Which I did. The boys had slept together, the old couple had said, and the girls had separate beds. It seemed to me the boys got the best deal, at least in cold weather. I do not think it can be cold all the time on Lichholm, but any warm weather must come really slowly at midsummer and disappear before you have time to hang up your coat.
After five or ten minutes Audrey wanted to know if I was sleepy.
I said, “That depends.”
“I’m sleepy. That’s what I wanted to say. I ate too much and drank too much. So I’m going to lie down, and if you want to do anything you can do it; but don’t expect me to talk or wiggle around to keep you entertained, and if I’m asleep try not to wake me up.”
That was fine with me.
10
THE COTTAGE IN THE CAVERN
Next morning I supposed that Audrey and I would hike across the village to the house where Dr. Fevre was staying with Rose and Millie, but we didn’t have to. I had just finished shaving when Audrey yelled for me to get my coat on. I did, still wishing I had a warm cap, and tramped out the front door in my new boots and just about all the clothes I had.
I’d seen the sleigh before I stepped out the door, but I hadn’t realized that it had come for us. It was pretty big and there were no regular seats for passengers, but there were four bales of straw in back. I sat on one of those.
Audrey sat up front beside the driver. That was going over to the house where Dr. Fevre was staying, and it ticked me off. When Dr. Fevre got in, he sat up front and Audrey in back with me, which I liked a hell of a lot better.
I could smell the food as soon as we went inside to get him, “we” meaning Audrey, the driver, and me. Millie was working her magic in the kitchen: thick bacon and thin bacon, two kinds of sausages, and griddle cakes with lovely dark butter and honey.
Audrey wanted to know how cold it was in the ice caves. Dr. Fevre said it was colder than outside; but there was no wind, so it seemed warmer. Tricky cold, in other words. Maybe that made Audrey feel better, but I decided I could take it or leave it. From what they said, I caught on that Millie and Rose would be staying right here in the village; and to tell the truth, I was tempted to say I’d stay there too and keep them company.
When we left in the sleigh, four bales were barely enough. Dr. Fevre rode up front beside the driver like Audrey had, and Audrey, our patron, Chandra, and I sat on the hay bales in back. After the first mile or two, Adah laid her head on Audrey’s shoulder and went to sleep. I smiled, and Chandra whispered, “She was going to stay where we were and go back to bed. Only then she said it would be too cold with nobody to tend the fire or sleep with her.”
I said, “Audrey and I took care of the fire. I suppose she’s forgotten.”
Chandra nodded.
Audrey said softly, “If I keep my voice down, is it going to wake her up?”
I shook my head and kept my own voice low. “I doubt it.”
“You look pleased.” It was a whisper, but Audrey grinned as she said it.
“I feel pleased,” I told her. “Chandra and her mother had separate problems when her mother checked me out, and I said I’d work on both of them. I’ll take care of Chandra’s as soon as we get back to Polly’s Cove. Her mother’s was a hand-drawn map she had found tipped into one of the doctor’s books. She wanted to know what the island was, and what the square thing in the middle was.” I took a deep breath, recalling what had happened when I had touched that square, and shivered.
“Now I think we know the name of the island,” I said, “and I believe we’re trotting straight toward the square on the map. Dr. Fevre”—I waved at his back—“must have drawn the map soon after he discovered this place. He’d turned up something important here, a thing that the local people didn’t like to talk about, and he wanted to make sure he could find it again anytime he came back.”
“People here want to keep the ice caves secret?” Audrey sounded doubtful.
“Wouldn’t you, if your parents and grandparents, and maybe a child or two, were lying on the ice in there? The first boy you ever kissed, and the little girl you played with when you were her age? Would you want a bunch of tourists swarming around, touching their bodies, leaving candy wrappers and cigar butts in the cave, and taking pictures? I wouldn’t.”
“They’ve been pretty open about it while we’ve been here.” Audrey sounded more doubtful.
“You and I are Dr. Fevre’s guests. Clearly we know about the ice caves already.” When she kept quiet, I added, “Besides, it looks as if he’s won their confidence.”
“He doctors the sick people here,” Chandra told me. “Just because he teaches anatomy people think he isn’t a real doctor, but he is. He writes prescriptions and does surgery.”
I nodded. “No doubt he does.”
Chandra had more to say. “Like, if somebody’s got a broken arm or something. He has a place in town. A clinic, like. They just call it the doctor’s office, but he brought a full-body scanner. Lots of stuff.”
“Good for him.”
“He doesn’t charge anybody, either. As long as there’s something really wrong with them, it’s free, like at home. Only fakers have to pay. He told me.”
Adah stirred at the sound of her daughter’s voice, and Audrey’s gesture warned Chandra to be quiet.
There was not much said after that. Mainly, I stewed over the old Ern A. Smithe, his cut throat, and the scalpel I was sure I had seen when the ’bots were cleaning up. I had been just about certain Dr. Fevre had done that, and now he looked worse and worse for it. So who? When? And why? Who else might have a scalpel?
I hope that I have already made it clear that the whole interior of the island was pretty much one big mountain. If I have not, well, it was. There were steep ravines and some side crags and various other details, but basically the ground sloped up and up. The top was snowcapped, like people talk about; but heck, when we were there everything on the island was covered with snow. So that mountain had snow pants on, too, down below its snow shirt.
Being covered with snow pretty much included us; we had been sitting in an open sleigh for almost two hours. When the doctor got down, we got down too and sort of brushed each other off. The sleigh turned around with a silvery jingle of bells, and the whip stirred the horses into a trot. Dr. Fevre started up what might have been a path if it had not been covered with new snow. I followed him, and pretty soon saw a black hole in the snowy side of a cliff, a hole big enough to take both horses and the sleigh. When I saw that, I thought I was looking at the square on the map. I told myself it was a shame we had no shining rectangle here—and then that we might have one after all, a light deep inside that twinkled and seemed to move. After a minute or two, I caught on that what I was seeing was a reflection of our pale sunshine in the ice. Hey, our sun, Sol, is an ordinary yellow-white star, right?
“Careful here,” Dr. Fevre called over his shoulder. “There’s ice underneath this snow.”
There was, but my new boots handled it pretty well. Audrey was used to decks that danced under her feet and could probably have walked up a wall, but Chandra and her mother held on to each other and fell down into the snow twice. I would have helped them up if they had accepted my help. They didn’t.