The Frost Child (2 page)

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Owen had been to Johnston's house before when it had been an armed camp, and had been held hostage in it, but somehow it was more intimidating in its deserted state. It had once been a great mansion, but now it was surrounded by scrap metal and barren ground. Some of the tall windows were broken, and torn curtains hung from them.

Owen crept closer. Johnston's old scrap truck was parked at the side of the house, one of its tires flat. A door creaked in the breeze. Owen went around the side of the house. Rubbish was piled everywhere. He made his way toward the back door. It was open. He stepped into the rear hallway. An old mattress lay against the wall, and there was some kind of liquid on the floor. A broken light hung crookedly from the ceiling. Owen edged his way around the foul-smelling pool on the floor. He could see the doorway to the cellar where he'd been held prisoner.

That's far enough
, he thought.
The house is deserted
. He had seen Johnston's ship being sucked down into time. The scrap dealer was gone. Relieved, he turned to go, the sunlight at the back door beckoning to him. And then, just as he reached the threshold, he heard a sound that made him feel as if someone had placed a cold finger on his spine: a single piano note from somewhere inside the house.

Owen froze. The note hung in the air, then was followed by another and another, a melody being picked out. A slow and eerie music, as if a ghost hand wandered lightly on the keyboard.

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As suddenly as it had begun, the music stopped. Owen spun around to face the hallway. He remembered that there had been a piano in the front room, Johnston's room, where the scrap dealer would listen to opera. And as he watched, a huge shadow was cast on the hallway wall. Owen shrank back against the stained wallpaper. He hadn't really thought that he would find Johnston alive and in the house, and he felt paralyzed with shock and fear. The shadow grew massive, full of menace. He forced himself to think coolly. No purpose would be served by a confrontation with Johnston. The man was strong and cunning and Owen could not win. Better to retreat and leave Johnston to think that his homecoming was a secret.

Steeling himself to move, Owen slipped out of the back door. As he emerged into the daylight, a flock of rooks burst from the dead trees and wheeled into the sky, the air filling with their cries.
They'll give me cover
, Owen thought. He lowered his head and ran. In half a minute he had cleared the gate and was running down the road, while behind him the rooks cawed as though jeering.

Johnston moved slowly down the hallway. He looked older. His massive sideburns had grayed, and he was limping heavily. But the same cunning light still shone in his eyes. He had been sucked into the maelstrom in time, as Owen had seen. But the distortion in the fabric of time that had enabled Owen and his friends to put the moon back into orbit also allowed his escape.

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Johnston limped to the back door and knelt slowly to examine the footprints in the dust. A mirthless smile showed his huge yellowing teeth like tombstones.

"The Navigator has run home, has he?" Johnston said softly to himself. "He thinks Johnston is stupid. But winter is coming, little boy, winter is coming."

Martha was peeling potatoes in the kitchen when she saw Owen running down the road. The radio was on in the background--the television networks and satellites had been destroyed and still had not been rebuilt. The presenter's voice was crackly and distant as he talked about expanding ice caps, but Martha was only half listening. The world had been so changed by what had happened that the unusual appeared almost normal.

She went out to the little grocery shop and ran her hand along the dusty counter. The shop had been owned by her neighbor, Mary White. On the surface Mary had appeared to be just a normal countrywoman, but in fact she had been the Resisters' contact in the world of ordinary people, and had been wise and knowing. Martha had been pursued by the Harsh when Owen was a baby, and her mind frozen by their deadly cold breath. It was Mary who had eased her, had put Martha's mind to sleep to allow it to heal, leaving her barely able to look after her young son. When Martha was needed, Mary had awakened her. But Mary had died in the end. She had been weakened by age and the effort of waking Martha's mind again, but it had been an attack on her by Johnston that had done the real and final damage.

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There was a crash, and she turned in alarm as Owen burst in through the door.

"What is it?" Martha asked. "Why were you running?"

"Johnston is back," Owen gasped. "Dr. Diamond was right. He wasn't lost."

Martha would have fallen if it was not for the support of the counter. She gripped Owen's arm. Her voice was hoarse.

"No! It can't be starting again so soon."

"It's all right," he said, "it's okay." Martha shook her head. Owen shouldn't be allowed to face this responsibility on his own. She straightened herself.

"It is time to contact Cati." Her voice was firm now. "The Watcher needs to know that Johnston is back."

Owen looked at her. "You're shaking."

"It will pass," she said, "it was just the shock." She gripped his arms and looked into his eyes. "We'll beat him this time as well. Besides," Martha went on, forcing a smile, "I know you're dying to see Cati again! Go and call the Watcher!"

But as she watched him run across the field, her heart was seized with dread. Twice Owen had been the key to defeating Johnston and the Harsh. What burden would fall on him in this new struggle?

Owen ran across the fields and straddled the tree trunk that formed a bridge across the river. The sun sparkled on the surface of the water and the wind gathered leaves against the low river wall. Owen jumped off the other end of the log and called.

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"Cati?"

No answer. He called and called, but she did not respond.

"Come on, Cati!" he shouted, impatient now. "It's important!"

In the end he gave up. He walked down the river path to his Den, pushed aside the bushes that he used to disguise the entrance, and went in. Everything was as he had left it. Greenish light from the clear perspex that acted as a skylight showing the old sofa and table with the stove on it. A truck wing mirror, dusty and forgotten on the wall. Under the table was the wooden box with his grandfather's maps, and on another wall something that looked like an old boat propeller but was in fact the Mortmain, an object of great power.

He threw himself down on the sofa.

"Where are you, Cati?" he said to himself.

"Here, you dimwit."

He looked up to see Cati standing in the doorway in her faded uniform, which she had studded with brightly colored badges. She looked a little older than he remembered, but then again so did he. But she still had the same restless movements, her green eyes dancing in her freckled face, quick to anger and quick to forgive.

"Dimwit?" He jumped to his feet, not knowing whether to hug her or shout at her.

"Blundering about the Workhouse calling my name. Did you want me to appear there and then, in front of whoever might be passing by? The outside world doesn't

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know about the Resisters and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Good to see you too, Cati," he said.

"Of course it's good to see you," she said, her face transformed by a smile, "but we have to be careful. There are still enemies out there."

"I know," Owen said. "Johnston's back!"

"What?" She looked at him in dismay. "We saw him--"

"I know! We thought he was lost, but I think that in some way we turned back time when we sailed from Hadima in the
Wayfarer
with the tempod."

"The
Wayfarer
rescued Johnston?"

"I'm afraid so. We didn't mean it to happen, but there was no other way ..." The
Wayfarer!
Just hearing the name of the slender vessel made his heart jump. At its resting place behind his house, it looked like a battered little schooner, but in fact it was a boat that could sail on the currents of time.

"I went up to his house," Owen said. "It is him, Cati."

"I believe you. I thought I heard opera music one night coming from that direction, but I put it out of my mind. You know the way Johnston loves opera." Cati's ears were very sensitive since her time in Hadima when she had temporarily joined up with a pack of children known as the Dogs who wore dog masks and sometimes seemed half canine. A bite from one of them had left Cati with more acute hearing, and a keen sense of smell.

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"Did he see you?" Cati went on.

"I don't think so. ..."

"At least that gives us a little time to think."

"So what do we do now?" Owen asked. "Is it time to wake the Resisters?"

Cati shook her head reluctantly. "Johnston was always here, even when they slept."

"It's our job to keep an eye on him," Owen said.

"You're right," Cati said. She had a strong sense of duty, and he could see that she knew it was the right thing to do.

"Are they all okay, the Resisters?"

"Yes," she said, "all sleeping peacefully."

"Why is it that when something happens, I want Dr. Diamond to be here?" Owen said.

"I miss him too," Cati said, "but we have to be able to make our own decisions without him." She smiled. "I wouldn't mind a bit of his cooking though."

"His apple tart," Owen said.

"His scones with butter," Cati said dreamily.

"Jam tarts, pear flan ..."

"Stop!" Cati leapt to her feet. "I have to go back to cured ham and hard biscuit."

"It's not really his food you miss, is it?"

"No," Cati said glumly. "I could do with a bit of company. And there's always something happening when he's around."

"Do you remember the jet-propelled rucksack?"

"He rescued you from the Harsh with that. And the silly glasses he got in Hadima."

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"It's hard here too sometimes. I can talk to my mum about stuff, but it isn't the same."

"I know. You know, I don't think I was really made for rules," Cati said sadly, "but I have to follow them. It's time for me to go now."

"Stay awhile."

"I don't know. ..." She frowned.

"We need to talk," Owen said slyly, "pool our knowledge. There may be some small bit of vital information that the other has missed."

"I suppose you're right," she said. "It might be useful...."

"I'll make some tea,' Owen said, springing to his feet and grabbing the battered kettle.

They had tea and some of the dried biscuit Cati carried in her pocket. They talked until nightfall of journeys through time, and great cities, and battles with the Harsh. They talked about the Yeati, the mythic beast that had helped them in Hadima, the City of Time, and of Conrad Black, the crooked keeper of the Museum of Time there, and of Rosie, the streetwise and clever girl who had been their guide.

"I'd love to see the Yeati again," Cati sighed. "He was like something out of a book."

"You remember how vain he was," Owen said, "always combing his fur? I'll never forget the night you and Rosie rescued him from Black's museum. He must have spent two hours in the bathroom looking after his fur."

They talked as old friends do when they haven't seen

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each other for a long time. But finally Cati looked up and saw that they were sitting in near darkness.

"My rounds!" she cried out. "My inspections!" She leapt to her feet, and before Owen could say a word, she was racing through the door. Owen followed her out, but she was gone. He shook his head.

"Good night, Watcher," he whispered, then he pulled the bushes across the gap to hide the Den and started home across the fields.

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Chapter 3

Half a mile away, a small exhausted girl crouched in the mouth of what looked like an old drain. Rosie's body ached from top to toe. She couldn't remember the last time she had eaten, and her hair, which once had been glossy and piled high on her head, hung in filthy hanks about her face. The last few hours had been the worst. Unseen creatures in the forest lining the roads, then a dark tunnel and a strange crossing point. The directions pieced together from what she had heard around the City and what Owen and Cati had told her about the journey they had undertaken to Hadima. Now she had retraced their path and had reached her destination. She looked over her shoulder. The drain was no ordinary drain, but an opening into another world, the world that Rosie had left behind to undertake a long and dangerous journey.

She looked at the drop below her--how would she

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get down?
Come all this way and then break my neck at the last of it
, she thought gloomily. She scrambled over the lip of the tunnel and grasped the edge, trying to lower herself over. But she was weak with hunger and her fingers did not have the strength. With a low moan she slipped from the mouth of the pipe and plummeted toward the edge of the river that flowed below.

She landed in a patch of thorny bushes on the bank, winded and sore, but none the worse for the fall. She tried to disentangle herself from the bushes, ripping what was left of her coat in the process. She cursed as she struggled, using terms that would have made one of the Resister soldiers blush.

With a final volley of swear words she tore herself free. As she did she heard a low chuckle above her head and shrank into the shadows.

"Who's there?" she demanded.

"You've got some tongue in your head for a youngster," a man said. Rosie peered suspiciously into the dark. She could just make out a figure leaning over an upstream bridge.

"None of your business what I say," Rosie snapped. The man chuckled again.

"You're right, of course. But I saw you fall and wondered if you were all right."

"I'm fine," Rosie said stiffly.

"That's good. There is one thing I have to remark upon--you coming out of that pipe up there."

"If I want to climb into a pipe, then that's my business," she said.