Catherine Fisher - Obsidian Mirror

Jake took a breath. “Is he…Do you know if my father is dead?”

Gideon shrugged. “He’s not dead, weakbrain. He went journeying. And they can’t get him back.”

It happened like this. In November 1846 I was passing a small shop in Seven Dials and heard a tap on the window. I stopped and turned. Between the stuffed heads of a fox and a badger, a wizened Asian man of some ancient age was beckoning to me.

I looked around, but as it was indeed me he seemed to mean, I went in.

The shop stank of glue and unknown potions. It was dark, and on every shelf glassy-eyed beasts stared out in hideous rigidity. Great stags loomed from the walls. Under domes, mummified birds were fixed in unfluttering flight.

I said, “Such things hold no interest for me.” I turned to go, but he reached out a hand like a dried claw and laid it on my sleeve. I shook him off—I confess it—with a shudder.

“Death and life,” he whispered. “The arrest of Time’s decay. These things hold no interest for sir?”

I looked at the fellow. “Perhaps. But…”

“Sir requires more than the captured life, the feathers and the bones. Sir requires, perhaps, a machine.”

A thud went through my heart. “What machine?”

He shrugged, an insolent gesture. “A device of great power. So strange and terrible, only an adept of the deepest arcana might dare to use it. One such as yourself.”

This was surely a ruse to rob me. And yet there was something in the dark gleam of the man’s eye that ensnared me.

I looked around. “Where is it?”

“Not here.”

“The price?”

“It is not mine to sell.” He leaned over and pressed a small token into my hand. “Tonight, at eight, sir must go to Solomon’s Court, off Charnel House Alley. Find the house with the pentangle. Show this token. And you will see.”

Then he turned and walked into the shadows of the shop.

Outside, on the wet pavement, I gazed at the thing in my hand. It was one half of a gold coin—a Greek stater, with the face of Zeus, his nose and eyes cut jaggedly away.

Jake said, “What do you mean? Journeyed where?”

But before he could ask any more, a glitter of light flashed deep in the Wood. Gideon leaped up—a movement so fleeting that he seemed to vanish and reappear in the same instant. He grabbed Jake and hauled him down among the nettles and bracken. “They’re coming! If they see you here, they’ll take you. Don’t even breathe.”

Astonished, Jake curled in the bracken. The urgency in the boy’s voice was all too real. He kept still, cold mud soaking his knees and fingers.

No one came. He glanced at Gideon; in the moss-green gloom he seemed perfectly camouflaged, though they crouched right next to each other. Gideon pointed, through the trees.

Jake turned. A tiny shimmer caught his eye. He stared at it; saw a patch of glossy leaf, a lichened tree trunk.

And it became them.

He breathed in, felt Gideon’s warning grip.

They were almost people.

Where they had come from he couldn’t tell; they were so much part of the shadow and the foliage. Tall and pale, male and female, it was as if they had always been there, and just some adjustment of the light had revealed them to him. Their faces were narrow and beautiful, their hair silvery-fair.

They sat and lounged and leaned on branches or fallen logs, their clothes a crazy collection of fashions and fabrics, green and gold, modern and aged and patched. Their speech, from here, was the murmur of bees.

“Who are they?” he whispered.

Gideon was silent. Then he put his lips to Jake’s ear. “Don’t be fooled. They look like angels, but they’re demons. They’re the Shee.”

Jake had no idea what that meant. But he did know, quite suddenly, that this was no longer his world. The twilit Wood was impossible, because it was only midday, and the moon that hung here unmoving should not be so young. His glance flickered. He saw oak leaves and rowan berries, and the flowers of creamy meadowsweet, all together, every season at once.

And yet it was winter.

Then, along the path, a young woman came walking. She strolled out of mist, wearing a brief, simple black dress. Her hair was black too, cropped short. Silver glinted at her ears. Her feet were bare, her lips red. She seemed about eighteen.

Behind her, to Jake’s astonishment, strode Venn.

The girl came to the Shee and turned lightly on her toes. She sat on a fallen log with her knees up and smiled as Venn stood over her and snapped, “If that’s all you’ll do for me…”

“Why should I do more? What do I care about any human woman?”

“She’s my wife.” His voice was low, as if he fought to keep it steady.

“Was. She was.” The girl smiled, heartless. “And as you boasted yourself, you don’t need me anymore. You have your precious machine .”

He shook his head. “I was wrong to say that. The machine—”

“Is a failure.” She laughed, stretching out her bare foot. “I know. A chaos of forces that you have no chance of controlling. It’s already cost you your friend…now you’ll experiment on this new girl. How long before she too disappears from your world?”

“I don’t care about the girl.” He watched her, his eyes cold. “Are you really still so jealous?”

“Of a dead woman?” She laughed again, and some of the Shee laughed with her. It was a sound like the ripple of a hidden stream, and there was no humor in it. It chilled Jake. “Why should I be jealous?”

She stretched out her hand and touched Venn’s face. “I could bring you back to us at any moment I choose. Is that what you want, Venn? To come home?”

He stepped back. He said quietly, “I don’t need you, Summer. Leave the girl alone. The boy too. Leave all of us alone.”

She stood, graceful and slender. “How can I do that, Venn? Light and Shadow. Sun and Moon. The winter king and the queen of summer. We belong together and we always have. You know you can never exist without me.”

He glared angrily at her, but at the same instant Jake’s hand slid in the mud. A twig cracked.

The Shee turned like cats.

Summer was still. Then she took a step forward on her bare feet and lifted her hand and pointed directly at him. “Who dares to spy on me?”

It was a whisper of venom. The hairs on Jake’s neck prickled. Her eyes were dark as an animal’s, without anything he recognized as human.

Then Gideon muttered, “Leave a window open for me,” and stood up, leaves and dust falling from him. He walked out among the Shee.

“I do, Summer. Just me.”

Summer watched him. She let him come close, with no change of expression. She said softly, “Anyone else, Gideon, would pay dearly for that.”

“I know.” He glanced at Venn. “I’m sorry. Just curious.”

“Well, as it’s you, I forgive you. As the cat forgives the sparrow. As the owl forgives the mouse.”

Gideon gasped. As Jake watched, he crumpled as if the breath had been struck out of him by a terrible blow; with a cry he fell on hands and knees into the forest mud, gasping and retching.

Venn said, “Stop that!”

“So you do have some feelings for them.” Summer came and stood over Gideon. “I envy you, Venn. Most times, they just bore me.”

Gideon kinked and squirmed in agony. His fists gripped mud. Jake wanted to leap out and stand there shouting “Not him. Me,” but he didn’t, because Gideon gave a low, dragging moan and lay still.