Obsidian Mirror

11

Interviewer: And how do you feel about conquering a summit like Katra Simba and going where no one else ever has? Does it give you a great sense of freedom?

Venn: That’s a stupid question.

Interviewer: Well…um…

Venn: You don’t conquer mountains. They conquer you.

Interviewer: Yes, but I mean…

Venn: You don’t have a clue what you mean. If you’d ever been up there, you’d see why. A place like that—a mountain like that—doesn’t set you free. She chains you to her memory forever.

BBC interview; Volcanoes—Hills of Fury

SARAH KNOCKED AGAIN on the door. “Jake!”

There was no answer, but she knew he was in there. “It’s me.” She opened it and went in.

Jake said, “Leave me alone.”

She sat on the unmade bed. It was a four-poster, with red damask hangings, ridiculously grand in the paneled room. “You didn’t come down for breakfast. Wharton was worried.”

“I’m devastated.” He sounded bone-weary. He was sitting, knees up on the wide window-ledge, wearing a coat over pajamas, gazing out at the white frost that had stiffened the lawns. Beyond, the Wood loomed dark.

“Venn wants a meeting. All of us. About last night.”

His eyes flicked to her. She gazed around at the tumble of his clothes, the laptop, the monkey’s mess of crumbs and stolen nuts. It seemed like he had stumbled to sleep last night as exhausted as she had, after Venn had ordered Rebecca home and the rest of them to bed.

She said, “We need to get things straight. If we’re going to succeed in finding your father, we need to be working together, not as enemies. You and me. You and Venn.”

It made sense. He still hated it.

“And you’ve got to get rid of this idea that he’s responsible for your father’s—”

“He is responsible.”

“You know what I mean. Let go, Jake.” She got up and came over to him, looking at his fragmented reflections in the tiny windowpanes. “He wants to get David back as much as you. He’s desperate. He’s not the person you think he is.”

He didn’t move or answer, but she sensed a change, the slightest of thaws. As the marmoset swung down and settled cozily on his lap, she said, “Do you believe him? About the Chronoptika?”

He shrugged.

She squeezed onto the seat beside him. “It is true, Jake! Last night, when I was looking into it, I saw it. I saw the past.”

Silence. Finally he said, “What did you see?” and she knew she had won. She stood up. “If you really want to know that, come downstairs. We’ll talk about it all together. You’ll get nowhere skulking up here by yourself.” She took a small leather-bound book from her pocket and thrust it at him. “And when you get a moment, read this. It’s Symmes’s journal. It’ll explain a lot.”

She went to the door and out, and he let her go without a word, his fingers deep in Horatio’s fur, watching her reflection vanish.

Then there was only the blue sky to stare at.

He was cold, and alone. The hot excitement of last night, the fight with Maskelyne and the amazing story of the mirror seemed like a dream now; it had evaporated into restless sleep and listless bewilderment and he felt that all his energy had gone. That he almost didn’t care.

And yet…

What did she mean, that she had seen the past?

Suddenly, he had to move. Pushing the monkey off, he ducked its wild screechy swing and went over to his crumpled pile of clothes, pulling on the black sweater and dragging a comb through his hair. For a moment he wanted to look at himself, to see if he looked older, paler, but of course there was no mirror and maybe that was good, because he didn’t want another vision like the last, another ghostly hand clutching at his. He pushed the small journal into his back pocket.

“Stay here,” he said. “And don’t wreck the place.”

Horatio bared his teeth and climbed the curtain.

Jake walked the creaking corridor and ran down the stairs. The house was in its eternal silence, the dark paneled rooms deserted, only the clocks ticking. Then he caught the low mutter of voices from far along a stone-paved passageway at the back that must have once been for servants.

He walked down there and paused in the archway. Heat struck his face, and the sweet smells of tea and toast and baking bread.

It was the kitchen. A vast hearth opened in the roof, and under it—inside it, really—a fire was burning with inglenook benches on each side. Wharton was sitting on one, his legs stretched blissfully out. Sarah perched opposite, her eyes on Jake. Venn was talking to Piers by a big table littered with dishes and books. When he saw Jake, he stopped. “So. We’re all here.”

“Except our friend Rebecca,” Wharton said.

“I escorted the young lady arm in arm back to her car last night.” Piers set out five striped mugs on the table. “Although she would happily have stayed. She was so curious, so breathless. Her voice has registers. She’s not quite the ditsy scatterbrain she appears. Perhaps we should be careful about how much we tell her.”

“I don’t want her here again.” Venn’s gaze was on Jake.

“Don’t tell me who I should see,” he growled.

“See her if you want. But not here.”

Jake shrugged.

As if that was a signal of some sort, Sarah came over and sat at the table. Piers carried the huge brown teapot, its handle wrapped in a tea-towel, and carefully poured hot tea into all the mugs. “My own biscuits,” he said, proud.

They were Christmas-tree shaped, and decorated with swags of icing and small pearly spheres. Wharton dipped one into his tea. “Magic, Piers.” He crammed the rest into his mouth. “Makes most biscuits taste like cardboard. But how on earth do you get the time.”

Piers shrugged, sly. “As you say. Magic.”

“You must give me the recipe.”

Jake sat. Ignoring the others, he turned to Sarah. “Tell me…tell us…exactly what you saw. Please.”

She stirred sugar in the tea, considering.

Venn came and sat opposite. She felt enclosed by their need, squeezed by their desperation. She knew they were both taut with nerves, but so was she. So she said, “At first there was nothing. Even when the bracelet started locking itself. It closed in on my skin—it was so cold, it hurt. Then I felt the mirror change. It became less…solid. It’s difficult to describe, because I think it was at that moment that Jake came running in, and it was as if the mirror…imploded.”

“How…” Wharton began, but Jake said, “Shut up. Go on, Sarah.”

“It just wasn’t there anymore. It became a vacuum, a sucking emptiness. It was so powerful—it pulled at me, as if it would drag me in. It was a sort of”—she shivered, her voice grim—“black hole.”

Venn flicked a glance at Piers, who said, “Like David.”

She looked up. “If it hadn’t been for your spiderweb, I would have been pulled right inside. I felt as if my ears and nose were bleeding; as if there was some tremendous build-up of pressure. And then I saw the street.”

Venn said, “I didn’t see anything.”

“I did. Houses. Big, like tenements or warehouses. A dull gray sky. People, running out of the rain. Umbrellas. The noise of horses’ hooves and cartwheels, a terrible clatter. A stink of dung.”

“People?” Venn was leaning close over the table now, his ice eyes points of fever. “What sort of clothes?”

“Old-fashioned. The women had long dresses. Bustles. There were horse-drawn omnibuses.”

He stared at her, astounded. “Was it London?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“My God.” He glanced at Piers, then back, his fingers grabbing hers and gripping them so hard, it hurt. “Are you saying this was the 1840s? 1850s?”

She had no idea. She said, “It was definitely Victorian. From pictures I’ve seen. But it was only there for a second. A blink of light. And then it was gone, and I felt so sick and giddy, I couldn’t even stand up anymore. And you were yelling at Jake and the bracelet fell off and rolled away.”

To her own surprise she felt upset, almost tearful. Wharton said, “Take your time,” but Venn just snatched his hand away and leaped up, pacing to the fire.

Piers slid the plate of biscuits toward her. “Eat up.”

She took one automatically, glancing at Jake. She had though he would argue angrily in disbelief, but his stare was considering, and she felt sure all at once that he knew more than she’d thought. Who had phoned him last night? What had they told him? Suddenly she needed to know it wasn’t Janus.

Wharton said, “Well, this clearly doesn’t mean…that is…you obviously imagined you saw it. In that dizzy moment.”

“The rain was on my face. I could have stepped through. Gone there.”

“Oh, surely…”

“I’m not a liar!”

Wharton didn’t flinch. “No?” he said quietly.

“Leave her alone.” Jake’s mutter was hoarse. “She’s right. She saw the past. That’s where Dad is.” He swiveled in the chair, to Venn. “You got him there. You can get him back.”

Venn was near the fire. He turned his head, winter-sharp. “Have you been talking to anyone about this?”

“Like who?”

“I don’t know. But you seem very ready to accept it all of a sudden.”

Jake shrugged. “Maybe I believe Sarah more than you.”

Venn’s stare was level. Then he came and sat at the table. In the silence, only the fire crackled, and a ripple of tea as Piers poured himself another mugful. “Tell the boy, Excellency,” he said quietly. “Tell them all. It’s time.”

When Venn spoke again, he didn’t look at any of them. He looked at the fire and he spoke steadily, to the flames.

“According to Harcourt Symmes, the mirror allows entry to time. I have a theory that it curves space-time, but that doesn’t explain…well. Never mind that now. The fact is we inherited the wreckage of an eccentric’s dream, and had to rebuild the thing almost from scratch. David found it. He was at an auction sale in Durham one time, and this thing was in the catalog. Lot eighty-six. Box containing a Victorian mirror, wiring, associated machinery, etc. ‘Etc.’ turned out to be a journal kept by Symmes, two silver bracelets, and some files of calculations and notes. It seemed to be just junk, but David was interested enough to bid and he got it all for twenty quid. He brought it here, and he read the journal. Stayed up all night reading it. He got really excited about the thing—the Chronoptika, Symmes called it. I was…Well, I didn’t care about anything. Maybe he thought at first it might be something to take my mind off Leah. Then he began to get this strange obsession that it might actually work.

“I didn’t need much persuasion. I was living in a terrible arctic darkness, on and on, for months. This was like a gleam of hope. Like the day you realize the sun will rise soon.

“We needed help. I summoned Piers up—he’s clever with his hands. He and David worked on the thing. They read and experimented and were up all hours. It was a long, difficult process, and they had to look after me too, because at that stage I was…suicidal.” He was silent a moment; Sarah flicked a look at Jake, who sat, arms folded, listening, pitiless.

“The first time we used it, it almost exploded. Then, the next time, David wore one of the bracelets, walked through the mirror and back out, immediately. At least, that’s how it seemed to us, but he said he had been back to 1969 and spent two days there. His clothes were dirty, he was unshaven, and he had a photograph of himself holding a newspaper. I remember how I just sat there, staring at it…We were so amazed. We thought if we can do that, we can do anything. Change time. Change history. Avoid the accident. Bring her back.” He gripped his fingers tight together, a knot of tension. “I can’t tell you what it felt like to be given a glimpse of that. We drank, we dreamed, we flung all the windows of the house open and whooped and whistled for joy. But then. Two days later we tried again. After our pride, the fall.”

Suddenly he stood up. “I can’t do this. Tell them, Piers. Give him the key to David’s room.”

Abruptly, he went out, ducking under the low arch.

Piers cleared his throat in the awkward silence. One of the cats leaped on the table and head-butted him; he stroked it idly. “Ah. Well, it hit him hard, you know. So much hope, so much despair. But your father is a determined man, Jake, and he was desperate to help his friend. I advised against another attempt until we had the web finished, because it was clear the power of the machine could drag us all into it without some safety device. But David wouldn’t wait. He put on the silver cuff and we activated the Chronoptika. There was a tremendous crack of sound, and every one of the lights in the house blew out. I knew then. We tried…believe me, Jake, we really did. But David was gone. And the mirror was black and hard and empty.”

Jake was silent. Without looking up, he turned the mug with his forefinger. “What did you do?”

“Waited, and waited. He never came out.”

Wharton leaned back, squeaking his chair. “I have to say, it all seems incredible.”

“No,” Jake said. “It doesn’t.” He took out the crocodile-skin wallet, pulled the photo from it, and placed it on the table. “It explains this.”

Sarah swiveled the photo around and stared at it. She looked astonished. “He had this taken?”

“It came with the note from my father. Someone sent them to me.” Jake took the letter out and gave it to her; she read it quickly.

He turned to Piers. “It was you, wasn’t it.”

Piers shrugged, shifty. His small body seemed to shrink. “Well, yes. But for God’s sake, don’t tell Venn. I’m in deep enough doo-dah as it is.”

“Stand up to him. He doesn’t own you,” Wharton growled.

“Actually he does.”

“Why send it?” Sarah asked quietly.

“Because it would get Jake here. And I thought his presence would affect the mirror; I was right.”

“Venn lied to the police,” Jake said, grim. “My father never left this house.”

“Depends on how you define left. But we couldn’t have the plods ferreting around here. I’m really sorry, Jake. I’m an expert at getting things wrong.”

“Venn wouldn’t have cared.”

Piers stood. “He was in no fit state to care about anyone.” He went to the wall, took down a bunch of keys and selected one. “I saw him spend nights sitting before that mirror, drinking, waiting. It’s taken months to get back to where we were. But last night showed me that there is still a chance. So tonight, I’m sure he’ll try again.”

Sarah looked up, alert. “So soon?”

Jake took the letter from under her fingers and folded it back into the wallet. “Well, this time I wear the bracelet. Not her. And not Venn.”

Piers slid a key over. “That’s for you. It opens your father’s room.”

Jake took it, but before he could answer, the rapid high peeping of an alarm startled them all, bursting out like a pulse in the silent house.

“What’s that?” Sarah leaped up so fast, her chair fell over.

“The gate.” Piers flitted out of the room and she ran after him, quickly, through the old scullery and into the dairy, though now its cold marble counters held only TV monitors and a keyboard.

Piers’s long fingers flicked on the keyboard. Sarah stared at the screen. She was looking down at the wrought-iron gates from a high, awkward angle, through a camera grimy with dirt. No one was there.

“Odd.” Piers clicked the camera; it panned left and right, up and down. They saw the rutted lane, a high hedgerow, bare brambles, some mud slashed with tire tracks. Then the left-hand pillar with its stone lion.

“There’s no one there,” she said, anxious.

“Well, something set it off.”

“A fox?”

“Maybe.” He touched a switch and the image flickered; she saw by the digital clock in the corner that he was running the footage backward.

“So we really can go back in time,” she said, trying to joke.

“Mortal time is only an image. The capture of images.” Piers stopped. “There! See! What’s that, I wonder.”

A figure. The edge of a dark shape, standing in the untidy tangle of the high hedges. Someone motionless, blurred in the grainy image, there and then not there, so swift, it might have been a movement of branches and thorns.

She stared at it, knowing it was Janus.

Piers looked grave. “Houston, we have a problem. Tell me, Sarah, did that look like a man with a scarred face to you?”

“Why?”

“We’ve had such a man hanging around in recent months. Maybe one of Summer’s, but I fear he knows something.”

“Who’s Summer?”

Piers giggled, nervous. “You don’t want to know.”

She didn’t answer. She was peering at the mud in front of the gate, where the tires of cars had flattened it. Even in the dim image she could make out the prints. Broad splayed paw prints.

“It could be anyone,” she said, in a whisper.