The Water Mirror

by Kai Meyer

  Serafin waited. First of all, he wanted to see where Arcimboldo would land. The gentle rocking was so soothing, it made him sleepy. . . .

  Serafin awoke with a start. He’d nodded off. No wonder, under the warm covers and after a night in which he’d never closed an eye. The growling of his stomach had awakened him.

  When he looked outside through a gap in the covers, he was more than a little astonished. They’d left the city and were gliding over the open water. Venice lay a great distance behind them. They were heading north, toward a maze of tiny swampy islands. Arcimboldo stood unmoving at the oar and looked out, stony-faced, over the sea.

  Now would be a good opportunity. Here outside, no one would see them together. But now Serafin’s curiosity won the upper hand. Where was Arcimboldo delivering the mirrors? People no longer lived here since the outbreak of the war; the outer islands were abandoned. Umberto suspected that Arcimboldo sold his mirrors to the rich women of society, the way the master weaver sold his garments. But in this wasteland? They’d even left the lion island far behind them. Only the wind whistled over the gray-brown waves; sometimes a fish could be seen.

  Another half hour might have passed before a tiny island appeared. The mirror maker headed for its shore. In the far distance, high over the mainland, Serafin thought he saw small strokes against the sky: the Pharaoh’s reconnaissance aircraft, sunbarks, powered by the black magic of the high priests. But they were too far away to be dangerous to their boat. No bark dared venture so deeply into the realm of the Flowing Queen.

  The island was about 200 yards across. It was overgrown with reeds and scrubby trees. The wind had pressed tree crowns and knotty branches pitilessly toward the ground. In earlier times such islands had been popular locations for isolated villas erected by noble Venetians. But for more than thirty years no one had come here anymore, never mind lived here. Islands like these were little slivers of no-man’s-land, and their mistress was the foaming sea alone.

  Ahead of the boat appeared the opening of a small waterway, which wound its way to the interior of the island. On both sides the trees grew densely crowded together, their branches touching the water. Multitudes of birds sat in the branches. Once, when Arcimboldo dipped his oar a bit too forcefully, gulls exploded from the brush and fluttered excitedly over the tips of the trees.

  After a last bend, the creek fed into a small lake, which formed the heart of the island. Serafin would have liked to bend forward to see how deep the water was, but it was too risky. Arcimboldo might be sunk in thought, but he certainly wasn’t blind.

  The mirror maker let the keel of the boat run gently onto land. The hull scraped over the sand. Arcimboldo shipped the oar and went onshore.

  Serafin rose up just far enough to see over the railing to the shore. The mirror maker was crouching before a wall of thicket. He drew something in the sand with his index finger. Then he stood up, parted the thicket with his hands, and disappeared into it.

  In a flash Serafin shook off the blankets and left the boat. He made an arc around the strange sign that Arcimboldo’s finger had left in the sand and ducked between the plants into damp dusk. He could still see Arcimboldo, a vague shape behind leaves and branches.

  After a few more steps he discovered the mirror maker’s goal. In a clearing rose the ruins of a building that looked like the pleasure palace of a Venetian nobleman. Only the foundation walls were standing now, darkly black with the burned-on soot of a fiercely hot fire that had left the mansion in rubble and ashes a long time ago. The plant world had long since begun to reconquer its kingdom: Broad fans of vines were climbing over the stones; grass was growing from the jagged tops of walls; a tree leaned out of a window opening like a skeleton with a bony arm outstretched in greeting.

  Arcimboldo approached the ruin and disappeared inside. Serafin hesitated, then hurried from his hiding place and took cover behind a wall. Crouching, he stole along it to a burned-out window opening. He carefully raised his head until he could just see over the wall.

  The inside of the ruin was an intricate labyrinth of hip-high remains of walls. An unusually large amount of stone was gone, entire walls completely toppled. The old roof tiles formed hills, from which vigorous weeds sprouted. A normal fire would never have been strong enough to cause such destruction. This looked more like the result of an explosion.

  Arcimboldo strode through the ruins and kept looking alertly around him. The thought that other people could be stopping at the island made Serafin uneasy. What if they saw him? Possibly they might then leave him marooned here, far away from all the boat routes in the middle of the lagoon.

  Arcimboldo bent and again wrote something on the ground with his finger. He turned himself around as he did so, so that the sign in the dust formed a circle. Only then did he right himself again, turning toward the center of the ruin.

  “Talamar,” he called out.

  Serafin didn’t recognize the word. It might be a name.

  “Talamar!” Arcimboldo repeated. “The wish is fulfilled, the magic worked, the agreement kept.” It sounded like a charm, like a magic spell. Serafin was trembling with excitement and curiosity.

  Then he noticed the smell of sulfur.

  “Talamar!”

  The stench was wafting over from the ruin. The source was a place that lay hidden behind the blackened stump of a wall.

  There was a hissing sound. Serafin hurried away, along the outer wall, until he came to a window that had a better view of the source of the stench.

  It was a hole in the floor, similar to a well. The edge was irregularly mounded up, like that of a crater. This is where the detonation that destroyed the building must have occurred. Serafin couldn’t make out how deep the opening was. The hissing grew louder. Something was approaching.

  Arcimboldo bowed. “Talamar,” he said once more, now a call no longer but a humble greeting.

  A spindly creature crept out of the hole on long legs. It was almost human but its joints appeared to bend into wrong angles, which gave it a dislocated, morbid appearance. It moved on all fours—and with its abdomen upward, like a child making a bridge. This made its face upside down. The creature was bald and blind. A wreath of thorny iron tendrils lay close around the eye area like a blindfold. A single spiky loop had escaped and ran crookedly over the face of the creature, straight across the toothless mouth. Where the thorns touched the lips, a broad, bulging scar had formed.

  “Mirror Maker,” the creature called Talamar whispered, and then repeated Arcimboldo’s words: “The wish is fulfilled, the magic worked, the agreement kept. At the service of Darkness forever and ever.”

  “At the service of Darkness forever and ever,” the mirror maker said also. With that, the ceremony of greeting was complete. “I am bringing the order of thirteen mirrors according to the wish of your master.”

  “He is also yours, Mirror Maker.” Despite the unclear speech, the tone of the creature sounded wary. Talamar turned himself with a complicated movement of his angled limbs until his head hung over the edge of the opening. He uttered a string of shrill sounds. In a flash a crowd of black creatures no larger than baby monkeys poured out of the sulfurous shaft. They were blind, like Talamar himself, their eye sockets empty. They bustled hurriedly away. Soon afterward Serafin heard them busy at the boat.

  “There’s bad news,” said Arcimboldo, without stepping outside the circle. “The Flowing Queen has left the lagoon. The water has lost its power. I won’t be able to produce any more mirrors until she returns.”

  “No mirrors?” shrieked Talamar, waving one of his spindly arms. “What are you babbling about, old man?”

  Arcimboldo remained calm. No single quiver betrayed any fear or unease. “You understood me, Talamar. Without the Flowing Queen in the waters of the lagoon, I can produce no more magic mirrors. The most important ingredient is missing. That means no more orders.” He sighed, his first expression of feeling in the presence of the creature. “Perhaps that won’t matter anymore anyway, whe
n the Empire takes possession of the city.”

  “The masters offered you help,” whispered Talamar. “You killed our messenger and turned down our support. You bear the responsibility for this yourselves.”

  “Not we. Only those who rule over us.” Arcimboldo’s tone became contemptuous. “Those damned councillors.”

  “Councillors! Fiddlesticks! All nonsense!” Talamar gesticulated wildly. The movements made him look still more alien, still more frightening; as always he was standing upside down on all fours. Now Serafin noticed that the creature’s heart was beating in a small glass box that was fastened to its stomach with straps—a knotty, black muscle like a pulsating heap of excrement. “Fiddlesticks! Fiddlesticks!” he kept thundering. “Mirrors must be here, more mirrors, more mirrors! So my master wishes.”

  Arcimboldo frowned. “Tell him that I would gladly do business with him. Lord Light was always a good customer.” He said it with a cynical undertone that Serafin understood very well, but Talamar didn’t notice at all. “But as long as the Flowing Queen is gone, I can produce no mirrors. Besides, the Egyptians will close my workshop—provided they leave one stone on top of another at all.”

  Talamar was getting more and more excited, beside himself. “That will not please him. Will not please him at all.”

  “Do you by any chance fear the anger of your master, Talamar?”

  “Fiddlesticks, fiddlesticks! Talamar fears nothing. But you shall fear him, Mirror Maker! You shall fear Talamar! And the anger of Lord Light!”

  “I can change nothing about that. I have done business with you so that the workshop would survive. Without your gold I must have closed it long ago. And what would have happened to the children then?” The old man shook his head sadly. “I could not let that happen.”

  “Children, children, children!” Talamar made a dismissive gesture. But then he distorted his raw lips into a grin. The steel vine over his mouth stretched and pulled the loops over his eyes tighter. “What about the children? You have done everything you were told to do?”

  Arcimboldo nodded. “I have taken the two girls into my house, as was the wish of your master.” He hesitated. Serafin could see that he was weighing whether to continue, but then he proceeded to keep Merle’s disappearance to himself.

  Talamar’s head swung forward and back. “You have fulfilled all the wishes of the master?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they are also the right girls?”

  “All was accomplished to Lord Light’s satisfaction.”

  “How can you know that? You have never met him.”

  “If it were otherwise, you would have told me, wouldn’t you, Talamar?” Arcimboldo grimaced. “It would have been a special joy to you if I were to fall into disfavor with Lord Light.”

  The creature let out a cackling laugh. “You can supply no more mirrors. The master will be angry.” Talamar considered briefly and then a horrible grin split his features. “As recompense we will collect on another contract. Earlier than planned.”

  Arcimboldo had made every effort to show no weakness before Talamar, but now he could no longer conceal his consternation. “No! It’s too early. The plan—”

  “Has been changed. Effective immediately.”

  “That lies outside your authority!”

  Talamar neared Arcimboldo until his skinny fingers almost touched the drawn circle. “My authority is Lord Light! You have no right to question it, human! You will obey, nothing else.”

  Arcimboldo’s voice suddenly sounded weak. “You want the girl?”

  Talamar giggled. “The girl with the mirror eyes. She belongs to us. You have known that from the beginning.”

  “But she was supposed to remain with us for years!”

  “The change has been initiated. That must be enough. Lord Light will take personal care of her.”

  “But—”

  “Recollect yourself, old man: At the service of Darkness forever and ever! You have sworn an oath. The wish must be fulfilled, the magic worked, the agreement kept. You break the agreement if you supply no more mirrors. For that we take the girl. And remember that sooner or later she would have fallen to us anyway.”

  “Junipa is only a child!”

  “She is the mirror girl. You have made her into that. And as far as the other is concerned—”

  “Merle.”

  “In her there is great strength. A strong will. But not so much power as in the other one. Therefore bring us the mirror girl, old man. Your creature, and soon ours.”

  Arcimboldo’s shoulders sagged. He looked at the ground. He was beaten; defeat was inescapable. Serafin felt pity for him, in spite of all he’d heard.

  The column of black monkey creatures returned. Every three bore one of the mirrors over their heads; it looked as though they were carrying fragments of the blue sky over the island. One after the other they marched into the hole, along a path that snaked down the walls of the shaft like a screw thread. Soon not a single mirror could be seen any longer. Arcimboldo and Talamar were again standing alone on the rim of the Hell hole.

  “At the service of Darkness forever and ever,” yelped the creature.

  “Forever,” whispered the mirror maker dejectedly.

  “I will await you here and receive the mirror girl. She is the most important part of the great plan. Do not disappoint us, old man.”

  Arcimboldo gave no answer. Silently he watched as Talamar crept back into the hole on his angled limbs, like a human spider. Seconds later he was gone.

  The mirror maker picked up the bundle of coins that Talamar had left on the floor and took his leave.

  Serafin was waiting for him in the boat.

  “You listened to it all?” Arcimboldo was too weak to show real surprise. Heaviness lay in his movements and his voice. His eyes showed apathy and dejection.

  Serafin nodded.

  “And—what do you think of me now?”

  “You must be a desperate man, Mirror Maker.”

  “Merle has told me of you. You are a good boy. If you knew the whole truth, you could perhaps understand me.”

  “Tell it to me.”

  Arcimboldo hesitated, then he climbed into the boat. “Possibly I shall do that.” He went past Serafin, tossed the bag of gold carelessly on the planks, and took up the oar. With tired thrusts he maneuvered the boat along the waterway in the direction of the open sea.

  Serafin sat between the empty supports for the mirrors. Small, wet footprints covered the wood.

  “Will you do it? Hand over Junipa, I mean?”

  “It’s the only way. It has to do with much more than my life.” He shook his head dejectedly. “The only way,” he repeated tonelessly.

  “What will you tell Junipa? The truth?”

  “That she is a chosen one and always was. Just like Merle—and yet in an entirely different way.”

  Serafin took a deep breath. “You have truly a lot to tell, Mirror Maker.”

  Arcimboldo held his gaze for a few seconds longer, then he looked out toward the lagoon, far away, farther still than the landscape, farther than this world.

  A gull planted itself on the railing beside Serafin and looked at him with dark eyes.

  “It has grown cool,” said the mirror maker softly.

  After a while Merle thought of the mirror again, the mirror in the pocket of her dress. While she held on to Vermithrax’s mane with one hand, she pulled it out of her pocket with the other. It had survived the flight from Venice unharmed. The mirror surface of water gleamed silvery in the late-morning light and sloshed back and forth without a single drop leaving the frame. Once a foggy flicker whizzed across it, only briefly, then was gone again. The phantom. Perhaps a creature from another world, another Venice. What would that look like? Did the people there fear the Pharaoh’s kingdom just like the inhabitants of this world? Did sunbarks there also circle in the sky like hungry raptors? And were there also a Merle, a Serafin, and a Flowing Queen there?

  “Perhaps,�
�� said the familiar voice in her head. “Who knows?”

  “Who, if not you yourself.”

  “I am only the lagoon.”

  “You know so much.”

  “And yet I possess no knowledge that reaches beyond the boundaries of this world.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Certainly.”

  Vermithrax joined in. His booming voice drowned out the rushing of his wingbeats. “Are you speaking with her? With the Queen?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s she saying?”

  “That you are the bravest lion the world has ever seen.”

  Vermithrax purred like a house cat. “That’s mighty nice of her. But you don’t have to flatter me, Merle. I owe you my freedom.”

  “You don’t owe me anything at all,” she said with a sigh, suddenly downhearted. “Without you I’d probably be dead.”

  She stuck the water mirror back in her pocket and carefully buttoned it in. A piece of another world, she thought numbly. So close to me. Perhaps Serafin was really right in what he said about the mirror pictures in the canals.

  Poor Serafin. What had become of him?

  “There ahead!” cried Vermithrax. “Left of us, to the south!”

  They had all three known that there would come a moment when they would face the military power of the Pharaoh. Yet so much had happened since they’d left the Campanile, the fears of the siege ring had become distant and diffused for Merle.

  But now it had come to the point. In a few moments they would be flying over the ring. It was still a blurry line on the horizon, but it was inching nearer and nearer.

  “I’m going to have to climb to a higher altitude,” explained Vermithrax. “The air will become thinner, so don’t be afraid if you find breathing a little difficult.”

  “I won’t be afraid.” Merle tried to give her voice a firm ring.

  The gigantic obsidian wings of the lion bore them higher and higher, until the sea beneath them became a uniform surface, without waves, without currents.