Release date: 1 Nov 2021
**eBook option includes .mobi for Kindle and .epub for all other apps and readers**
Every year, the town of Linderch gathers to watch the Ice Cream Crown Skating Races, a series of trick races skated on a pond of magically deep-frozen ice cream.
This year, fourteen-year-old George intends to win.
If he loses, his family loses their house.
George’s biggest challenge? His year off, with no practice.
Or so he thinks.
Because this year, something sinister simmers, a dangerous mystery founded on a long-running grudge that stands to jeopardise everything…
A fantasy-mystery for anyone who loves whimsy—and would fight to protect it.
Chapter 1
The sandstone house was old, and kind of falling down. Partly, that was because George and Mabel’s mum and dad had fallen on hard times recently and didn’t have the money for repairs. But partly, it was because the house was special.
George had always dreamed of magic, as long as he could remember. He’d never really expected his dreams to come true of course, and to be fair, it wasn’t like they definitely absolutely had.
Oh, sure, he did live in Linderch, famous these days for the Ice Cream Crown Skating Races, a series of competitions run on the pond of magically deep-frozen ice cream that occupied the town centre every year, so that was some evidence that magic was really real.
And he had seen the Snow Queen herself once or twice at the races, the woman who was reputedly responsible for freezing all that ice cream to make the races possible (quite how she managed that was a mystery the town was yet to solve).
But those sorts of things were external to himself, to his own life, and apart from providing annual entertainment and a whole lot of tourism income for his town, they didn’t really affect him.
The house, though: that was another story.
They’d moved in only two years ago, he and his sister and parents, and although the narrow two-storey building was practically falling down around their ears, honey-coloured sandstone crumbling at the corners and sky-blue paint on the front door flaking, it had immediately captured his fancy like nothing he’d ever seen before.
Partly because his room looked out over the tiny square of the backyard, a yard that was entirely, exclusively theirs (had he mentioned? They’d lived in an apartment all his life until then, and the idea of exclusively owned outdoor space was such a novelty), but partly because of the other reason the house was constantly threatening to fall down: like the Snow Queen, the house seemed not quite tied to reality in the way that everything else was.
In the sitting room at the front, the walls were mustard yellow and the carpet navy blue. It smelled of baked cabbage on Tuesdays, and on Thursdays odd-looking mirrors refracted over the ceiling despite the absence of anything to cause them.
The kitchen seemed normal enough, if somewhat small and pokey, with laminex-fronted cupboards faking being pale, honey-coloured timber stretching right to the roof… But if you walked in sideways, with your left arm leading the way, the view out the window shimmered into something otherworldly, and once George was positive he’d seen a unicorn saunter past.
The bathroom tasted like bubble gum constantly; the dining room floor creaked to the tune of ‘Happy Birthday’ if you hopped only on your right foot; and George’s own bedroom occasionally lit up with aquamarine ripples like light shining through water, accompanied by the smell and taste of the sea.
George’s sister Mabel had sworn the other day she’d even heard a seagull when she’d been passing by his door (and not at all sneaking into his room to borrow his set of expensive, brightly coloured markers).
It was a wonderful house, and it was a terrible house, because not only was it falling down all the time (though somehow always stopping just shy of things being a real problem—the shower leaked, for example, but only enough that a bit of moss—moss, you understand, not mould—was flourishing in one corner of the bathroom), but it also seemed to have brought with it rather bad luck for George’s family.
His parents, who’d had a thriving set of businesses for as long as he could remember, had fallen on hard times almost as soon as they’d moved in, and no attempt at starting some new sort of entrepreneurial endeavour to replace the ones that had died would stick. In the first six months they’d lived there, his father had imported cameras (everyone who’d pre-ordered one mysteriously decided to move away from town not a month before the cameras arrived, and couldn’t be contacted to either make their payments or collect the cameras, which unfortunately had melted in the house’s attic one bizarrely hot day), washed dogs (until the mayor issued a bizarre decree banning mobile dog washes for the summer), and tried selling his vibrant acrylic paintings at the markets, all to no avail.
In the end, he’d given up and had gone back to university to train as an accountant, but of course that wasn’t paying very much in the time it was taking to study.
And George’s mother had had it just as bad: from her very successful career as a self-employed architect, suddenly the entire state had decided to reframe all their building design laws so that she would need to go back and study again for another year—but George’s father was already doing that, and they needed someone to pay the bills in the meantime, so they were getting by on the income she could bring in by convincing people to pay her to design children’s cubbyhouses and architectural dog houses—delightful, but somewhat niche, and without a broad, stable client base.
Of course, it wasn’t like they had a real alternative right now, because with only a single income—and a part time one at that—not only were they having trouble paying the mortgage, but they were hardly in a position for the bank to look favourably on loaning them money to buy somewhere else, and anyway George had overheard his dad just yesterday saying that even if they sold the house right now, with the state it was in it wouldn’t pay back more than three quarters of the money they still owed.
At this point, magic was really the only option.
George was doing his best not to think about any of this, and failing rather dismally, as he slouched down the stairs on his way to the kitchen, wondering if something to snack on while dinner was cooking might not be too much to hope for.
But at the bottom, his plans were derailed.
“Pssst.” Mabel gestured frantically at him from her position at the sitting room door, a door which was currently closed and from behind which was emanating the sound of rather strained conversation. “It’s that Max fellow from the bank,” she whispered as George joined her at the door to listen.
A familiar insistent shiver rippled down George’s back. His stomach sank. He knew they’d been late on the last few mortgage payments, but surely, surely they had a little more time…
But no. Even though the conversation was a little muffled, he could catch the important details well enough:
Mortgage.
Repayments.
End of June.
Paid in full.
George winced, scrunching up his face. “Not good,” he breathed.
“Yeah,” Mabel agreed.
Five weeks. They had five weeks left to find enough money to catch up on the eight thousand dollars of late mortgage payments. If they couldn’t find it by then…
Mabel shifted.
George sighed and opened his eyes, registering burning smells from the kitchen as he inhaled. “Five weeks.”
He pushed away from the wall and stalked down the hall to the kitchen. Casting around for the source of the burning smell, George tossed his head to shift hair out of his eyes.
Mabel followed closely on his heels, squeezing past him in the doorway and darting to turn the oven off. She turned and leaned against the stove, knuckles white where she gripped the edge of the bench. “I just have to win, that’s all.”
She was talking about this year’s Ice Cream Crown Skating Races, for which she was currently ranked Junior favourite. George pursed his lips. “Look, I’m not saying that wouldn’t help, but it’s not your—”
“Please.” Mabel interrupted him with a withering look. “I’ve been training for months. That crown and its lifetime supply of ice cream is mine.” She scowled at that last, and George knew she’d be thinking of Landon, her primary competition for the crown—and someone who’d never failed to rub it in whenever Mabel made any kind of mistake.
He wrinkled his nose. That burnt smell really was disgusting. And it was going to set the fire alarm off in a second if he didn’t do something about all this smoke. He flicked the curtain back on the window over the sink and slid the window open with a tortured screech.
Mabel snorted behind him. “I don’t know why we’re bothering. This stupid house is falling apart anyway.”
“Yeah,” he said, then grinned as he realised that at least one of them must have come in sideways. “But you can’t beat the view.” He nodded meaningfully.
Mabel glanced out the kitchen window—and squeaked in delight at the slightly blurred view of a blue-tinged unicorn cantering through a stream, hooves splashing icy water up under the silver-clouded sky. She sighed deeply and leaned her chin in her hands.
George’s stomach curdled as he watched her from across the room. That look right there, the one of sheer delight on her face? He recognised that look. He’d felt it, plastered on his own face, filling his chest with joy.
He’d never felt that before here.
He’d never known he could.
And that… That was why they couldn’t lose the house.