The Mind's Eye (17 page)
Authors: K.C. Finn
Tags: #young adult, #historical, #wwii, #historical romance, #ww2, #ya, #europe, #telepathic, #clean teen publishing, #kc finn
Henri you make me feel sick when you do that!
I protested.
then laughed in quick succession.
“
Then you should tell me you’re here instead of spying on me,”
he accused.
He had a point, actually, but I wouldn’t let him win.
Oh yes,
I
replied,
because feeling you wash your
face is terribly exciting.
“
What do you mean ‘feeling’?” Henri asked.
Um…
In all our recent conversations
I had managed not to let that slip yet, though I had often felt as
though I ought to let Henri know I could feel everything that he
felt.
Well,
I
thought uncertainly,
I can feel what you
do with your body, almost like it’s my own body.
his arm hard.
Ow!
I cried immediately. He hissed
at the pain he’d caused himself.
You
didn’t have to test it!
“
This isn’t good news Kit,” Henri mused sadly, “If you’re with
me and I get hurt, you’ll feel it. I don’t want you to suffer for
me.”
I wanted to gulp down my worries.
Are you likely to get hurt?
I
asked.
his back on the sink quietly as he reached for his shirt and swung
it over his shoulders. For a brief moment he looked down to do up
his buttons and I saw a flash of his bare chest, but he must have
remembered quickly that I was behind his eyes because he looked up
again at the wall while he finished getting dressed.
“
Well, we’ve arrived at the place where the boats will come
for us,” he explained, “This is a small base made up by the
Resistance.”
When will your boat come?
I pressed.
He had ignored my last question, but I was too interested in how
soon he could get across the sea to pursue it.
“
When the water’s right,” he said, drawing in a sharp breath,
“We just have to be ready to leave as soon as they tell us. It
could be any night from now on.”
That’s brilliant,
I exclaimed. He
smiled a very small smile.
“
Listen to me Kit,” he said, his deep voice turning serious,
“I don’t want you to be there when I cross the water.” I made to
protest but he carried on talking. “It’s going to be cold and
dangerous and all kinds of hell to endure. I don’t want to be the
reason that you feel all that.”
But it won’t hurt me really,
I
argued,
I’ll just-
“
No,” Henri cut me off, shaking his head, “If you come to my
mind and you find me on that boat, you leave again right away. And
you keep leaving until I am back on land somewhere. If you don’t, I
won’t forgive you.”
heard him speak this harshly since the night he cursed the Germans
when his employer was taken away, and most of that had been in
Norwegian. This was his warning to me and he meant it.
“
If you care for me at all then you must do what I say,” he
urged.
than I did about the dangers on the water, someone had clearly
warned him how bad it was going to be. I wanted to tell him to turn
back, to not risk it, but now that he had vanished from a city
riddled with German soldiers there was little choice left for him
but to endure whatever the journey threw at him.
Of course I care for you,
I said
softly,
I promise I’ll stay away until
you’re safely on this island.
“
Good,” he answered quietly. I felt the heavy burden in his
chest start to relax. “Well, do we still have time together now, or
will you have to go soon?”
I smiled.
I think I’m all right for
a while. Everyone’s busy here today.
the little wooden washroom and made his way down a pitch black
corridor, turning instinctively to another tiny, dark room. Once
inside he fumbled with a lantern until it came to life,
illuminating a little bedroll on the floor. He lay down on it
quietly and I felt the hardness of the floor behind his back. It
was horribly uncomfortable, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
“
I’ve been wondering about your family in London,” he said
quietly, “Tell me, what does your mother do?”
Mum works in a factory that makes parts for bicycles,
I admitted. I felt Henri smiling quietly to
himself.
It used to be a tiny little
job,
but she started working millions of
hours there once Dad went away, and now she says the factory’s
started making parts for aircraft instead.
I felt a sad sort of longing creeping into the back of my
head.
That’s why she can’t get away long
enough to come and see us up here, she’s working very long hours
for the war effort.
“
I think it’s good that everyone does their part,” Henri
mused, “I want to do my part too when I come over.”
becoming a soldier, I was sure of it. The thought of Henri going to
battle was both awfully brave and utterly terrifying to me.
They won’t let you enlist until you’re eighteen
though,
I answered, bringing myself some
comfort.
“
I know, but my birthday’s in August, it’s not that far away.”
He shuffled on the hard floor, resting his head on a rolled up
jacket. “So your father is away at the war?”
exactly.
“
What do you mean?” Henri asked.
I hesitated, for a moment before I gave in and told
him.
Dad went away about a year before the
war started. Mum always says he’s working, but we haven’t heard a
word from him in all this time.
“
I had a friend like that once,” Henri began, “His mother told
him the same thing.”
And where was his dad really?
I
asked nervously.
lip. “I’m not sure I should say.”
Go on,
I pressed,
it can’t be any worse than what I’m
thinking.
“
In prison,” Henri answered, “What were you
thinking?”
I could feel
the shock in Henri’s broad chest. “You don’t really think your
father’s dead, do you?”
Sometimes,
I said sadly,
then sometimes not. It’s all so strange. We woke
up one morning and he’d just vanished, he never even came to say
goodbye to us. Mum just said he had to go, and that was
that.
“
I think prison’s more likely by the sound of that,” Henri
said. I felt his own grief matching mine as he gripped the pockets
of his trousers tightly, his arms turning stiff. “I would have
preferred to hope that my parents were still alive, if I could
have.”
to press him to talk about them and he didn’t volunteer any more
information, so I tried to ignore the sadness rising within
him.
If we were in the same place together
, I said gently,
this would be a
good moment to give you a hug.
a grin as his gaze fixed on the black ceiling. “I have saved up a
few hugs for you already,” he revealed, “On the condition that you
can walk up to me to get them.”
A fluttery,
wonderful feeling gripped my chest so strongly that I didn’t know
if it was me or Henri that was feeling it.
I did twenty seven steps last count,
I replied, wondering if my voice would quiver in his
head.
“
Then I’m going to stand thirty paces away and hold my arms
out like this,” he laughed, pushing his long, strong arms up in
front of him in a wide, welcoming gesture, “And you’ll have to get
to me.”
Yours arms will be aching by the time I do,
I giggled in reply,
I
walk like a snail. A slow snail. A really elderly, slow
snail.
laughing with such abandon that all thoughts of the war vanished
from our heads, so it wasn’t until I returned to Ty Gwyn later that
I thought again about the boat and the dangers ahead.
had a few more precious days where we could chat and laugh
together, but the night finally came where I closed my eyes and
found him at sea. The thrash of icy waves shocked me so severely
that I fell right out of his head and back into my own bed, but the
few seconds I’d been with him were enough to tell me that every
muscle in his body was straining against the North Sea. I wrestled
with myself about going back to him, just to check that he was all
right, but I had made a promise to him and it wouldn’t be right not
to keep it.
I told Idrys
about the boat when we were practising my steps outside and he
promised me that a good strong boy could make it across the water.
Henri was a good strong boy if ever I’d seen one, but I took little
comfort in the old Welshman’s words. I didn’t even need to step
into his head; there was something behind his thoughtful eyes that
told me he was worried for Henri too. I threw all my efforts into
reaching thirty paces, which was about the distance from the edge
of the field to the nearest tree, but I got stuck at twenty nine,
my energy sapping away until I actually did collapse on the
grass.
It had been
three days since Henri went to sea when my aching body dropped into
the long warm grass, spent from my futile efforts. Twenty nine
steps weren’t enough to reach him. Nothing was enough to reach him
until the beastly sea let him go. Idrys rushed over to me and made
to help me up, but I waved him off, looking up at the tree I had
almost reached as my eyes began to water. He looked down on me, his
bushy brow furrowed in concern.
“
Just leave me,” I sobbed, “I’m tired of this.”
“
Don’t be daft,” he said, crouching down to scoop me up in his
hefty arms, “You’re doing great, you are. Don’t be giving up now
eh? Not when you’re so close.”
and upset in his grip as he took me slowly back to my chair,
shaking my head.
“
Everything’ll come right soon,” he promised, and I knew he
didn’t just mean for me.
went to bed feeling sure that Henri’s crossing would be over,
readying myself to congratulate him on a mission well completed.
He’d told me it would take about three days if conditions were
good. I suspected that they weren’t good from the brief glimpses of
the crashing waves and hellish winds I had witnessed when I checked
on him, but I was still hopeful that the boat might have kept to
its timescale. I settled in my cosy bed trying to ignore the
anxious pounding in my chest, focusing on Henri as hard as I
could.
Everything
was black, like it sometimes was if I had caught him sleeping.
Henri? Henri
wake up, it’s me.
Nothing
happened. The world stayed black. I could feel someone breathing,
but I couldn’t tell if it was him or me. There was no movement of
body, no light, no noise.
Henri,
I pressed, pushing harder and
louder into his head.
Henri please wake
up. Please!
and again but there was no reply. I came back to my own head to
check nothing was wrong with me then tried Henri again, but found
myself in the same blackness as before. I panicked then, sitting up
in bed and throwing all my splints off with a mighty crash. He was
hurt; I just knew it, knocked out or something. I swung myself to
the edge of the bed, tears flowing down my face. Or worse still, he
was gone. He had warned me about the dangers he would have to face;
perhaps this was what he really meant when he said he didn’t want
me to suffer.
He didn’t
want me there in case I felt him die.
In spite of
any weakness I leapt to my feet, racing on wild limbs to the nearby
wash basin to throw up. I hadn’t even realised that I had made the
walk without aids until after I had spewed my guts out, crying and
heaving into the bowl. The door burst open and a second later I
felt Mam’s warm hands on my shoulders as she guided me to sit and
wiped my face. I could hardly communicate with her I was crying so
much, which didn’t really matter because I couldn’t have possibly
explained what had made me so upset. When my chest finally finished
heaving I began to hear her soothing words.
“
There, there, love,” Mam said in her sing-song lilt, “Bad
dream was it?”
nodded, feeling hollow. I grimaced at the horrid taste in my mouth
and Mam fetched me some water. When I tried to sip it my hands
shook out of all control.
