Catherine Fisher - The Slanted Worlds

Piers rolled his eyes at Jake.

Maskelyne looked up. He seemed startled, his dark eyes wide. He said, “Rebecca, you know . . .”

“I don’t know anything about you. I thought I did, because you’ve been here all my life, but for you it’s different, isn’t it. For you it was just a few seconds here and there, a flickering into existence, seconds and then minutes that were really years apart. This is all you care about. The mirror. The wretched mirror.”

Maskelyne held her gaze. The scar that marked his face stood out against the whiteness of his skin. He said, “That’s not true. You are . . . very special to me.”

“Special.”

“Yes. But I am older than you, Rebecca, centuries older, and more different than you could know. Don’t trust me, don’t rest your life on me. Because one day you might wake up and find me gone.”

She stared at him, bleak.

Jake said, “We need to go. Becky?”

She didn’t look at him or answer. But she turned and walked to the mirror and looked in, at the early twentieth-century girl that stared back at her. He thought there were tears in her eyes, but her voice was clear and steady. “Well then, let’s go. What’s keeping us.”

Jake glanced at Maskelyne. “What will be the date?”

“We’ll try for 1910. Around the time she films David.”

He nodded, grim. “Okay. Do it now.”

The mirror hummed.

The labyrinth whipped tight.

The mirror opened, and he saw again the vacancy at its heart, the terrible emptiness that snatched him and devoured him, and for a moment he knew all the anguish that was in it, that it had swallowed his father and would swallow him, and that there was no escape from that.

The mirror howled.

Its cry made Piers crouch and clap his hands over his ears, and gasp; it made the cats flee like seven streaks of darkness.

Only Maskelyne was unmoved, his hands steady on the monitor until the blackness collapsed with a snap and the glass was whole and Rebecca and Jake were gone.

Piers lowered his hands and breathed out. He shook his head and hauled himself up.

“That thing is getting worse. And are you sure you can control it?”

Maskelyne looked up. “No one controls the mirror. Not even Janus. But at least I can monitor it now I’ve sorted out Symmes’s dial.”

Piers wiped his hands on his apron. “I don’t know how you sleep at night. If ghosts sleep.”

He stopped.

Maskelyne was staring at the monitor with a fixed fear.

Piers hurried over. “What’s wrong?” He looked at the numbers on the dial, flicking back and back and back. 1900.

1800

1700

1600

He put both hands over his eyes. “Stop it. Stop it!”

“I can’t.”

1500

1400

“Hell,” Piers whispered.

19

My dark devyse is the portal into which my soule hath journeyed. I fear I have given myself up to its mercies as to a demon. As to a dark angel.

From The Scrutiny of Secrets by Mortimer Dee

HE ONLY REALIZED he was standing in the middle of a road when the donkey reared up in his face and whinnied; in an instant Rebecca had hauled him aside, and they both fell into the gutter, crashing against the hot stone curb.

Jake gasped. “Are you all right?”

“Bruised.” She was rubbing her elbow, there was dirt smudged on her cheek. Then she looked up.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Jake.”

The heat.

The heat struck him like a blow.

He saw a street too narrow, the houses too high. The bricks were tawny, the roofs red tile. Above them scorched a sky bluer than ever possible in London.

The smell of sewage, of olives, of incense, burst onto his senses. And the donkey cart had a driver, who had leaped down and was kneeling now, crossing himself with terror, screaming out “Demons! Fiends of hell!” in a dialect so garbled Jake could barely recognize it.

Rebecca clutched at him. “Jake.”

“Don’t talk. Keep quiet. That’s Italian.”

“You know what he’s saying?”

“Dad worked in Rome. We lived there when I was small.”

He could not believe this. This was all wrong—and, early, so early! The people who came running from the silent buildings, who flung open shutters and stared down at him, were dark-eyed and olive-skinned. He knew, with a rush of joy and terror, that the mirror had betrayed him again.

“Demons!” the driver screamed.

“No. Please.” Jake summoned his Italian. “We are merely visitors. We startled you. Please.”

It was no use. He realized that as he saw Rebecca turn and face the crowd that was gathering fast as rumor, as he looked at her ridiculous Edwardian clothes, his own dark suit. Slipping the bracelet as far up his arm as it would go, he said, “Run!”

They turned, dashed two women aside, hurtled around a cobbled corner.

Into a line of armed men.

Jake hit the ground; Rebecca screamed. Scrambling up he saw that one of the men had hold of her, and was laughing at her struggles. Her hat was off, her long red hair whipping free.

The men stared and whistled. They seemed amazed. One made a sign with his hand, against evil.

Jake leaped up. “Leave her alone. Let her go!”

Almost casually, a man dealt him a blow with the flat of his weapon that sent Jake sprawling, astonished with pain. He gasped for breath, got on hands and knees, was kicked flat again.

The crowd roared. Rebecca screeched, “Jake!”

As if her voice had released it, silence fell. Someone spoke, a sharp bark of command. At once the crowd fell back, slipped away, fled. The line of soldiers parted, and through them came a man on horseback, wearing a gown of black and gold and a hat of some red velvet wound elaborately about his head. His hair was dark and glossy; his nose curved like a hawk’s beak. He looked as though he had ridden out of some pre-Renaissance painting.

He drew rein and said, “Fall back. Disperse the citizens.”

Breathless and aching, Jake scrambled up. Rebecca grabbed him. She looked terrified, but kept silent.

As the soldiers cleared the streets Jake tried to think. They were in trouble here. Dire trouble.

“Who are you?”

The question was calm, but this man was clearly used to getting all the answers he wanted. For a crazy moment Jake was reminded of Inspector Allenby.

“My name is Jake Wilde, signore. This is my . . . wife. Rebecca.”

He registered her tiny gasp but ignored it. “We are travelers from a far country.”

“Where? Your speech is most barbaric.”

“England.”

“Ah. That is a distant island.” The man clicked his fingers. “Is the climate there really a constant fog so that the sun is never seen but on the morning of Easter Day?”

Jake risked a small smile. “Almost, signore.”

Behind the man now were others, a group on foot. He saw priests, a cardinal in red, a gather of well-dressed men. No women anywhere.

He said, “May I ask whom I address?”

The horseman said, “I am Federico Altamana, condottiere of the army of this city. Why are you here? To trade?”

Jake swallowed. Then he said, “In a sense. We heard of a sickness that has come to this place. We’ve heard how it spreads.”

The men murmured. He heard the words il morto negro. Rebecca squeezed his hand in a desperate warning. But he ignored her.

“In my land we have knowledge of many medicines and cures, many cordials and tinctures. I have come to bring this knowledge to you, and the friendship of my king . . .”