The Owl Keeper (5 page)

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"Wouldn't want you to regress, would we, Maxwell?" chortled Mrs. Crumlin. "We have your future to think of."

"But it hurts. It
really
hurts!" insisted Max. Why didn't they ever listen to him?

"You needn't raise your voice, Maxwell," reprimanded Mrs. Crumlin. "We know it stings a teensy bit, but you're a big boy now."

He hated it when she used that condescending tone. With a sigh, he held out his arm and pushed up his sleeve. He didn't have the strength to fight both of them.

"Rick rack ruin," sang Dr. Tredegar. "Over before you can say--"

Max shut his eyes, wincing at the sound of the doctor's twangy, nasal voice. He braced himself for the pain.

"Crimson moon!" Dr. Tredegar jabbed the InjectaPort into his arm.

Max flinched, blinking back tears.

"There's a brave boy." Mrs. Crumlin plucked a doily off the floor. "See, it wasn't so bad, was it?"

Muttering to himself, the doctor fumbled through his bag. "Now, where did I put that prescription pad?"

Clutching his arm, Max staggered out of the parlor and up to his room. He could feel the medicine moving inside his veins, spreading like a slow dark fire all through his body.

Lying on his bed, he gazed up at the wallpaper, a design that went back to his childhood: gray and blue ships sailing across the walls on crystal blue waves. The paper was so brittle it had started to peel, but Max didn't mind. He always found the ships comforting.

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He rolled onto his side and drifted off, knees drawn to his chest, into a familiar nightmare. In the dream, Mrs. Crumlin handed him a red mug with yellow suns around the rim. He knocked back the steaming cocoa in one gulp, leaving a purplish black sludge at the bottom.

He felt his fingers go cloggy-soft; the mug fell, smashing on the floor. Slobber gushed from his mouth. His back splintered and cracked open as thin ragged wings tore through. Beneath his slimy skin he could see a web of pulsing veins.

Wings outstretched, he soared into the sky, high above The Ruins. Dark shapes poured out through the windows, flapping off in uneven lines. Their hot breaths smelled like week-old garbage. He could see they were unfinished and half-made: frightening jellyish creatures, hissing and drooling.

On a branch the silver owl sat motionless, emitting soft silvery sounds. Her plumage sparkled in the moonlight. The tufts on her head fluttered in the breeze.

Where am I? thought Max. What am I doing here?

Rage shook his body, erasing all thought, and he dove earthward, shrieking, as the eyes of the small owl grew wide with fear. Talons outstretched, he snatched the trembling bird from her perch.

Max opened his mouth and crunched down, sinking his needle-sharp teeth into the owl's feathers. He could hear the tiny bones snap. The owl fell to the ground, where the others waited hungrily at the base of the tree.

After they had finished, Max spiraled down, settling on a branch at the bottom. All that was left of the owl was a frail, hollow bone, broken in two, lying on top of the moss.

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CHAPTER FIVE

[Image: Rose.]

Some nights the girl was there beneath the owl tree and some nights she wasn't. Max never knew when to expect her. He liked it that way, since it meant something in his life was unpredictable.

"Silver and ice,"
he sang, tramping through the field,
"silver and ice. Silver owl will guide you, with its golden eyes."

What had Cavernstone Grey been like when summer existed? He tried to imagine the heat rising up from the earth, the hum of insects in the waist-high grass. Before the Great Destruction, there had been fish called trout swimming in the river, and silver owls in the trees. Just seeing a silver owl, it was thought, brought

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good fortune. Back then, no one feared the forest, because Misshapens hadn't been invented yet.

Max's eyes watered from the cold. He pretended they were owl eyes, x-raying the dark, taking in every fern and blade of wheat, every dead insect, every crumpled leaf. If he concentrated, he could see pale greens and golds, muted shades of red.

He studied the vast overarching sky, where clouds scudded past the two moons--one a pearl gray, the other crimson. From a high, distant plateau gleamed the Frozen Zone. Max's stomach churned whenever he looked at it. A dead city ringed with ice, the Frozen Zone had been climate-damaged during the Great Destruction. The High Echelon declared it off-limits, citing public safety reasons, and warning that instant death awaited anyone who went there.

Max had vague memories of Gran telling him about the Frozen Zone. When Absolute Dark fell over the land, she had said, they must make their way to the high plateau. He seemed to remember there was an ancient tower there--or was that something he'd seen in a book?

He was sure Gran had mentioned the Owl Keeper, and the silver owls, but the details were sketchy. What exactly was Absolute Dark, he wondered, and why would anyone journey to such a cold, terrifying place?

As Max approached the owl tree, he saw Rose standing beneath it and his heart gave a small skip. One arm outstretched, she was swinging something small and dead. Her moth-eaten coat flapped in the wind, and on her feet were a pair of huge green boots.

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"Here's your dinner, mister owl!" she shouted up into the tree. "Come get this fat, juicy mouse!"

Blinking, the owl flitted down to a low branch. She blinked twice more, then flipped her head back and swiveled it around. Max loved to watch her do that, because it was a talent only owls had.

"She's not a mister," he told Rose, "and she doesn't want your old mouse."

Rose spun around, tipping sideways in her big boots. "Well, why not? Why is that owl so fussy? Doesn't it want a yummy midnight snack?"

"Owls eat fresh mice, not dead ones," said Max.

The silver owl hopped onto his shoulder, rubbing her beak against his cold cheek, warming him, and he thought how amazing it was that he'd found her. Where had this little owl come from? he wondered for the hundredth time. How lucky he was she'd chosen his tree to land in!

With a look of disdain, Rose tossed the dead mouse into the high grass. "I guess you're the authority when it comes to owls."

"Owls were my granny's specialty," Max said with pride. "She studied owls all her life and collected hundreds of books about them." He bit down on his lip. Why was he telling Rose things that could get him into serious trouble?

"Books? But they're illegal!" Rose narrowed her eyes. "The High Echelon only allows comic books with heroes who fight the silver owls--and, of course, boring textbooks with government stamps of approval."

"I know that!" he snapped. Why did Rose have to act so

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superior? "I know the High Echelon punishes anyone who goes against their edicts--including kids like us," he added, thinking of the Children's Prison. He smashed a clod of earth with the heel of his boot.

This was too hard, he thought--how long could he keep all his secrets bottled inside? He felt a sudden desperate need to confide in Rose. "Gran hid the books," he said in a low, shaky voice. He knew he was taking a chance, telling her. "She felt it was her duty because she was a Sage. Nobody knew except me."

"Your granny's a
Sage?
Wow, I'm impressed!" Rose grabbed a branch and swung back and forth, tendrils of dark hair flying about her olive-skinned face. Then she went quiet and it struck Max that maybe she was meditating, the way Gran used to do.

The owl snuggled against the scarf Max had wound tightly around his neck. "See how her feathers are fringed?" he said admiringly. "They muffle her wingbeats so that small animals don't hear her coming."

Rose stopped swinging and looked up. "Can I meet your grandmother, Max? Please?"

The old sorrow rushed through his body, weighing down his limbs, like blight spreading through a tree. "You're too late," he said. "My gran died."

"Oh." Rose's face crumpled a little.

"I was only seven. It happened real sudden." He furrowed his thick brows, remembering. "Afterward the authorities came and emptied out her house--they packed all Gran's things into an official van. She didn't own much except her books. Then a bulldozer came and flattened the house like a griddle cake." He

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chewed on his lower lip, trying to hold back tears. "Nothing was left."

The owl nudged his hand and dropped something into it--a white thistle--and Max knew she was trying to cheer him up. He wondered if the thistle belonged to some mysterious other world, a world where silver owls lived happily.

"I always wondered what happened to her books," he said wistfully.

"Simple," said Rose in that brassy, self-confident voice of hers. "The High Echelon burned them, just like they burned all the books when they shut down the libraries and universities! They closed museums and rewrote history books to cover their tracks and put those dopey songs on the radio! Now the borders are sealed and people are disappearing left and right!"

Max looked nervously over his shoulder. They weren't supposed to be discussing the Great Destruction or criticizing government policy. If the High Echelon heard them, or found out that he was harboring a silver owl, there would be serious consequences.

"Keep your voice down, okay, Rose?" he whispered.

She ignored him. "We lost spring and summer because of their bungled experiments! Nature crashed and burned: tremors, plagues, the moon cracked in two! They wiped out animals and fish and birds!" She pounded her fists against the tree. "The worst environmental disaster in the history of our planet!"

Max was shocked to hear her criticize the government. Only Gran had ever dared to do that. Referring to the High Echelon, Gran had often said: "If a government can't tell the truth, then it

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rewrites it." The people he knew either praised the authorities or said nothing. But here was Rose, ranting and raving, not even worried that someone might hear and report her.

Still, he knew that everything she said was true. Gran had told him how the High Echelon, grasping and overconfident, had tried to tweak the weather to create longer growing seasons. Their reckless experiments with fog banks and solar flares caused the Great Destruction of 2066--a cataclysm that shifted the earth on its axis, altering tides and magnetic fields, triggering atmospheric explosions, exploding nearby planets. Plagues were unleashed, wildlife vanished and thousands perished.

Looking distraught, Rose reached over and petted the owl's silver wing. "Nice owlie," she said, and Max could tell she was trying to calm herself. He smiled, thinking Rose must like his owl after all.

"Hey, go easy, that's her bum wing!" he told her.

"Oh yeah. Sorry." Rose patted more gently.

Max beamed. "Isn't she incredible? Look how her feathers sparkle. Like diamonds!"

"Her eyes are like two gold pirate's coins," murmured Rose.

"Remember I said I found a message in her beak?" Max blurted out. He couldn't keep it a secret any longer. "It's just two lines, but look--it was written by hand, with old-fashioned ink!" Excited, he pulled a folded-up paper out of his jeans pocket.

Rose gasped and leaned forward. "Read it, read it!" she urged. The owl hooted, flapping one wing and scurrying across the branch.

The paper crackled in his hands. Max cleared his throat and

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read:" 'Tear down the sails of the eastbound ship, steering into the darkest port, and beneath you will find the Silver Treasure.' See here? 'Silver Treasure' is capitalized." At the edge of his vision he saw the owl, hopping on one foot, blinking her one good eye.

"That's it?" said Rose, sounding disappointed.

Max gave the kind of heavy sigh his father did whenever Max annoyed him. How could she be so dense? "It's a riddle, Rose, a secret message! It's not meant for just anybody."

"Well, that owl's taking a big risk just to deliver two measly lines. I thought silver owls were special, not everyday delivery owls."

"She
is
special," bristled Max. "She's the last of the silver owls! There's no other owl like her in the world!"

Rose, as usual, was distracted. She dropped down from the tree, her boots making a hollow thud on the ground. "Oh no!" she shouted, leaping past Max, nearly knocking him down. "Deadly purple sphinx!"

He watched, confused, as she dove onto the ground, landing next to a spindly-looking flower.

"Cousin to deadly nightshade! I don't believe it!" She smiled up at him, showing her small shiny teeth. "Don't tell me you've never seen this flower before?"

Max shook his head. Why was Rose so ecstatic over a puny little plant?

"Deadly purple sphinx only opens at night!" Her voice fell to a melodramatic whisper. "It's like you and me, Max! It loves being outside in the dark!"

He squatted down to examine it, noting how the flower struggled up valiantly through the moss and trampled ferns. Its petals