The Mind's Eye (16 page)
Authors: K.C. Finn
Tags: #young adult, #historical, #wwii, #historical romance, #ww2, #ya, #europe, #telepathic, #clean teen publishing, #kc finn
Choose your moment carefully
, I told
Henri, my own nerves raging as wildly as his thumping heart,
That big silent guard is about to have a very
funny turn.
“
Good luck.” Henri mouthed it so quietly I couldn’t be sure
he’d even said it.
at the guard for me.
I focused
hard on the quiet man, glancing from his meaty hands gripping the
light to his small, piggy eyes cast into shadow. I tried to imagine
the mind numbing boredom he was feeling, the sheer pointlessness of
standing in the damp, dark night with three other blokes that he
probably didn’t like very much, judging by the discontented curl on
one side of his fat pink lip. I could feel his lip curling, and
suddenly I felt terribly hungry. My vision was staring into the gap
in the pass, following the beam of the flashlight. My flashlight.
In my meaty hand.
Mission
accomplished, but the real work was next. My distraction of choice
was a tried and tested method; I had done it to Leighton plenty of
times when I first got the hang of my gift, back before I realised
how cruel it was to frighten my little brother like that. But my
childish prank had not been in vain, for now it would give Henri
the chance to escape.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I buzzed like
a bee, hard and loud and right into the centre of the guard’s mind.
He jumped immediately as I’d hoped he would, dropping the
flashlight. It rolled away leaving the gap in total darkness. The
guard fell about wildly grabbing at his ears, batting them with his
huge hands as he tried desperately to flush the imaginary creature
from his eardrum.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I let my
inner child take over, the buzzing grew wilder and louder still.
The guard threw his gun off his shoulder and cried out which
attracted the attention of the other three men. I grew dizzy as the
meaty guard ran around in circles with his hands over his ears,
staring at the dark ground. He ran up away from the pass in the
opposite direction to Henri, along the fence a little until he
turned, crying to his fellow soldiers to help him as he sank to the
ground.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
He looked up
then, jumping up again frantically, and I saw all three of the
others racing towards him. The sternest looking of them was
shouting at the top of his voice. The other two were in fits of
laughter; one of them had even retrieved a camera, but was laughing
so much he couldn’t focus it. Not one of them still had hold of a
flashlight as they crowded around the now-cowering guard I was
occupying. My view of the pass was completely obscured, but that
meant theirs was too.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I let the
imaginary bee loose one last time in the meaty guard’s mind; he was
screaming so loudly that a hundred boys could have run through the
pass unnoticed. The stern soldier leant over to grab the distressed
guard by the shoulders. He shook us violently, making me feel sick
as he dug his hands sharply into the guard’s biceps, shouting over
the screams to make his orders heard.
I stopped
buzzing. The guard took a deep breath, his eyes clouded with water.
He was shaking and breathing out ragged sobs. The laughing pair had
finally gotten their act together to take an embarrassing
photograph of him; the stern one shouted at them both when he saw
the flashbulb go off behind his head. I receded gently back from
the congealed humiliation building in the guard’s stomach, thinking
instead of Henri and hoping that he’d taken the right moment to
dash by.
When I found
him he was streaking across the pitch black fields, glancing behind
him to the patrol and the soldiers. Another flash of the camera
told me he was already a considerable distance away from them; the
bulb was little more than a firefly sized burst. His feet fell
heavily into the grass but the socks over his shoes dulled each
leap into a tiny thud. I could feel every muscle in his strong body
raging as he pressed on in the darkness and slowly I saw the
shadowed forms of the rest of the boys running in a pack just ahead
of him.
Well?
I asked loudly over the sound
of Henri’s thudding heart.
Did I do all
right?
“
You. Were. Amazing,” he panted, half laughing and half
gasping for air.
shiver I knew only too well began to creep up the back of my spine
and though I wanted desperately to stay with Henri until he reached
the other lads, I knew my energy was spent.
I have to go,
I said sadly,
but I’ll come back as soon as I can.
“
Tomorrow,” Henri gasped, “Promise me, tomorrow.”
Tomorrow,
I replied as the feel of
his charging heart faded away.
visited Henri in the next few days he made me promise that I would
come back tomorrow, which was actually not an easy promise to keep
in a house full of unpredictable Welsh women. When Idrys was
visiting he helped me to make excuses to get peace and quiet, but
when he wasn’t there I often had to retire to bed early to be
undisturbed, pretending that I was tired or had a headache. Mam was
starting to think that I was ill, which could only mean that a
visit to beastly Bickerstaff was looming on the horizon and he was
the last person I wanted to see. After about a week of visiting
Henri for only five or ten minutes at a time I decided enough was
enough. There was only one way to get peace from Ty Gwyn, and that
was to get out of Ty Gwyn.
I needed to
walk. I needed to get as far as the bank of the stream or to one of
the trees where I could sit undisturbed and pretend to be taking in
the fresh air. I told Henri of the plan early one night when I had
feigned tired eyes and escaped to my room.
“
I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” he murmured, “Didn’t you
say the strain makes you ill for days?”
standing on the side of a large hill looking out at a stunning pink
sunset. The lads were making camp every night in some secluded part
of the mountains as they moved nearer to their target, but Ol,
their self-appointed leader, had told Henri it would be almost the
end of May before they could get where they were going. Every time
I went to him I saw a new, stunning view from the higher altitudes
of Norway and it often made me wonder how much he would miss that
kind of beauty when he eventually made it to the rain-drenched
shores of Northern Scotland.
We don’t know that for sure,
I
argued,
Bickerstaff pushed me too hard. If
I do it at my own pace I might be fine.
“
Or you might not,” he added. It was hard to tell what was
actual worry and what was just shivering in his chest from the cold
evening air.
Have a little faith in me,
I said
sadly.
hands up to his chapped lips and rubbed them gently.
“
Since this war began, you are the only thing I’ve had faith
in. Sometimes I still wake up afraid that you’re not
real.”
Perhaps when you make it to Britain I can prove to you that
I’m real
.
thought I’d been harbouring ever since Henri had told me his plan
to get to Scotland. When I wasn’t with Henri I often let doubts
creep in, like doubts about whether he would ever want to meet me
if he did make it across the sea. But, here with him, when he said
such meaningful things, it didn’t seem quite so impossible to
believe that he would.
I felt him
smiling even though it cracked his sore lip. “How far will it be
from Scotland to North Wales?” he asked. There was no hiding the
elation in my voice when I replied.
***
The huge
wooden crutches that Bickerstaff had tried me on had been sitting
in the corner of my bedroom ever since the fever. It was a bright
warm Sunday after chapel when Idrys wheeled me outside whilst
Leighton struggled along with the crutches, dragging their pointed
ends across the cobbles of the farmyard. We found a soft patch of
grass at the edge of one of the fields; it was a space I knew from
my psychic travels, the place where the teenage farm boys threw
their love notes up at Blod’s window. When I glanced up at the
window I saw Ness’s little face peeping out at us with interest,
thankfully Blod wasn’t there to witness my struggling.
“
Right, how do we go about this?” Idrys asked, perplexed by
the triangular contraptions that Leighton was now trying to keep
upright for me. I took them from him and stood them up either side
of the chair, gripping the handles tightly.
“
Just be ready to catch her if she falls on her bum,” Leighton
explained. I gave him a wide eyed glare but I couldn’t hide my
smile. His freckles were coming out in the spring sunshine and I
thought the country air had done wonders for his growth. Mum was
going to be impressed by both of us when she saw us next, that I’d
make sure of.
massive heave I got from the chair onto my feet, wobbling for a few
moments until I had the cushioned parts of the crutches under each
arm to prop me up. I felt like a sagging scarecrow as I
straightened up my frame, embarrassment forcing the red flush into
my cheeks as I realised how silly I must have looked to my little
audience. When I found Leighton’s face again he was smiling, but
thankfully not laughing. He rolled eagerly on the balls of his
feet, clapping his hands together silently.
“
Go on then, take a step.” I could hear the anticipation
hitching his breath.
heavy crutches made my progress even slower than it had been when I
used the wall of the bedroom to get about, but I walked seven
snail-like paces to Idrys before I had to stop and heave out
exhausted breaths. My arms were on fire and the jellyfish knees
were back but Leigh and Idrys gave me a cheer all the same. The old
farmer helped me back into my chair and said that we all deserved a
drink and a biscuit, but as he wheeled me inside I waved a finger
at him breathlessly.
“
Only for half an hour,” I heaved, “Then you’ve got to take me
back outside to try again.”
like that for days, stepping in and out of the increasingly warm
air as April turned to May. When Idrys was busy I managed to
persuade Mam to tear herself away from her washing and cooking long
enough to make sure I didn’t collapse on the grass and when
Leighton got home from school he watched me practice inside. At
first he stood by the door of the sitting room whilst I walked in
case he needed to shout to Mam for help, but I couldn’t avoid
feeling terribly pleased with myself when he finally plopped
himself into a chair, deciding that I wasn’t going to fall.
Though I
hadn’t quite gained independence with my steps, the rests I had to
take in between practices were perfect opportunities to wheel off
to my room and find Henri. We’d been exchanging stories every day
of our progress and though he had trekked scores of miles over
sheer hillsides and vast barren plains, my grand total of nineteen
steps in a row was still the greatest achievement he had ever heard
of. Every day he wanted to know the number of paces I could manage,
so every day I pressed myself harder to take that one extra step so
as not to disappoint him.
“
This boy must be bloody good looking to get you working so
hard,” Idrys remarked one morning when the step total had reached
twenty three.
inclined to agree, though I hadn’t seen Henri’s face at all since
the day he’d been beaten up by Kluger and his mob. I found my
motivation in the warmth in his chest when I told him of my success
and in the wide smile he cracked when he heard me say hello. I
needed his praise and his belief in me the same way I needed the
crutches: to hold me up, to help me take on the challenge. Without
them I could so easily be that tear-soaked little girl again
collapsing on the floor of Bickerstaff’s office and that was
something I definitely never wanted to go back to.
***
The last day
in May was a Friday which always signified Mam putting on a huge
family dinner and inviting Bampi Idrys in for the evening. It also
meant that Blod would be occupied with the dual tasks of helping
Mam cook and supervising Ness whilst Leighton spent most the day at
school. I disappeared under the pretence of practising a few
careful steps alone in my room, but once I’d wheeled in there I
took just four steps from my chair to the bed where I lay back and
shut my eyes immediately.
I was
surprised to find Henri indoors after so many visits to the
beautiful mountainsides he had been traversing. He was in a little
wooden room looking into a sink full of soapy water. He sloshed his
hands into the sink and brought them up to his face with a tired
sigh, obscuring my view as he washed his forehead before moving
down to his cheeks. He looked up, but where I had been hoping for a
mirror there was just a blank wooden wall that he stared at without
focus. He slapped his wet face gently a few times then suddenly
shook his whole head, droplets flying everywhere.
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