Catherine Fisher: The Slanted Worlds

He stepped up to Jake and he held the luggage room ticket in his face, the number 615 clear. “I’ve been waiting weeks for someone to come for this. It seems the old lady was running a bigger network than we thought.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Furious, Jake held himself still.

“Save it. Take him to the van, Joe.”

The red-faced sergeant twisted Jake’s arm expertly behind his back. “With pleasure. You are going to bleedin’ regret making me get all hot and bothered.” He jerked and Jake gasped.

“You can’t do that! I have rights!” he yelled.

“Oh really,” the sergeant growled. “You can tell me all about them. At the Yard.”

4

Five men were in the final ascent party on Katra Simba.

There are many rumors about what happened on those terrible slopes, but as only Venn returned, only he knows the truth. He has never discussed it publicly, though he did meet with the families of each of the dead climbers.

If, as is thought, Morris and James plummeted into the crevasse, Venn would have tried anything to save them.

His courage is not in doubt.

Jean Lamartine, The Strange Life of Oberon Venn

SARAH SPENT THE long drive to Devon gazing out at the green woods and the moors.

It was April, and she realized with surprise that the spring was well under way. Hidden in London, she had missed its coming; now she stared with delight at the lambs skittishly running from the motorway’s roar, and the white umbels of cow-parsley in the hedges. Every wood had its swathe of bluebells, every tree its small unfolding leaves. Small black horses nibbled the corners of fields.

She knew this country. As the twilight gathered, Dartmoor began to loom on the horizon, purple-gray receding folds of moorland under the darkening sky. Sleepily she felt the old desire to climb up there, breathe that wild air again, as she used to do with her father and the three dogs. Before Janus came, and unmade the world.

Wharton let her dream. He drove carefully with only the swiftest of glances at her. By Exeter, darkness was closing in. If Sarah hadn’t opened her eyes by chance and glimpsed the road sign to Princeton, they would have sped on unknowing into the night. Wharton slammed on the brakes, shunted back, and turned into the lanes, grateful there was no one behind. “Nice one, Sarah. Of course, I was just checking you were awake.”

“Right.” She wrapped her coat around her, shivering.

“Do you want to stop? Or there’s some water and fruit in the back.”

“Keep going.” She squirmed around to find it. “We need to get there before he does anything stupid.”

Urgency seemed to grow in the car as darkness fell. She bit into an apple, gazing out at the black landscape. “So, George. Did you ever get home? To Shepton Mallet?”

“Not yet. I will.”

“Then why the car?”

“Had to get something. You know how the Abbey is miles from anywhere.” He turned at a crossroads, knowing she was ready to ask the question he had been waiting for.

“What’s it been like?” she said quietly.

Wharton changed gear. He glanced out at the passing small squares of light that were cottage windows, the sudden flicker of a pub sign.

“Like? Sarah, it’s been like living in a besieged castle, with the enemy all around. For a start, the Shee. You can’t see them, can’t hear them, but you know they’re out there somewhere. Every time you go near the Wood you feel watched. Not only that, the defenders inside with you are silent, preoccupied, and feverishly working at a bizarre and broken machine. I never thought I’d say this, but I’m the only sane man among lunatics. It’s as bad as being back at the wretched school.”

She couldn’t help grinning. “Surely Piers . . .”

“Piers is hardly normal. Besides, Venn works the man like a slave.”

She said, “And how is my . . . how is Venn?”

“Obsessed. Sleepless. He scares me. And it’s worse, since Jake went.”

“Tell me about that,” she said.

As he drove deep into the dark land, he was glad to; glad to finally get the story out, to speak it aloud to someone, as if doing that would dissipate it like breath, release the tight hard ball of terror it had become inside him.

“Three weeks ago—on the Wednesday, it must have been—Piers came hurtling into the kitchen where Jake and I were working. As you know, that’s the only warm room in the place. He was yelling, tremendously excited. Come at once, come now, His E xcellency says! Why he gives Venn that ridiculous title . . . Anyway, we ran. Jake first, of course. Turns out they had made some breakthrough—the mirror was suddenly, inexplicably active. They were prepared, though, I’ll give them that. The plan had been formed for months—to journey to the 1960s—and Piers was so confident they could do it. Jake scrambled into a suit of clothes that was utterly nondescript—it was designed to be unnoticeable for almost any era, and was packed with everything he might need—money, a med kit, a souped-up phone-thing that Piers hoped might be able to communicate with him. And a weapon.”

“A gun?”

“I insisted, Sarah. Of course I didn’t want him to go, but you know Jake. He put me firmly in my place, the arrogant little sod . . . and then Venn made it clear my opinion counted for less than the dirt on his shoe.”

“So Jake put the bracelet on.”

The car splashed down toward the Abbey, the headlights picking out ghostly trees, a field gate, a spindly signpost pointing into the dark.

“And?” she said gently, because he was so silent.

“You know better than anyone. It worked all right. The mirror’s huge energies erupted, that dragging, terrible pressure, the implosion that seems to suck all your life—your spirit—right out of you. When I staggered up, Jake was gone. Simply no longer there.” He changed gear, his voice harsh. “We waited. Time went by so slowly. Time, Venn’s archenemy, seeming to mock him, and us. An hour, then two. The night. The next day. Venn just sat there, slumped in a chair, watching the mirror, watching his own dark reflection till he seemed to harden into its black stone. I have never seen a man so sunk in despair. Finally I couldn’t bear it anymore. I went up to my room and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, and because I knew—knew, Sarah—that they had lost him, just as they lost his father. And of course, the bracelet with him.”

The bleak anger in him, the cold fury, was so clear she was almost afraid to speak.

For a moment the only sound was the car’s tires, slurring down the muddy track; then she pressed the button that lowered the window, and smelled the twilight, rich loamy scents of the fields, the wet decay of the Wood.

“Next morning, about five, a shout woke me. I stumbled over to the window and looked down. Venn was there. He’d thrown the main doors open; he was standing on the top of the steps. It was pouring with rain, and a wind was gusting, but he ignored it. He just stood there, Sarah, a little drunk maybe, and he called her. He yelled ‘Come to me, Summer. I need you. Are you listening, you witch!’”

Sarah shivered. “He must be totally desperate.”

“Or insane.”

“Did she come?”

“No one came. But they heard him. All the birds of the Wood rose up, starlings and crows and jackdaws, karking and laughing and flapping around the trees. They all streamed off westward. Then Piers came out with an umbrella and he and Venn had one great unholy row. I got out the car and left to find you at once. I just pray we’re in . . .”

His voice faded into dismayed silence. The car stopped.

“. . . time,” he said.

The gates were wide open. Over the familiar lions on the pillars, ivy had grown. Sarah felt the seed of dread inside her grow to certainty.