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

‘Was he older than you?’ Stella asked.

Ethan nodded. ‘Four years older. He was sixteen when we went on that expedition last year. He’d been on several with Dad before but it was my first one.’

‘What happened?’ Stella asked quietly.

She wasn’t sure whether she should have asked or not, but Ethan just shrugged and said, ‘Dad wanted to hunt a screeching red devil squid. It’s one of the most dangerous monsters in the Poison Tentacle Sea so he thought it would make a fantastic trophy to bring back to the Ocean Squid Explorers’ Club. Julian tried to talk him out of it. He said it was too dangerous, that it was too big a monster for us to chase after on my first expedition. He said I wasn’t experienced enough.’ He sighed and handed Stella back the igloo. ‘I wanted to prove him wrong. So when the squid attacked the ship I didn’t go below deck like he told me to. I picked up the harpoon gun and ran to the starboard netting and tried to shoot it myself. The tentacle came up out of nowhere – a huge, monstrous thing. It curled around me and dragged me right off the ship.’

Stella shivered at the thought of suddenly being in the cold ocean with a huge squid. Beanie also flinched, momentarily distracted from his father’s travel journal.

‘Julian jumped in after me,’ Ethan went on, shaking his head. ‘He just jumped straight in with no hesitation at all. He must have known he’d probably die trying to save me, but he did it anyway.’

Stella thought of Felix, and knew that she would definitely risk her life if he was in danger and needed saving, even though she knew he’d be very angry with her if she were to put herself in harm’s way. She glanced towards the mouth of the cave, the frozen landscape stretching beyond it, and hoped that Felix was okay out there.

‘That’s what family does,’ she said.

Ethan glanced at her and said, ‘It’s not what all family does. Julian jumped in, but Dad didn’t. When Julian sliced off the squid’s tentacle, it floated up to the surface and Dad dragged it onto the deck. It was still wrapped around me so I came up with it, but part of me always wonders whether it was the tentacle he was after, or me.’

Stella was shocked to hear him speak in such a way about his own father. ‘I’m sure it was you,’ she said. ‘No one could care more about a trophy than about their own son!’

‘Well, then he should have been trying to help Julian,’ Ethan said. ‘I know he’s upset that he died – that’s why we came on a polar expedition rather than going back to sea – but he never talks about him. And he didn’t come into the water after us. He didn’t try to help. Maybe things would have been different if he had. But instead, the squid got away. It went down to the bottom of the ocean, and it took Julian with it. Mum says she’ll never forgive Dad for what happened. They argue all the time whenever Dad’s home now. It’s horrible. She didn’t even want me to come on this expedition but luckily Dad insisted. She’ll be even more angry with him now, I expect.’

Stella thought of Felix again and it struck her how lucky she had been that it was he who had found her in the snow that day. She could have been discovered by anyone, or no one at all, but she’d been found by the kindest man she knew. Someone who loved her and had taught her what it meant to be part of a family.

‘Felix says it’s always better to give people the benefit of the doubt,’ Stella said. ‘Maybe your father doesn’t talk about Julian because he finds it too painful.’

‘Who knows?’ Ethan replied. Then he looked at her and said, ‘Felix isn’t your real father, is he?’

‘He is my real father,’ Stella said. ‘But not my biological one, if that’s what you mean. Felix found me one day on an expedition. I’m a snow orphan. I don’t know where I came from.’ Stella thought of Felix, and Gruff, and Magic, and Buster, and all the other pygmy dinosaurs at home in the orangery, and said, ‘But it doesn’t matter, because I found a family anyway.’

Ethan nodded and said, ‘I think that anyone who won’t let you down, who’ll be there for you no matter what, counts as family.’

‘I think you’re right.’

Stella gazed around at their little expedition and the thought occurred to her that the four of them had become rather like a family since they had set out together. She looked at Ethan, who was staring thoughtfully into the flames of the volcano, and wondered whether he was thinking the same thing. She was about to ask him when the magician glanced over at Beanie and said, ‘What are you reading there?’

Beanie looked up. ‘This? It’s my dad’s journal. They found it at his abandoned camp on the Black Ice Bridge.’

Ethan shuddered and said, ‘I’d rather return to the Poison Tentacle Sea and swim with the squid again than venture onto that bridge. Don’t they say that it’s cursed?’

Beanie nodded. ‘Dad wrote in his journal that the men said they could sense an evil presence that got stronger and stronger the further they crossed. You can’t see the water because of the fog, but Dad wrote that they could hear strange splashing noises from below, like there were terrible monsters down there, trying to leap up at them.’

‘The sea is full of terrible monsters,’ Ethan agreed.

Shay wandered back to join them and flopped down by the fire next to Ethan. Two of the wolves came too, and curled up beside him with their heads in his lap.

‘There’s an awful lot of ghost stories and rumours concerning the Black Ice Bridge,’ Shay said. ‘Talk like that doesn’t come out of nowhere.