Jane Louise Curry, Children's Books Author

from Chapter Two

"Piggy? Do you really and truly believe Daddy’s alive, like Mama says?” Mab looked up from the suitcase, her eyes suspiciously shiny. “And that we’re going to find him?”

Perry frowned. The way Mab went on about being an artist, or about the latest nutty fairy tale she was writing, Perry tended to forget that she wasn’t as grown-up as she pretended. “Sure,” he said gruffly, feeling not at all sure. “Isn’t Mom always right about that sort of thing? Like knowing what Pop’s thinking, I mean, and if he’s going to be late to dinner, and all?”

Mab brightened. “I hadn’t thought of that. The way she feels about Daddy, she’d just know. There’s nobody in the world with a better woman’s institution than Mama.”

Perry looked blank for a moment, then exclaimed, “There you go again. It’s woman’s intuition, you chuckle-head. Come on, get your coat on. You’d better come with me. We can pick up a couple of phrase books at that shop just across the Staatsbrucke, that bridge down the street. Then I have to find someplace where we can buy…” He fished in a jacket pocket to bring out a list written in Mrs. Bird’s squiggly hand. “Let’s see: um—two more flashlights, four pairs of snow goggles, some snack stuff, and some extra batteries.”

“Lots of luck.” Mab pulled on her old woolly Scots tam. “What do you bet the phrase books don’t have a word for ‘goggles’?”

Perry sighed. ‘“I’ll use sign language. Look, idiot infant, if you’re coming, put on your boots and come.”

“Boots?” Mab looked at her stockinged feet thoughtfully. “Oh, boots.”


The Birds had flown, by way of New York and Brussels, to Salzburg. They had been a little delayed, as it had taken until late on Monday to find accommodations for Phyllis, whose heart-broken “why-have-they-abandoned-me?” howl was notorious in the Pasadena kennel world. Canis non gratus, Professor Bird had once quipped. Finally, thanks to the innocence of the receptionist at the Bide-a-Night Pet Hotel, the Birds made the Tuesday morning flight to New York.

Arriving in Salzburg on Wednesday the ninth, Mrs. Bird and the children took a taxi directly from the airport to the Landkrankenhaus, a modest hospital in the Mulln District—only to find Dr. Bachner gone. “Totally collapsed in the mind, you understand, no? We do not here have the facilities for such, therefore the Herr Doktor yesterday has been removed to Vienna, to the Sigmundhaus, which has for such ailments a specialty,” the doctor who had treated Bachner explained with much waving of hands. “All the time he was—how you say?—raving. About impossibilities. The tragedy of his friend was for him too much, nicht wahr? Most regrettable, dear Madame. You would wish to have the direction of the Sigmundhaus, nein?”

Mrs. Bird wished to have the address, yes; but on the other hand, it would not do to waste time traveling to Vienna to visit a Gus Bachner who was totally collapsed in the mind. A telephone call to the American Embassy in Vienna brought an answering call from the Embassy’s Consular Section the next morning. Professor Bachner was still incoherent; and though his physical condition was no longer critical, the Sigmundhaus did not allow him to have visitors. No, the Embassy did not know where Professors Bird and Bachner had been staying. Nor where the accident had taken place. Bachner had been found on the Tricklfall trail above Abtenau, but there was no telling how far he might have come.

Oriole’s pleas that the family make a dignified retreat home to California were firmly overruled. To Mab’s and Perry’s questions about where they were going, Mrs. Bird gave evasive answers. She disappeared for two hours after lunch, returning to the hotel to closet herself with Baedeker’s Tyrol and Salzburg guidebook, an armload of other guide books and maps, Wednesday’s Paris edition of the New York Herald-Tribune and, Mab suspected, the ouija board.

An hour later she reappeared in the hotel coffee shop to announce, “Riesenmoos. That’s where we’re going. Riesenmoos. You’ll have to pack tonight. We have to get up very early to catch the first train.”

Oriole, who had spent the early afternoon eating chocolate cake and drinking coffee in the Glockenspiel Café in the company of a mournful and wonderfully sympathetic young man she had met in the American Express office, looked dismayed. She had obviously abandoned all thought of a dignified retreat to Pasadena and become reconciled to a stay in Salzburg.

“Riesenmoos? Where’s that?” asked Mab.

“Why Riesenmoos?” Perry asked. “You’ve heard something about Pop!”

“No, dears. I wish I had. No. But I’ve been thinking about something your father said several weeks ago—something about a puzzle he wished he had time to look into. He never said exactly what it was, You see: only that it was very curious—‘a very unnatural disturbance pattern.’ I think it had something to do with this very unpredictable winter Europe is having and all those spotty little earthquakes in places with odd names like Ptuj and Stupnik. Daddy left behind a lot of newspaper clippings about that sort of thing, but I can’t make head or tail of them. I should have asked Skinny, I suppose, but one always thinks of such things too late, and you know I never can keep anything about tremor patterns and the Richter scale straight in my head for five minutes.”

“Then why Riesenmoos?” asked Oriole plaintively. “Because this was in the folder with the clippings.” Mrs. Bird produced a Shell road map of Austria and spread it out on the table, moving napkins, silver, and empty cups aside. “There.” She pointed. In the middle of the map, an inch and a quarter southeast of Salzburg, the mountainous district marked “Tennen-Geb.” was lightly shaded ill with Dr. Bird’s familiar blue pencil. The district was circled by roads indicated as highways or main roads, running from Golling, south of Salzburg, to Werfen, Pfarr-Werfen, Huttau, St. Martin, Annaberg, Abtenau, and back to Golling. A secondary road running up into the high valleys south of the highest peaks connected Pfarr-Werfen with Werfenweng and the even more remote Riesenmoos. Mab, peering closely, wondered . whether the faint circular scratches on the shaded portion that converged on Riesenmoos’ tiny dot were her father’s doing or the ouija board’s planchette’s.

“Abtenau.” Perry looked up. “Isn’t that near where Dr. Bachner was found?”

“Yes.” Molly nodded. “Yes, but. If you were interested in those mountains, would you have stayed in Abtenau?” She tapped the map.

“No-o,” Perry said slowly. “I guess I’d want to get as high up as I could.”

Producing the fat red Baedeker guide from her handbag, Mrs. Bird opened it to a more detailed map of the Tennen-Gebirge. “The highest and the closest to the center of the range is this little valley…here. The Eiswinkel.”

“And Riesenmoos is up in the Eiswinkel,” Oriole finished for her. “Oh, it’s all very logical, I’m sure, Mama, but…” The objection trailed off. Arguing was useless when Mrs. Bird wore her Sweetly Faraway look. And she had it now. “I think I’ll go out for a cup of coffee.” Oriole sighed.

“But you’ve coffee right here… Oh, but that child can be tiresome!” Mrs. Bird remarked under her breath as the coffee-shop door swung shut after Oriole. “Let’s see, now. I’ve already phoned for hotel reservations, but I forgot to arrange to have the Herald-Tribune sent up. It won’t do to get out of touch with the rest of the world. I’ll see to that next, and the train tickets.” She rose and pulled on the long coat that with her knee-high boots made her look like an oddly tiny Cossack. “Perry dear, would you mind picking up one or two little things for me? If you think you’ll need the German phrase book to get along in the shops, it’s upstairs in my large suitcase.” She fished a crumpled list from her pocket, tucked it in his hand, drank off Oriole’s abandoned coffee, wrapped Oriole’s untouched piece of hazelnut cake in a paper napkin, put it in her pocket, and hurried out, looking efficient.

Riesenmoos, according to the guide books, was a small farming village, fifty-seven kilometers from Salzburg, Elevation: 4832 ft.; Population: 225. The Eiswinkel was described as a “sleepy little valley time seems to have forgotten, nestled in its little niche in the great wall of steep, rounded limestone peaks ringing the rugged Tennen-Gebirge plateau between the impressive Konigskogel peak and the no less stately Kreuzkogel.” What the guide-book cliches gave no hint of was the wild loveliness of the Salzach Valley in a snow shower as the train wound upward out of Salzburg and through the Lueg Pass. Outside the old market town of Werfen, the great castle of Hohenwerfen crowned a high wooded hill set against a towering backdrop of mountains. A vision out of a fairy tale, it silenced even Mab, who had been kept busy exclaiming “O-Oh!” and “Look there!” as she switched from the window side of the train compartment to the window in the corridor.

Perry was more struck by a sign glimpsed near the Werfen station, indicating the route to a place called the “Eisriesenwelt.” In smaller print—in English, apparently for the benefit of tourists—it read, “World’s Largest Ice Cave.”

Perry leaned forward. “Hey, Mom? What does ‘Eisriesenwelt’ mean? And ‘Geschlossen Oktober-Mai’—is that ‘Closed from October to May’?”

“Yes, that’s right. ‘Eisriesenwelt’? My guess would be ‘The Ice Giants’ World.’ But that doesn’t make sense, does it? Perhaps it’s some legend to do with the caverns. There seem to be quite a few caves in these limestone mountains. We’ll have to look that one up in the book when we unpack,” she added with a thoughtful squint before taking up her Herald-Tribune again. “Have you seen? There’s been another earthquake. In Zagreb this time.”

“Too bad it’s closed.” Perry’s mind was still on the caves. “Places like that are really cool. I wonder what it would be like to be a speleologist and go exploring caves all over the world? Pretty cool, I’ll bet.”

“What’s an ice cave?” asked Mab. “ A cave in a glacier?”

Perry explained with the heavy brotherly kindness that could be counted on to make Mab writhe. “Of course not. It’s a regular cave, where the limestone’s been worn away by water. You know about that, don’t you? Well, the ice kind is all a matter of ventilation. In early summer the cold air from deep down in gets swept up and out, so that it freezes the water that seeps into the caves when the snow melts. Then in winter the cold air blows in. Verstehen Sie?”

“Oh, yes. I understand.” Mab patted a small yawn elegantly, then ducked quickly, cowering down in her corner as Perry flashed out a hand to give her arm a fox-bite pinch. “No, not that! Anything but that!” she pleaded in a dramatic, whispery shriek.

“Mavis Bird!” Oriole stiffened and sent her a wounded look. “Please! You are not, in case you don’t remember, on your way to a fun fair. This is a serious--a serious investigative expedition.” To Byron Fleischacker, the young man who sat next to the compartment door in the seat opposite her, she murmured apologetically, “The young forget easily.”

Mab and Perry, reminded of their father, subsided guiltily, but could not resist rolling their eyes at each other over Oriole’s martyred tone. Even Molly Bird’s attention twitched away from her Yugoslavian earthquake, but she hid her smile behind the paper. Oriole had, since her discovery of Byron Fleischacker in the American Express office, left off weeping and taken up Looking Brave. Austria was not only the place to be, but the discovery of Professor Bird’s fate was a Sacred Duty. Byron was—“Isn’t it a small world?” Oriole had breathed—a UCLA graduate student doing research for a study of “Superstitious Survivals in Isolated Mountain Communities,” and the isolated mountain community he was headed for happened to be Riesenmoos. That and the fact that he was not only Serious and Responsible but looked at her with adoring cocker spaniel eyes decided Oriole. It was clearly her duty to see that the Birds left no stone in Riesenmoos unturned in their sad search.

“Er—um, ah, Peregrine?” Byron cleared his throat apologetically.” About those caves. You might be interested in some of the stories I’ve run across in my researches. All superstition, of course, but fascinating. Once upon a time—up until not so very many years ago, in fact, there were strange tales around this part of the country about huge columns of cave ice coming to life.” Byron’s enthusiasm for his subject seemed to bring him to life, too. His voice dropped dramatically. “Great slab-footed, icicle-fingered giants with windy voices, who retreated deep into the mountain as the summer deepened.”

“Man!” Perry stared. “People really thought they saw them?”

Byron recovered his serious, scholarly tone and, with a self-conscious smile, said, “Well, yes and no. At bottom it’s an explanation of the yearly return of the ice. There are a lot of winter myths—the retreat of Old Man Winter, the defeat of the Winter King by summer’s champion-and the giants are a nice variation.” He mused. “It’s just my luck that nobody believes in such things any more. Oh, there are a lot of superstitions floating around, but very few real ‘survivals.’ People keep the old legends on more as tourist attractions than anything else. At Carnival in Imst, there are more strangers on hand than townspeople, all come to watch the Schemenlaufen procession. A ‘quaint custom.’ What a lot of people don’t realize is that their quaint customs have their roots in a time when the Schemen were the demons of winter, and the rituals-long before they degenerated into ‘performances’ and then parades—the rituals had to finish with their being chased out of town, or springtime couldn’t have come.” He sat back, a bit embarrassed. “Sorry to bore you with a lecture on the subject. But they are nice little myths.”

Oriole stifled a yawn and watched the mountains unroll past the corridor window, but Perry and Mab were fascinated.

“Sch—Schemen? What does it mean?” asked Mab.

Byron considered. “I suppose that Schemenlaufen means—literally—‘the running of the shadows.’ But Schemen in such legends almost always means ‘ghosts’."