The Slanted Worlds

21

He could not lie, he could not sleep.

She stole his dreams away.

She locked them in her darkest hall

with fiend and ghost and fey.

He said, “I will not mercy beg,

I will not bow the knee.”

But she smiled and thawed the snow

And set the flowers free.

Ballad of Lady Summer and Lord Winter

PIERS SWUNG THE casement wide and hung out. Rain spattered his face.

“There! See it!”

Over his shoulder, Maskelyne stared. From every window, a cat gazed.

This corridor was at the back of the Abbey, where the building crouched under the great crag called Winter Tor, a range of slate that jutted through the Wood. Far below, in its hidden ravine, the Wintercombe roared in flooded spate. Above, on that steep wooded slope, Piers could see movement.

It was slow. A trickle here, a slither there. A bush would snap, a scatter of earth fall into the river below. But he could feel its threat in the very stillness of the air, the persistent drizzle of the rain. The whole hillside was slipping, inch by inch, shallow roots straining and tugging up in the saturated soil, until the weight tore them away. Already, a tree opposite the window was leaning against its neighbor, the trunk creaking as if in pain.

“The whole lot could come down on us any minute,” Piers breathed.

He jerked back inside. “What do we do?”

Maskelyne did not seem too concerned. “If it falls, it damages the house. But the mirror is safe in the Monk’s Walk. That part is more ancient and built of stone. It would survive.”

Piers gaped. “It might, but I won’t! Have you any idea what Venn will do when he comes back and finds his house flattened! Have you any notion of the utter misery . . .”

Maskelyne shrugged gracefully and walked away down the uncarpeted corridor. A trail of cats followed at his feet. “What can I do?”

“Plenty.” Piers pattered along behind him. “You have . . . means.”

Maskelyne stopped.

“Means?”

“Abilities. Oh, I don’t know for sure who you are, Mr. Scarface, but I know what you are. Nobody bottles me up in a jar unless they have magic stored up right to their fingertips. I never felt a spell as strong as that, and I’ve been around some sorcerers, let me tell you. So maybe a moving forest would be easy-peasy.”

Maskelyne smiled, shaking his head. “Piers! I think you must have me mixed up with someone else. I can’t stop the rain.”

Piers folded his arms, stubborn. “Maybe, maybe not. But if the house is flattened, what’s to stop the Shee picking the place clean, mirror and all. Think on that, Mr. Ghost.”

Maskelyne slid him a dark glance and then resumed his stride toward the stairs.

Piers watched him go, smug. That was telling him. No pulling the wool over Piers’s eyes.

He puffed his chest out and grinned, and then saw the cats watching him and the grin went.

“Well? If I don’t guard the place, who will? You lot?”

They slunk away, except for Primo, who rubbed against Piers’s ankles. The little man scratched him fondly; the cat arched, then sauntered to a bedroom door and sat outside it, giving one piercing mew.

This wasn’t a corridor Piers got to often in the rambling house—he could tell that from the dust. Now he opened the door and saw the attic room he had given Sarah.

“What?” he whispered.

The black cat advanced graciously in and padded across the worn rug. Just under the window it stopped. Its paw creaked a loose plank.

Then it leaped up onto the windowsill and began to wash.

Piers came and crouched. The plank was completely loose; he pried it out and found a dark space beneath the boards.

He looked up at Primo. “She hides her treasures here then, does she? Should we be looking?”

The cat licked on. Piers leaned in, groping.

He pulled out a small notebook and a black pen held tight to it by an elastic band.

The pen was from the future. He could tell that by its smell, and the big Z, as if for Zeus, on its clip. The notebook was gray. When he opened it he saw it was full of messages, written by Sarah and someone else, someone who wrote in capitals, a jerky, amused, bitter handwriting.

Who signed himself JANUS.

He read the last one.

I HAVE SENT YOU MY CHILDREN.

Piers put his lips into a whistle shape but no sound came.

“Oh that’s bad,” he whispered instead.

David sat on the narrow bed, the baby in his arms. He said, “There was a woman. She was pretty and young and . . . we started as friends. She was . . . the only one I felt safe with. Then . . .”

“I don’t want to hear the whole sordid story,” Jake growled.

He had gone back to the window and was standing in the shade. Gazing out.

Rebecca said, “Jake.”

“Stay out of this. This is not your business.”

His arrogance infuriated her, but she could hear the raw pain too, so she just reached out to David. After a moment he handed her the baby; she was surprised at his warm weight. Then he went over to Jake and stood behind him.

“Don’t hate me, son.”

“I don’t hate you. But . . .”

“It just happened. She told me she was pregnant. We got married.”

“You’re already married! You’re married to my mother!”

“She’s a thousand years in the future in a country not even discovered yet.” He tried to smile. “She never need know.”

Jake spun. “This is not some joke!”

“No.” His father’s tired eyes held him. “No. It’s not. Not when Gabriella was carried home from the market and I saw the first black lesion on her neck. Twenty-four hours, Jake, that’s all it took. Twenty-four hours of agony from a healthy woman to a corpse suppurating with dark sores.”

He gripped Jake’s arms. “I couldn’t save her.”

Jake said, “The mirror. You could have . . .”

“And spread the pestilence to some other age? Not even for her.”

They were silent. Outside, a church bell began to clang for Mass, somewhere far across the city.

Rebecca shifted the weight in her arms; the baby made a small contented noise.

Jake took a step back. He said, “Okay. Look. Whatever happened. Whatever you did, doesn’t matter. We have to go. Now.”

“The baby comes. He has no one else.”

They stared at him; Rebecca said, “Can we . . . ?”

“Two bracelets. Together. We can try.”

Jake breathed out, hard. Then he nodded. “Right. All right. Let’s go.”

Ten minutes later they raced down the stairs. David had replaced his doctor’s mask, Jake wore an old apprentice robe. Rebecca had a cloak swathed around her and the baby was tied in it. “You’ll have to carry him,” David had breathed, fastening the swaddling. “It will look more natural.”

“Will it?”

She had felt ridiculous, but as if he knew, he said, “You would have been married here for years, Becky. You’d almost be old.”

It scared her now. Running down the dark stairs, she wanted to flee, suddenly afraid that the life she had always thought was in front of her was over. The thought of that other girl, who had gone from beauty to corruption in a day, terrified her.

At the street door, David peered out. Then he said, “Walk behind me. Close. Don’t speak. Put your arm around her, Jake, as if she’s sick. Everyone will stay clear.”

The streets were deserted. They hurried, but the heat was like a great hand on their chests, a film of sweat on their faces.

Above them the narrow tawny buildings rose, castellated houses and towers, each with a barred wooden door at the base, the windows fixed tight against contagion. The city stank of its own dying, as if it was already a silent graveyard. With a sudden shock Jake recognized it—these were the scribbled towers on the manuscript Sarah had brought—turning a corner he came face-to-face with a statue of a man on horseback.

“Dee,” he whispered

Rebecca was desperately trying to remember all she could about the disease that had wiped out a third of the population of Europe. Had it been spread by fleas? She held the baby tight and slipped between the pools of ordure and tried not even to breathe.

Like a knife-edge of darkness, the shade ended. They came to a small piazza, shimmering in the heat. Opposite it was a gray stone building with a narrow tower. It looked ominous and heavy. Two guards leaned wearily at its single door.

David glanced out, then drew back.

“That’s it. The Bargello. Town prison. Take a look up there.”

Jake looked. Two masses of bone and clothing that might once have been bodies hung from a window on the second floor. They turned, slowly, in the rancid air.

“God,” he muttered.

“Il signore’s holed up here while the plague is running.” David wiped sweat from his face. He managed a weak grin. “Visited it in 1986 on holiday once. Had an ice cream in a café just about here.” For a moment bewilderment seemed to flicker through him as if he no longer knew where he was. Then he turned back, and stepped out.

They climbed the steps slowly. The guards straightened. “Dottore . . . ?”

“New patient.” He waved at them. “Stand back, well back.”

They couldn’t do it fast enough.

Jake, his arms around Becky and the baby, hurried past. He had hoped it would be cooler inside, but the stone chamber led to an open courtyard, with a stair running up the side. David puffed up. “First floor. Hurry.”

They pattered around an open loggia stacked with stores and chests, as if the signore had had all his riches dragged in here too. Ignoring them, David ran into a stone flagged hall, its high windows wide so that the sun made slants of burning molten light across the floor.

“There,” he gasped.

At first Jake didn’t see it. Only sculptures. Gods and angels. Great painted chests. A table laden with an unfinished meal.

Then, in a shadowy corner against the marble wall, it leaned like a dark doorway.

The obsidian mirror.

The bird was a speck. It grew slowly, circling toward her, and when it came out with a rush of speed, she drew back with a gasp.

In its beak it held the broken coin.

Sarah held out her hand. The coin was in her palm.

“Now,” the bird said, “don’t make the mistake of running off with that. All I have to do is screech and the whole host of the Shee will come crashing in down the chimney and through the walls. I wouldn’t like to think what will happen to you afterward.”

She swallowed. “So you threaten as well.”

“If I need to.” It preened a small yellow feather back into place.

Sarah looked at the broken coin. The halved face of the Greek god stared out past her, and she felt a stab of guilt, because she was forgetting them, forgetting the whole horror of that distant bleak future, all that the group had planned, all their sworn friendship, forgetting Cara and Max.

“You’re not crying, are you?” the bird said. Its head tipped, sidelong.

“No,” she lied. “Look . . . I have to take this. It belonged to me—I gave it to Summer . . .”

“Oh, don’t say her name.” The bird seemed to shrink; at once it was tiny, a shiny miniature. “She’ll hear!”

“Now I’m taking it back. It’s vital. I can’t explain why. But . . .”

“Are you one of the Venns?”

She didn’t know what was best to say, so she nodded.

The bird whirled on its axis with an agitated rattle. Then it grew, just a little, and said, “I’ve seen him, you know, Oisin Venn. A handsome man. She torments him wonderfully.”

“It’s not Oisin anymore. Now it’s Oberon.”

The bird made a shrug in its depths. “Oberon, Oliver, Oscar. All the same. To her, that is. She’s like the weather and the earth. Ageless and pitiless. Come closer.”

Sarah approached, pulling the chain around her neck. “Look, I’ve got to . . .”

“She did this to me.” The bird fixed her with its bead of an eye, and she thought that deep down inside it, there was a spark, like a flame. “Imprisoned me in here. Turned me into this contraption of twigs and feathers.”

“Why?”

“Disobeyed her once. There was a place in the Wood—a trap. It looked just like any other piece of grass. But if a mortal stepped on it, they’d be stuck there while time went by without them. A step that would last a hundred years. Her idea of a joke. So everyone waited for one to come along.”

Despite her fear, Sarah was interested.

“Everyone except you.”

“I . . . well.” The bird preened. “Sort of felt . . . mischievous. I wanted to annoy her. The mortal was a real yokel—spade over his shoulder, right off the fields. The Shee were all clustered round like flies. So I warned him off. Whispered in his ear. You should have seen him run!”

It gave a soft, sad whistle. “Then she found out.”

Sarah said, “I’m sorry for you. But I have to go.”

“With that?” the bird gave a cheep of scorn. “You’d never get out of the room. Unless . . .”

“What?” But she already knew what.

“Take me with you. Put the box in your pocket. I’ll guide you all the way out of the Summerland. Refuse, and I SCREECH NOW.”

Sarah almost laughed. The pompous pride of the tiny thing was almost funny.

Then, outside, there was a crash. She whirled. “What’s that?”

“Nothing good, be sure.”

She decided. The mirror’s destruction depended on it. Without a moment’s hesitation she grabbed the box and slid it into her pocket, and even as she turned, the door opened.

There was no door out. Even the one they had come through was gone. There was nothing except the repeated surfaces of the obsidian mirrors, all identical and all, Wharton thought, illusions. He said, “She’s trapped us here. If we step through any of these, without a bracelet . . .”

“It doesn’t matter.” Gideon was gloomy. “We won’t be going anywhere. All this is in the Summerland, and that goes on forever.”

Ignoring the paradox, Wharton stared at himself. Really, he thought, he was getting a touch overweight. He said, “What do you think?”

Venn frowned. He went up to the nearest mirror and put his hands on it. It was black and solid. “We’re so used to going through mirrors,” he said, “that we’ve forgotten what they’re really for.” He stared into his own wintry eyes. “They show us what we think is real. But it isn’t. Nothing is real.”

He opened his fingers.

And to Wharton’s astonishment the wall of black glass held the tiniest point of light, diamond bright. As he watched, it grew, as if it zoomed toward them, became a circle, then a square, then filled the mirror and was a window down onto some peculiar street, narrow, sun-slanted and cobbled.

As they watched, it closed again.

“Was that real?” Wharton said, fascinated.

Venn had stepped back, every sense alert.

“Possibly. In some other time. Or it might be a trap set for us by Summer, because I’m beginning to think she knows we’re here.”

Wharton didn’t like the sound of that. “There’s nowhere to go.”

“Maybe.” Venn turned suddenly to Gideon. “You. Tell me. Why did you bring Sarah here?”

Gideon’s green gaze flickered. “She begged me. I . . .”

“Felt sorry for her?” Venn advanced on him. “I don’t think so.”

Gideon stared back, fierce. “We made a deal. She told me that she would help me.”

“How can . . .”

“She said that in her time there were no Shee.”

The words seemed to spill like a whispered wonder into the room. Gideon clenched his fists, hugged himself, as if he had said something terrible, something fascinating, that should never have been spoken.

Venn too, Wharton saw, was both astonished and intrigued. He stepped forward and lifted a hand, but as Wharton jerked forward in alarm, Venn’s fingers stopped inches from Gideon’s white glare. “No more,” he breathed. “Don’t talk of that here. Summer will hear.”

He paced, restless, furiously watching his own reflections pace with him. All, Wharton noticed with a sudden chill, except one.

Because there was one mirror that held no Venn, that held nothing but darkness.

Wharton looked at it. Sidled closer.

Venn turned. “I’ll smash every panel in this place if I have to. There must be a way out!”

Wharton reached out. The mirror was black, but not glass. It was a door painted dark as midnight, and there was a tiny handle recessed into it, and he reached out and turned it, and it opened.

Gideon yelled, “No!”

Venn turned and lunged at the door.

But Wharton was gone. All he saw was his own face in the mocking glass.