Obsidian Mirror

19

And you would not believe the pleasant happenings! On Christmas Eve the waits came and sang, and then late at night, the mummers with their old play, all dressed in ragged costumes, and then—rather eerie this, my dear—the Gray Mare, a horse’s skull on a pole, carried by villagers. And all the while the land lies deep in winter snow under the roundest of moons…

Letter of Lady Mary Venn, 1834

LIKE A SHADOW, Maskelyne crept down the Long Gallery.

Again he stopped and looked back, swiveling the weapon.

The house was dark, and only moonlight slanted through its casements, reflecting here and there in dim polished wood, the angled smiles of framed faces.

Twice he had thought he had heard a footfall, the faintest tread. And once, a snuffle, a sinister, animal breathing. Quietly he said, “This will kill you, Replicant. Do you hear me?”

Nothing.

He hurried on, letting the mirror draw him. He felt its disturbance like ripples in his mind, like an ache in his bones. It was close now, closer than it had been since that night when the stout, pompous man he had thought such a fool had tricked him out of it.

And he had thrown himself in, guideless.

He came to the covered alcove and drew the curtain aside. There was a door, and it was locked.

He worked quickly. Years in the thieving underworld of London had taught him many skills; he had the door open and closed behind him in seconds.

The Monk’s Walk, its grim cold Gothic stone, made him smile, because this was familiar. He had explored many vaults like this, broken through all too many crumbling sepulchers.

He walked on, carefully.

The room beyond was vast, and dark. He paused in the doorway, listening. Had they left the mirror unguarded?

Because there it was. He could not stop himself, he pushed hastily through the feeble remnants of Venn’s safety web, ducking under broken threads and snapped green cables.

After years, after centuries, after Symmes’s betrayal and his own bitter, stretched arrival, here it was.

His Chronoptika.

He walked right up to it and it showed him his own warped reflection, his face twisted and ugly and then in a shiver of moonlight, handsome and whole.

He leaped back. “Rebecca?”

She had been there, a slant of anxious eyes. He turned, saw her, took one step toward her when a voice said, “Stand perfectly still and drop that weapon. Or you get both barrels.”

The big man, Wharton, had a shotgun pointed right at him.

Maskelyne took a breath. He crouched, and slowly laid the glass weapon on the floor.

“Move away from it,” Wharton barked.

He took one step.

“Rebecca. Get it.”

She slipped out from the shadows and ran and picked it up, gingerly, as if it were hot.

“Now.” Wharton came forward into the light, cradling the shotgun; he took the weapon from her and looked at it, grim. “I want to know how you got in here. And who the hell you are.”

Maskelyne was silent. He felt so weary, he wasn’t sure if he could speak.

It was Rebecca who spoke. Facing Wharton, she drew herself up and she was nearly as tall.

“Actually, he’s sort of from the past. And he’s with me.”

Symmes’s house was a large one, in a wide London square. From the darkness of the gardens opposite, Jake staked the place out, noting its pillared porch, the black railinged servants’ area in front with its worn steps, the lofty windows—one, on the first floor, cozily lit behind its looped curtains.

Moll breathed noisily at his back.

They had crossed a London of nightmare that he had barely recognized. Great rookeries of filth and squalor, sudden tangles of slums, and then at a turn of a corner a gracious street, a wide avenue he knew in his own time. But the foul stench of the place, its rumbles and clanks, even its voices, had an alien note; they seemed to hang too long in the air, to be pitched too high. The books he had read—Sherlock Holmes, even Dickens—had not prepared him for the sheer brutality, the hundreds of horses, the opulence of the women’s dresses, the scrawny crossing-sweepers with their sickly, pocked faces.

Now he looked down at Moll. Her breathing was harsh after the running. What would happen to her? Consumption? Smallpox? He had a sudden mad idea of getting her back through the mirror with him, seeing Piers’s astonished alarm, when she said, “He’s got a visitor.”

He turned.

The house front was lit by a solitary gas-lamp; in its cone of light he saw a man walk along the street and pause at the steps, then stride up and rap impatiently at the door knocker.

“Closer,” he muttered.

They crossed the road. Tree-shadows from the gardens rustled over them.

The man was tall; he wore a dark hat, and as he swept it off and the hall light fell on his fair hair and lean face, Jake took a breath of surprise.

“Who is it?” Moll whispered.

“It’s Venn.”

He was intensely relieved, and then filled with bitter envy. Venn obviously hadn’t been set on by thieves; judging by his Victorian outfit, it had been he who had done the stealing.

Jake moved along the railings. “Venn!” he breathed.

Venn turned, fast, but at that instant the door opened and a servant in a dark suit said, “Yes?”

Venn swung back. “My name is Oberon Venn. I’d like to see Mr. Symmes.”

The butler looked doubtful, but Venn’s height and bearing seemed to reassure him; still he said, “Mr. Harcourt Symmes does not receive visitors at this hour.”

“He’ll receive me.” Venn took out a small card and wrote something on the back. “Give him this. Tell him it’s urgent I speak with him now.”

The butler vanished. Instantly Venn turned. “Jake? Where the hell have you been!”

“Where have I been? Getting robbed, beaten up…”

Venn’s icy glare took in Moll. “Listen. Get inside. Through the servants’ entrance. I need to look at Symmes’s setup for the mirror, and…”

The door opened; he turned. Jake shrank into the shadows.

“Mr. Harcourt Symmes will see you, sir.”

Venn flashed one look back into the dark street. Then he ran up the steps and the door closed behind him.

Jake turned, against the damp railings. He breathed out in anger. “How am I supposed to get inside?”

Moll looked at him, pitying. “Watch and learn, Jake, luv. Watch and learn.”

The Wood was a network of ice. Frozen branches crisscrossed above Sarah’s head; in the black sky, the stars were brilliant as jewels. Gideon looked back. “Not far now. Are you cold?”

“No,” she muttered, sarcastic.

He grinned.

They had slipped out of the house and run; though she was wearing a coat, gloves, and Jake’s school scarf, she was still shivering, hugging herself against the terrible, knife-sharp winter.

It was Christmas Eve, but here in the deep tangle of greenwood, it could have been any time, a pre-pagan Neolithic silence, of cracking branches and crunched puddles of ice aslant the path.

She gasped, “How do you…stand this?”

“I don’t.” He reached back and took her hand, leading her through the briars. “I live in the Summerland. See?”

Between a step and a step, the world changed.

She crossed a threshold that wasn’t there and the Wood was green, the sky blue. Bees buzzed in the throats of flowers. Warmth enfolded her, a relief so deep, she wanted to cry out with the delight of it.

“Incredible!” She turned, staring. “It’s like paradise! Where are we?”

And yet there were rooms in it, and buildings, that seemed to obtrude at crazy angles, corners of temples and museums and libraries, slabs of castle. As if these places began in some other dimension and ended here. As if they had slid in here, coming to a halt in the tangled Wood, snagged in brambles, held by honeysuckle.

He didn’t answer, and she saw he was gazing over her shoulder, with a dismayed, defiant look.

She turned.

Summer stood there in a dress of red, a brief, floaty thing. Her feet were bare. She smiled, charming. “Who have you brought me this time, Gideon?”

He shrugged. “She brought me.”

Sarah went to speak, and found she couldn’t. She tried to move, and nothing would work. In silent, suffocating panic she stood trapped in an immobile body, even unable to turn her own eyes and watch as Summer slowly circled her.

“A strange child indeed. So old, and so young.” Summer came around, reached out a finger and jerked Sarah’s chin up, studying her face. “A plotter and planner. A mad girl, of water and weeds.”

Her hand dropped. Then Sarah felt the lightest of touches, and realized the faery woman had lifted the broken coin from her neck and was examining it carefully.

“Zeus. I met him once. Another fool who came to nothing.”

She looked up, and Sarah looked for a moment deep into her eyes, and they were green and no light reflected in them.

Then, as if she had lost interest, Summer turned, and Sarah, with a gasp, could move.

She looked around. The clearing was grassy. There were fallen trunks and a sweet cascade of honeysuckle. Under it a fountain splashed into a deep well where salmon swam; hazelnuts fell from a bush above and floated in the water. On the grass a selection of chairs stood, rough and wooden, an ornate gilt stool, a toppled plastic garden chair, a faded painted throne that might have been Egyptian or from some film-set. Summer sat on the stool and spread her bare toes luxuriously in the warm grass. “So. Sarah. What do you want with us? Not many mortals have the gall to come here.”

“I need a favor.”

“From the Shee?” Summer laughed. “We don’t do favors. Bargains, perhaps. Is this about Venn?”

She nodded, trying not to sound too anxious because she sensed already how this creature seemed to feed on that. “Last night Venn and Jake entered the mirror. They haven’t come back.”

Summer’s laugh was a tinkle of spite. “So he finally got to seek his lost love. How I hope he rots in some brutal age forever.”

“He won’t,” Sarah said quietly, “and you know that. You’re jealous.”

Summer stood, swift as a cat. “I am not jealous. Of a woman!”

“Did you ever meet Leah? Did you know her?” Sarah’s curiosity was sudden and real; she saw Gideon glance at her quickly, a warning.

Summer shrugged. “Human women are all the same. I don’t remember.”

“But Venn…”

“Venn is one of us. Our music is in him. When he gets tired of his obsession with the mirror, he’ll come home.” Summer frowned. “Don’t I know you? Haven’t I seen you somewhere before? Among the ruin of Wintercombe maybe, the burned hall, the ashes of the Gallery?”

“No.”

“I think I have.”

Sarah went and righted a garden chair and sat on it. It was yellow plastic, from some cheap supermarket. Angling it to face Summer, she said, “You seem to know about the past.”

“All times are now to us.”

Sarah nodded. This was a huge risk, but she had to take it.

“Do you know Janus?” she said.

“What do you mean, he’s with you?” Baffled, Wharton lowered the shotgun.

Rebecca eyed the slim glass weapon. “I’m sorry. It was me that let him into the house.”

He stared. Even her voice was different. “He and I are friends. It’s a long story. But I know about the mirror, and well, Maskelyne’s not dangerous. He just wants what’s his.”

“Don’t we all.” Wharton took a step closer. He looked closely at the man. “I remember you. You were on the plane. You followed us here.”

“I did.”

“Are you really the one in the journal? All that time ago?”

Maskelyne shrugged. He looked wary.

“Well, then you can operate this thing! Get Jake back?”

“Maybe. At a price.”

They exchanged a long glance. Wharton said, “I have no idea what to do here. They’re all gone, even Piers seems to have vanished. There’s only me left to guard this thing, and I don’t know the first thing about it. I need help.”

Maskelyne faced him. His eyes were dark and troubled. “If I get them back, I take the mirror. It will be best—for Jake, and Venn.”

“They won’t think so.” Wharton frowned, blew out his cheeks, glanced at Rebecca. “I must be mad to trust you two, but do it. Do what you can.”

Rebecca laughed in relief. Maskelyne said, “I’ll try.”

Wharton turned.

“Where are you going?” Rebecca said, alarmed.

“To get Sarah. I think we need to be all together.”

Venn walked into the drawing room and saw a stout man in a red dressing gown standing before the fire in a hastily adopted pose. His mustache was bushy, his face florid.

He held the visiting card in his hand.

Venn said, “Mr. John Harcourt Symmes?”

“Who on earth are you?” The voice was peevish and suspicious. Symmes held up the card. “What is the meaning of this? This is the card of a fellow member of the Royal Society; I know him well, and you, sir, are an imposter.”

“My name’s Oberon Venn. We’re not acquainted. I’m an explorer and some say, a man of science.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of you, so…”

“I’ve come about David Wilde.”

Symmes stopped in mid-bluster. He stared at Venn and then, as if in a sudden weakness, groped for the chair behind and lowered himself slowly into it. “Bless my soul,” he whispered. “Are you from…that is, have you journeyed?”

Venn nodded. “I also have two companions with me and by now they’re probably causing havoc in your servants’ hall. Could you have them sent for, please.”

It was a command.

Symmes seemed helpless with surprise. He rang the bell, and even as the butler entered, Venn caught Jake’s voice from far off in the house.

“You have some…people down there,” Venn snapped. “Bring them.”

The man looked at his master. “Sir? These are an urchin from the streets and a young man in the most bizarre clothes. The girl at first pretended to be ill, and so…”

“Fetch them,” Symmes growled. “Do it.”

While they waited, he said, “I would appreciate…just a few words of description. Your time…how has London changed? Are there flying machines? Do women have the vote?”

Venn said quietly, “David never spoke of it, then?”

“He said it would be best if he did not.”

Venn smiled. That was David. As the door opened and Jake strode in with a small ragged girl trotting at his heels, he suddenly saw the resemblance again between the boy and David, that sharp awareness. That rapid taking in of everything around them.

Moll’s eyes were wide. She went straight to the fire and crouched there, almost purring. Jake faced Venn. “What’s going on?”

“This is Harcourt Symmes. He met your father.”

Jake said, “What?” He turned fast. “When?”

Symmes’s answer devastated him. “Three months ago.”

Venn sat on one of the armchairs and nodded to Jake to do the same. “I knew David would come here. He must have realized that if we managed to journey after him, you’d be the one we’d search out.”

“So he said.” Symmes seemed a little more at ease. He settled comfortably in the chair, and began to talk, and Jake caught the self-satisfied tone of the man that he had read in the journal. “I, er, obtained the mirror and worked on it for two years with limited success. It was obviously a portal to some other existence; I sent inanimate objects through, and then a rat and even a dog, but I dared not use it on a human, least of all on myself. A scientist should perhaps be bolder, but…”

Jake couldn’t wait. “Dad came through the mirror?”

“Oh no. Not at all. In fact, like you, he simply knocked on my door.”

Moll’s fingers slid over the table and took an apple from the bowl. She began, quietly, to crunch it.

“It was last May. I saw a thin, rather worn man of premature age.”

“Age! My father was forty-five!” Jake stared at Venn. “How could…”

“I don’t know!” Venn’s impatience was savage. “We don’t know how long he’d already been living here. Let him talk.”

Anguished, Jake sat back. His father was young, lively, always laughing. A joker. The thought of him growing old and alone in this squalid, noxious city, desperate and lost, was terrifying.

“He told me he was a traveler from the future, from the twenty-first century, which I scoffed at, until he showed me a small object which he called a mobile telephone, and which, quite frankly, I found amazing. It did nothing, but he said that in your time he could speak to distant people upon it, and certainly I had seen nothing like it. Still, he might have been a Bolshevist or a Prussian spy, so I was about to hand him over to the police, when he described my mirror. My mirror, in my study upstairs, my greatest secret. That convinced me.”

Venn nodded, bitter. “David can be convincing.”

“He explained his plight. He wanted to get home, as he put it. He promised me access to untold secrets if I would help him do it. He said his son would be worried about him.” Symmes glanced at Jake. “I assure you, you were all he thought about.”

Jake couldn’t speak. Moll whispered, “Told you.”

“What happened?” Venn’s voice was dark, as if he guessed.

“We worked together for two months. He did many things I didn’t understand. Finally he said the mirror was ready. He gave me a sealed paper and made me swear not to look at its revelations until he had gone. Then, we activated the device. I shook his hand—we were quite friends by then—and he strode into the black vacuum of the mirror.”

Into the silence he said, “He has not come home?”

“No.” Venn sat still a moment, then lifted his head. “The paper?”

“Ah yes, the paper. I had fondly imagined it a list of the secrets of the future. It was nothing of the sort.” Symmes got up and limped goutily to the sideboard and opened a drawer. He brought the paper, but instead of giving it to Venn, he handed it to Jake, who snatched it and read it avidly and then was silent so long, Venn’s patience ran out.

“What is it?”

Jake looked up. His face was lit with a bitter happiness. “A letter. To me.”