Obsidian Mirror

8

He was as cold as far Iceland,

His heart a frozen splinter

He was as dangerous as the dark

on the deepest night of winter.

Ballad of Lord Winter and Lady Summer

All my life I have been an inquirer after strange and singular knowledge.

I was orphaned early; my father, Charles Harcourt Symmes, being killed in an uprising in India. I was left a child alone with his fortune—wealth gained from the slavery of men and women in his factories and mines; their squalid lives in his cholera-ridden slums. What can you do to rid money of such dark origins? As soon as I came of age I sold everything and had the houses torn down, but perhaps my doom was already fixed. My life already cursed.

Certainly my career at Oxford was not a success. I was a lonely, bookish student. I had the money to fill my rooms with arcane volumes and pursue research into subjects that would have shocked my professors. I attended no parties, did no punting on the river. I worked steadily and gained my degree, but made no friends, and after I had left, I doubt many in the ancient town ever knew I had been there.

I bought a large house in London and began my pursuit of dreadful secrets. The truth is, I lived two lives. By day I was a member of polite society. I attended meetings of scientific academies, was to all appearances a young amateur gentleman about town. My interests were in the new wonders, the experiments of Galvani, the mysteries of Mesmer. I was calm, quiet, popular with the ladies. I was known as a collector of phonographs and chronographs and all the modern paraphernalia of science. My only eccentricity was believing the earth might be hollow.

But by night!

By night I was a tortured soul.

It is true that my mother died in an asylum for the insane. I never knew her, but perhaps I inherited her corrupted blood. How else can I explain how I, like the man in Mr. Stevenson’s excellent story, have such a dark shadow inside me.

The city made me evil. Something about the lurid twilights of London, the slow lighting of gas lamps down the Strand, worked the change in me. As soon as darkness fell I would put on a long cloak and leave the house, walking till the early hours. I roamed the teeming streets of the poorer districts, flitted down the dank, unspeakable alleys of Soho, explored the warrens of filth that were Wapping and Whitechapel.

I desired secrets. Magic. The occult arts of darkness. I desired to enter the deepest depravities of the soul, down ways too terrible for science and too unholy for religion. Above all I desired power—over men and women and beasts. A power only I, of all the world, would possess.

Sarah looked up. A door had opened somewhere in the house. Frozen, she heard Wharton’s steady tread squeak past the door of the study. She waited awhile, but there was no other sound. She leaned farther into the narrowing sliver of cold sunlight. This was it. This was where it had begun.

I dare not write much of this, lest you think me mad. I made expeditions to the corpse-yards of London, so heaped with the dead that the ground oozed with their reek. I explored deep crypts, assisted in dissecting the bodies of gallows-hung murderers. I joined weird sects and strange covens. I allowed vampiric women to feed on me. And all the time I sought my own secret source of power, and found only cheats and charlatans and depraved souls.

Until I met the scarred man.

It was an obvious question, but Jake had to ask it. “If I’m a mortal, what are you?”

The boy straightened. A flicker of amusement crossed his pale face. “That’s my business. I’m curious about you. I watched you all come to the Dwelling last night, first the girl, then you and the big man. Venn doesn’t let strangers in, so who are you?”

Jake said, “The girl? Last night?”

The boy shrugged. “In your world, last night. I saw her hunted by a wolf. A wolf of frost and snow. So, why do you follow Venn into the Wood? He must have warned you.”

Jake said shortly, “Maybe that’s my business.” He wanted to hurry back, get away with the surprising knowledge that Sarah was a stranger here too, but the boy stepped in front of him. “You can’t. There’s no way back without my help.”

Eye to eye, they measured each other. Then the boy said, “Gideon.”

“Jake Wilde.”

Gideon’s green eyes widened in sharp understanding. “So you’re the son!”

In the twilit forest, the moon was a silver fingernail through the branches. Jake’s hands gripped to fists. “You know about my father?”

“Only what I’ve heard. They don’t tell me anything. She and Venn, they keep the secrets.” Elegant, he flipped his coattails and sat on a fallen branch. His hands, Jake saw, were as brown and lichen-stained as the bark of the trees.

Jake took a breath. “Is he…Do you know if my father is dead?”

Gideon shrugged. “He’s not dead, weakbrain. He went journeying. And they can’t get him back.”

It happened like this. In November 1846 I was passing a small shop in Seven Dials and heard a tap on the window. I stopped and turned. Between the stuffed heads of a fox and a badger, a wizened Asian man of some ancient age was beckoning to me.

I looked around, but as it was indeed me he seemed to mean, I went in.

The shop stank of glue and unknown potions. It was dark, and on every shelf glassy-eyed beasts stared out in hideous rigidity. Great stags loomed from the walls. Under domes, mummified birds were fixed in unfluttering flight.

I said, “Such things hold no interest for me.” I turned to go, but he reached out a hand like a dried claw and laid it on my sleeve. I shook him off—I confess it—with a shudder.

“Death and life,” he whispered. “The arrest of Time’s decay. These things hold no interest for sir?”

I looked at the fellow. “Perhaps. But…”

“Sir requires more than the captured life, the feathers and the bones. Sir requires, perhaps, a machine.”

A thud went through my heart. “What machine?”

He shrugged, an insolent gesture. “A device of great power. So strange and terrible, only an adept of the deepest arcana might dare to use it. One such as yourself.”

This was surely a ruse to rob me. And yet there was something in the dark gleam of the man’s eye that ensnared me.

I looked around. “Where is it?”

“Not here.”

“The price?”

“It is not mine to sell.” He leaned over and pressed a small token into my hand. “Tonight, at eight, sir must go to Solomon’s Court, off Charnel House Alley. Find the house with the pentangle. Show this token. And you will see.”

Then he turned and walked into the shadows of the shop.

Outside, on the wet pavement, I gazed at the thing in my hand. It was one half of a gold coin—a Greek stater, with the face of Zeus, his nose and eyes cut jaggedly away.

Jake said, “What do you mean? Journeyed where?”

But before he could ask any more, a glitter of light flashed deep in the Wood. Gideon leaped up—a movement so fleeting that he seemed to vanish and reappear in the same instant. He grabbed Jake and hauled him down among the nettles and bracken. “They’re coming! If they see you here, they’ll take you. Don’t even breathe.”

Astonished, Jake curled in the bracken. The urgency in the boy’s voice was all too real. He kept still, cold mud soaking his knees and fingers.

No one came. He glanced at Gideon; in the moss-green gloom he seemed perfectly camouflaged, though they crouched right next to each other. Gideon pointed, through the trees.

Jake turned. A tiny shimmer caught his eye. He stared at it; saw a patch of glossy leaf, a lichened tree trunk.

And it became them.

He breathed in, felt Gideon’s warning grip.

They were almost people.

Where they had come from he couldn’t tell; they were so much part of the shadow and the foliage. Tall and pale, male and female, it was as if they had always been there, and just some adjustment of the light had revealed them to him. Their faces were narrow and beautiful, their hair silvery-fair.

They sat and lounged and leaned on branches or fallen logs, their clothes a crazy collection of fashions and fabrics, green and gold, modern and aged and patched. Their speech, from here, was the murmur of bees.

“Who are they?” he whispered.

Gideon was silent. Then he put his lips to Jake’s ear. “Don’t be fooled. They look like angels, but they’re demons. They’re the Shee.”

Jake had no idea what that meant. But he did know, quite suddenly, that this was no longer his world. The twilit Wood was impossible, because it was only midday, and the moon that hung here unmoving should not be so young. His glance flickered. He saw oak leaves and rowan berries, and the flowers of creamy meadowsweet, all together, every season at once.

And yet it was winter.

Then, along the path, a young woman came walking. She strolled out of mist, wearing a brief, simple black dress. Her hair was black too, cropped short. Silver glinted at her ears. Her feet were bare, her lips red. She seemed about eighteen.

Behind her, to Jake’s astonishment, strode Venn.

The girl came to the Shee and turned lightly on her toes. She sat on a fallen log with her knees up and smiled as Venn stood over her and snapped, “If that’s all you’ll do for me…”

“Why should I do more? What do I care about any human woman?”

“She’s my wife.” His voice was low, as if he fought to keep it steady.

“Was. She was.” The girl smiled, heartless. “And as you boasted yourself, you don’t need me anymore. You have your precious machine.”

He shook his head. “I was wrong to say that. The machine—”

“Is a failure.” She laughed, stretching out her bare foot. “I know. A chaos of forces that you have no chance of controlling. It’s already cost you your friend…now you’ll experiment on this new girl. How long before she too disappears from your world?”

“I don’t care about the girl.” He watched her, his eyes cold. “Are you really still so jealous?”

“Of a dead woman?” She laughed again, and some of the Shee laughed with her. It was a sound like the ripple of a hidden stream, and there was no humor in it. It chilled Jake. “Why should I be jealous?”

She stretched out her hand and touched Venn’s face. “I could bring you back to us at any moment I choose. Is that what you want, Venn? To come home?”

He stepped back. He said quietly, “I don’t need you, Summer. Leave the girl alone. The boy too. Leave all of us alone.”

She stood, graceful and slender. “How can I do that, Venn? Light and Shadow. Sun and Moon. The winter king and the queen of summer. We belong together and we always have. You know you can never exist without me.”

He glared angrily at her, but at the same instant Jake’s hand slid in the mud. A twig cracked.

The Shee turned like cats.

Summer was still. Then she took a step forward on her bare feet and lifted her hand and pointed directly at him. “Who dares to spy on me?”

It was a whisper of venom. The hairs on Jake’s neck prickled. Her eyes were dark as an animal’s, without anything he recognized as human.

Then Gideon muttered, “Leave a window open for me,” and stood up, leaves and dust falling from him. He walked out among the Shee.

“I do, Summer. Just me.”

Summer watched him. She let him come close, with no change of expression. She said softly, “Anyone else, Gideon, would pay dearly for that.”

“I know.” He glanced at Venn. “I’m sorry. Just curious.”

“Well, as it’s you, I forgive you. As the cat forgives the sparrow. As the owl forgives the mouse.”

Gideon gasped. As Jake watched, he crumpled as if the breath had been struck out of him by a terrible blow; with a cry he fell on hands and knees into the forest mud, gasping and retching.

Venn said, “Stop that!”

“So you do have some feelings for them.” Summer came and stood over Gideon. “I envy you, Venn. Most times, they just bore me.”

Gideon kinked and squirmed in agony. His fists gripped mud. Jake wanted to leap out and stand there shouting “Not him. Me,” but he didn’t, because Gideon gave a low, dragging moan and lay still.

Summer bent over him. She put her arms around him. She kissed him, over and over, on the hair, the forehead, the eyes, and her remorse was sudden and baffling. “Dear child. Sweet child. Help him, everyone. Help him up.”

The Shee clustered like flies. Their thin hands pulled at Gideon, tugged leaves from his hair. Their fingers, delicate as antennae, felt and picked at his clothes.

Then Venn dragged him away. “Get your vermin off him. Let him alone.”

Gideon dragged in a breath. He seemed still dizzy with the shock of pain, but he stood upright and tense, as if ready for anything that might come next, and Jake realized that there was no such thing as safety in Gideon’s world.

Summer’s mood changed with breathtaking speed. “Time to go.” Now she was coy and amused. She took Gideon’s hand and tugged him down the path. “Come away, oh human child, to the waters and the wild…. Good-bye, Venn.” She blew him a kiss, walking backward. “Guard your lovely machine, Venn. Guard your darling children. Lock your doors and enchant your thresholds, Venn. Because one day, very soon, we will get in.”

He said, “Not on my watch.”

She vanished. They all vanished.

Jake just couldn’t see them anymore. It was as if they had turned sideways and slipped through some slit in the air, even Gideon. Become sunshine and shadow.

Only Venn stood in the clearing, ankle-deep in nettles.

For a moment he waited, as if making sure he was alone.

Then he turned toward Jake. “Get up,” he snarled. “Let’s get out of here.”

Sarah flicked over a few pages, desperately impatient. The paper had been rubbed with finger marks, as if it had been read over and over. The writing was spiky and jagged with excitement.

…dank and dismal. Even with my experiences of the filthy rookeries of the city, I found it fouler than foul. The cabman I had hired said, “Are you sure about this, guv?”

“Sure,” I said. “But remember. Thirty minutes, no more. My life may depend on it.”

He nodded at me and said, “Trust me, I’m no tommyflit.” Then he turned the cab, and it clopped away into the night.

I groped down the alley, cane in hand, slipping in the running sewage, holding my handkerchief firmly to my face. Even so, the stench was stomach-churning. I came to an opening in the dingy wall and a solitary gas lamp flickered over the sign. SOLOMON’S COURT.

Excitement made my heart thump. I fingered the half coin in my pocket, and the loaded revolver next to it. Then I edged into the courtyard.

It was black as pitch. The houses—or warehouses—reared high into the fog. My footsteps seemed to shuffle and multiply in the enclosed space, as if there were others here, behind me.

The pentangle was scratched on the wall beside a very small door down a few steps running with noisome liquids. I descended carefully, and rapped on the wood with my cane.

I was breathless with excitement and avid for danger. These moments were what I lived for.

The door opened.

A sickly smell enfolded me, which I recognized immediately as opium. It was a vice I had sampled, but I loathed the way it robbed men of their intelligence, and had long abandoned it. I ducked inside. A stout woman in a red dress held out her hand. She no doubt expected money, but I handed her the broken coin. She brought it close to her eyes, and then, seeing what it was, thrust it back at me with almost a hiss of fear.

“Follow me,” she croaked.

The den was crowded, heaps of rags that were men and women lying sprawled, the pipes through which they took the drug spilling from their fingers. Some moaned. I wondered in what nightmare of horrors their souls wandered. The woman brought me to a dismal corner at the back; she pulled a heavy curtain aside and stepped back, gesturing me to go on. I groped my way along a stinking corridor, and at the end, found an open door. Beyond that, a room.

A small fire burned in a dark grate. Next to it a man rose to meet me.

He was the strangest of creatures. A handsome dark-haired man, until he turned, and the flamelight revealed a jagged scar down the left side of his face, a terrible curve, as if some sword had slashed it. His eyes were dark as a rat’s, his hair long, his hands delicate and slender. He lifted one, and held it out; I gave him the half coin and he spared it one glance, slipping it into his pocket.

“Mr. John Harcourt Symmes,” he said. His voice was curiously husky.

I bowed. “You know of me, sir?”

His calm stare unnerved me. He said…

“Sarah! Are you in here?”

A banging on the door. Sarah jumped. The sun had gone and the window seat was icy. She shoved the journal into her pocket and hustled the box back quickly in the cupboard.

“Sarah!”

“Yes…wait…coming,” she yelled, then hurtled out through the door. Straight into Wharton.

He gasped. The girl had run out without warning. There was a crash and a flutter. He looked down and saw the newspaper with a small fat leather journal lying splayed on top of it on the wooden floorboards.

“I’m so sorry,” he began, and she said, “No it’s me…”

They both dived for the papers, but Wharton was quicker; politely he picked up the notebook and arranged its scattered and damaged pages to smooth order. Words and phrases caught his eye. He stopped, turned back. Surely he had seen…Chronoptika…

He looked up. Sarah had the newspaper and her face was flushed. She handed it back to him, quickly. “Yours.”

“Piers’s really.” He took it. Then he said, “Sarah, listen. I’ve just read an article in here and your photo is—”

“Please.” She looked up at him with blue, urgent eyes. “Don’t tell anyone. I mean outside the house.”

“Venn knows?”

She nodded. “I ran away because I’m not mad. I’m not violent. I just need some time to sort myself out. Where they can’t find me.”

Wharton felt deeply uneasy. What was Venn doing, harboring a girl so disturbed? He shrugged. “Well, it’s none of my business. I’m just en route to Shepton Mallet.” He realized he was still holding the journal, and she was looking at it with an anxious, hungry look. He held it out. “Yours.”

She took it, just too quickly. He said, “Have you seen Jake?”

“Not since earlier. We managed to break a mirror.” She moved to go past him, then paused. As if she’d made up her mind, she said, “Mr. Wharton, do you think his father is really dead?”

Wharton folded the paper absently. “I have no idea. But if he is, I don’t think Venn murdered him.”

She looked at him calmly. “Neither do I.”

“That makes three of us,” Piers said, behind them.

They turned and saw he was standing at the end of the corridor watching them, a black cat tucked under his arm. He grinned his sidelong grin.

“Lunch is served.”