The Song of the Winns (6 page)

When he opened his eyes some time later it felt as if he was being smothered in a cold damp blanket. It took him a few seconds to understand that they must be flying through a cloud. He wanted to keep his eyes open until they had cleared the mist, but the moisture stung so he closed them again, rubbing his scarf between his fingers for comfort, trying to picture the colors and shapes, all of them bound together by the broad blue stripe that was, he now knew, the Winns. He let his thoughts drift lazily as he tried to imagine the great river that ran the whole length of Gerander from north to south. He could hardly believe that in a matter of hours he would be there, by the Winns, in his family's homeland. “
The Winns is a river, and more than that. It is the spine that knits our head to our feet. Its veins run through our country and its water runs through our veins.”

For a moment the frigid air lost some of its chill as Alistair remembered sitting by a fire on the bank of another river, in Souris, with the mysterious midnight blue mouse who had spoken as if he knew Alistair. Where was Timmy the Winns now? he wondered. With a heavy feeling in his chest he considered the possibility that Timmy was a prisoner of the Sourians—perhaps he was even in the dreaded Crankens prison camp from which Zanzibar had so recently escaped. Timmy the Winns, who loved freedom more than anything.

“Wherever the Winns takes me, that's where I'll be,

For me and the Winns will always flow free.”

That was what Timmy had sung by the fire that night in Souris. How surprised he'd be to know that Alistair was actually going to see the Winns. Or would he? Timmy never did seem surprised somehow. Like he hadn't been surprised to meet Alistair and Tibby Rose . . . Alistair stretched his toes closer to the fire, closer, closer—too close! They were burning!

Alistair awoke with a start. An icy wind was swirling around him and, as he squirmed a little within the owl's grasp, he realized that the burning in his toes was not from warmth, but from cold. And it was not only his toes: his ears, his nose, everywhere not enclosed by Oswald's talon was burning—except his tail, which was so numb with cold he couldn't feel it at all.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep, but the sky to his right was now edged with the palest of yellows, a promise of dawn. He squinted at the shadowy landscape far below, but it was still too dark to make out any landmarks.

He closed his eyes again, and tried to think warming thoughts, imagining that he was back at the fireside of Timmy the Winns, or drinking Uncle Ebenezer's super-chocolatey hot cocoa with his brother and sister in front of a roaring fire in the apartment in Smiggins, but it was hard to lose himself in imaginings with the wind driving icy needles into his feet and tugging at his ears with icy fingers.

Alistair opened his eyes. The sky was now lit with the pale gray of dawn, and as he peered down he was startled
to see a vista of white. Giant mountains reared and plunged in crests and troughs like a stormy sea far into the distance.

That was odd. Feast Thompson hadn't mentioned that they'd be flying over the mountains. The source of the Winns was in the foothills, Slippers had said.

“Whoa!” Alistair said aloud, as with a sudden whoomph they slewed sideways on a particularly strong gust of wind.

The owl doggedly resumed his course, flapping hard against the buffeting of the icy wind.

As his eyes traced the snowy peaks and steep, rocky dips, Alistair thought the mountains were very beautiful, in an awe-inspiring way. He was just glad he was able to admire them from a distance; there was no way he'd like to actually be down there in that frozen terrain.

He squeezed his eyes shut as another gust of wind hit him in the face so hard he couldn't draw a breath.

“Are you all right, Oswald?” he called as they listed farther to the right.

Alistair strained his ears, but the owl didn't respond. His talons seemed to be shuddering slightly, though, as if he was breathing hard.

The wind was coming very strongly from the west. Was it possible they'd been blown off course? As they were buffeted by another wild gust, Alistair turned his head to try to make eye contact with Tibby Rose, but Tibby's eyes were tightly shut. Alistair couldn't tell if she was sleeping.

Oswald continued to battle the freezing wind. Each
gust shocked the breath from Alistair's lungs, leaving him fighting for breath. He kept his eyes on the mountains below. It was now apparent that they were being pushed farther and farther to the east, and the wind was increasing in ferocity, whipping and whistling around the owl and his passengers in a near frenzy as they crested a mountain range and entered a long, wide valley. It seemed to Alistair that Oswald was tiring, that the beats of the owl's mighty wings were slowing. Alistair clutched his scarf, hoping desperately that Oswald had the strength to keep going.

Suddenly, above the shriek of the wind, Alistair heard an ear-splitting screech. He gasped as Oswald's talon suddenly squeezed tighter.

Alistair looked around wildly, but he couldn't see anything. He glanced over at Tibby Rose, and saw that her gaze was now raised upward. Alistair scanned the clear sky above until he finally spotted a dark shape circling high above. An eagle!

His whole body tensed as he watched the circling shadow, his heart pounding. Had they strayed into its territory, was that it? For several long minutes nothing happened, and Alistair began to relax. The eagle had obviously decided that they posed no threat, and hadn't meant to encroach on its territory. But then another bloodcurdling cry filled the air and it was diving, screaming toward them like an arrow.

“It's coming straight at us!” Alistair struggled against the restraint of Oswald's talon in panic as the eagle came closer, closer . . . Alistair could see the menace in the
bird's hooded glare. Had it spied the mice trapped helpless in the owl's grip? He quivered at the sight of the raptor's cruel curved beak.

When it was barely a few meters above, the eagle veered away, soaring on the currents as they carried it higher until it was a distant shadow once more.

It was probably just trying to frighten them off, Alistair reassured himself.

But if that was the case, the eagle didn't seem content that the warning was heeded, for with another grating screech it dived again almost immediately, and this time its outstretched talons grazed Oswald's head. Oswald let out a belligerent hoot as he took evasive action, swooping and spinning—straight into the path of a second eagle!

Its wingspan was huge, blocking from view everything but its muscular brown-feathered legs, the giant talons flexed to grasp.

Alistair had always thought of Oswald as enormous, but the owl seemed small now and very vulnerable. As the second eagle's talons scraped his head, Oswald let out a strange, pained shriek and suddenly began to plummet.

“Oswald! Are you hurt?” Alistair cried as they began to lose altitude, but either the owl didn't hear him or couldn't answer.

Mountains rose to their left and right and Alistair could make out jagged clusters of rocks and clumps of stunted trees as they headed toward the valley floor, the snowy ground below rising and falling unevenly, patches of stark white fading into bruise-colored shadows. The shadows
made Alistair think of the icy crevasse of Uncle Ebenezer's story, and he glanced at Tibby Rose to see her staring back at him, wide-eyed with alarm.

The eagles continued to swoop and dive, filling the air with their grating calls, and the owl continued to descend in a series of curves and loops that made Alistair's head and stomach spin so that now he could barely tell the snowy ground from the pale sky.

And then suddenly the owl's grip loosened and he was falling.

4

The Assignment

W
hen Alice opened her eyes that morning the first thing she saw was the empty bunk bed.

“Alex,” she said, propping herself up on one elbow and poking at the mattress above with her other hand, “where are Alistair and Tibby Rose?”

“Mmmph,” her brother muttered into his pillow. Alice saw the mattress shift as he rolled over.

“How would I know?” Alex said sleepily.

With a surge of panic that she tried to quell, Alice was reminded of the last time she had woken to find Alistair missing. “Their rucksacks are gone too.”

“They've probably gone for a walk, worry-whiskers,” Alex said, as if he sensed his sister's unease. “Where else could they have gone?”

Sinking back onto the pillow, Alice considered what Alex had said. He was right, of course. There was nowhere else for them to go. “Maybe they got up early
and have gone over to the cafeteria for breakfast already,” she suggested.

“Breakfast?” Alex sounded alert now. “Do you think there'll be a buffet? What are we waiting for?”

He threw off the blankets and clambered down the ladder. “Come on, sis.”

“Let's tell Aunt Beezer and Uncle Ebenezer where we're going,” she suggested, pointing to her aunt and uncle's room. The door was slightly ajar and, when she stuck her head into their room, she saw that their bed was empty.

“They must have gone with Alistair and Tibby,” she said. “I can't believe we slept through it all.”

“Hurry,” Alex urged. “What if we're the last ones there? What if there's only scraps left?”

The cafeteria was as crowded as it had been the night before, and filled with the clatter of cutlery and the babble of voices. “There's Alistair,” Alice said, as a flash of ginger caught her eye. But as she drew closer she saw that it wasn't Alistair at all, that this ginger mouse was much paler than her brother. It occurred to Alice that she had never seen so many ginger mice in her life as she had seen in the last twelve hours. Alice was brown, like their mother, and Alex was white, like the triplets' father. Ebenezer's fur was tan, and Beezer's was creamy. She had seen every shade of black and brown and gray and white, sometimes all mixed up together, but for most of her life Alistair was the only ginger mouse she had ever known—until Alistair had introduced her to Tibby Rose.
But it seemed that several ginger mice belonged to FIG: pale ginger and dark ginger, reddish-ginger and orangey-ginger. But that made sense, she supposed, since ginger fur was only ever seen on Gerandan mice.

Alice trailed after her brother to the breakfast buffet—there was plenty of food left; they needn't have worried—and then to a long table where Beezer and Ebenezer sat facing each other.

“Where's your brother got to?” Beezer asked as Alex and Alice slid onto chairs beside their uncle.

Alice shrugged, and felt her earlier anxiety prickle her fur once more. “We thought we'd find Alistair and Tibby Rose here,” she said. “Wherever they've gone, they've taken their rucksacks with them.”

“I haven't seen Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson this morning either,” her aunt noted.

Before they could speculate further, an officious-looking dark gray mouse with a clipboard approached them.

“Are you Alex and Alice?” he asked, and when they nodded said, “Tobias wants to see you now.”

As Alice and Alex exchanged mystified looks, the dark gray mouse turned away.

“Ah, excuse me,” Ebenezer said.

“What is it?” the mouse with the clipboard asked impatiently.