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

from pale gold wood, with real clothes, and frizzy grey hair puffing out from beneath the pointed witch’s hat glued to its head. Stella was horrified to notice that the witch puppet had burnt feet, and realised that it must be a replica of the witch who had killed her parents, and tried to kill her too. But why was there a puppet of her in the nursery? It didn’t make any sense.

Stella found herself constantly coming back to the puppet, staring at it and frowning hard. She had the weirdest feeling about it. Almost as if there was something she was supposed to remember about the witch, something important. For some reason that she couldn’t quite explain, she didn’t put the puppet back in the secret drawer, but tucked it into her bag instead.

Having failed to find anything that might help her escape, Stella thought about freezing the trolls who brought her meals, and then making a run for it down to the dungeon to find her friends – but she was afraid of doing too much magic and permanently turning her heart into ice. She remembered the chill she’d got in the dining room before, and that strange feeling of dislike she had felt for Shay. She didn’t want to run the risk of freezing her heart, but she didn’t want to remain stuck in the nursery either. And somebody needed to do something about rescuing the others, after all.

In the end, it was the dolls’ house version of the castle that gave Stella the idea. As it seemed to be an exact replica of the real castle, right down to the items inside the various rooms, Stella decided to study it in order to get an idea of the layout. If an opportunity for escape were to arise, the last thing she wanted was to go charging down a corridor into a dead end, or find herself trapped in the pantry, or wasting time strumming at lutes in the music room.

She’d got quite excited when she’d spotted a little room with a plaque that said ‘Armoury’ on the door, imagining that it would be full of swords and maces and axes that might help them escape. But when she peered into the room, she found only spinning wheels, and shiny red apples, and jewelled hair combs – ideal weapons for evil queens to use, but not much use to a junior explorer.

The dolls’ castle even had its own dungeon, hidden beneath the floor, and Stella spent some time working out the quickest way to get down there, even managing to plan out a route that would avoid going past any of the magic mirrors.

At the top of the staircase that led down to the dungeon was a huge library. Stella peered at the minute books on the bookshelves and saw that they all seemed to be fairy tales. With the edge of her thumbnail, she pulled out one of the books to see if it had actual writing inside, but when she removed the book, the entire bookcase swung open to reveal a secret passage hidden behind. Stella was delighted. All castles ought to have secret passages, and this could provide them with their means of escape.

On the morning of the third day, Stella had decided she couldn’t wait any longer and would have to risk using her ice powers. When the two trolls came to deliver her breakfast, she concentrated really hard on turning them into ice, and to her relief it worked exactly the same as it had with the candelabrum. The trolls were quite a bit larger than the candelabrum, though, and Stella felt even more of a chill this time, as if a bucket of icy water had been thrown in her face. She shivered, shook it off and concentrated her thoughts on what she needed to do: get down to the dungeon, find her friends, escape.

She tried to tiptoe along the corridor, but chunky snow boots aren’t designed for tiptoeing and so she was forced to take them off and carry them in her hand as she went along the corridor and down the stairs. Following the route she’d memorised from the dolls’ house castle, Stella swiftly made her way down to the dungeon, taking care to avoid any corridors with magic mirrors hanging in them. This meant she had to take a rather roundabout kind of route, which led her past a vast fish tank that took up an entire wall and was filled with drifting pink jellyfish, and also through rooms that stored some more of her mother’s collections, only these objects were not as nice as the jewelled eggs and music boxes she’d seen upstairs. The huge collection of iron slippers was particularly horrible. They were all sizes and shapes, to suit all different types of creature including – from the look of some of them – frosties, and even yetis.

Finally, Stella reached the staircase that led down to the dungeons, diving into it quickly in order to avoid two trolls who were clumping along the corridor towards her. She put her boots back on then because the steps were wet with condensation, and she wanted to be able to run away very fast if she needed to.

The stairs were lit by flickering sconces but, as Stella went further down, it started to feel darker and darker. She hoped her friends were all right and that they hadn’t been chained to the wall or anything uncivilized like that. Stella knew from studying the dolls’ castle that the dungeon was a warren of cells, and she expected to have some difficulty locating the right one. But in fact, she heard Ethan’s loud, carrying voice the moment she reached the bottom of the staircase.

‘—is nothing to do with any of us,’ he was saying. ‘We’re not ice princesses, for heaven’s sake!’

Stella peered around the corner and saw a troll holding up a mirror and facing it towards a cell. She could