The Crystal Mirror (2 page)

Laney walked down the High Street, past the mini-mart and the Lionhart Pet Shop. She crossed the road and took her normal shortcut through the churchyard. The church spire stretched up high, sticking right into the rainclouds as if trying to make them burst. Thunder rolled over her head again. Slowly this time, like a giant’s yawn.

Laney opened the iron gate and closed it behind her. The sky grew lighter and the rain thinned, leaving water sparkling on the tilted gravestones. Wiping her wet face on her sleeve, she followed the gravel path round the side of the church and past the fenced-off pond in the corner. The clouds shifted apart, revealing blue sky and a moon that had risen early.

Laney stopped and her throat tightened. The moon was full and red, and it hung there looking down like a blood-stained face. She stared at it, wondering why it was that creepy colour. Was it a trick of the light – maybe something to do with the storm? Eventually she managed to pull her gaze away and carried on through the gate that led into her road, Oldwing Rise. Her house sat there, snug in the middle of the row of cottages.

Light poured over her as she opened the front door and the TV rumbled in the background. Her stepbrother, Toby, sat in his high chair in the kitchen, watching his favourite train programme.

“Laney! Choo-choo!” Toby rolled his little train across the kitchen table to her.

“Hi, Toby!” Laney caught the engine and rolled it back to him.

“Laney!” Her stepmum, Kim, hugged her. “Happy birthday!”

“Thanks!” Laney relaxed a little. Miss Roderick hadn’t rung. Kim would have said something straight away if she had.

“Come and see what Toby and I made for you.” Kim drew Laney over to a chair and placed a large, lopsided sponge cake on the table in front of her.

Laney stared at the chocolate icing and her name spelled out in Smarties. She swallowed, her heart suddenly full. “Thanks. It looks great!”

“Me want cake!” said Toby.

“Let’s have it now.” Laney grinned. Either they had run out of sweets on the final letter or Toby had eaten some of the Smarties off the top of the cake already.

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait? I asked your dad to come home early especially,” said Kim.

“He won’t remember.” It was a family joke that her dad never seemed to remember Laney’s birthday, although today she didn’t find it so funny. He had left for work early that morning before she was up, without even leaving a card.

“Let’s have some candles on it, too,” Laney said
daringly. She knew she was on dangerous ground.

Kim paused and looked at her. “You know we don’t have any,” she said evenly. “Your dad won’t have anything like that in the house.”

“Oh, please, Kim! Won’t next-door have some?” Laney tilted her head to one side and widened her blue eyes in the look she knew Kim could never resist. “I am twelve now.”

Kim made a face. “All right then. I guess you’re old enough to be sensible and we can keep Toby away from them easily enough. I’ll see if Mr Platt has any.” She hurried away to knock on their neighbour’s door.

“Cake! Cake!” Toby said, bouncing in his high chair.

“In a minute,” Laney promised.

Kim returned quickly, holding a handful of candles in one hand and a box of matches in the other. “These will look lovely.” She placed twelve golden candles on top of the cake. Then she struck a match and lit each one in turn. A smoky fragrance filled the room.

Laney watched, mesmerised by the little flames that danced in the draught from the back door. There was something special about them. It had been so long since she’d seen any kind of flame that she’d forgotten how pretty they were. Her dad never let them have anything in the house that burned,
not even birthday candles. When she was little she used to see them on her friends’ cakes every year, until they’d all got too old to have that kind of birthday party any more.

“OK, ready?” Kim smiled. She lit the final candle and blew out the match. “Toby’s been practising the song, haven’t you?”

“Happy bird-day to you!” sang Toby.

“
Birth
-day,” corrected Kim, but Toby wasn’t listening.

The front door slammed.

Kim and Laney exchanged looks. Toby went on singing.

“Should we take the candles off?” said Laney.

Kim hesitated. But it was too late.

Mr Rivers stopped in the doorway, his face darkening. “What are you doing? Put those out!”

“No, Robert. It’s her birthday. Let her have the candles for once,” said Kim.

“Birthday?” Her dad’s eyes flicked to Laney’s face. “Oh…yes, of course it is. But we’re not having candles. I don’t want any fire in this house.” He stepped towards the cake.

Defiantly, Laney leaned over and blew the candles out. Eleven flames flickered and vanished, and eleven tiny lines of smoke curled upwards. But the twelfth candle toppled over on to the chocolate icing, its flame still burning brightly.

Toby clapped his hands. “Happy bird-day!”

“No fire in this house,” repeated Mr Rivers, and he went to hang up his coat, frowning.

“They’re just candles,” Laney muttered after he’d gone. “Never mind. We’ve still got the cake and I’ll cut it up in a minute, OK?” Kim’s face had a closed look as she lifted Toby out of his high chair and took him upstairs.

Laney stared down at the cake. Some birthday this was.

She reached for the fallen candle that lay on the icing with its flame still flickering. Her dad hadn’t noticed it, hidden behind all the blown-out ones. Why was he so freaked out by a tiny little flame anyway? It was only a birthday candle.

She picked it up by the base and looked at the flame, noticing the blue-tinged space at the bottom and how it soared up to a pure gold point. It was just a little candle, not dangerous at all. Yet her dad would be so mad if he saw her holding it like this. What
was
the big fuss?

The candle wobbled and slipped in her grasp.

For a long moment, the flame touched the tip of her middle finger. A scorching pain spread through her skin. She grimaced and dropped the candle. The flame went out. Cross with herself, she picked it up and put it with the others. Then she rinsed her
finger under cold water to soothe the stinging. So that was what it felt like to be burned. She was glad her dad hadn’t seen her.

It was growing darker outside so she switched on the kitchen light. Her burned finger began to throb. There was a round mark where the flame had touched her. The soreness turned into a strange tingling that spread through her hand and up her arm. She waggled the injured finger.
As long as it hasn’t dropped off you’ll be fine,
her dad used to say when she was little. Well, it hadn’t dropped off but she didn’t feel fine.

She could hear voices in the living room arguing in low whispers.

“Why shouldn’t she have birthday candles for once?” Kim was saying. “What’s wrong with that?”

Mr Rivers’ gruff reply was too faint to be heard.

Guilt twisted in Laney’s stomach. She was the one who’d made Kim fetch the candles. She hadn’t meant to cause trouble between them. Quickly she gathered up the blown-out candles and the matches and threw them in the bin.

The pain in her hand and arm grew stronger, spreading relentlessly into the rest of her body. It began as a horrible sort of prickliness that made her want to scratch like mad and then turned into an overpowering agony. She doubled over on the kitchen floor, grasping at the tiles
with her fingertips.

She tried to call Kim but no sound came out. Her heart hammered. She felt as if every tiny bit of her was changing from the inside – every cell inside her was shifting. Then, just as she thought she couldn’t bear it any more, the pain vanished.

Hauling herself up, she leaned on the kitchen worktop, relieved to be free of the pain. Her reflection in the kitchen window looked strange. Her skin was pale and her eyes gleamed, almost as though there was a ring of bright gold encircling each pupil. The burn mark on her finger glowed red.

Cross voices rose in the living room and a door opened. She panicked. She didn’t want them to see her like this. Taking one last look at her strange eyes, she ducked through the back door and closed it behind her. Then she rushed down the passage that ran alongside the house and across the road to the churchyard. From there she crossed the High Street and took the footpath that led out of Skellmore towards the riverbank. The Mistray river was the best thing about living in Skellmore and she often came down here to think. The sun vanished below the horizon and the light faded.

The pain didn’t return. It was replaced by a feeling of warmth, as if melted chocolate was flowing through her bloodstream. She ran past the last row
of houses and sprang down the grassy slope to the edge of the river. It was darker now and the trees on the other side of the water were no more than black shapes against a fading sky.

Now that she was away from the houses, she could see the blood-red moon again. Her heart tightened as she realised how grisly it looked, here in the gathering dark. The crimson circle matched the shape and colour of the burn on her middle finger.

She shivered. This moon was bad news. She didn’t know why, but it made her feel hollow inside. A red moon – it was hard to stop looking at it.

She pulled her eyes away and looked down at the glittering river. The water stilled and her reflection became clearer in the red moonlight. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. There she was, her face as pale as usual, with wisps of hair hanging over her forehead. But now there were bright golden rings in her eyes.

Laney wasn’t sure how long she’d stood there on the riverbank, staring at herself in the water. Her eyes had always been blue like her dad’s, but now there were gold rings around her pupils. She hadn’t really believed it when she’d seen her reflection in the kitchen window. Out here they seemed to glow even brighter.

She stumbled back up the bank, aware of the red moon watching her from above the trees. She could hear voices. There were people coming down the path from the direction of the village.

Heart thumping, she left the path and crossed the field towards the line of fences that marked the back gardens on the edge of Skellmore. She didn’t want to meet anyone; didn’t want them to see her like this. Reaching the first fence, she followed it, running her hand along the rough panel.

A bitter smell hung in the air, which became stronger the further she walked. She covered her nose with her hand. If she followed these fences she should come to a corner and be able to get back to the High Street and then home. She heard voices again and hurried on.

She was close to the edge of the field and she could just make out a cluster of willow and birch trees beyond. The light from the red moon strengthened, casting a revolting rusty glow across the ground. A bank of fog was rising in front of the trees. A
warning pinged in Laney’s mind. She’d seen fog around here lots of times, but it rose from the river, not from the woods.

Inching closer to the trees, Laney tried to remember what this place looked like in daylight. It was a pretty spot, with a good view of the river. Kim had brought her and Toby for a picnic here once. They had sat in the shade of the trees and Kim had pointed out a circle of darker grass that she called a fairy ring.

The fog near the trees rose higher. It had reached about head height and it looked orangey-red in the light from the moon. A strange heaviness weighed on Laney’s chest and she struggled to breathe. It was nice here in the daytime, but this was surely some nightmare version of the place. She didn’t like it. It was time to go.

She climbed over the stile and tried to find the footpath. Panic shot through her. She didn’t want the fog to touch her. It looked so wrong. The way it was swaying and curling made it seem alive.

Seeing the path beneath her feet, she remembered – this was where the fairy ring had been, just here on the left. She glanced that way and froze.

Through the reddish fog she could see a black shape. It was large but close to the ground, and as she stared she realised that it was a crouching figure. An overwhelming sense of darkness and
fear flooded through her.

The figure wasn’t moving.

She watched it for a minute and the freezing fog folded itself around her, chilling her skin and clouding her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she tried to calm her heartbeat but the fog tasted bitter and the panic wouldn’t let her go. The bitter taste filled her lungs and cold began to steal through her body as if she was being frozen from the inside.

Backing away, she hoped desperately that the figure wouldn’t see her. As she breathed in more of the fog, the iciness inside her grew. She pressed a hand to her chest, but couldn’t feel her body beneath the cold. Each step backwards became more difficult as the frozen feeling spread along her arms and legs.

Then the figure turned its head. It rose upwards, doubling in height, tall and faceless in the fog. Laney stared, shivering. From behind the figure came a faint, wordless singing.

The fog thickened, enclosing her in its
orange-red
arms and drawing her in. It brought the singing closer. She couldn’t understand any of the words, but the singing told her that everything would be all right. It would all be over soon. She found herself wanting to move closer and hear more of the song.

Her foot hit an uneven piece of ground and she fell over. She put her arms out and landed on her
hands and knees. She told herself to get up. She knew the dark figure was still close. More than anything else, she knew she had to run.

Laney struggled up and limped away until she splashed into shallow water and realised she’d run straight into the river. Water swirled round her ankles, soaking into her socks and shoes. A crimson colour seeped outwards from where she was standing, and the icy feeling inside went with it, until she felt like she could move properly again. The weird colour spread across the water like ink, but there was no time to think about what it meant.

Spinning round, she jumped back on to the bank and ran alongside the river until she reached the footpath. She wanted to look behind her to see if the figure was following, but she didn’t dare. When she got to the first house on the street she finally turned around. There was no black figure and no fog. She was safe.

She kept on running. Skellmore seemed quiet and normal. The streetlights were bright and the houses were lit behind their curtains. It was just another summer’s evening, except for that creepy red moon. She scanned the sky, but a bank of cloud had moved in and the moon had disappeared.

She hurried back home and let herself in the back door. There was no one in the kitchen but some dinner had been left out for her on the side. The
birthday cake sat on the table, cut into slices but still uneaten.

“Laney? Are you OK?” called Kim from the living room. “Let me come and heat your dinner up for you.”

“No, don’t worry. I’ve got a headache so I’m not that hungry,” Laney called back. She grabbed a slice of cake and went upstairs before Kim could come out to check on her.

She switched on the light in her room and looked at the finger she’d hurt on the candle flame. The red burn mark was still as bright as before.

Now for the thing she really had to know…

She took a deep breath and turned towards the mirror. Scraping her hair back from her face, she made herself walk right up to the glass. A pair of gold-ringed eyes blinked back at her. So it was true. Her eyes were different now.
She
was different.

She closed her eyes and opened them wide again. The gold circles were still there, like rings around her pupils. It reminded her of a picture of an eagle she’d once seen.

She sat down heavily on her bed, ignoring her sore finger. When she was very young and before her dad had married Kim, they’d been walking in the woods together. She had thought she’d seen a person flying, but her dad had told her it was an owl. She’d always remembered how it had swooped
away, with its wingtips brushing against the leaves.

And there was an old story about an Eagle Man who had lived near Skellmore and had flown over the woods at night. They’d learned the story at primary school – how the Eagle Man had turned the whole village into eagles and then they couldn’t change back into people again.

Was that what she was now – an Eagle Girl? Had the dark figure by the trees turned her into something that wasn’t human? She shivered. She couldn’t go back there to find out. There had been something so terrible about that figure.

Anyway, her eyes had turned gold
before
she saw the figure. She’d seen them in her reflection in the kitchen window. So maybe it was nothing to do with the dark figure at all. Maybe some people’s eyes changed colour as they grew up. She’d heard somewhere that babies’ eyes could change colour.

She closed her eyes and tried to breathe slowly. Her mind went back to the river. It had always been her favourite place – she loved the sound of the water.

A gentle brush of air touched her face. She opened her eyes and stood up, searching for what had made the draught. The school clothes she had been wearing were gone, and in their place was a pale-blue dress. Two translucent shapes curved out from her back, flexing as she put her hand over
her mouth. They glinted, reflecting the light of the ceiling lamp.

How could they be real?

These shining wings.