Free The Ice King (A Witch Ways Whisper) by Helen Slavin

them. Indeed tonight seemed particularly beautiful, the sky was lit with the Milky Way. She parked and, hefting her rucksack onto her back, she checked her own compass against the company compass she had brought from the lab. Both gave the same readings and, satisfied, she moved off. The moment she did so her own compass twitched and the needle shifted 90 degrees. Vanessa halted and took a deep breath as she looked at the two compass faces. It was time for an experiment. She moved forward another few steps and as she did so, her own compass shifted again another few degrees south. Another few steps, another few degrees. What was the compass drawn to? She turned on her heel and looked out across the landscape to see if there was anything, that might be obvious to the naked eye, that could be affecting the compass. Her gaze moved methodically over the trees in the near and far distance, edging the vast expanse of frozen lake.
    She turned in the direction of the compass. Her control compass, in her right hand, whirled around to point North and Vanessa made a mental note. She walked towards the edge of the trees, the faulty compass twitched slightly to show her she was going in the wrong direction. She turned out again, moved across the frozen surface. Forwards, backwards, seven steps, three steps, five steps and then the needle on the compass began to spin slowly like a clock being wound. She looked down. There seemed to be nothing visible. There were no markings on the snow, no stones or rocks that might generate a magnetic field of any kind however weak. There was just the snow, the frozen surface of the lake.
    The Lake. Vanessa had a very unscientific feeling about this experience. Her head was not clear at all; it was filled with moths all looking for some kind of light.
    She knelt and scraped a gloved hand across the snow. There had been snowfall a few days ago, the top was crusted but, a few inches beneath, her hand scraped at the packed ice. She noted the colour, the texture and then scraped a bit more. Her glove smoothed the ice, the warmth from her making it glassier. There still appeared to be nothing to see and yet, if she checked the compass it was spinning, not fast, just smoothly around and around. She reached into her rucksack for a scraper.
    She had been scratching at the surface for only a moment when she saw the hand.
    *
    It was some hours before Vanessa skidded to a halt at the research centre, the glassy ice coffin dragging behind the snowcat, rigged with a tarpaulin. It was several more hours of effort to bring the entombed body into the workroom at the back of the centre and rest it on a tarp and a selection of pallets.
    “What the hell?” Finbar stood in the workroom doorway “ What the hell Way? Why did you bring this here? What were you NOT thinking out there?” his face was gingery red with anger but Dr Byrne overruled him.
    “It’s archaeology. A biological find. This possibly prehistoric specimen could tell us a great deal about the ecology of the area.”
    Finbar did not look convinced.
    “I just don’t think we need a dead body defrosting in the back room…It’s unhygienic.”
    “It isn’t a fish finger Finbar…I’m not asking you to eat it….” Dr Byrne was growing very tired of Finbar and his confederates, they were ruining her Arctic adventure. “Besides, Vanessa is in charge of it, it’s her find, her project.”
    Finbar headed off in a huff and at some point a few moments later there could be heard uproar from the kitchen area where the grazing habits of the other professors had been halted by Finbar’s news.
    Several more hours passed as Vanessa assessed the ice and tried various implements on it in an attempt to take pillar samples and then make an attempt to crack it open. Nothing would chip the ice, it was granite like in consistency.
    “I don’t know what to do.” Vanessa said to Dr Byrne “Is it better to get a heat source and melt it? I could rig it so that we