The Song of the Winns (37 page)

He sighed. “We can at least use the tunnel to travel some of the way south,” he said, running his finger down the blue stripe of the Winns. “Maybe there'll be a place where—” Alistair stopped. “Tibby, look at this.”

Tibby peered at the blue stripe where Alistair was pointing. “It looks like a thin green line,” she said. “A line across the river.” She turned to Alistair, her eyes wide. “Do you think it could be a bridge?”

“It's possible,” said Alistair. “Let's see if Mom knows anything about it.” He was about to call to his mother to come see, but then had a better idea. He unwrapped the scarf from around his neck and carried it to her.

“I remember knitting this scarf,” Emmeline said softly as Alistair laid it on her lap. For a moment Alistair himself
could see the dancing flames in the fireplace of the cottage of honey-colored stone where he and Alice and Alex had passed the first eight years of their lives, and Emmeline knitting beside it. “And it brought you here.” She seemed both happy and sad.

“Mom,” said Alistair, “do you know anything about this green line here across the Winns?”

Emmeline bent her head to look. “I've wondered about that line,” she said. “I asked my grandmother about it, but she didn't know what it meant. I've always thought it might be a mistake, a slip of the artist's brush.” She glanced up at the painting on the wall.

“It could be a bridge, though,” Tibby said.

“It could be, I suppose,” said Emmeline, her voice doubtful. “But it's such a thin little line.” She traced the delicate stitch on the scarf with her finger.

“Since we were planning to head south anyway, let's leave the tunnel at that point and investigate,” Zanzibar decided.

As they passed back through the tunnel he and Tibby had traveled so recently with Slippers Pink and Feast Thompson, Alistair recalled their return from Atticus Island. He had been expecting to travel from Cobb back to the north of Gerander with his parents and, despite his joy at being reunited with them now, this journey through the tunnel still reminded him of the heavy heart with which he had last trod this earthen floor. Now, when he had least expected it, he and Tibby were traveling south through the tunnel with Emmeline and Rebus—and the famous
Zanzibar! He smiled to himself as he pictured the look on Alice and Alex's faces at their triumphant return. Though there were many dangers between them and a triumphant return, of course.

“We went to Atticus Island to find you,” Alistair told his parents. “But you weren't there.”

“All the prisoners were moved off the island about a week ago,” Rebus explained. “We were being moved to the Crankens.” He related how a sympathetic guard had helped them to slip away from the convoy of guards and prisoners one night, and Emmeline had used her knowledge of the secret tunnels to find an entrance.

Zanizbar looked thoughtful at this. “Another sympathetic guard,” he murmured. “Perhaps the tide is turning. . . .”

“We should take this,” Tibby, who had memorized the map, interrupted as they neared a smaller tunnel branching off to the left. A few meters down the path, the smaller tunnel ended at a ladder.

Zanzibar climbed the ladder first to check that it was safe, then at his signal one by one they clambered up to join him. They were standing under a thick canopy of trees. Alistair could tell by the pale sky it was dawn. After the close earthy atmosphere of the tunnel, it was a relief to breathe the clear cool air of the trees and river.

There was no bridge. Alistair had barely had time to register this fact when a gentle breeze set the leaves of the trees rustling. And then he heard it: a faint whistle, almost like a sigh.

“Tibby, listen!”

“That sounds like Althea,” Tibby said, looking around as if expecting to see the elderly mouse with curly gray fur.

“It's not Althea,” Alistair told her. “It's the trees—just like she described.”

They both cocked their heads to listen to the peculiar fluting sigh. Glancing at the others, Alistair saw that his mother had her head cocked too.

“What is that strange sound?” she was asking. “Can anyone else hear it? It sounds like the trees are whistling.”

Rebus and Zanzibar shook their heads, but Tibby Rose said, “I can,” and Alistair said, “Me too. Althea, the old mouse from the east who we met in the tunnel, told us about the whistling. She said not everyone can hear it though.”

Tibby looked thoughtful. “You know how the rustling reeds play the Winns's north song? Maybe this is like the Winns's east song.”

“The sound was like a song to Althea,” Alistair recalled. “Remember how she taught me to whistle like that when you were dancing?” He pursed his lips and began the sequence of inhalations and exhalations that sounded remarkably like the sighing whistle of the trees.

“That's it,” said Tibby. She began to move her feet, hesitantly at first, then more confidently, until she had traced out a pattern in the earth.

“And she said something about the murmur of the Winns below helping her to find her way home. I thought
that was funny actually—the bit about the Winns below, like she was walking on water.” He stopped suddenly, struck by a thought. “Or walking above it.” He tilted his head back to look into the canopy. In a gust of whistling breeze he thought for a moment he saw a fine web of branches intertwined. The way they wove together seemed familiar somehow.

He glanced down at the pattern Tibby's dancing feet had made, then looked skyward again.

“It's the trees!” he said. “She was walking in the trees! The branches have woven together to make a path.”

He pointed into the canopy, and when the breeze parted the leaves the woven path of branches was briefly visible once more.

“And the green lines on the map show the secret paths through the trees,” said Tibby. “And you can find them by the whistling sound. Yes, it all makes sense!”

Zanzibar was watching their exchange with a pleased look on his face.

“What a clever pair,” he said. He turned to Emmeline and Rebus. “You've raised him well. You must be very proud.”

“We are,” said Emmeline quietly. “Though a lot of the credit belongs to Ebenezer and Beezer. I think Tibby's parents would be very proud too.”

“Indeed they would,” said Zanzibar solemnly.

It seemed to Alistair that Tibby Rose's pink-tinted fur looked more pink than usual, and he could feel a blush heating his own neck and face. “We still have to find a way
up there,” he pointed out, to change the subject. “I can't imagine old Althea climbing trees with her walking stick.”

Tibby began walking slowly through the trees lining the river, scrutinizing their upper branches closely. She paused by one tree for several seconds and Alistair looked at her inquiringly.

“Have you found something?”

She circled the trunk, looking up into the tree's leaves, then shook her head.

“No,” she said uncertainly. “But the whistling sound is really strong. Come listen.”

Alistair joined her beneath the large spreading branches. “Wow,” he said. “That's almost piercing. I wonder what's so special about this tree.” He put his hand to the bark and tapped it lightly, then started in surprise when he felt it give beneath his touch. “What . . . ?” He pushed at the trunk more forcefully, and gasped as with a slow creak a section of the trunk swung inward. “It's a door!” He stuck his head into the tree's dark interior, and by the light streaming in through the door could see a set of wooden stairs cut into the wood. “With a staircase.”

Alistair ran up the steps till he came to another door. He opened it and climbed out onto a path of braided branches high above the ground. He turned to see the expectant face of Tibby Rose, and nodded. Then, with the murmur of the Winns below, he began to walk above the river toward the thick mass of treetops on the other side.

Only a few minutes later he was hurrying down a spiral staircase inside a tree on the east side of the river.
He pushed open the door at the base of the trunk and stepped out to find himself at the edge of a broad meadow stretching toward a series of rolling hills. Long grass was interspersed with wildflowers that filled the air with the scent of honey. The sun hadn't yet risen, but the few clouds in the pale mauve sky were tinged with pink and gold. It was an exquisite dawn and, as Tibby Rose, his parents and Zanzibar joined him, Alistair couldn't help but feel that he was at the threshold of something more than just a new day. Everything would be different now, he sensed.

They gazed in silence for several minutes, then Zanzibar remarked, “I get so used to thinking of our country as a pawn in a political game that sometimes I forget how beautiful it is.”

Alistair was just about to ask which direction they should walk in when Tibby said, “What's that?” She was pointing into the sky.

“Dirigible,” said Rebus immediately. “The Sourians have been using airships to patrol the borders.”

“I don't think so,” said Zanzibar. “It's the wrong shape. It looks more like a hot-air balloon.”

“Whoever it is, do you think they've seen us?” asked Emmeline. She sounded worried.

“Yes!” said Alistair. “Look—they're waving.” And he ran into the long grass, waving his own arms above his head, his heart lifting into the air with the blue balloon, for he had recognized its passengers.

Then the balloon's basket was skidding along the
ground and two familiar mice tumbled from it and raced across the meadow.

“Oh, my children!” Emmeline's face lit up as Alex and Alice threw themselves at her and she gathered them into her arms.

Alistair came up behind his brother and sister and flung an arm around each of them, and Rebus wrapped his long arms around the whole lot of them.

They stayed like that for some time, then his mother lifted her head and exclaimed, “Timmy!” Alistair saw that his mother was laughing as well as crying. “Look at you! What have you done to your fur? It's all blue!”

Alistair turned to see Timmy the Winns loping across the grass toward them.

The midnight blue mouse winked at Alistair. “See the trouble I get into without my big sister to look out for me?”

Big sister? “You mean . . . you're Mom's brother too?”

Timmy the Winns gave Emmeline a quick glance then said, “I surely am, little brother—or should I say nephew. And what names are you two going by these days?”

“Alistair,” said Alistair, “and Tibby Rose.” He blushed, remembering how he and Tibby Rose had given Timmy the Winns false names when they had encountered him in Souris. They hadn't known who to trust in those days. All the same, Timmy had seemed to know them. . . .

“You knew who we were all along,” he said accusingly.

Timmy just raised his eyebrows and gave Alistair an enigmatic smile.

“Hang on,” Alice said, “if Timmy is Zanzibar's brother,
and Mom is Zanzibar's sister, then you three are the heirs of Cornolius—and me, Alex, and Alistair are too: we're the next generation.”

“What do you mean?” Alistair asked.

“We were working undercover at the palace in Cornoliana,” his sister explained, “when—”

“You were what?” Alistair felt his jaw drop in astonishment.

“It's a long story,” Alice said. “The point is, Queen Eugenia has this hit list. She wants to kill off anyone else who has a claim to the throne of Cornolius so she can reunite Greater Gerander and rule without opposition.”

“I get it,” said Alistair. So that was why Tobias had betrayed him, why Keaters had planned to leave him to die on Atticus Island. Because as Zanizbar's nephew he was an heir to the throne. . . .

“And if anything happens to Zanzibar, Mom, or Timmy, I could be the king of Gerander,” said Alex.

Alice pulled his whiskers. “Or I might be the queen,” she said.

“Whatever,” said Alex, rubbing his cheek. “But I'm right, aren't I, Solomon?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Solomon joked. “I guess I'd better pilot this thing carefully seeing as I have the whole Gerandan royal family aboard.”

After much jostling and stepping on tails they all managed to squeeze into the basket. Alistair couldn't believe that all the people he loved were finally together in one place.

“Is everyone ready?” asked Solomon over the happy hubbub.

“Yes!” they all chorused.

“I just have one question,” Tibby Rose piped up as Solomon started the burner and the balloon drifted skyward.

“What's that, Tibby?” Zanzibar asked, resting a hand on her shoulder fondly.

Tibby put her hands on her hips and looked from Uncle Ebenezer to Rebus and back again. “What was the mozzarella doing in the icy crevasse?!”

Rebus, who had one arm around the shoulders of Alice and the other around Alex, looked startled for a moment, and then began to laugh. Soon everyone joined in, even those who had never heard Uncle Ebenezer's stories before (or maybe they had, Alistair realized), seemingly struck by the absurdity of Tibby Rose's question.