The Crystal Heart Read Free Page A

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.
    â€˜From little things, big things grow,’ my father had answered.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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!’
    â€˜What?’ It had been an ordinary day when I’d left.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜But why?’ I asked.
    â€˜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