Catherine Fisher: Obsidian Mirror

A young woman came out. She had a basket of laundry; quickly she pegged a row of clothes to the line. Trousers, dresses, a shirt.

A baby cried, indoors.

“All right,” the woman muttered. “Mummy’s coming!” She went in, slamming the door.

Sarah moved. Keeping low, she ran across the lane and crouched outside the garden. Through the gate she could see toys, a yellow swing.

And a vehicle.

It was black. It stood, all glass and metal, on the drive of the house. Fascinated, she inched through the gate, closer to it, and touched the icy metal. In its curved surfaces saw herself, warped and strange. Had she been altered? Become aged, unrecognizable? A thread of terror chilled her spine.

But then the wing-mirror showed the same cropped blond hair. The same sharp blue eyes.

Her relief was stupid.

The door opened. She leaped back around the corner of the house as the woman came out again, this time with a baby in her arms. Over the mother’s shoulder the baby saw her, and screeched.

“Don’t be naughty, now. In you go.”

The vehicle flashed and clunked. Its door was open; the woman strapped the child into a small seat, then climbed in after it.

Sarah watched. The vehicle exploded into a roar of sound so terrible she flattened herself back against the wall, because how could anyone bear that? And then with a slur of gravel and a choking stink, the car rolled down the lane and was gone.

It seemed to leave a hole in the air behind it.

Quickly she ran to the line and felt the clothes. The driest were a green woolen top and a pair of the same blue trousers the woman had been wearing; she snatched them down and changed into them behind the hedge, clumsy with cold, her hands fumbling over zips and buttons, desperately watching the bend in the lane.

The clothes felt soft and well-worn. They smelled of lemons, but she really needed shoes. She threw her own soaked dress in the green plastic bin, and as she slammed down the lid, she heard the Replicant arrive.

A footstep cracking a frozen puddle. A yelp in the lane.

Immediately she turned and fled through the winter garden, flinging open a gate, racing through a paddock where blanketed horses whinnied and scattered. She slipped, picked herself up, twisted to look back.

Shadows. One near the house, another around the bin, snuffling, long and lean. She stifled a hiss of dismay and slammed against a wooden fence, then leaped it, agile with terror.

Crossroads.

A weathered fingerpost leaned in a triangle of frosted grass.

EXETER 12 OKEHAMPTON 11

And in smaller letters underneath, pointing up a narrow lane:

Wintercombe 2

The wolf howled; it had her scent. She turned and saw it streaking toward her, unleashed, a low shape hurtling through the twilight, eager to pin her down. She was running and it was behind her and she couldn’t stop the terror now, it rose up within her like a red, snatched pain, the frozen lane quaked with it, the hedges roared.

And then it slid alongside her—a vast scarlet machine, stinking of diesel.

She flung her hand up, grabbed a metal pole, and leaped on board.

“Hold tight, love,” the driver said.

The bus roared away. Bent double, she dragged in air. The driver, his eyes on the road, said, “Where to, then?”

“Sorry?”

“Where to? Where are you going?”

The lane dwindled behind her, the wolf snarling in the dark. She whispered, “Wintercombe.”

“One forty.”

Baffled, she turned. “I don’t have any…currency.”

His eyes flicked to her in the mirror. “I should put you straight off.”

“Oh give her a lift, Dave,” a woman said. “You were young once.”

People laughed. There were five on the bus, all elderly, all watching her.

“Okay. This once. And I still am young, compared to you lot.”

She said, “Thanks,” and went and crumpled onto a seat behind the pensioners. A man glanced at her, disapproving.

The moor was the same. But nothing else. She’d never seen a bus before, was alarmed at how it scratched down the lane, its windows clotted with dried mud. The rattling motion and the smell made her feel sick; she held tight to the metal rail in font of her, her bleeding foot braced on the floor. On the next seat was a discarded newspaper. The page was upside-down; she turned it quickly. It showed a picture of a blond girl in a gray dress. The headline was Patient still missing from Secure Unit.

She read the article carefully, feeling her heart rate thud to slowness. This was just what she needed. She folded it and dropped it under the seat.

The bus ran over a small humpbacked bridge and stopped on a street.

The driver peered around his screen. “Wintercombe.”

It was far sooner than she’d thought. She scrambled to the door, looked out cautiously, and jumped down. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure.” His voice was dry. Doors swished shut in her face. The bus roared away.

It was the village, but intact. People lived here. Over the huddled houses, the sky was already darkening. Shouts made her turn, fast, but only a few men came laughing out of the pub. The Replicant and his wolf could be here in half an hour. She had to hurry.

Avoiding the houses, she slipped down a footpath marked Wintercombe Abbey; it led into woodland. Great trees creaked overhead. She felt tiny under them, and uneasy because the wolf wasn’t the only danger. Getting into the estate would be difficult. Through the Wood.

It was so silent, the rustle of her own footsteps scared her.

The path descended into a deep hollow, banked on each side. Broken winter umbels lay snapped and trampled in the mud. After about a mile she stopped, holding her side, and listened. Everything seemed quiet. Then, as she turned to go on, she heard the sudden, excited howl.

Too close.

She ran, the momentum of the descent pulling her so fast that she almost tumbled out of the end of the path, and there were the gates, high black wrought-iron gates, streaked with rust, each of their pillars crowned with a sitting lion, one paw resting on a shield. She threw herself against them, but to her despair they were securely locked, and only a battered mailbox with WINTERCOMBE ABBEY. STRICTLY NO VISITORSleaned in the hedge.

She’d climb. As she put her hands to the metal, a click alarmed her and she stared up. A small white camera, mounted on one of the lions, had shifted. It swiveled down. The round blank lens scrutinized her.

“Let me in. Please! I need to speak to you. It’s urgent!”

A low growl. She spun around, back against the wet metal. Something was creeping through the dim undergrowth of the wood.

The gates moved.

A bolt slid. They shuddered apart, just a fraction, but it was enough, she’d squeezed through and was limping up the dark, overgrown drive, leaping logs, ducking under the untrimmed boughs of trees. The path twisted, all gravel and mud; above her a mass of branches tangled against the twilight. She looked back, saw the wolf’s snarling silhouette, stumbled and crashed headlong over a fallen trunk, sprawling in nettles and mud.

The wolf’s belly was low to the ground. Its eyes gleamed ice-cold, as if they caught the arctic sun.

“Go back,” she whispered. She groped in the leaf-litter; clutched a brittle branch.

The wolf slavered, its spittle hanging. Then, quick as a flicker of moonlight, its eyes darted to the left. She turned her head. And held her breath.

In the eaves of the Wood a shadow stood. A boy in a green coat, barely visible in the gloom. He leaned on a spear tipped with a flake of sharp flint. He wasn’t even looking at her, as if she didn’t matter at all, but he had fixed his gaze on the dog and his lips were curled in scorn.