Catherine Fisher - The Slanted Worlds

And, following at his heels, three small shadows of himself, three small grubby schoolboys, who grinned at Jake as they passed, the last one swinging a yo-yo like a pendulum from his outstretched finger.

“Bye, Jake.”

“See you, Jake.”

“Soon, Jake.”

Until they too walked into the shadows and were gone.

Jake’s face was set with that brittle, angry look he often had.

But Venn stayed staring into the mirror. He said, “David?”

Sarah saw Jake’s father. He looked exhausted, his eyes red-rimmed, his face dirty and ill-shaven. He said, “Yes its me, O. I’m coming back to you. It’s just . . .” He looked up quickly at something she couldn’t see. “There might be a tiny delay, that’s all. Is Lorenzo safe?”

“Who?”

“Yes,” Rebecca said, behind him. “We’re both safe.”

“What do you mean? What delay?” Venn gripped the silver frame. “David?”

Somewhere a deep boom sent a ripple through the mirror.

“What’s that? David! What’s happening there? ”

Jake looked up, anxious. “We’re under . . .”

An explosion. It sent an enormous shockwave of red-hot air across the lab. Glassware shattered. The mirror went black. Venn was blown backward, Wharton sent staggering into Piers, all the cats’ fur flattened. The baby screamed, and even as she crashed against the bench, Sarah turned to stare at it in astonishment.

Piers picked himself up from the ruins of the workbench. “What was that?”

Wharton looked at Venn. “It sounded like a bomb,” he whispered.

The ceiling imploded, plaster smashing down. Glass from the windows sliced in like shards of light, one catching Jake on the cheek with a splinter of blood. Maskelyne ducked, muttered something and grabbed him. “Come, Jake. We have to go.”

“No!” He squirmed away. “Dad! Listen to me. We can’t leave Alicia here. She’ll die.” His mind was weary with fear and pain; he struggled to make sense of it. “When I come . . . when I arrive, in a few minutes, I speak to her, but then . . . later . . . nothing. I thought she was dead. But what if . . . what if she goes with you.”

Alicia, crouching by the broken sofa, looked up at him. For a moment their eyes met. She said, “You mean for me to journey? Through time ? Oh, how absolutely marvelous!”

David caught her hand. “All right. But go! We’ll be right behind you.”

Maskelyne grabbed Jake. He looked at David and said, “First, listen to me now. We found Dee’s manuscript. What it says is important. He says Time is defeated only by love . You must remember that! And the snake’s eye on the bracelet. It opens. Use what you find inside.”

“I will. But go!”

Alicia looked flustered. “Wait! Jake, I have to give you the ticket to the left luggage office. Now, where did I put that? Ah yes, the tea caddy.”

Pressure in the air.

Jake gasped. He felt the scream of the bomb as it fell. He felt it hurtle down through smoke and tiles and rafters. Maskelyne was a darkness pulling him. The touch of the silver bracelet was spilled blood on his arm, the throbbing opening of the mirror his death. Terrible desolation fell on him. “No! Wait!” he yelled. “Wait!”

Too late.

He was dead, in the darkness, in the mirror.

It opened for him, he crossed the invisible threshold and fell out into Wharton’s arms.

“Dad!” he screamed.

But George held him too tight and there was no going back.

Hours later it might have been, he heard Sarah creep into his room.

He lay with his face to the wall, and she sat on the end of the bed for a long moment before he spoke. “He hasn’t come, has he?”

She said softly, “No. But . . .”

“They must have got away.” He didn’t turn; she wondered if it was her he was trying to convince or himself. “When I spoke to Alicia first in the rubble, she was still alive. They never found her body.” He rolled over and his eyes were wet and furious. “They must have journeyed, Sarah, mustn’t they? They must have got out?”

She had never seen him like this. “They had every chance.”

“But where? And it was my fault, that he stayed with her! I needn’t have told him. We could just have gone together.”

“You did the right thing, Jake. You saved her life. And . . . your father . . . he wasn’t . . . he’s not the sort of man to abandon anyone in trouble. You knew that.”

“You think he’s dead.”

She sat without looking at him, her bleak gaze on the scuffed carpet. At last she said, “I don’t know what I think, Jake, not anymore.”

“I found him, Sarah. Just for a few minutes . . . an hour. He was there, with me. And now he’s gone again.”

There was nothing she could say. How could she say that she knew that loss? Because for a few moments the golden crescent of the Zeus coin had been in her hands, and now it was gone, and maybe her parents’ lives and all hope of saving them were gone with it.

Maybe he guessed. He said, “You did what you thought was right. But Venn won’t forgive you.”

“I’m not asking him to.”

“We have to be able to trust you.”

Sidelong, she glanced at him, her blue eyes as cool as Venn’s. “Do you know who the enemy is here, Jake? Not me, not Summer. Not even Janus. The mirror is the enemy. The mirror, and what it offers. It has us all in its power; we already all but worship it.”

He was silent. Then, to her surprise he said, “We need to work together, you and me. Promise me we will. No more secrets.”

She laughed. Then she nodded.

Deep in the house a gong rang. Piers’s yell came up the stairs. “Supper!”

Jake rolled off the bed.

“I’m surprised you can eat,” she said.

“I’m not giving up.” He grimaced, feeling the strapping Wharton had put on the knife slash. “Not on my father. I know him. He’ll be back. Anytime.”

He went out and ran down the stairs. She wondered if the glint in his eyes had been tears, or sheer determination; either way, she envied him. Instead of following, she crossed to the window and opened it, leaning her elbows on the sill.

The night was calm. Over the dark branches of the Wood the moon was a thin crescent.

Below her the kitchen light spilled out across the lawns; she could see the shadow of Piers and then maybe Wharton cross the window.

She stood still, listening, as if the evening called her.

It was the last night of April.

And it was strangely warm.

Small yellow flowers were opening in the aisles of the wood. Cow-parsley stood ghostly, its white umbels wide. She could smell the may, and even as she watched, the undergrowth seemed to ripple into the soft greenery of spring, as if Summer had forgotten her anger, lost interest in her revenge.

Smoke from the Abbey chimneys rose straight in the calm evening air.

A bird chirruped, high above.

Sarah breathed in the sweetness, and despised herself. Jake had failed. She had failed too.

Whatever he said, it was over. Unless . . .

A cheep called her, a last lonely whistle in the twilight.

She looked up, alert.

It fell from high in the blue-and-purple sky. It dropped like a small crystal raindrop, a solitary snowflake, so small she could barely see it at first. And then it was a tiny blue-and-gold bird of wood and feathers, giddying down to land on the windowsill with a broken gold coin in its beak.