrown her arms around the magician.

‘Oh, please don’t hug me,’ Ethan groaned, trying to disentangle himself from her embrace.

Stella let him go with a grin. ‘How did you find it?’ she asked.

‘I tried to use a locator spell,’ Ethan replied. ‘Only it didn’t work. So I just had to dig in the snow.’

‘But that must have taken hours!’ Shay said.

‘Most of the night,’ Ethan agreed. He looked at Beanie. ‘Look, my brother, Julian … well … he’s gone too,’ he said. ‘So I know what it’s like to lose someone on an expedition. And I am sorry about your father. The Black Ice Bridge has claimed many good explorers.’

Beanie nodded. ‘Thank you. I’m sorry about your brother.’

‘Me too,’ Stella said. ‘You should have told us about him before.’

‘Why?’ Ethan said. ‘You never knew him. It doesn’t matter to you.’

‘But we know you,’ Stella said. ‘So it does matter. Plus, we would have, you know, made allowances for you whenever you were being obnoxious.’

‘Obnoxious’ was another one of the words Felix had taught her how to spell, and Stella was rather fond of it and enjoyed using it wherever possible. She remembered Felix telling her once that grief could make people a bit obnoxious sometimes. Why, Aunt Agatha had been particularly obnoxious for practically an entire year after their father died. Stella didn’t want Ethan to think she was being horrible to him again though, so she threw her arms around him in another hug.

‘Would you please stop doing that?’ Ethan said.

Stella gave him a final squeeze and then let go. She couldn’t help noticing that he looked pink and embarrassed, and maybe just a little bit pleased as well.

‘Ethan—’ Shay began.

The magician pointed a warning finger at the wolf whisperer. ‘Don’t. Don’t even think about hugging me. Nothing’s changed. I’m still obnoxious.’

Shay grinned. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I still think you’re uppity. And a prawn, come to that. I was just going to say, “catch”.’

He threw one of the goose eggs at him. Unfortunately, Ethan wasn’t very good at catching flying objects, and ended up fumbling with the egg for a moment before dropping it on the floor, and having to scrabble around for it in an undignified kind of way. It didn’t break though, and he soon scooped it back up again.

‘Stop messing about with that egg and sit down,’ Shay said. ‘Have some breakfast.’

Ethan sat and the four of them concentrated on what breakfast they’d like to find in their eggs. Before long, the