Crystal (7 page)

It was a laboratory. The walls were lined with shelves of glass tubes and beakers, pots, bottles of powders and strange instruments. On the long metal table in the centre of the room was an open-ended steel box with large screws jutting out on either side.

Raek came in. He didn’t glance towards the window and anyway Crystal knew how hard it was to see out into the dark, but she made sure she didn’t get too close. He put the carry-box –
their
carry-box with
their
sly-ugg in it – down on the table and lifted the sly-ugg out with gloved hands. It was droopy and limp.

The window was open and Crystal could hear clearly.

‘What can I squeeze out of you tonight, my slimy, slithery, squelchy spy, eh?’ Raek said. He got down so low, so close, that mucus from the sly-ugg stuck to his hair and slimed on his cheek. ‘Secrets? Got lots of secrets for me, eh? Lovely, lovely secrets?’

The sly-ugg’s eyeballs rolled backwards and forwards on the end of their stalks. It hunched itself up as it tried to slither away, but Raek held it tight.

‘Oh no, we don’t! No escape for you! In we go, you foul slime-ball!’

Raek squashed the sly-ugg into the metal box. Its head stuck out at one end, tail at the other. Its stalk-eyes thrashed around furiously as it bucked and fought; but it was trapped. Raek tightened the screws, turning them slowly until the sly-ugg’s head began to bulge like a balloon.

Suddenly there was an awful scream. Crystal jumped. Goose bumps broke out all over her skin. She stared at the sly-ugg, at its open mouth …

The sly-ugg! The sly-ugg was screaming!

Raek was turning the screws and squashing it harder and harder. It eye-stalks flailed about, twisting and knotting up. It writhed and wriggled like a worm on the end of a line.

Crystal felt weak and sick.

Then, quite suddenly, the sly-ugg went still. Its flesh began to glow a brilliant white, as if it were hot. The light that poured from it began to form a beam and the beam of white light condensed and formed a circle on the wall opposite.

‘Aha!’ Raek roared. ‘Here we go!’

He stood back and watched the white circle where an image was gradually appearing … It gave Crystal a jolt. The sly-ugg had recorded everything it had seen at their apartment inside its head and now here it all was, replayed! Everything they’d said and done in front of the sly-ugg had been captured. She had known it was a spy, but still, it was awful to see how good a spy it was!

And if that was what Raek did to the sly-ugg, what was Grint doing to her mother?

Raek squeezed the screws a little tighter.

‘Now, slug-bug spy,’ Raek said. ‘I didn’t get as much out of you last time as I think I could have. We have to go back to that smoky day, that special day when Effie got so lively, when she began to
remember.
When she collapsed! You didn’t tell me everything. I know there’s more. You’re hiding something, little sluggy, and you know you mustn’t hide things from me. What happened? Something, something … We need to see what she got up to …’

The white circle on the wall became cloudy. Grey swirls of smoke drifted across. There was a noise like thunder, which was the sound of coal slithering out of the coal bucket onto the fire and then the whoosh of water sizzling and steaming. The sly-ugg was replaying the moment when Crystal had tried to outwit it; the time her mum had gone alone to the lake. Raek waved his hands around as if he could actually waft the smoke on the wall away.

‘… Can’t see a thing! You should have moved faster. You should have recorded everything! Mindless mollusc! Spineless slug! You’re no use at all!’

Crystal couldn’t watch any more. She was horrified to see what the sly-ugg’s spying could do, though she felt sorry for it at the same time. And somehow,
somehow
, it had not seen her mother bring back the thing from the lake. Thank goodness for that!

She edged nervously along to the next window, briefly wondering how long she’d been outside. The rain was starting up again. She was getting wetter but she doubted Raek would notice that. She just had to have a look in the next window. It wasn’t the receiving room because that was at the front of the House. If her idea was right, and Grint took Effie somewhere else, this might be the place.

She
was
right. Her mother was there.

Grint too.

There were only two chairs and a table, otherwise the room was bare. And cold. She knew it was cold because both Grint and her mother wore furs: fur cloaks, wraps and hats. Crystal had never seen anything like these skins before. Perhaps they came from some animal beyond the Wall? But why was the room cold? Why—?

Grint suddenly strode towards the window with his arms outstretched. Crystal choked back a terrified scream; he’d seen her!

‘Rain’s getting in,’ he muttered and slammed the wooden shutters shut with a crash.

Crystal leaned against the wall panting, heart thumping. What was going on?

She jumped at a small noise close by. Was someone there? She was so nervous everything made her jump. Her heart thudded fast and painfully against her ribs. She had to get back before Raek found she was missing. She couldn’t skirt the garden and go back through the shelter of the trees; she hadn’t time. As she ran alongside the house and the crumbling outbuildings, she tripped on something poking up and crashed against a shed door with a horrible metallic clang.

She froze where she landed, crouching on the ground, terribly afraid. She held her breath, hoping that no one had heard.

All was quiet, no doors opening or angry shouts. Then in the silence she heard something, some sort of animal right there, in the shed. She shot away from the door, but the creature, whatever it was, seemed to be locked in. It whimpered softly and whined. Then it sniffed wetly at the crack beneath the door. A dog perhaps? A Minty Moment had fallen from her pocket and was lying by the door. Suddenly a long tongue slipped out from the inky blackness below the door, caught the sweet and hooked it inside.

The creature cried out suddenly, slamming itself against the door with a thundering clatter. The door groaned under its weight and the hinges creaked.

It wasn’t a dog.

Crystal ran.

Questrid set off for the library, a room near the very top of Spindle House.

He rarely went there. Firstly, he wasn’t very keen on books and reading, and secondly, he didn’t like the swaying of the branches and the creaking of the timber, both of which got more violent and louder the higher up you went.

He was looking for information about the Glass Hills and the circular lake. He knew Greenwood’s sudden strange behaviour was linked to what had happened there.

Questrid took down the books that contained maps and plans of the Marble Mountains. The tallest peak in the mountains was called the Rock and his mother lived there. The Glass Hills were part of that pointed craggy chain. He found them clearly marked but not the lake. He couldn’t find the lake on any of the maps. Then he tried histories. Fishing. Boating. No book mentioned the circular lake inside the Glass Hills. It was well and truly hidden.

He was about to give up when he spotted an old, battered book of Marble Mountain folklore. He flicked through the pages, stopping suddenly at
The Gateway in the Frozen Lake
.

The story was about Pol Lake, which was as round as a plate, as smooth as a mirror, and hidden behind tall glass-like mountains. The lake remained frozen always. Questrid’s pulse began to race as he read:

…until one year, without warning, the ice will begin to melt. A perfect circle of water will appear in the lake’s very centre as the ice shrinks. The water will be of the clearest turquoise blue. It is The Gateway to the World Below. It will not be open for long and it may close behind whoever dares to risk the journey but …

Questrid turned to the next page, but there was no more of the tale, the pages had been torn out.

‘The tickets for the mines trip have come,’ Stella told Crystal as they walked back from school a few days later. ‘Remember? I told you Dad won them in a raffle.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Oh, I did tell you!’ Stella said. ‘You never remember anything – I don’t think you even listen! But, anyway, it doesn’t matter because we’re
not
going. I’m so disappointed.’ She paused as if she were waiting for Crystal to say something. When Crystal didn’t speak, she started again. ‘It was just Mum and me who
were
going, but Mum thinks it will be too scary. She says there’s rockgoyles and skweeners and outsiders who might attack … Of course, I’m not scared, but—And now the tickets will be
wasted
.’

It was the words
Mum and me
that gave Crystal the idea. Why didn’t she go with
her
mum? This was their chance to escape! Crystal squeezed Stella’s arm. ‘Stella!’

‘Yes?’

‘Could
we
have them? My mum and I? Because you know Mum hasn’t been very well and the trip would do her good, I’m sure it would. Something different. Oh, could we?’

She tried not to let the desperation she felt creep into her voice.

‘What? Of course you can. What a good idea!’ Stella said straightaway. ‘We don’t want them now … Would Effie really want to see the mines?’

‘Maybe not – but I’d like to see them. I mean, you know how I think I’ll end up there one day! Better check them out first, eh? But seriously, to be on the other side of the Wall would be such a treat for us both.’

Stella smiled. ‘I think it’s a brilliant idea,’ she said. ‘I’m so glad you thought of it!’

They had four days before the trip. Then three. Two. One day to go and they’d be out of this grey city! Crystal wanted to do something to prepare, but she knew she mustn’t. It was important she behaved completely normally in front of the sly-ugg and their neighbours. No one must know their plans. Still, despite her efforts, the sly-ugg began to watch her very carefully.

Ever since Crystal had seen what Raek did to it, she’d felt differently about the sly-ugg. It seemed it spied without trying, by accident almost, and then was tortured into revealing what it had recorded. She had started to feed it flower petals and strips of carrot, as much loffseed as it could eat. She had even once stroked its head and it had responded by nudging against her hand, like the cat.

But it was still Grint’s spy and she had to keep their plans secret.

After the last visit to Morton Grint, her mother attacked her woodcarving with new energy. It made Crystal’s heart hurt to watch her; the way she cut into the wood as if she were in search of something, as if she knew that deep inside the block of oak there was something hidden that she had lost.

A knock at the door made her jump.
Stella!
It had to be Stella and she was going to change her mind and want the tickets back and they’d never escape. I won’t answer the door, she thought. I won’t.

The knocking grew louder and more insistent until her mum put down her sculpting tools and cried: ‘Open the door, Crystal!’

It was Raek. He peered over Crystal’s shoulder into the room. ‘What’s Effie doing? Not making love potions, I hope.’

Crystal was almost too surprised to speak. Then she was scared. Did Raek know about the tickets? She swallowed. ‘No. Mum’s fine.’ She stood back a little so that he could see her mum stroking the cat. The sly-ugg saw Raek and pulled in its eye-stalks as if it had been burned.

‘She looks odd,’ Raek said. ‘A bit deranged.’

‘No, she’s fine. Thank you.’ Crystal pushed the door shut a little.

Raek’s face was very red and shiny, as if it had been scrubbed with a hard bristly brush. ‘Are
you
OK?’ Crystal added.

Raek touched his cheek. ‘How dare you ask me something so personal!’ he snapped. ‘Insolent girl! I came to tell you that Grint, Bless and Praise his Name, requires Effie to make an extra visit this evening. Same time as usual.’

‘Again? Not again! Why? We’ve been twice—’

‘Oh now, I think you know the reason. She has been seen behaving strangely. You’ve only to look at her … There’s talk of witchcraft again.’