Crystal (5 page)

The light had gone! Raek had disappeared.

‘Raek! Raek!’

Behind her all was darkness. Or was there something darker, blacker, coming along the walkway? It
had
to be Raek – who else could it be? His lantern had burned out. He’d got scared, or lonely … It had to be Raek. But she knew it wasn’t.

The planks were shuddering. Something was thudding on the walkway. The wood was pulsing! The footsteps were getting stronger and heavier. Thumping. Something was
thumping
along towards her. Something much heavier than Raek …

She could hear the sound of feet, or was it paws?
Bedum, bedum
, they were drumming on the wood.
Click click
, something scratched the wood.
Swoosh, whoosh
, something heavy brushed over the planks.

Crystal looked quickly over her shoulder. Just a glimpse was enough. It was a skweener! Its head was down low, wings held close to its side, long tail thrashing from side to side. Its eyes gleamed red. A terrible low, skweening cry burst from its open jaws.

Crystal screamed. And ran. ‘Help!’

The walkway swayed from side to side, the lantern spluttered.

Her worst nightmare – a skweener!

‘Help!’

The creature was almost upon her when she felt leaves brush her face – the tree! She dropped the lantern and somehow it landed upright. The flame flickered then steadied. She was up the tree in an instant, hooking her legs over a branch and pulling herself up.

The skweener thundered into the light. She could see the whites of its eyes, the curl of its yellow nostrils, scales glinting on its sinewy neck. It was so close below her she could smell its breath, ashy and hot and stinking of rotten meat.

It lumbered past, then hesitated …

‘Skweeeen!’

It couldn’t see her. But it could smell her.

It lifted its snout and sniffed the air, pinpointed where she was and tried to spin round to head back. But the planks were as slippery as ice. The skweener’s feet slithered as it turned, claws ripping at the wood, and it crashed against the rail. The rail snapped like a matchstick and the skweener tumbled into the swamp.
Splat!
like a giant wooden spoon hitting batter.

‘Skweeeeen! Skweeeeen!’

The scream was terrible; it chilled Crystal to the centre of her being and made her hair stand on end. Shivering, she clung more tightly to her tree.

The skweener was stuck. It began thrashing against the mud, beating its wings and swirling its tail round in a desperate attempt to get free. The more it struggled and writhed, the deeper into the swamp it sank. It was a horrible thing to witness. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she told it while she squeezed her eyes shut and blocked off her ears. ‘Sorry.’

A cold sweat covered her body. She was sobbing silently, trying not to see, trying not to hear. She felt her grasp weakening and knew she’d fall at any moment. She stayed on the branch as long as she could, then finally her fingers lost their hold and she slithered down. Her legs collapsed and she crumpled in a heap on the walkway, weeping.

The skweener was barely moving now. It was covered in mud; even its gleaming eyes were blacked out. It was doomed.

At last it was quiet – except for a few bubbles slowly erupting on the slimy surface.

She opened her eyes and stared at the mud where she thought she could still see the shape of the dead skweener. That could so easily have been me, she thought.

Questrid stared at his drawing in the design book:

It was an acorn – a little smaller than a chicken’s egg – sitting in its knobbly cup. He had made it from a solid chunk of green marble. One end of the marble had flecks of darker green and brown in it and he had used that to form the eggcup. The other part of the marble had lines in it like wood grain, which had been perfect for the acorn itself. The acorn nut unscrewed from the cup base and both were hollow so that something could be hidden inside it, something like a slip of curled-up paper, or a trinket.

Questrid had finished carving and polishing it only last week. The screw mechanism didn’t turn smoothly yet, but with a little more work it would. Copper said it was a wooden thing made of stone and therefore brilliant – like him!

He had put the acorn holder on his window ledge.

Now it wasn’t there.

Perhaps it had rolled off. He began to search. There was dust under the bed, a couple of socks, spiders, but no acorn holder. He checked everywhere: in the chest of drawers, his boxes of tools, amongst his books … It had disappeared.

Questrid stared out of the window towards the Glass Hills.

He was certain. Greenwood had chucked his acorn holder into the lake.

Crystal’s pounding heart slowly stilled. Her breathing grew calmer. She could not take her eyes from the muddy swamp.

Was the skweener truly dead? Could it still rise up and get her? She wanted to turn and run, but for a long while she did not dare move. At last she convinced herself that the skweener was really no longer a threat and she began to breathe more easily.

Her mother. Moon moss. She needed moon moss. She’d almost forgotten it in her terror, and there it was on the other side of the walkway. It was gleaming pearly white and reassuringly normal. Crystal kneeled down and plucked at it with boneless fingers; she could hardly tear the spongy leaves. She pushed what she gathered into her pocket and picked up the lantern and headed back.

No Raek.

Coward! Crystal didn’t wait to find out what had happened to him but set out for Grint’s house alone. Near the Square she spotted the Town Guard and quickly hid in the burnt-out shell of an old building. She waited until the Guard had passed by and it was clear again before leaving the shelter. Nervously she checked she had the moon moss. Yes, there it was. And then quite suddenly it struck her how odd it was that her mother had asked for
fresh
moon moss. It was more potent dry. Why had her mother asked for this …? A sense of unease began to seep through her bones.

Something was not right.

A pale light coming from Grint’s windows lit up the old clock tower in the Square but all the surrounding buildings were dark.

The front door was ajar. There were voices coming from inside; they sounded angry and urgent. Crystal crept forward to listen.

‘You fool!’ Grint was saying. ‘I didn’t want her hurt! Just kept out of the way a little longer. I need time with Effie – something’s wrong with her. For some reason she was remembering things …’

‘The skweener was only to try and scare Crystal a little,’ Raek said. ‘She’s too cocky. Too—’

‘Oh, my precious skweener! Where is it now? And where is
she
? You stupid idiot! Go back and find her! Effie will never work for me if I don’t have her daughter to bargain with. I need them both.’

‘Sorry, I …’

‘Did you actually see her fall?’ Grint asked.

‘Er … I think I heard her,’ Raek said.

Crystal pushed the door open and went in.

‘You!’ They spoke at the same time.

Raek stumbled backwards, eyes wide. ‘But – you can’t be!’

A nerve twitched in Grint’s cheek but he looked at her calmly. ‘Crystal. You’re here: we were worried. Did you get the moon moss?’

Crystal nodded. She wondered if they could see her knees knocking. She held her hands together tightly to try and hide their trembling. She hoped she didn’t look as sick as she felt.

‘I was worried when you took so long. Raek shouldn’t have left you. How would I ever tell your mother I’d let anything bad happen to you?’

‘No. I’m fine,’ Crystal said. ‘How is Mum?’

‘The same,’ Grint said. ‘You’d better come and see her.’ As he went past Raek he knocked into him so Raek was thrown against the wall. ‘Sorry!’ Grint said with a smile.

Crystal followed.

Grint stood back while Crystal placed the moon moss on her mother’s forehead, put more into her slack hands and some round her throat like a necklace. ‘There, there,’ she said. ‘That will help you, Mum.’

‘She was nervous and jumpy tonight. Not at all her usual self.’ Grint looked at Crystal enquiringly. ‘Your sly-ugg told Raek everything, you know, before he left. What has Effie been doing?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Crystal said. If the sly-ugg
had
told him everything, why was he asking her? He was lying. He didn’t know anything. ‘Mum’s probably just a bit off colour.’

She looked up and was shocked to find Morton Grint very close, staring at her, as if he were trying to see inside her head. She smiled as lightly as she could. ‘I must keep an eye on her,’ she added.

‘We must
both
keep an eye on her,’ Grint said.

Effie suddenly stirred. Her eyes flew open. ‘What happened?’

‘Mum! Thank goodness!’ Crystal exclaimed. ‘I knew we shouldn’t have come tonight only—’

‘Only Effie is not allowed to miss her sessions with Morton Grint,’ Grint reminded her. ‘Is she?’

Next day Crystal left Effie sitting by the window stroking Icicle’s black fur, and forced herself to go up into the ghostly space above their apartment. She had to find that egg-shaped thing from the lake.

There were seven floors of abandoned apartments upstairs; so many rooms, all empty. The furniture had been stolen and used as firewood long ago. Her footsteps echoed loudly on the dusty floor and seemed to follow her around. She kept looking over her shoulder, thinking she wasn’t alone.

There were loads of empty buildings and derelict factories in Town. Giant chimneystacks, blocks of flats, warehouses with a hundred glass-less windows through which the rain dripped. Some of the rooms in the office buildings had machines wired into the walls but those had stopped working at whatever they did long ago. Stella had told her that once the Town had been filled with hundreds of thousands of people. They’d had
electricity
that made the machines work. Then there was the war.

After the war, Grint.

No one knew where Grint came from, or how he arrived, but he took over the Town with no resistance from the Towners. As if he were used to doing that sort of thing. He had the Wall reinforced so people couldn’t get in or out. He made rules and laws. He organized the mining of precious metals that they could exchange for food with outsiders. The Town became secure and able to sustain itself again.

Crystal didn’t go into every apartment upstairs. The dust on the floor had not been disturbed for years. She was sure her mother had not come here to hide the mystery object.

She clattered down the stairway and let herself into the flat. The first thing she saw was her mum stroking the little black cat. The word
witch
sprang into her head, she couldn’t help it. Her mother’s hair was stringy; she was muttering to herself, and the kitten was gazing at her from her lap.
Witch
.

‘Mum!’ She tipped the cat off her mother’s lap. ‘What did Grint do to you last night? Yesterday you were so, so wonderful! So different …’ She almost said, ‘So much
nicer
!’ and stopped herself. But she felt cheated, as if she’d glimpsed her real mum, and then had her snatched away.