The Crystal Maker

By Neil Hetzner

Astrid Berensen, a highly intelligent and volatile teen, is good at solving problems. Using her intelligence and dogged determination, she has learned how to make replicas of crystals that were used in 1300 BC to move a colony of persecuted worshippers from Egypt to the world of Kemet.

Astrid is also very good at creating problems. Her grief from her mother’s disappearance, her periodic rages, and her guilt over her twin sister’s death have estranged her from her father and kept her from making friends.

Ignoring everything around her, Astrid concentrates on making crystals in a make-shift lab at the Peltdown Institute, a residential school for savants and gifted Asperger autists. Fearing that her life is in danger from the success she is beginning to achieve with the crystals, but also with the hope she may find her mother and a world more likely to accept her, Astrid and her unwelcome traveling companion, Raymond, a be-smitten, whiny chess-obsessed fellow student run away. Avoiding capture from some mysterious assailants, they use Astrid’s crystals to transport themselves to the arid world of Kemet. After crossing the Dustlands, they arrive in Amarna, an ancient city gone to ruin. There they find that Astrid's mother in prison and their dream of finding a better world has turned into a nightmare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neil Hetzner
• Release date: Oct 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781734108903

Neil Hetzner

Neil (aka C.N.) Hetzner is married, has two children, and lives a mile from the edge of the continent in Rhode Island. Since his inauspicious birth in Indiana in 1948 he has worked as a cook, millwright, newspaper columnist, business professor, vacuumist, printer's assistant, landscaper, railroader, caterer, factory worker, consulting editor, and, currently, real estate agent. In addition to working, which he likes a lot, and writing, which he likes even more, he enjoys reading, weaving, cooking, and intrepidly screwing up house repairs. His writing runs the gamut from young adult futurism to stories about the intricacies of families; however, if there is a theme that links his writing, it is the complicated and miraculous mathematics of mercy.

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THE CRYSTAL MAKER

VOLUME I

THE ANNALS OF AMARNA

BY

NEIL HETZNER

Copyright © 2019 Neil Hetzner

All rights reserved.

Distributed by Smashwords

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter One - Misfits and Gifts

Chapter Two - Escape Times Two

Chapter Three - New Days, Old Ways

Chapter Four - An Angry God

Chapter Five - An Angry Girl

Chapter Six - Flight and Fright

Chapter Seven - Fight and Flight

Chapter Eight - Welcome

Glossary

Acknowledgments

I thank my readers, Martha Day, Phil Hetzner, Zoe Hetzner, Larry Rothstein, and Doris Rutz, for their fertile brains and sharp eyes in making this story better than it ever could have been without their help. I am deeply indebted to Mike Monahan, who has made a picture that is worth the ninety thousand words it took to tell this tale.

CHAPTER ONE

Misfits and Gifts

Astrid Berenson was about to begin her third year at the Peltdown Institute. Located twenty-three miles west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, between Noblestown and Raccoon, on a heavily wooded tract of land, the Institute had been started by Dr. Frank Bruer, an educator who claimed to have been influenced by the research on savants of J. L. Down and A. F. Tredgold.

The Institute, which given the paucity of Dr. Bruer’s resources, was more like a lightly staffed year-round camp than a research institute, educated and studied what the doctor himself called disregardful children. Although some of the residents had committed acts that a judge would have branded delinquent, and others had long histories of doing things that caused their parents and teachers to call them disobedient or defiant, Dr. Bruer believed his students or subjects, (the doctor never could decide which term he preferred) should be called juvenile disregardants and their behavior thought of as unobedient.

A visitor coming to Peltdown would have found classrooms very different from what he or she might have expected. Instead of students sitting in rows of desks with a teacher in the front of the room telling all of the students the same thing at the same time, that visitor might have found a large ramshackle room, perhaps with splotches of paint on the floor and mathematical equations precisely written on the walls, with a handful of students scattered about. One student might be hunched over a battered table molding something out of a large block of clay. Another might be building a city out of cardboard, matchsticks and tongue depressors. A third might be drawing the pipework necessary for an oil refinery. Two students might be walking about, perhaps one in random loops and another in rigid patterns. One of those walking might be doing math problems in his head while the other could be figuring out if March 13, 3117 would fall on a Sunday. There might be a student lying on the floor in the corner of the room softly humming one of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies while playing the notes on a paper keyboard. In another corner a student might be sleeping.

All of the teenagers at Peltdown were unusual. They could be very smart in some ways—like mathematics or music, and very unsmart in other ways—like folding a pile of laundry or talking to a stranger. Some of the students had very clever hands, but almost all of the students had not-so-clever feet. If a visitor to Peltdown were to see a student only from the knees up, he might think the child was walking on a soggy mattress. If that same visitor were to spend several hours observing how the students talked with one another—sometimes with faces just inches apart and other times ten feet apart, but never directly looking at one another—he might think they were blind.

If a visitor were to tell Dr. Bruer what he or she had observed, the doctor would laugh, a noise that sounded very much like the triumphant caw a crow makes when it spies something shiny, and say that all of the children were just fine, that all were remarkable, that all were gifted in some way, that all of them saw what was important to them to see, and all of them said what was important to them to say … and as far as other things went, they were just a little disregardant.

Astrid had come to Peltdown Institute when she was fourteen. When she had come home on Friday, September 21, 1962, her first day back in school after having been suspended for three days for flinging a sniggering girl’s loaded food tray a quarter of the way across Ithaca, New York’s high school cafeteria, two suitcases were packed. It was just like when Astred had come home on October 24, 1958 from Maumee Elementary School in Onabasha, Indiana and her suitcases had been packed.

Throughout the hours of the drive, Astrid had alternated between being silent and sullen and being very vocal about how much she hated wherever it was she was being sent. Her rage caused her to slam her feet against the car floor and threaten to open the door and throw herself onto the road. Regardless of Astrid’s threats, her father, Dr. Berenson, kept his eyes on the road, his hands on the steering wheel, and his lips shut.

Father and daughter were supposed to arrive at the school between eight and nine o’clock at night, but driving almost all of the way through rain as well as getting lost outside Pittsburgh meant that it was almost eleven o’clock before Dr. Berenson drove down a wide driveway of broken asphalt and stopped in front of a five-story brick building that had started life as a factory to manufacture radios. Just before they got out of the car and for the first time in seven hours and twelve minutes by Astrid’s watch, her father spoke.

You aren’t fitting in at high school, just like you didn’t fit in at junior high. You’re here because you are different. I’m told everybody here also is different so maybe you won’t feel so out of place.

Astrid was wailing before they got to the front door. She continued to bawl as they waited for someone to answer her father’s repeated knocking. The door finally was opened by a tall, thin man with an incongruously large, melon-shaped head, which sat almost directly atop his shoulders. The head featured bright pink jug ears, wispy white hair going everywhere, and a smile showing lots of large, coffee-stained teeth. Dr. Bruer’s eyes, which were very small, very bright, and shiny black, reminded Astrid of a crow’s eyes—looking everywhere and missing nothing.

Dr. Berenson? I was beginning to worry. I’m Dr. Bruer and this must be Astrid.

When the doctor bent forward and extended his hand, Astrid’s hand shot out and slapped his away as she screamed, I hate you.

Dr. Bruer stepped back and made a slight bow as he said, "Just as I would expect. Almost everyone hates me when they arrive, but, strangely, no one seems to hate me for very long. I like to think it is because I am so wonderful, but it is more likely because there are so many better things to hate at Peltdown… like the abominable meals, the hot water that isn’t hot, and our unfathomably ugly blankets.

Come in. Come in so you can get started straightaway on the hating. Or, if you prefer crying, there is a little room right over here where you can cry just as much as you like, but without waking up the others. If it were earlier, you could go over to that even smaller room over there. It’s where we keep the television that almost none of our students watch. At this time of the night, I don’t imagine there would be anything that you would want to watch … if you are a television watcher.

When Astrid didn’t respond, Dr. Bruer asked, Do you have a preference? I myself usually prefer being angry because it gives me so much energy and makes me feel wonderfully right, while crying makes me tired and sad. Occasionally, I try to do both at the same time, but that usually makes me feel like my head might explode off my neck.

Astrid thought that Bruer’s neck was too short for it to be able to contain enough explosives to do the job. As she considered her choices, Dr. Bruer had her father sign several papers. He offered Dr. Berenson a room, which he made clear was not a particularly wonderful room, but one where he could spend the night. Astrid’s father said that he would prefer to get back on the road.

Dr. Berenson shook Dr. Bruer’s hand, stood for a moment looking at his daughter, reached out a hand, pulled it back, said her name in a whisper, and walked out the door.

Well, Astrid, that might give you one more thing to hate, but before your mind is completely filled with that fine emotion, would you please tell me what is your favorite peanut butter sandwich?

Because the only thing she had eaten since school lunch almost twelve hours before had been a package of Neccos in the car, where it had been so dark that it had been very difficult to pick out the brown ones to throw away, Astrid blurted out, Peanut butter, olive, and mayonnaise.

Dr. Bruer beamed, Perfect. With the crusts cut off to make the bread square? With the peanut butter spread to the very edges of the bottom piece of bread? With the mayonnaise spread to the very edge of the upper slice?

Astrid shrugged.

The doctor cocked his head, which made him look even more like a crow.

You’re indifferent? Hmm. That is unusual at Peltdown. Our students tend to take the construction of their sandwiches very seriously. Well, then, what about the olives? That’s often a critical question. Whole or slices? Twelve? Three across and four down, or four down and three across? Or, a four by four matrix?

Astrid shrugged a second time.

How astounding. And, does your indifference include the presence or absence of pimientos?

I don’t like pimientos.

Excellent. I myself fall into the anti-pimiento school. Astrid, someday soon, when you hate me less, you and I must have a discussion about why they put pimientos in olives in the first place. I have some theories I would like to run by you.

Dr. Bruer nodded toward the door he had pointed to earlier. Would you like to do some crying while I make your sandwich?

When Astrid shook her head the doctor said, Well, then, I will see you back here in eleven minutes.

As she was watching Dr. Bruer’s crane-like steps disappear into the shadows of the hallway, she wondered how such a strange looking man was so knowledgeable about the ways to make peanut butter sandwiches.

• • •

Soon after Astrid arrived at Peltdown, she learned that most of the students called themselves dizzies. When she asked why, Mrs. Corkle, a Mrs. Claus-looking woman who frequently wandered around Astrid’s classroom, sometimes supplying pens and paper or wiping up spills, but mostly taking notes in a large red notebook, told her that Dr. Bruer’s term for the students, disregardents, had over time been shortened to dissies. With the passage of more time, dissies had metamorphosed into dizzies. As there were no z’s in disregardant, Astrid thought that was wrong and refused to use the word.

From the moment of her arrival, Astrid had known that she would hate Dr. Bruer forever. That certainty had begun to fade that very first night when he made her sandwich. Her father had not made her a sandwich in four years. Astrid, who had first become interested in evolution when the elm trees in her old back yard in Indiana did not change enough to save themselves from bark beetles, saw that peanut butter sandwich as a mutating factor. As a result of that sandwich, she began to keep a notebook about how her feelings toward Dr. Bruer mutated over time. In it she noted that it was on November 14, a Wednesday, fifty-five days after she had come to Peltdown that she stopped hating Dr. Bruer. By that time she had learned to hate Frederick Lawson, who made obnoxious sounds like water running out of a bathtub as he drew pictures of enormous banks that looked like castles using large, small, and microscopic dollar signs instead of drawing bricks or stones. She had learned to hate Robert William because he never stopped talking about breeds of dogs, even when he was eating so that a lot of his food ended up on other people’s plates (especially when he was talking about bulldogs, beagles, and boxers). Astrid hated Hank, who worked in the kitchen and could whistle dozens of songs, but slowed down the cafeteria line as he made sure that that the foods on the other students’ plates didn’t touch each other. Astrid hated the horrible reception on Peltdown’s television. Watching the fluttering gray images of old movies with Rita Hayworth or Loretta Young, or shows like Ben Casey was frustrating, although for Astrid it was far better than trying to spend time with Peltdown’s pimply-faced hand flappers who took everything she said literally.

Even though there were plenty of people and things at Peltdown to hate, Astrid tended to forget those things when she was in her classroom. That room was on the top floor of the building. It was quiet and she could see birds and squirrels in the trees that towered outside the windows. Although the room was huge, there were only four other students. Christopher Lenz was a red-cheeked boy whose hair always looked like a sweater filled with static electricity had just been pulled over it. Christopher’s paucity of physical gifts meant that he had never hit or caught a baseball; however, he spent his time organizing, studying, and making notes from several thousand baseball cards and two tall stacks of books about baseball. Raymond Bierstow was two inches shorter than Astrid. He spent most of his time sitting at a table set with three chessboards and three chairs on each side. While screwing his index finger into his right ear, he would study a board. After a while he would remove his finger and point it at the board, make a move, murmur something like I’ve got you now, you idiot, get up and move to the opposite side of the table, put his finger back in his ear, study the board from the other side, point his finger, make a move, murmur something triumphant and move over to the next board. Whether walking or sitting, Raymond’s head jutted past the rest of his body by several inches. Astrid didn’t know whether to attribute Raymond’s turtle-like behavior to years of hovering over chess boards, or a case of undiagnosed short-sightedness. Through greasy lenses Marcus Rheardon studied an enormous map of the eastern half of the United States upon which were marked scores of passenger train routes. Using a huge stack of train schedules, some going back to the turn of the century, and small differently colored wooden blocks for locomotives, Marcus improved and fine-tuned the passenger rail system of Eastern America to cut down wait times between connections. Like Raymond but with much lower volume, Lawrence Harrington had conversations with people who didn’t appear to be present as he made kites. Lawrence’s kites came in dozens of different styles made from many different materials. All of the kites were small, never more than two feet in length. As far as Astrid could tell, none of Lawrence Harrington’s kites had ever been taken outside to see if they would fly; however, every one of them had to be presented to the classroom’s four other students for their inspection and acknowledgment of Lawrence’s genius.

Astrid spent as much time as possible time in her classroom—and not because of the birds and squirrels playing outside the windows or the interesting things the other students were doing. Astrid loved the classroom because before it was a classroom it had been a laboratory in the radio factory. Although the equipment that remained was not as good as what her father’s friend Doc Sprigley had taught her in his chemistry lab at Cornell University, it was superior to what Astrid had found in the chemistry room at Ithaca High School and far superior to what she had assembled in her own basement to grow crystals.

• • •

By the end of her second year at Peltdown Astrid was less unhappy than at any time since the summer when she was nine. She had arrived at the institute when she was fourteen, still more girl than woman. That had changed. Despite her losses and pains since her mother had disappeared, Astrid’s black eyes remained bright—distrusting, disdaining, disbelieving, and disgusted with the world around her—but still bright. In sneakers, the only shoes she wore, she stood five foot eight inches tall. Despite her indifference to what she wore, almost everything she did wear gave evidence that she had a chest, waist and hips. Her blue-black hair, which had not been cut since her mother had vanished, reached almost to her waist. After it was washed, it was thick and shiny, but because it took so much effort, it was infrequently washed.

Astrid was appreciating her diminished unhappiness on a day when she, her classmates, Raymond, Marcus, and Christopher, and two other students, Timothy McLaughlin and Randolph Mercer, were sitting on the edge of the abandoned loading dock at the back of the building. All of the boys had their feet dangling over the edge of the dock. Astrid was sitting cross-legged off to the side. All five of the boys were rhythmically banging their heels against the side of the dock. Like students in boarding schools over the centuries and across the continents, they were analyzing the horrors of the food they were served.

Marcus said, Cheese that doesn’t melt.

Raymond, who detested cheese, rejoined, Maybe that is a good thing because then you know that it was manufactured by a chemical factory rather than being made from the rotting fluids of a bovine. I don’t like cheese.

Astrid scooted herself over to the edge of the dock and dangled her feet.

Do you remember your moms making toast that was crunchy with squares of butter, like little yellow rafts, floating around?

Christopher violently shook his head and waved his hands, I hate that kind of toast. It is like it was designed to be an automated crumb producer rather than food.

Astrid countered, Then a Peltdown breakfast must be heaven for you since the toast is too soggy to make even a single crumb.

Randolph stopped beating his heels as he asked, What is heaven? Where is heaven?

Astrid took a deep breath and surprised herself when in a very quiet voice she said, Heaven is where my sister might be.

I didn’t know you had a sister.

Timothy said, I thought all dizzies were only children.

Astrid said, I am the only child.

Mercer shook his head, But, you weren’t. Who came first? You or your sister?

My sister. By twenty-seven minutes.

Well, then, said Raymond, She was an only child until you were born, but you never were.

But I am the only child now.

Timothy frowned, That is not true if there is a heaven. What happened to your sister?

She had polio. For the briefest moment, Astrid started to say more. Instead, she asked, Why are we weird?

All of the boys spoke at once. In the jumble of words, Astrid heard, Peculiar, gifted, unique, unusual. As the words died out she said, And weird. We walk weird, talk weird, think weird.

Christopher shook his head so violently that spittle shot out of the corners of his mouth. We are not weird. We’re normal dizzies. You’re the one who is weird. We all walk the same way. You don’t. None of us have brothers or sisters. You did.

As Christopher was talking, Astrid felt like she was going to burst into tears. Even weird people thought she was weird. The happiness she had been feeling only minutes before was gone.

• • •

One July day at the end of her third year at Peltdown, Astrid was having trouble concentrating on trying to grow a potassium dichromate geode. It was a week after her seventeenth birthday, which had been celebrated like the previous two—with a cake that was covered in crumbly frosting from the school cafeteria and nothing from her father. Rather than considering the chemistry of the crystal she wanted to grow, Astrid was deep in thought of how her life had changed since her mother had gone away when she realized that Dr. Bruer was standing beside her.

How is it going?

Astrid shook her head.

The director looked at the shelves behind the table where Astrid was working that were filled with scores of crystals of different shapes, sizes and colors.

It seems like you usually are successful.

Astrid shook her head again. Those are all of my failures.

So, you have a particular crystal you want to grow?

Astrid, who had never told anyone what kind of crystal she was trying to grow, or why, just shrugged.

The director looked over at the shelves again. It looks as though you especially like blue crystals. Dr. Bruer made his cawing laugh. Could you grow some blue sapphires and, while you are at it, make some diamonds, rubies, and emeralds? That would be very helpful.

Astrid concentrated on the lab thermometer that was clipped to the side of a solution she was heating on a Bunsen burner while hoping that ignoring him would cause the director to go away. Lately, Dr. Bruer had been spending more time in her classroom. He paid attention to what Christopher, Raymond and Marcus were doing, but Astrid thought that most of his attention was focused on her. With the director’s bright black eyes, long spindly legs, bobbing head, and constant movement from one foot to the other, Astrid always thought of birds when he was in the room. Sometimes a crow, sometimes a crane, and sometimes, when he hovered just behind her shoulders, a vulture.

Astrid, when did you become interested in crystals?

The teenager hesitated before saying, Ten.

And is there a special reason for your interest?

They’re mysterious. The atoms of a liquid get together, organize themselves, and turn into something solid. Something hard.

Dr. Bruer nodded, Something hard, and organized, and beautiful, and something that you can see through. And sometimes they are very valuable, valuable in many different ways. I agree with you that crystals are mysterious. Just like a crystal grower I know, although that person sometimes can be very difficult to see through.

The following day Raymond, who over time had become Astrid’s best friend, if she even had a best friend, left his chess games and walked over to her while she was mixing up one more solution she hoped would grow a blue crystal that would have a honey-like center. After watching for a minute, he said, How did you end up here?

My dad didn’t want me. He probably begged Dr. Bruer to take me. Begged and begged.

That is not the reason. Mrs. Corkle says that Dr. Bruer accepts very few of those whose parents ask to have their child come here. She says that some of the dizzies’ parents can’t even pay. So begging or money cannot be the reason. It must be something else.

Looks, Raymond? Or, how about my charm?

No. I think it is your crystals.

Why?

Yesterday, he made his joke about how good it would be if you learned to grow diamonds and rubies. In a way I think he meant it. I think he is running out of money. I think Peltdown will be shutting down.

Astrid’s eyebrows shot upward in disbelief. Why would you say that?

Leonard Pilsky and Steven Winston left their jobs and haven’t been replaced. Towels and sheets get washed every fourteen days rather than every seven days like they used to when I first came. Samuel Langer told me that his paint supplies are running low and that Mrs. Corkle told him to make do with what he had. Dr. Bruer’s horrible laugh is hardly heard.

Given how much she hated Peltdown when she arrived, Astrid was astounded at how frightening it was to think of the school being closed. If it closed, where would she go? What would she do? Her father had visited just once in three years, for an afternoon. He had called her twice. He had sent her a few letters that were written with ever larger letters on ever smaller pieces of stationery.

If it closed, what would happen to us?

Raymond glanced back over to his table filled with chess boards.

I would go back to Euclid, Ohio to play unchallenging chess at the library with World War I veterans. I would stay in my bedroom so I wouldn’t scream at my father and my father wouldn’t yell at me.

What can we do?

Raymond turned back toward his chess sets.

Play chess and make crystals.

• • •

It was after Astrid began worrying about Peltdown closing that the nightmares came. After the first one, which caused her to wake up screaming, she worried that she had gotten rheumatic fever again like she had after her mother disappeared. She couldn’t imagine re-experiencing those nightmare horrors again: screaming for her mother, hiding from Tippy, crashing down the hill onto the roofs of the houses on Harp Street, chewing something that was like a dry sponge that sucked up all of her saliva, but couldn’t be spit out, having egg yolks poured down her nose, being chased by something very fat and featureless. She couldn’t imagine having the pains again. Her knees and elbows, ankles and wrists feeling like someone was pulling them apart. Waking up soaked in sweat and wondering if the bright red rash all over her arms was real or some other horrible thing she was dreaming.

When Astrid looked in the mirror, her neck didn’t look swollen, and when she felt her forehead, she didn’t think she had a fever. However, just because she decided she did not have rheumatic fever did not mean that the nightmares went away. In fact, instead of going away, they came more frequently. She was trapped in a bubble and was suffocating as she used up all the air. She was being compressed in a bubble that kept shrinking. Her feet were tied to something and rising waves of blue water were hitting her in the face. Her mother was ahead of her walking along a trail in dark, dense woods. A moment later