by Carmen Caine
We had to get out, and it had to be now.
Taking up my tether, I spun around to face Jareth and Rafael who were still strangely standing there, stunned.
I hurriedly tried to poke the fine line of the tether through the little hole in the stone, in order to form a closed loop, but my fingers were shaking so badly, I might as well have been trying to thread a needle with a rope.
The approaching footsteps grew louder, and I glanced back at the sopping wet Protectors in the courtyard. They were flopping and flailing helplessly in the courtyard, deluged with waves of water as they covered their faces with their arms and attempted to fend off the twelve-foot kitty’s attack.
It was then that I saw the door to the Hall of Mirrors.
It was unprotected.
The decision was easy.
Grabbing Rafael and Jareth’s hands, I darted across the courtyard. I was a few yards from the door when even more Protectors poured into the courtyard from all directions, and I froze like a deer in the headlights.
But then Rafael jerked his arm out of my grasp. Holding out his hand, he spoke a single word, and the door to the great Hall of Mirrors flew open. A moment later, were all inside with the door slamming shut behind us.
We stood there, breathing heavily, listening to the shouts reverberating outside.
“What was that thing?” Jareth made a strangled sound.
“I’m not sure,” Rafael whispered, shaking his head, clearly puzzled. “What manner of beast was that, Sydney?”
I drew a long, wavering breath. Apparently, they’d never seen Hello Kitty before. I didn’t have the energy to explain. Instead, I gave a nervous twitter of a laugh and said, “I’m glad it wasn’t a real gun. I’d have felt horrible if someone had really gotten injured or something.”
“You did that?” Jareth asked in outright astonishment. “With all that water out there, they’ll be drunk in seconds!”
I blinked. I’d forgotten that water could render a Fae drunk almost instantly. That is, if they didn’t neutralize its effect with Equal. Fervently, I hoped the Protectors weren’t in the habit of carrying the sugar substitute around.
After a time, I noticed Rafael watching me mysteriously from beneath lowered lids, and I could have sworn I saw a flash of admiration.
Tilting his head my direction, he said, “Brilliantly done, Sydney. You’ve bought us some time, but we must hurry. They know we’re here now. Let’s consult the mirrors while we may and find the answers to our questions while we still can!”
He pointed behind me.
Thrilling with anticipation, I pivoted on my heel to inspect the great, forbidden Hall of Mirrors.
It was everything I thought it would be and more.
Breathtakingly beautiful, spacious, and brightly lit, it reminded me of a cathedral, with its enormous domed ceiling and marble-tiled steps leading down to a large, recessed area in the center of the hall.
But it wasn’t the magnificent building that enthralled me the most.
It was the mirrors.
In the very center of the hall were two mirrors hovering above the floor without any visible form of support. And they were monstrous; at least six times the size of any IMAX screen I’d ever seen. Framing each of the massive mirrors was a pure gold border that seemed to glow with a life of its own.
“The Mirrors of Destiny … mirrors so pure, so pristine, facing each other to record into infinity,” Rafael whispered in reverent tones.
Even Jareth seemed subdued.
We all just stood there in awe.
Jareth was the first to move. Without a word, he made a beeline for the mirrors.
‘Wait!” Rafael called, lunging forward as if to stop him.
As they both broke out into a run, I quickly sprinted after them.
I wasn’t about to chance a Protector—drunk or not—all by myself.
We all arrived in the center of the hall at the same time.
The response was immediate.
A gong sounded, rumbling through the floor and up to the high-domed ceiling as the surface of each mirror ignited into life.
Images exploded in rapid succession, so jumbled I couldn’t make sense of them at first. It was like standing a few feet away from a movie screen that was trying to play three films at once.
I was overwhelmed by a falling sensation, and something began pulling me down. Every inch of me felt extremely heavy as if I weighed a ton.
I must have pitched forward because I was suddenly aware of Rafael’s strong arm locked around my waist, pulling me back. He was shouting, but his voice sounded miles away. “You can’t touch the mirrors, Sydney!”
I couldn’t keep my balance. I didn’t understand what was going on. I just stood there, hanging onto him desperately, my eyes glued to the mirrors, unable to look away.
A thick black line appeared along the top edge of each mirror, morphing into a series of long, vertical strings. The black strings began falling down the surface of the mirror, looking very much like someone had just dumped a can of black paint from the top.
The gong sound was growing louder.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Rafael’s mouth moving, and I felt his chest rumbling against my back. But I could no longer hear his words.
Everything went silent all at once.
“—get her out of here! I’ve never seen the mirrors act like this!” Rafael was shouting.
Then he froze.
The mirrors sparkled, and one of the black strings widened, turning into a thin, lanky man, dressed in a tuxedo. Shading his entire face was a tall, black top hat. He stood in midair as a doorway appeared next to him, opening into utter darkness.
He began beckoning to someone, or something in the void yawning beside him.
Forms began running into view and into the door, shapes of lizards walking upright like men. They had long tails, clawed feet, and their skin was covered with black, shining scales, much like the ones I’d seen on Jareth. And some had horned ridges above their golden eyes.
I knew they could only be the lizard people, and they were clearly unhappy at being forced through the door by the man in the hat.
One particularly gruesome, oily, and strangely familiar lizard loomed large on the mirror. It took me a moment to recognize him as the one I’d seen lounging on the cliff attached to Marquis by a cord of light.
The lizard paused on the threshold and lifted his lip at the man before boldly stepping forward to disappear into the inky darkness that awaited him.
Then the mirrors went blank, but only for a moment.
This time, a pillar of light appeared, an incredibly beautiful column of light holding an immense, undeniable power.
I didn’t know what it was, but I wanted to touch it.
The lizards appeared again. Hoards of them crowded around this beam, their forked tongues flickering out as if to taste it. As they did so, small white strands separated from the pillar like pieces of spaghetti, but they were no longer beautiful. As they separated, they became corrupt, changing into something creepy and disgusting.
The lizards threw their heads back and gave shrill cries before chasing the spaghetti strands of light. Catching them, they swallowed them whole and flew off to the red cliffs. After a few moments, their stomachs began to glow, growing brighter and brighter until a beam of light erupted, shooting out into the void.
I gasped, recognizing the cords of light. But they looked repulsive now, like some invasive overgrown parasite with an evil intent. Creeping away from the lizards, the strands of light slithered back to the pillar and burrowing into it, traveled through it like a tunnel to come out the other end, arriving in a familiar place.
It was Avalon.
We watched in horror, following the trail of a single cord as it slipped through masses of shadowy beings and began its search, pausing and sniffing a potential victim, someone clearly unaware of the danger lurking near them.
Several times, the cord tried to climb up a shadowy form,
and each time it got knocked down until finally, it stopped in front of a foot wearing a diamond encrusted and distinctly feminine slipper.
The cord shivered in excitement, and one end began to widen, growing into a form startling similar to the chupacabra, but covered in heavy, black scales. This new shape twisted up its victim’s leg, all the while hissing in a low voice.
It wasn’t clear just how much the victim was aware of the parasite now whispering in her ear.
A significant amount of time passed, ending each time with the chupacabra crawling up further.
Apparently, it was a slow dance of acceptance as a relationship developed. The victim’s consent was clearly required.
Finally, the cord of light got what it wanted. On the mirror, the victim’s face grew sharper into focus as the chupacabra-form shimmered back into a cord of light to suddenly rear up like a cobra, split into two strands, and dive straight into the victim’s eyes, burrowing through them to disappear entirely into its new host’s body.
At my side, Rafael choked.
“Morgan le Fae?” Jareth cried in a strangled voice. “The Great Queen Morgan?”
I watched curiously as the victim’s face filled the mirror.
I’d heard her name before. She was a popular character in Arthurian legends. Queen Morgan le Fae was gorgeous, possessing porcelain skin, ruby red lips, and a wealth of golden hair intricately woven through a golden tiara.
But the image on the mirror revealed that her compelling blue eyes had another pair flickering beneath them, eyes with reptilian, vertical slits.
She stood there, tall, slim, and with laughter wrinkling her upturned nose. But at times, when she was alone, her tongue forked and her skin shimmered black with scales.
A series of images floated around her, images of the Fae designing and constructing the Glass Wall. She oversaw every detail of its creation, walking as the Queen of the Fae but all the while holding inside her the dark, grinning lizard.
There was a big hoopla when the wall was finished. She stood at the base of it, giving speeches of how the Fae were now thoroughly protecting humanity and how the wall was sacred, never to be destroyed.
But the Glass Wall had scarcely been finished before creeping cords of light tunneled through the pillar again, and even as Morgan Le Fae stood there, rousing the masses with the glory of their cause, the cords of light began spreading to Earth to take possession of humans, beginning with the kings and queens of Europe. As time accelerated, they appeared to control many government officials and more than one Wall Street banker.
I gasped as the realization struck me.
The Glass Wall had been built by the lizard people.
Morgan Le Fae had built it so that they could infiltrate Earth.
It was hard to fathom.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Jareth running his hand over his face, reminding me that only a short time ago those very same black scales had appeared on his skin.
Was he possessed by a lizard, too?
Marquis hadn’t seemed to think so.
What did it all mean?
The mirror went dark, and a new scene appeared.
A slender, light-haired male Fae was walking down a darkened corridor. I couldn’t quite make out his face, but he seemed strikingly familiar.
Suddenly, a white-cloaked form stepped out of the shadows to plunge what looked like a needle into the back of his neck. And as the male collapsed unconscious to the floor, the mirror zoomed to focus on a particularly distinctive golden-eyed snake ring circling his finger, and the white-cloaked figure stepped away.
The cloak fell back a little, revealing a slender, distinctly female hand.
The scene changed, focusing on the cloaked figure, this time in the desert, trapping rattlesnakes and mangy coyotes. The figure appeared to be hauling them off to some kind of lab to run experiments on them.
Again, the mirror flickered, this time showing the mysteriously cloaked form plunging the needle into new victims: humans, Fae, snakes, and even armadillos.
More time passed, and the mirror zoomed in on the figure moving undetected through Fae towers until it finally stopped to hover over a sleeping Fae female with dark hair. After hurriedly pressing a needle against her arm, the white-cloaked form returned to the lab in the desert and continued experimenting on caged creatures that I began to recognize.
The chupacabra.
I caught my breath.
A Fae had created the chupacabras?
I didn’t see any cord of light attached to this Fae, whoever it was. It didn’t make sense.
The Fae female with the dark hair appeared on the mirror again.
She was smiling, resting her hand protectively over an unborn child. Clearly, she was excited about an impending birth, as all of the Dark Fae. Parties were planned, songs written, and special garments made.
The mirror then showed that the day had arrived. And the Dark Fae gathered around to hear the joyous news that, indeed, the new Fae mother and her newborn son slept peacefully together. The Dark Fae danced outside her tower till the dawn of the two moons.
But then the white-cloaked form appeared again, standing over the sleeping mother and her infant, and suddenly, the image faded. But when the scene returned, the mother slept fitfully, distressed and alone.
Meanwhile, images appeared in rapid succession, images of the white-cloaked form and the crying baby boy together in the lab. And terrible, horrific experiments were done upon the child that my tears fell freely when I saw them. As we watched, the baby grew older.
Finally, the mirror concentrated on the boy, now a dark-haired toddler being dressed in white clothing. And he was left by the white-cloaked form before the doors of some kind of Fae training academy. As he was carried inside, the scene began to look startlingly familiar. The toddler crawled to stand at the end of a long line of children practicing martial arts, and we all gasped.
It was the scene that had played over and over again on Rafael’s mirror.
The baby who’d been taken from his mother by the evil, white-cloaked form was Jareth!
My mouth dropped open.
Jareth’s face drained of all color.
A new image appeared on the mirror, and my mouth opened even wider.
It was me.
I was trapped in a life-sized Coke bottle, screaming and shouting while banging on the sides trying to break free. Suddenly, the bottle shattered.
The mirrors went black, and the floor began to vibrate.
It took us all a little too long to realize what was happening.
Rafael was the first one to figure it out.
“We’ve been discovered!” he shouted, whirling me around to face him. “Where’s your tether, Sydney?”
But I couldn’t move. I felt as if I was made of lead, and I realized I had no control over my body. I couldn’t even lift a finger.
Panic flooded through me. Around me the mirrors flickered and began to shake.
“They’re almost here!” Rafael gave up on me and instead whirled to slap Jareth across the face. “Wake up, Jareth! We need your tether and we need it now!”
Jareth blinked, stepping back.
In slow, lethargic movements, he fumbled for the tether, nearly dropping it.
Growling in frustration, Rafael snatched it from his fingers. Looping the two ends together, he slipped his arm around my waist and reached for Jareth.
Several things happened at once.
First, the door burst open, revealing at least a dozen Protectors with trions trained straight at us.
Second, the mirrors flashed into life, showing two images at once. One of Jareth writhing in pain as dark scales consumed every inch of his flesh and another of a white-clad Rafael standing in the Hall of Mirrors, as a white-cloaked figure placed an elaborately decorated Venetian mask over his face, a mask emblazoned with the symbol that I’d seen on the Fae woman’s hand: the elaborate Celtic circle with a more simple one inside it.
And third, I
caught a glimpse of Rafael’s fingers clenched over Jareth’s wrist just as he slid his hand through the tether.
And then everything went dark.
Chapter Twelve – Home Again, Home Again
I felt completely weightless, like I was floating in space.
I couldn’t feel Rafael or Jareth, but I somehow knew they were there.
Time didn’t seem to exist. It could have been only a few seconds, or it could have been hours before I was rolling on the ground in a tangle of arms and legs and muffled curses.
It was dark, wet, and cold.
It took my eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness surrounding me, allowing me to perceive the dim outline of monolithic stones rising around me, huge shapes illuminated by the anemic light of the moon.
I squinted in confusion.
Those stones looked familiar, but then I noticed I was getting sopping wet, and I discovered we’d landed in a pile of half-melted snow.
Next to me, Jareth sprawled on his stomach with his head buried in his arms. “Tethers make me so sick,” he groaned to no one in particular.
Hope flooded through me. “Did we make it?” I asked, shaking his arm excitedly.
He didn’t even lift his head. “You’re here, aren’t you?” he snapped waspishly in reply.
I was thrilled. We’d made it back to Earth!
Suddenly, Rafael towered over me, reaching down to offer me a hand and lifting me easily to my feet.
Giddy that we were safe, I threw my arms around his neck. “We made it back!” I said, knowing I was grinning like a fool.
Even in the low light, I could see amusement in his eyes. “Yes, little pixie.” He laughed a little in my ear. “You’ve returned safely home. You should know that I’ll always see you safe.”
I just stood there, hugging him, and then I realized that I was hugging him.
But I really didn’t care, and I definitely didn’t want to stop.
I stayed where I was, staring up into his enigmatic gray eyes outlined with outlandish make-up and thinking that he was not only incredibly handsome, he was also incredibly trustworthy as well. He’d brought me back to Earth.
Actually, now that I thought about it, he was pretty incredible all around.