The Frost Child by Eoin McNamee

open.
    The corridor outside was flooded with moonlight. She stopped and listened. Somewhere in the house a man snored loudly. She slipped down the corridor. The back door sagged on its hinges and she had no trouble ducking past it and out into a world changed beyond recognition. The snowfall had made even Johnston's yard look magical. Old cars and truck chassis and piled scrap metal took on strange and fantastic shapes. With a nervous glance over her shoulder Rosie ran into the yard and took cover behind one of the snow shapes. She was used to cold weather. Perhaps, for all she knew, it snowed all the time in Owen and Cati's world, although they had never mentioned it. She listened. From an open window somewhere in the house she could still hear the snores.
    The only way out that she could see was the tree-lined avenue, so she ran into the eerie shadow of the dead trees. She waited for a moment, then ran to the next. On she went down the avenue, through the broken gates and out into the road. Free at last , she thought. Now to find
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    Owen . She set off, her feet barely denting the surface of the snow.
    In Johnston's bedroom, the snoring stopped for a moment. Johnston's great head rested on the pillow. One eye opened and stared without blinking into the darkness. Then it closed again and the snoring resumed.
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    Chapter 7
    They had been sailing for several hours when Cati pointed over the bow.
    "Look!"
    About a hundred yards from the bow a shape rose above the water, slick and black like a whale's back. The creature sank below the waves again and the next time it rose it was facing toward the Wayfarer . In shape it was somewhere between a seal and a dolphin, with two fins on its back. It had a drooping mouth with long supple lips and great elegant whiskers that arced into the air. There were round markings around its small black eyes that made it look as if it was wearing old-fashioned glasses.
    "What on earth is it?" Cati said, looking on the strange creature with delight.
    "It's a schooner, I think," Owen said, remembering the skeleton of the beast that hung from the ceiling in Hadima's Museum of Time.
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    "Oh, I remember!" Cati said. "Doesn't it feed off time or something?"
    "I think so."
    The schooner stared at them in a mournful way as if it was thinking sad but dignified thoughts, then, with a flick of its tail, it was gone. Cati stared at the spot where it had appeared until it was out of sight behind them.
    The waves died down and soon it was almost flat. The Wayfarer slowed to a gentle pace. They sat on the hatch cover, eating the rest of the chocolate biscuits, lulled into a sense of security by the calm--that is, until Owen looked behind them.
    "We should have kept a better watch," he said quietly. Thirty yards behind them, and closing fast, was a vast bank of silvery fog.
    "I hope it isn't poisonous!" Cati gasped as the fog bank swept over them.
    The fog wasn't poisonous, but it did bring a strange sensation, half a smell and half a feeling.
    "It smells ..." Cati's sensitive nose was twitching. "It smells like ... like stars!"
    "Do stars have a smell?" Owen asked.
    "I suppose they must. It's the only description I can think of. Kind of cold and beautiful and far away. What do we do now?"
    "Keep on sailing, I suppose. We're moving slowly enough and there isn't anything out here to run into, as far as I know."
    The Wayfarer sailed on soundlessly through the silver
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    mist. Owen could barely see the mast, and every sound they made seemed to be muffled. After a while they started to notice a strange thing. When they spoke to each other the words took a long time to cross the distance between them, so for a second or two after their mouths stopped moving, the other still had not heard what had been said.
    "What do you expect from a fog in time, I suppose?" Owen said, and waited for his words to reach Cati.
    "Kind of funny, all the same," Cati said. "And look at this." She moved her arm swiftly through the mist in