Catherine Fisher - Obsidian Mirror

Ballad of Lord Winter and Lady Summer

T HE SILVER SNAKEclosed around her wrist like an alien hand, but this time Sarah was ready for it.

She stared into the obsidian mirror.

In its convex darkness she saw the room, warped and unfocused, a blur of shapes in the gloom of the winter afternoon. She saw the soft, relentless snowfall outside the mullioned windows.

They were all watching her—Piers at the computer, Wharton perched on a broken armchair, Jake leaning against the stone wall, his arms folded in rigid defense, after his bitter argument with Venn that it should be him.

But Piers had told them both to shut up, and he had clasped the bracelet on her wrist.

Venn stepped back. “Anything yet?”

“No.” Sound was muffled in the soft carpet. It was there to protect the mirror if it fell. She frowned. What if it did fall? Would that be enough?

Venn turned on Piers. “Now?”

“Less response than before. The temporal axis is steady. No fluctuations.”

Her hands were sweating. She stared into the mirror, willing it to change, praying something would happen to its stubbornly solid surface. Glancing at Wharton, she sensed the rising silence of his disbelief. He was a lot shrewder than he looked. Had he told Jake about her?

The room was dim, woven with the dense web of cables between her and the Chronoptika. Its pillars rose into darkness, their capitals adorned with clusters of crumbling ivy leaves and carved acorns. Under some, the faces of green men peeped through bramble, tendrils of leaves sprouting from their mouths.

They were watching her too.

Piers sighed. “Nothing. Maybe we should take a break.”

“No!” It was her own cry, echoing Venn’s.

“No,” he said, walking around behind Piers. “We increase power.”

“I don’t think that’s wise, Excellency. It’s already at the maximum we—”

“Don’t argue with me! Just do it!”

Wharton was on his feet. “I don’t think—”

Venn turned, lean and ominous. “No one asked you.” He came and stood in front of Sarah. “Be ready. There might be a strong reaction. If you feel anything at all, just say. If you can’t speak, raise a hand, and we’ll switch it off. Understand?”

Wharton said, “I want you to know I heartily disapprove of all of this. Jake. What do you say?”

Jake was looking at Sarah. Quietly he said, “We should go on.”

He knows. The knowledge flickered through her fear, her swift sight of Wharton’s shock. He knows I’m not who I say. And he’ll sacrifice me if it means getting his father back.

Venn was already at the controls, that mishmash of Victorian wiring and dials, roped with modern cables. He adjusted a few dials, said, “Now Piers,” and turned to watch the mirror.

Nothing seemed different, but at once the air changed. It seemed sharper, tasted of metal. Jake peeled himself off the wall. A whine he had barely been aware of before was growing, inside his ears, inside his skull. It was climbing to a shrill, subsonic needlepoint of intense irritation.

Sarah was still, focused on the mirror.

She made a small movement, as if in pain.

Jake said, “What is it?”

She didn’t look at him, her gaze caught by her own curved reflection.

“It’s starting,” she said.

Gideon lay on the top of the high wall of the estate and watched the snow settle on the flat roof of the car below. All he had to do was slide his legs over and jump. He would land safely, ankle-deep in the snowy lane. He would be free.

He didn’t dare.

Between him and that safe landing lay centuries of days and nights, sunrises, moonsets. So many lifetimes that almost nothing was left the same from the place he had been born to. He dragged dirty hair from his eyes and lay with his chin on his hands.

Was it true, or one of her lies?

Would he crumble to dust, would old age fall on him as soon as his foot touched the outside? Was Venn’s estate really a protected outpost of the Summerland, with nothing but death beyond its borders?

There was only one way to find out. He stood up, balancing.

From here he could see the weathervane on the church tower at Grimsby Deep, miles away. That was the church he had been baptized in; vaguely he remembered a gaunt, echoing space. It had stayed with him, but it must be very different in there now. For him seventeen years ago. He had not changed by as much as a lost eyelash.

Everything else had rippled through fat, inexplicable changes. Houses appeared, almost overnight. Carts had crawled, then cars had sped up the lanes. Small planes had fought each other in the sky. Pylons grew. Strange wires that the swallows gathered on every autumn hummed in the frosty wind. What were they all? When had they come? He couldn’t remember. And he had never been beyond, to the places where cars and people arrived from, where the planes sailed from, the small fascinating silver birds that flew so high.

He had asked her once, what they were. She had kissed his forehead and said, “They are the enemy, sweet boy.”

A voice said, “You would be a fool to jump.”

He wobbled, then crouched and turned, furious. “Don’t creep up on me!”

The Shee, waiting in the dark branches of a pine, smiled its charming smile. It was a male, gracefully dressed in blue and silver, its long hair tied back. “What are you looking at? May I see?”

They all had this childish curiosity. He said, “A car. Someone’s parked it here. And I think they’ve come inside.”

He could see from the snow that the car had been here a while. It was a dark, sleek machine, and its skin gave out no heat.

The Shee wandered over to the gates and Gideon jumped down beside it. The creature indicated with a long finger. “Look.”

The gates were open; as far apart as a man could slither. They swung, slightly, in the icy wind. The camera was already clotted with snow. Gideon said, “What is that thing?”

“Venn’s scrying device.” The Shee gave a languid grin. “It will see nothing today. Not even these.”

They both gazed at the footprints that led through the gap between the snowy gates, and up the dark, clogged drive.

A man’s. And the splayed spoor of the wolf.

The whine rose in Jake’s teeth and nerves. It shivered down his spine. He wanted to yell for it to stop, but he forced himself to keep still, his eyes fixed on Sarah. She was gazing into the mirror. He moved so he was behind her, but saw only blackness.

“Nothing.”

“Exactly.” Venn’s voice was breathless with triumph. “Nothing. No reflections. Nothing.”

Sarah said, “A room. A man, thickset, with a mustache. He’s seen me. He’s talking to me.”

The whine rose to screaming pitch. The web vibrated. Piers said quickly, “Shutting down.”

“No!” Venn’s eyes were on the mirror, searching. “Not yet. Not till I see it. Where is it, Sarah? Where?”

But she spoke, not to him but to the mirror. “Where is this? Who are you?”

The answer came from no one in the room. It was a thin, pompous voice, oddly quailing. It said, “My name…my name is Symmes.”

The Shee knelt and touched the footprints, sniffed them. Then it raised its hands to its ears. “What is that terrible whining cry?”

Gideon was wondering that too. “Is it the world freezing up?”

He had been with them so long, they had taught him to hear as they did. He could hear the cold night coming down, puddles on the graveled track hardening infinitely slowly, the icy crystals lengthening and creaking to a pitted surface. He could hear the birds edging on their frozen roosts, the blown barbs of their feathers, the blinks of their beady black eyes. He could hear the frost crisp over the windowpanes of Wintercombe.