When Dracula bit her tongue

WHEN DRACULA BIT HER TONGUE

I have been invited to the Pop-Up Festival in London to talk to three schools about Kobal - my first book in the Mysteries of the Septagram trilogy. It is three years since I wrote it. What could I tell them?

Tell them about when Dracula bit her tongue, my editor said.

I had almost forgotten Dracula. But I remembered now. And I shivered.

It was in the far north of Finland. I had flown from Heathrow to Helsinki, and then on to Kittila, which is the furthest commercial airport north of the Arctic Circle. Then I hired a car and drove another 300 ks to the Russian border near Archangel - and there was Dracula.

A half-Alaskan husky, half-English pointer bitch. The leader of my team. My companion for three days and nights while I journeyed northward in search of the legendary Gateway to Hell.

Why is she called Dracula, I asked.

'Stroke her and you will find out,' they said. Laughingly.

I decided to give stroking her a miss.

'Who is the driver?' I said.

You, they said.

I looked at the sled. It was nothing like the things you see in Call of the Wild movies. It was more like a supermarket shopping trolley with steel runners instead of wheels.

But it did have a brake. Of sorts. It looked like a row of metal teeth,hanging down between the runners. If you wanted to stop, or slow down, you stamped on it with your foot and it dug into the snow and ice, bringing the sled to a halt.

At least that was the theory.

The sled was tied to a tree with a particular kind of knot so you only have to pull one end of the rope to release it. But they said, 'when you do, it take off like an aeroplane' and they fell about laughing. They laughed a lot. They were Lapps.

The only other instructions they gave me were, Lean out at the corners - and NEVER LET GO OF THE SLED.

What corners, I wondered? We were in a wildnerness north of the Arctic circle. There was nothing for hundreds of miles before the North Pole. And why would I want to let go of the sled?

I pulled the rope. They were right. We took off like an aeroplane.

We were heading through the forest at about 50 miles an hour with a faint scream of Nooooooooo blown away by the wind. That was me.

There was this guy called Bartek leading the 'safari' as they called it. But there were only two sleds. His and mine. He had a passenger. She was a German retired postmistress, wrapped in a fur coat. She had decided to spend her retirment having adventures, she told me.

She rode in Bartek's sled, which was larger than mine and had six dogs. I only had four. Three of them were pure bred Siberian or Alaskan huskies and they were totally brain dead. All they could do was run and eat. Dracula, though, had a brain. This was why she was the lead. I did not find this entirely reassuring. I soon found out why.

The trail wound between trees - this was where i found the corners. Unfortunately i also found you could not lean out very far without hitting a tree. Sometimes I missed it by a few centimetres. Sometimes less. The other problem was the terrain. It was like going over moguls when you are ski-ing. The sled spent more time in the air than on the snow.

And then there was the brake. To stamp on the brake you had to take one foot off the runner, and when you took one foot off the runner, the sled went over on to its side.

The dogs kept going. So did I. Dragged full length through the snow, hanging on for dear life, screaming. We only stopped when the friction of my boots - or teeth or nails - in the snow slowed the dogs sufficiently for me to climb to my feet and set the sled to rights. This happened many times.

Finally I did what they told me not to do: I LET GO OF THE SLED. I lay face down in the snow watching it go. Out of the forest and onto a frozen lake.

Bartek went after it. I caught up with him about an hour later. The runner of the sled had caught in a small tree growing up through the snow on the far side of the lake. This had brought the sled to a sudden halt and Dracula, it appeared, had bit her tongue.

Poor love, I thought. Probably all the Hail Maries I was saying.

Bartek was displeased.

'I think' he said. 'You will be better with reindeer.'

beit leham of galilee

Just back from Israel researching The Winds of Folly, next in the Nathan Peake series. Stayed in the Ecce Homo which isn't quite what it sounds like, on the Via Dolorosa in the Old City of Jerusalem. It was the site of a pool built by Herod - the remains are still in the basement - and Pontius Pilate used it as his headquarters at the time of Christ. The basement apart, great views from the roof terrace across the Old City.
Moved on from there to Galilee and the village of Beit Lehem, which some scholars believe was the true birthplace of Christ (as opposed to Bethlehem of Judea). It was a German Templar colony until WW2 and I wanted to use it as a location. Still looks very Germanic. Galilee in spring very beautiful, wild flowers everywhere, but I was quite lonely by myself. Not a lot to do except write, but I guess that's the idea! Still, good to be back in London and it's spring here, too.