Catherine Fisher - Obsidian Mirror

Summer bent over him. She put her arms around him. She kissed him, over and over, on the hair, the forehead, the eyes, and her remorse was sudden and baffling. “Dear child. Sweet child. Help him, everyone. Help him up.”

The Shee clustered like flies. Their thin hands pulled at Gideon, tugged leaves from his hair. Their fingers, delicate as antennae, felt and picked at his clothes.

Then Venn dragged him away. “Get your vermin off him. Let him alone.”

Gideon dragged in a breath. He seemed still dizzy with the shock of pain, but he stood upright and tense, as if ready for anything that might come next, and Jake realized that there was no such thing as safety in Gideon’s world.

Summer’s mood changed with breathtaking speed. “Time to go.” Now she was coy and amused. She took Gideon’s hand and tugged him down the path. “Come away, oh human child, to the waters and the wild…. Good-bye, Venn.” She blew him a kiss, walking backward. “Guard your lovely machine, Venn. Guard your darling children. Lock your doors and enchant your thresholds, Venn. Because one day, very soon, we will get in.”

He said, “Not on my watch.”

She vanished. They all vanished.

Jake just couldn’t see them anymore. It was as if they had turned sideways and slipped through some slit in the air, even Gideon. Become sunshine and shadow.

Only Venn stood in the clearing, ankle-deep in nettles.

For a moment he waited, as if making sure he was alone.

Then he turned toward Jake. “Get up,” he snarled. “Let’s get out of here.”

Sarah flicked over a few pages, desperately impatient. The paper had been rubbed with finger marks, as if it had been read over and over. The writing was spiky and jagged with excitement.

…dank and dismal. Even with my experiences of the filthy rookeries of the city, I found it fouler than foul. The cabman I had hired said, “Are you sure about this, guv?”

“Sure,” I said. “But remember. Thirty minutes, no more. My life may depend on it.”

He nodded at me and said, “Trust me, I’m no tommyflit.” Then he turned the cab, and it clopped away into the night.

I groped down the alley, cane in hand, slipping in the running sewage, holding my handkerchief firmly to my face. Even so, the stench was stomach-churning. I came to an opening in the dingy wall and a solitary gas lamp flickered over the sign. SOLOMON’S COURT.

Excitement made my heart thump. I fingered the half coin in my pocket, and the loaded revolver next to it. Then I edged into the courtyard.

It was black as pitch. The houses—or warehouses—reared high into the fog. My footsteps seemed to shuffle and multiply in the enclosed space, as if there were others here, behind me.

The pentangle was scratched on the wall beside a very small door down a few steps running with noisome liquids. I descended carefully, and rapped on the wood with my cane.

I was breathless with excitement and avid for danger. These moments were what I lived for.

The door opened.

A sickly smell enfolded me, which I recognized immediately as opium. It was a vice I had sampled, but I loathed the way it robbed men of their intelligence, and had long abandoned it. I ducked inside. A stout woman in a red dress held out her hand. She no doubt expected money, but I handed her the broken coin. She brought it close to her eyes, and then, seeing what it was, thrust it back at me with almost a hiss of fear.

“Follow me,” she croaked.

The den was crowded, heaps of rags that were men and women lying sprawled, the pipes through which they took the drug spilling from their fingers. Some moaned. I wondered in what nightmare of horrors their souls wandered. The woman brought me to a dismal corner at the back; she pulled a heavy curtain aside and stepped back, gesturing me to go on. I groped my way along a stinking corridor, and at the end, found an open door. Beyond that, a room.

A small fire burned in a dark grate. Next to it a man rose to meet me.

He was the strangest of creatures. A handsome dark-haired man, until he turned, and the flamelight revealed a jagged scar down the left side of his face, a terrible curve, as if some sword had slashed it. His eyes were dark as a rat’s, his hair long, his hands delicate and slender. He lifted one, and held it out; I gave him the half coin and he spared it one glance, slipping it into his pocket.

“Mr. John Harcourt Symmes,” he said. His voice was curiously husky.

I bowed. “You know of me, sir?”

His calm stare unnerved me. He said…

“Sarah! Are you in here?”

A banging on the door. Sarah jumped. The sun had gone and the window seat was icy. She shoved the journal into her pocket and hustled the box back quickly in the cupboard.

“Sarah!”

“Yes…wait…coming,” she yelled, then hurtled out through the door. Straight into Wharton.

He gasped. The girl had run out without warning. There was a crash and a flutter. He looked down and saw the newspaper with a small fat leather journal lying splayed on top of it on the wooden floorboards.

“I’m so sorry,” he began, and she said, “No it’s me…”

They both dived for the papers, but Wharton was quicker; politely he picked up the notebook and arranged its scattered and damaged pages to smooth order. Words and phrases caught his eye. He stopped, turned back. Surely he had seen… Chronoptika…

He looked up. Sarah had the newspaper and her face was flushed. She handed it back to him, quickly. “Yours.”

“Piers’s really.” He took it. Then he said, “Sarah, listen. I’ve just read an article in here and your photo is—”

“Please.” She looked up at him with blue, urgent eyes. “Don’t tell anyone. I mean outside the house.”

“Venn knows?”

She nodded. “I ran away because I’m not mad. I’m not violent. I just need some time to sort myself out. Where they can’t find me.”

Wharton felt deeply uneasy. What was Venn doing, harboring a girl so disturbed? He shrugged. “Well, it’s none of my business. I’m just en route to Shepton Mallet.” He realized he was still holding the journal, and she was looking at it with an anxious, hungry look. He held it out. “Yours.”

She took it, just too quickly. He said, “Have you seen Jake?”

“Not since earlier. We managed to break a mirror.” She moved to go past him, then paused. As if she’d made up her mind, she said, “Mr. Wharton, do you think his father is really dead?”

Wharton folded the paper absently. “I have no idea. But if he is, I don’t think Venn murdered him.”

She looked at him calmly. “Neither do I.”

“That makes three of us,” Piers said, behind them.

They turned and saw he was standing at the end of the corridor watching them, a black cat tucked under his arm. He grinned his sidelong grin.

“Lunch is served.”

9

What is a reflection? Where doth it exist…in the eye, or in the glasse? What properties in the light return us to our selves? Is it divine revelation, or doth the devyl taunt us with our imperfections?

Above all, this. How can any man be certayn that what he sees in the mirror is true?

From The Scrutiny of Secrets by Mortimer Dee

“T HAT WAS DELICIOUS,”Wharton said.

“So glad you enjoyed it.” Piers piled the dishes on a tray.

“I’ll take those,” Sarah said quickly. She took the tray and went out with it. She hadn’t eaten much, Wharton thought, and she had seemed tense, on edge. Once, when something had howled far off in the Wood, she had almost jumped, and gone over to the window and stared out at the bleak day for a long time. People must be looking for her. Really, he ought just to phone the police.