My Dear Lady Misericordia,

 
I hope this letter finds you well. I do hope that you have recovered from your exertions at the Christmas Ball in the no doubt entertaining company of Viscount Fox.
 
I am, of course, delighted that you were able to put aside your worries and concerns about your father and his friends, the dangers they were facing, the unexpected peril that could destroy them at any moment, and, for just one night, enjoy yourself in a lovely, heated ballroom, with plenty of fruit punch and inconsequential gossip.
 
You will have guessed by now, my Lady, that I am being sarcastic. I really do think it is terribly heartless of you, at the very moment that the Baronet Oxshott was throwing himself to his doom on the top of the world, as your father and I were plummeting from the sky towards an icy fate, that you were busy worrying about what Sir Charles said to Captain Wentworth and who was marked down for your next waltz.
 
I am afraid, my Lady, that I am suddenly not all that sorry that I included your father's less than charitable remarks in my last letter.
 
But, ah! My last letter. Surely this mystery at least will have gathered your attention. You must have had that letter by now, but how? And how is it that I, lost in a remote valley high up amidst the Arctic mountains, can have had your letter about the Christmas Ball? Surely the penny post does not extend that far?
 
Well, my Lady, I must confess that the answers to some of these questions are still a mystery to me, but thereby hangs a tale.
 
If you have had my last letter by now, then you will know that we had found ourselves marooned on a snowy plateau in the mountains, as far beyond human civilisation as the most deserted island on the ocean. Or was it? For, in the distance, were the lights and chimney smoke that could only mean human habitation, and while the Professor and Lord Daunt, you father, might know what those signs meant, I and the Professor's assistant Harry were only left with another puzzle: who, or what, could live in such a desolate place?
 
We camped for the night and set out next morning for this mysterious house. Fortunately the skis had been one of the items we had brought with us in our balloon journey through the mountains, although they are not easy things to master, at all. Well, not easy for me. Harry picked the whole thing up very quickly, though, and was able to help when I struggled. Which was often, I'm afraid to say.
 
How odd it is that, while I knew nothing of our goal or the reasons behind our adventure, I could simply enjoy the travelling - the wonder of the sleigh ride or the strangeness of the balloon borne boat, but the moment we had a purpose in sight - the house, growing ever so slowly closer ahead - the journey immediately became exhausting and interminable.
 
We struggled on, that is, the others skied and I struggled, across the featureless white plain, our destination under the distant mountains never seeming to grow any closer, above us the bare, cloudless sky, below us the bare, endless snow.
 
Here ought to have been adventure - at the top of the world, on the verge of some great mystery - but here was only incredible boredom and nuisance.
 
Slowly, however, our goal began to make itself clear before us. Not a single house, it turned out, but a homestead, a collection of buildings: houses, barns, stables, all with lights burning merrily in the windows and fires lit within.
 
There was something immediately cheerful about the place, more than just the delight of finding civilisation again, out here in the wilderness. There was something immediately human about the buildings, something welcoming and warm and any worries I might have had about what we were about to discover there disappeared entirely, although I could not and still cannot quite put my finger on why.
 

As we finally approached the main gate, extravagantly decorated with carved reindeer heads, a small figure came bustling out of a nearby building, running up towards us through the snow. At first I thought it must be a child, from the size of it, but when I saw the face under the red, fur-lined hood, I realised that it was, in fact, a full grown but very small man.
 
His features were something like the Sami, but with a twist something else that I couldn't put a finger on and a look in his eye as if he were laughing at something that we would never understand.
 
He drew himself up under the gate and bowed to us. The Professor stepped forward and tried a greeting in Sami that he had learned from the reindeer herders. To our great astonishment the little man replied in broken English, his voice clear in the still air.
 
"Well coming to the Youlutonty, hearty journey-makers! I am Tom, you may come well in and take hearth."
 
We followed him through the gates and into a small square, ringed about with many buildings and dwellings, many of them bearing signs above the door that suggested that they might be shops or businesses of some kind.
 
Lights burned in all the houses and at every window faces peered out at us, fascinated by the strange new-comers.
 
Tom led us to a large building on the far side of the square, almost immediately evident as an inn or hostel, where we were ushered into low-ceilinged room where a huge table groaned under a great feast laid out, apparently, for us.
 
"They must have seen us arrive, yesterday," whispered Harry, "To be so prepared."
 
Tom motioned for us to make ourselves at home, but the Professor and Lord Daunt would hear none of it. They immediately started bombarding Tom with questions:
 
"What is this place? How do you live here? Where did all this food come from? Who is in charge here? When can we meet him?"
 
Questions poor Tom's English was not quite up to answering. And not just his English, either, I suspected. There was something in his careful confusion that made me think he was deliberately not telling them something, was keeping something back. They were willing to feed us and give us shelter, it seemed, but not to offer us anything beyond that.

But no matter how curious we might be, or how strange and wondrous the place we found ourselves in was, there was nothing so guaranteed to capture our attention and evoke our wonder than a feast, not after all our exertions and traveling, not after 'Expedition Rations'.

Tom was happy, I think, to watch us fall to with such gusto - and not just because he was a good and generous host, either, I'm sure, but also because mouths that are full of mince pies cannot ask questions.

And yet, I must admit, still the questions came to mind: how were there mince pies, for one? Mince pies out here, beyond the reach of mankind and his orchards and pastry cooks and steam trains and grocer? Mince pies and glazed hams, devils on horseback and hot punch? What unseen hands were cooking these things - for we saw no one but Tom, who fetched and carried on his own - where did they get their ingredients, where did they cook up their feast? 

What was this place, beyond the end of beyond and above the top of the world, that could feast us so splendidly?

But no answer was coming from Tom, and so Harry and I fell to discussing the matter between ourselves as the Professor and Lord Daunt badgered our host and the fire flickered away in the grate, illuminating the carvings that covered every surface in the room.

Carvings that, in the firelight, seemed to move and dance: reindeer cantered, faces winked and grinned, forests waved in the wind and the clouds flew. And, well fed, tired and warm, sleep crept up on us.

The Professor is already snoring and his Lordship stares at the fire, unspeaking. Harry sleeps in his chair beside me and even I can feel my head growing heavy as I write these words - and yet one final question remains: Tom has promised to post this letter for me... but where, and how?

But this mystery is for tomorrow...

Yours,

Finally off Expedition Rations
 
Timothy Hope, Esq