The Frost Child (3 page)

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"Of course, of course. I was going to remark on ... how do I put it? A certain navigation took place through that pipe...."

"Navigation?" Rosie lowered her voice. "You mean you know about ..."

"The Navigator? Of course. A brave fighter."

"Anybody could know the name," Rosie said.

"That's true," the man said, "but who knows that his name is Owen and that his companion is Cati, the Watcher?"

"You do know them!" Rosie said.

"Friends of mine, in fact."

"Can you take me to them?" Rosie said eagerly.

"Well now," the man said, "how do I know I can trust you?"

"Of course you can trust me. I came all the way from Hadima to find them!"

"I suppose you're right," the man said. "There's something about your voice that I like. Come on up, I'll take you to them."

Just below the bridge there were footholds, and Rosie scrambled up, her tiredness forgotten. When she got to the final part of the climb the man leaned over to help her. Rosie reached up and grasped Johnston's hand.

Rosie felt warm and sleepy. The inside of Johnston's truck was untidy. Springs poked through the seats and there was rubbish everywhere. But the heater was on and opera music played softly on a stereo that looked homemade. Johnston talked as they drove. He really did know

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a lot about Owen and Cati and the Resisters, Rosie thought, and he was delighted to know about how Rosie had met them--the search for the tempod in particular. He wanted to know what else Owen had found at Hadima, and when Rosie told him that Owen had found his grandfather's old maps, Johnston laughed and slapped his leg as though he had heard a great joke.

But when Johnston asked what news Rosie had for Owen, she fell silent, her mind dwelling on the scenes she had left behind in the City of Time, and Johnston did not press her.

The truck bounced up a driveway overhung by crooked tree limbs.

"Where are we?" Rosie looked about her as the truck jolted to a halt.

"My house," Johnston said. "I just want to get a few things to give to Owen and Cati. And maybe a bite to eat for you. How does steak sound? With potatoes and peas and gravy?"

Rosie thought she would faint at the idea of steak and potatoes. Johnston took her by the arm and led her through the big front doors, talking about apple pie with hot custard followed by ice cream. They were halfway through the house before her mind, dazed and exhausted with the long and dangerous journey, started to focus on the dereliction all around her--wallpaper hanging off the walls, old machine parts stacked to the ceiling.

"Where ... ?" she said as he led her down a narrow staircase, the steps gleaming with damp.

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"You'll like it down here," Johnston said, his huge teeth shining in the gloom. "It's a very special place where we keep ..." His hand shot out and wrenched a door open. "Where we keep the rats!" he snarled, shoving her through the door.

Rosie fell down the steps inside, skinning her hands and knees, then landed with a splash in brackish water. She looked behind her just in time to see Johnston's wolfish grin as he slammed and locked the door, plunging the room into semidarkness. She felt something slimy beneath her fingers and snatched her hand out of the water.

She was in a cell, with one barred window high on the left-hand wall through which came a dull gleam of moonlight. The floor was covered in water, and in a far corner something slipped or fell into the water with a plop. Feeling her skin crawl, she backed onto the staircase, which was at least dry. What a fool she had been, she thought bitterly, to trust the first person she came across. And now she was alone and hungry and a prisoner. Worst of all, she had let her friends down. Rosie almost never cried, but she could feel tears of blame prick her eyes now. Crossly she brushed them away. She looked around as best she could in the dim light. The only ways in or out were the high barred window or the solid-looking door. The cell reminded her of the damp cellar where she had found the Yeati imprisoned the previous year. The Yeati, the mythical beast whom she had helped escape in Hadima and who had given the Resister children a ring of immense

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power that had healed her damaged hands. She rubbed her hands, thinking. She had picked the lock then; could she do it again now? But no. When she examined the door she found no lock on the inside.

She felt a new wave of exhaustion sweep over her. She had last slept in the forest, and that was many hours ago. Ignoring the rumbling in her stomach, she made herself as comfortable as she could on the step, and curled up to sleep in the very spot where Owen had also slept a fitful sleep while a prisoner of Johnston.

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Chapter 4

Owen went out to the
Wayfarer
, as he did every night before he went to bed. The little boat lay tilted on her side in the orchard behind the house. He touched her timbers and could feel a shudder run through her, how the boat was eager to be aloft and sailing on the currents of time. But he knew that he could not take her out.

"Think about it," his mother had said to him. "You might be seen, or picked up on radar. Anything. The next thing the government would track you down and take the
Wayfarer
away. They'd tear the boat apart to get at her secrets."

"But that means I can never sail her," Owen said.

"No. When the time comes, when you are needed, you can risk taking her out, but not until then. The
Wayfarer
isn't just a sailing boat."

I know she isn't a sailing boat
, Owen thought, climbing on board and taking hold of the tiller, which jumped in
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his hand. Dr. Diamond might have all sorts of complicated explanations to explain how the
Wayfarer
sailed on the sea of time, but Owen felt that if there was such a thing as magic, then the boat was magical.

His grandfather had first owned the
Wayfarer
, and had left maps that would guide her as she sailed through time. In the evenings Owen would bring the maps and the Mortmain up from the Den. The Mortmain fitted onto a spot below the wheel, as a type of compass, and Owen would spend hours trying to understand how it worked. The maps were very old and covered in strange symbols, but he knew that none of it would work when the boat was sitting on the ground. He
knew
that if he could sail the
Wayfarer
she would show him the way, as the boat had done the time he had brought her from Hadima. More and more he understood that he had an instinct that enabled him to work out directions and distances. That was what made him the Navigator.

He gripped the tiller hard and imagined her billowing sails, which appeared to be made of time itself, rather than cloth, if that was possible. He ached to sail her, but his mother's warning stayed in his head. He pictured men in white coats going through the little cabin, sinking instruments into the delicate timbers, ripping up her decking in search of something that could not be measured by any instrument.

He had never forgotten the first time he had held the tiller of the
Wayfarer
. She had lain, dusty and forgotten, in the Museum of Time in Hadima, but Owen had found

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her. The moment he touched the tiller he had known that she was a living thing and that somehow they were bound together. And the first time he had sailed her into the sky and out onto the ocean of time, his heart had leapt.

Owen ran his hand over the space where the Mortmain would fit on the hatch in front of him, then let go of the tiller regretfully and swung over the side, giving the
Wayfarer
one last glance as he walked back toward the house. He went in and closed and locked the door behind him.

His mother was sitting at the table, an accounts book open in front of her. She didn't hear him coming in, and he heard her sigh and say, "Oh, Owen."

"What is it?"

"Nothing--well, not nothing. We just don't seem to be making very much money from the shop."

He told her about meeting Cati. His mother thought it over.

"I think you did the right thing. It was very sensible of you both. I think the best thing is to keep a close eye on Johnston. It's true that he was always here causing mischief, but his reappearance is suspicious."

Owen hesitated. "When I came in, you said, 'Oh, Owen.' Why did you use my name?"

"I didn't. I was thinking about your father. He was Owen too, as was your grandfather--the first Navigator."

"I wish I'd met my grandfather."

"He was quite a man. He made and lost fortunes,

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learned how to sail on time, invented and discovered all sorts of marvelous things. Everybody looked up to him, but..."

"But what?"

"He didn't have time to bring up your father properly," Martha sighed. "Your dad missed that. I think he was always trying to live up to your granddad."

They were both silent for a moment, each thinking about the moment Owen's father had been lost.

"Am I like either of them?"

"You are just yourself, Owen." She smiled and ruffled his hair. "That's all you have to be in order to be the Navigator. I don't think your father ever realized that."

Owen's father had been the Navigator before him, but had died when his car had crashed into the harbor. Owen, a baby, had been in the car too, but his father had saved his son's life by throwing him from the car. Some of the Resisters had been suspicious of Owen's father. They had accused him of taking the Mortmain, and of opening up the road to Hadima when it would have been better left closed. And for those Resisters, such as Samual, the son was not to be trusted either.

Owen fished in his pocket now, bringing out the last two pieces of chocolate. He held them out to his mother.

"Here. I nearly forgot--it's not much ...," and he told her about the children. She smiled at him and took a piece.

"You see, Owen? You're just yourself."

And you are yourself as well
, he thought. There had
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been long years when, as a result of being attacked by the Harsh, his mother had been vague and forgetful, barely there. But now she was strong. He noticed that people from the town would come out to the shop to buy some small thing, then spend half an hour asking her for advice. There were questions about rebuilding part of the hospital, or setting up a fire brigade. They were subjects she knew nothing about, but she had a way of giving people confidence and sending them home full of hope. She caught him looking at her now, smiled, and yawned. Behind them the grandfather clock chimed.

"I still don't understand how the clock--the ingress-- works," Owen said.

"Goodness," Martha said sleepily. "That's a big and complicated subject. An ingress, well ... it lets you into the engine of time, like lifting the hood of a car. When you look into it, you're looking at the machinery of time. Does that help? Now, unless you've any more difficult questions ..."

"Okay," Owen said, "I'll go to bed."

Down at the river all was quiet, save for the stir of a sleeping moorhen and a gentle splash in the shallows as a late-migrating salmon drove up the river toward its mountain birthplace. Through the town the river flowed, under the bridge and past the entrance from which Rosie had come, and on toward the sea. But Rosie was not to be the only person to pass through the entrance that day. If Johnston had been leaning on the bridge he would have

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seen another figure standing in the mouth of what appeared to be a drainage pipe. He would have had no trouble picking out the long white hair shimmering in the moonlight, the violet eyes ringed with black mascara, a pale and cold and beautiful creature poised without moving above the river, moonlight glinting from the chrome talons attached to her nails. No one in this world knew her name, although she had led an attack against Owen and Cati and Dr. Diamond, and had hunted Rosie through the dark forest. She was Agnetha, the leader of the Albions, guardians of the forest that stood at the other side of the gate, and she had never dared to pass through the tunnel to the other side. But this time the Harsh queen had told her that it was allowed. The Harsh queen had told her what to do.

She turned and gave a signal. Other Albions appeared out of the darkness, all with the same white hair and violet eyes, though none as beautiful as she. Thin ropes snaked down into the darkness below. Agnetha caught a rope and slid gracefully downward, followed by the others. Above them another Albion rolled up the ropes, leaving no trace of their passage. They crossed the river, jumping lightly from stone to stone. Suddenly Agnetha turned her head to one side and listened. She gestured to the Albions. They ran to the other bank and melted into the shadows under the bridge.

Cati's nightly round took her along the front of the Workhouse and down along the riverbank. Strictly speaking, she should have stopped at the boundaries of the