The Owl Keeper (28 page)

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Wexford rubbed his prickly chin. "Seems to me, if you fell from the battlements and you're still alive, no bones broken, there's a reason. The owls let you pass, is why."

"You mean ... the
silver owls?"
said Max, suddenly heartened. "They live here?"

"Live here? They guard this city day and night!" The man's rheumy eyes brightened. "We'd not be alive otherwise. Oh, them silver owls can be mighty fierce."

"The silver owls rescued us!" said Max, relieved that Wexford wasn't going to turn them over to the authorities. "What's the name of this place? Is it Silvern?"

"This is Port Sunlight, oldest resort in the country," came the reply, and Max felt a stab of disappointment. "Course it ain't no summer picnic now. The climate turned arctic when the High Echelon messed with the weather."

"Is they ice-mummies, Grampy?" giggled the little girl. "They says they's not ghosties."

"No, Miranda, they're neither--though you might wonder, by the looks of them. Now get up out of the snow." Taking the girl's hand, he turned to Max and Rose. "Follow me, we'd best get something warm into you." He stared at Rose's soaking-wet sock. "Looks like you've lost a boot."

"A plague wolf got it," said Rose. "That's not all I lost either! An evil doctor shot an arrow at me and wrecked my eyesight."

"Oh me cracking bones!" replied Wexford, shaking his head.

"Uh ... could you give me a minute?" said Max, glancing over at the skræk. "I just need to bury my friend." He had to, he reasoned; it wouldn't be right to leave the skræk exposed on the ground.

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"Nobody has them things for
friends!"
Wexford spit out of the side of his mouth. "Them things are killers made by lunatic scientists."

"Yeah, but this one's special," Rose said. "It owed Max a favor, so it killed a plague wolf to save our lives." Wexford whistled through his teeth.

Scarf wound around his mouth to mask the stench, Max chipped at the ice with a broken spade. The ground was frozen, so he built a small igloo instead of digging a hole. When the igloo was ready, he scooped up the skræk with the spade. Its wings were stiff and stuck out at right angles. Looking at the creature made him want to gag. He could see veins snarled beneath its skin, its blood still and brackish.

"Thank you for saving us, fallen warrior," he whispered solemnly. "You were gallant and stalwart and lionhearted, and a cut above the others. Thus I commit you to this igloo." He thought a moment, then added, "I'll never, ever forget you."

Few words, he thought, but heartfelt; they would have to do. His queasiness gone, he studied the knotted corpse, bleak and frozen and riddled with plague. What kind of being was it? Did it have thoughts? Emotions? Was this skræk somehow different from the other skræks?

He noticed something strange, and looked closer at the skræk. To his surprise, he saw that the sun tattoo was losing its golden color. He leaned forward, curious. The number
176
grew dimmer, fading to a pale bruise, as did the tattoo. Then they were gone.

Somewhat shaken, Max lowered the spade and dropped the

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skræk into the hollowed-out igloo. In death it looked sad and harmless. He threw the spade aside, then bent down and peered inside. The skræk's wings were beginning to crumble. Max stared in fascinated horror as its claws shriveled and its head caved in, scattering slivers of teeth. The twisted body grew smaller, until only a husk remained. Then the husk split open, revealing a tiny, fragile heart, suffusing the igloo with a luminous light. Max blinked, and the heart crumbled to dust.

2,61

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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

[Image: Cocoa.]

With Miranda in tow, Wexford guided Max and Rose through the courtyard and down a narrow, looping street. Minutes later, he paused outside a run-down wooden building six stories high, with peaky dormers, a tilted brick chimney, and green paint flaking off the veranda. Built into one side of the building was a large makeshift greenhouse. Max peered in through a scratched sheet of glass and saw a row of leggy tomato plants. The sight of something green and growing cheered him up a bit.

Above the front door hung a weathered wooden sign that read summer winds hotel. Beneath it was a painting of a woman in

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a long dress looking out to sea. Why call it Summer Winds, wondered Max, when summer doesn't even exist anymore? Then again, he reasoned, maybe they kept the sign as a reminder of better times.

"Was once a fancy place, this," said Wexford, fumbling with the key. "Port Sunlight was one heck of a jumped-up town when I was a youngling. Sunny climate, warm breezes, a paradise! Ach, you'd never know it now."

Inside the hotel, Wexford put away his rifle in a cabinet and hoisted Miranda onto his shoulders. Max and Rose trailed behind as they shuffled through an immense gloomy hall, past splintered mirrors and murals eaten away by time, on threadbare carpets and uneven floors, past windows stuffed with cardboard to keep out the cold.

Max kept thinking about his room at home: the coziness of his goose down quilt, the owl book under the closet floorboards, his collection of odd-shaped stones. Everything neat and tidy, each thing in its place. Don't dwell too much on it, he told himself; don't hold on to the memories. Your old life is gone.

At the end of the hall, Wexford threw open a lacquered blue door. Welcoming smells of cabbage and boiled meat hung in the air, mixed with smoke and melting wax. Max could hear his stomach rumble with hunger as he stepped inside. Candles dripped from iron sconces. Smoke swirled around timbered beams. On one side of the room a gigantic brick hearth surrounded a blazing fire.

"Here's newcomers," announced Wexford. "Fell from the battlements, they did. Silver owls let them pass!"

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A hush fell over the room. Faces creased with dirt looked up with curious expressions, eyes red-rimmed from the smoke. Wrapped in furs and blankets, the adults sat at long tables, eating from wooden bowls. Max's mouth began to water. Helios scuttled over to the fire and flopped down as if he'd lived there all his life.

"We's brung wolfie!" said Miranda.

"It ain't no wolf," sputtered Wexford. "It's just an old hound." Coughing and hacking, he set the girl on the floor and she ran straight to Helios.

Max looked around the room, suddenly self-conscious. He hadn't expected so many people. There were, he guessed, three or four dozen adults, several children his own age, and some smaller ones, bundled in thick sweaters and hats, sitting on the floor near the fire shooting marbles.

"Ach, dust in me throat," croaked Wexford, spitting into the hearth. "I feel like a bit of chewed string, chasing after that youngling." He strode to the center of the room, addressing the ragtag crowd. "These here two younglings is Rose and Max. They says they come from Cavernstone Grey. They says they run away from the High Echelon."

"And they failed off the tower!" Miranda piped up. She looked around brightly at the children by the fire. "But they's not ghosties." The children giggled.

"We can see they're not, Miranda," said a severe-looking woman in half-moon glasses and a purple woolen shawl. "We can see that plain as day." She ladled soup from a stone urn, and she motioned for Max and Rose to sit down at the table. Max recognized her from somewhere, but he was too tired to think past the soup.

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Seated on a wooden bench, he gazed into the bowl. Cabbage leaves floated on top of a rich broth; there were chunks of carrots, onions, potatoes, and meat, and some leafy vegetables he had never seen before. It smelled heavenly.

"We've been running for our lives," said Rose, already busy slurping her soup. "We were chased by plague wolves and skræks and the Dark Brigade, and Misshapens, too!"

Max wolfed down the steaming broth, only half listening to Rose. It was the most delicious soup he had ever tasted. He noticed that Rose was wide awake now and she couldn't stop talking.

"Max's guardian tried to make us eat poison muffins," she went on. "The old pit viper wanted me dead, but she got turned into a skræk. Then there was this evil doctor who shot a poisoned arrow and blinded me!"

There were murmurs and groans, a yelp of disgust from one of the teenagers. Max stared into his soup, annoyed. Somebody needs to wind her down, he thought.

"I'm not really blind," Rose went on, "just sometimes a white fog comes down and all I can see are shapes that look like ghosts." She paused, gazing around at the others. "Are all of you runaways, too?" she asked.

"We're all in the battle against the High Echelon, if that's what you mean," said the austere woman in the shawl. "I'm Vivian Ashe, by the way. The grumpy old man who found you is my husband, Wexford. We grew up in the Easterly Reaches and he visited Port Sunlight as a child."

Max glanced up from his soup, wiping broth from the corners

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of his mouth. He vaguely recalled seeing a map of the Easterly Reaches, which was located somewhere near the coast.

"Now we're here as refugees, like everyone else," the woman continued. "We've come from all parts of the country, fleeing the High Echelon. We've settled in here despite the cold weather, building greenhouses in the city, working hard and growing our own food--"

"The High Echelon says the Frozen Zone's a wasteland," grumbled Wexford, tossing a bone to Helios. "Government claims the silver owls are extinct. Lies and half-truths, all what the High Echelon says! We're safe here, see, the silver owls keep watch from aeries that ring the city. Anyone tries to breach the walls, the owls attack."

Max knew what aeries were: hollowed-out places in walls and the sides of cliffs where birds lived. He felt an ache in his heart, remembering his own owl. Where was she now? He was about to mention her when Vivian spoke up.

"Port Sunlight will never fall," she declared. "The silver owls will defend us to the death."

Max watched her remove her glasses and dab at her eyes with the shawl. He realized she was crying.

"We're waiting for our daughter, Rosalyn," Vivian continued. "She's Miranda's mother and works in a factory ironing uniforms. Her husband was sent to jail."

"A fine kettle of fish," muttered Wexford.

"My granny's in jail," said Max, who was beginning to feel a kinship with these people. Like him, they had been uprooted, separated from the ones they loved. How he wished his mother

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and father were here. "Rose's parents are in prison too, right, Rose?"

He looked over and saw Rose's head resting on her elbows as she snored gently beside her empty bowl. He didn't have the heart to wake her.

Wexford cleared his throat. "Well, Max and Rose, you're welcome to stay here as long as you like." He strode over to the fire and spit into the flames, making them crackle and leap. "And it looks to me like you could use a good night's sleep. You both look like the devil."

Max wanted to ask about the Owl Keeper and the tower and the ancient town of Silvern, but he was too tired to say another word. It was as if his eyelids had lead weights on top of them.

Miranda sprang up. "Is they devils, Grampy?"

"No," said Wexford, "they's not devils." He turned to Max, the hard look on his face softening. "They're strangers, Miranda-- strangers same as us."

Barely awake, Max smiled to himself, thinking how pleased Gran would be, knowing he had found a place so warm and welcoming, a place where he might even belong.

The next morning Max crawled out from under a heap of scratchy blankets. The wind whistled through a crack in the window. He'd slept more soundly than he'd slept in years, and there had been no terrifying nightmares. The room was so cold he could see his breath, and the wallpaper was loose and flapping, but none of that mattered to Max. He felt safe and cared for and, yes, happy. It was a feeling he wasn't used to.

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Outside it was still dark, though he could see a pale light spreading across the eastern sky. He threw on his jeans and sweater and stepped into a hallway papered in summer flowers. Wandering along, he came to a grand staircase covered in shabby carpet and followed it down to a dreary hallway. There he spotted the lacquered blue door.

Max lifted the latch, wondering what the great hall looked like in early morning with no one around. He pushed the door open and tiptoed inside. Beside the enormous brick fireplace crouched a figure in a tattered bathrobe, stirring the embers with a stick. Something that smelled delicious bubbled inside an enormous pot that hung over the embers.

The woman raised her head as the door closed behind him. "Hello, Max," said Vivian Ashe, rising to her feet. He noticed she was tall and willowy, with an air of old-fashioned genteelness. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, thanks," he answered. Why did she look so familiar? Unable to contain his curiosity, he blurted out, "I've seen you before, I know I have!"

Vivian fixed him with her stern smile. "I worked in the prison system thirty years and learned a thing or two there. That was the reason I turned against the High Echelon. I trust you've never spent any time in a prison?"

"Never," said Max, thinking how things might have turned out differently. Instead of this hotel, he could be locked inside a windowless cell in Children's Prison.

"Fancy some bitter chocolate?" She dropped a gold-wrapped cube into his hand. Max looked at it suspiciously, recalling the