Read The Crystal Mirror for Free Online

down and have something to eat.” She offered Laney a plate stacked high with duck-shaped cookies.
    Laney edged towards the door. “I’m sorry, Mrs Whitefern. I didn’t mean to… I should go.”
    “But you’ve only just got here.” Gwen looked at her beadily. “Someone as old and little as me can hardly understand what you’re going through, isthat what you’re thinking?”
    “Um, it’s just that I have to get back.” Laney tried to smile politely. She was pretty sure that Mrs Whitefern couldn’t help her, but she didn’t want to be rude.
    Gwen tottered over to a fruit bowl that stood on a side table. She peeled an orange and took a pip from one of the segments. Holding it in the palm of her crinkly hand, she whispered to it and then blew softly. It sprouted instantly, growing a sturdy stem, then several side branches, all with leaves. Within half a minute there were ripe oranges hanging from each branch of the tree. It carried on growing and sprouting until it reached the ceiling.
    Laney stared wide-eyed at Gwen through the tangle of branches. This was the same Gwen. She just hadn’t really known her before. “That was amazing! I didn’t think you were…like that…” She tailed off.
    “I know.” Gwen picked an orange and offered it to Laney with a wrinkled smile. “Sometimes you have to see with the heart not with the eyes. Not all power lies in young skin and supple limbs.”
    “I’m sorry!” Laney blushed as she took the orange.
    Gwen placed the orange tree, now bushy with overhanging roots, carefully on the carpet. “It seems we must start afresh. I am Gwen, faerie Elder and the oldest Thorn faerie in Skellmore.”She stood a little taller as she spoke, power shining from behind her tawny eyes.
    Laney sat down heavily on the flowery sofa. She thought she knew this room. She remembered the threadbare bit on the arm of the sofa where you could see the white lining underneath. Yet all the time Gwen had kept her secret. She took hold of a rose-patterned cushion and held it tight. “So it’s all true then? About the…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word faeries.
    “You
are
a faerie, Laney,” Gwen said solemnly. “There are faeries living in different places all over the world and this village is one of them.”
    Laney shook her head. “But this is just Skellmore!”
    Gwen smiled and tucked her curly white hair under her hat. “There’s more to this village than you think. Come with me. There’s something I want to show you.” She tottered through the door and down the passageway. “Usually I keep my front room as ordinary as possible. Then I use my skills down here in my plant house,” she called back.
    Laney skirted round the orange tree and followed her down the passage. Even though she’d been to Gwen’s house millions of times, she’d never been any further than the front room before.
    They passed through a doorway hung with long curling vines and the scent of flowers filled the air. Then she was inside a huge plant house with twoglass walls and a glass ceiling. Small trees stretched up to the windowed panes in the roof. Flowers grew beneath them in crimson, pink and mauve.
    “It’s beautiful!” said Laney.
    “This is the part of my house I could never let you see before you Awakened,” said Gwen.
    They followed the path, which was almost covered with foliage. The flowers turned their faces towards Gwen as she passed. A nearby tree branch moved creakily to rest its leaves on her shoulder. Laney caught her breath.
    “Come and sit down.” Gwen slowly seated herself on a wooden bench with long vines woven all around it. The flowers gazed at the old lady with upturned faces. Laney noticed that the backs of Gwen’s hands were covered with curling silvery marks that she’d never seen before.
    “Other Elders said that you might never Awaken,” Gwen told her. “They said that twelve was too old. But there was just something about you – something waiting to come