The Collector of Remarkable Stories (14 page)

Rise to Fame of an Ice Queen

"Who's there?" shouted Margie.

She listened for a response even though she knew, deep down, it was the same voice that had been stalking her since she arrived in Limbuss. This time, however, it unsettled her. What
was
it? Why was it following
her?
And just what would happen if she
didn't
stop?

A shrill voice interrupted her anxious thoughts. It belonged to one of Grandma Doyle’s little helpers (a midget by the name of Marie-Joseph) and she was carrying a large brown bag that swamped her.

"How are you feeling ma fifille?" she whispered excitedly in a thick French accent. "Etes-vous prêt pour le spectacle?"

"I'm ready!" smiled Margie. It was, of course, a lie. Overcome with a dreadful feeling that something terrible was about to happen, all Margie wanted to do was run as far away from the circus as she possibly could. Marie-Joseph sensed Margie's apprehension.

"Please do not fret mon poussin," she soothed. "You should fear nothing. Madame Doyle as asked me to present these to you by way of thank you for being so wonderfool."

The bag contained a handful of gold coins and a heart-shaped emerald pendant.

"Wow, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen," whispered Margie.

"Good luck. Bonne chance," said Marie-Joseph. "It will feel a little strange at first, but you will soon get used to eet."

Margie nodded and Marie Joseph quietly exited at the rear of the stall. And that's when Margie heard Grandma Doyle addressing the waiting crowd:

"... and so," she called out dramatically, "you’re seeing it here for the first time ever; with ice coursing through her veins, a real live Ice Queen."

As she listened to the crowd clapping and chattering excitedly, she looked at the pendant in her hand. She was sure that she’d never been given such a beautiful gift before and she had never felt so special. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Margie positioned herself in the iceberg chair, her beautiful white ice dress exposing her deathly back for all to see. From the other side of the door she could hear the crowd growing as they chattered and speculated on what they might find inside.

The door opened and the crowd of people surged in frantically, clutching pamphlets that outlined how Margie had fallen into a frozen lake aged three ... how her blood had frozen solid ... how she was left with a mixture of ice-water and blood coursing through her veins ... and how that ultimately made her a genuine, authentic, bona fide cold-blooded killer.

"Just one touch from the Ice Queen," declared Madam Doyle, "and you're toast!"

As the crowd entered the stall Margie could hear them jostling with each other to get a better view of the pretty young woman that could freeze your eyeballs with a mere glance in your direction if the mood so took her. Then she could hear them gasp in shock at the sight of her ice encrusted back.

It didn’t take long for everyone to find a seat and soon the excited chattering had slowed to an expectant whisper and finally a deafening silence.

Grandma Doyle entered the stall and positioned herself between Margie and the audience. "Ladies and gentlemen," she said, theatrically. "What you are about to see this morning will astound and astonish. It will make the bravest and strongest of you fearful. You will not believe your eyes. Do NOT – I repeat do NOT touch this young woman with your bare hands. Do so at your peril!"

"Pah, codswallop!" shouted someone near the back of the audience. "That’s just a bit of wax that is. I want my money back!"

"Anyone else think it’s codswallop?" shouted Grandma Doyle angrily.

A handful of people threw their hands in the air.

"You," said Grandma Doyle sharply at a young man sitting in the front row. "Give me your handkerchief."

The young man duly handed Grandma Doyle the handkerchief, a look of bemused scepticism on his face.

Grandma Doyle attached the handkerchief to the end of one of the wooden poles and handed it to the gentleman in the front row. The young man took hold of the pole and Grandma Doyle moved in until her face was inches from his.

"Put that handkerchief as close as you dare to the back of this young woman," she hissed.

The young man turned to the audience and laughed. Then, in an act of youthful arrogance and stupidity, whipped the handkerchief from the pincer, leapt up onto the stage and pressed the handkerchief to Margie’s back.

Almost instantaneously, the handkerchief had turned to ice; the gentleman’s hand too. The young man screamed in agony and the audience gasped in unison. For a few of the crowd it was simply too much and they fell to the floor. A number of others walked straight out of the stall, unable (or unwilling) to comprehend what they had just witnessed.

"Do it again," shouted one of the remaining crowd. "Freeze this," shouted another, throwing a freshly caught fish at Margie. "More, more, encore!" shouted the crowd.

A young woman by the name of Emily stepped forward and, gingerly grabbing the fish from where it had landed near Margie's foot, hooked it on the end of a pole and held it an inch from Margie’s back.

Within a fraction of a second – almost faster than time itself – the fish (and half the pole with it) had frozen solid; cracking and crumbling as though it had been dipped in a vat of liquid nitrogen.

Emily dropped what was left of the pole and stepped back. By now the audience was shocked into silence having realised that this couldn’t be a trick. Was it possible that she really was the result of a tragic accident in the ice? At first one or two of the people closest to the stage decided it was perhaps a little too dangerous to stand so close to the Ice Queen, so they shuffled backwards without any regard for those behind, who in turn pushed them forward again. Those at the front were now terrified of being pushed onto the stage and began fighting their way back with more alarm which resulted in an explosion of panic which spread through the crowd with ferocious speed. Within moments there was a stampede out of the stall, people screaming and shouting in fear.

Only one person remained in the enclosure: Grandma Doyle. She was sitting on a wooden stool right at the very back of the enclosure, her highly rouged cheeks the only thing standing out in the dim light.

"I’m sorry," said Margie. "I don’t know what happened, I didn’t do anything; I just kept my eyes closed the whole time."

Grandma Doyle grinned, exposing her gums, and clapped her hands like a small child. "That was the most incredible show I have ever seen in my entire life and let me tell you, I’ve seen a lot of shows!" said Grandma Doyle.

News of Margie’s remarkable gift travelled fast through Avaricia. Suddenly everyone was talking about the young girl who could freeze anything on demand. Those who had seen the show became minor celebrities with people clamouring to ask questions: did the young man lose his hand? Was it true that the ice queen had blue skin? Could she turn rain into snow by blowing on it? Newspapers were full of stories about visitors being frozen to death after the Ice Queen sneezed instantaneously turning everyone in the front row to ice.

And the shows starring Margie just got bigger and better. It wasn’t long before she needed a bigger stage and still the audiences kept on coming. Quite often it was the same people coming again and again, unable to believe their eyes; trying to figure out the secret. What was the trick? People would return to the show night after night bringing with them all manner of items to be frozen, items that would prove once and for all that she was a fraud.

Of course she wasn’t and so every item, from a diamond ring to a live frog to a brass ornament to a lead ball were all lost to the trick.

And as the audiences kept on coming so did the money. Mountains of it; the more people that came the more people
wanted
to come. Margie was fast becoming an otherworldly sensation. People had never seen anything like it; forget the fat ladies, the tall men and the Siamese twins. This was something truly inexplicable. It quickly became the number one topic of conversation throughout Avaricia; how did she do it? Theories abounded but not one person could grasp the science behind it.

And truth be told, neither could Margie. What was happening to her perplexed her. She had no more of an idea what was happening to her than those who came to look at her. In fact her back didn’t feel too different to her at all; maybe slightly colder. And the pain, although getting worse, was still bearable. It was something she could live with ... for now at least.

Anyway, it wasn't her back that frightened her; it was whatever it was that stalked her; that breathed down her neck and whispered in her ear. It was a dark entity, this much she had come to realise. And she knew that the entity and her back were inextricably linked. A thought had planted in Margie's brain. Was it possible that she had done something bad in a previous life? Something so bad that she was being haunted by it? She closed her eyes and tapped her head a couple of times. The thought was definitely anchored in her brain ... but to what she just couldn't recall.

That, it would seem, wasn't the only thing she had forgotten.

The more money Margie made and the more famous she became, the more she forgot about her journey and why she was making it. The Big Invisible was always there, breathing down her neck, but as Margie was swept up in the raging rivers of fame, so too was the sense of disquiet she felt about it. As the waves of adulation and success grew bigger and stronger so the uneasiness grew weaker until it was eventually washed away.

With the fear gone (and giddy with her new found success) she forgot about her journey and why she was making it. Her motivation to reach the Darkest of All Places was gone, replaced with excitement at her burgeoning celebrity. Strangers, desperate to jump on the Margie bandwagon, threw money at her. They fought amongst themselves to be her friend so they could brag about it to anyone who would listen. They wanted to bathe in her glory for she had everything they coveted: fame, wealth and talent.

Of course, Margie’s sudden and meteoric rise to fame hadn’t gone unnoticed by the rest of the circus gang, particularly The Giant. From a distance, he watched as Grandma Doyle fussed over Margie, bestowing her with gifts of gold, jewellery and clothes. He had seen how Grandma Doyle's eyes lit up when Margie entered the room and how they laughed and giggled over shared secrets.

The Giant thought he ought to be angry but Grandma Doyle had been good to him over the years so he held his tongue.

Never-the-less, he felt neglected. Unable to reach Margie and unwilling to compete with Grandma Doyle's munificence he spent all of his time in his wagon doing nothing very much at all except worry. He'd long since quit trying to make money from his show. No one came to see him anymore. Tall people were so old hat now. And they certainly couldn't turn things into ice!

And then of course there was the small matter of the other freaks. The crowds were no longer interested in their shows either, which made them twitchy and uncomfortable. No crowds equalled no work. And no work equalled no money. If that wasn't bad enough, they'd seen the beautiful caravan that Grandma Doyle had bought for Margie. Part trolley bus, part fairy-tale castle, the two storey wagon with its brass turrets and ornate balconies was the nail in the coffin of kindness as far as the circus freaks were concerned.

Over the years they’d seen many people come and go as their disabilities, deformities and anomalies had come in and out of fashion. Only a core remained including Mary The Human Mermaid, Douglas the Dough Boy, Magnus The Magnificent Magnet Man, Tatty the Tattooed Man, a variety of midgets (of various sizes); and a hairy child. But none of them had bewitched Grandma Doyle the way Margie had.

And certainly none of them had ever come close to destroying Le Cirque de L'extraordinaire the way Margie had.

They were angry. Understandably so. Their beloved Grandma Doyle had failed to notice that her circus was falling apart around her ears; that her loyal band of merry freaks were all starving. And there was only one person to blame.

It was Magnus the Magnificent Magnet Man who called the secret meeting at the far end of the showground with Tatty, Mary and Douglas the Dough Boy.

"Magnus, this had better be good," grumbled a bleary-eyed Tatty. He wasn’t an early riser.

"I was right about the girl," he hissed, his eyes narrowed into thin slits.

He peeled back his sleeve and there stuck to his magnetic arm was a small mechanical Spy Fly.

"Found it snooping around - and guess what! Tell them what you know Spy Fly."

Torquere's Spy Flies were renowned for their ability to spy on people unnoticed but not so well regarded for their ability to
keep
a secret. Luckily for Magnus this unfortunate little mole had flown a little too close to his magnetic field and was instantly immobilised. With no way to escape, he didn't take much persuading and quickly imparted all the information he had.

"The Great and Mighty Torquere has offered a reward," he said in a small, tinny voice, "for information leading to the capture and return of Margie May Langley to Limbuss City."

Mary, Douglas and Tatty gasped sharply in unison.