The Owl Keeper Read online

  The Owl Keeper

  Christine Brodien-Jones

  TO PETER, WHO FIRST HEARD THE OWLSONG

  THE WAY TO THE OWL KEEPER

  --FROM THE SILVER PROPHECIES

  Owl in the darkness, silver in the leaves,

  Blind child comes leading through the fog and trees.

  Through the haunted forest, beyond the aching hills,

  Darker grows the eventide, deeper grows the chill.

  Silver and ice, silver and ice,

  Silver owl will guide you, with its golden eyes.

  Ancient dark is rising on the highest bridge, red-eyed wolves are running on the distant ridge.

  Beware the eyeless creatures

  that would have your soul,

  Choose the burning sunlight, choose the path of gold.

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  Silver and ice, silver and ice,

  Silver owl will guide you, with its golden eyes.

  Journey to the mountain, flee the fortress old,

  Silver wings will save you from the killing cold, two will make the journey, old one gone before, to the icebound tower, through the crumbling door.

  Silver and ice, silver and ice,

  Silver owl will guide you, with its golden eyes.

  Owl Keeper is summoned

  atop the frozen plain,

  Owls and Sages gather to fight the dark again, two will make the journey, silver owl in hand,

  Seek the moonlit tower as darkness sweeps the land.

  Silver and ice, silver and ice,

  Silver owl will guide you, with its golden eyes.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  [Image: The owl tree.]

  When Max first saw the girl that night, standing beneath the owl tree, he thought she was a ghost or a vision, or maybe a comic-book character come to life. It didn't occur to him that she might be real. As far as he knew, nobody real had ever come to the owl tree before.

  The girl tilted her head, peering sideways at him. That's no ghost, he told himself, pulling down the flaps of his woolen cap. He shivered, feeling feverish. This field of dry brown grasses was his territory, along with the owl tree that stood in the center. The river below was his too, with its muddy path and view of the forest on the other side. All this belonged to him.

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  Night after night, Max sat under the owl tree, to be alone to brood and think. He held a secret hope that the Owl Keeper might pass this way, but that had never happened--not yet, anyway-- and for sure this girl wasn't the Owl Keeper. He wanted to say she had no right to be there, but the shivering went right through his lips and into his throat, locking the words inside.

  He stared at the girl as she looked around in a defiant sort of way. She was tall--string-bean skinny, as Gran used to say--with an oval-shaped olive face. Hair fanned from her head in a burst of coppery orange, and leaves were tangled all through it.

  Max had never seen anyone so disorderly. She looked moody and self-centered. Where had she come from? She couldn't be a Misshapen--they never left the forest--yet she was utterly unlike anyone he had ever known.

  Without a word she whipped around, glaring at him with a haughty expression. Looking into those green eyes, too big for her face, Max could see that the girl was different in a scary kind of way. Those eyes had a lean, hungry look. Her woolly black coat hung to her ankles, a spider dangling from the hem. Sticking out from under it were long, bumpy toes. Nobody around here dressed in clothes like that, and nobody Max knew would dream of going barefoot in this damp climate.

  Max had a nervous feeling in his chest. Clenching his teeth, he stepped forward, unsure of what to say. The girl drew herself up. Beneath the coat, her shoulders moved like frail wings. He noticed she was nearly a head taller than he was.

  "You don't have any deathwatch beetles attached to your coat, do you?" he asked hesitantly. Didn't she see that spider hanging

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  there? This girl, Max realized, was even more of an outsider than he was.

  Her eyes flashed. "What's that supposed to mean?" She jutted out her sharp chin. Her coat smelled like wet leaves.

  "Deathwatch beetles are bad luck. They foretell death--that's what my guardian, Mrs. Crumlin, says."

  "Death doesn't scare me." The girl pointed to the top of the tree. Despite the cold air, she wasn't wearing mittens. "What's up there?" Her eyes traveled to a small silver-feathered owl, sitting on a high branch.

  Max froze. No one knew about the owl. Since last winter he had kept her hidden in the owl tree, away from prying eyes. The problem was, silver owls didn't exist--not officially, at any rate. Silver owls had been declared extinct by the government.

  "It's just an ordinary barn owl," Max lied. He hoped his owl hadn't heard that remark; she'd be terribly insulted if she had. "She lives in this tree. I call it the owl tree." This girl is acting so uppity, he thought, you'd think the owl was the intruder, not her.

  Max adored owls--they were his passion--and he was endlessly fascinated with silver owls. He'd learned volumes about them from his gran. To have this small silver owl appear out of nowhere, he knew, was nothing short of a miracle.

  The girl scrunched up her eyes. "I never saw a silver owl before," she said, her voice thin and scratchy.

  Neither had Max--not until this owl turned up with a message in her beak. Fearful of her at first, he quickly realized that she was unique, with her heart-shaped face and golden eyes. He didn't mind that she was small and scruffy--her feathers gave off light,

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  a luminescent glow that silver owls were famous for. It was the kind of light Max imagined at the center of the sun, if only he dared look at it.

  "I told you, it's not a silver owl," he insisted. "It's a cousin or some distant relative."

  The girl paid him no attention. She couldn't stop looking at the owl. Max wished he had a stronger voice. If his words boomed out, she might listen. She'd probably be impressed if he told her about the message; maybe she'd even help him decipher it.

  But the message was his secret, and so was the mystery of his amazing silver owl. Telling this girl anything might be risky. What if the authorities had sent her to spy on him?

  "Real silver owls don't exist," she said, her lips set in a fierce line. "That's what they want us to think anyway." She threw him an enigmatic smile.

  Alarmed by her comment, Max looked away. How much, he wondered, did this girl know about silver owls? According to the textbooks, countless birds had perished during the Great Destruction. The books said that all the silver owls had.

  But Gran had told Max that not every silver owl had been destroyed. Dispersed by the Dark Brigade, the silver owls had been weakened and were in hiding, waiting for the Owl Keeper to appear. One day, said Gran, they would fulfill an ancient Prophecy and bring their OwlSong back to the world. But as Max grew older he'd started to wonder if it was true--or had it just been one of Gran's made-up stories?

  The bobble on his cap flopped over one eye and he knocked it back. "My owl eats mice and small birds--swallows them whole!"

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  He wanted to impress this strange girl and his words tumbled out before he could stop them. "Afterward she spits out a pellet with bones and feathers and fur inside. If you take one apart, you never know what you'll find."

  "Know what I think?" said the girl, tilting her head at a funny angle. "I think this isn't any ordinary owl. I can tell by looking at it: this is a real silver owl." She paused dramatically. "It's the last silver owl on the whole planet!"

  Her fiery eyes alighted on Max. He shifted from one foot to the other, feeling more anxious than ever. There was no way to trick this girl, he realized. She was too smart.

 
"You won't tell anybody, will you?" Max studied her solemn, pinched face, searching for a sign that she was trustworthy. The owl fluttered down onto his arm, blinking at him, her movements slow and stiff. He smoothed her soft feathers with the back of his hand, feeling her warmth, her tiny beating heart.

  "She's got courage, you can tell." He breathed deeply, thinking if only he could be brave like his silver owl. "I found her last winter, up in this tree," he added proudly. "She had ice on her wings and white thistles stuck to her feathers."

  He didn't mention how he'd been afraid at first, thinking the bird might try to attack him.

  "That owl's wing is sticking out funny," said the girl. "And that eye worries me. Look how it only opens halfway." She wiped her nose on her coat sleeve. "Seems to me somebody tried to knock its eye out."

  "Her wing's broken!" snapped Max, irritated with this girl and her comments. Why was she so critical? "Can't you see? She was

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  in a fight!" He steadied his voice, trying to explain. "She can hardly fly at all. That wing of hers has to mend. I bring her mice and grubs--she's not able to hunt for herself."

  "Then that bird's stuck here in this tree, isn't it?" said the girl, her eyes fixed on the owl. "It can't get away even if it wants to."

  Max shrugged. He often sensed that his owl longed to fly off, swift and far, that she was just waiting for her wing to heal. But he didn't tell the girl that his greatest fear was one day she'd fly away and never return.

  They stood in silence as the minutes ticked by. The girl fidgeted. Max could see her eyes wandering, taking in the tree, the owl, the high grasses all around them. He chewed on his fingernails, worried that he'd said too much.

  "I won't tell anyone," the girl said at last. "Your secret's safe with me."

  Max looked up, surprised and relieved. The owl fluttered awkwardly into the air, landing on a low branch next to the girl, hooting softly. Is the owl trying to tell me something? he wondered. Was she saying he could trust this quirky, peculiar girl?

  "Who are you?" he asked. "Why are you here?"

  The girl whirled around to face him, puffing herself up like an owl. "I'm named after the moon goddess Artemis! She was a free spirit who ran through the forest and shot her enemies through the heart with arrows. Nothing scared Artemis, the goddess of wild animals--she was totally fearless!"

  Mouth open, Max backed away, startled by her fierce reply. He wondered if she was hiding any bows and arrows under that long coat of hers.

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  "I know about the myths," he said. His granny had read them to him out of a tattered leather book. He cast back in his mind for stories about a huntress.

  "Artemis Rose Eccles, that's me," the girl huffed. Then her body seemed to deflate and she settled back down. "You can call me Rose; it's less formal."

  Max gave a shy smile, thinking he had worried needlessly. The High Echelon would never hire anyone as unstable as Rose. "I'm Maxwell Unger. Max for short." He pointed across the field. "My house is at the top of this hill, behind that clump of trees. You can't see it too well in the dark. I live there with my parents at the end of a dead-end street."

  Rose looked sidelong at him. Her eyes were the color of the moss around the tree. "What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?"

  Max's face burned. "I've got my reasons." He tugged the earflaps on his cap, wishing she would stop looking so hard. "Besides, I could ask you the same."

  "You could." Rose bent down and scratched her ankle. "But I asked first."

  Max frowned, thinking how this wild girl had an answer for everything. "My parents don't know I come here at night," he confided. "If they did, they'd be really upset."

  The silver owl hooted softly, so softly one might mistake it for the wind. It was the sound Max loved best in the world. Shoulders hunched, he dug his hands into his jacket pockets. How could he tell Rose that for the last five years the dark was all he had known?

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  CHAPTER TWO

  [Image: The owl.]

  "Is that you, Maxwell?" Mrs. Crumlin set down her knitting needles and heaved herself off the sofa.

  Rubbing his eyes, Max stood in the hallway gazing into the dim parlor. He had been sleeping in his bedroom most of the afternoon. Unlike other boys his age, he never went outdoors in the daytime. Five years ago he'd been diagnosed with a rare and mysterious illness: he was allergic to sun particles.

  For Max, only the night mattered.

  The drapes were pulled tightly together, secured from top to bottom with clothespins so that no sunlight could filter in. Mrs.

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  Crumlin's lumpy shadow bobbed up and down as she stumped over to the radio, humming to a Top Ten song.

  Ancient dark is rising on the highest bridge,

  Red-eyed wolves are running on the distant ridge.

  Beware the silver darkness that would have

  your soul,

  Choose the temperate city domes, with their lights of gold.

  Most of the popular songs these days were about the dome cities that were going up all over the country. Max found their lyrics totally inane. The Citizens' Dome Construction Scheme was nearing completion, which meant people would be moving out of the towns and into the new domes.

  Why, he wondered, did the song include those scary parts? It gave him a feeling of dread, hearing that line about wolves.

  Dressed in pajamas and slippers, he scuffed into the parlor. "I had another nightmare," he announced, tripping over his pajama cuffs. Nothing ever seemed to hang right on his small, skinny frame.

  "Have a seat, Maxwell." With a look of concern, Mrs. Crumlin patted the sofa. Devoid of color or shape, her dress reeked of bleach and pickling spices. "I hope you're not having one of your funny turns."

  Bleary-eyed, Max flopped down on the cushions. Shadows, thrown by sputtering flare lamps, leapt across the walls. He could smell burnt food, drifting in from the kitchen down the hall-- Mrs. Crumlin's idea of home cooking, he joked to himself.

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  Max Unger was a pale-faced flannel-shirt sort of boy, with dark brown eyes and stringy brown hair. He had his father's straight nose, his mother's high cheekbones and a dash of freckles. His ears were slightly too big, but his mother promised he'd grow into them.

  Mrs. Crumlin often remarked that Max's face had a look of permanent worry due to his insecure nature. True, he was often anxious and easily frightened. As a little boy he had been afraid of large dogs, fearful of spiders, terrified of loud noises. Even now, those things could make him jump.

  "Breaking news," boomed the radio announcer. "In an emergency session last night the government passed the Sealed Borders Act, declaring that all borders will be closed until further notice. This action, they say, comes after threats from hostile countries as yet unnamed. Under this act, no one is allowed to enter or leave the country without High Echelon permission."

  Puzzled, Max sat up, listening intently, but the announcer had moved on to the weather. Why would the government want to cut them off from the rest of the world?

  "Why are the borders closed?" he asked.

  "Not to worry, Maxwell, the High Echelon knows what it's doing. Remember, its job is to protect us." Mrs. Crumlin turned down the volume. "Puzzling, I'd say, the way those injections bring on those nightmares of yours," she said, changing the subject completely. "Would you like to tell me about your dream?"

  "No," Max said, gnawing on a fingernail. "I wouldn't."

  His mother often said that Mrs. Crumlin had a thankless job and that Max should see things from her point of view. But he

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  resented the way she was always quizzing him about his dreams, pressing him for details.

  "Very well." Mrs. Crumlin sounded a bit hurt. "Have it your way.

  When Max was little, he'd had impossibly wonderful dreams that featured mysterious towers and enchanted trees and silver owls flying through snow. He remembered those as the Good Dreams. But when he turned seven, those
dreams ended abruptly. Ever since, he had suffered from disturbing nightmares.

  "Hungry, Maxwell?" asked Mrs. Crumlin, straightening a lamp shade. "I'll find something to munch on." She plodded off. "Try not to bite your nails, dear."

  He leaned back on the cushions, pretending he hadn't heard that last, annoying remark.

  Max's schedule was totally different from those of other kids his age. Because he spent his nights at the owl tree--a secret he'd kept from his parents for years--he'd gotten into the habit of sleeping through the day.

  Mrs. Crumlin arrived each morning at seven sharp, lugging a tapestry bag stuffed with yarn, just as Max's parents were leaving for work. All day long she knitted and pickled and boiled up meals, singing nonstop to the radio. Every hour she inspected the house, clumping from room to room, checking that no sunlight filtered inside. When Nora and Ewan Unger returned each evening at six o'clock she rushed off, terrified of being caught out in the dark.

  The Ungers' kitchen was a permanent disaster. Pots were burned, counters scorched, dish towels mangled, all on account

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  of Mrs. Crumlin. Max's father said it was a marvel the house was still standing at the end of the day. Max didn't mind the chaos, the off-putting smells or even Mrs. Crumlin's inedible cooking. It was her constant niggling that drove him crazy, her disapproving looks, and the way she passed judgment on everything he did.

  "You look peaky, Maxwell." Mrs. Crumlin set down a mug of hot cocoa and a plate of her sunfire cookies. "Everything all right? I'm willing to listen, if you'd like to discuss your dream. No need to be hypersensitive."

  Mrs. Crumlin loved words like hypersensitive and hyperfrenetic, Max noticed. She used them every chance she got.

  "I don't feel like talking," he said, running a hand through his limp hair. He could tell it needed a good shampooing. "My throat's scratchy." Max often woke from his nightmares with a sore throat, his eyes burning.