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

cold of the lake, it cleaned her lungs, made her chest feel free. The pike’s teeth held her as they rose to the surface and as he flipped and dived so Vanessa gasped and, feet kicking, reached and found the algaed stones beneath her, the pike’s dive creating a wave that pushed her swiftly to the shore.
    She ought to have been afraid, that she had been careless and fallen in, that she might have drowned, but Vanessa understood there was no time for that. Where she had been underwater and out of her element, now the Pike had beached himself beside her and was out of his.
    She took up her notebook, shivered as she worked quickly, her clothes and hair and skin dripping droplets of water that puddled onto the pike’s skin. The colours were different on land, made of earth, so unlike Beneath where they had been made of water. She measured him quickly, marking on paper, drawing quickly the patterns of his skin, the shape of his head. Counted the number of his teeth and the shape of them as he opened his mouth and let her fingers touch his jawbone, understanding how it locked here, unlocked there. His eyes were black and greeny liquid now, no longer holding an image of herself walking with an aurora above her. Those eyes watched her studiously and Vanessa knew, she was being measured, drawn and memorised too.
    It was mere moments, she had recorded the breaths that his gaping mouth had taken, before she finished and with a touch of his side she pushed at Esox Lucius and with a sudden powering movement he slithered back into the water. The surface closed over his spine leaving ripples rolling inward, sealing.
    Vanessa sat for a long time watching the water, a breeze blew her dry, flapped a little at her notebook. She thought of the pike, of the gull, of the heat from her mother. There is nothing more cruel and powerful than this wood , her mother’s words echoed in her head. She felt the stone beneath her, the warmth it held from the sun. She was uncertain now about what strange results her experiment at Pike Lake had shown her.
    She took up her pencil and began to draw in a way she’d never drawn before, as if the pencil knew what was hidden inside its core and could guide her hand to extract it.
    *
    They were setting the table for dinner and her mother lifted Vanessa’s bag to move it onto the sofa. As she did so the flap opened and Vanessa’s notebook not only slid out onto the floor, but opened itself up to the double page she had taken to draw the pike. Her mother looked at it for a moment, read the caption ‘ESOX LUCIUS’.
    “When did you do this?” she asked. Vanessa expected there might be some small hell to pay for her plan and was prepared for it.
    “Today. I wanted to help… I thought if we put up a notice saying it had been caught and this is all the information about it and so no one need bother anymore and also saying PRIVATE because…”
    She watched her mother look over the drawing and say nothing. Vanessa ran out of words. Her mother closed the book and put it into the schoolbag, out of the way.
    “It’s very good.” was her comment as she moved into the kitchen. They went about their tasks in a strange silence, Vanessa unsure what to say. Her plan had seemed so certain and assured and now, after everything that had happened, it was a jumble in her head.
    “Do not do this ever again.” her mother’s voice was cool and clear, like the water. It would have felt better to Vanessa if it had been a cross voice, angry words. This was much worse. They did not speak through dinner, passing bowls and plates without a word. The food should have tasted good, it was Vanessa’s favourite, macaroni cheese with broccoli. It tasted of mud.
    Starlight sparkled the water of Pike Lake as Hettie Way, feeling chill in her black waxed raincoat, rowed out. She halted at a particular spot and the boat, far from drifting on the slight waves, stayed put, Hettie pulled up the oars and waited. The moon was only three