The Slanted Worlds

12

Her fury brought the lightning

her fury brought the rain.

Her fury took the buds of spring

and frosted them again.

She drowned the blackbird on the nest

the rabbit in the burrow.

Drowned all happiness and hope.

Turned all joy to sorrow.

Ballad of Lord Winter and Lady Summer

GIDEON LAY ON the grass and stared at the cloudless blue sky.

Outside, in the world, in Wintercombe, the rain had been falling for days, but it never rained here. The endless blue bored him; he longed for the sudden brilliant spark of an airplane to cross it. He loved to see those bright metal birds, with their arrow-straight trails of . . . what? Steam? Smoke? Sarah had told him people traveled on them, high above the world, and at first he had laughed harshly at that, because he was only too used to mischief, the torment of lies.

Jake said it was true.

He wished he could fly so high, so far.

Then he gave a gasp. Summer was smiling down at him.

“Did I scare you?”

He sat up quickly. “Of course not.” Never admit weakness, not to Them.

“You look tired.”

“I’m not.”

She touched his hair lightly. “It must be wonderful to be tired. To sleep. They say in human sleep there are pictures and visions. Is that true?”

“No.” She would never find out about his dreams. Dreams were the only place he could go where he was safe from her. Where They couldn’t touch him.

“Do you dream about your childhood? When you were small, in that cottage at the edge of the wood?”

He shook his head.

“I’m so pleased. It was so miserably dark and dingy. And yet you seem all not and no today, my sweet.” Her fingers carefully rearranged his hair. “All so quick and touchy. Are you hiding secrets from me, Gideon?”

He pulled his head away and stood up. “Of course not.”

“Again!” Summer’s small red lips sweetened to a smile. She sat back. “Answer me a question then, without no, or not, or never . . . can you do that?”

He recognized the trap. Hugging himself, he shrugged. “Summer . . .”

She held up a hand. “Did you bring something for Venn. Through my kingdom?”

“N— Would I do that?”

Fear. It made him clench his fingers tight. She saw that, her beautiful eyes missing nothing.

“Because if I thought you had, Gideon . . . If for a moment I thought you could do that, you see I would be so, so angry.” She tapped him lightly with a long white finger. “So . . . implacable.”

“Summer, of course I didn’t. What could I . . . ?”

“Something from some other time. Something in a small”—she tapped him again for each word—“black, velvet bag.”

He glanced down in horror. His right hand was shriveling. As he stared he felt it contract, the fingers merge, flesh meshing, bones knitting. Nails hooked to claws. The pain of shrinkage shot through him.

“No.”

Her finger on his lips. “Not that word, Gideon.” She kissed him, her lips soft.

His coat, green as lichen, rippled. The sleeve became feathers, dark and glossy. He felt his skin crack and sprout, his bones hollow out, become frail as twigs.

“I didn’t bring anything for Venn. I swear! Not Venn. Venn wouldn’t even . . .”

“Then who?” Her eyes were close against his, unblinking as an owl’s. “Who?”

“Jake. It was just . . . Jake . . . had journeyed.”

“What did you bring?”

He hated himself. He hated her. He wanted to die but there was no death. There would never be any death.

“The bag. There was some sort of plastic film inside.”

“And?”

“And . . . the bracelet.”

“Indeed.” Summer smiled, and her smile was cool and the terror grew strong in him. “So you helped them without telling me. Without asking my permission. Do you know what I will do, Gideon, for that?”

He knew. He had been a bird before, wind-blown, buffeted, pecked by the hosts of the Shee from one end of the Wood to another. He had been a fish, caught suffocating in a net; he had drowned endlessly in his own terror till he had torn himself free, and then the stabbing beaks of herons had caught him and thrown him and tossed him back. He had been a stone in the path, without a voice, without eyes, feeling only the pain of the Shee horses that rode over him. He had been trapped in the trunk of a tree, screaming in silent agony for centuries of no time.

He knew exactly what she could do to him.

He made himself stand tall. “Let me make up for it then. Tell me what you want, I’ll get it.”

His arm was a wing now. She stroked the feathers. “Anything?”

“Anything. Just . . .”

“I want the silver bracelet, Gideon.”

Gideon stared. “Venn wears it all the time.”

“Not when he comes here.”

Aghast, he said, “No. Then he leaves it locked in an iron safe. But . . .”

She leaned against him. “I want the bracelet. Iron holds no pain for you.”

Feathers broke out down his back, splitting the skin, tearing sinew, reworking his body. “Yes,” he gasped. “Yes, I’ll get it, please, just don’t . . .”

She stepped back, turned, her voice bored now, cold as stone, as the Shee descended in screeching flocks through the branches. “Until you do Gideon, no more sleep. No more dreams. Gideon shall sleep no more.” She clapped her hands.

“Come now, my people! Shall we hunt the wren? Shall we play?”

I should have known it would not be easy.

I did try. My advertisements brought many curious seekers, and I soon learned how simple it is to fool people. At my séances voices were heard, lights flickered, ghostly invisible hands drifted across the faces of my guests. In my trances I moaned and murmured and spoke in their own voices comforting messages from dead husbands and lost children. I read palms and consulted the tarot, I gazed long into crystals and traced out names and dates on the lettered tabletop.

I soon had a reputation and a growing clientele.

But after about two years of this I was restless and dissatisfied. Certainly I was making money. I dressed well, and wore the latest hats. But perhaps my conscience was beginning to trouble me, because although comforting the bereaved starts as a warm glow in the heart, it ends as the cold lies of a practiced charlatan.

It was late one evening, after a particularly troubling session, that I entered the room where my father had worked. It was not a room I frequented, being small and dark, but that evening it seemed charged with a strange, silent expectancy. The maid had gone to bed—by now she was a trusted accomplice in my business—so I lit a small fire myself and then sat on the green ottoman by the window looking down at the street, the few late travelers hurrying home out of the dark and cold.

The clock struck three a.m.

At that moment, for no reason I can relate now, I turned my head. As if a voice had called me.

The obsidian mirror stood facing me.

In it I saw a figure, dark and warped. I was wearing the robe I often wore for séances, a fabulously exotic caftan of purple and turquoise velvet; my hair turbaned and fixed with a brooch of kingfisher wings.

But with a chill of certainty I knew this reflection was not myself.

My heart was beating so loud I could hear it; sweat broke out cold on my back.

Was I, at last, seeing a ghost?

I resolved not to be terrified, and managed to stand. There was a lit candle on the sill; I took it up, and came closer to the glass.

The figure seemed to retreat from the light. I saw it was a man, in some dark, perhaps monkish robe. The candlelight threw strange, brilliant streaks of flame across the black glass.

“Who are you?” I whispered.

He came closer. I saw a man of average height, his face obscured by a hood, and behind him, as if in some other place, stone walls, a wooden bench, a table all laid with paraphernalia and alchemical apparatus.

A sudden idea stabbed me with joy. “Are you . . . are you my father? Father, is that you?”

He drew off the hood. “No,” he whispered.

He was younger, brown-haired, stubbled, worn thin with anxiety. “Where are you?” he whispered. “And when?”

“London. The year is 1904.”

His shoulders sagged; he looked haggard with disappointment. He sat on the bench and behind him, through a small window, I saw the blue sky of some hot climate.

“Are you a ghost?” I asked, quivering.

He looked up. “I don’t know what I am anymore,” he said. And then: “My name is David Wilde.”

It was Sarah who answered the door to the repeated, angry knock.

Rebecca stood on the steps under a dripping, striped umbrella. “He’s here, isn’t he?” She pushed past into the tiled hall. “What’s happening? What the hell have you done with him?”

Sarah glanced out into the rainy afternoon. Starlings were rising from the Wood in flocks.

She shut the door and bolted it. “If you mean Maskelyne, yes he’s here.”

“Why on earth couldn’t he call me! I’ve been waiting at the cottage for an hour.”

“There’s no signal here. Besides, he’s busy. With the mirror.”

The tall girl closed her umbrella. Sarah saw how her long red plait of hair was soaked, the way her anger had suddenly thawed to a bleak resentment. “The mirror. Always the mirror.”

Sarah nodded. But she didn’t move, checking quickly there was no one around but one of the replicated cats, washing its tail on the dark wooden table. Then she ventured:

“If it wasn’t for the mirror, he wouldn’t be here.”

“He never is here!” Rebecca dumped the umbrella in the rack; a pool of water trickled from it across the tiles. “All he thinks about is how to reach the thing, and now he’s done that. They need him and he needs it.”

“To do what? Journey?”

Suspicious, Rebecca shrugged. “What’s it to you?”

“Nothing. Except . . .” Sarah came closer. Rebecca always made her feel small, ridiculously petite. Folding her arms, she leaned back against the table and said, “Except that without the mirror, you’d have him all to yourself.”

As soon as she’d said it, she knew it was too crude. She cursed herself silently.

Rebecca’s suspicion became indignant certainty. “Don’t involve me in your crazy plots, Sarah. I know all about you, and where you’ve come from. Maskelyne says you’re dangerous, that you want to destroy the mirror. You’ll get no help from me. Now, where is he?”

She stalked across the hall head high, and Sarah let her reach the corridor to the kitchen before saying, “Yes, I’m dangerous. But I’m not your enemy. The mirror is your enemy. Your rival. The fascinating, endlessly powerful Chronoptika.”

Rebecca stopped, but didn’t turn.

Sarah went on, relentless. “Venn, Jake, Maskelyne. They all think they need it. But they’ll become slaves to it, and believe me, I know that’s true, because I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen how the mirror can devour people, mind and soul, how it can swell and pulsate with its own power, how it can become a darkness that can—will—devour the world.” She took a step across the hall. “I’m going to stop that happening. You could help me.”

Rebecca’s braid dripped rain on the tiles. Her jacket was patched with damp. She said, “Leave me out of this, Sarah. I’m not like you. I don’t care about saving the world. I’m just a girl in love with a ghost.”

The cat stopped washing and gazed at them both; Rebecca scooped it up and ran her hand over its black purring fur. Then she walked down the corridor, carrying it.

The cat stared back over her shoulder.

Sarah followed, thoughtful.

The seed had been planted.

It would have to be enough for now.

Piers had set up the ancient film projector in the drawing room, and had cleared the wall of its paintings to use as a screen. He wound the restored film reel in expertly, humming, his red brocade waistcoat a cheery brilliance under the dirty lab coat.

Venn paced. “Ready?”

“Almost, Excellency.”

Wharton was sitting on the leather sofa, feet up on the coffee table. “Like a Saturday matinee, this. Should have some popcorn, Piers.”

As the two girls came in, he nodded at Rebecca in surprise. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she muttered.

He also saw how Sarah had what he had come to call her “plotting” face on—he raised his eyebrows at her now and she smiled quietly, sarcastically back.

“I don’t remember inviting guests,” Venn said.

Ignoring him, Rebecca went straight to Maskelyne. The scarred man stood near the window, his dark eyes on the silver bracelet Venn wore around his wrist.

Quietly to Rebecca he said, “You should be in Exeter.”

“Not when I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Nothing is going on. Except that my magic game worked.”

She nodded, dumping her wet coat. “And you were too busy even to tell me.”

“Right.” Piers flexed his fingers. “Are we all ready?”

“Where’s Jake?” Sarah said.

“Here.” He came in with the marmoset on his shoulder; it leaped to the curtain and raced up.

To Sarah Jake looked tired, and strangely older, as if time in the past had moved differently, as if he had lived longer than the few days he had been there. But he wore his expensive clothes carelessly, and threw himself down next to Wharton.

“Right.” Venn turned. “Get on with it.”

Piers clicked the projector on, and the reels began to whirr. “Just to say this was almost impossible to get back. Corroded almost to nothing in places.”

The room was dim; rain patterns moved on the windows. On the wall, shadows began to blur; Piers muttered and played with the focus, producing a rapidly shrinking fuzziness that made Wharton say, “What is that?”

“People.” Jake watched, intent.

“One person.” Venn came forward, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Sort it, Piers.”

“Doing my best. Like I said, it’s in bits . . . How about . . . that.”

With an abruptness that silenced them all, a man loomed from out of the darkness and was there looking out at them. A man in a dark place, wearing some sort of brown ragged robe.

His outline flickered, vanishing briefly, reappearing with a jerky flicker slightly off center.

Wharton sat up. Sarah stared.

Rebecca looked around, wondering why they were all so silent.

“Who is that?” she muttered.

Rain pattered on the window.

No one answered.

Until Maskelyne said in his husky voice, “That’s Jake’s father.”