The Owl Keeper (18 page)

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He decided to keep quiet. After all, Rose had plenty of secrets herself.

Rose wasn't listening anyway. She was busy turning her mittens and coat pockets inside out.

"Don't be mad, I'll find it," she said, removing her hat and peering inside. "It's here somewhere."

"What? What did you lose?"

"Your shell, Max. I lost your granny's lucky shell."

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

[Image: Max and the owl.]

Max felt as if the breath was knocked out of him, as if he'd been punched in the stomach. "You lost Gran's
shell?"

"Don't get your hackles up! It was an accident." Rose checked her pockets. "These things happen when you're on the run." She threw him a sheepish glance. "I'll find it, Max, I promise. I'm real good at finding things. It's a special talent I have."

Max chewed his lip, biting back tears, too angry to speak. How could she be so careless? Gran had entrusted the shell to him! Didn't Rose realize how rare and precious it was? Didn't she know it could never be replaced?

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Furious, he stomped through the graveyard, thinking what a mistake he'd made, trusting Rose with Gran's shell. He kicked at the dead leaves, desperately hoping it would appear.

"Hey, Max, I forgot all about this!"

He looked over to see Rose waving a piece of paper.

"Look, I found this in your closet!"

He ignored her and kept walking away. Big deal, he thought, that old closet was overflowing with junk. He was so upset he didn't care when the owl wiggled out of his pocket and darted into the air.

Why did Rose always get so distracted? he wondered, jumping from one topic to the next? She never stuck with one thing for more than a minute. Her flightiness was maddening. Why wasn't she helping him find Gran's shell? Obviously she didn't care about it, he thought angrily. The shell meant nothing to her.

Max heard the silver owl hooting again. She teetered on top of a gravestone, flapping her good wing, more animated than he'd seen her in a long time.

Rose ran over, waving the paper in his face. "Here, take a look, Max. I was going to read it, but I suppose you should be first. After all, it was in your closet."

Annoyed, he snatched the paper from her hand.

She clicked on her miniflashlight, shining it over a crumpled page filled with handwritten words. "What are you waiting for? Read it!"

Max smoothed out the paper. When he saw the elaborate script he blinked in surprise. "You found this in my
closet?"
The paper was covered with faded looping letters in blue and silver ink. It was in the same old-fashioned handwriting as the owl's

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secret message. Why hadn't Mrs. Crumlin discovered this? he wondered, remembering all the times she'd barged into his room and snooped through his closet.

"I found it behind the wallpaper," explained Rose. "I was waving my flashlight around, see, and I saw all these places where the wallpaper was coming unstuck."

Max scowled, forgetting for a moment what he held in his hands. Sticky-fingers Rose, he thought irritably, she can never leave things alone. "You ripped the
wallpaper
off my closet wall?"

"That wallpaper was so decrepit, it fell right off! Anyway, it was boring in there, so I had to do something. A row of ships fell down and I found this paper, stuck to the wall. Sorry, I wrinkled it a bit."

Hooting, the owl fluttered in a crooked line to Max's shoulder.

Gripping the paper, Max thought back to the message. Something Rose had just said tugged at his memory. "The owl's message talked about a ship."

"I'm talking
wallpaper
ships, Max." Rose tapped the paper. "Read it."

"Maybe the owl's message doesn't mean a real-life ship?
'Tear down the sails of the eastbound ship,
"' he recited from memory,
"steering into the darkest port.'"
He glanced sideways at his owl, who sat on his shoulder listening intently, her golden eyes fixed on him. "The ship sails into the dark, right? My closet's dark-- there's no light in there."

"Yeah, and it smells like dirty socks. I almost threw up."

Max dismissed her silly remark with a wave of his hand. Inside his head, he felt the click-click of gears, whirling and turning.
"'The eastbound ship'
--that side of the house faces east." Had the

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owl's message been meant for
him?
He skimmed the words on the crumpled paper. "This is from the Silver Prophecies, Rose! It's the song of silver and ice, the one Gran used to sing to me!"

The owl gave a triumphant silvery hoot. Max could feel her small body trembling with excitement.

"Let me see!" Rose reached greedily for the paper.

Max whisked it behind his back, the lost shell fresh in his mind. "Do you know how rare this is? This might be the only copy of the poem left in the world!"

"Maybe your gran knew she was dying," Rose said in a melancholy tone. "Maybe she hid it for you to find."

Max could feel the old, familiar sorrow. "I think you're right, she left it for me," he said slowly. "Look at the letters. Nobody writes like this anymore, except people from my granny's generation-- and Gran's the only older person I know.
Knew,
I mean." His throat tightened. "Rose, I'm almost positive she wrote this."

"Good thing I found it, right, Max?" said Rose, sounding like her old self again. "Otherwise that witchy old housekeeper would've thrown it in the trash."

"You're right," he agreed. He looked at Rose. "The owl's message talks about finding the Silver Treasure. This is it: 'Silver and Ice'! This poem is the treasure!"

"It could be," she mused, "but your owl is silver too."

Max hadn't thought of that. The silver owl hopped off his shoulder onto a gravestone.

"I wonder who sent your owl to you?" Rose went on. "I mean, somebody must've put the message in her beak and sent her off with it."

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Max thought a moment, mentally running down the short list of people he knew. He could exclude the untrustworthy ones like Mrs. Crumlin, Dr. Tredegar and Einstein right off the bat. And it was doubtful his mom and dad or Professor LaMothe knew anything about the poem.

"My gran had lots of friends who were Sages, so maybe it was one of them," he suggested, knowing it was only a guess.

Rose frowned. "Then that means your owl belongs to somebody else. What if they're waiting for it to come back?"

Alarmed, Max glanced over at his silver owl, flitting from one gravestone to the next. It had never occurred to him she might be someone's pet. "She's
mine,"
he said fiercely, feeling a deep anger rising inside him. "And nobody's going to take my owl away from me." He would fight to the death, he knew, to keep his silver owl.

"Read the message!" urged Rose, waving her flashlight. "Hurry up before this thing runs out of batteries."

Max threw her an annoyed look. He was tired of being ordered around.

He turned his attention back to the poem. In the beam of Rose's flashlight, the words glimmered strangely--as if they weren't words at all, he thought, but tiny galaxies of light spinning on the page.

He cleared his throat. "The Way to the Owl Keeper," he began, trying to deepen his voice, "from the Silver Prophecies:

"Owl in the darkness, silver in the leaves,

Blind child comes leading

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through the fog and trees.

Through the haunted forest, beyond the aching hills,

Darker grows the eventide, deeper grows the chill.

Ancient dark is rising on the highest bridge,

Red-eyed wolves are running on the distant ridge.

Beware the eyeless creatures

that would have your soul,

Choose the burning sunlight, choose the path of gold.

Journey to the mountain, flee the fortress old,

Silver wings will save you from the killing cold.

Two will make the journey, old one gone before,

TO the icebound tower, through the crumbling door."

He stopped reading. There was an extra verse at the end, one he'd never heard before. While the first three verses were written in blue, the last verse was penned in thick, broad strokes of silvery ink--as if Gran had meant to draw his attention to it. He continued:

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"Owl Keeper is summoned

atop the frozen plain,

Owls and Sages gather to fight the dark again, two will make the journey, silver owl in hand,

Seek the moonlit tower as darkness sweeps the land.

Silver and ice, silver and ice,

Silver owl will guide you, with its golden eyes."

Rose leaned over and patted the owl, perched on a gravestone nearby. "It gives me the shivers."

"The haunted forest makes sense," said Max, mulling over the phrases. "We're in it right now! And the red-eyed wolves are plague wolves."

"The eyeless creatures are skræks," said Rose darkly. "I really hate those things."

"Me too." Max shuddered. How could he ever tell Rose that the High Echelon had planned to make him a Skræk Master?

Rose tugged on a string of matted hair. "What does the last verse mean?"

"It's about the Owl Keeper bringing together Sages and silver owls."

"Yeah, but what about the two making a journey with a silver owl?" Rose's voice fell to a melodramatic whisper. "That's
us,

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Max! We're supposed to take your silver owl to a moonlit tower! It says so right there!"

Max sifted through his memories, trying to recall what Gran had told him. Sounds and images tumbled through his head: a tower, a silver treasure, unearthly songs rising up through the moonlight. He tilted his head toward the silver owl. Looking into her golden eyes, scattered with flecks of amber, he could almost read her thoughts.
Heed the poem,
she seemed to say to him.
Follow the path.

Max let out a slow, measured breath. "Gran always talked about a tower on a high plateau. I think that's where we'll find the Owl Keeper, Rose!"

"Okay. The poem talks about an icebound tower and a frozen plain," she said, craning her neck and looking off in the distance. "Does that mean--"

"Yep," said Max, following her gaze. "The Frozen Zone." Just above the trees he could see its cold, jagged edges, jutting up against the sky.

Rose sucked in her breath. "Wow, Max, this is a real adventure! And the Owl Keeper lives up there in a tower, right? Hey, maybe we can stay with him! I bet he has servants and a maitre d' and a television with a rotary antenna--"

"Don't count on it," Max cut in dryly, wondering what a maitre d' was. "Televisions haven't been around for generations." He slipped the paper inside his jacket.

The owl gave a delicate sneeze. Max picked her up and held her a moment, stroking her feathers, then he opened his pocket and she squeezed inside.

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"Max!" cried Rose.

He looked up to see a pinkish yellow light, filtering through the tangled branches. "The sun!" he gasped. Panic and fear took hold of him.

"Run!" yelled Rose.

Wheeling around, they streaked through the graveyard, dodging headstones, leaping over stone walls, sprinting through the trees. The sky was growing lighter by the minute. Soon they were running along the river, slipping and sliding on the muddy banks.

This is worse than plague wolves or skræks, thought Max, this is instant death.

"Over here!" cried Rose, pulling him toward a narrow wooden bridge.

There was no time to worry about crossing the river into a forest where wolves and Misshapens roamed at night. It was the only place to hide. All Max could do was clamber across the bridge and into the shadows, dodging the lethal rays of the sun.

Looking wildly around, Max glimpsed a cluster of shapes, half hidden in the mist, and galloped toward them. To his amazement he could see a clump of blasted walls, with stone steps winding upward---and a doorway leading into a crumbling stone structure.

Crashing through the forest, he jumped over twisted roots and ducked beneath branches. Arms pumping, he hurtled through the open doorway and into the ruined building. Rolling across the earthen floor, he landed in a cold, pitch-black space, relief spiraling through him.

Rose came flying in, her rubber boots skidding in the dirt. "Max, are you okay?"

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Out of breath, he looked up at her with a weary smile, his eyes already adjusting to the darkness.

"Whew, that was a close call," she said. With a concerned expression, she pulled him to his feet, looking him up and down, checking for damage. "I was so scared for you, Max! I was afraid your skin would start bubbling up and your eyes would pop out and your hair would catch fire and--" She stopped abruptly, leaving the rest to their imaginations.

Seeing her worried expression, Max felt his cheeks go red. Rose really
does
care about me, he thought. Now that the scare was over, he brushed leaves and dirt from his clothes, gazing with curiosity at the scarred walls and beams of rotting wood. They were in a great hall of some sort. It was built of enormous stones that were covered with carvings so weathered, they were fading back into the stone.

It must have been magnificent here once, he thought. Who had lived in this place? Had they been royalty or wise people of some sort? He guessed the castle had been built centuries ago, maybe as far back as the first Sages.

Then he was struck by an awful thought and his heart sank. "My owl!" he cried. "What if I squashed her?"

But when he opened his pocket, the owl fluttered out and flew straight up to a beam in the ceiling, ruffling her feathers. She had a look of faded elegance, sitting high above, gazing at them with quizzical eyes, making soft triumphant noises.

"Did you see her fly up there?" Max stared at his owl, feeling incredibly happy and relieved. "Her wing is working again, Rose! And look at her bad eye--doesn't it seem brighter to you?" His owl was whole again! Her broken wing was healed!