The Ice King (A Witch Ways Whisper) Read Free Page B

Patrol.
    “No sweetheart. Not today. Another one, ok?” they hugged and Hettie headed off towards the North of the wood.
    Vanessa had stashed her equipment in a small canvas rucksack under the porch, now she simply collected it and started her own short trek to the particular curve of the lake where she thought her plan would work best.
    At the shoreline she placed her notebook on a big round rock and glanced over the instructions she’d written down for herself. She had them memorised from reading and re-reading and rewriting them, but it settled her mind to read the words and feel the notebook paper under her tracing finger. She had made a fishing net from twine, string and wire and it was woven around a wide plastic ring she’d taken out of the frame of her washing basket.
    So, prepared, she fished.
    A few hours drifted by slowly. It was pleasant on the bank and Vanessa had found a smooth stone worn down into a bowl and was sitting in that feeling the coolness of it. She had tried reading a book but there was something about the lake today, it was almost like an electricity, that distracted her. She found her gaze drawn to the glassy grey surface where she could see the perfect reflection of the crowds of jackdaws and rooks taking off from the trees on the opposite shore, the image as clear as if she was looking down into a reversed world. She thought of the cities of birds above her, the nuthatches and treecreepers. Somewhere a woodpecker was knocking. There must be, she thought, yet another world still, in the water.
    There was a rippling plash. Vanessa looked up, her binoculars lifted to check out the disturbance in the water. Was that a fin? She jumped down from her stone and took a step closer to the water, scanning with the binoculars. The clouds had thickened and so where Vanessa now stood was darker and more shadowed, the trees leaning in closer. The water looked silken, the ripples rolled towards her and she was tempted to take off her shoes. Her mother gave strict instruction at all times; she was never to go swimming in the lake. They had rowed out in the boat but not ever, not once, even so much as dipped a toe in the steely grey water.
    It could not hurt to paddle today, could it ? Yes. She would get into trouble. She thought of the prickle of heat she’d felt from her mother when the gull attacked and it seemed like a warning. Vanessa’s mind ticked. She reached into her bag for a jam jar that she had filled with her mother’s homebrewed blackberry squash and, unfastening the lid, drank the squash.
    Perhaps there was a way to examine the water without actually getting into it. Vanessa, sitting on her stone above the lake, watched the water. Looked at the empty jar. Of course. That was what she could do. In her pencil case she had a little stash of litmus paper from school. Acid. Alkaline. PH .
    There was no way she could fill the jar from the shore without getting her feet a little bit wet but the taboo placed on the lake prickled at her so she climbed quickly back up onto the bowled stone and lay down flat. Yes. Look . If she just reached her arm down like this the jar would…yes… As she was contorting her small frame across the front edge of the stone there was another, heavier splot. Vanessa looked out across the water. From her stony perch she could see, just beneath the surface, a long dark shadow, a flick of fin. A waterboatman was paddling his legs across the lake until, with a glint of sunlight, the insect was gone, vanished into the dimple of water where the pike’s mouth had snapped at its small feast.
    Vanessa paused. Her heart was beating fast. She was so very, very close. Now the shadows of the clouds were playing tricks. Was that the pike? That. There? If she just shifted a little bit…further…and if she just angled her shoulder. She watched as a little puddle of water gushed into the jar. Vanessa pulled her arm back, shunted down into the bowl of the stone to look. The water was a