Of course her mother had not stolen the candlestick. That weasel, John Carter, had planted it in their seats knowing exactly which ones they would be sitting in. And she had actually thought that because Mr Carter sometimes spoke up against Grint he might have been on their side. But he was no different from the rest. The injustice of it all! What a false friend Stella had turned out to be! The Guard had been expecting them at the West Gate all along …
West Gate.
She tried to think but her brain felt like treacle. Her mother had mentioned the West Gate to Grint. She must have seen it in the icicle thing. A fortune, that’s what she’d said. And she’d told Grint about it just as she told Grint everything … and Grint, or Grint and Carter, had fixed for them to be arrested.
They would never escape now.
The sly-ugg slithered warily out of its box and waved its eye-stalks about. It oozed over the table and came and sat close to her.
Crystal moved away. She wanted the kitten; she wanted to stroke his smooth warm fur and have him cuddle under her neck.
The sly-ugg slimed over the table, keeping its eyes focused on Crystal all the time. Crystal watched it, vaguely wondering what it was up to. Then, as if it hadn’t noticed the table edge at all, the sly-ugg dropped into the kitten’s basket with a damp plop.
‘That’s not your bed!’ Crystal tipped the sly-ugg out and the kitten’s red cushion tumbled out with it.
And something else.
Something egg-shaped.
Crystal knew immediately it was the thing from Lop Lake that her mother had caught.
She picked it up and rolled it around in her fingers, examining it. It was a beautiful green stone acorn in an acorn cup. As she rolled it, the two sections fell apart. For a second she thought it was broken, until she saw the tiny roll of paper inside.
Crystal’s knees gave way and she sat down with a thud.
The sly-ugg had wormed up the table leg and was staring at her. It was smiling, she was sure it was smiling and yet she didn’t think they could, that they did. Had the sly-ugg shown her where the acorn was? Was that it? Of course, it probably had watched her mother when she came back from Lop Lake that day when the smoke had cleared. Of course it had seen what Effie had done with the acorn and yet it hadn’t revealed anything to Raek – even under torture. She looked at the sly-ugg again. It was definitely, certainly smiling. Had it come over to their side? Had she got a friend where she least expected it?
Crystal got up and brought the sly-ugg a few leaves of loffseed. Its eyes gleamed and it gobbled them up with delight. She was sorry now; sorry for all the bad thoughts she’d had about it. She quickly heaped more herbs on the chair for the sly-ugg before picking the acorn up again.
Somehow this was good, this acorn felt good – it felt hopeful. Greenwood, whoever he was, was hope. But where was he? How did he exist in Lop Lake? She never for one moment doubted that the acorn and its message were for Effie and her. They were. She knew it.
She quite suddenly wasn’t sad any more. She actually felt optimistic and almost happy. It was bizarre.
She turned the slip of paper over and wrote on the back of it. Carefully she put the message back inside the acorn and screwed the two parts tightly together.
She paused at the doorway – the sly-ugg wasn’t going to stop her. It wasn’t going to cry out. It went on nibbling quietly on the leaves, looking up at her only for a second with a kindly look, before returning to its food.
She was free.
Outside, the sky was overcast and heavy. The trees’ shrunken leaves trembled in the wind and the smell of the lake came down to meet her.
She stood at the water’s edge, breathing in the magical scent of water; and thinking of her mother, she threw the acorn into Lop Lake with all her force.
13
Questrid’s Plan
Snow was falling in the Marble Mountains, large light snowflakes that drifted and clung to everything. As Questrid worked outside in front of the stables, he acquired a thin covering of white, too, like sugar icing.
‘What’s all that noise, Questrid? What are you doing?’ Robin cried, coming out into the yard. ‘Silver’s barking in sympathy.’
‘Caw, caw,’ the jackdaw on Robin’s shoulder cried.
Questrid was kneeling in the snow. ‘Oh, nothing,’ he said, waving a hammer around.
‘When people start hammering and banging,’ Robin said, ‘and make a lot of noise which they don’t normally do, and then call it nothing, it’s usually something.’
Questrid grinned. ‘Sorry. Secret.’
‘You’re not up to anything you shouldn’t be, are you?’ Robin asked, feeding the jackdaw a slice of apple.
‘Nothing I shouldn’t be doing, I promise.’
‘Only we’re responsible for you,’ Robin went on. ‘We don’t want anything to happen to you.’
‘You can trust me, Robin. I’m making something—’
‘Out of wood?’
Questrid looked squarely at Robin. ‘Yes, wood. If Copper can do it, I can too. I’m just as much part of the Wood tribe as she is.’
‘She’s not a natural with wood and neither are you! That looks like a tabletop! I can’t think why you’d want to make a tabletop.’
‘Robin!’
Robin chuckled. ‘OK. I understand you don’t want to tell me.’ He walked away whistling, and the jackdaw joined in.
Questrid had to admit that his carpentry did look like a tabletop, but it was supposed to be a raft. Working with wood did not come easily to him, and he was using flighty-wood, which was notorious for being difficult. But it was also known to be the best for building things to float. He’d lashed the planks together with thin rope and filled the gaps with glued-up sawdust.
Why did anyone want to do anything with this woody stuff? he thought, extracting a long splinter out of his finger. And why, when my father was from the Wood tribe, am I so much more a Stone person? Come to think of it, from whom do I get my tracking skills? He scratched his head. Ah me! One day I’ll invent a stone boat that can follow wave patterns!
At last he was finished. He went to tell Oriole that he would be gone for the afternoon and to get the latest news on Greenwood from her.
‘He’s still very peculiar,’ Oriole said sadly. ‘I don’t know … He’s talked more the last day than he ever did all the years I’ve been here! It’s like something’s been unlocked or broken open or something. Mind you, it’s all gobbledegook. What is wrong with him?’
Questrid shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Anyway, he’ll be fine here with you and Robin looking after him, won’t he?’ he said.
‘Of course he will. You take care!’
Questrid tied the raft and paddles on top of his sledge and set out up the hill, pulling it behind him.
He arrived at Pol Lake a few hours later.
The icy walls rose up steeply around him, trapping the still, fresh air. There was no doubt it was a magical place, but what secrets did it hold? Was there really a gateway to another world as the book said? And what could it have to do with Greenwood’s odd behaviour?
He tramped across the ice pulling the sledge over the smooth glassy surface behind him. He was alert to any cracks or warning groans meaning the ice might give way. A couple of metres from the meltwater he stopped. He untied the raft and the makeshift paddles, and left the sledge there. Now he inched forward, pulling the light raft behind him. When the ice was so thin that it creaked and sunk under him, wetting his boots, he stopped. He got gently onto the raft and pushed off from the ice.
After four heaves and arm-aching pushes, Questrid was afloat in the magical pool. He held his paddles and let the raft drift. The only sound was the water lapping gently and the soft sighs of the ice shifting around him.
He paddled right into the centre of the pool and took out a thick wedge of glass from the safety of his backpack. He had fitted a holder round it so he could place it on the surface, just like a large diving mask.
He
was kneeling, about to put his face right up to the glass, when a light breeze suddenly stroked his cheeks and he stopped what he was doing.
The sun appeared, startlingly bright as it slipped out from behind the great white billowing clouds.
The water shifted and a bubble blew up and exploded with a pop right in front of him. The raft rocked. He steadied himself. He felt his heart pitter-pattering: he almost laughed.
Ripples flipped and waved and skittered.
Something was coming! He could see something charging up through the depths below like a torpedo. It got closer and closer and then shot out with a splash, soaring straight out and up into the air.
His acorn holder!
It soared through the air, tumbled onto the ice and rolled away, safe from the water’s edge. Questrid turned back to where the bubble had exploded. Quickly he laid the glass mask on the water.
He had no idea what to expect but he knew there’d be something.
What he saw was a lake. And a girl.
It was as if he were looking down through the top of an hourglass; the view below narrowed and then spread out again. Far below, there was a small round lake of dirty grey water. Bent and gnarled trees surrounded it. Beside the water stood a girl with white-blonde hair. And she was staring straight up at him.
‘Hello!’ he yelled. ‘Hello! Can you see me?’ He thought she had seen him, thought a faint jolt had passed through her, and was so excited that he wobbled the glass. The vision trembled and blurred and disappeared.
By the time the water was calm enough to look through again, the girl had disappeared.
14
Prison
Crystal gazed at the ripples on the lake where the stone acorn had disappeared. I’m going as crazy as Mum, she told herself. As if there could be anyone at the bottom of the lake. As if there is anyone anywhere who can help me.
And yet she had thought for one fleeting moment that she’d seen a face a long way off, peering up at her through the water. But there couldn’t have been anyone … Could there?
She trudged back home, less hopeful without the feel of the smooth, cold stone acorn in her hand. She built up the fire in the living room, glad to have the crackle and hiss of the burning coal. What wonderful stuff coal was, she reflected. She knew it was made from ancient dead trees that had got squashed and gone solid. Those trees had captured the sun’s strength and now here it was being released as fire. Wood was wonderful stuff.
Seeing her mother’s little brown envelopes of powders and herbs drying near the hearth, she threw them on the fire too. No more of that, ever! Any herbs were strictly for the sly-ugg to eat and nothing else.
The sly-ugg was watching her closely.
‘Thank you for showing me where the acorn was,’ Crystal told it. ‘I’d never have found it. I don’t know what it means, but it made Mum happy and it made me happy. And listen, Sly-ugg, I know what Raek does and I’m never taking you back there. Ever. I promise. No more squeezing. OK?’
The sly-ugg’s eye-stalks danced and a golden glow began to creep over its skin.
‘Happy?’
The sly-ugg’s mouth curved into a wide smile.
‘Aha! I was right. You can smile! Well well, if I’d known that before maybe I’d have been nicer to you. Sorry, Sly-ugg.’ Crystal looked at the clock. ‘We’ve a long wait. The guards told me I’m not allowed in the prison to see Mum until four o’clock,’ she said. ‘Now it’s just you and me.’
The day dragged by. Crystal tidied the rooms, stared into the fire, talked to the sly-ugg, worried about her mum and wondered about the acorn.
At last it was time for them to go.
‘Come on, Sly-ugg!’ The sly-ugg obligingly oozed into its carry-box on its own. ‘Mum always said we were prisoners,’ she told the sly-ugg as she set off towards the prison, ‘but I didn’t believe her. Or rather I didn’t understand what she meant. But she was right. Grint trapped us. He’s made her forget everything so she can’t go home because she doesn’t know where it is.’
Nearer the Square there were more people on the streets and she noticed how the Towners avoided looking at her. Mrs Babbage was the only person who spoke to her. ‘Don’t worry, dear, your mum will be fine. Grint, Bless and Praise his Name, will see sense in the end. And in case you’re worrying, I’ve got the kitten,’ she said. ‘He seems to have moved in with me!’
‘Thanks,’ Crystal said.
Mrs Babbage patted her arm, looked around a little nervously, as if she shouldn’t be seen talking to her, and hurried off.
‘They know about Mum being in prison,’ she told the sly-ugg. ‘I suppose you’re a prisoner too, aren’t you?’ she added. ‘You have to live with us and I bet you don’t want to.’
Three girls from her school swung round the corner and almost bumped into her.
‘Oh, look at Crystal Waters! Talking to herself like she’s barmy!’
‘Mad as her mad mother!’
‘Are you off to the prison to see her?’
‘Now you’re not so grand, are you?’
‘We always knew you two were bad ones,’ the first said again. ‘Now it’s proven. A thief and a witch!’
‘Liar!’ Crystal cried. ‘We’re not!’
‘It’s all over Town. Your mother’s going to be tried as a witch!’
‘My mother is not a thief or a witch,’ Crystal said quietly. ‘Grint, Bless and Praise his Name, will release her very soon. It’s all been a mistake.’
The other girls shrieked with laughter. ‘Yeah! Sure!’ They strolled away, arms linked, chattering.
‘We never liked you anyway!’ one of the girls called out over her shoulder. ‘Freak!’
Crystal joined the dismal queue of people quietly waiting outside the prison. She leaned back against the gritty walls and stared up at the grey sky. The sly-ugg stared out too. She wondered if it was listening to the Towners around her and if it would remember everything it had heard.
While she waited for the doors to open she crunched her way through two Minty Moments, savouring the strong sharp taste because she knew it might be a long time before she got more.
At last the big iron doors squealed open and the guards guided the visitors in.
The prison block was horrible. It smelled of dirty socks and rancid cheese. Every time the visitors were moved from one room to another, doors clanged shut with nerve-jangling squeals and keys grated as they were turned in locks. Finally Crystal was shown into a vast, echoing hall where the female prisoners sat at small tables dotted around the room. They each wore identical brown dresses. It wasn’t difficult to spot her mum’s blonde hair amongst all the dark heads, and Crystal ran towards her.
‘Mum, Mum! It’s so good to see you! I’ve been so scared!’ Crystal hugged her tightly. ‘Are you all right? They haven’t hurt you?’ She searched her mother’s face for a clue to her state of mind.
Effie looked round the room furtively as she patted Crystal’s arm. ‘I’m all right, darling,’ she said. And she did look well, neither crazy nor in a trance. ‘My mind’s clearing. Now I’m locked in here, he can’t get me, can he? Something has shifted, come unstuck. I’m beginning to get my mind back. Now I’m away from him and the eye-cycle …’
‘Icicle?’
‘Eye-cycle. E-y-e-c-y-c-l-e,’ she spelled out. ‘It tells fortunes. It was made by pixicles.’
‘Mum, all these words! What’s a pixicle?’
‘Of course, you don’t know. Pixicles are very small pixies that lives in the Marble Mountains. They build beautiful ice houses – at night when they put their lights on you can see right through them. They wear soft blue, white and grey clothes and if they stand very still they’re so pale they just disappear into the landscape. But when they want you to see them they wear brightly-coloured hats. They are good folk, the pixicles … Grint was using me to see the fortunes and pastunes in the eye-cycle and to give information to him. I don’t have the skills the pixicles have, of course, but we’re all from the W
ater tribe and that’s why I could read the eye-cycles. Sometimes I foretold important things that must have helped Grint stay in power.’
‘I saw you. I spied through the window, but when I told you about it later you didn’t remember anything at all.’
‘Didn’t I? Each time I read the eye-cycle I lost more memory,’ she said. ‘Each time my brain got cloudier and softer and I got more stupid. I saw a fortune that showed us at the West Gate. I must have told Grint! But anyway, Carter set us up. He got Stella to talk about the tickets and pretend they didn’t want them. She made sure you took them, didn’t she? Then her father made sure we were stopped and arrested by planting that candlestick. Your plan was doomed, Crystal – right from the start.’
Crystal nodded. ‘Sorry, Mum. What’s Mr Carter got against us anyway?’
‘John Carter wants to get rid of me because he suspects that I help Grint predict things. And he’s always been suspicious of us. He’s as narrow-minded as the rest of the Towners. And I never trusted Stella.’
‘I thought she was my friend.’
‘Poor thing!’
Crystal didn’t want to dwell on Stella. ‘I found the acorn, Mum, the one that came from Lop Lake.’
Effie looked puzzled. ‘I never had an acorn, did I?’
‘You did. You don’t remember. I’m sure the acorn sparked off your memory. Remember how happy you were when you found it? No, you don’t, but you were. And, you don’t know about this, Mum, but the sly-ugg’s changed. It’s much nicer. That started after the acorn came. I’m sure it did, because it didn’t tell Raek about you going to the lake and everything. It’s all connected. And, Mum, you’ll never believe it, but there was a message inside the acorn! It said—’
She stopped. The room had grown quiet and still; everyone was looking towards the door. There stood Raek.
Crystal saw a tiny movement out of the corner of her eye. The sly-ugg, which up until now had been listening closely, was inching under the table out of sight.
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