Crystal Read Online Free

snow.’
    ‘I don’t understand. Snow? I wish—’
    ‘But I’ve woken up, Crystal. We must be careful. Play safe. Yes.’ She looked round anxiously. ‘We can fool Grint. We must not let him know … Give me that stupid bit of cloth!’
    Effie deftly wrapped the black scarf around her pale hair. Usually Crystal had to do it while her mum sat like a pudding on a plate. ‘I have to see his high and mighty-ship, I know. I know,’ Effie rattled on. ‘I should never have let him use me like this. I should have battled and oh, done anything to escape. How have I let this happen, Crystal?’
    ‘What, Mum? I wish I could understand you.’
    ‘This! To be caught here like a salmon in a net.’
    ‘Mum! Hush!’
    ‘Yes, yes, hush! The sly-ugg might hear and then Raek will hear. And Grint will hear. I know, I know, but it’s too late anyway. If only I didn’t have to go! Grint works in mysterious ways. What would you say Mr Grint has coursing though his veins, Crystal? Do you think he has real blood or mercury? What’s in his heart? Iron, or is it marble?’
    ‘I really don’t know, I—’ Crystal quickly dropped an upturned bowl over the sly-ugg. ‘Whoops, how silly of me!’ she cried, then aside in a fierce whisper to her mother: ‘Mum! The sly-ugg! Please! You’re talking treason.’
    ‘ Treason! Is it treason to know we’re trapped here, kept against our will? But …’ She paused, thinking. ‘Is having hope worse? It might be. We must escape, Crystal. That’s what we must do! Prisoners escape.’
    Crystal turned away and hid her tears. Her mother was truly mad. She really was.
    ‘Stone in his heart, Crystal,’ her mum muttered. ‘He is grit and gravel and hardness. Quartz in his bones.’
    ‘Shh! Yes, Mum. Come on. We’ll be late.’
    Effie grasped Crystal’s arm. ‘You think I’m crazy. My darling, dearest daughter, I am not mad. I am so not mad. If something goes wrong and I don’t speak like this again; if I seem to forget, try and remember this moment.’ She looked round anxiously and gripped Crystal hard. ‘I have a feeling this won’t last. I don’t know how to hold on to this wakefulness.’
    ‘I’ll try to remember,’ Crystal said. ‘I’ll try and do everything you say.’
    Crystal lifted the bowl off the sly-ugg. Its eye-stalks twisted and waved rapidly then it fixed her with an intense stare as if it had caught a bit of her mother’s new fiery spirit. ‘What’s up with you?’ she said. ‘Sorree! Don’t you like it under there? I suppose it’s not your fault you’re so horrid. Come on. Time for a walk.’
    They had a sly-ugg carry-box for trips, made of light thin metal. It had a handle at the top and one side opened for the sly-ugg to go in and out. The opening side was made of a thin mesh so that the sly-ugg could continue spying wherever it was.
    Crystal put some dandelion leaves into the carry-box and then swept the greasy creature in too. It left a trail of grey, snotty slime behind on the table.
    The black kitten sat at the window and watched them go, flicking his tail backwards and forwards, blinking his green eyes.
    The outlines of buildings were blurred and shadowy. One or two lights glowed through chinks of half-closed shutters. The warm wind moaned. It whistled through glass-less windows and whined like a poltergeist as it whipped round the vast empty factories and rows of abandoned houses and tall office blocks.
    Grint’s stone house in the Square stood in grand isolation. Two columns of granite, carved like totem poles, guarded the front door. Every time Crystal visited the House she felt compelled to look at them. She’d heard that Grint had carved the columns himself: strange faces, mountains and flying beasts. Crystal found it hard to believe that Grint’s hands could ever have made anything so beautiful.
    They rang the doorbell. Raek, Grint’s second-in-command, opened the door. He was dressed in his habitual grey suit, his thin hair neatly greased