A Gypsy Song (The Eye of the Crystal Ball - The Wolfboy Chronicles) (7 page)

Then the woman looked at Moeselman. He came closer and she handed him the baby. He took it gently into his arms, lifted the blanket and looked. Then he turned to the crowd.

“It is a boy!” he yelled.

The crowd cheered again like they couldn’t be happier.

Everyone was happy except for Sara. She had walked away from the crowd and was sitting in the grass watching them all dance of joy. The only one not dancing was Sami, the Wolfboy. She noticed him as he was sitting in his cage staring at her with his blue eyes. It was like he was always looking at her now, ever since that night they stood face to face. It was like he was following her every move.

All of a sudden Moeselman stood in front of her with the baby in his arms.

“Get up and meet your little brother,” he said.

Sara got up a little reluctantly. Moeselman handed her the baby. She looked at him and he nodded.

“It is alright. Just take him.”

So she did. She held him in her arms and in that moment the baby opened his eyes and looked straight at Sara. Then he squeezed her forefinger with his hand and she could have sworn that she saw him smile. That must have been the most beautiful sight she had ever seen.

In that instant Sara couldn’t stop the tears from running down her cheeks. She looked at her dad and saw that he felt it too. Her mom had been right. This boy was truly a miracle and something very special.

“His name shall be Marius,” her dad said.

Later that same day, Moeselman took his best and finest horse to the market and sold it. Then he bought meat and wine for the tribe and they danced all night.

A STRANGE ILLNESS

It didn’t take
Sara long to get accustomed to her new life with a baby in the caravan. She had been so wrong. This was nothing like when the three babies were born at Mr. and Mrs. Schneider’s house. Marius was nothing like them.

He never cried, not even at night when he woke up. Sara just heard him babbling in his crib and then she would get up and give him his bottle. She didn’t have to do that, her mom said, but Sara really wanted to. She enjoyed those moments in the middle of the night when she was alone with her baby brother.

She would sing to him and tell him stories and he would stare at her with those big brown eyes and laugh that cute little laugh. She felt she could talk to him about everything. She told him all about their family, about their tribe and the people he would soon meet. She talked to him about the children in the camp, who he should play with and who he shouldn’t and she told him some of the stories she used to read in her many books.

And after a while he would fall asleep in her arms and she would sit with him for a couple of minutes more and look at him. And every once in a while she would look up and see her mother standing in the doorway smiling at her.

Together they would put him in the crib and her mother would tuck her in afterwards, kissing her on the forehead telling her how good she was with Marius. How happy she was that they had her and that they all were a family.

Sara enjoyed that, too, and that nagging feeling of hers went away for awhile.

But as fall came and the north wind began to blow, the tribe was getting ready to begin their travel south to keep warm for the winter.

Sara had turned fourteen and the baby was six months old when he all of a sudden got ill and they had to postpone the plans of traveling.

There wasn’t one particular day that Sara discovered that something was wrong. It was more something that came gradually.

It was mostly her mother’s crying at night and her parents’ worried faces at day that let her know that something wasn’t as it should be.

Marius was still quiet and you wouldn’t have known he was ill if it wasn’t for the constant fever that went on for weeks and the fact that he stopped growing.

Sara’s mom looked through her books for the answer but didn’t seem to get any. She would search the forest for herbs, plants, vegetables, mushrooms or fruit barks and then she would cook them for the baby to drink. She found ancient Romani recipes and tried that on him, too. She asked the spirits what to do and prayed for help. The tribe’s women came with potions and tried their different spells that were supposed to exorcise the evil spirits in him.

But nothing worked.

And it was wearing on her mother, Sara could tell. She became skinny and had black marks under her eyes. The laughter, the singing and the happiness was gone from her parents. And inside Sara, the anxiety grew.

Marius got worse and worse, until   he was sleeping and barely waking up at all during the day. Sara’s mother would watch him all day and night to make sure she didn’t miss the few minutes when he would open his eyes. She gave him cold baths to keep his temperature down and she held him in her arms for hours while he was sleeping. Still, he was burning with fever.

It got to a point when Sara just couldn’t take it any longer. An idea had shaped in her head long ago and she couldn’t escape it. She kept wondering if she could do something. If she could somehow save her little brother.

By the time Marius had gotten sick, they had set their camp in the Cantabrian Mountains, a chain of mountains in the northwestern part of Spain. And they had stayed there now for two months. Sara had run into Manolo at one of the markets and they had started seeing each other daily. She had told him about her brother’s illness and enjoyed having someone to talk to—someone outside of the tribe. He had told her that he had run away from home with nothing but his guitar and now he tried to make a living by playing on the markets. The two of them had gotten quite close and therefore it was natural for Manolo to be the first to hear about Sara’s plan.

They met for lunch at their usual spot by a big river that ran into a deep canyon. They loved to stand and watch as the water run down the waterfall. It was one of Sara’s favorite spots in the whole world.

“I need to save my brother,” she said.

“There isn’t much you can do, is there?” he said and handed her some bread and olives. Pointy mountaintops surrounded them. They sat on some rocks. Pine trees were leaning on the sloping mountainside.

“I think I might know a way.”

“How?”

He ate some bread. Sara wasn’t hungry.

“
The Book of Foresight
,” she said while staring in the air with an empty look in her eyes. “I am going to ask it how to cure my brother.”

Manolo looked at her with surprise.

“I remember you told me about the book, but your mom made you promise never to open it again.”

“I know. But that was before I had a little brother and before that brother got ill. I have to do something.”

Manolo thought for a moment.

“It sounds dangerous. Are you sure you know what you are doing?”

“No.”

“Well at least discuss it with your mother before you do anything.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because she will just tell me not to do it. She already said that once. I can’t risk her saying no. Who else will save my brother? My mom is the only one around that knows how to heal people and even she can’t do it. We need help.”

Manolo looked pensively at the crystal clear water running in the river.

”Okay, but you shouldn’t do it alone. I will help you ask the book.”

Sara looked at Manolo.

”Not that I need it, but thank you.”

So without anyone noticing them, they went in to Settela’s tent and found the book. Sara put it on the table where Settela made her potions. She looked at the golden snakehead at the front cover. It was staring right at her. She felt her heart racing in her chest. She looked at Manolo. He seemed pale and frightened, too.

Then she heard the whisper again.

“…Sara … Sara … Sara …”

She let go of the book. Her heart was beating even faster now. She looked at Manolo to see if he heard it. By the look on his face, she knew that he had. He took a step backwards with his eyes wide open.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked with a shivering voice.

“Yes I am,” Sara said with great determination.

Then she grabbed the book and opened it.

The pages were still blank. She flipped a couple of pages. Still nothing.

“How do we do this?” Manolo said. “How do we ask it a question?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a deep sigh. “Maybe we just ask?”

And so she did. She took in a deep breath and said:

“Book of Foresight, how do I save my little brother?”

They both held their breath as they stared at the blank pages. But nothing happened.

Sara sat down in her mother’s chair. It was like she sank right into it, as if it was so big it would absorb her. She felt the weight of responsibility on her. She was still a long way from becoming as great a sorceress as her mother.

Then Sara looked at her mother’s desk, and saw the book she used to write down the recipes that she made herself. Besides it was a feather pen in an ink-house of silver.

“Maybe we need to say like a spell or something or a verse,” Manolo said.

“Maybe,” Sara said and took the pen and ink-house.

She dipped the feather a couple of times in the ink and then she wrote on a blank page in the book:

How do I save my little brother?

Again they held their breath as they waited for the book to answer. Nothing happened for the first minute or so and they almost gave up hope. Sara closed the book with a bang. Then all of a sudden the golden snake started to move. Two red eyes emerged in its face and it became alive moving across the table like a real snake. It looked at Sara with a hissing sound.

Her heart stood still.

Then the snake opened its mouth and said with a hoarse whispering voice: ”Look into the Eye of the Crystal Ball and you will find your answer.”

After that it crawled back in the front cover of the book again and froze. The eyes disappeared and it became of solid gold again.

All was quiet in the tent. Only Sara and Manolo’s heavy breathing could be heard.

”Did you see the same as I did?” Sara finally asked Manolo.

“If you saw a talking snake coming out of that book, I did.”

She sat down still staring at the book in front of her. The snake looked like it had never moved.

“What is the Eye of the Crystal Ball?” she asked.

Manolo looked at her with fear in his eyes.

“This is really not a good idea,” he said.

She got up and walked towards him.

“You know what it is?”

“Well … yes I do, but it is really a bad idea to try this. This is dark magic. It belongs to the dark spirits. You really shouldn’t be messing with it.”

Sara snorted with anger.

“I am not afraid. I will save my brother no matter what.”

“I know you want to save him, but still … this book, the snake and now the Eye of the Crystal Ball. My mother, rest her soul, always told me to stay away from this kind of darkness. You can’t trust the evil spirits.”

“It is my only chance. Just tell me where I can find it, you don’t have to come along if you are too afraid,” she said.

He sighed.

“I really don’t know …”

“Come on just tell me.”

He sighed again.

“Alright but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I won’t.”

“Okay.”

He sat down and began: “The Eye of the Crystal Ball belongs to an ancient fortune teller named Sensisaron, the legend says. She lives deep in the Cantabrian Mountains. She has a ring she wears on one of her claw-like fingers. A gold ring set with a fiery red ruby. With this ring she can make herself invisible or even into any shape human or not human that she wishes and she can also bewitch men and women and little children and every animal that lives and breathes. One glint of that red ruby in your eyes and you are powerless and helpless. You must go where the fortune teller wills and do what she wills. Some people she keeps prisoners, some people she changes into dark creatures that wander the forests and mountains at night for eternity or until someone breaks the spell. It is also that same ring that keeps her alive. She is more than three hundred years old, the story goes.”

“And what about the crystal ball?”

“She keeps it in her castle. If you look into its eye it can tell you the future.”

“And show me how I am going to cure Marius.”

Manolo nodded.

“But there is another thing. The legend says that when you look into the eye you will also face yourself in the future and that can sometimes make even the toughest warriors break down and cry. Standing face to face with your own true self can be scary.”

Sara sighed and looked at Manolo. She wasn’t scared of anything in this world except losing her little brother.

“I will do it. I will go and find the Crystal Ball and look into its eye and face myself,” she said.

Manolo got up.

“Then I will go with you.”

THE SINGING CAVE

They left at
dawn. Sara packed a small bag with food, some bread, water a little meat and some clothes.

Her mom had fallen asleep with her head on Marius’ crib. Sara sneaked past her and gave her a kiss before she left the caravan, not knowing if she would ever come back.

Manolo was waiting for her by the river. He, too, had packed some things and had (as he always did) his guitar strapped on the back.

Sara took one of her father’s horses, a beautiful black stallion. And on its back they began their quest to find the ancient fortuneteller deep within the mountains.

Her castle was supposed to be in a canyon at the foot of Torre Cerredo, the highest peak in the Cantabrian Mountains, Manolo had told her. It was located more than two hundred miles away.

They traveled for days on the stallion’s back. When they were hungry they ate, when they were tired they camped and spent the night.

Little did they know, but that same day they set out from the Romani camp, in another part of the mountains a creature of evil in shape of a giant black bear also began its journey. Its big red eyes were only set on one thing: