The Song of the Winns

by Frances Watts

  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

  When 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.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where my other nephew and his friend are, would you?”

  “Do I look like a nanny?” the dark gray mouse snapped. “How should I know where they are?”

  “I just thought, since they met with Tobias last night . . . ,” Ebenezer said apologetically.

  The dark gray mouse stilled. “Oh,” he said. “Them.” It seemed to Alice that he looked shifty now. He cleared his throat and turned to Alice and her brother. “What are you two waiting for?” he demanded. “Didn’t I just tell you that Tobias is expecting you? Come on.” And he rushed away.

  “I think we’d better see what this is all about,” Ebenezer said to Beezer, and they rose to accompany their niece and nephew.

  “What do you think is going on?” Alice asked as they followed the dark gray mouse out of the hall and across the playground. Then, voicing her own fear, she said, “You don’t think Alistair’s been kidnapped, do you?”

  Her uncle was looking extremely worried. “No, my dear, not that; I’m sure there’s no way Sourian agents could reach him here. And kidnappers wouldn’t take the rucksacks too.” He looked at his wife. “It’s not possible that they’d send him and Tibby Rose on assignment, is it? No, surely not. And anyway, Alistair wouldn’t leave without saying good-bye.”

  By this time the dark gray mouse had led them into another building and down a corridor. He stopped by an open door and gestured to Ebenezer, Beezer, Alex, and Alice to enter.

  Inside the office, Tobias was sitting behind a wooden desk. His brow was furrowed above a pair of reading glasses. He was scanning a piece of paper, watched by a mournful-looking white mouse with long, drooping whiskers.

  “I’ve got Alice and Alex here,” said the dark gray mouse.

  “And their uncle and aunt,” Ebenezer added firmly from behind them.

  Tobias looked up at the dark gray mouse over the top of his glasses with a questioning frown.

  “Emmeline and Rebus’s children,” the dark gray mouse reminded him.

  Tobias’s face cleared. “Of course,” he said. “Alice and Alex. And Ebenezer and Beezer—it’s been a while, hasn’t it? It’s good to see you again.” He shot a look at the dark gray mouse still hovering in the doorway. “Thank you, Flanagan. That’ll be all for now.” He made a few notations on the piece of paper he’d been perusing then handed it to the white mouse, who squeezed past them and out the door.

  Tobias nodded for the two young mice and their aunt and uncle to sit in the chairs grouped in front of the desk, then shuffled through a stack of folders by his left hand. “Ah yes,” he said, extracting a folder. He opened it, quickly read the first page, then closed it again. “I have a very special assignment for you two.” He was looking at Alice and her brother.

  “Yes!” said Alex, to Alice’s right.

  “Oh no,” said Ebenezer, to her left.

  “Shhh . . . ,” said Beezer gently, patting her husband’s arm. “Let Tobias explain.”

  “Thank you, Beezer,” said Tobias. “And let me say on behalf of FIG how pleased we are that you and Ebenezer have consented to join us once again.”

  “Naturally we want to do our bit,” Ebenezer said, his voice gruff, though Alice thought he looked rather pleased. “We do worry about the children, though. Emmeline and Rebus left them in our care, you know, and—well there was that unfortunate incident with Alistair disappearing, and then these two running off. Now Alistair is missing again. Do you know anything about that?”

  Tobias shifted in his seat. “Alistair and Tibby Rose have been sent on a very important mission.”

  Ebenezer stared at him in disbelief. “You have sent them on a mission?” he repeated slowly, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What kind of mission?”

  Tobias looked uncomfortable. “You know the rules, Ebenezer. It’s top secret, I’m afraid.” He cleared his throat and looked from Ebenezer to Beezer. “It’s been a pleasure to see you both, and I’ll look forward to meeting with you each later to discuss your roles with FIG, but if you’ll excuse us. . . .” His eyes slid toward the door. After several seconds, when it was clear that Ebenezer had no intention of leaving, Tobias raised his shoulders in a resigned shrug. “Ordinarily, an assignment such as this would be revealed only to those FIG members directly involved in its execution, but given your concerns—and that you are the children’s guardians—I will include you in this briefing.”

  “Thank you,” Ebenezer said. It seemed to Alice that he was struggling to stay calm. “But to go back to this mission that Alistair and Tibby Rose are on, would you say it was a dangerous mission?” His voice was rising.

  Tobias nodded his affirmation.

  In the four years that the triplets had been living with Ebenezer and Beezer, Alice had hardly ever seen her ebullient uncle angry. But now his face reddened beneath his tan fur as he shouted, “Of all the reckless, irresponsible things to do! This is exactly why I left FIG in the first place. This careless endangerment of lives, this—this . . .” He seemed lost for words.

  When he was sure that Ebenezer was finished, Tobias said, “I believe Emmeline and Rebus would approve.”

  “What about Zanzibar?” Ebenezer demanded. “Does Zanzibar know about this?”

  Alice couldn’t imagine why her uncle would think that a mouse as important as Zanzibar would be interested.

  Beezer spoke up. “You were saying something about an assignment for Alice and Alex.”

  “That’s right.” Tobias sounded reluctant now. “The mission calls for young mice, you see.”

  “Young mice?!” Ebenezer jumped up and, leaning over the desk, roared, “No! Absolutely not! You need young mice for this assignment, you say? Send your own son then!”

  At this, Tobias’s calm deserted him. His expression darkened and he too jumped up, so that he stood nose to nose with Ebenezer. “You leave my son out of this!” he thundered, jabbing a finger at Ebenezer. “My boy . . .” As suddenly as he had leaped up the marmalade mouse sank back into his chair. He seemed deflated, his eyes now indescribably sad. “We have all made sacrifices, Ebenezer. Every family. Not just yours. My wife . . .” He straightened. “But the needs of the many—”

  “Outweigh the needs of the few,” Ebenezer finished. He sat down heavily, looking contrite. “Of course,” he said. “You’re right.” He sighed. “I just wanted to keep the family together.”

  Tobias was nodding sympathetically. “I do understand, my friend. Really I do. And I wouldn’t ask Alice and Alex to undertake this assignment if there was any other way
,” the marmalade mouse went on. “I won’t lie to you: if your niece and nephew accept this assignment they will be in danger.”

  “We’ll do it!” Alex broke in.

  Tobias gave him a stern look. “Young man, your enthusiasm is commendable—but foolhardiness is not. I’d recommend you wait to hear what the assignment is before you accept it.”

  Alex, abashed, hung his head.

  “However, I believe that careful planning will ensure their safety,” Tobias continued as if Alex hadn’t interrupted. He opened the folder again, and spoke directly to Alice and Alex. “Now the assignment calls for you to go undercover.”

  “Undercover. . . . ,” Alex breathed, but although he squirmed in his seat excitedly he restrained himself from further comment.

  “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that everything I say now must be treated in the strictest of confidence,” Tobias said to Beezer and Ebenezer. Then he glanced down at the file and back at the younger mice. “You will take on the identities of two Sourian orphans, and you will be sent to Gerander to work as servants in the palace in Cornoliana.”

  Alice gasped, as did her aunt and uncle. Even Alex, who had been so enthusiastic only moments before, looked paler than usual beneath his white fur. They were being asked to infiltrate the headquarters of the Sourian army in Gerander!

  5

  Crossing the Crankens

  Alistair heard a cry—it might have been his own—and saw a flash of color; the ends of his scarf were streaming past his face as he tumbled, clutching at the air as if it could arrest his fall. The wind roared in his ears and caught in his chest, until suddenly he was sinking, engulfed by a sea of snow, and he couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t breathe as the cold filled his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He clawed desperately at the thick wet snow, not even sure which way was up, until a shock of chill air told him that his left arm was free. He scrabbled at the snow until he had dug a hole wide enough to let in a small burst of light and air—and sound, it seemed, as he heard a voice: Tibby’s. She sounded like she was very far away.