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.
7
Something’s Not Right
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.
‘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.’
8
Greenwood is Low
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?
9
Spying on the Spy
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?
Crystal Page 4