Catherine Fisher - The Slanted Worlds

“A possible one.” I thought of what Janus had said. Then I patted the sofa. “Come and talk to me, Papa. Tell me about this urchin Moll.”

Wharton crawled on hands and knees in the dripping muddy tunnel.

The pack on his back scraped the brick roof. Water ran down his hair and behind his ears.

He sneezed. The sound rang like an explosion. He groped for a handkerchief. “For God’s sake. How much farther?”

Venn was a dark mass ahead. His voice came back like an angry rumble. “Will you stop asking that?”

He obviously had no idea.

Gritting his teeth, Wharton slopped on. After all, it was no worse than the army assault courses he had sweated through in training. They had come in useful years later, when he had needed to invent a fiendish exercise regime for the boys at the school. Wharton’s Workouts had soon sorted the wimps from the . . . er well, boys. Legendary in the staff room. He snorted a laugh.

As if it was some signal, light blinded him. He raised his head and realized Venn had emerged ahead; a bright blue glow was emanating from the end of the tunnel. A cold, oddly silent glow.

He pulled himself along, squelching and cursing, but even as he reached the end, he knew that the mud under his palms was hardening, becoming ridges of ice, and when he crawled to the end and staggered to his feet he stared around with a mixture of dismay and delight.

“My God. Where is this!”

It was a high arctic plateau. The snow plain stretched down before them, blinding in the full sun. Beyond, range upon range of mountains needled the sky, their brilliant tops dusting faint cloud into the pure blue air.

He breathed deep, and the cold entered him like energy. “It’s fantastic! Even better than the Alps. But we must be so high . . . Is this really the Summerland?”

Venn was a dark shadow on the snow. He stood looking out, intent, his blue eyes cold as the ice.

When he answered, it was not Wharton he spoke to.

“What are you doing?” he whispered. “What games are you playing, Summer?”

Wharton said, “You know this place?”

Venn flicked a freezing glare. “This is the Summerland. It’s also Katra Simba.”

As if the word was a signal far off in the mountain heights above them, something rumbled. Wharton whipped around, startled. “What was that?”

Under his feet, the mountain vibrated. “Is that an avalanche?”

Venn looked at him, his face white and weary. “Let’s hope not.”

“But we can’t really be there.” He knew all about the mythical mountain. Deep in the lost lands of Tibet, it had never been climbed by Westerners until Venn’s own hubristic expedition. And that had gone so disastrously wrong. He couldn’t remember the details now, but surely only Venn had gotten out alive.

“We’re not.” Venn seemed to rouse himself. “We’re barely half a mile from Winterbourne . And I will not be played with, Summer! ”

His yell of fury made Wharton cringe; above them the snow seemed to shudder; he fought the desire to crouch and cover his head, and said, “Surely noise doesn’t help. Wherever we are, Sarah must have been here first. If we can find . . .”

Venn pointed. “Those?”

The footsteps were deep, and there were two sets. They led down and Wharton could see them as blue smudges far below, tending toward a ridge of exposed rock.

Without a word, Venn set off after them.

Wharton adjusted his pack, pulled out a woolly hat, and tugged it down over his ears.

Then he trudged into the deep snow, floundering down the slope.

“Is Sarah in the same landscape? Or do they see it differently?”

But Venn gave no answer.

Sarah could not believe the cold. It was like breathing in arrows or nails, it hurt her throat and lungs. She had already lost feeling in her feet, her hands were throbbing with pain.

Frostbite!

You could lose fingers like that. She thought of Venn’s own left hand maimed by frostbite. Had that happened in a place like this?

Gideon had slithered a little ahead; he waited for her, and when she reached him, she wondered why he was standing there grinning, in this white landscape.

“What?” she gasped.

“Look at it. It’s amazing!” He seemed exhilarated, set free. “I’ve never seen a place like this. As if the world goes on forever. As if you could just travel and climb and walk and run forever. With no wall around you. No one watching you. Free!”

She stared at him, his thin clothes, his lit face. Here his skin was as pale as any Shee’s, one hand braced against the rock with its crystal veins. She had a sudden desire to bring him crashing down; she said harshly, “It’s an illusion, Gideon. It’s just the Summerland. She still has you prisoner.”

His face held its brightness for a second more. Then she saw the light go out of it, and he looked down.

She was sorry. She said, “Look there. What’s that?”

Below them, on the slope of the mountain, was a dark cube. It looked like a building poking up out of the deep drifts. Some ancient construction, roofless, its doorway an empty arch.

“I don’t know.” His voice was dulled. “Does it even matter?”

She pushed past him. “As you said, at least it’s there. Nothing else is.”

This time she led. As they descended the long flank of the mountain, the snow thickened; it was waist-high now and she was forcing her body through it, and she knew they were leaving a great scar down the white slope that anyone might see.

The building waited for them. Its empty windows watched them come. It was small, no more than a stone sheepfold, she thought, something like the ones you found up on the moor, centuries old, rebuilt and mended over the generations.

It was certainly not the palace of the Queen of the Shee.

When they reached it, something made her stop.

A vibration trembled deep in the earth; Gideon glanced back in alarm. “The snow’s moving!”

Still she didn’t move.

“Go inside.” He shoved her on. “At least there’ll be some shelter.”

“Is it safe?”

“Safer than out here, surely.” He glanced back again, screwing his eyes up against the brilliant light, the reflective snow. “Sarah, someone’s up there. Following us. I can hear their breathing.”

She turned, and stepped between the black stones of the empty doorway, and vanished.

Gideon stared in dismay. “Sarah?”

The doorway yawned, empty. He could see the snow through it.

But he dared not follow her.

Jake and Rebecca stood together at the mirror. He was wearing the same dark suit as before, now with a cloth cap. Rebecca’s hair was caught up in a swirly chignon; she wore a long skirt, a white blouse with a brooch at the neck, a coat with fur trim. She fidgeted with the hat. “Do I have to wear this?”

“Totally necessary.” Piers stood back. “Every respectable girl wore a hat. Suits you.”

Jake checked the clasp on the silver bracelet.

“Nervous?” he muttered.

“Absolutely terrified.” She glanced at Maskelyne, who was adjusting the small monitor he had made. “Why me? I mean, I have no desire to go traveling in time.”

“He may need you.” It was Maskelyne who answered, but he didn’t look up at her, so she left Jake and walked over there, and grabbed his fingers. “Don’t you need me?”