Amethyst (5 page)

‘Shut up! Go away!’

The rockgoyle shrugged. She went to the door. ‘Spoil things,’ she said, ‘and you’ll end up spoiling yourself. Be warned!’

‘Shut up!’ Amy flung her shoe at the door just as it closed. Horrid little beast! What rubbish! What lies!

Spoiling. What an ugly word that was. She did not like to think of spoiling and mirrors in the same sentence.

No time to think now. Time to go.

Amy was appointed two stocky rockgoyles to take her to the Spindle House. They both had thick necks, skin like elephant hide and pointed, hairy ears.

I shan’t talk to them, Amy thought. Granite should have come with me. It’s not right sending me off with – animals!

Amy did not speak to the rockgoyles and they did not speak to her. They ignored her. They pulled her sledge down the steep mountain and over the snowy hills as if she were a rather annoying item of baggage.

They spent the first night in an igloo.

‘I cannot sleep in here with you!’ said Amy. The igloo only had one room and it was quite small.

The rockgoyles did not reply. They made up a bed for her and went and sat outside. They built a fire and cooked food. They told each other jokes and stories. Amy lay inside listening to them chuckling. It took a long time for her to fall asleep.

At last, in the afternoon of the second day, they stopped on a rocky outcrop and looked down into the valley below.

There was a massive tree: Spindle House.

The tree’s bare brown branches made it look like a giant’s bony hand, protruding from the snow. Smoke streamed from a chimney. Amy could see some large black birds perched in the branches. The blurred contours of a great lake could just be seen in front of the tree. Surrounding it all, at a distance, was a high wall.

Ugly. Horrid, Amy thought. How will I live there? How will I bear it inside that bendy, wooden thing? All that wood!

Twenty minutes later, Amy was at the door. The lintel above was carved into a beautiful dragon. She leaned against the great wooden doors and knocked as loudly as she could. From inside she heard dogs barking. She was afraid of dogs. Granite had never mentioned dogs, only the wolf cub. Holding her breath, she waited for the door to open.

There were voices from inside. The door creaked opened.

‘Amethyst?’ A very tall man welcomed her with a smile. ‘You must be Amethyst! Come in.’ His glasses slipped down his long nose until just as they reached the tip, he pushed them back. ‘You got here all right? Good, good.’

‘Of course it’s Amethyst, who else would it be?’ cried a girl’s voice, and Copper pushed forward.

It had to be Copper, it had to be, because of her mass of coppery red hair. It was like a roaring flame around her head. She came towards Amy with a big grin on her freckled face.

Amy could not help smiling back.

‘You must be so cold!’ cried Copper, grasping Amy’s hand and drawing her in. ‘Come in! Come in and get warm – or would you rather be cold? I just don’t know! Come! Oh, don’t mind Silver,’ she added. The large grey
dog sniffed at Amy. ‘She’s ever so gentle and friendly – even though she’s a wolf.’

‘Wolf!’

‘Yeah, but honestly, she’s gentle as a lamb.’

Silver’s broad back reached almost to Amy’s waist. Her fur coat was very thick, sticking out around her neck in a feathery, silver-tipped ruff. Her eyes were golden yellow, rimmed prettily with black, as if she wore make-up. Nervously, Amy slipped past her and followed Copper.

The kitchen door had bowls of fruit and loaves of bread carved on it. As they went in, a flock of birds that must have been quietly roosting on the backs of chairs and shelves, rose up in a flutter, squawking in alarm.

‘Don’t mind them,’ said Copper. ‘I’m used to it now, but I found it strange too, at first.’

She helped Amy struggle out of her coat.

Amy smiled tightly. The heat was overpowering. So were the strange smells of wood, the birds, the cooking. It was making her feel ill. She felt as if a hundred pairs of eyes were watching her: birds, wolves, people …

They’ll see through me. Know I’m a traitor, she thought. Avoiding their eyes, she looked around the odd kitchen.

The room was shaped like a wedge of cake, wide at one end and pointed at the other. A slice of tree. There was a very long table, a dresser full of green pots, large cupboards and bookshelves. An old black stove.

She suddenly found herself staring at a boy. He was a lanky thing with messy hair. She felt her pulse quicken.
He wasn’t a Wood, was he? He was pale and dark and rocky. What was he doing in Spindle House? He had a penetrating stare which made her cheeks hot.

‘This is Questrid,’ said Copper. ‘He’s a mixture of Rock and Wood too. Like me.’

‘Questrid’s a funny name.’

‘It means hunter,’ said Questrid.

‘Ruby is his mother.’

‘Ruby?’ For a second Amy couldn’t remember who Ruby was. She got hotter and hotter. Copper and Questrid kept on staring at her. Suddenly the name clicked into place. ‘Oh,
Ruby
! Yes, she arranged for me to come and stay, didn’t she?’

‘And here’s my mother. Amber,’ said Copper.

Amber.
Granite’s great love who could knit gold out of rock.

Amy got a shock. Amber did not fit the image she’d invented for her. She was younger and more attractive. She wasn’t at all fat and greedy looking. Her thick hair was the colour of a gleaming, freshly-opened conker. She had friendly, happy eyes.

‘I’m so pleased you’re here,’ Amber said. ‘Copper has so few friends in the mountains. You must stay as long as you wish and treat this as your home – if you can.’

‘I’m Cedar, Copper’s father,’ said the man who had opened the door. ‘Ah, and this is Greenwood,’ he added.

Amy blinked and had to take a second look at the identical man who had entered the room. The twin brothers were so alike it was as if there was a mirror in the room somewhere, playing tricks on her.

Greenwood nodded at her. He collected a pile of drawings from a shelf. ‘Glad to meet you,’ he said, then he went out again.

Copper grinned. ‘Don’t mind him, he’s very kind, really. Come on, Amethyst, I’ll show you your room. I hope you like it. It’s not very big because the branches of the Spindle Tree are a little on the thin side.’

Amy felt as if something horrible – a splinter of wood perhaps – was lodged in her stomach. There was a real pain there. All this tree! This terrible wood. She knew she had a frozen smile on her face. She heard her voice and it sounded strained and awkward. There was absolutely nothing she could do about it. If I’d known what it felt to be a traitor and a spy I don’t think I’d have agreed to this, she thought. Why can’t they be the way I thought they’d be? Stiff, ugly, mean …

Amy followed Copper up the creaking spiral staircase to the next floor.

‘It’s all quite new for me, too,’ Copper told her. ‘I was living down in the South with my Aunt Ruby. I didn’t even know about the Woods or the Rocks until I came here – about five months ago. The mountains are fantastic, aren’t they? I just feel so at home here. Before I came, I felt as if I was in the wrong place all the time, trying to do the right thing and never managing. But I didn’t know why.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Amy. ‘I understand.’

‘Oh, do you? I’m so glad. I knew we’d have lots in common.’

Amy had spoken without thinking, but it was true. What Copper described was exactly how she had felt. But how could a girl with Wood blood and a pure Rocker like Amethyst ever share feelings?

The wooden staircase was so different from the cold, hard one which spiralled up the centre of Malachite Mountain. This was like walking on jelly.

‘Is everything made of wood?’ Amy stared up at the beams on the ceiling. Her fingertips fluttered on the wooden bannister. It felt warm and smooth and strangely alive: like touching a snake.

Copper laughed. ‘I expect it’s really peculiar for you, but for me it’s glorious. Absolutely everything is wood. Spindle House is special. It moves, you know? It can tell things about people. I think it listens and watches and feels …’

‘Really?’ Amy’s smile felt as if it was set in concrete. The girl is mad, she thought. As if wood could do that! It can’t listen to me!

At the top of the spiral staircase was a circular landing. The main tree branches forked off it. This made all the rooms oddly shaped, with curved ceilings and curved walls. The floor slanted and some rooms had four or five steps going up or down in them, to incorporate the steep climb of the branches.

‘Here’s yours,’ Copper said, opening a tiny door. ‘Mind your head.’

Amy felt Copper beaming happily at her. Why was the wretched girl so merry? ‘It’s pretty,’ Amy managed to say. ‘I shall love it here.’

The room was round, with a small arched window set deep into the thickness of the tree trunk wall. The wooden floor and walls gleamed like golden honey. Awful, Amy thought as a wave of nausea swept over her. I’ll get claustrophobia. Or woodphobia. I’ll be sick. And if Copper keeps grinning and smiling and being so maddeningly nice, I’ll die!

Copper pointed to the bed. ‘We cut off the legs and replaced them with stone pillars,’ she said proudly. ‘And there’s an iron headboard. Questrid helped make it. He said you wouldn’t want to sleep on wood, it might give you a headache. It does to him – or it used to.’

‘He’s right,’ Amy said. ‘Even being in here …’ She stopped. ‘Well, I’ll see how I get on. Which is your room?’

‘Just here.’ Copper opened the next door along the corridor and stood back to let Amy into her room.

‘Oh, and this,’ she added, waving towards the bed, ‘is Ralick.’

Amy stopped dead. She stared at the scruffy ball of fur on the bed.

‘A stuffed toy?’

‘My wolf cub.’

Wolf cub!
She’d forgotten all about it. The wolf cub she had to steal. The reason she was here. How could she forget?

The little cub uncurled itself. Its fur was darker than Silver’s, a soft gold, with white-blond patches round its eyes. A dark streak ran down its forehead and from each eye, joining to make a dark line down the bridge of its nose. It had golden eyes.

‘What did you say it was?’ she gulped.

‘He’
s a wolf cub,’ said Copper. ‘He’s four months old. He’s still got his baby fur, but later he’ll be more silvery-coloured. Isn’t he gorgeous?’

‘Er, yes.’

Then Amy saw a strange thing. She saw Copper and the wolf cub exchange a very particular look. It wasn’t just that their eyes met, nothing so simple, no, she was sure. They looked at each other as equals, as friends. As intelligent beings.

Granite was right, she thought. This cub
is
special.

Ralick yawned and stretched. He rolled over so his little pink tummy showed. His out-sized paws hung limply as Copper rubbed his underneath and stroked his head. She fondled his thickly-furred ears and cooed at him.

‘I don’t know why he’s up here. He slipped away when you knocked at the door. I expect he didn’t like all the commotion. He’s my very closest friend, Amy. I hope you two will get on.’

The way they gazed at each other was sickening. Amy felt herself growing tight and angry. As if some internal spring was being wound up, and was getting shorter and springier and about to burst.

‘How sweet.’

‘Thank you. He is. Ralick and Questrid are special. And now you, Amethyst. I’m so glad Ruby arranged for you to come and stay.’

Amy smiled weakly. There she goes again, she thought, gushing like a waterfall, and nice. So NICE.

‘I’ll go and unpack my things,’ Amy told Copper.

‘Do you want me to help?’

‘No, no,’ said Amy. ‘Thanks.’

She scuttled into her bedroom and closed the door.

She snatched her hand away from the door as she shut
it: Yuk! Even the handle was made of wood. It was shaped into an acorn, and so realistic that if it hadn’t been so big, a squirrel would have been fooled. She stood very still so the floorboards wouldn’t creak, closed her eyes and tried not to breathe the wood smell in too deeply.

It was all so weird. That horrible wolf cub thing, she thought. I hate it. And I hate Copper. Why do they look at each other like that? Secrets. They’ve got secrets but I’m not jealous. How could I be jealous of a wolf and a Wood girl?