A Gypsy Song (The Eye of the Crystal Ball - The Wolfboy Chronicles) (17 page)

Tonight she will have her greatest feast

Sara had to admit the song was alluring and a little scary. She had never heard of the Bog-Woman except for that old saying about the mist. She never thought it might be real.

As the women were dancing trying to get Manolo to dance with them, Sara suddenly saw some light in the distance. There was more than one light, and they were moving in different directions. First the light was up in the air, then shortly after it was on the ground. Then it disappeared for a while until it reappeared in a different spot. A few seconds Sara thought she had only been dreaming, but a little later she thought she heard voices. Small indistinct voices, as if a crowd of very small creatures were heading towards them.

As the voices became clearer, the light also became much brighter and out of the mist emerged a little flock of about seven or maybe eight small creatures that were lighting up the whole area. As they got closer, the elves stopped their singing and dancing.

“Hush, get away from here, you deceitful women” one of the creatures said while waving his arm at them.

Like cats, the elves hissed and withdrew throwing their long-nailed fingers at them like claws. Then they ran away and disappeared in the mud.

The small creatures came closer. They seemed to be made out of glass. Each of their foreheads had a light in it and lit up the whole area.

“Will-o’-the-wisps!” Manolo said. ”What a pleasant surprise.”

One of the small creatures waved his hand showing he wanted them to follow him.

“Come on before more of these women come out of their hiding between the trees,” he said.

“I thought Will-o’-the-wisps were mischievous creatures that by their light attempted to lead travelers astray,” Sara whispered to Manolo as they followed the small people made of glass through the water.

“That is the common misunderstanding,” he whispered back. “Actually, they are very nice people, a little shy, but often helpful to strangers.”

“So where are they taking us?” she asked and looked up in the sky, but the mist was still too heavy for her to see anything.

“We will just have to wait and see, won’t we?” Manolo said with a smile.

“So you trust these people?”

“They just saved us from the elves, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“Then why shouldn’t we trust them?”

Sara had no answer. She stared at the creatures and the faint light coming from their heads. Some of them were zigzagging through the bog, they stopped here and there, then crawled high up into a tree, rested on a branch and a moment later hurried on.

“Why do they do that?” Sara asked.

“Do what?”

”Walk all over the place.”

“Because they want to make sure that no one can follow us,” Manolo replied. “If anyone is behind us he will be unable to follow the light without being confused and eventually lose his way. Will-o’-the-wisps are very good at that sort of thing. They are incredibly agile and can change directions in the middle of a leap.”

“And you are sure they are not leading us to that Bog-Woman instead?” Sara asked.

“Nothing in life is sure,” Manolo answered. “Sometimes you just have to have a little trust.”

They came to The City of Lights as the day had almost passed. Suddenly, out of the mist grew fantastic towers that looked like they were all made of light, but it was in fact glass. The strong light came from the heads of the Will-o’-the-wisps walking around inside the city reflecting their light on the colored glass. Some towers were red, others blue and some yellow.

The Will-o’-the-wisps stopped at the gate to the city and talked to the guard. Then they opened this huge gate that was big enough for Sara and Manolo to enter the city. Everywhere they went there were high ceilings like cathedrals. They had to walk carefully though, big as they were, so as not to step on any of the small creatures. Because even though they did light up, the Will-o’-the-wisps were hard to see because they moved so quickly and unevenly, zigzagging their way through the town.

They washed and dried their clothes and gave them white tunics to wear while they waited. And then Sara and Manolo were presented to their king, a small glass creature just like the rest of the Will-o’-the-wisps but this one had a red light in his forehead. It made it very comfortable to talk to him since the light wasn’t so bright in Sara and Manolo’s eyes.

“So what brings you to this town?” the king asked as a young Will-o’-the-wisp dressed all in white gave them plenty of food and drink. Sara wondered why she hadn’t seen any women in the city yet.

“Your people brought us here,” Manolo said. “They rescued us from the hands of the elves.”

“Oh, those crazy women,” the king said and threw a fist in the air. “Well I am glad we could help.”

The king was served a cup of tea and he drank some of it before he continued talking.

“But I must say that my people also told me that before they found you they came upon some disturbing tracks around the bog. Those of a big animal that seemed to be chasing you.”

Manolo stopped eating and looked at the small king sitting on his small throne made of glass. Even his teacup was made of glass as were their plates and the knives and forks they used to eat with. There were a lot of clinking sounds in the entire city and the royal palace as you can imagine. Especially from the glass-creatures as they walked on their floors that were made also of glass. Manolo and Sara thought they were lucky the food wasn’t glass.

“We did have a feeling that someone or something was following us. What do you think it was?” Manolo asked and ate some more of that delicious cinnamon bread they had been served.

“I haven’t the faintest idea, but it was a creature of darkness, of that my people were sure.”

Sara and Manolo looked at each other with a hint of fear.

“Don’t worry,” the king said. “You are safe in our town. When the light is turned on, the darkness has to go.”

He smiled. Then he got up from his little throne and clapped his two glass hands. Immediately two other Will-o’-the-wisps appeared also dressed entirely in white and removed all of the food and plates.

The king looked at his pocket watch, which Sara found extremely peculiar since it too was made of glass and he could see right through it. There were no numbers or anything on it. It was just a piece of glass though it did reflect the light from his head in different colors. Out of that he must have been able to tell the time.

“We must hurry. We don’t want to be late for the show,” the king said and gestured that he wanted them to follow him.

“The show?” Sara said and looked at Manolo, thinking only about her brother. Their quest had already taken much longer than anticipated and she had become afraid that they were running out of time to save Marius. She wanted to continue as quickly as possible. “We don’t have time to see a show. We must move on,” she said.

“These people saved our lives and gave us food to eat. It would be very impolite of us not to accept the king’s nice invitation,” Manolo whispered back.

So they accepted it and followed the king through the streets of the whole bright city with its high glass pillars and mosaic tiles.

“What kind of a show is it?” asked Sara as they walked next to the glass chariot in which the king was sitting.

The king looked out of the small window, which, strange as it seems, had no glass in it.

“Well, glass music, of course.”

Manolo and Sara looked at each other.

“Well, of course,” Sara said just as distinguished.

Glass music turned out to be quite an experience for the two travelers. For never had they heard such beautiful tones come out of anything made of glass. Especially the Glass Harp gave them great pleasure as it turned while the small creatures played with their fingers on it. The notes were crystal clear and inexpressively soft. Later followed musical bowls, a glass harpsichord, a man playing musical glasses, and finally a glass xylophone.

Every time someone put his finger on top of some sort of glass and made music come out of it, Sara felt enchanted. And for a short while she forgot about the reason for her quest. She forgot her troubles and worries about her brother. See, that is what music is capable of doing to a person. Real good music, that is. Sara had only tried it once before and that was when she let herself be spellbound by an interesting book.

“Why are there no women in this town?” Sara asked Manolo as they left the theatre after the show.

“Will-o’-the-wisps are neither male nor female creatures. Such a distinction does not exist among them,” he whispered.

“Oh,” she said. How very boring, she thought to herself.

The king stopped outside the theatre.

“Join me for a walk in the park,” he said.

They accepted the invitation and soon they were walking among what looked like elms and oaks, but was in fact artificial trees made entirely of glass. The king’s red light was reflected everywhere he went and made him sort of always walking in this red spotlight. He walked with a cane (of glass, naturally) that had what looked like a real blue diamond on top of it, but Sara guessed it was probably just cut out of glass as well.

“So tell me, my young travelers,” he said. “Where does that quest of yours end? What is the point of this traveling around?”

Manolo cleared his throat.

“We are going to find Sensisaron and look into her crystal ball.”

The king stopped and looked at him.

“You must be either very brave or very stupid,” the king said, lifting the cane with the glass diamond up in the air.

Manolo looked at Sara.

“Maybe we are a little of both,” he said.

“Good answer, my friend,” he said and started walking again mumbling, “Very good answer indeed.”

“Why stupid?” Sara asked.

”Oh,” he sighed. ”You don’t know what is waiting for you, do you, dear?”

“I am afraid not.”

“Let me try and explain. Sensisaron used to be a beautiful woman, a Romani, traveling around like you two helping people by telling them their future. And she was very good at it, indeed, she was. But not at telling her own future. If so, she would have acted differently knowing what was to come. One day, she found a ring at one of the markets and she couldn’t stop looking at it. It was like she was drawn to it, like they were connected and meant for each other or something. She just had to have it. So she bought it and put it on her finger. What she didn’t know was that the red ruby in the ring had a will of its own. It just needed a human to put it on his or her finger and then the ring would have that person totally in control. The ruby turned the beautiful young woman into an old witch. Overnight she grew gray, almost white hair and wrinkles as deep as canyons. Terrified of what was happening to her, the woman tried to pull the ring off her finger, but it was impossible. The ring had her under control now and she had to obey its will. So she moved deep into the mountains and had a castle built. It is supposed to be like a fortress to protect her and the ring from the outside world. She has been living there for the last three hundred years and anyone that comes near that castle and looks into the red ruby will have to obey to her will. She has a whole forest of creatures that will try and kill you if you go there. It is like a great army. And even if you get past them, which is highly unlikely, you will have to face the red ruby ring.”

“Can’t we just avoid looking into the ring?”

“But see, my dear, that is impossible. Anyone in the presence of the red ruby must look at it. You can’t help it. It has that power over people. And furthermore it can help the witch turn her invisible and walk wherever she wants in her valley or in the forest surrounding us. She amuses herself by putting curses on the animals transforming them into strange creatures.”

Sara thought about Abigail the small snail that Sensisaron had made big as a house.

“So maybe you’d be better off just going back home,” the king said. “There is no way you can get out of there alive.”

“Do you know anything about The Eye of the Crystal Ball?” Manolo asked.

The king turned to look at him.

“Just that no one has ever looked into it without losing their mind. Only a person true to his heart can survive a meeting with himself. See, the eye looks straight into your heart. There is an old saying that says: As a man thinks in his heart so does he become.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means is that the eye looks straight into your heart and shows you who you really think you are. That, my friends, can be very frightening.”

“I am not afraid of that,” Sara said. She didn’t get it. What could be so frightening as to discover who she thought she was? She didn’t think she was anything but Sara, did she?

“But you should be,” the king said shaking his apple-sized head. “The bravest knights and kings have succumbed to the sight of what is in their heart.”

Well I will not, Sara thought to herself.

“Where is she hiding the crystal ball?” Manolo asked.

“The only thing I heard is that she has it in her castle covered up so the eye can’t look at her. The great Sensisaron fears nothing in the world but to see her true self.”

“How is the easiest way to get to her castle from here?” Manolo asked. “We had a cloud that led us here, but we seemed to have lost it in the bog’s mist.”

The king sighed and looked at him with a worried look.

“You won’t give up, do you?”

“No,” Sara said. “We won’t.”

The king shook his head slowly.

“Well, if you must know. You will have to climb the mountaintop of Montañas Pesadilla, Nightmare Mountain, which is entirely in her control as well. There you must find a mountain stream and follow that until it leads you to the valley. There you will find the old witch’s marshland of La Tierra Muerta—the dead land. That is where her army is. You have to get by them and cross the valley to get to the house at the foot of Torre Cerredo, the highest mountain in all of the Cantabrian Mountains. If you ever get that far then remember to keep an eye out for Satali. It will be guarding her.”