Catherine Fisher - The Slanted Worlds

She stepped back.

Then deep in the house she heard an enormous crash.

As if a chimney had fallen.

Or a bomb.

Venn prowled the mirrored hall with tormented anxiety. “Something’s happening. Can you feel it? Something’s changing.”

Gideon, his face and hands pressed to one of the identical glass surfaces, gazed into his own green eyes. He too could sense it. A subtle distortion of space, a contraction. A breathing in.

He said, “The room’s getting smaller.”

“Smaller?”

“It’s closing in on us. Collapsing.” He could hear it now, the soft, creaking shrinkage of the chamber.

Venn turned with sudden purpose to the mirrors. “Then we smash our way out.” He tore at the carved frames, but the gilded wood fell away as if it was rotten, desiccating in his fingers.

“Try this!”

Gideon found a chair, picked it up and crashed it down. Frail wood splintered. They each snatched a chair-leg, and attacked the walls. Already the room was half the size it had been, the floor and ceiling slanting at impossible angles.

Venn smashed the nearest mirror; it starred into jagged fractures. For a moment Gideon was reminded of the crevasses out in the ice field; he leaped back as the pieces fell in great slabs at his feet.

But there was no opening. Behind the first, another identical mirror showed them their own despair.

Furious, Venn smashed that too, and found only another.

Gideon dragged him back. “That’s no use. Think! You must have some power here. The Venns are half Shee, everyone says. Summon it! Use it!”

Venn’s cold stare chilled him.

“No.”

“But—”

“If I do . . . if I start that, where will it end?” He stared at the collapsing room. “That’s what she wants, for me to give in to her, to enter the unhuman world. And it would be easy. So easy.” He took a deep breath. “You above all know that. You’ve heard their music. You went with them.”

Gideon nodded, but panic was growing in him. “I know. But if you don’t, we die here.”

“Summer would never . . .”

Gideon faced him. “Summer would kill us like flies,” he breathed.

Venn was silent. As if he made himself face the truth of that.

Gideon watched the man’s struggle with a cold compassion. “You have to,” he hissed. “The Shee all whisper about it. Ever since Oisin Venn your family have had the choice. The power is there, if you want it. Do it, Venn. Destroy her with her own gift.” His voice was fierce, he knew. His desire for vengeance on her shocked even himself.

Venn threw down the piece of wood and stood still.

Gideon waited, breathless. The room was so small now that he could reach out and touch both sides of it, as if the very cube of the world was dwindling to a point as minute as infinity.

Venn looked up.

The ceiling was a glass plane, still out of reach. He seemed to focus on it with a bitter, controlled fury. Gideon waited, fighting down panic. Glass walls nudged his arm. His own reflection pushed against him. He was replicated, hand to hand, face to face, an eternity of Gideons crowded together with his stifling terror. He would be suffocated, crushed against his own face, his hands clawing hopelessly against their glassy copies.

He tried to turn, but there was no space.

Venn shivered. He seemed thinner, paler. His fingers a little longer. His eyes bird-blue.

He had lost something of himself.

He crouched. “On my shoulders. Quickly!”

Gideon climbed, light and fleet; Venn stood, heaving him up. “Push. Push hard!”

He strained. His palms forced against the glass roof, but it was solid, hard as ice, impenetrable. For a second he understood the whole horror of being sealed in, the fear of the baby in the womb, the chick in the egg.

“Push!” Venn yelled.

The walls crushed against them.

Then, with a crack that sent Gideon’s heart leaping, the world shattered.

Water roared down. Into his yell of terror. Into his mouth and eyes.

Sarah said quietly, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Wharton was a little startled. For a moment he was not quite sure where he was. He looked around curiously at the sumptuous room, then at Summer, who smiled sweetly.

Sarah held his eye. “Good. Be careful. Please .”

She dared not say more. But if he guessed she was here for the half coin, surely he would know not to risk mentioning it. She felt the tiny half-moon of gold move against her skin, under her clothes. Now all she had to do was get it—and them—out of here.

“But where’s Venn?” Wharton turned, astonished. “And Gideon?”

“Oh, I think it only fair they have a little difficulty, don’t you?” Summer stretched her small feet languorously. She fixed Sarah with a sudden sly glance. “Because Gideon was supposed to be bringing me one of those lovely magic bracelets, and he has failed me. Again. How very disappointing.”

She sat up. “And you see, Sarah, something else is all wrong.” She stood and crossed lightly to the red box and picked it up. Wharton stared at it.

“I don’t believe you came for this. I think you came for something else.” Summer pouted. “Now, I wonder what that could be? Something so powerful you would even dare to come to my house for it?”

Sarah dared not move. She sensed Wharton edge closer.

Summer opened the box. “You, in there!”

The bird popped up and chirruped brightly.

“Stop that.” Summer extended a finger. “Listen, I know she’s taken something. What is it? Tell me at once or I’ll turn you into a cockroach and you can crawl in dung for a thousand years.”

The bird was silent. Then it looked at Sarah, a bold flicker of its beady eyes, and before it spoke, she knew that this time it would betray her.

“What do I get if I tell you?”

“Freedom. You get to fly in the greenwood.”

“And change my shape back?”

Summer shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe I could let you be a real bird.”

“A starling? And fly with the Host again?”

“Why not.”

The wooden bird considered. Then said, “A half coin of gold. On a chain around her neck.”

Sarah grabbed at the chain and leaped back. Wharton stepped between her and Summer.

Summer laughed. “That trinket! So the emperor’s face does have power. I rather thought so when I asked you for it. But it must be far, far more powerful than I thought.”

She came toward them and Wharton braced himself to stop her. But to his astonishment his body refused to move. His arms remained at his sides. Furious and terrified, he tried to yell. Nothing came out but the faintest of gasps.

Summer came up to him and stood on tiptoes to stare into his eyes. “Sorry, George,” she whispered. “It won’t last, I promise.”

He tried to squirm as she passed behind him.

Summer came to Sarah and said quietly, “When a gift is given, it should never be taken back.” She reached out lightly and took the chain from around Sarah’s neck, her touch light and cold as a spider’s.

Furious, unable to move or even access her invisibility, Sarah saw the glittering broken coin held before her eyes, the key to the mirror’s destruction dangled like a taunting toy before a child.

A terrible, wrenching anger surged in her; she cried out in her mind, a great cry of despair that seemed to well up and burst into abrupt sound as if her ears had popped. Summer stepped back, astonished, and in that single instant the tiny bird flew; it snatched the half coin from Summer’s fingers and fled with it, up and up, into the high white ceiling of the room, into the curtains, through the opened window out into the mothy night.