Septimus Heap, Book One_ Magyk - Angie Sage [82]
“You’ll eat it soon enough, Ratty,” said Mad Jack with his mouth full, spraying apple spit all over Stanley. “There ain’t no other food comin’ your way until this snow stops. An’ that’ll be a while. The wind’s shifted to the north—the Big Freeze is comin’ now. Always ’appens round about MidWinter Feast Day. Sure as eggs is eggs, and rats is rats.”
Mad Jack cackled to himself at his joke, then he wrapped himself up in the donkey-smelling blanket that had been Stanley’s undoing and fell fast asleep.
Stanley kicked the bars of his cage and wondered how thin he would have to get before he could squeeze out.
Stanley sighed. Very thin indeed was the answer.
28
THE BIG FREEZE
The remains of the MidWinter Feast of stewed cabbage, braised eel heads and spicy onions lay abandoned on the table as Aunt Zelda tried to coax some life into the spluttering fire at Keeper’s Cottage. The inside of the windows were glazing over with ice, and the temperature in the cottage was plummeting, but still Aunt Zelda could not get the fire going. Bert swallowed her pride and snuggled up to Maxie to keep warm. Everyone else sat wrapped in their quilts, staring at the struggling fire.
“Why don’t you let me have a go at that fire, Zelda?” Marcia asked crossly. “I don’t see why we have to sit here and freeze when all I have to do is this.” Marcia clicked her fingers and the fire blazed up in the grate.
“You know I don’t agree with Interfering with the elements, Marcia,” said Aunt Zelda sternly. “You Wizards have no respect for Mother Nature.”
“Not when Mother Nature is turning my feet into blocks of ice,” Marcia grumbled.
“Well, if you wore some sensible boots like I do instead of prancing around in little purple snakey things, your feet would be fine,” Aunt Zelda observed.
Marcia ignored her. She sat warming her purple snakey feet by the blazing fire and noted with some satisfaction that Aunt Zelda had made no attempt to return the fire to Mother Nature’s spluttering state.
Outside the cottage, the North Wind howled mournfully. The snow flurries from earlier in the day had thickened, and now the wind brought with it a thick, swirling blizzard that blew in over the Marram Marshes and began to cover the land with deep drifts of snow. As the night wore on and Marcia’s fire at last began to warm them up, the noise of the wind became muffled by the snowdrifts piling up outside. Soon the inside of the cottage had become full of a soft, snowy silence. The fire burned steadily in the grate, and one by one they all followed Maxie’s example and fell asleep.
Having successfully buried the cottage up to its roof in snow, the Big Freeze continued its journey. Out over the marshes it traveled, covering the brackish marsh water with a thick white layer of ice, freezing the bogs and quags and sending the marsh creatures burrowing down into the depths of the mires where the frost could not reach. It swept up the river and spread across the land on either side, burying cow barns and cottages and the occasional sheep.
At midnight it arrived at the Castle, where all was prepared.
During the month before the advent of the Big Freeze, the Castle dwellers stockpiled their food, ventured into the Forest and brought back as much wood as they could carry, and spent a fair amount of time knitting and weaving blankets. It was at this time of year that the Northern Traders would arrive, bringing their supplies of heavy wool cloth, thick arctic furs and salted fish, not forgetting the spicy foods that the Wendron Witches loved so much. The Northern Traders had an uncanny instinct for the timing of the Big Freeze, arriving about a month before it was due and leaving just before it set in. The five Traders who had sat in Sally Mullin’s cafe on the night of the fire had been the last ones to leave, and so no one in the Castle was at all surprised by the arrival of the Big Freeze.