Read Online The Frost Child by Eoin McNamee - Free Book Online

the gate quickly, she ran down the field. When she got to the riverbank she could clearly see the gaunt, lifeless building beyond. Puzzled, she stared at it. Owen and Cati had told her about the Workhouse when the Resisters were awake. She had no idea that it was disguised as this crumbling ruin when the Resisters slept.
    There was no way to cross the river except by an old tree trunk. Rosie climbed on and gingerly made her away across. But the bark was slippery with ice and Rosie was weak. Halfway across she lost her grip and tumbled off. She braced herself to hit water, a fleeting thought crossing her mind that she could not survive the night in the open in wet clothes. She landed with a bone-numbing crunch--the river was frozen solid.
    She picked herself up and made her way to the far bank, her whole body aching. She clambered up the bank and looked around. The Workhouse loomed above her, silent and forbidding.
    "Owen!" Her voice echoed in the trees. She climbed the bank toward the Workhouse. There was ivy growing through the windows, and it was roofless. She called out,
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    "Owen! Cati! Dr. Diamond!" time and again. For an hour she explored the Workhouse, calling as she went. In the end she sank down on a stone.
    Her mission had been in vain. She was shivering uncontrollably and knew that if she did not find some shelter for the night, she could die in the snow. Wearily she rose to her feet and walked to the river. Downriver, the town lay sleeping, but instinct forced her away from it. She was a traveler in time, a refugee from a great city whose presence the people of this world had not even guessed at. Even if people could see her through the shadows of time, she could not risk contact with them.
    Finally she had her first piece of luck since she had stepped through the Hadima gate, if luck it was. Rosie wandered off the snow-covered path along the river and found herself floundering on a hillside, forcing her way through snow-covered bracken. Suddenly there was something slippery underfoot. Her feet shot out from under her and she fell flat on her face in the bracken. Her eyes pricked with tears of self-pity. Angrily she wiped them with her sleeve, then blinked and blinked again. She was looking down through the scratched sheet of perspex into a room that was dimly lit by the glow of a piece of magno. There was a battered old sofa, and a table with a little cooker on it, and she remembered Owen talking about a place he went to be on his own. She had stumbled on the Den!
    It took another half an hour of casting about before she found the entrance. Then, swaying from exhaustion,
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    she fell into the cozy little room. She saw the sleeping bag on the sofa. With one last effort she pulled the bushes across the entrance, then without another thought climbed into the sleeping bag and closed her eyes. Once more a snatch of music drifted through her head before a sharp pain drove it away. The pain faded and she fell into a deep, deep sleep.
    Dawn broke clear and cold over the Workhouse and over the snow-covered town. A few birds sang, but only to keep warm, and the others saved their energy in the hope that a thaw would reveal some food. There were few other sounds--sometimes the sharp crack of the sap exploding within a frozen branch or the rustle of snow sliding from a roof to the ground, but otherwise it was quiet. There was no one to hear the faint whistle of a streamlined hull cleaving the air as the Wayfarer appeared in the sky, and swooped downward.
    Cati had lowered the sail at Owen's signal. For several hours the Wayfarer had skimmed across time, never faltering, while Owen stayed at the helm and Cati stood anxiously in the bow. They had moved much faster than on the outward journey, but time was still short. Owen worked the tiller so that the craft swooped low over his own house.
    "To the Workhouse! To the Workhouse!" he shouted as loud as he could, and as they sped away he saw his mother's bedroom curtain move. The