A Gypsy Song (The Eye of the Crystal Ball - The Wolfboy Chronicles) (8 page)

To kill Sara the Mighty One.

By the time Manolo and Sara had traveled for three days, the bear caught up with them. They had stopped in a clearing by a mountain stream and  were eating bread and drinking water, when the black bear spotted them between the pine trees.

Manolo and Sara were laughing at something Manolo had said earlier. Sara petted the black stallion and made sure he got enough to drink and grass to eat. She didn’t see the red eyes staring at them between the trees. She didn’t hear the heavy breathing or sense the danger that was right next to them.

But nevertheless she suddenly rose from the grass, looked at Manolo and said to him: “We shouldn’t waste any more time.”

He immediately agreed and in a few seconds they both jumped on the back of the horse. Just as the bear entered the clearing and threw its paw at them they galloped off and disappeared between the pine trees.

Then they were gone.

While the black bear had lost their track and was searching for them, they traveled for another couple of days until they had no more food left. Then they set camp and Manolo went hunting and brought back four rabbits they could cook over a small fire that Sara made.

“We will soon be reaching the Singing Cave,” he said while they were eating.

“And what is that?”

“They say a spirit is sleeping in there. And she will stay asleep as long as the singing doesn’t stop,” he said.

“The singing?”

He nodded while blowing on the campfire causing it to flame up. Sara looked at him, impressed.

“The singing comes out of the cave. They say it is the earth that is doing it. The cave is very deep. It goes right into the burning center of the earth.”

He handed her a piece of meat.

“What kind of a spirit is it?” she asked while eating.

“It is the spirit of Cantabria.”

“Cantabria?” Sara remembered hearing that name before.

“She was a princess who gave her name to this chain of mountains. A snake-wizard was in love with her, but she wouldn’t have him, and one day he got very drunk and raped her. Nine month later she gave birth to a serpent. She ran away to the woods, afraid of her father’s anger. Alone, she poured out her story to the forest but when she did, she attracted the attention of the wild beasts and they ripped her to pieces. Later on, the wizard that loved her got sober and went to look for her but found nothing but her shattered remains. Heartbroken with grief, he put the pieces together and laid her to rest in this cave demanding that the surroundings join his mourning. He caused the whole earth to shiver while he created these extremely high mountains as a graveyard for her. He wouldn’t let her go to the world of the dead so he trapped her spirit by making the earth sing it to sleep in the cave.”

Sara drank water and wiped her mouth with the top of her hand like she always did. (Something Mrs. Schneider often had commented upon with the remark that “that was not the way a nice young lady wiped her mouth.”)

“So what happens if the singing stops and her spirit wake up?” Sara asked almost missing Mrs. Schneider and her small comments about her manners for a while—but only almost, that is.

“If her spirit wakes up she will be able to travel over to the other side and leave this world. But the story says that the wizard is still watching over her and he will take whoever wakes her up with him into the center of the earth and in there they will burn for eternity.”

Sara had a lump in her throat.

“And we are passing this cave?”

“We have to go through it to get to the Wild Witches Valley.”

A few hours later they stood at the entrance of the cave. They both got off the horse since it was difficult for the stallion to walk on the rocks. It was a big cave, at least ten times as big as Sara, she thought as they entered.

“The important thing is to be extremely quiet,” Manolo said.

So they walked without making a sound. Only the sound of the stallion’s hooves gave an echo in the cave.

As soon as they entered the cave, Sara had a feeling that someone or something was behind them, following them, but every time she turned to look there was nothing but darkness.

As they went deeper, they began to hear a weak singing. It sounded somewhat like a whooshing in the beginning, but as they walked it became louder and more beautiful but dangerously alluring. The light disappeared completely after a while, and Manolo lifted his torch high in the air so they could all see where they were walking.

The air got moist and every once in a while they heard a drip of water fall. Small animals fled as they arrived. Spiders, roaches, and scorpions crawled on the walls and some even on their feet.

Bats flew over their heads making a shrieking sound, causing them to duck their heads. Sara had never seen bats before and found them quite fascinating. Sara had a connection to animals that no one ever understood.  She loved all sorts of animals, often more than she loved people. And sometimes she would talk to them, tell them her troubles or if someone had been bad to her at school, like she often had done with the neighbor’s cat when she lived with the Schneider’s at Reidenburgerstrasse. She liked to talk to them, because they always listened, they were never too busy for her and they never interrupted with something they thought was more important.

So now you understand why Sara didn’t get scared by the presence of all these animals in the cave, not even as they went even deeper in and the cave became even more alive. Not even when they saw the biggest insects she had ever seen.

“Are you sure that there is an opening at the other end of the cave?” Sara whispered after a while.

Manolo hushed her and signaled that they should hurry and move forward. He, too, sensed that something was following them. So they hurried up trying to be as quiet as possible. Even the stallion seemed to be able to walk quietly. Somewhere in the middle, they found steps that they climbed and they were now walking at the edge of a deep canyon.

“Look,” Manolo whispered suddenly while pointing down in the canyon.

Sara uttered a shocked sound. A burning mass of lava ran like a river beneath them. Sputtering and spouting, the lava seemed to be trying to reach them. Burning rocks landed every once in a while on their path but never hit any of them. Sara sensed the anxiety rising in the stallion and as they went, it began to slow down and she had to talk calmly to it to convince it to continue.

They came to a long wooden bridge that went over the river of lava. Sara looked around to try and find another way, but this was the only way if they were to move on. The path they were following stopped here.

The bridge looked old and unsafe. It had a couple of holes in it and in some places even entire planks were missing.

“We can’t walk on this bridge,” Sara whispered. “It is too dangerous.”

“We have to,” Manolo said. “It is the only way across.”

 Sara looked at the stallion that was already backing up. She wasn’t scared to enter the bridge for her own sake. She would be just fine, but she was concerned about the horse. He had a fear in his eyes and that is never good in a horse’s eyes. Once they give in to fear there is no turning back. They run. (And when they do run they only look back at the danger that they are trying to escape. They never look ahead, which means they might run into everything and everyone they are passing. Therefore you should never stand in the way of a horse running from something.)

“Come on, stallion,” she said and began to walk, pulling it by the bridle.

The bridge made a large creaky sound when she put her weight onto it. Her heart pounded in her chest. It would never hold the weight of the horse. Underneath her feet, the burning lava seemed to want her to fall into it. It seemed to be waiting for her to slip or fall through a hole in the bridge.

Then she took a difficult decision. She started unloading their bags from the horse.

“We need to leave the horse,” Sara said. “The bridge won’t hold his weight.”

Manolo nodded. Even though this meant they had to walk the rest of the way and even though that meant it would take them much longer to reach their destination they both knew this was the right thing to do. It was the only thing.

But unfortunately it was too late. At that moment Sara walked back to release the horse, the fear took the better of the stallion and it balked pulling Sara, who was holding the reins, into the air. Then it started to neigh loudly while it threw itself back and forth kicking and balking.

“STOP!” Sara yelled when she got her feet back on the ground, but it didn’t help and she had to let go of the reins. Just at the same time, one of the horse’s legs slipped and it started to fall down the steep edges. Sara grabbed the reins again, and while the horse fought to get back up, she and Manolo pulled with all they had, helping it to almost get back on the path. Then it slipped again and fell further down. Sara and Manolo held and pulled, but the horse was far too heavy for them. It neighed out so loudly, the sound echoed in the cave. That long high-pitched sound kept on going and going as the horse fought for his life. And then Sara saw something happening in his eyes.

It gave up.

Sara looked at it and yelled that it should keep on fighting, that it shouldn’t give into the fear, but it was too late. The stallion slipped even further and she and Manolo had to let go of the reins if they weren’t to be drawn down with it.

They heard one last neigh as the stallion hit the burning lava that instantly swallowed it. And then he was gone. Their beautiful black stallion, their friend and companion.

The cave was quiet again and there was nothing but the sound of the lava. Having loved the horse, Sara fought the urge to burst into tears.

“Listen,” Manolo said.

”What? I can’t hear anything.” She wiped away a tear that had escaped despite her effort to hold it back.

”Exactly. The singing stopped.”

They looked at each other with alarm.

“We have to hurry,” Sara said and stepped out onto the creaking bridge.

Carefully, she took one step after another out on the bridge over the running lava. It kept squeaking and creaking but it didn’t break, and after having jumped a few holes and balancing like a tightrope artist she finally reached the other side.

Manolo followed. He slipped once in the middle and caused Sara to scream, but after that he managed to balance his way on the old bridge and get to the other side.

From there they walked as quietly and carefully as they could. Every once in a while Sara couldn’t help but to look down at the burning lava as if she was expecting to see her stallion coming out of the lava again. But he was gone.

They reached a door and behind that door they found a chamber with a monument of stone. In it they guessed lay the remains of the princess Cantabria and her trapped spirit. But right at that moment the monument cracked in two pieces down the middle in a big explosion.

Manolo grabbed Sara and threw her to the ground.

A horrific scream filled the room so they had to cover their ears, and out of the monument oozed a white smoke. In it Sara was sure she saw the face of a woman, screaming, her eyes filled with heartbroken sorrow. The smoke found a crack in the stone chamber and disappeared through it.

Sara’s heart stood still for a couple of seconds before she could get up and move on. They walked carefully, still sensing that something or someone was behind them. Since they didn’t see anything, they passed the monument and tried to reach the door at the other end. But as Sara tried to grab the handle, it turned into a hissing serpent that snapped at her. She removed the hand and stepped backwards. As she did, she felt like she was standing on something. It was moving.

The whole floor was moving.

Manolo lowered the torch so they could see what it was. Snakes. Snakes all over the floor. They twisted themselves up their legs and snapped at them. Sara shrieked and tried to kick them to get them off of her, but they were climbing her everywhere. Manolo used the torch to make them withdraw.

“They are afraid of fire,” he said.

But the snakes soon had them cornered.

Manolo kept trying to get the snakes to move away but more and more kept coming in front of them. All of a sudden in the middle of the pile of snakes a figure arose of a man that soon turned into a big wizard. It was as if he grew out of the pile of snakes. Only after a few minutes did Sara notice that the wizard was not one single body, but was made of innumerable long and short snakes.

His hair and arms were snakes hanging down hissing and snapping at her. Even his face had red eyes and a mouth and teeth similar to those of a serpent.

He hissed and looked at them with anger. Then he raised his wand high in the air. It had a stone at the end that lit up the dark chamber.

Sara felt like the blood in her veins froze. Then she looked at Manolo and saw something strange happening to him. His face was changing. Like sand moving by the force of a strong wind, his skin was moving in his face, on his hands and his whole body. It seemed to be altering him, changing him. He was growing and soon became as big as the snake-wizard in front of them.

Then Manolo made a sound, like a groaning, and he set himself on fire. He became one big burning torch wavering at the snakes and wizard. Sara saw the light reflecting in all the snakes’ eyes in front of her and the hissing sound rose.

They began to move, all the snakes at one time as the fire scared them off. They backed off as quickly as they had appeared. As they did, the wizard crumbled in front of her eyes. He disintegrated and thousands of snakes fell onto the floor and disappeared into cracks.

It took a while for Sara’s heart to stop trying to jump out of her chest. She sat at the floor attempting to catch her breath. Manolo quickly returned to his own self and his body fell to the ground. He was quiet for a long time, and Sara was suddenly afraid that something bad had happened to him. But then she saw his leg move and little by little he woke up. He held his hands to his head like he had a big headache and after a while he tried to get up.