Crystal (6 page)

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I know. Neither do I … Listen, it’s Saturday,’ she went on. ‘Food store day. There might be some green vegetables. You’ll enjoy that, won’t you?’

Effie shrugged.

‘Oh, come on, Mum, even the sly-ugg likes to get out!’ she added, sweeping it into the carry-box. ‘Let’s go.’

They went to the food store once or twice a week. Each person got a certain amount of food depending on their age and what job they did. If you had money you could buy extra rations. A little of the food was grown in Town, but most was tinned and left over from before the war. If it weren’t for the medicines Effie made, there would be no extras such as Minty Moments for Crystal.

They stood in the long queue with their tickets ready.

‘Hello, Effie.’

‘Hi, Stella,’ Crystal said. ‘Mum, say hello to Stella!’

‘Stella?’ Effie looked surprised, then cool. ‘Stella. How is your father’s cousin? How is Annie Scott?’ she asked.

Stella’s smile slipped from her face. ‘Haven’t you heard?’

‘What?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘Oh, no! Dead? I’m so sorry, Stella!’ Crystal said.

‘Dead? Oh dear. Oh dear, but I gave her—I must sit down,’ Effie said. She sat on one of the hard metal chairs that lined the hall and looked worriedly round the room. She began jiggling the sly-ugg’s carry-box on her knee as if it were the kitten.

‘Oh dear, I thought Effie’d have known. I’m sure it wasn’t her fault – I mean, of course it wasn’t.’ Stella lowered her voice. ‘I didn’t know Annie Scott very well.’

‘Nor did I. But I
am
sorry,’ Crystal said.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard, you manage to miss most important things, Crystal, but Grint, Bless and Praise his Name, is really cracking down on witchcraft. Anything can be called sorcery, Crystal, anything, so do take care …’

Crystal nodded.

‘You know that somehow Grint found out all about Fred Furkin trying to go over the Wall,’ Stella went on. ‘He’s been arrested. What would Mr Furkin want to do that for? There are only swamps and deserts and mines out there. Isn’t Grint amazing? He knows everything, doesn’t he?’

Crystal shrugged. She couldn’t concentrate. She glanced round at the queues of people shuffling up to the counter. Were they staring at Effie? Did they think she was a witch? Her mum was ill, that was all. It wasn’t
her
fault about Annie Scott. She’d developed mysterious lumps on her arms and neck. No one could have cured her. There, those old biddies were staring at Effie and whispering about her, she could tell. Why didn’t they leave her alone?

‘But I’m sure you’ve nothing to worry about, Crystal,’ Stella continued.

Which only made Crystal more worried.

‘We don’t blame Effie,’ Stella went on, watching Crystal closely. ‘For Annie, I mean.’

‘Mum tried to help her,’ Crystal said.

‘Of course she did. The trouble is, everyone’s talking about it, I’m afraid. I thought you should know,’ she added with a sympathetic smile.

‘No one told us.’ Crystal swallowed with difficulty; felt a tightening in her insides. Had her mum made some awful mistake? Was she losing her touch? ‘I did hear someone had seen a skweener in Town,’ Crystal said quickly, changing the subject.

‘A skweener?’ Stella shivered. ‘No! Really? Right here in Town? I think I’d die if I saw one. They are so scary!’

You have no idea just
how
scary, Crystal thought with a shudder.

Effie and Crystal walked slowly back from the food store with their bags of provisions. Crystal tried to chat brightly, but it was so hard. She was fretting over what Stella had said. And she wished her mother wasn’t plodding along so heavily beside her looking distracted and … weird.

They were passing an area of scrub, when Effie stopped suddenly. She pointed at a sapling by the wall. ‘Look! Oh look, Crystal, a dear little
Spindle tree
! I don’t remember ever having seen one here before!’

‘How do you know its name, then?’

Effie looked dazed. She blinked and shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe,’ Crystal whispered, pressing the meshed side of the carry-box against her skirt so the sly-ugg couldn’t hear, ‘maybe the place we came from, the place we used to live, had Spindle trees?’

Effie shook her head. ‘Don’t ask me. I remember nothing. Nothing at all.’

‘If you could remember where we came from, Mum,’ Crystal went on quietly, ‘we could go back there. The other day you said—’

‘How can I remember something when there’s nothing there?’ Effie shrugged. ‘It’s empty, empty … But … there’s specks floating and sometimes I almost grasp one … Like a—’

‘What?’

Effie squeezed Crystal’s arm. ‘Like a snowflake.’ She straightened up; her eyes gleamed with a sudden burst of light. ‘Just the thought of it! I feel so much more me.
Snowflake!
Come on. Come!’

They walked home quickly.

Crystal put the sly-ugg’s carry-box down on the table and swivelled it round to face the wall. She pretended to forget to open it. The sly-ugg could push the lever that held the side closed, but it would take a few minutes – precious minutes she would have unobserved with her mother.

Effie was pulling her bed out from against the wall. She lifted up the torn lino beneath it to reveal wooden planks.

‘Mum?’

‘Shh!’ Effie prised out a strip of wood and took something out from the cavity below. Crystal almost stopped breathing. It must be that thing from Lop Lake. At last!

But it wasn’t.

‘It’s a picture,’ Effie said. ‘It’s for you!’

It was a tiny, framed painting of snow-covered hills. A minuscule man, woman and girl tramped up towards a high peak. Everything was covered in white.

‘Touch it,’ said Effie.

Crystal touched it. The white surface depicting snow was cold to touch. And it was raised; she could feel it with her fingertips.

‘It’s been carved out of spindle wood,’ her mother said. ‘I put it away for safekeeping and forgot … It’s for you. He’d only just made it. A present.’

‘Who made it?’

‘It was … He was … Sorry, Crystal, I don’t remember.’

‘Never mind.’

Crystal had never seen real snow. It was never cold enough for the lake to freeze or for snow to fall, though she’d heard about it. There were distant places where it snowed.

‘So that is snow. It’s so beautiful!’ Crystal said. ‘It’s wonderful. I feel, I feel …’ She gazed into the picture. ‘I feel I know that place. Is it where we were before?’

‘Is it? I don’t know. Mountains. Hills. Everything covered in white. Snowflakes as big as leaves. A sky so blue and a sun so big and yellow … There’s never a sun like that here! Never a sapphire sky. Never anything glinting and sparkling …’

She squeezed Crystal’s hands in hers and smiled.

‘Oh, Mum!’ Crystal had never seen her look so beautiful and happy. ‘It must be where we were before we came here—’ She spotted a movement; the sly-ugg had oozed into the room and was listening to them with great attention. ‘I think it’s where we came from,’ Crystal said quietly. ‘It must be beyond the Wall. We’ve got to get back there, Mum. We have to!’

Effie sighed loudly. She sank down on her bed. As quickly as her interest and energy had flared up, they’d died again.

‘We’ll never get out. Nothing is worth bothering about. We are lost, Crystal. Lost.’

Questrid had searched his room again. The acorn holder was definitely missing. It
had
to be what Greenwood had thrown into the lake. He was determined to try and talk to him about it as soon as he could.

Next day he was in the kitchen helping Oriole prepare lunch, when a redwing flew in through the window and landed on the back of a chair beside him. A tiny roll of paper was tied around its left leg.

‘It’s from Greenwood,’ Questrid said, reading the message. ‘He says thank you for lunch and don’t worry about him. He wants to be left alone. I get the feeling he’s a bit low.’

That was a nuisance. He was determined to try and talk to him about it as soon as he could, but he didn’t want to admit to Greenwood that he’d spied on him. It was very difficult. But then everything about Greenwood was rather difficult. He was calm and kind and solid, and yet Questrid got the feeling he was rather sad. When all the family was together Greenwood was the first to leave a meal, the last to stop work. He was a shadowy splinter of a person.

Questrid turned the slip of paper over and over in his hands. Everyone in the house used the birds to send messages to each other as a matter of course. A small slip of paper, a few tiny letters …

Questrid had not shown anyone the acorn holder except Copper. He’d wanted it to be absolutely perfect before he’d shown it off. Had Greenwood perhaps found it and worked out that it was hollow? Had Greenwood in fact been using it to
send
a message, like in an empty bottle, and not, as Questrid had first thought, been throwing the acorn away?

But then where had the message been going?

The next day, Effie and Crystal had a surprise visit from one of the Town Guard. He brought a summons. Effie had to go to see Grint again that evening.

But why again so soon? Crystal wondered. Was it because Annie Scott had died? Or was it because of her mother’s recent odd behaviour? Or was Raek going to try to scare her again?

Crystal had relived that awful flight from the skweener over and over. How could Raek have done that to her? Raek was more hateful than she’d ever imagined he could be. And now because of him the poor animal had died a dreadful death. She would hear the sound of its cries and the thrashing noises in the mud forever and ever.

She must be careful, really careful.

Raek opened the door for them. He didn’t mention what had happened on their last visit. He looked narrowly at Crystal and then snatched the sly-ugg’s carry-box from her and set it down on a marble sideboard.

‘Put your umbrellas in there,’ he said. ‘Don’t let them drip on the floor. Grint, Bless and Praise his Name, will see you straightaway. It’s wet so
you
’d better sit in the waiting room,’ he told Crystal. ‘Come on, Effie.’

‘Why does he want her again?’ Crystal asked.

Raek assumed a look of disgust. ‘She was no use last visit, was she?’ he said bitterly. ‘She was ill. Grint, Bless and Praise his Name, wants Effie tonight. Effie must do as he says!’

The small waiting room where Crystal sat was bare except for a line of benches around the walls. No one else was waiting to see Grint. Crystal sat sucking a sweet and staring at a door in the corner. She had never really noticed that door before.

The house was silent. Crystal got up and tried the door. It wasn’t locked. It opened onto a long corridor. The walls were close; the floor was made of uneven stone slabs. At the end was a small green metal door.

Crystal went back to the waiting room and sat down. She was shaking. Could she go out that way? Out into the space behind the House and perhaps spy on Grint? Ever since she had found her mother lying on that divan and not in the receiving room, she had been suspicious. Where did Grint take her mother when Crystal left? What did he do to her?

Of course the green door could be locked, but … it might not be.

She got up swiftly, went down the corridor and tried the green door at the end. It opened. Two seconds later she was outside, behind Grint’s house in a high-walled garden.

The rain had almost stopped, but anyway Crystal loved the rain. She liked to feel a thin veil of it covering her bare skin; she loved the damp earthy smell rain released from the ground. She loved getting wet.

She ran straight to a group of tall thin trees and stood there looking at the House. This was dangerous! She could hardly get her breath, as if she were wearing a too-tight belt. She’d be in terrible,
awful
trouble if she were caught …

There were two dimly lit windows on the ground floor of the House. One, she was sure, would be where her mum was. Crystal laid her hand against the slender tree; it exuded a scent – a sort of clean greenness, which made her feel braver.

She scampered over a patch of soil and tufts of grass; the ground was rough with shards of pointed steel, broken pipes and rocks. She stopped beside one of these windows and peeped inside.