Hamish X and the Cheese Pirates (18 page)

Hamish X grabbed his rucksack and tossed it out onto the ice. “Now, we walk.”

“We ain't gonna get far in this cold.”

Hamish X jumped out after his rucksack. “We won't get anywhere at all if we stay here. Grab everything you need from the flyer … sled … whatever. Parveen will take a compass reading and off we go.”

Mimi tossed her bag out and scrambled down beside Hamish X. Parveen was about to follow when he stopped and stared out across the ice.

“What is it?” Hamish X asked.

“Look over there.” Parveen pointed.

Off in the distance to the north, on the very edge of the horizon, a green light shone. It wavered slightly, but it didn't disappear.

“What could it be?” Mimi wondered.

“Let's find out,” Hamish X decided. He heaved his rucksack onto his shoulders and Mimi and Parveen followed suit. Soon they were tramping across the ice. Hamish X had no trouble with his huge boots, but the footing was precarious for the others. The light was farther away than it had seemed at first. Hamish X didn't seem to feel the cold as badly as his companions. Before too long, Parveen and Mimi were both suffering, lips blue and breath rasping out in frosty clouds. Hamish X knew he had to get them in out of the cold soon, but the light danced maddeningly ahead, never seeming to get closer.

Finally, after hours of torturous hiking, they crested a rise formed from two huge plates of ice colliding. They looked down into a small valley to see a tent and three snowmobiles. The tent was green and it glowed with light from within. Cold and exhausted as they were, the children felt their hearts leap at the thought of shelter.

“Come on!” Mimi shouted, starting to scramble down the slope. Parveen staggered after her.

“Wait,” Hamish X called. “We don't know who they are.” They didn't listen but stumbled on towards the tent. Hamish X shook his head and followed. By the time he reached the camp, Mimi and Parveen had already gone inside.

Hamish X stopped and looked around at the frozen expanse of ice. The wind had started to pick up, blowing snow and cutting down visibility. But the snowmobiles
were free of snow drifts, leading him to conclude that someone had used them recently. He felt a finger of dread slide along his spine. Quickly, he turned and poked his head into the tent.

It was warm and dry. A portable heater sat on the floor, with Parveen and Mimi hunkered down in front of it. “Close the door!” Mimi grunted. Her eyelids were drooping. Parveen leaned against her, already breathing deeply.

“You can't just go to sleep. We have to be careful,” Hamish X pleaded. “We don't know who this camp belongs to.” His words fell on deaf ears. Mimi's chin fell forward. She was asleep. Hamish X felt the warmth of the tent beckon, but he forced himself to step back outside. He had to make sure they were safe.

He looked around the camp, but the storm made it impossible to see more than a few metres in any direction. Holding out one of his hands and using the tent to guide him, he made a slow circuit of the shelter. Hamish X had just turned the third corner when his boot struck something on the ground. A rounded, snow-covered lump blocked his path. He crouched down and carefully brushed away the snow.

Hamish X reeled back in horror, falling onto his backside. He had uncovered a skinless face, red muscle frozen solid in a monstrous grimace of pain. At first he thought it was a human face, but after the initial shock he could see that the teeth were far too long and the face had an elongated snout.

“What is that?” Hamish X said out loud.

“A polar bear,” came a heavily accented reply. Hamish X turned in time to see a club descend towards his skull. He saw stars and then darkness.

Mr. Candy and Mr. Sweet

Mr. Sweet and Mr. Candy stood looking into the hole that was once the front door of the Windcity Orphanage and Cheese Factory, their helicopter idling behind them on the concrete.

“It would seem there has been some sort of incident, Mr. Candy.”

“Well spotted, Mr. Sweet.”

Mr. Candy reached down and gingerly lifted the hilt of a broken sword between his thumb and forefinger. “Pirates, Mr. Sweet. An interesting wrinkle.”

“Indeed, Mr. Candy. It would appear that the subject is heading north in pursuit.”

“Mother is tracking them as we speak, Mr. Sweet.”

“The signs indicate that his development is accelerating, Mr. Candy.”

“According to thermal tracking reports, our asset is not alone. He has two companions, Mr. Sweet.”

“Companions? He has never before exhibited any willingness to work with others. Could it be he is developing emotionally?”

“The thought is disturbing, Mr. Sweet.” Mr. Candy thought for a moment, the wind tearing at his coattails. “We shall have to perform a thorough wipe after retrieval, prior to integration.”

“I agree, Mr. Candy.”

“Shall we?”

“Let's.”

They turned in unison, picked their way fastidiously through the wreckage, and climbed into their helicopter. Minutes later it rose over the slanted roofs of Windcity and swept north.

Mr. Nieuwendyke, the last resident of Windcity, looked out his front window, watching them go. “Meow,” he said, for he was dressed as a cat and that was the proper thing for a cat to say.

Chapter 21

Hamish X dreamt he was falling. Below him yawned a black abyss waiting to swallow him up. He could not stop his descent. His arms and feet were bound; he could barely move at all. The lovely voice spoke again, resonating all through his body. It wasn't outside his head but rather inside his mind.
“Hamish X. Wake up.”
The voice was beautiful, feminine, and kind: a mother's voice. His mother's voice.
“You have to wake up now.”

Hamish X woke to find that he was hanging upside down above a hole cut into the ice. His hands were bound behind his back. He strained to look at his feet and saw that they were tied together with nylon rope. A hook was threaded through that rope and attached via a cable to a tripod winch. Hamish X twisted violently, trying to heave himself off the hook. Suddenly, something long and hard struck him across the back of his thighs, sending an explosion of pain through his body. The area was illuminated by a portable spotlight on a pole rammed into the ice.

“Stop wiggling.” It was the same voice he'd heard before being knocked unconscious. He craned his neck around to look at his tormentor.

The owner of the voice wasn't very tall but she was bulky, padded out in a thick down parka. She wore a round fur hat and fur mittens in which she held a long stick. Her face was pale and her cheeks ruddy, whether from the cold or from the bottle she plucked from the snow and guzzled Hamish X couldn't tell. Wisps of white hair framed her blotchy face.

“Where did you come from, leetle boy?” she asked, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. “You and your friends, out on the ice. Spying on us, no?”

“Where are my friends? What have you done with them?” Hamish squirmed but the ropes held him fast. The woman laughed at his efforts, then spat. “Stop struggling or I will hit you once again.” She brandished the stick and the dull throbbing of his legs made him decide to bide his time. She cackled and tipped the bottle up again.

“Where are my friends?” he asked once more.

“Don't worry.” The woman grinned, displaying brown crumbling teeth. “They will be joining you soon. Ah …” She looked past Hamish X and cackled, “Here they come now. My strong sons bring them. Yuri! Alexi! Bring them here!”

Hamish X twisted to follow her gaze and saw two men trudging towards him. Each carried a child over his shoulder. Parveen and Mimi were bound in a similar fashion to Hamish X, but Mimi was also gagged. The man carrying her was tall and thin with a narrow face and long nose. A scraggly moustache completed the weasel-like effect. He held up a bare hand. “Mama, she bit me!” The other man giggled in a most disturbing fashion. “It isn't funny, Alexi! Tell him to stop laughing, Mama.” He shook a fist at the other man.

Whereas Yuri was a weasel, Alexi was a bear. He wore no hat and his hair was long and matted. His eyes were a little too close together over a broken nose, and the lower half of his face was shrouded in a bushy black beard. A clot of frozen drool crusted the area below his mouth.

“My poor baby Yuri! Let me kiss it better.” The woman grabbed the injured hand and planted a slobbery kiss on
the wound. Hamish X felt his stomach heave. The two men dropped their burdens on the snow by the open hole in the ice.

“Why are you doing this?” Hamish X cried. “We haven't done anything to you!”

The woman stared at him with hate in her eyes. “You lie. You spy on us! You will tell the government officers and they come and take away our valuable prizes.”

“Valuable prizes?”

“Our beautiful bearskins. They fetch a pretty ruble on black market.”

“They're Russian poachers,”
⁵⁸
Parveen said. He had managed to sit up despite his bonds. “They kill polar bears and steal their pelts.”

The giggling brother stopped giggling and lashed out with the toe of his boot, catching Parveen in the temple. The little boy fell back, dazed.

“Don't touch him!” Hamish X shouted.

“What are you going to do about it?” the woman chuckled. “You should worry about yourself, leetle boy.” She pointed to the open circle of black water below Hamish X. Already the water was beginning to freeze around the edges. The woman's voice grew harder with it. “We hunt the white bears for generations but now they tell us it is illegal! We have to travel farther and farther to find them, but still we come. They tell us we take too many bears. They lie. There will always be bears. And we will always come, as we have for generations. You however …” She jerked her head towards Yuri, who grabbed hold of a crank handle attached to the winch.

“You shall not endure. The sea is cold here. You will freeze before you have time to drown.”

“We aren't interested in you,” Hamish X cried. “We only want to save our friends. Let us go and we won't tell anyone about you.”

“Do you think I can trust them, my sons?” she asked. “Nyet, Mama,” Yuri said. Alexi just giggled and shook his shaggy head.

“Neither do I,” she sneered. Her face, upside down, vicious and cruel, was inches from Hamish X's own when she added, “Drop him.”

Yuri flipped a lever and Hamish X dropped into the black water.

The cold was instantaneous and all-encompassing. Hamish X screamed out at the intensity of the sensation, receiving a mouthful of salty water for his troubles. Opening his eyes, he saw nothing but blackness broken only by a faint light that was slowly drifting away to his left. He realized that his only chance was to get back to the hole.

He desperately tried to free his hands or his feet but the brothers had bound him well. Panic clawed at his mind as his lungs yearned for oxygen. The light drifted farther away.

Hamish X desperately kicked out for what he hoped was the surface. Swarms of lights chased each other across his vision as his oxygen-starved body screamed for the surface. The cold was disorienting. He was weakening. Hamish X felt the darkness of the water creeping into his body and mind. His struggles lessened. He began to let go. He thought sadly,
I'm dying. I can't save my friends. I can't save myself
.

“You can, Hamish X. Don't give up.”
The voice spoke to him again within his mind.
“Use your boots.”

The voice was warm and kind, a woman's voice.

“I can't move them,”
Hamish thought, and the voice heard him.

“Concentrate on the boots.”

Hamish X did as he was told. He pictured the boots in his mind's eye, concentrating as hard as he could with his eyes closed. His lungs cried for air, but he tried to stay calm and hold the image. He saw the boots, glossy and black, and in his mind he saw them begin to pulse with some sort of energy, light, and heat. He felt the heat in his legs creeping up towards his stomach, spreading through his body, renewing his strength. He began to sense a lessening of the darkness around him. He opened his eyes and looked down.

The boots glowed with a blue radiance, illuminating the water around Hamish X. Particles suspended in the water glittered and danced in the glare. The most amazing thing, however, was that the nylon rope binding his boots was melting. He strained and kicked until the rope shredded, drifting away into the darkness.

His hands were still bound behind his back. Precious seconds ticked by as he jackknifed his body, pulling his arms down his back and around up the back of his legs until he could pass them, with some effort, over his large boots. The light and heat were already fading from them. Hamish X pulled at the knots holding his hands with his teeth, swallowing seawater as he did so. The cold was encroaching again as he finally worked his hands free. By the fading light from his boots, he saw the underside of the ice pebbled with small bubbles of air. He swam upward. But in his mind he asked, “Who are you?”