The Keepers of the Keys Read online

  “Sorry for up-gutting,” Third said. “Hope Jytte’s head doesn’t stink too much.”

  “No need to apologize. Owls have almost no sense of smell.”

  “What?” all the bears said at once. That was unthinkable. They were extremely dependent on smell.

  “Just follow me. No time for convo.”

  They followed the “eyes” in this thick sky that pressed against the tumultuous waters of the Sea of Hoolemere. This was it! Their destination was in reach, and the precious key was in the pouch that Svern had made. They were about to deliver it. And as sure as the stars of the Great Ursus constellation hung in the sky, they had to be believed. For they were the keepers of that key. The survival of this world depended on them.

  In another sea far from that of Hoolemere, Svenna, the mother of Stellan and Jytte, swam her way through a dangerous maze of gears and hyivqik ice baffles beneath the Ice Clock of the Ublunkyn, the Ice Cap of the Nunquivik. The gears and baffles were the very guts of the clock. They guided the flow of water and were controlled by the escapement wheels and gear trains that transferred the energy of the currents of the sea to power the moving parts of the great clock. These waters were the most dangerous on earth. They swirled with blood from the blue diving seals that the savage bears of the Ice Clock used for adjusting the submerged parts.

  On a night like this, a cloudless night, the shine of the stars and the full moon’s light penetrated the ice with a terrifying radiance. The sea flashed with the reflected light off the blades of the knifelike baffles and the jagged teeth of the gears. A current began to suck Svenna toward three spinning blades. She stroked harder. But she couldn’t escape the suction. It was as if she had swum into a whirlpool—a whirlpool of death. The water was suddenly dark with blood. She stroked with all her might and finally pulled herself out from the sucking current.

  In Svenna’s mind, it was like swimming through a pod of krag sharks, the most vicious monster in the Nunqua Sea. But at least she was not tethered like the poor seal slaves. And after her near-deadly encounter, she became more proficient in dodging the whirlpools that spun out from the blades and the toothed wheels of the gear trains. She quickly learned how to gauge the odd currents they created. Still, it was a gruesome journey, fraught with the terror of instant death.

  She had long suspected a system like this had powered the clock, but she had never expected to be swimming through this lethal maze, and never imagined that it would be her route of escape from the imprisonment she had endured for—well, to be exact—380 days, 9,120 hours, 547,200 minutes, or 32,832,000 seconds. Shocking! Shocking that she could calculate so precisely down to the second, or even millisecond.

  Svenna knew that she had to stop thinking this way, but for over a year she had been just that, a calculator! She was smart. The horrible Mystress of the Chimes realized that almost immediately after her capture and had placed her in the Oscillaria, where she had quickly risen to the highest grade. Yes, she had become a fantastic calculator but in the process had forgotten how to be a bear.

  But a few moons before, she had begun to seriously explore possible escape routes. In her explorations, she had discovered some secret ice tunnels. On her very last day at the Ice Clock, she made an astonishing discovery. She had followed one tunnel that became a slide wet with seawater. She skidded down it and landed in a shallow pond swirling with blood. There a Nunquivik fox was bent over a dying blue seal, obviously one of the diving blues that tended the gears. His tether had been shredded and his body crisscrossed with dreadful wounds.

  The seal’s name was Jameson. But nothing could have been more astonishing to Svenna than the moment when the fox, who had been nursing the poor creature, turned around, and there, before Svenna’s very eyes, an ancient fanciful tale of shape-shifting creatures became anything but fanciful. It was true. The fox began to swell and then change its shape into that of a bear, and not just any bear but Galilya, the Mystress of the Chimes. Her harsh, arrogant taskmaster was in fact a double agent. The conversation, Galilya’s words, came back to Svenna now.

  Who are you—really?

  A traitor, Galilya had said calmly. A traitor to the clock.

  You, the Mystress of the Chimes, a traitor?

  Galilya wanted to stop the clock and the destruction that the Grand Patek had devised for the rest of the bear world. You see, she had said, Jameson and I were trying to stop the clock. Stop it and end this heresy. Her eyes had narrowed as she threatened, If you go, I’ll set the Roguers on you. I swear!

  In a flash, Svenna’s true nature asserted itself, surged through her like a tidal wave. She was a bear. She had only ever been a bear. Svenna rose on her hind legs, charged Galilya, and with her massive paw smacked her squarely in the face. The fox-bear collapsed on the ice shelf by the bloody pond, and Svenna jumped into the water and began swimming her way out of the horrendous clock.

  Her bear instincts came back to her quickly. She had always been an excellent swimmer. She had good lungs and could stay underwater for at least a minute and a half. That was considered long. But as she swam, she began to take longer dives. She saw terrible things. Tethered blue seals like Jameson, many badly wounded. Had she the time and the strength, she would have severed their tethers and freed every one of them. But she didn’t. A few who looked in relatively good condition she did free. But she was always aware that above the churning gears, there were guard bears on ice bridges supervising the seals. She must at all costs avoid being spotted.

  Quickly, she figured out how to use random blocks of hyivqik ice as a kind of camouflage. Pressing them against either side of her head when she came up for air, she hoped that her head looked like simply another chunk of sea ice. The water was becoming calmer, she realized. The roar of the baffles and gears had subsided. She was almost clear of this maze of slicing blades and the spiked wheels of the Ice Clock.

  Finally, there was complete stillness. A blessed quiet. The quiet of thick ice and deep water. She was exhausted, for this had been her longest dive—perhaps three minutes. She didn’t have another drop of air left within her. She had to surface just as she spotted a shaft of light—silvery light. Moonlight. How could this be? The shaft bore through the ice. A stream of bubbles like stars seemed to guide her. Guide her to air. Fresh air. It was a seal breathing hole.

  How many breathing holes had Svenna crouched by for endless hours still-hunting for seals? And how too few hours had she been allowed to teach her cubs the skills for still-hunting? She must get to it. Gasping, she tore through the hole, flinging herself on top of the ice. There were no cubs waiting to be taught the hunting lessons of the ice world, but there were stars. So many stars, and there out in front of the Great Bear constellation were the skipping stars—Jytte and Stellan. Hadn’t Jameson told her that he had met her cubs and that they had named themselves after these stars? His words came back to her. They were well … and they have names … Jytte and Stellan.

  Galilya was unsure for the first time in a very long time exactly what time it was. How many minutes or hours—or could it be days now—since Svenna had attacked her? In all her life, she had never been attacked by a bear—not when she was a fox, not when she shifted her shape and became a bear. She had seen bears fight in her fox days as she trailed them with her sister, Lago, picking up the scraps from their kills. But she could never have imagined their power. That was something the Ki-hi-ru stories never talked about. They didn’t reveal exactly the difference between appearing and actually being a bear. Oh, she had acted the part brilliantly, and yet all along did she suspect, or could she have imagined, that enormous power they possessed? She had even, after her transformation, clung to some of her foxish ways. She preferred to sleep with her head pointed north. Like all foxes, she had what was called the Northing. It helped them hunt. They often described it as a sparkling line in their heads that matched up with a deep line in the earth. The foxes used it as a guide for hunting as well as traveling.

  For several days after Sven
na had delivered that powerful blow to the fox-bear, Galilya’s head rang. Her body felt wrong—all wrong. It was as if the immense weight she carried as a bear could not be supported by her fox legs. Several times in the days that followed, Galilya would look down toward her feet, but there were no spindly legs with dainty padded paws. The legs she stood on were thick—thick as the ice pillars she had seen in the far northern hunting grounds when she followed the bears. They of course were not real pillars or real ice, but an illusion. They were actually light formed when a special kind of ice crystal, one with six sides, settled low on the horizon. And now she herself felt as if she were nothing but an illusion. And though her pelt seemed to her to possess a yellowish cast like that of the bears, she knew that to the bears of the clock, her fur appeared whiter than any they had ever seen. She ran her claws through the fur. This yellowish color made her nauseous to even look at. Perhaps worst of all was the emptiness she felt behind her hips. She had no tail but instead some ridiculous little stump. Without a tail she felt unbalanced. And sleeping as she once had as a fox, curled up with her tail wrapped around herself, cushioning her head, was pure luxury. How many nights since she had lived at this infernal clock she had been tempted to shift herself back to a fox just for a sound night’s sleep. But she dared not.

  Of course, there were many invisible traits of her fox nature that she had kept. Her hearing for one. She could hear a lemming deep beneath the snow, or the tiniest mouse. Bears, although they heard decently enough, in Galilya’s mind were almost deaf by comparison to foxes. So why had she done this? What had driven her? It sickened her to even think of it now. But in fact, she had done it for love. Love. How ridiculous was that?

  But it had not been love at first exactly. It had simply been the fun of it, of shifting one’s shape. A delicious secret that she kept to herself when she first discovered this magic within her own body. She felt special, for not every fox had it. It was hers and hers alone. Though in truth she had been tempted to share the secret with her baby sister, Lago. But Lago was just a kit and she might blab. Then she would get into trouble. It was their mum of course who had told them the Ki-hi-ru stories in the burrow. That’s what they were supposedly—just burrow stories to get the kits to sleep so the parents could go out and hunt. But one evening, when her parents thought they were both asleep, she heard her mum and tod saying something about Ru blood in their family. That a great-great-great-auntie Kai was rumored to have had it. And that’s what got Galilya to experiment, though her name then was simply Illya.

  First, she became a tern flying high, then diving steeply in open waters for fish. She covered vast distances. But in fact, terns had to be careful of foxes when they were on the ground, no matter how briefly. Flying wing tip to wing tip with both the slowest and fastest birds from owl to peregrine falcons was thrilling. But in all honesty, there was no keeping up with a falcon. Their speed was as fast as lightning.

  Illya herself learned what love was when she first spied Uluk Uluk—a bear who always seemed to travel alone. Never went to the northern hunting grounds. Never went during the Moon of the First Cracks to seek a mate. And yet she was drawn to him. She knew she wanted not to fly above the earth but to be on the earth with him and only him. Uluk Uluk. And she was for a while. Until he discovered her secret.

  Galilya groaned in her sleep now and thought, I am neither fox nor bear. I am the Mystress of Nothing!

  This is the place! Jytte thought as the cubs approached the island. We’re actually here! Both Jytte and Stellan had grown up hearing about this place in the den stories their mum had told them. They would soon be meeting the king, Soren, a creature of legend in the cubs’ minds. But would he believe them?

  All these thoughts streamed through Jytte and her brother’s heads as Rosie alighted on a rock and the bears clambered out of the surf onto the beach.

  “So where’s the Great Tree?” Jytte asked.

  “The Great Tree is not called great for nothing. It’s everywhere!” Rosie spread her small wings and swept them to each side and up above her head. “The fog is so thick, as it often is this time of year, that it’s hard to see. You know it’s the Moons of the Copper-Rose Rain. Fog often comes in.”

  “What kind of rain?” Stellan tipped his head to one side in thought.

  “Oh, pardon me. I think in bear country they might call this the Halibut Moon just before the Seal Moon.” She sighed. Then, after pausing again, she slowly began to speak, as if in deep reflection. “It must take great patience to wait for those seals to poke their snouts up. Don’t you get bored?”

  “Never, if you’re hungry,” Third said.

  “Not into delayed gratification myself,” Rosie said cheerfully. “From high above, I see a vole skittering about, and holy racdrops, I’m on it like a bolt of lightning cracking from the sky. Bam!” She clapped her wings together, which made no sound at all. But the bears blinked as the tiny owl appeared to double in size as two previously invisible tufts on either side of Rosie’s head stood straight up. She noticed that one of the bears gasped.

  “Oh, forgive me, I accidentally slipped into threat mode. My tufts. I know—impressive, aren’t they? I’m a pygmy, as I said. Southern pygmy owls don’t have the tufts. I’m a northern pygmy. The tufts are part of the deal.”

  Just as Stellan found himself wishing that Rosie would stop with the chatter and get on with it, a much larger owl with a beautiful, white heart-shaped face and large black eyes arrived. The feathers of this owl’s wings and body were mottled tawny browns mixed with white.

  “Bash is the name,” he said by way of introduction. “Feel free to call me Basher.” The owl swelled up a bit. “I got the nickname in a small skirmish in my first battle. Swooped in on the enemy and just bashed him out of the sky. No talons. No fire limbs, no battle claws.” He began rattling off words and terms that were strange to the bears’ ears. “I have a double attachment to the colliering and weather chaws. But I’d lost my coals and my firebrand in this particular battle. Just had to use what I had. My body.”

  “Enough, Bash!” Rose said and blinked rapidly, then spun her head about in a gesture that seemed to instantly convey her impatience with this somewhat boastful owl.

  “Yes! Yes!” Bash shrugged good-naturedly. “I admit it. I do run on a bit. Anyhow, I’m here to deliver a message. Da awaits you in the parliament. Bring them through the roots, I daresay. Might be easier for them than climbing.”

  “I can climb!” Jytte blurted. “I once climbed straight up a tree on Stormfast to escape a skunk bear.” But Bash had already flown off.

  “Hush, Jytte!” Stellan reprimanded. Then Stellan turned to Rosie. “He said his da awaits us. Who is his da?”

  “Soren.”

  “Soren the king?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Our da told us that the owls of the Great Ga’hoole Tree are very … very … What were the words he used?”

  “ ‘Traditional’ and ‘formal,’ ” Third said.

  “Yes.” Stellan nodded. “But Bash never even told us his father was the king.”

  “You have to understand that although Soren is king, and the wisest king this tree has ever had, he wears that title lightly. He is serious about his duty, but he doesn’t think that being called a king requires more than just a word, a title, or a name. You’ll see when you meet him. He is a rare owl, like no other you’ve ever met.”

  “Before we go, I have another question,” Stellan said.

  “Certainly.” The little owl turned toward them and blinked. A shiver ran through Stellan. He was unaccustomed to creatures with such bright yellow eyes.

  “How did you know we were coming?”

  “Your own da, of course, Svern of Stormfast. He tapped it out in code from his Yinq. He’s a Yinqui, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, but that means he listens, he was a spy,” Froya said. Her brow crinkled. “But then, of course, he had to tell, communicate what he heard, I suppose. Silly that we wouldn’t realize this.”
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  “There’s a code. A very ancient code he used. Never been broken.”

  “But how do you know this code?” Jytte asked.

  “Oh, I don’t. Blythe does. She’s a code cracker. Not only does she crack them, she makes them. Now follow me—as I said, you’re expected.”

  “But where is the tree?” Froya asked, looking up. At just that moment, a stiff breeze stirred the air. They heard a ruffling above their heads. The fog dissolved, as did every cloud. There was only an immense canopy of branches that seemed to stretch across the entire night. And suspended from the branches were glistening threads with ripening berries. “The milkberries are almost ready to harvest. Wait until you taste milkberry tea or milkberry fritters.” Svern had told them that the owls of the Great Tree had unusual eating habits and even cooked their food.

  Jytte felt a soft clunk on the top of her head. “Is this a milkberry?” she said, picking it out. But it was not the shape of any berry she had ever seen.

  “Oh, Great Glaux, no!” Rose giggled. “That’s a pellet. You’re under a yarping branch.”

  “A what?” Froya asked.

  “A pellet. We have very odd digestive tracts. In fact, we are quite proud of this. All the rest of the animals in the world are wet poopers.”

  “Wet poopers!” Stellan was stunned. Their mum had always scolded them for poop talk. And their father had said that these owls were reserved creatures, traditional, formal, “with impeccable manners,” and here this tiny owl Rosie was talking about poop.

  “You see,” Rosie continued, “we have the ability to compress certain parts of our waste into neat pellets that we then yarp up through our beaks.”