Crystal (12 page)

‘You remember our icy eye-cycles in our gardens, don’t you?’ Grampy asked. ‘We are the best ice sculptors for miles around. Our eye-cycles are best-special to us, showing us the future and the gone-away-past. But you may not know that they are priceless-valuable and we never, never let anyone who is a non-pixicle have one. Not ever. Too preciously-special to let others hear a fortune or a pastune, too much danger of someone else-other misusing them and doing bad—’

‘I remember you let the girls look in them as a treat when we stayed with you,’ Questrid said, ‘but I got the feeling they only got a hint at the future—’

‘Clever-brainy boy. Face-features do not hint at existence of a working mind. Ha ha! Just my little fun-joke. It’s true we can see more in the eye-cycles than any other Water person. Certain-sure more than non-Water types like you. In the wrong hands of the wrong sort, an eye-cycle can be a dangerous thing.

‘And this is why we’re presently-here,’ Grampy said. ‘We have heard a fortune singing and ringing and calling out. Another eye-cycle, you understand? Not an eye-cycle in our village, but
another
one—’

‘What’s this got to do with Grampy’s temper?’ Questrid interrupted.

‘Wait. Listen. We were amazedly-flabbergasted to hear it,’ Squitcher said. ‘How was this possible? Another eye-cycle! Where? How?’

‘So we set out on Boldly Seer to seek it out,’ Grampy said. ‘Even though I was knowing in my heart where the fortune rang-sang from.’

‘Huh, the silly old man! Wouldn’t tell us! Wasted all that time!’ Squitcher said.

‘Humph. Silly young man! You took some long-time-ages to find it,’ Grampy retorted quickly.

‘Where was it?’ Questrid asked them.

‘Pol Lake—’

‘Pol Lake! How weird, because—’

‘Don’t interrupt. Pol Lake is hidden in the folds of the Glass Hills, frozen from top-most to bottom-most,’ Grampy said. ‘From bottom to top it freezes, except for once on a rare-occasional moment when it is not frozen and then a gateway opens and you can slip along through to the other side.’

Questrid thrilled at the words. ‘Yes? I know. I mean I sort of know. Where to? Where’s the other side?’ He could barely speak with excitement.

‘I don’t know! The other side, that’s all I can tell you,’ Grampy said quickly. ‘I threw the eye-cycle in there to spite my father. I told you I was a fearful, brimstone-temper boy.’

‘You threw the eye-cycle into the lake?’ Questrid said.

‘Yes. And some person has got it down there and they are badly-wickedly employing it. We flew over the lake and saw the melt hole. We heard the eye-cycle singing a fortune; the tune was coming up through the hole—’

‘But hold on,’ Questrid interrupted him. ‘I don’t understand. It must be years ago that you threw it in – but only now that you’ve heard it?’

‘Oh, Lanky One, what questions and questions!’ Grampy said.

‘But he deserves a polite answer, Grampy,’ Squitcher said. ‘We think that when Grampy threw-tossed the eye-cycle into the hole it didn’t reach the other side, but got trapped-lodged in the ice. Frozen up and iced there. Maybe for years and years it slowly sank through the ice. I don’t know. We thought we heard it ten years-long ago but we weren’t sure – there was an ice melting moment then also. Now the melt hole is open again and out comes-singing the sound—’

‘Our sound! Our eye-cycle! Someone is using it! This cannot happen,’ Grampy said. ‘It must be stopped!’

‘So that’s why we’re here,’ Squitcher said. ‘We need your help to go and find-locate it and bring it back.’

‘But, but—’

‘You are being a jolly Stone-Wood person,’ Squitcher went on. ‘You are perfect for passing through. We are ice pixies, yes from the Water tribe, and yes we can pass through, but look at us! So small and minuscule. What could we do down there?’

‘And if we
did
go down,’ Grampy put in, ‘they’d keep us – whoever they are – make us tell what’s in the eye-cycle. Not good. Much better
you
go, Lanky Boy. Lanky Boy can’t do anything useful with the eye-cycle.’

‘Well—’

‘So please, dear friend, will you help us?’

The power was slipping away from him; Grint could feel it. The Elders he’d spoken to that morning had not looked him in the eye. They had not laughed at his jokes or clapped and cheered as he spoke. How was this possible so suddenly, he wondered? After all he’d done building up the Town. Just one day without Effie and he was already losing control. He should have nipped John Carter’s rebelliousness in the bud.

He decided to call a further meeting in an attempt to quieten things down and regain some control.

The Elders grouped in the hall, muttering and whispering. Grint climbed onto a big marble table to speak. He could hear desperation in his voice and tried to slow down his speech and steady himself. He wiped away the sweat that had broken out on his forehead. He had to make them see sense. Otherwise he would lose Effie and he could not afford for that to happen; not if he was to have any chance of remaining their leader.

‘We must all thank Mr John Carter for apprehending Effie and Crystal Waters,’ he said, trying to smile through his gritted teeth. Whatever he did, his voice rumbled and grated as if it were tired. ‘Mr Carter has been very diligent … I agree that Effie stepped out of line when she tried to leave the Town but—’

‘Stealing! Stealing, don’t forget!’

‘And I know some of her dabbling with herbs and flowers might seem—’

‘
Might seem?
’ John Carter shouted. ‘She killed my cousin, Annie Scott, with her so-called medicine!’

‘Now, now, we have no proof—’

‘She’s not like us,’ someone shouted. ‘She doesn’t look like us. Nor does her daughter. We don’t want them here!’

‘I fail to understand—’

But the Elders shouted Grint down. ‘She’s a witch!’ John Carter cried. ‘We’ve talked it through. We Elders have consulted and we agree she is a witch and must be tried by us. Maybe she’s bewitched you, Grint, Bless and Praise You, maybe that’s why you think she’s worth saving!’

‘We don’t want a witch in the Town.’

‘She should be put to the witch test!’ Sam Smith, Carter’s friend, called out. ‘Who agrees?’

Everyone in the room raised their arm in agreement.

‘No, no!’ Grint had to shout to be heard. ‘This is just the sort of superstitious rubbish I wanted to eradicate from the Town! She
is
different, but she is not a witch!’

‘All right for you to say that!’ Henry Timms cried. ‘You’re protected here in your big house with Raek to look after you, doctors to tend you. We have nothing except the likes of Effie Waters, and if her magic does kill us who do we turn to then, eh?’

‘Yes!’ another cried. ‘She’s killed! She’ll kill again. I say test her. See if she is a witch!’

‘The ducking stool will prove it!’

‘The two of them want throwing out of the place,’ Sam Smith said. ‘They’re odd. Never belonged.’

‘No, no, not the ducking stool,’ Grint said. ‘You’re wrong! That’s from the dark ages. We can’t—Haven’t I always been right? Don’t I know always what will happen? I’m telling you—’

‘But now
we’re
telling
you
!’ John Carter cried. ‘This time
we
are making the decision. And if she’s not a witch, it won’t hardly matter, will it?’

‘That’s right, because if she’s innocent, she’ll come up unhurt and if she’s guilty, she’ll drown!’ Henry Timms said.

‘Ah, I don’t know,’ Sam Smith said. ‘If she comes up not drowned doesn’t that mean she is a witch?’

‘Let’s just do it!’

‘Yeah! The sooner the better,’ another man called.

‘We’ll build the ducking stool right away!’ John Carter shouted. ‘Come on, men! A good ducking in Lop Lake will soon tell us just what sort of a woman Effie Waters really is!’

Questrid hugged his big coat round his shoulders. A wind was blowing up and snow swirled off the stable roof and scattered around them.

‘Wow. I need to think about this.’ He got up and paced round the yard nervously. ‘I can’t say I’m not scared, because I am. Go through the melt hole? Wow. What if I drown? Or if I do get through to the other side, what if I never come back?’

The pixicles looked at each other sympathetically, as if it were they who were having this problem. They shrugged.

‘Would be a jolly disgracing-shame,’ Grampy said. ‘Tragic-sad.’ He didn’t sound sad.

‘If only Copper were here,’ Questrid said. ‘She’d know what to do.’

‘Oh, the lovely Coppery person! I am loving her!’ Squitcher said, slapping a hand on his knee. ‘I am wishing she was here too. She is always having such good ideas.’

‘Great. Thanks,’ Questrid muttered.

‘Oh, Lanky Boy, we are never forgetting your help in the past. Never. And it is you who are here and who we need to help us now. Will you do it?’

‘First I must talk to Greenwood. He knows about this lake, but he’s …’

‘The Uncle Greenwood of Spindle Tree House? I have heard Coppery One talk of him. A bendy-wood person, isn’t he?’

‘Yes. But he started being odd after he went to Pol Lake and there’s the acorn and now you come with this story about the eye-cycle … They’re all connected.’

‘Please do go see him. We will not go-leaving you until we have an answer in the jolly affirmative-yes mode,’ Squitcher said. ‘Then we will go back home with our eye-cycle.’ He folded his arms. ‘We will wait here.’

‘You can’t just sit here all night!’

‘We will be very jolly,’ Squitcher said, smiling. ‘All is chilly-well here.’

Questrid gulped. He looked at the two tiny pixicles sitting on the bench swinging their little legs backwards and forwards; both had their beady eyes fixed on him like a pair of pale birds watching their prey.

‘You’re jolly good with your nose and your eyes,’ Squitcher said. ‘A tracker. A hunter. You would be finding our precious eye-cycle easily.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

‘Well, we will sit and wait,’ Grampy said, taking a swig of his fizzy drink. ‘You are the one we choose. Thank you.’

‘Oh, please—’

‘Coppery One would not be taking so long thinking this one out,’ Squitcher said, playing with a ball of snow. ‘But then she’s very clever-brainy, is she not?’

Questrid jumped up and brushed the snow off his coat. ‘I’ll go see Greenwood now.’

He knocked on Greenwood’s door. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ he called out rather breathlessly. ‘But I need to ask you something. Are you well enough for me to come in?’ He steadied himself against the wooden wall trying to ignore the sway of the tree around him.

‘Go away!’ Greenwood shouted. ‘I need to be alone!’

Questrid went in anyway.

Greenwood was lying on his bed in his dressing gown staring up at the ceiling. He did not look round at Questrid.

‘How are you?’ Questrid asked gently. He felt embarrassed to see Greenwood reduced to such a feeble figure.

‘I’m not here,’ Greenwood said weakly.

‘Oh.’ Questrid stared out through the three windows at the snowy mountains, but the landscape moved as the treetop bent in the wind and he was hit by a wave of sickness. A sudden gust shook the branch so badly that two books fell off Greenwood’s desk.

‘Happens all the time,’ Greenwood said lightly. ‘Suppose you feel it more; Stone and Rock in you.’

‘You don’t look well. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I had to come.’ Questrid sat down beside the bed. ‘It’s about Pol Lake.’

Greenwood sat up sharply. His face was much more lined than Questrid remembered it. ‘What? Why? Why
that
lake? Why my darlings and that lake?’

Questrid patted Greenwood’s arm and tried to smile reassuringly. ‘Greenwood, let me tell you why the pixicles have come and what they want me to do.’

When Greenwood had heard Questrid’s story, he swung himself off the bed, stood up and stared through one of the windows. He was trembling. ‘That lake is dangerous. I know it is.’ He ruffled his hair with a shaking hand. ‘Are you asking me to give you permission to go?’ he said at last. ‘Or are you asking me for some other reason?’

‘Greenwood, I’m sorry, really sorry, but I saw you – at the lake …’ Questrid pulled out the stone acorn holder from his pocket and held it up. ‘I saw you throw this into the water—’