Crystal (2 page)

There it was! Something round, something no bigger than an egg, flew out of the lake and soared into the sky. Droplets scattered, shimmering in a sun that wasn’t there. The object rose up and arced towards Crystal’s mum. She caught it, hugged it to her chest and then immediately turned and ran back to their block.

She
ran
. Crystal had never seen her mum run before. Or look so lively, so
alive
.

Crystal quickly stepped up to the lake’s edge herself.

She loved the smell of the water and breathed it in deeply. She could smell
behind
the rotten leaves and oil; she could smell the water itself, like the scent of a just-bitten-into crisp apple. The scent of water was the scent of life to her. Perhaps her mother felt that too.

The grey water in Lop Lake looked as if it went down and down forever and ever. Perhaps it did. She peered into the water’s depths but the lake held no answers to her mother’s odd behaviour.

The smoke had cleared by the time Crystal got back home. She hoped the sly-ugg hadn’t noticed her mother’s absence. It had slithered along the wall and was coiled up like a pale dog turd on a shelf close by her mum. Hateful thing. Theirs was particularly ugly: orange, dotted with grey spots and a covering of mucus and slime. It was coated with a thin layer of soot, now, too. It was watching Crystal’s mum so intently that its eyes were bulging like balloons on the end of their stalks.

And well it might! Her mum was shining, glowing! As if a spotlight were focused on her. She was drumming her foot on the hearth: tap, tap,
pound
, tap, tap, and
pound
. Icicle, their black kitten, clung on to her lap as he was jogged up and down. He looked worried.

Most days her mother sat by the hearth, dreamy and vague. On good days she made medicines. On troubled days she painstakingly chipped away at a lump of wood, a sculpture, though she never said what it was going to be. There were several odd-shaped chunks of wood in the apartment carved by her mother. One, which looked like a sort of house with a door and windows, was currently used to wedge open the kitchen window in the summer. Her mum seemed to drift around in a secret pool of quietness, never looking truly alive. But now, now she was sparkling!

‘Mum, what is it? What’s the matter?’ Crystal asked. She looked around for the thing that had flown out of the lake, but saw no sign of it.

Her mother took Crystal’s hand and squeezed it. ‘Is there something wrong with me, darling?’ Her blue eyes blazed. ‘Something the matter?’

‘Yes. No! You went up to Lop Lake. What was that thing you caught? Where is it?’

Crystal sensed the tiniest movement as the sly-ugg uncurled a little more and stretched out its eye-stalks to catch all they said. She turned her back on it.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m very well,’ her mum said. ‘I am much, much better. I know that in the end, we will get back. We will!’ She threw herself back in her chair. ‘The water was clear. Clear as
glass
.’

The Towners said Crystal’s mum, Effie, was crazy, but that wasn’t true. She was different, that was all. Silent, thoughtful and … different. And if the Towners thought she was a little mad, that didn’t stop them from buying her remedies, lotions and poultices because there was little in the way of medicine in the Town and Effie’s stuff worked. Plus, while Morton Grint, the Town leader, treated her as if she were special, she was safe.

Like Crystal, Effie was blonde with fair skin and large blue eyes. Crystal knew her mum was beautiful but the Towners preferred dark hair and dark eyes.

The other thing that made Effie different was that she remembered little of the past years and nothing of her life before arriving in the Town. All that Crystal knew of her past she had gleaned from others. She knew that they had arrived some ten or so years before, but no one knew where from or how. She had been told that at first Effie refused to speak of where she came from, then she was unable to remember. Her past had vanished.

Crystal longed to talk to someone about the extraordinary change in her mum’s behaviour, but there was no one she trusted. Stella was her only close friend but because her father was an Elder, a member of Grint’s inner circle, Crystal certainly couldn’t tell
her
.

‘What subjects are you choosing to do for Final-Sit exams?’ Stella asked as she and Crystal walked back from school the following day. It was their first chance to talk because although they went to the same school, Crystal had to sit at the back where her white-blonde hair couldn’t offend anyone.

‘None. I’m no good at schoolwork. You know I’m not. I’ll fail everything and end up working in the rationing block handing out food,’ Crystal said. ‘I won’t reach Final-Sits.’

‘Oh, Crystal, don’t say that!’

‘It’s true. As long as I don’t get sent out to the mines, that’s all I care about.’ She unwrapped a Minty Moment and sucked on it hard. ‘I’d hate the mines. I’d hate to work in the mines. I’d hate that!’

Secretly Crystal longed to escape the Town, to go over the Wall, past the mines and everything dirty and grey and falling down to – well, she didn’t know where. But to wherever she belonged, and she knew it wasn’t here.

‘Others like me,’ she went on. ‘I mean people who look different – outsiders, orphans – they are banished to the mines.’ Crystal shivered. ‘I really wonder why Mum and I have never been sent there.’

‘Effie’s special,’ Stella said. ‘Everyone, specially Grint, Bless and Praise his Name, knows that.’

Crystal could never quite tell whether Stella meant such comments kindly or not. She thought carefully before she spoke again.

‘I was thinking that instead of doing my Finals, Mum and I might try and get a permit to leave,’ Crystal said quietly.

Stella looked at her sharply. ‘Crystal! That’s like saying you don’t like it here! Or you don’t admire our leader. That’s almost treason.’

Crystal kicked some broken glass out of her path. ‘We don’t belong. We’ll never belong. We have to take the sly-ugg every week to Raek. Mum has to see Grint—’

‘Bless and Praise his Name!’ Stella said quickly.

‘But
you
don’t!’ Crystal said. ‘You don’t have a sly-ugg. You like it here, you belong here, but we—’

‘Shh! Look, there
is
Raek!’ said Stella.

‘Wonder what nasty business he’s on,’ Crystal whispered.

‘Good afternoon, Raek.’ Stella nodded politely at him and nudged Crystal to do the same. Crystal’s nod was so tiny as not to be seen.

Raek sailed past with hardly a glance at them.

‘Pompous twit!’ Crystal said under her breath.

‘Hush! Don’t! Raek is very important. You must be polite to him, Crystal. Please do try. If you tried to fit in a bit better, maybe you would.’

‘I can’t be polite to him. When I take Mum to the house to see Grint—’

‘Bless and Praise his Name!’ Stella hissed.

‘– Raek’s always so horrid.’

‘You don’t realize how lucky you are. I’ve never even been inside the House, though Dad has of course.’

‘What does Grint want to see Mum for? As if she’s a criminal!’

‘Our leader knows best,’ Stella said. ‘We’re well looked after. Some people would love the chance to go and see him like you do. And there are only about ten families with a sly-ugg in the whole Town. Honestly, you don’t know how lucky you are. Isn’t having a sly-ugg rather an honour?’

‘No! Are you mad? It watches Mum all day while I’m at school, then it watches me when I get home. We have to keep it with us all the time. It’s a spy, that’s all. What does
he
want to see Mum for, Stella? She’s ill. I think she’s getting worse. I worry. There’s something …’ She was thinking back to her mum’s odd behaviour at Lop Lake, her new spirit.

Stella played with her black hair and smiled blankly. She didn’t
want
to know. It wasn’t normal, so she did not want to know, but Crystal couldn’t leave the subject alone.

‘After each visit to
him
she seems worse.
More
confused.’

‘I’m sure you’re wrong,’ Stella said. ‘Anyway, Effie can’t be that confused because she makes good medicine, doesn’t she? She cured Mr Bolton’s leg ulcers, I heard. Her medicines are famous; everyone uses her lotions … Although Dad told me some cousin – I think her name was Annie Scott – was given stuff by your mum and now she’s worse!’

‘Annie Scott? I didn’t know she was your relation … The doctor couldn’t do anything for her so Mum’s medicine was the last resort.’

Stella fluffed up her long black hair and quickly changed the subject.

‘My mum said that Effie’s mind is so empty, you know, with her not having any old memories, that whatever Grint, Bless and Praise his Name, asks her, she gives him a clear answer. And the other thing I heard someone say – though I don’t know if this is true – is that Grint, Bless and Praise his Name, might have come from the same place as Effie. He’s not quite the same as us Towners either, really, is he? He doesn’t have blonde hair like you, but you know what I mean?’ Stella looked at Crystal carefully but Crystal was too busy thinking about this idea to notice.

‘Where did Grint come from?’ Crystal asked.

‘I don’t know … I’ve never thought about it … I thought Effie might have said … Anyway, listen, a skweener carried off a guard from the Wall last night!’

Crystal shivered. ‘I still have nightmares that a skweener will come over the Wall and get me.’

‘Me too! This one was green and had spiked wings and a long tail,’ Stella said. ‘It swooped down and grabbed this poor man. It had talons like massive hooks, Dad said – and carried him away. And you know we won those tickets to go out and see the mines? Well, what if we get attacked by a skweener when we go out of the gate? I’m scared! You don’t really want to get a permit and leave, do you? I’d miss you. And it’s not safe out there.’

‘I don’t feel safe
in
here.’

‘Don’t feel safe?’ Stella cried. ‘But this is the Town! This is our home!’

‘Home for you, Stella, but even your dad – well, I’ve heard him in the Square. He sometimes says things – not against Grint – well, not exactly, but he challenges him—’

‘Dad is loyal,’ Stella said firmly, ending the discussion.

If Crystal and her mum got a permit to leave, she would find out what was on the other side of the Wall. Surely it couldn’t be worse than here. Maybe they could travel miles and miles and find …

‘What are you dreaming about, Crystal?’

‘Nothing. We’ve got to go to the House tonight,’ Crystal said. ‘And Mum is—’

‘Yes?’

No, she didn’t dare tell her what had happened at Lop Lake. ‘Nothing.’

Questrid retrieved his sledge from the shelter of the furzz trees by the split in the mountain wall and pointed it down the hill towards home – Spindle House.

‘Yahoo!’ he cried as he pushed off. ‘Yahoo!’

Sledging
downhill
was so brilliant it was worth all the effort of lugging it
uphill
. He shot down like a bullet. Snow flew up around him, the cold wind whipped his cheeks, nipped his nose and made his eyes water. Bliss!

From a distance Spindle House looked like a giant tree; it was only when you saw the smoking chimneys and the little windows that you realized it was a house. The rooms in the trunk were shaped like slices of cake with the pointed ends cut off, and upstairs, inside the giant branches, the rooms were strange wobbly shapes.

Questrid paused for a moment on the top of the last rise and stared at the tree. He picked out Copper’s dark window. Like him, she was from both the Rock and Wood tribes, so they understood each other, though it was Wood that predominated in her character and Rock and Stone in his. She and her parents were away. He missed them. Greenwood’s window was at the very top, far away from the rest of the family. Typical. And over there was the stable building on the other side of the courtyard where Questrid spent most of his time. Home.

Questrid tipped the sledge down the rise and sped on smoothly through the gateway, stopping right inside the walled courtyard. Good fun, but it would be better when Copper was back and they went sledging and skating together again.

The two horses, Thunder and Lightning, leaned out over the stable door and snorted a greeting at him. He patted their noses and stroked their ears. ‘Good fellows. Good boys.’ Questrid propped his sledge up inside the porch by the back door and went in. Opening the door set off a draft of wind through the kitchen and sent birds rising in a flurry of wings. They burst into a noisy chatter and then settled again just as quickly. Silver, the great dog-like wolf, came up and sniffed him with interest. Questrid patted her head.

Oriole, the housekeeper, was cooking soup; her partner, Robin, was sitting at the table cradling a bird in his hands. Other birds were perched on the dresser and backs of chairs, while more flew in and out of an opening in the window.

‘This thrush has broken a wing feather,’ Robin told Questrid. ‘I’m trying to mend it.’

A large owl with brilliant sparky round eyes was perched on the back of the rocking chair. It stared at Questrid haughtily. ‘Twit twoo!’