The Slanted Worlds

by Catherine Fisher

  Rebecca shifted the weight in her arms; the baby made a small contented noise.

  Jake took a step back. He said, “Okay. Look. Whatever happened. Whatever you did, doesn’t matter. We have to go. Now.”

  “The baby comes. He has no one else.”

  They stared at him; Rebecca said, “Can we . . . ?”

  “Two bracelets. Together. We can try.”

  Jake breathed out, hard. Then he nodded. “Right. All right. Let’s go.”

  Ten minutes later they raced down the stairs. David had replaced his doctor’s mask, Jake wore an old apprentice robe. Rebecca had a cloak swathed around her and the baby was tied in it. “You’ll have to carry him,” David had breathed, fastening the swaddling. “It will look more natural.”

  “Will it?”

  She had felt ridiculous, but as if he knew, he said, “You would have been married here for years, Becky. You’d almost be old.”

  It scared her now. Running down the dark stairs, she wanted to flee, suddenly afraid that the life she had always thought was in front of her was over. The thought of that other girl, who had gone from beauty to corruption in a day, terrified her.

  At the street door, David peered out. Then he said, “Walk behind me. Close. Don’t speak. Put your arm around her, Jake, as if she’s sick. Everyone will stay clear.”

  The streets were deserted. They hurried, but the heat was like a great hand on their chests, a film of sweat on their faces.

  Above them the narrow tawny buildings rose, castellated houses and towers, each with a barred wooden door at the base, the windows fixed tight against contagion. The city stank of its own dying, as if it was already a silent graveyard. With a sudden shock Jake recognized it—these were the scribbled towers on the manuscript Sarah had brought—turning a corner he came face-to-face with a statue of a man on horseback.

  “Dee,” he whispered

  Rebecca was desperately trying to remember all she could about the disease that had wiped out a third of the population of Europe. Had it been spread by fleas? She held the baby tight and slipped between the pools of ordure and tried not even to breathe.

  Like a knife-edge of darkness, the shade ended. They came to a small piazza, shimmering in the heat. Opposite it was a gray stone building with a narrow tower. It looked ominous and heavy. Two guards leaned wearily at its single door.

  David glanced out, then drew back.

  “That’s it. The Bargello. Town prison. Take a look up there.”

  Jake looked. Two masses of bone and clothing that might once have been bodies hung from a window on the second floor. They turned, slowly, in the rancid air.

  “God,” he muttered.

  “Il signore’s holed up here while the plague is running.” David wiped sweat from his face. He managed a weak grin. “Visited it in 1986 on holiday once. Had an ice cream in a café just about here.” For a moment bewilderment seemed to flicker through him as if he no longer knew where he was. Then he turned back, and stepped out.

  They climbed the steps slowly. The guards straightened. “Dottore . . . ?”

  “New patient.” He waved at them. “Stand back, well back.”

  They couldn’t do it fast enough.

  Jake, his arms around Becky and the baby, hurried past. He had hoped it would be cooler inside, but the stone chamber led to an open courtyard, with a stair running up the side. David puffed up. “First floor. Hurry.”

  They pattered around an open loggia stacked with stores and chests, as if the signore had had all his riches dragged in here too. Ignoring them, David ran into a stone flagged hall, its high windows wide so that the sun made slants of burning molten light across the floor.

  “There,” he gasped.

  At first Jake didn’t see it. Only sculptures. Gods and angels. Great painted chests. A table laden with an unfinished meal.

  Then, in a shadowy corner against the marble wall, it leaned like a dark doorway.

  The obsidian mirror.

  The bird was a speck. It grew slowly, circling toward her, and when it came out with a rush of speed, she drew back with a gasp.

  In its beak it held the broken coin.

  Sarah held out her hand. The coin was in her palm.

  “Now,” the bird said, “don’t make the mistake of running off with that. All I have to do is screech and the whole host of the Shee will come crashing in down the chimney and through the walls. I wouldn’t like to think what will happen to you afterward.”

  She swallowed. “So you threaten as well.”

  “If I need to.” It preened a small yellow feather back into place.

  Sarah looked at the broken coin. The halved face of the Greek god stared out past her, and she felt a stab of guilt, because she was forgetting them, forgetting the whole horror of that distant bleak future, all that the group had planned, all their sworn friendship, forgetting Cara and Max.

  “You’re not crying, are you?” the bird said. Its head tipped, sidelong.

  “No,” she lied. “Look . . . I have to take this. It belonged to me—I gave it to Summer . . .”

  “Oh, don’t say her name.” The bird seemed to shrink; at once it was tiny, a shiny miniature. “She’ll hear!”

  “Now I’m taking it back. It’s vital. I can’t explain why. But . . .”

  “Are you one of the Venns?”

  She didn’t know what was best to say, so she nodded.

  The bird whirled on its axis with an agitated rattle. Then it grew, just a little, and said, “I’ve seen him, you know, Oisin Venn. A handsome man. She torments him wonderfully.”

  “It’s not Oisin anymore. Now it’s Oberon.”

  The bird made a shrug in its depths. “Oberon, Oliver, Oscar. All the same. To her, that is. She’s like the weather and the earth. Ageless and pitiless. Come closer.”

  Sarah approached, pulling the chain around her neck. “Look, I’ve got to . . .”

  “She did this to me.” The bird fixed her with its bead of an eye, and she thought that deep down inside it, there was a spark, like a flame. “Imprisoned me in here. Turned me into this contraption of twigs and feathers.”

  “Why?”

  “Disobeyed her once. There was a place in the Wood—a trap. It looked just like any other piece of grass. But if a mortal stepped on it, they’d be stuck there while time went by without them. A step that would last a hundred years. Her idea of a joke. So everyone waited for one to come along.”

  Despite her fear, Sarah was interested.

  “Everyone except you.”

  “I . . . well.” The bird preened. “Sort of felt . . . mischievous. I wanted to annoy her. The mortal was a real yokel—spade over his shoulder, right off the fields. The Shee were all clustered round like flies. So I warned him off. Whispered in his ear. You should have seen him run!”

  It gave a soft, sad whistle. “Then she found out.”

  Sarah said, “I’m sorry for you. But I have to go.”

  “With that?” the bird gave a cheep of scorn. “You’d never get out of the room. Unless . . .”

  “What?” But she already knew what.

  “Take me with you. Put the box in your pocket. I’ll guide you all the way out of the Summerland. Refuse, and I SCREECH NOW.”

  Sarah almost laughed. The pompous pride of the tiny thing was almost funny.

  Then, outside, there was a crash. She whirled. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing good, be sure.”

  She decided. The mirror’s destruction depended on it. Without a moment’s hesitation she grabbed the box and slid it into her pocket, and even as she turned, the door opened.

  There was no door out. Even the one they had come through was gone. There was nothing except the repeated surfaces of the obsidian mirrors, all identical and all, Wharton thought, illusions. He said, “Sh
e’s trapped us here. If we step through any of these, without a bracelet . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Gideon was gloomy. “We won’t be going anywhere. All this is in the Summerland, and that goes on forever.”

  Ignoring the paradox, Wharton stared at himself. Really, he thought, he was getting a touch overweight. He said, “What do you think?”

  Venn frowned. He went up to the nearest mirror and put his hands on it. It was black and solid. “We’re so used to going through mirrors,” he said, “that we’ve forgotten what they’re really for.” He stared into his own wintry eyes. “They show us what we think is real. But it isn’t. Nothing is real.”

  He opened his fingers.

  And to Wharton’s astonishment the wall of black glass held the tiniest point of light, diamond bright. As he watched, it grew, as if it zoomed toward them, became a circle, then a square, then filled the mirror and was a window down onto some peculiar street, narrow, sun-slanted and cobbled.

  As they watched, it closed again.

  “Was that real?” Wharton said, fascinated.

  Venn had stepped back, every sense alert.

  “Possibly. In some other time. Or it might be a trap set for us by Summer, because I’m beginning to think she knows we’re here.”

  Wharton didn’t like the sound of that. “There’s nowhere to go.”

  “Maybe.” Venn turned suddenly to Gideon. “You. Tell me. Why did you bring Sarah here?”

  Gideon’s green gaze flickered. “She begged me. I . . .”

  “Felt sorry for her?” Venn advanced on him. “I don’t think so.”

  Gideon stared back, fierce. “We made a deal. She told me that she would help me.”

  “How can . . .”

  “She said that in her time there were no Shee.”

  The words seemed to spill like a whispered wonder into the room. Gideon clenched his fists, hugged himself, as if he had said something terrible, something fascinating, that should never have been spoken.

  Venn too, Wharton saw, was both astonished and intrigued. He stepped forward and lifted a hand, but as Wharton jerked forward in alarm, Venn’s fingers stopped inches from Gideon’s white glare. “No more,” he breathed. “Don’t talk of that here. Summer will hear.”

  He paced, restless, furiously watching his own reflections pace with him. All, Wharton noticed with a sudden chill, except one.

  Because there was one mirror that held no Venn, that held nothing but darkness.

  Wharton looked at it. Sidled closer.

  Venn turned. “I’ll smash every panel in this place if I have to. There must be a way out!”

  Wharton reached out. The mirror was black, but not glass. It was a door painted dark as midnight, and there was a tiny handle recessed into it, and he reached out and turned it, and it opened.

  Gideon yelled, “No!”

  Venn turned and lunged at the door.

  But Wharton was gone. All he saw was his own face in the mocking glass.

  22

  Progress report: ALICIA HARCOURT SYMMES

  Subject observed continually. Seems to meet co-conspirators only at alleged séances. Information likely to be passed here.

  Subject may be aware of surveillance. Yesterday she left the house and winked at this officer.

  ALLENBY Covert Operations

  THE ROOM WAS set up as a crude laboratory. Alembics stood on the bench; a rack of bizarre glass retorts bubbled and spat. A skull watched them with empty eyes.

  David crossed quickly to a small cupboard in the wall and unlocked it. He took out a tiny vial. “This is it.”

  He brought it over. “I’ve been trying to isolate an antibiotic. It’s crude, unrefined. But it might work, Jake, it might save a few lives.”

  The vial was filled with a grainy substance, amber as honey.

  A noise somewhere in the building startled them. They froze, listened to footsteps running up the stair outside. The baby made a small snuggling motion against Rebecca’s warmth. The footsteps came close, passed the door. Then they pattered on up and died into the distance.

  Jake breathed out. “Right.” He undid the bracelet from his own arm and slid it onto Rebecca’s wrist, clicking it shut.

  “What?” She stared in alarm. “But we’re all going together, aren’t we?”

  “Of course we are. But this is just in case.”

  For a moment she stared at him in dread, the possibilities of being lost in the endlessness of time reeling out before her. Then he turned her to the mirror.

  “What do you use to operate this, Dad? There are no controls . . .”

  “I’ve learned a few things about the mirror.” David came toward the silver frame. “All that electrical input, you don’t even need it. These letters here, these words. They’re enough if you know how to use them. You put your hands here. And here. Sometimes I think it reads your DNA. But”—he shook his head, stepping away in dismay—“for God’s sake Jake, every time I’ve tried I’ve gone further back! What if we all end up in some prehistoric swamp? What if . . .”

  “We won’t.” Before his father could object, he moved, grabbing Becky and pulling her close. “Do as he says.”

  She touched the silver frame.

  Under her fingers she felt it tremble, felt it sense the bracelet she wore, the terror she felt. She felt it waken and become interested in her.

  “Jake.”

  Jake grabbed David. “Now us, Dad.”

  The mirror hummed. It shuddered. The air in the room gathered itself up.

  But what burst open, with an abrupt, shocking crash, was the door. The guards leaped inside, halberds at the ready. Behind, striding tall in his robe of damask, the condottiere of the palazzo entered and stared.

  The mirror throbbed.

  It opened like a sudden vacancy in the world and took Rebecca and Lorenzo into a sudden roaring gust of emptiness.

  The guards fell to their knees, speechless with terror. A halberd clattered. All the retorts on the bench shattered; Jake was flung sideways, and in the seconds it took him to stumble up and get his breath back, the signore had a knife at his throat and one strong arm tight strangling around his neck.

  He saw his father stop in midstride, fling up his arms, yell, “Signore! No!”

  Jake gasped for air. His hands clutched at the warlord’s arm, but it was firm as steel, and the man’s voice was contorted with anger and fear.

  “What sort of filthy devilry have you brought into my house, dottore?”

  The very last ghost I ever saw was in January 1941.

  I really should have given up by then, but even though I was an old woman, I could not stop hoping. My father had been so sure they would come—David or his son Jake, or their mysterious and rather thrilling-sounding friend Mr. Oberon Venn.

  I had taken to keeping the mirror covered, and all those years it had been a silent presence in my room. It had never shown me anyone again but for my own sadly ageing face. Perhaps I had begun to wonder if David had ever existed. My father died, the world changed, another world war loomed over us. Food was rationed, London cowered under the Blitz.

  And then, on a cold spring morning when the daffodils in the square were splitting their papery yellow buds, Janus came back.

  I had long since ceased to be able to afford a maid. I had become a dusty old woman, gray and lined, but still my spirit was high. I was happy with my séances, which had become strangely popular, and my tea parties and my dear friends from the Psychic Society.

  So when I entered the study that morning, the fire was unlit and the blackout curtains drawn. I opened them myself, letting them rattle in their great rings, and was gazing sleepily out into the street when he said behind me, “Hello again, Alicia.”

  I turned, my heart thumping.

  He had not changed by even the growth
of a hair. Small and uniformed, his hair lank, his glasses blue discs, he stood on my hearthrug and smiled that twisted smile that had no warmth.

  “You!” I gasped. Not my most original retort, I admit, but I was so shocked to see him out of the mirror. It leaned behind him. One of my china dogs lay smashed on the tiles of the grate.

  “I hope you don’t mind me appropriating your parlor.” He waved a small hand. “I intend to meet someone here.”

  I stared, astonished.

  “In fact, they should be here any moment now.”

  “Is it David?” I confess my voice quavered.

  He smiled. “Ah yes. You have wasted all your life waiting for David. How pitiful a thing that is.”

  Now, I take pity from no one. I rose, drew myself to my full height, and said, “My dear sir, I have waited for anyone who would come from the Other Side. My father and I spent many years contemplating our next visitor. And be assured, we did not waste our time.”

  And with what I hope was a suitably grandiloquent gesture, I put my hand up and tugged at the lever hidden discreetly behind the curtains.

  The concertinaed cage crashed down from the ceiling.

  Electric wiring crackled on.

  Janus stood startled and unmoving in the trap that for years had been awaiting him.

  To say I felt satisfied would be too inadequate a word. I really felt rather gleeful. I turned, sat demurely upon my sofa, folded my hands, and contemplated my handiwork. A tyrant from the end of time was my prisoner. It was really rather gratifying.

  Janus said nothing. He reached out curiously as if to touch the steel bars but I said quickly, “I would not wish you to harm yourself. There is a charge of twenty-five volts throbbing through that metal as we speak, enough to give you quite a nasty shock. My dear papa designed the whole apparatus.”

  “Did he now.” Janus nodded, folding his arms. He looked at the mirror, safely beyond his reach. “My dear lady, I congratulate you. I really do.”

  “I’m only sorry you have no chair in there. I have no wish to make you uncomfortable.”