The Crystal Heart Read online

  ‘But who cleans the room?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, an old woman who is specially brought over from the mainland. But she’s never seen the witch. She’s blind.’

  ‘Blind!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Yes. If she wasn’t, she’d have to wear a blindfold, like Lieutenant Romus and anyone else who goes up there,’ said Serek. ‘Plus, the witch is made to wear a veil whenever there are any visitors. Remember, if your eyes were to meet hers, you’d turn to stone.’

  ‘So no one knows what she looks like?’ I said.

  Serek shook his head. ‘No. And nobody wants to, either.’ He leaned forward. ‘I’ve heard that if she meets your eyes, she can burrow into your mind and read your dreams. And then she destroys you.’

  ‘I don’t really understand how that power can remain to her when she’s locked in the Tower,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it supposed to ward off all magic?’

  ‘It does,’ said Marcinek, ‘but I guess the bosses think it’s better to be safe than sorry. I tell you what, if I had to go up there, I’d make certain I was wearing a blindfold! And if ever you draw the short straw, Kasper, you’d better do the same thing!’

  ‘Ha! I’m neither a blind cleaner nor a bigwig, just a lowly kitchenhand,’ I retorted. ‘So there’s no chance of my going up to face the witch.’

  ‘And I would keep it that way,’ said Franz. ‘Now how about dealing those cards you’ve got in your hand?’

  Despite her fearsome reputation, the witch seemed to eat and drink like anyone else, for her food was prepared in the kitchens and sent up the Tower by a contraption called a dumb waiter – a mechanical platform that went up a narrow elevator shaft from the cellar. I’d seen the food before it went up – and there were certainly no eyes of newts or toads’ legs or whatever you expect to see on a witch’s menu. No, the witch ate the food we ate, which is to say, big hearty stews and the occasional roast – nothing fancy. Our cook, Flamel, prided himself on his plain meals. ‘Food fit for soldiers,’ he’d declare, waving his spoon around. ‘And if your society ladies ever visit, they’ll have the same menu, no matter what!’ Franz and I would look at each other and stifle a desire to laugh. For what lady would ever visit the island, anyway?

  Only once did anything trouble the even tenor of my days. I was crossing the courtyard on some errand when I happened to glance up at the single window of the Tower, and just for an instant I saw a blurred shadow move behind the dark, barred glass. My pulse quickened. I thought to look away, just in case the power of the witch’s glance could pierce through the glass. But I was much too curious. Look as I might, though, I could see nothing beyond the merest hint of a form, nothing more. Suddenly, I became conscious of an odd feeling in my throat – a thickening, a choking. Quickly, I looked away – and when I looked back, she was gone.

  I told my friends about it that evening. ‘I feel stupid that I looked away so quickly,’ I confessed.

  Franz laughed. ‘You’d have been stupid if you hadn’t looked away!’

  ‘You’d have been a lunatic,’ Serek chimed in.

  ‘No, you’d have been a statue,’ said Marcinek, ‘frozen there with your mouth wide open like a goldfish.’

  They’d never seen anything at all at the window, not even a shadow, not even the faintest shadow of a shadow, and they intended to keep it that way. ‘Don’t look up there again,’ Franz advised me.

  I nodded, but truth to tell, a part of me wished I’d seen more. I sneaked glances up at the window over the following weeks, but I never saw anything else. And in time, I forgot about it.

  Three months into my time on the island, and it all felt normal to me. The island, the Tower, the unseen prisoner – it was my life now. I was homesick at times – I missed my parents, the village, my beloved woods, my old friends. But I had made new friends, and despite the pot-scrubbing and floor-washing, life on the island was much better than life in the recruits’ hall with that bully Gawel bellowing in my ears and having slops served up on tin plates. Flamel’s food might be plain but it was hearty and good, and we young guards were all treated fairly.

  I wrote to my parents several times about life on the island, and they replied saying how pleased they were to hear I’d settled in well. They were proud of me, just as Commander Los had said they would be. They could hold their heads up high not only in Fish-the-Moon but in the market town nearby, because no one from our region had ever been chosen for the Tower Guard. I was by way of being a local hero now, they said. This made me happy, though I was honest enough to admit to them that I had started out as a lowly kitchenhand.

  ‘From little things, big things grow,’ my father had answered.

  ‘Take care of yourself, my dearest child,’ my mother had added. She still thought it was unsafe. I understood that from far away it could look like that. But from close by it was all so different. So reassuring. So normal.

  Until the day it all changed.

  Kasper

  It was a day like any other. I’d finished my morning’s work in the kitchens and had lunch in the mess hall. Afterwards, my friends had preferred to stay inside and play cards, but I felt restless that day and in need of some air. I walked out of the soldiers’ quarters, past a couple of the officers’ houses, and then turned sharply down a path that led to the other side of the island, the side that faced not the mainland but the open sea. On one of my earlier wanders, I’d found a little sheltered beach where there were rock-pools in which sea urchins lurked. I was fond of the taste of sea urchins, and had a thought to collect some to cook up for a card-party snack the next day.

  I was squatting by a big rockpool, scooping up one sea urchin after another, when all at once a sharp pain burst behind my eyes. Overbalancing, I hit my head on a rock and fell headfirst into the water. My eyes stinging, my lungs bursting, I thought I was going to die. And then, suddenly, I heard a voice – a girl crying, ‘Why? Why?’

  Then another voice, which I recognised to be Commander Los, said, ‘I am sorry but it has to be. On the day of your eighteenth birthday, you must die. It’s the only way to keep our land safe.’

  Spluttering, coughing, I managed to crawl out of the water and lie there gasping. I could feel a bruise forming on the side of my head where I’d hit the rock, and my throat was sore from swallowing salt water. The headache or whatever it was that had made me pass out so suddenly had gone. And yet the words remained, repeating themselves over and over in my head.

  My heart thundered. I tried to tell myself it had been nothing other than a hallucination after hitting my head. But it hadn’t felt like a hallucination. It had felt utterly real.

  What did it mean? Forgetting about the sea urchins, I hurried away from the rockpool and headed back to the comforting cluster of buildings. I meant to catch my friends before they returned to work to tell them what had happened. But they’d already left so I went back to the kitchens, which I found in an uproar.

  ‘Where have you been, Bator?’ shouted the chief kitchen hand, Lew, as I skulked in. ‘We’re loaded down with work, and you go sneaking off!’

  ‘What?’ It had been an ordinary day when I’d left.

  ‘We have massive preparations, pulled on us at the last minute,’ snapped Lew. ‘All the top people from the mainland are going to be here for a high-level Supreme Council conference tonight, and we have to cater for them all. Commander Los, the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Administrator, the Chief Magus, the University Chancellor and heaven knows who else.’

  ‘But why?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you think they told me? Something mighty important, because we’re not allowed to send in the usual waiters. The food’s got to be ready and placed inside the conference hall before they start. And everyone will be confined to quarters while it’s happening. Oh, stop looking at me with your eyes popping out like a frog’s, boy, and get that pile of cutlery polished till it shines!’ He dumped a mountain of silver knives and forks in front of me. They looked old as the hills and about as dirty.

  So
I sat there and polished and polished, and all the while my hands were working, my mind was racing. Why was the Supreme Council of Krainos meeting here, on the island? Why all the secrecy? Could it have anything to do with the voices I’d heard – those words? Surely not.

  It’s the only way to keep our land safe, the voice had said. His voice. On the day of your eighteenth birthday, you must die. And that girl’s voice, her crying … How could such a wicked thing have come to my mind? Alek Los was a true hero, not someone who would murder a young girl in cold blood. He was not like the others on the Supreme Council, whom nobody held in much affection. Like everyone else in Krainos, I looked up to the Commander. He had saved our country. He continued to serve it selflessly. His aim had always been to keep us safe. Always …

  My parents had always said I put two and two together and came up with the wrong sum, that I had too much imagination. Gingerly, I felt the bruise at my temple. I knew I should just dismiss the whole experience, but I couldn’t. I had to know if those words I’d heard were real. I had to find out from someone who knew about these things. From someone who could see into one’s dreams …

  I caught my breath as I realised where my mind was leading me. It was crazy. Dangerous. Yet not to try to find out seemed more dangerous than anything else. I had to see the witch. I had to ask her what it all meant.

  I could hear my friends’ voices in my head: Lunatic! Stupid! Reckless! But I also heard the voice of curiosity – the voice that had been nagging at me ever since I came to the island. I’d take all precautions. I’d wear the thickest blindfold I could. The witch’s capacity for magic might be quelled in the Tower, but not her second sight. It was inborn in immortals. You could no more take it from them than you could unhook the moon from the sky.

  I had to speak to her. Something deep inside told me it was urgent. The Commander’s honour was at stake. I wanted to be sure we still had truth and justice on our side; Krainos must not be stained with a young girl’s blood. And if it had been a hallucination, then she would tell me that too. She had to. Immortals cannot lie about what they see in second sight. They are bound to tell you. I knew that from all the old stories about the immortal feya. A feyin, who is only part-feya, may lie just like full-blooded humans do. But never an immortal. And so one way or the other, I would have my answer.

  Now, for a way to get up to the forbidden room … I’d never be able to get past the locked door to the elevator, but I could go up in the dumb waiter. If I crouched down low I could fit in its narrow shaft. There was a lever you turned in the cellar to open and shut the door, and if I left it open down below, I could get down again without mishap.

  I waited for what seemed like a long time. The conference doors stayed closed. The rest of the Tower Guard were confined to quarters but the kitchen staff had to keep working.

  ‘And I don’t mind staying behind till the kitchens close,’ I told Lew.

  He looked hard at me, then growled, ‘I guess you think you’re going to get all the leftovers.’

  I nodded ruefully, trying to look as though he’d rumbled me.

  ‘Then you’d better stay till I tell you to go home.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I told Franz I’d volunteered to work extra hours because I couldn’t afford to lose at cards again. And it was true – I had lost at cards a couple of evenings in a row. ‘Just tell Serek and Marcinek that old devil of a Lew kept me back,’ I added. ‘I don’t want them to know I’m penniless. You know what it’s like.’

  ‘Sure, friend,’ said an unsuspecting Franz, clapping me on the shoulder. ‘Rather you than me.’

  Lew certainly kept me busy. I washed dishes till my hands were wrinkled, and swept till my arms ached. After I had finished all my work, I slipped into the cellar when Lew and Flamel weren’t looking. I could hear them toasting each other and talking for what seemed like hours. Before long, I heard the scrape of chairs as they got up, blew out all the lamps and noisily clumped off to their beds.

  At last, I was alone.

  Izolda

  That morning I’d woken reluctantly, emerging from a wonderful dream. I’d had a few of those recently. In the dream I was flying high above the earth. Everything looked so beautiful – the pattern of field and forest, town and river, the sparkle of the sea, the tall peaks of mountains, the folds of hill and valley. I was dressed all in white like an angel, only I wasn’t an angel – I was just me.

  But I wasn’t alone in the dream. Someone flew with me – a young man. I couldn’t see him properly. I only had the merest sense of him, just a flash of colour: hair black as coal, skin pale as snow, lips red as blood. He didn’t speak, and I didn’t know who he was. Yet I knew, like you do in dreams, that he was important to me. I had no idea why, and it didn’t seem to matter. We swooped and flew, swooped and flew, and all the while joy filled me. I was free – we were free. And I knew I’d never be alone again.

  The dream always ended there. I would wake, filled with hope, and find myself once again in this place. Yet, somehow, the power of the dream lingered, giving me renewed strength. This time the dream had been different. It hadn’t ended on us swooping and flying. This time I’d heard a voice singing. His voice. I knew it was his voice, though I’d never heard it before. A voice deep and soft. And I’d heard the words of his song so clearly that I was able to write it down word for word:

  If only I’d listened,

  if only I’d cared,

  if only I’d spoken,

  if only I’d dared.

  Then things would be different,

  and all would be fine.

  If only I’d done it,

  what joy would be mine!

  There was so much sadness in his voice. In the dream I had wanted to speak, to say, No, no, don’t be like that. There is so much hope. We are free, don’t you see? We can go where we like, do what we want …

  And then I awoke. To those walls and the knowledge that had sat like a stone in my heart ever since they told me what would happen when this day had ended. No, I would not waste the day thinking about it. I had to remember who I was. But what a hollow thing to say! Memory weakens in this place that hollows you out, though it is hard to forget completely. I could remember the halls of my people. The black ships and the grim-faced warriors. My hand closing over the crystal heart …

  It lay in my palm, the crystal cool against my skin. Once it had belonged to my mother. It was the only thing I had that belonged to her. So many times I’d look into its flashing depths and see what I’d want to see: escape, hope, home. Love. In the dream it was there, too, resting against my skin, under the white dress. Remembering this, I looked into the crystal. I saw nothing but my face, reflected in miniature a dozen times. There was no hope. No escape.

  I heard his voice again. Their voices. So calm, despite their words. To them I was a prize, a pawn. And more than that now, it seemed.

  Slipping the crystal heart back on its silver chain around my neck, I studied the room that had been my prison for ten long years. My eyes swept across the bed, the desk, the chair, the carpet, the small closet that was my washroom. I knew every bit of that place – every thread of the carpet, every scratch in the steel wall, every crack in the stone floor. I had memorised each brushstroke of the four pictures on the wall – scenes of spring, summer, autumn, winter. Every book on that shelf I’d read several times over, I knew every word in the notebooks I’d kept for so long, and every inch of the small portion of landscape I could see through the darkened window. How it distorted the life outside, the houses, the people far below scurrying like ants, and yet how beautiful it looked to me right then! For a moment it seemed like the best place on earth. Only a moment.

  I was not resigned. I’d tried to be but I couldn’t. Everything was taken from me, everything I cared about, everything I knew. At first I was angry, frightened. I tried to think of ways to escape. Nothing worked, and I grew desperate, numb. It was like that all the time, passing from hope to fear to anger to numbness
, then back to hope. Since I’d started having the dream, hope had returned, and these last couple of years, whenever I got a visit from one of them, I’d try my best to make them see that I was of no threat to them. I promised to persuade my father to bring lasting peace between our people. And for a while, I’d imagined it was working. That they were beginning to see they could one day let me go.

  What a fool I was. They never intended on letting me go. There was nothing I could do. Nothing I …

  What was that? The elevator already? No, it couldn’t be – they said it wouldn’t be till the night began its march to morning. The wolf-hour – the darkest time of night – and that’s hours away yet.

  But why should I have believed anything they said? They have lied to me over and over and over again, especially the one they call the Commander. He had never been unkind to me. Lately, he’d even said things were looking different – that treaties could be renegotiated and arrangements could be made. I had been co-operative – that would be taken into account. It was he who told me in the end what was to happen to me.

  I heard the rattle of the platform coming to a stop. And all at once I felt as if a great burden had slid off my shoulders. I no longer had to fight. It was over. I stood there, straight and tall, ready to meet my fate with all the honour and grace my people would expect. But it wasn’t the elevator that slid open. It was the small door of the shaft next to it, which housed the machine that brought up my meals. As I stared in numb perplexity, the door was pushed back and someone half-crawled, half-stumbled out, scrambling almost immediately to his feet, revealing himself to be a tall young man with dishevelled black hair, dressed in the uniform of the Tower Guard, a ragged blindfold covering his eyes.