by Willow Rose
Manolo looked pensively at the crystal clear water running in the river.
”Okay, but you shouldn’t do it alone. I will help you ask the book.”
Sara looked at Manolo.
”Not that I need it, but thank you.”
So without anyone noticing them, they went in to Settela’s tent and found the book. Sara put it on the table where Settela made her potions. She looked at the golden snakehead at the front cover. It was staring right at her. She felt her heart racing in her chest. She looked at Manolo. He seemed pale and frightened, too.
Then she heard the whisper again.
“…Sara … Sara … Sara …”
She let go of the book. Her heart was beating even faster now. She looked at Manolo to see if he heard it. By the look on his face, she knew that he had. He took a step backwards with his eyes wide open.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked with a shivering voice.
“Yes I am,” Sara said with great determination.
Then she grabbed the book and opened it.
The pages were still blank. She flipped a couple of pages. Still nothing.
“How do we do this?” Manolo said. “How do we ask it a question?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a deep sigh. “Maybe we just ask?”
And so she did. She took in a deep breath and said:
“Book of Foresight, how do I save my little brother?”
They both held their breath as they stared at the blank pages. But nothing happened.
Sara sat down in her mother’s chair. It was like she sank right into it, as if it was so big it would absorb her. She felt the weight of responsibility on her. She was still a long way from becoming as great a sorceress as her mother.
Then Sara looked at her mother’s desk, and saw the book she used to write down the recipes that she made herself. Besides it was a feather pen in an ink-house of silver.
“Maybe we need to say like a spell or something or a verse,” Manolo said.
“Maybe,” Sara said and took the pen and ink-house.
She dipped the feather a couple of times in the ink and then she wrote on a blank page in the book:
How do I save my little brother?
Again they held their breath as they waited for the book to answer. Nothing happened for the first minute or so and they almost gave up hope. Sara closed the book with a bang. Then all of a sudden the golden snake started to move. Two red eyes emerged in its face and it became alive moving across the table like a real snake. It looked at Sara with a hissing sound.
Her heart stood still.
Then the snake opened its mouth and said with a hoarse whispering voice: ”Look into the Eye of the Crystal Ball and you will find your answer.”
After that it crawled back in the front cover of the book again and froze. The eyes disappeared and it became of solid gold again.
All was quiet in the tent. Only Sara and Manolo’s heavy breathing could be heard.
”Did you see the same as I did?” Sara finally asked Manolo.
“If you saw a talking snake coming out of that book, I did.”
She sat down still staring at the book in front of her. The snake looked like it had never moved.
“What is the Eye of the Crystal Ball?” she asked.
Manolo looked at her with fear in his eyes.
“This is really not a good idea,” he said.
She got up and walked towards him.
“You know what it is?”
“Well … yes I do, but it is really a bad idea to try this. This is dark magic. It belongs to the dark spirits. You really shouldn’t be messing with it.”
Sara snorted with anger.
“I am not afraid. I will save my brother no matter what.”
“I know you want to save him, but still … this book, the snake and now the Eye of the Crystal Ball. My mother, rest her soul, always told me to stay away from this kind of darkness. You can’t trust the evil spirits.”
“It is my only chance. Just tell me where I can find it, you don’t have to come along if you are too afraid,” she said.
He sighed.
“I really don’t know …”
“Come on just tell me.”
He sighed again.
“Alright but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I won’t.”
“Okay.”
He sat down and began: “The Eye of the Crystal Ball belongs to an ancient fortune teller named Sensisaron, the legend says. She lives deep in the Cantabrian Mountains. She has a ring she wears on one of her claw-like fingers. A gold ring set with a fiery red ruby. With this ring she can make herself invisible or even into any shape human or not human that she wishes and she can also bewitch men and women and little children and every animal that lives and breathes. One glint of that red ruby in your eyes and you are powerless and helpless. You must go where the fortune teller wills and do what she wills. Some people she keeps prisoners, some people she changes into dark creatures that wander the forests and mountains at night for eternity or until someone breaks the spell. It is also that same ring that keeps her alive. She is more than three hundred years old, the story goes.”
“And what about the crystal ball?”
“She keeps it in her castle. If you look into its eye it can tell you the future.”
“And show me how I am going to cure Marius.”
Manolo nodded.
“But there is another thing. The legend says that when you look into the eye you will also face yourself in the future and that can sometimes make even the toughest warriors break down and cry. Standing face to face with your own true self can be scary.”
Sara sighed and looked at Manolo. She wasn’t scared of anything in this world except losing her little brother.
“I will do it. I will go and find the Crystal Ball and look into its eye and face myself,” she said.
Manolo got up.
“Then I will go with you.”
THE SINGING CAVE
They left at dawn. Sara packed a small bag with food, some bread, water a little meat and some clothes.
Her mom had fallen asleep with her head on Marius’ crib. Sara sneaked past her and gave her a kiss before she left the caravan, not knowing if she would ever come back.
Manolo was waiting for her by the river. He, too, had packed some things and had (as he always did) his guitar strapped on the back.
Sara took one of her father’s horses, a beautiful black stallion. And on its back they began their quest to find the ancient fortuneteller deep within the mountains.
Her castle was supposed to be in a canyon at the foot of Torre Cerredo, the highest peak in the Cantabrian Mountains, Manolo had told her. It was located more than two hundred miles away.
They traveled for days on the stallion’s back. When they were hungry they ate, when they were tired they camped and spent the night.
Little did they know, but that same day they set out from the Romani camp, in another part of the mountains a creature of evil in shape of a giant black bear also began its journey. Its big red eyes were only set on one thing:
To kill Sara the Mighty One.
By the time Manolo and Sara had traveled for three days, the bear caught up with them. They had stopped in a clearing by a mountain stream and were eating bread and drinking water, when the black bear spotted them between the pine trees.
Manolo and Sara were laughing at something Manolo had said earlier. Sara petted the black stallion and made sure he got enough to drink and grass to eat. She didn’t see the red eyes staring at them between the trees. She didn’t hear the heavy breathing or sense the danger that was right next to them.
But nevertheless she suddenly rose from the grass, looked at Manolo and said to him: “We shouldn’t waste any more time.”
He immediately agreed and in a few seconds they both jumped on the back of the horse. Just as the bear entered the clearing and threw its paw at them they galloped off and disa
ppeared between the pine trees.
Then they were gone.
While the black bear had lost their track and was searching for them, they traveled for another couple of days until they had no more food left. Then they set camp and Manolo went hunting and brought back four rabbits they could cook over a small fire that Sara made.
“We will soon be reaching the Singing Cave,” he said while they were eating.
“And what is that?”
“They say a spirit is sleeping in there. And she will stay asleep as long as the singing doesn’t stop,” he said.
“The singing?”
He nodded while blowing on the campfire causing it to flame up. Sara looked at him, impressed.
“The singing comes out of the cave. They say it is the earth that is doing it. The cave is very deep. It goes right into the burning center of the earth.”
He handed her a piece of meat.
“What kind of a spirit is it?” she asked while eating.
“It is the spirit of Cantabria.”
“Cantabria?” Sara remembered hearing that name before.
“She was a princess who gave her name to this chain of mountains. A snake-wizard was in love with her, but she wouldn’t have him, and one day he got very drunk and raped her. Nine month later she gave birth to a serpent. She ran away to the woods, afraid of her father’s anger. Alone, she poured out her story to the forest but when she did, she attracted the attention of the wild beasts and they ripped her to pieces. Later on, the wizard that loved her got sober and went to look for her but found nothing but her shattered remains. Heartbroken with grief, he put the pieces together and laid her to rest in this cave demanding that the surroundings join his mourning. He caused the whole earth to shiver while he created these extremely high mountains as a graveyard for her. He wouldn’t let her go to the world of the dead so he trapped her spirit by making the earth sing it to sleep in the cave.”
Sara drank water and wiped her mouth with the top of her hand like she always did. (Something Mrs. Schneider often had commented upon with the remark that “that was not the way a nice young lady wiped her mouth.”)
“So what happens if the singing stops and her spirit wake up?” Sara asked almost missing Mrs. Schneider and her small comments about her manners for a while—but only almost, that is.
“If her spirit wakes up she will be able to travel over to the other side and leave this world. But the story says that the wizard is still watching over her and he will take whoever wakes her up with him into the center of the earth and in there they will burn for eternity.”
Sara had a lump in her throat.
“And we are passing this cave?”
“We have to go through it to get to the Wild Witches Valley.”
A few hours later they stood at the entrance of the cave. They both got off the horse since it was difficult for the stallion to walk on the rocks. It was a big cave, at least ten times as big as Sara, she thought as they entered.
“The important thing is to be extremely quiet,” Manolo said.
So they walked without making a sound. Only the sound of the stallion’s hooves gave an echo in the cave.
As soon as they entered the cave, Sara had a feeling that someone or something was behind them, following them, but every time she turned to look there was nothing but darkness.
As they went deeper, they began to hear a weak singing. It sounded somewhat like a whooshing in the beginning, but as they walked it became louder and more beautiful but dangerously alluring. The light disappeared completely after a while, and Manolo lifted his torch high in the air so they could all see where they were walking.
The air got moist and every once in a while they heard a drip of water fall. Small animals fled as they arrived. Spiders, roaches, and scorpions crawled on the walls and some even on their feet.
Bats flew over their heads making a shrieking sound, causing them to duck their heads. Sara had never seen bats before and found them quite fascinating. Sara had a connection to animals that no one ever understood. She loved all sorts of animals, often more than she loved people. And sometimes she would talk to them, tell them her troubles or if someone had been bad to her at school, like she often had done with the neighbor’s cat when she lived with the Schneider’s at Reidenburgerstrasse. She liked to talk to them, because they always listened, they were never too busy for her and they never interrupted with something they thought was more important.
So now you understand why Sara didn’t get scared by the presence of all these animals in the cave, not even as they went even deeper in and the cave became even more alive. Not even when they saw the biggest insects she had ever seen.
“Are you sure that there is an opening at the other end of the cave?” Sara whispered after a while.
Manolo hushed her and signaled that they should hurry and move forward. He, too, sensed that something was following them. So they hurried up trying to be as quiet as possible. Even the stallion seemed to be able to walk quietly. Somewhere in the middle, they found steps that they climbed and they were now walking at the edge of a deep canyon.
“Look,” Manolo whispered suddenly while pointing down in the canyon.
Sara uttered a shocked sound. A burning mass of lava ran like a river beneath them. Sputtering and spouting, the lava seemed to be trying to reach them. Burning rocks landed every once in a while on their path but never hit any of them. Sara sensed the anxiety rising in the stallion and as they went, it began to slow down and she had to talk calmly to it to convince it to continue.
They came to a long wooden bridge that went over the river of lava. Sara looked around to try and find another way, but this was the only way if they were to move on. The path they were following stopped here.
The bridge looked old and unsafe. It had a couple of holes in it and in some places even entire planks were missing.
“We can’t walk on this bridge,” Sara whispered. “It is too dangerous.”
“We have to,” Manolo said. “It is the only way across.”
Sara looked at the stallion that was already backing up. She wasn’t scared to enter the bridge for her own sake. She would be just fine, but she was concerned about the horse. He had a fear in his eyes and that is never good in a horse’s eyes. Once they give in to fear there is no turning back. They run. (And when they do run they only look back at the danger that they are trying to escape. They never look ahead, which means they might run into everything and everyone they are passing. Therefore you should never stand in the way of a horse running from something.)
“Come on, stallion,” she said and began to walk, pulling it by the bridle.
The bridge made a large creaky sound when she put her weight onto it. Her heart pounded in her chest. It would never hold the weight of the horse. Underneath her feet, the burning lava seemed to want her to fall into it. It seemed to be waiting for her to slip or fall through a hole in the bridge.
Then she took a difficult decision. She started unloading their bags from the horse.
“We need to leave the horse,” Sara said. “The bridge won’t hold his weight.”
Manolo nodded. Even though this meant they had to walk the rest of the way and even though that meant it would take them much longer to reach their destination they both knew this was the right thing to do. It was the only thing.
But unfortunately it was too late. At that moment Sara walked back to release the horse, the fear took the better of the stallion and it balked pulling Sara, who was holding the reins, into the air. Then it started to neigh loudly while it threw itself back and forth kicking and balking.
“STOP!” Sara yelled when she got her feet back on the ground, but it didn’t help and she had to let go of the reins. Just at the same time, one of the horse’s legs slipped and it started to fall down the steep edges. Sara grabbed the reins again, and while the horse fought to get back up, she and Manolo pulled with all they had, helping it to almost get back on the path. Then it slipped again and fell
further down. Sara and Manolo held and pulled, but the horse was far too heavy for them. It neighed out so loudly, the sound echoed in the cave. That long high-pitched sound kept on going and going as the horse fought for his life. And then Sara saw something happening in his eyes.
It gave up.
Sara looked at it and yelled that it should keep on fighting, that it shouldn’t give into the fear, but it was too late. The stallion slipped even further and she and Manolo had to let go of the reins if they weren’t to be drawn down with it.
They heard one last neigh as the stallion hit the burning lava that instantly swallowed it. And then he was gone. Their beautiful black stallion, their friend and companion.
The cave was quiet again and there was nothing but the sound of the lava. Having loved the horse, Sara fought the urge to burst into tears.
“Listen,” Manolo said.
”What? I can’t hear anything.” She wiped away a tear that had escaped despite her effort to hold it back.
”Exactly. The singing stopped.”
They looked at each other with alarm.
“We have to hurry,” Sara said and stepped out onto the creaking bridge.
Carefully, she took one step after another out on the bridge over the running lava. It kept squeaking and creaking but it didn’t break, and after having jumped a few holes and balancing like a tightrope artist she finally reached the other side.
Manolo followed. He slipped once in the middle and caused Sara to scream, but after that he managed to balance his way on the old bridge and get to the other side.
From there they walked as quietly and carefully as they could. Every once in a while Sara couldn’t help but to look down at the burning lava as if she was expecting to see her stallion coming out of the lava again. But he was gone.
They reached a door and behind that door they found a chamber with a monument of stone. In it they guessed lay the remains of the princess Cantabria and her trapped spirit. But right at that moment the monument cracked in two pieces down the middle in a big explosion.
