The Slanted Worlds

20

Oisin Venn did not age, he did not grow old.

He had wealth and land, and everything he turned his hand to prospered. And yet, late one night he came to the house of the priest and said, “Father, absolve me, for I am a great sinner.”

He sat by the fire. The holy man said, “God forgives all, my son.”

“He will not forgive me. For she offered me a choice of mortality or to be with the Shee forever, and I could not choose. So I have sworn to her that each of my descendants will face this choice, and that one day, one of them will be hers. I have betrayed all the unborn generations. For I dare not anger her.”

Chronicle of Wintercombe

“HOW FAR?” Piers almost ran around the table.

The dial remained at 1400.

“I don’t know for sure. Far enough.” Maskelyne was infuriatingly calm, but even Piers could feel the fear in his stillness.

“Do something!”

“I am.” His fingers touched the controls that he had rigged up. Figures rippled across the screen.

“Oh my God.” Piers pressed his fists to his face. “We’ve lost them. Jake. Rebecca. Both the bracelets! Venn will absolutely kill me. No, not kill. Kill would be too easy. Imprison me in a tree for centuries. Saw me down and burn me on a bonfire. Grind my every atom into sawdust.”

Maskelyne flicked him an irritated look. “Always about you, isn’t it, little man.”

“You can talk. You think the mirror belongs to you.”

“It does.”

“You wish! You can’t even make it work properly!”

“I could once!” In a flash Maskelyne lost his temper; like a flicker of lightning he seemed to transform to a being of raw ferocity and dark fury. “Before I had to spend lifetimes plunging through time and space! Piecing my memories together again! What would you know about that loss, that terrible descent?”

Piers squared up. His chin jutted. “More than you might expect. I’m not all cooking and cleaning. I have a history too, so you can just—”

A mew silenced him.

He looked around.

A black cat stood there, tail in the air. It snarled at them both.

“Well.” Piers took a breath. Suddenly he was a little ashamed of himself. “Well, yes of course, you’re right,” he muttered. “Not the time. Not the place.”

Maskelyne stepped back. The dangerous darkness seemed to gather inside him; he said nothing, but left the control panel and crossed to the mirror itself, gripping the silver frame with his fine-boned hands.

He stared in at emptiness. “All the world is in there,” he whispered. “All possible worlds. And I will journey in them all again.”

Piers watched him, curious. “Is it alive, that thing? You talk to it as if it can hear you.”

“As alive as your replicant cats, little man.”

With an effort Maskelyne looked away from the black glass. He stepped back, the reflection of the lab shrinking and rippling. Then he turned, and he was calm again, his voice husky and quiet.

“It seems clear that Jake has managed to journey back far enough to reach David. Perhaps their longing for each other reached out and touched, like the snake and its tail. Dee recorded a similar result. He calls it the Magnetism of the heart.”

“What!” Piers stared. Then he turned and ran to the desk and snatched up the Dee manuscript from under his pages of notes. “That’s it! The heart! Oh my goodness. That means . . . this . . . and then this . . .” He scribbled letters furiously, and Maskelyne came and watched over his shoulder.

Then Piers stopped. “Do you see?”

“I see.”

Together they stared at the words that had emerged from the random mass of symbols like a sunlight through the fog of a wintry wood.

Let it be said the mirror is a way from heart to heart. For Time is defeated only by love.

Like a man who finds a path in a dark wood, and follows it to a lighted window, so is the journeyman.

Let the snake’s eye open. Let the hearts reach out.

Piers looked up. Maskelyne nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said, his voice husky. “I remember. The snake’s eye can be opened.”

“What do you mean . . . remember?”

A crash made the cat jump.

Then another.

Three separate crashes, as if a giant was beating at the door until the house shook.

Like the slow rumbling thunder of an avalanche, movement in the roots and depths of the earth itself.

“What’s that?” Piers breathed.

Maskelyne listened, alert. “The wood is walking,” he said. “Summer’s revenge.”

“Dad.”

The word hurt. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

But to his astonishment the figure in the gray robe exploded into rage. “What the hell do you think you are doing, Jake! Telling him you can cure the plague! How do you think you can say that! These people are dying, don’t you realize! Really dying! Babies, and women and little children, dying in agony of this filthy, endless disease and there’s nothing, nothing any of us can do and you, you have the reckless, stupid arrogance to stand there and—”

“Dad.” Jake’s voice was soft. “Dad, it’s all right. We’re here now.” He stepped forward, giving one glance to Rebecca, where she crouched on a chair, watching with wide eyes. “It’s all right.”

He reached out.

His father’s hands, thin and oddly frail, grabbed him, pulled him close.

His father’s face was muffled in his shoulder. He was sobbing, muttering, “Oh God. Jake. Jake. I never thought I’d see you again.”

Jake closed his eyes.

Rebecca bit her lip and blinked away tears.

For a long moment in the dark room no one said anything, as if just that holding, that watching, was enough.

Then, slowly, David Wilde pulled back. He managed a weak grin. “Look at me! Stupid. Hysteria.”

“It’s all right.”

“It’s been so long. On my own. So hard . . .”

“You don’t have to say anything. I get it.” Jake gave a wry grin. “God, you look awful.”

His father laughed, a rusty, snatched gasp of relief. “Do I? You look great. So much . . . more grown-up.”

“I’m sorry about what I said. The plague. I just . . . I get carried away, caught up in the excitement. I know it’s not a game. It must have been hell.”

David nodded. He cleared his throat, wiped his face with a dirty sleeve, and stepped back. “That’s one word for it. The one they would use here.” He glanced at Rebecca. “Is this . . . ?”

“I’m Becky.” She stood and held out her hand; he took it and shook it, slightly bemused.

“Why are you both dressed like that?”

Jake said, “Bit of a mistake. We were trying to reach you through Alicia. I had no idea we could get this far.”

“And Venn? Where’s Venn?”

“Gone into the Summerland after half a Greek coin. Look, I haven’t got time to explain it all now—we need to get straight to the mirror and get you back home. With both the bracelets we should be able to do it, even in stages.”

Jake stopped. “What. What’s wrong?”

David Wilde turned and walked to the window. He unlatched the shutter and let it swing wide; immediately heat entered the room on a ray of scorching sunlight. Swifts screamed outside, high over the houses.

“Il signore. His family. I can’t just leave them.”

Jake stared.

“Don’t look at me like that, Jake! I’m a doctor, it’s my duty.”

“No!” Jake couldn’t believe this.

“If I go, they’ll die. I’ve been working day and night. I’ve managed to prepare a crude antibiotic—it’s a tiny amount and the process is almost complete. If I could just . . .”

Before it could come again, the words, the flood of terror, Rebecca intervened. She took his hands and held them, and looked straight into his eyes. Jake was amazed at her strength.

“Listen to me, David. This is not your time. I’m a history student, I know about the Black Death. It raged through Europe and nothing and no one could stop it. It was there, it happened, it’s over. It’s not your fault, or your responsibility. If you stay, you’ll die. And so will we, because I can’t see Jake going back without you.”

David stared at her. She could see how exhausted he was, how worn to a shadow.

He said, “I lie awake at night and dream, you know. About the mirror. It torments me. What use is a time travel device if you don’t use it? I could go back to Wintercombe, get the drugs, bring them here. Perhaps we could stop the epidemic, stop it spreading. Save thousands of lives. Change history. We could do that.” He stepped back, sat down on the meager bed, as if stunned. “Think of what we could do.”

She threw a worried glance at Jake. “Get burned for sorcery more like,” he snapped, and she had never been so glad of his self-assurance.

“What do we do?” she whispered.

“Get him home. That’s all I care about.” He went to the window and looked down. The street was deserted, burning in the noonday heat. Only the swifts screeched in the eaves.

“And we need to go now. During the siesta.” He came back and knelt at David’s feet. “Dad. Where is the mirror? You said you knew.”

His father looked at him. He drew a hand over his face and said, “Yes. I know. It’s in the old palazzo.”

“Can we get there?”

“Il signore lives there. His official apartments are there. With his guards and his torture-rooms.” He frowned. “But Jake . . .”

“We go. Now.”

David stood, picked up the bird mask, and looked around. For the first time Jake took in the meager poverty of the room, its crucifix, its dusty jug of water, its bleached walls.

“You’ve got the bracelet?”

“On my wrist, always.” His father hesitated. “Jake . . . there’s something I haven’t told you.”

“Is there anything else you want to take? From here?”

There was a wooden chest at the end of the bed. Some garments were folded on it; Jake pulled one out. “Maybe we could use this as a cloak for Becky or . . .”

His voice died.

It wasn’t a cloak.

It was a baby’s shawl.

A small sharp cry rose from the woolen fabrics. He tugged the topmost blanket aside, and stared.

A baby gazed up at him. Its eyes were blue and wide.

Rebecca put a hand to her mouth.

“Who’s this?” Jake whispered. He felt numb now. Dread lodged in him like something unswallowed.

David hesitated. Then he came over and picked the baby up, folding the coverings down around its face.

“This is Lorenzo, Jake. This is my son. Your brother.”

Venn felt the snow crash down on him like memory, as it had on Katra Simba, the weight of the past white and blank blotting everything out. It filled eyes and mouth and nose, it filled grasping hands, it swept even Leah’s memory away and bowled him backward into the doorway that he knew led to Summer’s house.

His whole being screamed out against it, but it was fate, it carried him along, and there was nothing he could do about it except rage.

And in an instant he lay on the floor of a vast hall, snow slopping from him, with Gideon gasping on hands and knees and Wharton sliding far over the tiles, coming to rest with his face flat against the wall.

Venn felt as if his rib cage was crushed. It was a feeling he knew. He sat up, slowly, and looked around.

A hundred images of himself sat up around him.

Gideon stared. He stood, and all the other Gideons stood too, an endless replication of tall pale boys in green frock coats that made him turn and stare and laugh in delight. “What is this place?”

“A hall of mirrors.” Sour, Venn scrambled over to Wharton, turning the big man over. “George. Are you hurt?”

Wharton groaned and opened his eyes. “One bloody great bruise, that’s all I am.” Venn helped him to sit up, and his eyes widened as he looked around. For a moment the multiplicity of people astonished him; he thought there was a great crowd there, crouched, standing, sprawled. And then he saw it was just the three of them, over and over, going on forever in the opposing mirrored walls.

He took a breath. “Where is this? Is this Summer’s doing?”

Venn stared around, then stood, tall and icy among the tilted glass. There were mirrors of all shapes and sizes, elegantly framed, fixed to every part of the wall, even the ceiling, Gideon realized, looking up at his own crazily foreshortened head and feet.

“This is Summer’s doing,” Venn murmured.

Wharton spread his hands. “Then where’s Sarah?”

As soon as the box opened, a bird popped up. It was a tiny wooden bird with bright green and yellow feathers; it spun around and opened its beak and piped a high twittering song, so loud in the stillness she almost jumped.

“Ssh . . . shut up. Go down.”

She tried to close the lid, but it seemed locked open.

She flung a desperate glance at the door, the curtained windows, but no one came in.

As suddenly as it began, the song ended. The bird stopped twirling and fixed her with a beady black eye.

All around it, the interior of the box was lined with scarlet satin. It seemed empty, but there was one tiny loop of ribbon that showed where a secret compartment lay.

Sarah took a breath. Then she reached in and her fingers lifted the ribbon loop, careful with the delicate sliver.

She stared into the black hole. It was space, eternal and endless. It was dusted with tiny stars and distant galaxies. Or were they strands of gold and diamonds and rubies?

The bird said, “Nice, isn’t it? It goes on forever and ever.”

She stared.

“I can’t tell you how good it is to be back, though.” It spread its tiny wooden wings and waggled them. “I am so bored! Centuries of silence.” It whistled again, joyful, flew around the room and came back to perch on the box rim.

Sarah took a breath. “This belongs to Summer?”

“Her treasure box.”

Hope was dawning in her like pain. She said, “I’m looking for something that belongs to me. A coin—well, half a coin. It’s been cut in two. It hangs on a gold chain and . . .”

“Know the very thing.” The bird nodded, self-important. “Just you wait there.” It spread its wings, then looked at her again, oddly anxious. “You won’t go away, will you?”

“NO! . . . No.”

It flew into the box. And as she watched, it was lost among the distant stars.