The mozzarella was in an icy crevasse,” said Uncle Ebenezer with a shiver, to demonstrate how cold the crevasse had been. The movement made his big belly wobble and his long shadow shimmied on the road stretching up between two high ridges of rock.
“An icy crevasse?” said Tibby Rose, who was beside him. “The mozzarella was in an icy crevasse? But why? How did it get there?”
Alistair, walking behind them with Aunt Beezer, had to laugh at his friend’s perplexed tone. He and his brother and sister were used to their uncle’s stories, but then the triplets had been living with their uncle and aunt for years, while Tibby had only just met Ebenezer and Beezer.
Uncle Ebenezer didn’t seem inclined to answer Tibby Rose’s questions. (They were the kind of questions Alistair himself used to ask once upon a time, but his uncle had never answered him either.) “I saw at once that the only way to reach the cheese was to abseil down. Fortunately, I had a length of rope with me, so I looped it around a tree.”
Tibby Rose nodded approvingly. “A firm anchor is crucial,” she agreed. Tibby was an expert in survival skills. She had been named after Charlotte Tibby—a great explorer—and had read all her namesake’s books. (Her mother had added the name Rose because of Tibby’s pink-tinted ginger fur.)
“I have an instinct for these things,” Uncle Ebenezer admitted modestly, stroking his mustache. “I left my brother Rebus at the top of the crevasse—that’s Alex, Alice, and Alistair’s father”—he reminded Tibby—“and began my descent.” He shivered again at the memory. “The deeper I went, the darker it grew. The crevasse was so narrow in places that my back brushed the wall behind me, and my feet were so cold where they touched the ice that they burned. I knew that if I stopped moving I would probably freeze to death, and the crevasse would become my icy tomb.”
Even though it was summer, Alistair pulled his scarf tight around his neck as he imagined being surrounded by sheer walls of ice.
Ebenezer paused in his storytelling, and for a moment the only sound was the rustle of leaves in the trees lining their way, and the soft pad of their feet upon the road. Even Alice and Alex, walking behind Alistair, had stopped their customary bickering to listen.
“So what happened?” Tibby Rose demanded as the silence lengthened.
“What happened?” repeated Uncle Ebenezer. “I’ll tell you what happened—just as I was within a tail’s length of the cheese, I heard a loud thump, so loud the ice around me shuddered.”
“What was it?” Tibby gasped.
Ebenezer shook his head sorrowfully. “It was Rebus,” he said. “I’d quite forgotten how my poor brother was scared of heights. He took one look into the ravine and grew so dizzy he passed out. Well of course with Rebus unconscious he wouldn’t be able to pull me up once I’d reached the cheese—and I might die waiting for him to regain consciousness! There was only one thing to do: I would have to climb the rope myself. And for that, I would need both hands.” He sighed. “So, leaving that poor mozzarella all alone at the bottom of the icy crevasse, I began to climb. Inch by determined inch I scaled that sheer ice wall until at last I reached the top. Then, with my final reserves of strength, I lifted up my unconscious brother, slung him over my shoulder and carried him home.” All of Ebenezer’s stories, Alistair noted, ended with him slinging Rebus over his shoulder and carrying him home.
Alistair felt a tremor in his chest as he thought of his father. It had been four years since the triplets had seen their parents—and for most of that time, they’d thought that Rebus and Emmeline were dead. . . .
“I can’t believe Mom and Dad have really been alive this whole time,” said Alex, as if his thoughts had been following the same line as Alistair’s.
“Do you think they’ll have changed?” Alice asked in a small voice.
Ebenezer, serious now, said, “Four years in an enemy prison would change anyone. But you know, my dear, I think we will all have to get used to a great many changes now. Why, look how much you four have been through in such a short time; I’m sure your experiences will have changed you in many ways.”
“I’m even braver than I thought,” Alex boasted.
Alistair wouldn’t have put it in those words exactly, but he knew what his brother meant. He definitely felt more confident, and more capable, as a result of his and Tibby’s hair-raising journey through Souris.
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Ebenezer. “You may well have cause to be brave now that we have joined the resistance movement to fight for a Free and Independent Gerander—or rejoined, in the case of myself and Beezer.”
“Do you think FIG will send us on spy missions, like the one Mom and Dad went on?” Alex asked eagerly.
“Well, I hope not like the one your parents went on,” Ebenezer said, sounding alarmed. “Look how that turned out. But yes, it’s possible you will be asked to undertake missions.” He sighed heavily. “As members of FIG we will all be exposed to risks and dangers; your parents risked their lives to free our homeland, and any one of us may be called on to do the same. We are going to be living a very different life now: always on the move, always looking over our shoulders. It’s not what I would have wished for you. After your parents died—after we thought they had died, I should say—Beezer and I were determined that you would have a normal, happy, safe childhood.”
“Is that why you never told us about Gerander and FIG?” Alice asked.
“That’s right,” Beezer replied. “We weren’t going to tell you until you were older; though now I think we might have been wrong to hide it from you.”
Even after everything he and Tibby Rose had been through on their way back to Smiggins, Alistair still thought the biggest shock he had ever had was finding out that he and his brother and sister were actually Gerandan, and that his whole family had been involved in the struggle to free their homeland from the Sourian occupation. He felt as if he’d had a whole new identity thrust upon him. He didn’t mind it exactly, but it certainly took some getting used to. It was amazing to think his parents and aunt and uncle had lived with a secret so big for so many years.
And now he was the one with a secret, Alistair reflected—he and Tibby Rose. He gripped the ends of his scarf. “How much farther do you think, Aunt Beezer?” He tried to keep the impatience from his voice. A secret FIG meeting was being held near the town of Stetson in the northwest of Shetlock, right near Shetlock’s border with Gerander. They had left their home in Smiggins before dawn three days earlier, and had been walking long hours each day.
His aunt replied, “It can’t be far now. I was hoping we’d get there before dark, but I’m not sure we will.” She lifted her eyes to scan the sky. Alistair knew she was watching for night hunters. And it wasn’t only night birds looking for prey they had to be wary of as the light faded on this lonely road. There was a strong possibility that two Sourian spies were on their trail. “Ebenezer, let’s take another look at the map,” she suggested.
While Uncle Ebenezer and Aunt Beezer murmured over the map, Alistair and Tibby Rose stood with Alice and Alex.
“We probably would have been there by now if Alex hadn’t ordered the cheddar soufflé at that place where we stopped for lunch,” Alice grumbled, casting an apprehensive look over her shoulder at the road behind them. “It said on the menu it would take them an extra twenty minutes to make.”
“It was the specialty of the house,” Alex argued.
Alistair suspected it was fear making Alice so sharp with their brother. Unlike him and Tibby Rose, Alice and Alex had actually encountered the Sourian spies, Horace and Sophia, first-hand, and had only narrowly escaped being killed.
“Not far now,” Beezer reassured the triplets and their friend as they resumed walking.
Tibby Rose fell into step beside Alistair. “I can’t believe how tiring all this walking is,” she said. “I can’t remember being this tired when we were traveling across Souris. But it was much easier when we didn’t have to carry anything.” She put her hands behind her back to ease the weight of the pack on her shoulders.
“For someone who ran away from home with nothing, you certainly have managed to cram a lot into that rucksack,” Alistair teased. “Though we didn’t really do that much walking in Souris,” he reminded his friend. “Most of the time we were paddling down a river, on the raft you made.”
“And even when we weren’t on the raft, we did a lot more running than walking,” Tibby recalled ruefully. “It would have been so much easier if we could have used secret paths,” she added in a low voice, glancing at Alistair’s scarf.
Alistair’s hands closed on the ends of his scarf once more as Tibby referred to the secret paths that crisscrossed Gerander. Was it really possible that his mother had knitted a map of the secret paths into the scarf she had given him just before she left on her last mission?
He was distracted from these thoughts when a swooping movement caught his eye. There was something circling above them in the sky!
“It’s a hawk!” Uncle Ebenezer yelled.
“An eagle!” cried Aunt Beezer at the same time.
Ebenezer ran back toward Alistair and Tibby Rose. “Hurry, everyone!” he called. Taking Tibby Rose’s hand he ran toward the shelter of the shrubs at the side of the road, pushing Alistair along ahead of him. Aunt Beezer ushered Alice and Alex ahead of her.
Alistair crouched in the bushes, his heart racing, as the shape wheeled around, then descended. It was heading straight toward them! A shadow swept across the bush where he was hiding and Alistair thought he heard a voice say, “Oh, I really don’t feel well,” followed by a terrifying screech. A screech that sounded very familiar to Alistair . . .
“That’s not a hawk or an eagle,” he shouted. “It’s an owl!” And before his aunt or uncle could stop him, he darted out of the bushes.