Free Pureheart by Cassandra Golds Page B

she had talked of taking him to the doctor for a chest X-ray.
    It was odd how one minute it was open war between them, the next minute she was treating him as if he was her child and she a fussing, attentive guardian.
    However, the visit didn’t seem to be going to take place anytime soon. Mrs Dark was very busy, these days, with her building plans.
    They never seemed to get to the end of the passages and stairways and rooms to explore. They had wandered down a dark hallway with doors on either side of it: all locked, all apparently leading to empty flats that had been shut up because they couldn’t be let. They were about to turn back, disappointed; they didn’t remember this hall and it had seemed more promising from the outside than within. But then Gal noticed a dim glow on the wall at the end. It was oblong-shaped and they suddenly realised the passage did not culminate in a dead end but turned at right angles towards some place more brightly lit. The peculiar thing was, the light looked like sunshine.
    And yet they could still hear the rain dripping relentlessly through the pipes.
    â€˜We’re in the middle of the building,’ Gal said suddenly. He was sure it was true, although he didn’t know how he could tell, unless it was some kind of instinct. ‘The very middle,’ he said wonderingly. ‘Like the centre of the earth. Except this is the centre of Corbenic.’
    Then Deirdre did something that startled him. She turned her head towards him and looked at him in a weird, interior kind of way, as if she was there, but not there; as if she was blind, or sleepwalking.
    â€˜I know,’ she said.
    They ventured on towards the end, turned the corner, and were confronted with a surprising sight. Another hall – a strange, rough, empty hall like a stony passage between an underground network of caves. Only there was a stairway at the end of it and the steps seemed to be made of stones, naturally occurring stones, which might have been found in a river. The stairway led upward. At the top was a gate with iron bars. Through it poured a dim red-gold light.
    They did not speak; but they reached for each other’s hands, and walked towards it.
    The gate looked very old, older than the building; too old to be in the building. It looked like something that might be found somewhere in an old, old church: a gate round the tomb of a knight or a saint, perhaps. As they approached Deirdre grew strangely confident. She went ahead a little, pulling him by the hand. She walked up the steps and instead of peering in through the bars, as he had expected, reached in and found a latch that was invisible to him but which, when released, caused the door to drift gently open.
    He followed her inside.
    There was light all around and the room seemed to be made of crystal – that is, cut glass – which, like the light, was impossible. There were no walls, only windows, and the windows looked like diamonds. The room was circular and contained only one thing – an iron plinth on which stood a crystal box. The box had a lid, also crystal.
    The sunlight seemed to be shining through the cut glass from within the box. But the box was not filled with light, or not light only. There was something inside, something about the size of a fist that could be dimly perceived through the glass. It glowed red-gold and it moved, or jumped, rhythmically, almost as if the fist were clenching itself and releasing, clenching itself and releasing, with a blind, but conscious intensity.
    â€˜It’s a little animal!’ whispered Gal. ‘Is it – a frog? He must be trapped! But how does he live?’
    â€˜He’s not trapped,’ whispered Deirdre. ‘That’s his cage. He lives because I feed him. Grandmother put him here. It’s my task to guard him and look after him.’
    â€˜So you’ve been here before?’
    â€˜I come here every night,’ said Deirdre. ‘But when