The Slanted Worlds

by Catherine Fisher

  She stepped back.

  Then deep in the house she heard an enormous crash.

  As if a chimney had fallen.

  Or a bomb.

  Venn prowled the mirrored hall with tormented anxiety. “Something’s happening. Can you feel it? Something’s changing.”

  Gideon, his face and hands pressed to one of the identical glass surfaces, gazed into his own green eyes. He too could sense it. A subtle distortion of space, a contraction. A breathing in.

  He said, “The room’s getting smaller.”

  “Smaller?”

  “It’s closing in on us. Collapsing.” He could hear it now, the soft, creaking shrinkage of the chamber.

  Venn turned with sudden purpose to the mirrors. “Then we smash our way out.” He tore at the carved frames, but the gilded wood fell away as if it was rotten, desiccating in his fingers.

  “Try this!”

  Gideon found a chair, picked it up and crashed it down. Frail wood splintered. They each snatched a chair-leg, and attacked the walls. Already the room was half the size it had been, the floor and ceiling slanting at impossible angles.

  Venn smashed the nearest mirror; it starred into jagged fractures. For a moment Gideon was reminded of the crevasses out in the ice field; he leaped back as the pieces fell in great slabs at his feet.

  But there was no opening. Behind the first, another identical mirror showed them their own despair.

  Furious, Venn smashed that too, and found only another.

  Gideon dragged him back. “That’s no use. Think! You must have some power here. The Venns are half Shee, everyone says. Summon it! Use it!”

  Venn’s cold stare chilled him.

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “If I do . . . if I start that, where will it end?” He stared at the collapsing room. “That’s what she wants, for me to give in to her, to enter the unhuman world. And it would be easy. So easy.” He took a deep breath. “You above all know that. You’ve heard their music. You went with them.”

  Gideon nodded, but panic was growing in him. “I know. But if you don’t, we die here.”

  “Summer would never . . .”

  Gideon faced him. “Summer would kill us like flies,” he breathed.

  Venn was silent. As if he made himself face the truth of that.

  Gideon watched the man’s struggle with a cold compassion. “You have to,” he hissed. “The Shee all whisper about it. Ever since Oisin Venn your family have had the choice. The power is there, if you want it. Do it, Venn. Destroy her with her own gift.” His voice was fierce, he knew. His desire for vengeance on her shocked even himself.

  Venn threw down the piece of wood and stood still.

  Gideon waited, breathless. The room was so small now that he could reach out and touch both sides of it, as if the very cube of the world was dwindling to a point as minute as infinity.

  Venn looked up.

  The ceiling was a glass plane, still out of reach. He seemed to focus on it with a bitter, controlled fury. Gideon waited, fighting down panic. Glass walls nudged his arm. His own reflection pushed against him. He was replicated, hand to hand, face to face, an eternity of Gideons crowded together with his stifling terror. He would be suffocated, crushed against his own face, his hands clawing hopelessly against their glassy copies.

  He tried to turn, but there was no space.

  Venn shivered. He seemed thinner, paler. His fingers a little longer. His eyes bird-blue.

  He had lost something of himself.

  He crouched. “On my shoulders. Quickly!”

  Gideon climbed, light and fleet; Venn stood, heaving him up. “Push. Push hard!”

  He strained. His palms forced against the glass roof, but it was solid, hard as ice, impenetrable. For a second he understood the whole horror of being sealed in, the fear of the baby in the womb, the chick in the egg.

  “Push!” Venn yelled.

  The walls crushed against them.

  Then, with a crack that sent Gideon’s heart leaping, the world shattered.

  Water roared down. Into his yell of terror. Into his mouth and eyes.

  Sarah said quietly, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Wharton was a little startled. For a moment he was not quite sure where he was. He looked around curiously at the sumptuous room, then at Summer, who smiled sweetly.

  Sarah held his eye. “Good. Be careful. Please.”

  She dared not say more. But if he guessed she was here for the half coin, surely he would know not to risk mentioning it. She felt the tiny half-moon of gold move against her skin, under her clothes. Now all she had to do was get it—and them—out of here.

  “But where’s Venn?” Wharton turned, astonished. “And Gideon?”

  “Oh, I think it only fair they have a little difficulty, don’t you?” Summer stretched her small feet languorously. She fixed Sarah with a sudden sly glance. “Because Gideon was supposed to be bringing me one of those lovely magic bracelets, and he has failed me. Again. How very disappointing.”

  She sat up. “And you see, Sarah, something else is all wrong.” She stood and crossed lightly to the red box and picked it up. Wharton stared at it.

  “I don’t believe you came for this. I think you came for something else.” Summer pouted. “Now, I wonder what that could be? Something so powerful you would even dare to come to my house for it?”

  Sarah dared not move. She sensed Wharton edge closer.

  Summer opened the box. “You, in there!”

  The bird popped up and chirruped brightly.

  “Stop that.” Summer extended a finger. “Listen, I know she’s taken something. What is it? Tell me at once or I’ll turn you into a cockroach and you can crawl in dung for a thousand years.”

  The bird was silent. Then it looked at Sarah, a bold flicker of its beady eyes, and before it spoke, she knew that this time it would betray her.

  “What do I get if I tell you?”

  “Freedom. You get to fly in the greenwood.”

  “And change my shape back?”

  Summer shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe I could let you be a real bird.”

  “A starling? And fly with the Host again?”

  “Why not.”

  The wooden bird considered. Then said, “A half coin of gold. On a chain around her neck.”

  Sarah grabbed at the chain and leaped back. Wharton stepped between her and Summer.

  Summer laughed. “That trinket! So the emperor’s face does have power. I rather thought so when I asked you for it. But it must be far, far more powerful than I thought.”

  She came toward them and Wharton braced himself to stop her. But to his astonishment his body refused to move. His arms remained at his sides. Furious and terrified, he tried to yell. Nothing came out but the faintest of gasps.

  Summer came up to him and stood on tiptoes to stare into his eyes. “Sorry, George,” she whispered. “It won’t last, I promise.”

  He tried to squirm as she passed behind him.

  Summer came to Sarah and said quietly, “When a gift is given, it should never be taken back.” She reached out lightly and took the chain from around Sarah’s neck, her touch light and cold as a spider’s.

  Furious, unable to move or even access her invisibility, Sarah saw the glittering broken coin held before her eyes, the key to the mirror’s destruction dangled like a taunting toy before a child.

  A terrible, wrenching anger surged in her; she cried out in her mind, a great cry of despair that seemed to well up and burst into abrupt sound as if her ears had popped. Summer stepped back, astonished, and in that single instant the tiny bird flew; it snatched the half coin from Summer’s fingers and fled with it, up and up, into the high white ceiling of the room, into the curtains, through the opened window out into
the mothy night.

  Sarah collapsed. Wharton gasped.

  Summer screamed a shrill screech of fury and with a flurry of feathers became instantly a black hawk with yellow eyes; she flew and the room flew with her, the sofa transforming into a fallen log, the deep carpet a pile of leaves, the ceiling the crowded trees of the Wood.

  And above, in the starry darkness of the sky, the tiny bird flew up and up and up, until it was lost to sight in the frosty galaxies, the endless black eternity of space.

  24

  Come with us! Join us, all you men and women who have courage in your hearts. For what is life without freedom?

  Illegal ZEUS transmission

  MASKELYNE HURRIED PIERS through the corridors of Wintercombe.

  The crashing from outside was enormous, as if all the trees of the Wood were marching down on them. At the front door Piers hung back. “Why me? Why me? I can’t . . .”

  “You will. You must.” Maskelyne grabbed the little man and turned him, pulling the white lab coat off him quickly. “Piers, we’re all depending on you.”

  Piers laughed, a horribly nervous cackle. His red waistcoat darkened to brown, his clothes faded to the drabbest of tweeds. “Got to blend in, then. Camouflage.” He pulled a coat from the rack and huddled into it.

  “Now listen to me.” Maskelyne already had both hands on the door bolts. “Get out there and find Venn. You have to tell him what Sarah is up to. You have to protect the Zeus coin. If Summer gets her claws on it . . .” He shook his head, anxious, the scar livid against his dark hair. “You’re the hero now, Piers. Not the servant anymore. You’re the warrior, the lonely defender against the dark. If you do this, Venn will never be able to thank you enough.”

  “You think so? Really?” The little man swelled a little. “Well . . . right.”

  “Ready?”

  “No . . . Look. I don’t . . .”

  Maskelyne hauled the bolts back. The door crashed open. The gale hurtled horizontal rain across the hall.

  Piers’s objections were snatched away. He took a great breath, clutched the coat around him and was gone, as if he were a small brown leaf the wind had sucked up and blown far away.

  Maskelyne instantly slammed and locked the door. Leaning his back on it, he stood there a moment like a shadow in the hall, his eyes on the rain patterns, the damp tiled floor, the stairs going up into the deserted corridors and attics of the Abbey.

  Finally he allowed himself a small weary smile.

  Because now, at last, he was alone. With the mirror.

  Ignoring the darkness he ran swiftly along the Long Gallery and into the Monk’s Walk. Down through the ancient arches the river foamed in its ravine below; the air was saturated with water, the walls running with damp.

  The mirror called to him. He could hear its voice, that strange toneless whine that was always somewhere deep in his mind, modulating and searching, tormenting him with its anxiety, as if somewhere it had lost the language it had once spoken and yearned only to find it again.

  “Hush,” he whispered. “Hush now. I’m coming.”

  The lab was silent. He came in and stood there, listening. Then he approached down the tunnel of the malachite webbing.

  The mirror waited in its silver frame. He knew those words; he knew their meanings. He reached out to touch them, and his fingers caressed the archaic spell that he had seen forged and placed here centuries before.

  He said, “I’m back. I’m here. It’s only us now. Forget the others, forget Venn. They’re lost. Only we exist.” He reached out for the new controls. “And now they never need come back.”

  His fingers closed on the switch.

  Then, behind him in the darkness, a sound made him freeze. The most peculiar mew, a gurgle. A message from a mind before speech, without language.

  He turned in terror.

  “So don’t I exist?” A girl’s voice, hard with bitterness. “Or am I forgotten too?” She came forward out of the shadows, wrapped in some dirty robe, and his breath choked him because for a moment he had thought she came from a past so distant that he had buried all traces of it.

  “Rebecca? When did you . . .” He stopped, staring.

  The baby moved in her arms. He came and looked down at it, the round grizzling face, the tiny clenched waving fists. “What happened back there?”

  Her face was scorched with contempt. “Not what you think. This is David’s son. His mother died of the plague . . .”

  Maskelyne licked dry lips. “Look, Rebecca . . .”

  “What were you going to do?” She came forward, her head on one side. “Leave them there? Venn, Jake, David? Close the mirror against them? You know how to do that, don’t you.”

  He did not speak, but she had her answer.

  She felt the baby squirm against her. She said, “There is no way in the world I will ever let you do that. I thought I knew you, Maskelyne. I thought I loved you. But maybe I haven’t a clue about who you are. Who you really are.”

  This time I was a little more prepared. When the mirror opened, I held my skirts down and stared boldly into the black vortex. How shall I describe it? Like seeing for a second into the very depths of space, into the terrible emptiness beyond the remotest galaxy and the final ashes of the last star.

  And when it ended, my room felt tiny and crowded.

  A boy stood there, a tall thin lad in a dark suit. I saw at once that he was bleeding from a cut in the shoulder; he all but collapsed onto my hearthrug. And behind him, dropping a strange bird-face mask and hurrying to his side, was—at last!—David.

  “Jake!” He looked up. “Venn! Get some . . .”

  His voice stopped. He looked around. At Janus, standing calmly in the bars of my father’s cage.

  “What . . . ?” His eyes took in the details of my room rapidly.

  “A little detour, I’m afraid,” Janus said. His smile was a mockery.

  I poured out some wine from the decanter and hurried over to hold it to the boy’s lips. Instead he took it from me and drank a sip. He stared at me with dawning astonishment.

  David stood slowly. “Alicia?”

  “That’s right, dear.” I became very businesslike. “How wonderful that you’ve finally made it! Now, this must be Jake, I presume, and really, what a nasty gash he has. Come and sit down, child.”

  They were amazed. David said, “Why here?” and Jake replied in a murmur, “I don’t know.” Neither of them could take their eyes from Janus.

  “You mustn’t worry about that wicked man from the future.” I fussed Jake into a chair. “My father and I were quite prepared. As you see, he can never get out of that cage.”

  They looked at me as if I was a child. Jake—quite a handsome boy really—said, “Don’t you understand? He’s a replicant. He can walk through that anytime.”

  “Nonsense. Only a ghost could.” I stood upright and looked at Janus. “Can you?”

  He smiled. “My dear lady, I would never be so impolite.”

  It was then I truly understood the evil that was in him, as if for a second something dark and cruel flickered in my shabby room. I turned quickly. “He wants your bracelet. Go! Hurry!”

  Janus was quicker. He reached out and pushed me aside so that I stumbled over the footstool and fell rather awkwardly on the rug. Jake leaped up.

  “Move!”

  Catching hold of his father’s hand, he stepped back against the mirror.

  I flinched from the terrible implosion.

  But nothing happened!

  Janus seemed as surprised as the rest of us. The he laughed; a short, amused laugh. “Well. That is surprising. It seems you’ve been betrayed.”

  “Betrayed?” David was frantically adjusting the silver ring.

  “By Venn perhaps. Or by the scarred man.” Janus frowned, as if at an irritating memory. I gathered my
skirts around me and stayed on the mat. I was rather shaken, but David’s anxiety was acute.

  The mirror remained black, and solid.

  Jake snarled, “You’ll never get the bracelet. We’ll throw it in the fire first.”

  “Then you will have done what I want.” The tyrant had a flat, unpleasant smirk. It became annoying really quickly.

  There was silence. But in the stillness I realized that the traffic in the street seemed to have stopped. There was distant shouting, a running of feet on the pavement outside.

  I saw Jake’s eyes fix in what I can only say was utter alarm.

  He was staring at my calendar; a sweet thing, free with the Daily Mirror, decorated with pictures of kittens and puppies. It was open on the date, 14th January 1941.

  “Oh my God,” he breathed. He looked at me, hard, as if seeing for the first time my gray hair, my sadly advanced age.

  Then he turned on his father. “It’s now!”

  “What is?”

  “The raid . . . the bombing raid! This is the date I came here. The day she dies. It’s today. It’s now!”

  As if to answer him, up from the depths of the city rose a sound they started at, but which I had grown only too used to. The wail of the sirens, the eerie early warning of the coming waves of planes.

  And far off, with the soft thudding of rain on a roof, the first bombs burst open on the East End, like murderous red flowers.

  “Don’t do this.” Rebecca came toward him. “They need you. Venn and Jake and Sarah. You made an agreement with them.”

  “That girl will destroy the mirror! I can’t let that happen. Without them . . .”

  “You can’t leave Jake to die in some plague-ridden past. I won’t let you.”

  Maskelyne stood like a shadow between her and the obsidian glass. As ever, it showed no image of him, as if he had never existed, as if he were only the product of her dreams, unseen by anyone else. Sometimes she felt she had invented him, created him, but now she realized that he was some mystery beyond anything she could make.