A Gypsy Song (The Eye of the Crystal Ball - The Wolfboy Chronicles) (16 page)

The feeling was indescribable. The tickling in the stomach, the whooshing in the ears, the feeling of being on top of the whole world. It was incredible.

Soon the sun disappeared in the horizon and the moon shone from a sky of stars.

Once Manolo came closer to the forest, came the bit that he had dreaded—the  landing. Manolo leaned back as the smooth neck lowered, feeling he was going to slip off over the beak. For a few seconds it was like he was falling through thin air before he felt a heavy thud as the griffin’s four legs hit the ground.

Manolo slid off him at once holding the shield high in air.

Dzila now bent its scaly front knees and sank into what was an unmistakable bow. Manolo patted him on his beak and thanked him.

Then, Dzila’s enormous wings rose once more and he took off into the air getting smaller and smaller as Manolo gazed after him. Then a cloud drifted in front of the moon and he was gone.

He waited until the moon was shining again before he entered Vamila with the big tree trunks and let the darkness surround him. He picked up the tracks they had left there earlier when they walked through the forest. Their footprints were still there even though a lot of animals had run over them since. Manolo blew fire in a branch and used it as a torch to light his way but also to keep the animals at a distance. The night was never a time to be wandering in the deep forest with all its night creatures, he knew. But he had no choice. He couldn’t leave Sara there all night alone in the darkness.

The moon seemed to be following him and helping him finding his way when its light once in a while managed to reach him through the trees. But it also seemed to bring out other creatures. In the distance he heard a wolf howl at it and some other big animal was definitely not far from him, he could sense. He speeded up and started running. The leaves and pine needles creaked under his feet. Small animals fled from his path as they heard it. He called for her: “Sara!” Sara!”

No answer.

Except a quiet voice in his head whispering gently: “She doesn’t appreciate you, she is not good enough for you.”

Manolo shook his head to try and get the voice out. He ignored it but it kept getting stronger. It sensed his weakness and tiredness. He wasn’t as strong as the first time he had been in the forest. He had a harder time resisting that manipulating voice.

“You are such a handsome boy. What do you want with a girl like that? Her hair is always a mess, she is stubborn, she is dirty. You are a more than a great man. You are not even human, are you? No, you are “The Spirit of Fire.” But you haven’t told her that, have you? She doesn’t even know who you really are. And she doesn’t care. She is only interested in herself and she doesn’t care about you.”

Manolo stopped. He felt as if his head was about to explode. The voice was so strong now it took all of his strength to resist it. Why was it so hard? Was it because it was what he really felt inside? Was that how he felt about her?

The deeper he got into the forest and the more he gave in to listening to the gentle voice in his head the less he wanted to save Sara.

Why bother? he thought. Why care about her? She just walked into the forest and didn’t even look back once to see if I was still following her. The voice is right. She doesn’t care one bit about me. Who does ever think about me? I do all the work. But what about me? When is it my turn to be served?

Manolo had now totally stopped his search for Sara and found himself lost in his thoughts. He was tired of always having to save others. Who would ever save him? Who would protect him? Slowly his human nature from the body he had chosen to live in the last fifteen years began to take over inside of him. It was like it had a will of its own. A will that no longer listened to reason, but only to its own selfish needs. It wanted to be treated like a king, it now demanded. It was too beautiful to be running around in these dirty woods helping some ugly little girl who thought she was better than everyone else.

And as Manolo was frozen from his thoughts and unable to move anywhere, he didn’t even notice that he and Sara were standing right next to one another between two high trunks.

Meanwhile the beast of darkness, the black bear, was now in the forest, too, heading in their direction, keeping its nose on their trail, smelling its way through the forest and nothing in the whole world would deflect it from that trail.

 Luckily for the two travelers, Manolo had a strong spirit living inside of him. (Actually The Spirit of Fire was one of the four spirits that in the times of creation descended from The Great Spirit and its power was unmatched by any other spirit except for the three others, namely The Spirit of Earth, The Spirit of Air, and The Spirit of Water. Out of the four elements sprung two powers. That of love and hatred. But that is a whole different story that might be told in a different time.)

And that spirit now broke through his selfish thoughts and spoke:

“Manolo! What is in your hand?” it asked.

At first he didn’t hear it, but the spirit tried again and this time it was like a wall of glass shattered inside of his head.

“Look in your hand!”

So Manolo did.

He saw the bronze shield he was still holding on to. With his last strength he lifted it high up in the air and as the shield hit the light from the moon it shaped a blue light, like a shelter that went all around Manolo’s body and protected him.

He stood still and listened. The voice was gone.

Instead, he now saw the truth about himself. He saw himself for who he really was. It was like falling from a stage in the middle of the show. He could do nothing but laugh at himself for acting so foolish, thinking these things about himself, being all high and mighty and important.

He saw Sara standing right next to him. She was talking, her lips were moving but no sound came out from her mouth. All of her body was frozen in the same position that she had been in when he left her. Her eyes were wide open and stared stiff into empty air. Her hands were reaching out as if she had been saying something important when a sudden freeze came upon her.

Manolo walked towards her with the shield. Then he went as close to her as possible putting the shield over her head. The blue light covered her body and her arms started creaking. Little by little it was like she thawed. First her fingers and hands, then the arms and legs started moving. Her neck made a huge creaking sound and she moved her head. She looked at him, blinking her eyes as if she saw him for the first time. And maybe it felt a little like that in the beginning because she had to get her memory back little by little, since the truth sometimes can be very hard to realize.

And then she burst in to a bubbly laughter.

The most beautiful enchanting laughter Manolo had ever heard. The laughter came because she now saw everything for what it was and realized just how silly she had been.

“Manolo?” she said.

”That’s me.”

”Wow,” she smiled and held a hand to her head. “You won’t believe it. I had the strangest dream.”

Manolo smiled. Not because it was funny, but because he did believe it. And he knew how she felt.

“Come on,” he said. “We’d better hurry up and get out of here.”

As they passed through the forest carrying the protective shield over their heads, Manolo blew a small fire to erase their trail behind them. Any smell or footprint was gone, and when the black bear a few seconds later reached the spot where the two had been standing, he saw the trunks and the moon in the sky, but there was no one in sight.

The trail he had been following was broken off and, try it as he might, he could not pick up their smell again.

14

THE CITY OF LIGHTS

Towards sunrise
, our two travelers reached the end of Vamila. The high pine trunks stopped and they found themselves by a small mountain lake. The lake, however, had almost dried up and had become more like a bog. Clouds of mist drifted over them. It was said about that particular sort of mist that the Bog-Woman was brewing her magical potion. But that was just a saying. As far as Sara knew no one had ever really seen this supposedly bog-woman.

They were both hungry but they had run out of food and water. There was nothing left for them but to keep on walking. The sky was dark but every now and then they spotted their own cloud leading them through the bog.

Here and there they distinguished little clumps of trees as they walked through the muddy water. It was next to impossible to make out where there was solid ground. Step by step they tested the fitness of the ground trying not to sink in. The further they went into the bog the more sluggish became their movements.

How long they waded and waded no one knows, but the mist grew thicker and thicker making it almost impossible to see where they were going.

At one point Sara wanted to sit down, feeling ever so tired of all this wandering, fighting the heavy mud. She told Manolo that she just had to sit down for one second.

“Don’t!” he said.

But it was too late. She sat down in the mud, not caring about anything but to get a little rest. Soon after she sank in to her belly.

“Sara,” Manolo said. “You need to get up before you sink in too deep and can’t get up.”

She shook her head.

“I am so tired, Manolo. I need to rest.”

The mud around her seemed to slowly be swallowing her and Manolo grabbed her arms.

“Get up! You must not give in.”

Now, Sara too realized that she was sinking and started fighting it.

Desperately Manolo pulled both her arms.

“Help me, Manolo. I can’t get up!” She looked at him with great fear in her brown eyes.

Her arms hurt badly as Manolo pulled all he could. Sara tried to climb out on her own but as she did she just sank in deeper. And then she panicked and began to desperately fight against the mud that was grabbing and holding her body.

“Don’t move,” Manolo said. “It will just make it worse.”

He looked her in her panicking eyes and she thought for a moment of the stallion that they had lost in the Singing Cave. It too had panicked only making things worse for itself. So she calmed down, taking in a few deep breaths while the mud reached her neck. Her eyes looked at Manolo’s begging for him to save her.

“I am going to pull one big one now, okay?” he said.

She would have nodded but she couldn’t. She had a hard time moving any body parts. Only her head and her arms were above the mud.

Then she felt like her arms were being ripped off her body. Manolo pulled with all of his strength and slowly she felt the mud let go of her shoulders and neck. With a strange squashing sound that sounded to Sara like a great deep sigh, the mud gave up and let her body go.

With some cleaner water from a pond in the bog they got her almost cleaned up and continued their walk.

“You have to keep moving,” he said with great concern in his voice. “If you stop, you’ll sink in.”

For hours and hours the two of them walked the bog while the mist got thicker and thicker. It seemed to be wrapping itself all around them and at one point they couldn’t even see their own hand if they stretched it out in front of them, let alone the cloud in the sky they were supposed to follow.

They were on their own walking in thick water up to their waist.

At last, when they had gone heaven knows how far, they heard a soft sound in the distance. They stopped and listened.

The sound came closer. It was a singing voice,  gentle and small and so very, very sad. Almost sobbing at times. This lamenting song felt like a warm breeze in the cold and moist air. Then it stopped in one place, rose and fell, rose and fell until it seemed to be all around them, moving in circles.

They stood still and waited.

Little by little, the circle became smaller and out of the thick mist emerged four singing girls, all pale and white as the cleanest sheet. They were dancing around them. Around and around. Spinning and turning, reaching out their hands trying to entice Manolo to dance with them. But as they turned, Sara and Manolo both noticed that the girls were hollow in their backs.

“They are elves,” Manolo said. “The saying is that they appear on the front to be lovely and beautiful but inside they are hollow and empty.”

Sara stared at the young women who were more beautiful than any human she had ever seen. Their faces were fair and white, the hair blond and light, swirling as they danced.

 “They are going to try and lure us to dance with them. Once you do you will lose your mind. They will either dance with you until you drop dead of exhaustion or they will make you go crazy and take you with them to Álfheim, the city where they live with their king, Völundr, the ruler of the elves. In there you will be their prisoner.”

 “So just don’t dance? Is that it?”

“Yes. By all means just don’t dance.”

The elves kept on singing and dancing and little by little Sara began to understand the words.

Oh listen to us.

Listen to our song

We dance for you

All day long

Listen to us

Please be nice

Dance with us today

We will not ask twice

Oh come ye and dance

Please, it is for your best!

Or else before the rooster crows

Silver knives will put your heart at rest

The Bog-Woman is coming your way

She is cooking her potion as we speak

Look at the mist she is cooking up