Crystal (4 page)

‘Is there
nothing
anyone does that you don’t know about, sir?’

They all laughed.

‘Nothing!’ Grint cried.

The men cheered.

The group departed, and about five minutes later Raek ushered Crystal and her mother in to Morton Grint.

Grint was sitting in a gold chair. He was rubbing the sides of his head with his thumbs as if he had a headache. He was a small, wiry man and despite being old, still had a mass of iron-grey hair like a lion’s mane that he wore swept off his high forehead. His teeth, on the other hand, were very small and even and yellow. He remained seated as Crystal and her mother came in, but watched them carefully through half-closed eyes.

Two bright spots burned on Effie’s cheeks as if she had a fever. She looked nervously round the room. Crystal prayed Grint wouldn’t notice.

‘Something has disturbed your mother, Crystal,’ he said straightaway. ‘She looks different.’

‘I could take her home again if you want.’ Crystal’s heart was beating fast. She wished her mother would not pluck at the hem of her cloak like that, or tap her foot. She prayed she wouldn’t say anything foolish or crazy.

‘No, no,’ Grint said. ‘I wouldn’t miss an evening with Effie for anything.’

‘If you’re sure?’ Crystal said.

‘Of course I’m sure! Go now,’ Grint said. ‘Come back in one hour.’

‘Goodbye, Mum,’ Crystal called as she went.

In fine weather, while Effie was with Grint, Crystal waited on the porch. When it was raining she sat in the waiting room. But tonight she was going to go home: it was a chance for her to find the egg thing from Lop Lake without her mother and the sly-ugg watching.

She glanced up at the purple sky: just time before dark fell completely and the night curfew began.

She ran.

Her block felt very big, very empty without her mum. She even missed the sly-ugg. At least it was another living, breathing creature. Without them, the place was echoing and dismal. Knowing there were hundreds of empty rooms above her made her skin tingle uncomfortably. She sucked a Minty Moment. She had to ration her sweets because she only had a few each week, but she did love them. They seemed to give her courage.

In the evening quiet she could hear muffled thudding and pounding from the distant mines. Grint used great wild creatures called rockgoyles to dig, as well as every poor Towner who’d ever been banished. How long before being different from everyone else meant she was sent out there too?

Crystal started her search.

She looked between the folds of Effie’s few clothes in the dressing table. Nothing. She searched under the bed. She looked in the kitchen drawers and on high ledges. She didn’t even know what she was looking for. It wasn’t big. Not so small. The impression that it had been egg-shaped was strong in her mind. But what could that mean?
Where
could it be?

She searched everywhere. Nothing. She had to get back to the House before the hour was up. Abandoning her search, she ran.

By the time Crystal was racing back to Grint’s house it was almost nightfall. She slipped into the porch and steadied her breathing. The door opened immediately. Raek’s spotty red face cracked into a grin. ‘Terrible calamity,’ he said. ‘Your mother has been taken ill.’

‘Oh, no! Where is she?’ Crystal pushed past him recklessly. I shouldn’t have brought her, she thought. She was ill, not mad. She must have had a fever and I never thought—Oh, I’m so stupid!

Grint met her in the hall. ‘No need to worry, Effie’s being looked after. She asked you to go and gather some moss for her.
Moon moss
. She said you’d know it.’

‘But can’t I see her?’

‘There’s no need.’

‘I must!’

Grint’s tongue darted out like a little snake between his lips. ‘Show a bit of respect, Crystal Waters. Do try.’ He sighed. ‘Very well. This way.’

The receiving room was crammed with fine wooden furniture, rare in the Town, which was why Grint had it. He himself always sat on one of the wrought-iron chairs or even on the stone bench. She let her fingers drift over the back of a couch as she passed it, imagining she felt it ripple under her fingertips, responding to her touch. When they escaped, when they got home – wherever that was – she would surround herself with carved wooden furniture like this, and wooden floors and wooden walls and …

The room was empty. Why wasn’t her mother in there?

Grint led her out into a wide corridor.

‘Mum!’

Effie was lying on a large divan. Her face was white. Her eyes were shut. Crystal ran to her side. ‘What’s she doing out here?’

Grint shrugged. ‘She felt faint,’ he said. ‘She said you’d help. Asked me to tell you to collect moon moss for her. Fresh moon moss.’

Crystal held back her tears. This was all because of what happened at the lake. ‘I don’t want to leave her. Can’t we get a doctor?’

‘We could, but she
said
she wanted moon moss. You want to do what she wants, I suppose?’ Grint frowned. ‘She said it grew at the swamp. It isn’t some sort of witchcraft, is it? I won’t allow that.’

‘Moon moss? No, it’s just a herb. All right. I’ll go.’ She turned and almost bumped into Raek, who’d quietly crept up behind them.

‘Watch where you’re going!’ he said. He had put on an ankle-length coat and was carrying two lanterns. His frog-eyes were bulging with excitement.

He meant to go with her!

‘
He
doesn’t need to come,’ Crystal said.

‘Raek will go with you to the swamp. It’s the curfew.’

‘But – Oh …’ What could she do? She had to accept Raek’s company during the curfew because on her own she’d be arrested.

Moon moss was a tiny plant that produced small white globular flowers all over a dense mound of leaves. From a distance it looked like one giant flower glowing like moonlight. Crystal had picked some a few weeks ago for Annie Scott. And they had some at home. Surely she didn’t need to go and pick fresh leaves – but if her mum had said she should …

It was now quite dark outside. The streets were deserted; no one was allowed out unless they had special permission.

Crystal walked briskly, hating having Raek jogging behind her, feeling him watching her back. She focused on the light from their swinging lanterns making their shadows lurch into vast monsters or shrink to a weird nothing. It was a novelty being out in the dark.

‘Town Guard!’ Raek snapped suddenly.

The sound of the Guards’ boots pounding the ground had been audible for some time. Now their lanterns came into view. The light flashing off their gold buttons glittered like hundreds of watchful eyes.

‘Halt! Who goes there?’ the lead Guard asked. ‘Papers!’

Raek flashed his identity card.

‘Of course you have permission. Apologies, Mr Raek,’ the lead Guard said. ‘I thought I recognized you but I had to be sure.’

He glanced suspiciously at Crystal. ‘Is everything all right, missy?’

‘We’re on business,’ Raek snapped. ‘Morton Grint’s business.’

‘Very well.’

The Town Guards’ footsteps died away as they marched off. The darkness crept in again. Crystal shivered.

‘You and me are not so different you know, Crystal,’ Raek said. ‘I have no parents and you can hardly count your mother as a proper parent, can you? And who knows who your father was? No one. I was from the outside. I learned how to adapt. I changed. You could do that too and then you could get on. You could learn to fit in and then I think being different could be an advantage. Even though you’re a blonde freak. If you just showed a bit of respect towards me, Crystal … You’re not natural. I think …’

Crystal pulled her cloak over her hair. ‘
You’re
not natural,’ she said under her breath.

‘I don’t understand why Grint, Bless and Praise his Name, hasn’t locked you both up, I really don’t.’

Crystal sighed. ‘We don’t do any harm—’

‘He needs Effie, I can see that,’ Raek persisted from behind her. ‘He locks the door. I listen; I eavesdrop. I know she’s important to him. But there’s more. Some other link.’ His voice was low, as if he were really talking only to himself.

They passed down a street of empty houses with corrugated steel sheets nailed up over them; and across a patch of rubble and stone to the end of the broken tarmac road. One more group of Town Guards came past and checked Raek’s papers before moving off into the dark again.

‘People can sleep easy in this place,’ Raek muttered. ‘Don’t you agree, Crystal, they can sleep easy with the Guard around?’

Crystal hated the sound of their marching boots going by in the night, but she didn’t say so.

‘They are saying your mum’s a witch. The Elders are cracking down on witchcraft, Crystal. Anything that smells like witchcraft, anything that is remotely connected to witchcraft will be dealt with harshly. If you ask me, moon moss is pretty much—’

‘Mum can’t remember things. Now she’s ill.’

‘Humph,’ Raek puffed. ‘I say Effie can remember
when
she has to, and
what
she has to.’

They were climbing over mounds of debris, clattering over stones and fallen bricks. Crystal tried not to listen to him. She tried to think only of her mother and of making her better.

‘We haven’t had a witch in the Town for years. Used to burn them long ago,’ Raek went on. ‘Used to put them on a stake and burn out all the sorcery and magic. Always had a black cat, they did, and
your
mother …’

Crystal swung round and glared at him. ‘Shut up or—’ She froze; horrified she’d dared speak to Raek like that. Stella would be furious with her. She turned away quickly.

Raek smoothed his tongue over his sore lips and did not speak for a few moments.

‘Be careful. Softly, softly,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t talk to me like that, Crystal. I’ve made myself a person of consequence. Morton Grint, Bless and Praise his Name, has made me his right-hand man, and as he goes up, I go up with him. But if he goes down, well, I intend to stay up. You need to keep in my good books.’

Crystal clamped her mouth shut. She must learn to curb her sharp words. She mustn’t say anything.

They walked on down the cinder path, on towards the blackness of an old factory chimney and the swamp.

The swamp – a vast expanse of black oily mud – stretched away in front of them from the derelict chimney to the distant North Gate. Half a mile of dangerous black that sucked down anything that fell in it. Nobody who had fallen in had ever been taken from it alive. An ancient wooden walkway ran across it. Crystal rested her palm on the smoothed rail and straightaway felt stronger.

Tiny mounds of green moss and lichen grew in clumps over the swamp. Small twisted trees sprang out of miniature mossy islands. Crystal believed it had to be a good place if it had trees and moon moss.

‘Go on, then.’ Raek gave her a push.

‘Don’t touch me!’ She spun round angrily, almost hitting him with her lantern.

He was laughing at her. ‘Not scared, are you? Witch child! Alien! Silver head!’

Crystal turned away and stepped onto the planks. They were greasy with moss and mould. ‘It’s slippery. Hold up your lantern, please.’

Raek backed away from the edge of the black sludge. ‘It won’t be strong enough for the two of us,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll wait here.’ He held up his lantern though.

Coward, Crystal thought. The walkway was strong enough to take ten men, but she didn’t care, she’d rather be alone.

The moon appeared between the clouds and for a second it was reflected in the oily expanse, making the black surface appear like molten silver. The mud sighed and heaved and shifted around her, releasing nose-tingling sulphurous smells.

Moon moss. Moon moss.
She knew exactly where it was: just where a thin young oak tree branched right over the walkway. She set off, treading very carefully on the slippery boards.

She hadn’t gone far when she heard something.

‘Raek? What was that noise?’ She hesitated, listening. There was the sound of something moving, shifting.

‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Raek called from the edge of the swamp.

Crystal shrugged and went on.

Each step had to be taken carefully. The boards were slippery and she only had one hand free to hold the rail.

How quiet it was. How much darker it grew as she got further from Raek with only the light from her own lantern to guide her.

Again she heard the strange shuffling noise. She stopped and turned. Raek was still there, just a dot of light now, but still there.

She walked on, swinging her lantern from left to right. The mud glittered and sparkled in the light; little swamp creatures went skittering away into the shadows.

Thud! Flap!
What was
that
?

She stopped, holding her breath. There
was
something on the walkway. She listened intently. It was on the planks behind her! Now it wasn’t so much that she could hear it, but
feel
it; the wooden walkway was vibrating as something came towards her.

Raek. He must have changed his mind. He was following – but the footsteps were so heavy …

Crystal swallowed. She turned slowly, afraid of what she’d see.