Catherine Fisher - Obsidian Mirror

Venn: That’s a stupid question.

Interviewer: Well…um…

Venn: You don’t conquer mountains. They conquer you.

Interviewer: Yes, but I mean…

Venn: You don’t have a clue what you mean. If you’d ever been up there, you’d see why. A place like that—a mountain like that—doesn’t set you free. She chains you to her memory forever.

BBC interview; Volcanoes—Hills of Fury

S ARAH KNOCKED AGAINon the door. “Jake!”

There was no answer, but she knew he was in there. “It’s me.” She opened it and went in.

Jake said, “Leave me alone.”

She sat on the unmade bed. It was a four-poster, with red damask hangings, ridiculously grand in the paneled room. “You didn’t come down for breakfast. Wharton was worried.”

“I’m devastated.” He sounded bone-weary. He was sitting, knees up on the wide window-ledge, wearing a coat over pajamas, gazing out at the white frost that had stiffened the lawns. Beyond, the Wood loomed dark.

“Venn wants a meeting. All of us. About last night.”

His eyes flicked to her. She gazed around at the tumble of his clothes, the laptop, the monkey’s mess of crumbs and stolen nuts. It seemed like he had stumbled to sleep last night as exhausted as she had, after Venn had ordered Rebecca home and the rest of them to bed.

She said, “We need to get things straight. If we’re going to succeed in finding your father, we need to be working together, not as enemies. You and me. You and Venn.”

It made sense. He still hated it.

“And you’ve got to get rid of this idea that he’s responsible for your father’s—”

“He is responsible.”

“You know what I mean. Let go, Jake.” She got up and came over to him, looking at his fragmented reflections in the tiny windowpanes. “He wants to get David back as much as you. He’s desperate. He’s not the person you think he is.”

He didn’t move or answer, but she sensed a change, the slightest of thaws. As the marmoset swung down and settled cozily on his lap, she said, “Do you believe him? About the Chronoptika?”

He shrugged.

She squeezed onto the seat beside him. “It is true, Jake! Last night, when I was looking into it, I saw it. I saw the past.”

Silence. Finally he said, “What did you see?” and she knew she had won. She stood up. “If you really want to know that, come downstairs. We’ll talk about it all together. You’ll get nowhere skulking up here by yourself.” She took a small leather-bound book from her pocket and thrust it at him. “And when you get a moment, read this. It’s Symmes’s journal. It’ll explain a lot.”

She went to the door and out, and he let her go without a word, his fingers deep in Horatio’s fur, watching her reflection vanish.

Then there was only the blue sky to stare at.

He was cold, and alone. The hot excitement of last night, the fight with Maskelyne and the amazing story of the mirror seemed like a dream now; it had evaporated into restless sleep and listless bewilderment and he felt that all his energy had gone. That he almost didn’t care.

And yet…

What did she mean, that she had seen the past?

Suddenly, he had to move. Pushing the monkey off, he ducked its wild screechy swing and went over to his crumpled pile of clothes, pulling on the black sweater and dragging a comb through his hair. For a moment he wanted to look at himself, to see if he looked older, paler, but of course there was no mirror and maybe that was good, because he didn’t want another vision like the last, another ghostly hand clutching at his. He pushed the small journal into his back pocket.

“Stay here,” he said. “And don’t wreck the place.”

Horatio bared his teeth and climbed the curtain.

Jake walked the creaking corridor and ran down the stairs. The house was in its eternal silence, the dark paneled rooms deserted, only the clocks ticking. Then he caught the low mutter of voices from far along a stone-paved passageway at the back that must have once been for servants.

He walked down there and paused in the archway. Heat struck his face, and the sweet smells of tea and toast and baking bread.

It was the kitchen. A vast hearth opened in the roof, and under it—inside it, really—a fire was burning with inglenook benches on each side. Wharton was sitting on one, his legs stretched blissfully out. Sarah perched opposite, her eyes on Jake. Venn was talking to Piers by a big table littered with dishes and books. When he saw Jake, he stopped. “So. We’re all here.”

“Except our friend Rebecca,” Wharton said.

“I escorted the young lady arm in arm back to her car last night.” Piers set out five striped mugs on the table. “Although she would happily have stayed. She was so curious, so breathless. Her voice has registers. She’s not quite the ditsy scatterbrain she appears. Perhaps we should be careful about how much we tell her.”

“I don’t want her here again.” Venn’s gaze was on Jake.

“Don’t tell me who I should see,” he growled.

“See her if you want. But not here.”

Jake shrugged.

As if that was a signal of some sort, Sarah came over and sat at the table. Piers carried the huge brown teapot, its handle wrapped in a tea-towel, and carefully poured hot tea into all the mugs. “My own biscuits,” he said, proud.

They were Christmas-tree shaped, and decorated with swags of icing and small pearly spheres. Wharton dipped one into his tea. “Magic, Piers.” He crammed the rest into his mouth. “Makes most biscuits taste like cardboard. But how on earth do you get the time.”

Piers shrugged, sly. “As you say. Magic.”

“You must give me the recipe.”

Jake sat. Ignoring the others, he turned to Sarah. “Tell me…tell us…exactly what you saw. Please.”

She stirred sugar in the tea, considering.

Venn came and sat opposite. She felt enclosed by their need, squeezed by their desperation. She knew they were both taut with nerves, but so was she. So she said, “At first there was nothing. Even when the bracelet started locking itself. It closed in on my skin—it was so cold, it hurt. Then I felt the mirror change. It became less…solid. It’s difficult to describe, because I think it was at that moment that Jake came running in, and it was as if the mirror… imploded. ”

“How…” Wharton began, but Jake said, “Shut up. Go on, Sarah.”

“It just wasn’t there anymore. It became a vacuum, a sucking emptiness. It was so powerful—it pulled at me, as if it would drag me in. It was a sort of”—she shivered, her voice grim—“black hole.”

Venn flicked a glance at Piers, who said, “Like David.”

She looked up. “If it hadn’t been for your spiderweb, I would have been pulled right inside. I felt as if my ears and nose were bleeding; as if there was some tremendous build-up of pressure. And then I saw the street.”

Venn said, “I didn’t see anything.”

“I did. Houses. Big, like tenements or warehouses. A dull gray sky. People, running out of the rain. Umbrellas. The noise of horses’ hooves and cartwheels, a terrible clatter. A stink of dung.”

“People?” Venn was leaning close over the table now, his ice eyes points of fever. “What sort of clothes?”

“Old-fashioned. The women had long dresses. Bustles. There were horse-drawn omnibuses.”

He stared at her, astounded. “Was it London?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“My God.” He glanced at Piers, then back, his fingers grabbing hers and gripping them so hard, it hurt. “Are you saying this was the 1840s? 1850s?”

She had no idea. She said, “It was definitely Victorian. From pictures I’ve seen. But it was only there for a second. A blink of light. And then it was gone, and I felt so sick and giddy, I couldn’t even stand up anymore. And you were yelling at Jake and the bracelet fell off and rolled away.”