Obsidian Mirror

7

Long ago, they say, a baby was born in a cottage at the edge of the Wood. The boy was healthy, and his mother protected him with charms and prayers, and amulets of iron hanging from his cradle. But he cried and gurgled so loudly, the sound echoed under the trees.

Soon, she began to see the faces of the Shee at the window, and hear, every night, their soft tapping at the door.

She grew afraid in her heart.

Chronicle of Wintercombe

JAKE COULDN’T MOVE.

The hand in the mirror was a gray fragility, but it gripped him tight.

He stared into the glass, so close his breath misted it. “Dad?” he whispered.

The face blurred beyond the mottled surface. It was his own, and yet its edges were worn, its eyes terrified, its skin ashen.

“Jake,” it said.

“How can it be you?” He grabbed the mirror with the other hand, flattening himself against it. His legs went weak; only the frame held him up. His father’s voice was as fogged as the mirror between them.

“Venn…need to…trapped…”

He couldn’t understand. He pressed closer. “Are you dead? Are you a ghost?”

Was he saying it, shouting it? There was movement in the mirror; a swirl of snow. The plane of glass was flat and smooth and yet it was deep; if he moved a millimeter he might fall into it and never stop falling.

The hand dragged him close. In his ear the lips whispered, “Venn…”

“I can’t hear you.” His cheek was against the glass. It was ice on his skin. “I can’t hear you. Say it again. Tell me what I have to do!”

“Venn…”

“Did he do this? Are you really dead?” The words came out in a wild cry he barely recognized.

Then Sarah had hold of him; she was pulling him away, but he clung on and his own reflection was yelling “Dad!” to himself, and the mirror toppled and wobbled and he let go and staggered back.

It fell with a terrible crash. A black star of cracks fractured it. He felt the sting of flying glass, tasted blood.

Sarah scrambled over and grabbed the mirror and turned it to the wall. Then she spun and stared at him.

Jake knelt, huddled. He had a stunned, bruised look, as if someone had punched him. His face was flecked with tiny cuts. “Are you okay?” She squatted next to him.

“It was him.” He looked at her. “You saw, didn’t you? He spoke to me. My father!”

His own disbelief was raw. He couldn’t take his eyes off the scatter of broken glass. She moved in front, so he had to look at her. “Your father? He’s dead?”

“Yes. He’s gone. Do you think that was his ghost?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.” She sat back, thinking of her own father, rotting in one of Janus’s prisons.

“But you saw him.” He had hold of her arm. His need for reassurance was suddenly embarrassing to them both. Jake let go, quickly. She shrugged. “I thought…”

A door closed softly somewhere close in the house. They both stared up the Long Gallery. As if the sound had broken the terror, Jake pulled himself to his feet. “My father is missing and Venn’s responsible. This proves it.”

“A face in a mirror doesn’t prove anything.” She scrambled up and went and sat on a window seat.

“It had hold of me!”

“Don’t be stupid. You imagined that. You panicked.”

He glared at her. “I don’t panic! You don’t even know me! Or anything about me.”

“Then tell me,” she said.

For a moment she thought he wouldn’t. But he paced up and down restlessly, obsessively, and the words came out as if the shock had triggered them.

He told her the story of David Wilde’s disappearance. She saw the anger and bewilderment that burned in him, the terrible betrayal he squirmed away from. He turned quickly and pulled out a small leather wallet. From it he took a piece of paper and gave it to her. “Look. Read it for yourself!”

She read his father’s scrawled words.

Sorry not to have called, but we’ve been incredibly busy with the Chronoptika…

Her fingers went tight on the paper. She looked up and interrupted him in mid-sentence. “What do you know about this Chronoptika?”

He stared, annoyed. “Nothing.”

“He never said anything else about it? About their work here?”

“Obviously Venn swore him to secrecy.” He came closer. “Have you heard of it?”

She shook her head, rereading. He was silent, so she looked up and saw he was staring down at her.

“Because if you had,” he said softly, “we could work together. You could help me.”

She gave the note back and stood up. “I’m sorry about your father, Jake, but I don’t think Venn killed him.”

As she turned away he said, “But you saw him in the mirror. You heard him speak.”

She didn’t stop or look back. “I just saw your reflection. I just heard you.”

Then, afraid he would come after her, she had to walk all the way up the Long Gallery with his angry stare at her back.

Wharton put his head around the door and looked in. It was a small side hall, as cold as every other room here. He was wearing a coat and scarf, because he made a point of taking a walk every morning, and the grounds would probably be warmer than inside. Now all he had to do was find a way out.

The Abbey was a confusing building, but he remembered this hall from last night. He walked over the stone tiles, clearing his throat. On the walls the eyes of the few remaining portraits watched him pass, and one of the black cats that seemed to infest the place sat washing, its pink tongue working rhythmically.

He was already regretting his offer to stay for Christmas. Despite Piers’s admirable cooking, it promised to be a cold, comfortless, and embarrassing time. After all, the boy was Venn’s responsibility now. And good luck to him, because Jake could be intensely irritating. Also sullen, simmering, and mixed-up. But hadn’t there been a faint relief through the sarcasm last night? As if he was quite glad not to be left here alone?

Wharton stopped at a glass cabinet. It housed a small collection of pottery figures, elongated and crudely painted. He recognized them as Cycladic, very ancient. One of Venn’s areas of expertise. Venn was another mystery. How could a man who had seen so much and traveled so restlessly bear to shut himself up in this cold, silent house?

Wharton shook his head. Then he saw the newspaper. It lay folded on a small table by the door; Piers must have gotten it from the village, because it was today’s. The local rag, but something. He flicked the pages. He’d read it when he came back, with a cup of tea. It would probably be the highlight of his day.

Then his hand held the page still.

It was her.

He had only seen her briefly, when she’d brought in the breakfast tray, and the photo was very small, but surely that was Sarah. She was dressed in different, dull clothes and her hair was longer. The byline said Still no sign of missing patient.

He glanced around.

Then he folded the paper, tucked it inside his coat, and went out.

Sarah sat on her bed, knees up, and wrote quickly with the black pen.

Will certainly try to find JHS’s box again. It has to be the one recorded in the files…. When will Venn re-activate the mirror? A boy called Jake Wilde has arrived…claims to be Venn’s godson. He’s already disrupting things. Today there was a strange…

She stopped, searching for the right word. Vision? Ghost?

The writing faded. Suddenly, out of nowhere, panic and a terrible loneliness seized her; she wrote franticly, in a wild scribble. Are you left, any of you? Max, Evan, Cara? ANYONE? What’s happening back there?

One by one the letters died away.

She felt numb and empty.

But then, just as she went to close the notebook, something started to appear. A few words, emerging slowly, as if they struggled through some immeasurable distance. Cold with concentration and a growing horror, she watched them form.

YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD, SARAH. NO ONE IS LEFT. NO ONE HEARS YOU BUT ME. WE CAN CONVERSE NOW. YOU AND ME. SARAH AND JANUS. YOUR LORD. YOUR MASTER.

Terrified, she slammed the book shut and stared at its cover, her heart thudding. For a long moment she sat there, fighting against fear and despair. Was it true? Were they all gone? If so, it was all up to her.

She jumped up, crammed the pen and book back into the secret space under the floorboard, and raced downstairs.

Piers, wearing an apron with a huge red sauce bottle on it, was peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink.

“Sarah, good,” he said at once. “Venn wants you to be there tonight. The Monk’s Walk, at eight o’clock.”

Her heart missed a beat. “Already?”

“He’s desperate to get the thing working again.”

She began to wipe the dishes and put them away. There was so much to ask, but she had to be careful. “The thing?”

Piers grinned. “You’d never make an interrogator, Sarah. If you want to know details, speak to Venn. But he’s heading out again, so you’ll have to wait.”

“I thought he never left the estate.”

“Maybe the estate is bigger than you think. Maybe it contains the whole universe.” He tossed a peeled potato into a saucepan with perfect accuracy.

Calm, she said, “I’m really sorry, but I’m afraid a mirror got broken this morning. Up in the Long Gallery.”

He turned and looked at her.

“Jake…slipped against it. It cracked.”

“Thirteen years bad luck.” He looked utterly dismayed.

“Yes. It’s a pity. Especially as there aren’t any mirrors anywhere else.”

Now she felt better because he was the one wanting to ask the questions. He said gloomily, “Damn. Damn damn damn. I was supposed to get rid of them all. If Venn finds out he’ll hurl me halfway around the world….”

“He won’t. Not from me.” She sat. “Jake said he saw his father’s reflection in it. I think he’s a bit obsessed with his father, don’t you?”

Piers still seemed worried about punishment. So she said, “Who’s the scarred man?”

“What?”

“The scarred man. Something Venn said.”

But he was too quick for her; already he was slicing another potato and flicking it into the pot.

“Absolutely no idea,” he said, grinning.

Annoyed at the lie, she got up and stalked to the door. “Suit yourself.”

But walking down the corridor, she thought fast. Let herself smile. She’d never have a better chance than now to get at the box.

The small study on the ground floor was empty. She stood inside, listening to the silence. The sun slanted in, a faint wintry glimmer from the window she had climbed through yesterday.

The room smelled of ashes, and the grate held the gray, flaked remains of burned logs.

She closed the door and locked herself in. Then she crossed to the bureau, opened the small cupboard, and felt through the papers and files until she found the box.

She pulled it out. The initials JHS gleamed in the sunlight. She took it to the window seat and perched on the faded red upholstery. Then she opened the box and carefully took out the journal.

It was a small fat notebook, much worn. The covers were black cloth, stained with greasy finger marks. It had clearly once been badly damaged by fire—the edges of later pages were crisped brown and in places whole chunks were burned away.

She opened it. The handwriting was spiky and formal in flowing brown ink. It was difficult to read at first, until her eyes got used to it. Venn must have made a transcript long ago. But she didn’t have time to find that—she’d have to do her best with this.

It was amazing to be holding it here, in her hands.

She read the first page.

June 24, 1846

My name is John Harcourt Symmes. On this day I begin my book of the Chronoptika.

The details of all the processes are in the appendix; my notes on the obtaining of the precious metals and the meteoric materials will be found in the red leather binders which accompany this. Here, I propose to record only my personal observations and the details of every demonstration I conduct with the device, every success and failure, because I have learned that to fail is as important as to succeed. I am determined to write everything down. I am not afraid. It will be a tragedy for the world to lose what I have discovered.

Sarah glanced up. The grandfather clock whirred; now it chimed, eleven soft notes. Piers was busy; Venn out. She had time. She curled up on the window seat and read quickly.

Jake sat on a bench in the cloister. He leaned his head back against the cold stone and shivered, because the morning was bitterly cold. But he needed to think.

Of course Sarah had seen the face in the mirror. So why deny it? Was she scared? Of Venn? And who was she? Certainly not Piers’s niece.

Something tapped his boot and he glanced down quickly. A brown hen cocked its head and looked at him with one bright eye.

“Buk,” it said.

Jake jerked his foot and the hen squawked away.

He needed to find his father’s room. There might be something there, some message left for him, some clue. He needed to act, not sit here and let the ghost-face and his father’s terrified voice eat into his energy.

Venn. Surely he had heard that.

A door clicked. He jumped up and scrambled behind a pillar just as Venn came into the cloister. He wore a long coat, and strode quickly down the arcade, his tall shape flickering through the trefoiled arches. At the end he unlocked an iron-bolted door and ducked out, into the grounds.

Jake moved out stealthily after him. Here was a chance to get him alone. Outside. Make him answer.

Beyond the door was a flight of stone steps. Venn was already down them, brushing through the wintry wastes of an herb garden, the frost-blackened twigs snapping as he passed. Sharp scents of last summer’s lavender came to Jake as he slipped along the path. At the end was an iron gate; Venn opened it and it clanged behind him.

Reaching it, Jake saw Venn enter the Wood.

He closed the gate, but the clank made him look down, and he saw that the whole thing was hung with metal objects. Rusty bells and crosses, knives, even broken shears clattered against each other like some bizarre charm bracelet. He stared at them, noting the iron strip hammered down across the threshold.

What was Venn keeping out?

He ran to the edge of the Wood and crept in. It was dank and chilly. Venn was far ahead; Jake slunk after him, wishing he’d brought a coat. The track led down between gnarled bare oaks, their heaped leaves slabbed with frozen puddles. He stepped on one; it wheezed and cracked.

Venn looked back.

Jake froze, deep in shadow, praying the low sun would be in the man’s eyes. After a moment Venn turned and walked on. Jake followed more warily. Now he didn’t want to catch up. He wanted to see where Venn was going.

What if his father was being held prisoner somewhere in the Wood? If Venn was heading there now?

The path led deep into green gloom. Soon it was no more than a narrow trail, soft with humps and hollows. He slowed, eyes and ears alert. The Wood darkened around him. It had become a thicket of thorns and brambles, impassible; above him the canopy of branches a closed lacework against the sky. Great roots sprawled across the track; he could hear only his own breath and the soft trickle of water in some hidden ditch to his left. His foot splashed a muddy spring.

Breathless, he stopped. Venn was too far ahead to see.

Suddenly panicky, he turned. To his astonishment there was no way back. Branches clustered behind him; he took a step toward them. Brambles blocked his way. He reached out and pushed them, and they snagged at his hand.

This hadn’t been here before.

Was he even facing the right way?

Strange disorientation came over him; he had no idea which way was forward or back, in or out, north or south, as if the Wood had wriggled and twisted. Even the air was as dank and smoky as a November night, though it had been a sunny morning outside.

“What’s going on?” he whispered. “Where is this?”

“This is the Wintercombe, mortal. And you’re inside it.”

Jake turned, fast. A boy of his own age was leaning against a tree trunk. He wore a lichen-green tailcoat and his skin was as pale as ivory.

“What did you call me?” Jake demanded.

The boy smiled a bitter smile. “You heard. I called you mortal.”