The Frost Child (32 page)

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lesson I can give you in life, it is don't be a cheapskate." His grandfather's eyes wrinkled in a smile. "Goodbye," he said simply.

"Goodbye."

The scene flickered once more and then Owen found himself in the stillness of the Den.

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Chapter 32

It was two months before the frost fully loosened its grip on the earth. During that time the Resisters were busy at the Workhouse, rebuilding the burned sections and fixing the building so that when the world did awake, it could more easily be disguised as a ruin. They had lost soldiers, but they were not as shorthanded as they might have been. The Yeati's ring had saved many of the injured.

It was a time of much coming and going between Hadima and the Workhouse. The truck traveled once a week. There was no sign of the Albions, and the road was safe. Hadima was gradually thawing, and the Specials' hold on the city was broken. A new city council was formed. Graham, Rosie's brother, was appointed. And to Rosie's delight, if not that of many citizens, Graham picked Clancy, the Dog leader, to sit beside him.

Owen spent as much time as he could on the
Wayfarer
,

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sometimes alone and sometimes with Silkie. Every now and then he sailed off on his own and was silent about where he had been. Martha suspected that he had been to see the Long Woman.

Martha passed several hours each day scanning the airwaves on her radio, hoping to hear some signal, a human voice, that would tell them that the world had awoken.

Owen spent a lot of time with Dr. Diamond, talking about the future.

"Is time safe now?" he asked the doctor, half dreading the answer. For he did not want the Harsh to return, and yet he didn't want the Resisters to go back to sleep forever.

"Who knows," the doctor replied. "Perhaps somewhere, in another time and space, a lonely child is dreaming of another set of kings and queens and a new Harsh will be born. There will always be a threat to time."

"And what about the Harsh child?"

"I suspect that he was very old but was frozen in the mind of a child."

"What will have happened to him?"

"I imagine that instead of his being frozen in that moment of childhood, that moment passed and he went on living his life, had his own children, and died many, many years ago."

"That's sad." Owen thought for a moment, though as usual, thinking about time made his head ache. "If the moment passed, wouldn't that mean that the Harsh never existed at all, so none of this would have happened?"

"The moment passed in his time but not in ours." Dr.

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Diamond stood up and stretched. He went to the window. It was a pleasant evening. There was still snow and ice on the high ground, but the river ran free, and the buds had started to form on the trees.

"When you threw the book into the grandfather clock, you were putting the child back to the place he came from."

"I still don't understand."

"Imagine time as one long story--a very long story, one with no ending and a beginning so far back it is lost. Then think of it written as a book. The Harsh child was a chapter torn out of that book. He was in the wrong place. That was the genius of Gobillard. He figured that out and wrote it down as a story. All we had to do was return it to the book--which is what you did when you put the book into the ingress. Once the story was intact again, everything was put to rights."

"The clock is gone."

"Yes, destroyed in the fire. Half of me is glad. No one should have access to such a powerful and dangerous object." He turned to Owen. "You and your friends must come to the Hadima gate tomorrow evening. There is something I want to show you."

Owen left the Skyward and went to find Cati. Anytime he looked for her now, she seemed to be at the warehouse with the Raggies. He had been spending some time there himself, swimming in holes cut in the melting ice and eating fish and chips around sweet-smelling driftwood fires.

He passed the dark Hadima entrance, still guarded by

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Rutgar's soldiers, and wondered what it was Dr. Diamond wanted to show them. When he got to the warehouse, Cati and Wesley were lying on the roof watching the sunset. Silkie came up and sat beside them.

"Owen, we had a meeting last night," she said. "We decided that the Raggies needed a Watcher like Cati, and a Watcher in the real world like you. Wesley and me is scared when we're all sleeping and nobody watching."

Owen could see her looking at him in the dusk. He felt as if he was supposed to say something, but he didn't know what.

It was late when he got home, but his mother was still awake. The little room behind the shop looked bare without the grandfather clock.

His mother had her old battery radio on the table in front of her. Owen could tell that something had happened. He sat down.

"What is it?"

"I picked up a signal. Human voices! The world is awake again, Owen."

Owen sighed. He knew that he should be glad, but he would miss so much of the world that would go back to sleep.

The next evening Owen, Cati, Wesley, and Rosie went to the Hadima gate. Dr. Diamond met them at the foot of the stairs that had been built up to the entrance. They climbed in silence and walked along the dark tunnel, still covered in Albion graffiti. When they emerged into the

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courtyard, though, much had changed. Instead of the old graffiti-covered shops, there was smooth stone with complex astrological symbols etched on them. Owen and Wesley looked around in bewilderment, but Cati and Rosie knew immediately.

"Andromeda!" They rushed forward. The mythical Yeati stood in the entrance that led down to the Hadima road. They buried their faces in his white fur as Wesley looked on in astonishment and Dr. Diamond beamed.

"The Yeati don't really like to fight, so I couldn't involve him in our battle, but I asked him to do a job for me. Look."

The tunnel entrance had been fitted with a stone door carved with the same symbols as the walls. When Rosie and Cati let go of the Yeati, he showed them how it worked (though not without fixing his ruffled fur first-- he was very vain). When the door was closed you couldn't see the join. The Yeati reached into his fur and produced a marvelous key, carved entirely from white stone, fine and light and delicate. He presented it to Owen and bowed deeply. Owen, embarrassed, stuttered his thanks.

"It is a grave responsibility," the doctor said. "The Navigator now has control over the Hadima entrance. Guard it well, Owen."

To Rosie and Cati's delight, the Yeati walked to the harbor with them. The Raggie children hid when they saw the fabulous beast arm in arm with Cati and Rosie. Together they strolled along the quay and over the ice bridge still joining the warehouse to the mainland, while Raggie children ran giggling in front of them. One very small girl was

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brave enough to present him with a piece of seaweed and received the same courteous bow that the Yeati had given to Owen.

But evening came time for him to go. Cati and Rosie hugged him again. He stopped in the tunnel entrance and his green eyes met Owen's. Owen felt as if he was looking across galaxies to the very source of time and space itself. The Yeati's eyes crinkled in what appeared to be a smile, then he walked off and was swallowed by the darkness of the tunnel. Owen closed and locked the door behind him.

That night there was a flurry of radio signals from the outside world. The next morning the Resisters started to prepare for their sleep. There was an air of departures and of leave-taking. The
Faltaine
, with Dardanelle Smith at the helm, arrived to take Rosie and Graham back to Hadima. Shem wouldn't even glance at the buccaneer ship, but just before they boarded, Rosie darted forward and kissed him on the lips. He looked stunned.

Rosie climbed on board. She stood on the bow, grasping the foremast as the
Faltaine
lifted off to cries of farewell, and disappeared into the cloud.

Owen looked everywhere for Silkie, but no one knew where she was. He couldn't understand why he was so afraid that she would go to sleep before he found her. He asked Contessa if she had seen Silkie, but she only shook her head and smiled in a strange way.

Martha was saying her farewells to Contessa, Dr.

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Diamond, and Rutgar, and still Owen could not find Silkie. He met Cati and Wesley, walking along deep in conversation.

"Where is Silkie?" he asked, almost crossly.

Cati shook her head. "Silkie is the new Watcher in the world, you bonehead. Wesley is going to stay awake and watch with me, and she is to stay in the world. But she has nowhere to live and is afraid to ask you!"

"Why ... what ... ?" Owen's face was a picture of bewilderment.

"You know a lot about sailing through time," Cati said, "but you don't know much about girls!"

In the end his heart told him where to find her. The
Wayfarer
was in the garden behind Mary White's house. When he looked in, Silkie was asleep in the cabin. He looked down at her, at the curl of fair hair across her cheek where the scar had once been, now flawless. He shook her awake gently.

"The
Wayfarer
is great when you're sailing across time, but maybe you'd be more comfortable in the house."

She smiled up at him. He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet.

The next few hours were a blur of preparations for sleep, Dr. Diamond thrusting books into Owen's hands.

"them reading enjoy You'll," he said, then grinned. "Only kidding!"

Rutgar was gruff and unemotional with everyone.

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Contessa was dignified as always. She shook Owen's hand, then to his surprise--and to hers, it seemed--she hugged him.

Cati hugged him and Wesley shook hands. They would be in touch with each other, but still could not contact Owen unless there was danger.

"You won't be so lonely, will you, Cati?" Owen said.

"What?" Cati asked innocently, but her eyes flickered in Wesley's direction.

"You don't know much about boys either." He grinned, and Wesley blushed.

Silkie went to the warehouse to help put the children to bed, and when she came back her eyes were puffy.

And then it was time to leave. Owen, Silkie, and Martha climbed the two fields on the far side of the river. When they got to the top they turned to see all the Resisters standing in the windows and on the battlements of the Workhouse.

"The Navigator!" they shouted. "The Navigator!" And there was a great roar from every throat. Owen waved back, unable to speak. Silkie and Martha each took him by the hand and they crossed the top of the hill, the Workhouse no longer visible.

They ate quietly together that evening, and when they were finished Silkie went to bed. Owen knocked on the door to his mother's room. It swung open, and he gasped. For a moment he thought that it was Rosie or one of the other Hadima folk standing there, wearing a

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long dress and an elegant stovepipe hat in velvet. Then he saw his mother's face under the hat, a mischievous gleam in her eye, and caught a glimpse of who she had been when his father had met her, an elegant citizen of Hadima, the great City of Time. She was taller as well, for she was wearing stiletto heels. She smoothed down the dress and cast a critical eye at herself in the mirror.

"I wore this on the way back from Hadima with your father," she said. "I'm amazed it still fits."

"You look ... brilliant," Owen said.

"Do I? I must have, then. Your father certainly thought so. Perhaps someday we'll travel back to Hadima."

"I'd like that." He hesitated. "I have a lot to tell you. About fathers and grandfathers and ... things."

His mother smiled and kissed him on the cheek. "I know. But now--to bed." She turned to the mirror for a last look, then took off the hat and laid it on the bed.

Owen slipped out of the room. He went outside to check the
Wayfarer
, then made his way to bed. He woke several hours later, to see moonlight streaming through the window. He got up and slipped on a jacket and a pair of shoes.

Outside the fields were awash with silvery light, but the shadows under the Workhouse were dark and impenetrable.

"See you soon, Watcher," he called out. He waited for a long time but there was no reply. He sighed. The Harsh were gone. Johnston was dead. It was over. He remembered

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the first time he had seen the Workhouse. He had been so much younger then. How strange a thing time was, that his first glimpse should seem not just years but worlds ago. He turned and made his way to the brow of the hill. As he did a girl's voice rang out, clear and loud in the night air, a call that could have been a farewell, or a summons.

"From the shadows, Navigator!"

He smiled. "See you soon, Cati," he murmured, and walked toward the lights of home.