The Dark Crystal by Henson Jim

Author:Henson, Jim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Archaia
Published: 2014-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Jen awoke to daylight and to Kira’s face smiling down at him. His head was in her lap.

“Where are we?” Jen asked.

“We are safe,” Kira replied.

“What a wonderful thing to hear the moment you awake!” Jen smiled back at her and sat up. He winced, feeling his arm.

“How is it?” Kira asked.

Jen moved it backward and forward, carefully. “Better,” he announced. “A lot better, I think. A bit stiff, though.”

“Leave the moss on for now, all the same.”

Jen inspected his green arm and grinned at the sight. Then he stood up and glanced around the glade. Fizzgig stood up with him and began to romp among the flowers.

“Did you sleep?” Jen asked.

“Of course I did.”

“With my head in your lap?”

“You were groaning a bit but it didn’t stop me falling back to sleep. On the contrary.”

“What’s that?” Jen was staring across the glade. What he had taken, in the darkness, to be the edge of a low cliff he now saw to be the façade of a ruined building.

“It’s the house of the Old Ones.”

“The Old Ones?” Jen repeated, intensely curious. A strange sense of intimacy with the house at once took possession of him. “Who are they?”

Kira shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s what the Pod People always call them, the Old Ones.” She seemed reluctant to say any more.

“Have you ever seen them, the Old Ones?”

“No. I don’t think anyone lives there now.”

Jen was wandering toward a dilapidated doorway. He was enchanted by the ruins, which he now saw were more than just the one house. Through the doorway, other walls and courtyards came into view. The stonework was graceful, with the remains of carvings evident here and there. The floors, where they were not covered with debris from the caved-in roofs, were apparently tiled.

“Don’t go in, Jen.” Kira’s voice was suddenly tense.

“Why not?”

“I was told not to. Ever.”

“Why? What’s the danger?”

“I don’t know. The roofs might fall in on you. The Pod People would never go inside. Bad things happened here once. The Old Ones were killed by the Skeksis. Jen?”

“I have to.” Jen meant exactly what he said. No mere idle curiosity was luring him into the ruins but an affinity he immediately felt with the place. He could not begin to explain it. He was being drawn inside, that was all he knew.

As if to confirm his impulse, lying in the doorway among the leaves was the shard, the blade of its dagger shape pointing inside the ruins like a compass needle. Jen hesitated a moment, then decided not to retrieve it. That was a decision he would rather defer for now. He walked through the doorway.

Then he turned round, looking back at Kira. “Come on,” he said and held out his hand.

She gazed at him, doubtful and anxious.

More persuasively he repeated, “Come on, Kira. We must see what’s in here.”

With a slow shrug and pursing her lips, she crossed the glade. At the doorway she stopped. “I’m afraid,” she muttered to herself, almost in apology.

Jen did not hear her.

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