The crowd in the cafeteria had thinned by the time Alistair and Tibby Rose rejoined the others at the long table.
“There you are,” Ebenezer said with obvious relief. “When you disappeared with Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson I thought they might have whisked you back to Souris.” He chuckled.
“Where did they take you?” Alice asked curiously.
“We, ah, we went to meet Tobias,” Alistair explained. Tibby Rose kicked him under the table, as if warning him not to reveal too much.
“You met Tobias?” Alex’s mouth dropped open and the others were looking similarly astonished. “Why?”
It was a good question. Alistair tried desperately to think of something he could tell his family that wouldn’t mean revealing their secret mission. Then he remembered how Tobias had greeted them. “He said it was a pleasure to see some younger faces,” Alistair said casually. “Apparently he has a son about our age who’s on vacation with a friend. I think he misses him. Hey, sis, can I finish your ice cream?” Alistair pointed to Alice’s bowl to change the subject.
“I don’t know why seeing your face would be a pleasure,” Alex grumbled. “My face is much nicer. Tobias should’ve asked to meet me.”
Fortunately Tibby Rose succeeded in distracting him with a question about which desserts he had tried from the buffet, and Alistair was able to finish his sister’s ice cream in peace—though perhaps peace was the wrong word, since his thoughts were anything but peaceful. Timmy the Winns was missing. . . . He and Tibby Rose were about to go on a dangerous mission without telling anyone. . . . They were going to rescue his parents! Worry, guilt and anticipation tumbled around in his mind so that he barely tasted the dessert. He was glad when Ebenezer stood up and said, “Come on, you lot, we’ve had a big day. Let’s get some sleep.”
Alex started grumbling again as they walked across the dark oval toward the sleeping quarters. “I still don’t get why you two met Tobias and we didn’t.”
“Maybe they reminded Tobias of his son because they’re ginger,” Alice suggested. “He has a lot of ginger in his fur, so his son might too.”
“That must be it,” Tibby Rose agreed. “We saw a photo of him and he looked just like his dad.”
“So Alistair and Tibby Rose get special treatment because of the color of their fur?” Alex complained.
Alistair had to laugh. “Makes a pleasant change from being abused and hunted because of it!” he said.
Soon they reached the small bedroom that the four young mice were sharing. “Let’s unpack our rucksacks so we have a bit of room to move in here,” Alice said.
Alistair and Tibby Rose exchanged glances.
“I’m really tired,” Tibby said, yawning and stretching her arms above her head. “I might leave mine till morning.”
“Me too,” said Alistair quickly.
Alice shrugged. “Whatever. Bags this bunk.” As the other three scrambled to claim their places, she wondered aloud, “What will happen tomorrow, do you think? Tobias was talking about having assignments for everyone. Do you think he meant us too?”
“I hope so,” Alex said. He was lying in the bunk above Alice, his hands crossed under his head. “I hope it’s something really dangerous and exciting.”
Alistair didn’t say anything; it was torture not being able to tell his brother and sister about his mission. He was thankful that Tibby Rose chose that moment to turn out the lights.
At a light tap on the window, Alistair opened his eyes. In the moonlight streaming through the window he saw that Tibby Rose was already awake, kneeling by the foot of the bed and tightening the straps on her rucksack.
Alistair slid soundlessly from the top bunk, though he couldn’t suppress a soft thud as he landed on the floor. Alice sighed in her sleep and murmured something indistinct, but she didn’t wake. Alex, in the bed above hers, was as solid and unmoving as a rock. Trumpet blasts from the room next door, interspersed with light whistles, told him that his aunt and uncle were also sound asleep. It seemed wrong to creep away without saying good-bye, and Alistair hesitated for a moment, but when he glanced at the door he saw Tibby Rose beckoning. With one last look at his sleeping siblings, Alistair secured his scarf around his neck, heaved his rucksack onto one shoulder, and followed Tibby out into the dark corridor lined with closed doors.
As they walked quickly toward the exit, a symphony of snores and snuffles, woofs and whiffles, toots and tweets reverberated through the still air of the dormitory block.
They stepped outside into a world bathed in moonlight. The rocks encircling the school and town loomed black and forbidding against a sky illuminated by stars, and the grass of the oval was silvery.
“Where’s Oswald?” Alistair asked.
As if in answer to his question, he felt a sudden downward breeze as the giant owl swooped from a nearby tree and came to rest a few meters away.
“Ready?” the night bird asked in his deep voice.
The two mice moved so they were standing about a meter apart, rucksacks securely over their shoulders. Alistair clutched the ends of his scarf between his fingers.
Oswald flexed his wings then gave a couple of short flutters, enough to propel him to hover just above their heads and slightly behind them. The downdraft ruffled the fur on Alistair’s head and he was about to lift his hand to smooth it back when he felt the owl’s talon close like a vice around him and he was immobilized. Inching his head to the left, he could just make out Tibby Rose, similarly imprisoned.
“Okay, Tib?” he called, but just then the owl began to flap his giant wings in great beats and Tibby’s reply was lost in the rush of air past his ears.
Oswald must have been weary from his previous trip, because it took five beats of his wings before he was able to lift off, and his usually smooth climb seemed labored. At last, though, they were airborne, rising high into the starry sky. The buildings below grew small, the hall and the dormitory squatting on one side of the oval, the cafeteria and school office on the other. The town of Stetson itself was visible as a few lights twinkling at the foot of the great hill. And then, as they rose higher still, Alistair could see the rocks and hills surrounding Stetson in a protective embrace. He could also feel currents of air now, blowing hard against him.
Alistair would have thought there was no chance of sleep with the wind roaring in his ears and the slightly jerky movement that accompanied each powerful thrust of Oswald’s wings, but to his surprise he was feeling rather drowsy. . . .
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.