The Owl Keeper (27 page)

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with snow. Traces of silver light from the owls dissolved in the air around him. High overhead he could see the medieval fortress wall, with its sturdy buttresses and turrets, guarding over the city.

"Are we dead?" murmured Rose, eyes fluttering. "Are we ice-mummies?" Max could see foggy breath rising from her mouth as she spoke.

"We're not dead!" he shouted. "We're alive!" He could still feel the softness of those linked wings beneath him. "Rose, it was a flock of silver owls! My owl was there too, and they lowered us down on their wings!"

The knot in his stomach was gone. That awful churning sensation had stopped. The despair and heaviness in his chest had lifted. Max felt transformed.

Rose sat up, wiggling her toes inside Max's socks. "That was owls?" Her hair looked smooth and glossy, sparkling with new-fallen snow.

Helios lay on his back, paws in the air, but Max knew he was alive because his nose was wiggling. It looked as if the dog had a smile on his face.

From the top of the hay bales, Max watched snow whirl past bricks and stone and splintered timbers, settling on branches and walls and low stone troughs. Snow sifted down on collapsed walls and boarded-up warehouses, on rusted metal scraps and fallen chunks of masonry.

He wondered what sort of city this had been. Who had lived here and why had they left? He wished his parents were with him now. What would they think of this silent, ice-cold city? Would they be willing to start a new life here?

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He found his jacket in the hay and shrugged it on, all the while studying the ancient stone columns, the damaged statues, the cavernous holes. Trees, black and leafless, pushed up through the ice-covered ground. How did anything manage to grow here?

Once again, he realized, the High Echelon had lied, telling people that if they went to the Frozen Zone they would die. Why did the government want to keep this place a secret? He was here and
he
wasn't dead.

Rose slid off the hay bales, followed by Helios. "Max, I can see again!" she cried in an overexcited voice, shaking snow from her hair. "Why does my sight come and go like that? Why can't my eyes go back to normal?"

"Don't worry, Rose," said Max. "The Owl Keeper will help you, once we find him." He wasn't being totally honest, he knew. He had no idea what the Owl Keeper could do for her, if anything.

Rose stood looking around at the courtyard. "Well, where is the Owl Keeper? I don't see any magic tower." She reached down to pull up her socks. "Where's your silver owl, Max?"

"She flew off with the others," he said, telling himself not to worry. "She'll be back, I know she will."

"Your owl better hurry up, that's all I can say--the Owl Keeper's waiting!" Rose frowned. "Max, what if she's got a new life now--her owl life up in the sky again?"

Max reached into his empty pocket; it was still warm. What if his owl didn't come back? It was too painful to think she might leave him. But what if the pull of the other owls was too great? Then what would he do? Maybe, he thought, her life down here with him really was over.

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"On the other hand, that owl's your friend," Rose was quick to say as she wandered off. "She can have two different lives, right? One with you and one with the owls. Don't worry, she'll be back."

"I guess," said Max glumly. But he didn't want to share his owl with anyone else, not even the other owls.

Then he glimpsed a shape, moving through the trees, obscured by falling snow. He felt a prickling between his shoulder blades, a creeping fear. What was it? It looked too small to be a Dark Brigadier. He stiffened, suddenly alert. Was it a plague wolf? A Misshapen?

"What's this piece of junk?" shouted Rose, stomping around, kicking things that got in her way with her big green boot. She gave a loud sniff, kicking at a pile of dirty rags.
"Whooeee,
smells pretty nasty!"

Curious, Max ran over. Shooing Helios away, he bent down and breathed in a revolting smell. He recognized instantly what it was. A dull ache stabbed at his heart. There was no mistaking the crumpled wings and slimy skin, the half-formed face that had no eyes: a dead skræk, wrapped in layers of ice.

"Rose, it's my skræk!" he cried, forgetting all about the shape in the mist.

"Your
skræk? Since when do you own a skræk?"

"It's dead--dead and frozen," he said, feeling a strange mix of compassion and revulsion. He could see the creature's head was twisted at an angle. Tears sprang to his eyes. "Rose, this skræk saved us! It attacked the wolf and saved our lives!" Blood and foam trickled out between its tiny sharp teeth. Plague, he thought grimly.

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"Skræks aren't on our side, Max." Rose hopped off on the one boot, Helios at her heels. "They're the enemy."

"Not this one! He saved our lives and it cost him his life!" Max nudged the creature with his boot. Its pointy head flopped to one side, revealing a sun tattoo and a number. "This
is
the skræk from The Ruins! Look, Rose, number 176!"

He knew it was childish to cry, especially over such a gruesome creature, but a few tears escaped anyway. "This skræk was my friend and I didn't even know it."

"Okay, have it your way, Max, but you'd better bury it fast. That thing's got plague!"

Max wandered around the courtyard, looking through a row of abandoned market stalls, searching for a shovel to dig through the frozen earth. He had to give the skræk a proper burial: it was, after all, a fallen warrior--it had sacrificed its life for two humans and a dog.

As he turned a corner, a figure flitted at the edge of his vision. He ground to a halt. The figure stopped too and stood unmoving by a gnarled tree. Max could see it was small and shaped not like a wolf but like a miniature human. That made him feel slightly braver.

"Come out of there!" he shouted, his voice shaking. "I see you, so don't try to hide!"

"You's not ghosties, is you?"

Max nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw a tiny girl step forward. She wore a white woolen cape and a white dress with scalloped edges that trailed through the snow. White-blond hair flowed down her back.

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Except for Rose, Max hadn't had any contact with girls in years. This one looked extremely tiny and fragile. She seemed the opposite of Rose, and much better looked-after.

"Do we look like ghosts?" he said, shaken. "Who are you? Why are you sneaking around?"

"Who are you talking to?" shouted Rose, running over.

"Some little kid!" Max rubbed his eyes. What if this child was one of the High Echelon's weird experiments?

"You's not one of them," the girl said to Max. Her voice was high and whispery. "You's real."

Max stared at her, puzzled. "What are you talking about? Who's
them?"
he asked nervously.

She waved her small hands. "Them that moves in fog, all furry and pale." Her hands reminded Max of starfish he'd seen in Gran's
Book of the Sea.

"Skræks?" Just saying the word made him shudder. What if the government had laboratories here? What if they were manufacturing skræsks and other bizarre things? That would explain why they'd declared the Frozen Zone off-limits.

"She's talking about the owls," said Rose, turning to address the child. "They make
whoo-hoo
sounds, right? They move like ghosties in the fog, right?"

"Yes," whispered the girl, nodding. "That's them."

Max watched the girl's eyes drift over to the dead skræk. She gave a frightened squeal and her face went pale. "What's that? Smelly. That's smelly." She pointed. "Is it biting?"

"Don't worry," said Max, trying to reassure her. "It's frozen solid. It's a dead skræk and I'm going to bury it."

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"Don't touch it!" warned Rose. "It's got plague." The girl looked at Rose and her lower lip trembled. "Scary," she whispered.

Max was afraid the girl was going to cry. He could see she was timid and easily upset. She looked like a worrier, the way he used to be. Or did she have a reason to be scared? he wondered uneasily. What if hideous, menacing creatures roamed this place?

"See that tower?" He pointed to the wall that ringed the city. Maybe if he explained what had happened, the girl wouldn't be so frightened. "A wolf chased us down the steps and this skræk killed the wolf and saved our lives. So it was a good skræk."

"Scary! Biting!" whispered the girl, shaking all over. It was obvious she knew what the creature was.

"That's a happy ending, right?" asked Rose.

The girl chewed on a long strand of hair, considering. Meanwhile, Helios, who had been sleeping under a bench, woke up and started to bark.

The girl's eyes darted around. "Wolfie!" She gave a terrified scream as the dog raced toward them.

Poor kid, thought Max, she's scared to death.

Rose laughed. "Helios isn't a wolfie!" The dog jumped up on Rose and licked her face. "This is my dog and he wouldn't bite a fly!"

"Scared." The little girl backed away, her frilly dress dragging in the snow. "Is scared."

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CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

[Image: The fortress.]

"Miranda!" shouted a gravelly voice. Through the falling snow Max saw a short, stocky man in a fur coat, a rifle strapped to his back. He stumped toward them, the wind lifting his thin white hair.

"Who's that old geezer?" whispered Rose.

"No idea," said Max. Seeing the rifle made him jumpy. He hoped this was someone they could trust, someone who carried a gun to protect the Frozen Zone from plague wolves and skræks.

"Miranda Juniper Ashe!" growled the man. "Where you been, youngling?"

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Max studied the old man's watery eyes, the stubble on his leathery face. He couldn't decide if this was a friend or an enemy. What if he and Rose got into trouble with the old man for trespassing? What would happen to them then? Was there a Children's Prison nearby? he wondered.

"You shouldn't be out here alone, Miranda!" rasped the old man. "Now come to Grampy." He was so intent on retrieving his granddaughter he didn't notice Max and Rose.

Miranda scampered behind a tree, hiding. "Not alone!" she chirped.

"No playing tricks, youngling, I'm far too old for tricks." The man gave a hoarse cough.

"They jumped out the tower and brung scary creatures!" The girl's voice was low and whispery, but loud enough that Max could hear. "They brung a biting-flying thing, and a wolfie, too!"

The man turned stiffly, his mouth forming an
O
as he caught sight of Max and Rose for the first time. He stared at them long and hard, and Max broke out in a cold sweat. Was the man going to shoot them?

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. "How did you get here?"

Before Max could answer, the girl tugged on her grandfather's sleeve. "Grampy, look! A biting-flying thing!" She pointed to the skræk. "Smelly! Dead!"

The man strode over and stared down at it. "Well, I'll be skeeved! Looks like its neck is twisted right around." He looked up at Max and Rose, pressing together his thick white eyebrows. "What's all this about, eh? We don't take kindly to Outsiders

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bringing skræks into our city. We don't take kindly to Outsiders period. And what's this about a wolf?"

"Helios isn't a wolf!" Max blurted out, worried that the man might be trigger-happy. He could see the dog at the far end of the courtyard, rolling in the snow. "Please don't shoot him, he belongs to my friend Rose!"

Head thrown back, Rose stepped forward. "Anyone touches my dog," she said in an imperious voice, "I'll cut out their eyes and strangle them dead."

Max had to hand it to Rose: she was a force to be contended with.

The old man suppressed a guffaw.

"Who are you anyway, mister?" demanded Rose in her tough-girl voice. She narrowed her eyes to see the man better. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm
the one should be asking that question!" the man thundered.

"I'm Maxwell Unger, sir," offered Max, before Rose could say anything. He hoped that if he acted respectful the man might simmer down. Rose was impulsive--she tended to get people worked up. "And this is my friend Artemis Rose Eccles."

"Call me Wexford," said the man, but offered no further details.

"We've come from Cavernstone Grey," Max went on. "We were chased by skræks and plague wolves and the Dark Brigade."

"The High Echelon wants us dead!" added Rose. "And we're starving hungry because all we've had to eat are rotten peaches and stale cookies."

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Wexford scratched his head. "Where's the rest of you?"

"We're all there is," said Max, keeping one eye on the rifle. "Just the two of us."

"Don't forget Helios," Rose chimed in. "That's my dog."

Max sensed the old man's thoughts ticking away, adding things up.

"Who sent you?" Wexford wanted to know. "Nobody arrives here by accident. The High Echelon calls it the Frozen Zone, to scare folks off. Not many folks know this city is a refuge."

"We ran away," said Max. "We followed a path and ended up here." Better not mention the secret message, he told himself, or the silver owls--just in case Wexford was planning to double-cross them.

"We fell from a parapet," boasted Rose. "A fortress way high up."

"Oh me cracking bones!" Wexford squinted skyward through the snow, then turned his gaze back to Rose. Disbelief clouded his features. "A long way to fall, from the battlements."

"That's the battlements? Up there?" asked Max.

Wexford nodded. "Old as the hills, that fortress, older than yours truly!" He made a gargling noise that Max assumed was a chuckle.

"The High Echelon says if people come here they turn into ice-mummies," said Rose.

"Humph, typical propaganda," muttered Wexford.

"Ice-mummies?" tittered Miranda, swinging on his arm.

"That's when your bones and eyeballs turn to ice," said Rose, seriously.

Laughing, the little girl fell into the snow.