The Frost Child (6 page)

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hoarded time so there wasn't enough to go around? Well, it looks as if they've released all that time back where it should be."

Cati looked around in wonder. "So this is what it is meant to look like?"

"Yes. But what are they up to? That's the question."

A mighty wave crashed down, sending spume leaping high into the air. The spume swept over the boat, stinging their faces like shards of ice.

"Get the suits!" Owen said. There were suits of a kind of chain mail hanging in the cabin, and Cati fetched two. Quickly she pulled hers on.

"Take the tiller," Owen said, struggling into his suit. Cati's hand closed on it, but he could feel the boat hesitate slightly, then veer as Cati moved the tiller nervously.

"Just hold it straight!" Owen said. "She can feel that you're nervous."

"I can't help it," Cati snapped. "I'm a land girl."

"Look out!" Owen shouted. Cati had not been watching what she was doing. They were driven across the side of a giant wave. The wave broke on the foredeck so that they were almost buried in the stinging spume. Cati was knocked to her knees and Owen fell back against the side of the boat.

"Keep her pointing straight into the waves," Owen said, correcting the tiller, "and don't look away for a moment."

With a doubting glance at Cati he pulled the maps out from under his jacket. He picked the one that looked like the master copy of them all and pinned it to the hatch

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beside the Mortmain. Then he stood up and took the tiller.

"I couldn't help it," Cati said, looking crossly at him.

Owen grinned at her.

"I know. You're a landlubber. Next thing you'll be seasick. Tell you what, you want to do something useful?"

"What?"

"Make a cup of tea. Go on. Everything's in the galley. I stocked up."

Cati opened the hatch and slid down into the cabin. She closed the hatch and breathed a sigh of relief as the storm sounds were shut out. It was roomier than she would have thought, with a table at one end surrounded by soft benches that could be turned into beds. Cupboards lined the walls and at the other end there was a little kitchen.

Must be what he means by galley
, she thought. She looked around. There were small copper pots and pans that fitted neatly into each other, drawers full of beautifully shaped knives and forks and kitchen implements. There were silver platters and pewter mugs, everything made to be stowed away in stormy weather. In front of her was a small cooker on gimbals, and a sink beside it. She lifted the kettle from the cooker and put it under the tap. The water boiled quickly and within minutes she was back on deck with two mugs of steaming tea.

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"Thanks," Owen said, setting his mug down on a shelf that seemed made for the purpose. He was engrossed in the maps, his eyes moving from the spinning Mortmain to the old parchment.

"I need to look at these," he said. "Would you go into the bow and keep a lookout?"

Cati, grumbling a little, made her way forward, expecting to be exposed to the waves. But she found it was cozy, crouched in the bow, as long as you ducked sometimes. The weather, if it could be called weather, went straight over your head. She munched contentedly on a chocolate biscuit, beginning to feel a little at home on the
Wayfarer
.

At the tiller Owen puzzled over the symbols. The place with the tower was obviously the City of Time, Hadima. And the Workhouse was obvious as well. There was a plain, almost shapeless white symbol on the map, and if you touched it, your hand burned with searing cold. So that had to be something to do with the Harsh. But what or where was the pillar, and the silvery knife? The pair of sightless eyes, the elegant glass flask, the delicately shaped woman's ear, or any other of the dozens of symbols on the map?

He sighed, wondering if he would ever master the map, or the secrets of the Mortmain, which moved precisely in its mounting, reacting to each movement of the tiller under his hand.

He was tempted to steer the
Wayfarer
toward one of the unknown symbols--the red hand, or the fiery horse--

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but in the end he decided to sail toward the place that he knew: Hadima. Apart from anything else, it was the last place he had come across the Harsh. He moved the tiller until the signs for the Workhouse and Hadima were aligned. The bow came around until the boat was on course. Owen wasn't sure if he should go all the way to Hadima, but it would be good to see Rosie again.

Rosie awoke on the stone step in her cell. She had a headache and her head felt fuzzy. Her side ached where she had lain on the stone, and as she felt her body gingerly there were bruises and sore patches, as if she had been dragged back to the cell.

She sat up, vague memories running through her mind. Johnston had taken her to the kitchen and fed her ... then she'd collapsed--a drug of some sort in the tea, perhaps. After that there was ... something ... just out of reach. ... As she searched for it a snatch of music drifted through her head, then a stab of pain drove it away.

She shook her head impatiently. She was cold and hungry and a prisoner. It was about time she did something about all three. She took a little mirror from an inside pocket and looked at herself. She was also grubby, and her hair was a mess. Then an idea occurred to her. There was a large crack under the locked door, more than enough to slip the mirror through. Rosie crawled to the top of the stairs and pushed the mirror under. There was just enough light to see the big padlock that held the

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door. Rosie barely dared to breathe. Her captor had made a mistake! He had put the lock through the two rings that held the door, but he hadn't bothered to close it. If she had something that could reach it, she could knock it off. She looked around. Perhaps underneath the foul water ...

Despite the cold she took off her shoes and stockings and hitched up her skirt. She gingerly put her bare foot into the water and shuddered at its oily, unclean touch. Resisting the urge to jump back onto the step, she put the other foot in, then bent down and started to run her hand along the floor under the water. She groped around for a few minutes until her hand touched something slimy, which seemed to squirm momentarily in her grasp. With a shriek she jumped back. Her heart hammered in her chest.
Come on, Rosie
, she said to herself.
Who knows what else old sideburns has in store for you?

Gritting her teeth, she got back into the water and swept the floor with her hand. Her hand brushed against all sorts of strange things, hard and soft. Near the bottom of the steps she touched an object that rolled away from her. Instinctively she reached out for it and found her fingers gripping the eye sockets of a skull.

She didn't know how she kept searching, her hands blindly sweeping from corner to corner, but in the end her hands touched something metallic, fumbled, lost it again, then brought it out of the water. She held it up. A long slender piece of wire, shining in the moonlight. She yanked her stockings and boots back on and ran up the

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stairs to the door. She slipped the mirror under the door so that she could see what she was doing and worked the wire through the jamb, level with the padlock. Forcing her frozen fingers to move, she got the end of the wire under the hasp of the lock. Time and again, the wire slipped from her numb and aching fingers, but in the end, agonizingly, the rusty old lock relinquished its grip on the door and fell to the ground with a thud. She put her weight against the door and it swung open.

The corridor outside was flooded with moonlight. She stopped and listened. Somewhere in the house a man snored loudly. She slipped down the corridor. The back door sagged on its hinges and she had no trouble ducking past it and out into a world changed beyond recognition. The snowfall had made even Johnston's yard look magical. Old cars and truck chassis and piled scrap metal took on strange and fantastic shapes. With a nervous glance over her shoulder Rosie ran into the yard and took cover behind one of the snow shapes. She was used to cold weather. Perhaps, for all she knew, it snowed all the time in Owen and Cati's world, although they had never mentioned it. She listened. From an open window somewhere in the house she could still hear the snores.

The only way out that she could see was the tree-lined avenue, so she ran into the eerie shadow of the dead trees. She waited for a moment, then ran to the next. On she went down the avenue, through the broken gates and out into the road.
Free at last
, she thought.
Now to find

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Owen
. She set off, her feet barely denting the surface of the snow.

In Johnston's bedroom, the snoring stopped for a moment. Johnston's great head rested on the pillow. One eye opened and stared without blinking into the darkness. Then it closed again and the snoring resumed.

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Chapter 7

They had been sailing for several hours when Cati pointed over the bow.

"Look!"

About a hundred yards from the bow a shape rose above the water, slick and black like a whale's back. The creature sank below the waves again and the next time it rose it was facing toward the
Wayfarer
. In shape it was somewhere between a seal and a dolphin, with two fins on its back. It had a drooping mouth with long supple lips and great elegant whiskers that arced into the air. There were round markings around its small black eyes that made it look as if it was wearing old-fashioned glasses.

"What on earth is it?" Cati said, looking on the strange creature with delight.

"It's a schooner, I think," Owen said, remembering the skeleton of the beast that hung from the ceiling in Hadima's Museum of Time.

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"Oh, I remember!" Cati said. "Doesn't it feed off time or something?"

"I think so."

The schooner stared at them in a mournful way as if it was thinking sad but dignified thoughts, then, with a flick of its tail, it was gone. Cati stared at the spot where it had appeared until it was out of sight behind them.

The waves died down and soon it was almost flat. The
Wayfarer
slowed to a gentle pace. They sat on the hatch cover, eating the rest of the chocolate biscuits, lulled into a sense of security by the calm--that is, until Owen looked behind them.

"We should have kept a better watch," he said quietly. Thirty yards behind them, and closing fast, was a vast bank of silvery fog.

"I hope it isn't poisonous!" Cati gasped as the fog bank swept over them.

The fog wasn't poisonous, but it did bring a strange sensation, half a smell and half a feeling.

"It smells ..." Cati's sensitive nose was twitching. "It smells like ... like stars!"

"Do stars have a smell?" Owen asked.

"I suppose they must. It's the only description I can think of. Kind of cold and beautiful and far away. What do we do now?"

"Keep on sailing, I suppose. We're moving slowly enough and there isn't anything out here to run into, as far as I know."

The
Wayfarer
sailed on soundlessly through the silver

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mist. Owen could barely see the mast, and every sound they made seemed to be muffled. After a while they started to notice a strange thing. When they spoke to each other the words took a long time to cross the distance between them, so for a second or two after their mouths stopped moving, the other still had not heard what had been said.

"What do you expect from a fog in time, I suppose?" Owen said, and waited for his words to reach Cati.

"Kind of funny, all the same," Cati said. "And look at this." She moved her arm swiftly through the mist in front of her face as she spoke. Her words distorted as they passed through the swirling fog, the vowels elongated, as if someone had slowed them.

"Let me try that," Owen said, doing the same thing. Cati heard his words in a deep, slow version of Owen's voice. She giggled, and the sound wavered as it struck Owen's hand. Then, as if in reply, there was another sound, right beside the
Wayfarer
, a long, mournful cry full of the sorrows of the vast ocean they sailed upon. Cati edged a bit closer to Owen.

"It sounds like the schooner," he said. "I don't think it's dangerous."

"No, I don't think so either," Cati said, peering nervously into the mist.

They didn't hear the schooner again. Owen could see Cati yawning.

"Why don't you go below and get some sleep?" Owen said. "I'll take the first watch."

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Cati was going to argue, but then she thought of the cozy beds in the cabin, and she found her feet moving toward the hatch.

"Just for an hour, mind," she said, opening the hatch and climbing through.

Down below, all was calm. She was quite glad to be out of the swirling mist. The cabin was warm, and in a quiet way there was a welcoming feel, as though the
Wayfarer
herself was glad to have a crew again and wanted Cati to feel at home. Slipping off her boots, she climbed into one of the beds and pulled the blankets up around her. The bed was narrow but comfortable, and she lay staring at the ceiling and feeling the movement of the hull beneath her. She saw that the ceiling was engraved with symbols like those on the Mortmain. Then she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Owen studied the maps, but it was difficult to see in the mist and he gave up. Instead he stood at the tiller and abandoned himself to the rhythms of the vessel. He felt as if the
Wayfarer
was trying to tell him things, if only he could understand.

After another hour his own eyelids grew heavy, the gentle motion of the ship rocking him. He tried to fight it, but gradually he slipped into a doze, the
Wayfarer
sailing onward, carrying her sleeping crew.

Owen didn't know how long he had slept, but he woke with a start. He looked down at the tiller, his hand still