The Mind's Eye

  K.C. Finn

  Clean Teen Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Mind’s Eye

  Copyright © 2013 by: K.C. Finn

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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  Clean Teen Publishing

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  The Colony, TX 75056

  www.cleanteenpublishing.com

  Cover design by: Marya Heiman

  Typography by: Courtney Nuckels

  ~Smashwords Edition~

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Inspiration Behind The Mind’s Eye

  For Jackson Freeman:

  Henri’s biggest fan.

  “Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye…”

  That’s what they were singing, all along the train. Hordes of children much younger than me, singing and dancing in their drab school uniforms, flinging their gas masks at each other like catapults. Some of them had lost the name labels that were supposed to be pinned to their lapels, those little white tickets that told the billeting officers where they’d come from and where they were going. But they didn’t care; they just went on singing.

  “… Cheerio, here I go, on my way…”

  I didn’t feel much like singing. It was all too sad and too sudden, leaving Mum at the station in London, being herded onto the great grey engine like cattle. Leighton didn’t understand my thoughtful expression as he stood beside me, rocking with the motion of the carriage. He wanted to sing, I could tell. But he was only ten, a full five years younger than me; he didn’t even know how to feel the way I did. He didn’t worry about when we’d be able to see Mum again.

  Or Dad, for that matter.

  “Go and join in Leigh,” I pressed, “I’ll be all right without you.”

  My little brother didn’t seem sure about that, but he took the opportunity he’d been waiting for all the same. I watched his skinny legs skip into the throng of children until I lost sight of his brown bowl-cut head of hair in the crowd. I looked around hopelessly, confirming once again that I was the only teenager on the train. I cursed under my breath. I’d forgotten to tell Leighton to take care of his label. It didn’t matter so much for the other kids, now trampling on a sea of white paper name tags on the train floor, but our labels were important. Ours were green.

  I took another careful look at the train. The guard had passed through our carriage quite some time ago, which meant that the children who had been initially well behaved had now worked themselves up into a frenzy. They were chattering excitedly about where they were being sent, asking the ones that were good at reading to read out notes from their parents, hanging their heads out of the window to catch a taste of the bitter September breeze flying by. They hadn’t noticed me. Nobody really did. So they wouldn’t notice if I were to do something odd.

  I closed my eyes, lifting my arms until the base of my palms rested on my forehead. I took two slow breaths. In and out and in and out. I brought my hands gently down over my face until I could feel them casting a shadow against the light streaming in from the window. The chatter of the children faded into a low hum as I began to concentrate hard on Leighton.

  A cold shiver passed through me. When I opened my eyes I was four feet tall and standing in the middle of a mass of giggling boys and girls. One girl with curly blonde ringlets gave the shoulder I was attached to a push. I felt her pinchy grip.

  “What’s your name then?” She demanded with a lisp.

  “Leighton Cavendish,” I heard my brother’s voice reply.

  “Are you goin’ on your own?” The girl asked.

  I felt a little dizzy as my brother shook his head.

  “No I’m with my sister, Kit,” he explained, “she’s back in the other part of the carriage.”

  “Oh yeah,” said the little blonde girl, who I was beginning to think was a rather nasty piece of work. She screwed up her piggy face and shoved Leighton again. I felt the jab harshly. She had hurt him. “Where are you goin’ then? I bet it’s not as good as my place. I’m going to An-jel-see.”

  Anglesey, I thought, but I tried my best to keep it to myself. Leighton was fidgeting with his lapels, confirming my worst fears when he dropped his head down to look at them. Through his eyes I saw the pin that should have been holding his green paper label.

  “Oh, um,” he stammered, starting to look around.

  I followed his gaze in deep concentration, trying to ignore the piggy girl’s laugh as I helped him search the floor of the crowded carriage. I could feel the tension building in his little body, like he knew how angry I might be at him for losing his paper after all the warnings Mum had given him that same morning. His glances became more erratic and harder to follow as he twirled around, but I caught a flash of something in a pea green shade on one of his twists. But I couldn’t make him move back to it and he didn’t seem to want to turn that way again.

  Frustrated I thought harder, pushing myself deeper into his head, until I could hear him fretting so loudly in my skull I thought my head would burst. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, trying just to whisper the words in my mind.

  Behind your left shoe.

  Leighton turned, looking to see where the voice had come from.

  Left’s the other way.

  He turned again and to my relief he immediately saw the paper on the ground. As my brother bent to retrieve it I let him go, sinking back into a dizzying blackness for a few seconds until I could see my own hands over my eyes. I let my arms drop, taking a lungful of oxygen in desperately. My head ached and my arms were limp at my side, but I smiled at the sight of Leighton skipping back up the corridor towards me with the slip of green paper in his hand.

  “Kit, this came off,” he said as he waved it in my face, “Can you pin it back on please?”

  “Perhaps I’d better keep it until we get off,” I suggested, after which he immediately handed the paper over. I didn’t miss the look of relief on his face.

  ***

  Most of the children had settled into sleepy little heaps by the time we finally crossed the border into North Wales, which gave me some time to recover from my l
ittle trip into Leighton’s head. I wasn’t supposed to do things like that in public places. Nobody had ever told me so, exactly, but then nobody else knew what I could do. I just knew that the closed-eye deep breathing thing would look odd to me if I saw someone else doing it, and God only knows what I looked like when my mind was otherwise engaged.

  Probably like some great gawking ape, with my bristling curly hair the colour of ginger biscuits flying out in all directions, my indigo eyes dark and dead to all in my immediate space. I laughed to myself silently so I didn’t disturb the sleeping masses. If those kids had seen me use my ability, then they were likely to forget it, perhaps write it off as teenagers just being odd and doing strange things. So long as no-one important ever caught me, I’d be safe.

  The train guard re-entered the carriage with the jangle of keys, stepping gently down the central aisle and shaking his head at the carpet of labels under his feet. He caught my eye and gave a “Tsk, tsk”. I just nodded politely whilst he approached.

  “We’ll be at your station in a few minutes, Miss Cavendish,” the kindly old guard informed. He had a voice as smoky as the puffs passing the train window. “You’d best wake your brother and I’ll help you alight.”

  “Thank you sir,” I said with a small smile.

  I could feel the tremble in my chest as I gave Leighton a little push. He was curled up on the seat beside me with his head in my lap. He unfurled himself like a cat and rubbed his sleepy blue eyes as I told him the news from the guard. When he’d got himself together he nodded and climbed off of the seat so I could shuffle over to the edge in preparation. Sure enough the train slowed a moment later and the watchful guard crouched down beside me.

  “If you’ll pardon me, Miss,” he said as he put one hand under my knees. I said nothing, feeling terribly awkward as I put my arm around his shoulder, letting him lift me out of the seat. “Come along young Mister,” the guard said to Leighton in haste, “you’ll have to carry the chair.”

  The strong old guard took me down the steps from the carriage onto the platform. Over his shoulder I watched Leighton scrambling down in pursuit of him, clanking my poor metal wheelchair along behind him. It hit every step on the way down, making me shudder.

  “Can you stand for a moment Miss, whilst I work out this fancy folding chair of yours?” asked the guard with a patient smile. I panicked instantly. Stand? Fall was far more likely. But Leighton saved me with an outburst.

  “Oh it’s easy!”

  Leigh was already well away attacking the chair, pushing it to and fro until he could slam down the middle and put the tubular frames in the right places. The old guard looked relieved and impressed at the same time as he set me down into the seat. I felt the redness rising in my cheeks at his kindness. He patted me on the head and straightened up.

  “I’ll fetch your bags Miss,” he said with a smile, “You wave those green tickets about until the billet man sees you.”

  I looked around the dirty, smoky railway platform into the mass of unlabelled children now wandering aimlessly along in clumps. The billeting officer wasn’t hard to spot at all; he was the tall one in the middle of a particularly large clump of younger children, most of whom were crying. The billet man looked like he wanted to cry too. He was an older man, though not as grey and bristly as the train guard and as the bawling children were shuffled to and fro I realised that he was wearing a policeman’s uniform under an open beige jacket. I waved my green label towards his field of vision just as the train guard said, but he didn’t notice us. The green was supposed to signal us as a special case because of my chair. He should have been looking out for us, but now I could see he was too busy in the throng of cry-babies to even look up.

  Eventually we were introduced when the guard took us and our one suitcase over into the eye of the child storm. I was wet from the explosion of tears instantly, pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of my knit jumper to wipe my face. It was always awful being at the same eye level as small children and large animals. On this occasion I would have preferred the large animals over this noisy mess of kids who had just realised they wouldn’t be seeing Mummy again for a while now that their train adventure was over. I couldn’t hear a word that the billet man said over the din, but eventually he took control of pushing my wheelchair and made off for the station exit.

  I turned weakly in my chair to wave goodbye to the kind old guard, feeling the noise of the busy platform fade away. My head felt normal again at last.

  “I’ve just got to transfer my duties to Officer Jones, then I’ll be accompanying you two up to the village.”

  His accent was a terribly thick Welsh one and it was actually several minutes after he had gone back to the station before I could translate exactly what he had said and tell it to Leighton again. We were in a little car park where a cold wind nipped against my stockings, making my knees ache under my pleated skirt. I should have worn something warmer. Mum was always telling me to worry about the weather more. But then she wouldn’t have abandoned me in a car park in the first place.

  The flustered officer assigned to help us on Evacuation Day was Officer Lewis. When he returned, I was wheeled into the back of a large hospital car especially built for the purpose. I had to admit the shiny white car filled me with a little excitement. When Leigh came to sit opposite me on a bench inside the back of the vehicle, he looked around him with a big smile.

  “Nice this Kit,” he mused, “Do you think it means the people looking after us are rich?”

  “No such luck young man,” said Lewis from the front passenger seat, “This is the doctor’s private car, this, you’ll only see it when you’re going up his office.”

  Again it took some time to translate, the way Lewis mashed all his words together into a melodious jangle was hard on our London ears, but I got enough words from the mix to know I shouldn’t expect a chauffeur. Although I probably would be in this car quite often, given the circumstances. The pin in my jumper where the green label clung to me was starting to itch. I took it off gently, saving the pin against the fabric strap of my gas mask holder and tried to read the address we were destined for.

  Ty Gwyn, Bryn Eira Bach

  That was it. No borough, no postcode, not even a house number. I stretched forward to give the paper to Leighton whose little eyes were craning to see it. A lot of good it’d do him. He scrumpled his face at the address.

  “Tie goy-un?” he asked, “What kind of address is tie goy-un?”

  Lewis curved his head round his seat, looking at the paper over Leigh’s little shoulders.

  “Tie indeed,” he tutted, “That’s Ty Gwyn that is. Lovely big farm house on the edge of the village. You’ll love it there.”

  He said it as Tee Gwin. I tried to remember it, murmuring it on my lips. It would be so rude to say it wrong to the people who were kind enough to take us in for the duration of the threat in London, perhaps even for the duration of the war. Tee Gwin. The thought of a farm house didn’t appeal in the least to me, all I could think of was how cold and drafty it would be in the winter months, but Leighton was all over the idea, scrambling up the bench to turn and talk to Officer Lewis.

  “A farm!” he squealed, stamping his feet, “Will there be pigs and chickens and things to chase around?”

  “I don’t know if they’ll appreciate you chasing ‘em much, bach, but yes there will be animals about the place.” Lewis’s round face smiled at Leighton before he turned his brown eyes on me. “Oh it’s a lovely village this, you’ll have everything you could ever want in Bryn Eira Bach.”

  I felt a bitter taste in my mouth, but I smiled back before I looked out of the window. Unless this distant village could somehow make me able-bodied again and then give me a handsome young chap to go dancing with, I knew that Lewis’s promises, and my hopes, couldn’t ever come true.

  The doctor’s private car took us an awfully long way from the station, over sparse grassy hills and down little brown roads that led to yet more hills. We had gone
over so many bumps that I could feel the restraints on my chair starting to loosen, but just as I began to worry that I’d be flung out of my seat at the next bend, the car finally stopped. Out of one window I saw a mass of misty fields with the vague shadow of mountains in the background. From the other I just caught sight of a lot of out buildings ranging in shape and size. Barns and things, I supposed.

  Ty Gwyn was straight ahead of us, so I didn’t see the huge white building until I was properly out of the car. Officer Lewis started to wheel me up to it over the bumpy gravel path, jarring my spine with every pebble. I tried to keep smiling and made sure my clothes and hair were neat as we approached. When Lewis rang the doorbell the ancient sound echoed out of the cracks in the wood around the window panes. A few birds roosting in the eaves of the big white farm house suddenly took flight, making Leighton jump. He shuffled from foot to foot, biting his little pink lip.

  The tiniest girl I had ever seen answered the door. She was short and willowy with huge blue eyes and tawny brown hair sticking up at funny angles. Her plain little dress was stained with something that looked like blueberries. She clung to its hem as she looked up at Officer Lewis, then she suddenly broke into a great beaming smile, showing off her stumpy white teeth.