Have you ever heard of a quest that took a short time? We must heal the wizard Bechet’s world with the amethyst key. That doesn’t sound like something you can do overnight and be back for kippers in the morning.
I suppose you’re right. Is this an adventure?
I believe so.
I’ve never been on an adventure before. I think I’m looking forward to it. I just wish this cold would go away.
I think we should be ready to leave the next time the face door thing appears.
She would be ready to get this quest over with and get the throbbing compulsion out of her. The quicker it was started the sooner it would be over, and she could get back to normal; she could return to hiding from the world by reading her books. She turned a page in the book and settled down to read as the hot sun broke into her grandfather’s sick-room.
Chapter 4 Through the Door
Watch for the face of the Dimn,
Watch for the face of the Dimn,
His stare is cold,
His voice is old,
Watch for the face of the Dimn.
Anonymous, found on a rock wall
at the Falls of Wanda
If you get them hold them fast.
If they enter don’t let them pass.
If they question, if they ask,
Tell them nothing—we are just the doors.
Anthem of the Agency of Guards,
Watchers, Keepers of Keys,
Mirror Daemons and Pookas
It was on a midnight, dark and dreary. Almost midnight anyway, thought Lucy.
She lay on her bed as the rain lashed at her windowpane. It fell in great drenching sheets as if some deity had decided to sit outside with a hose. She didn’t like the thought that someone, or something, was trying to keep her awake tonight.
The compulsion spell beat in her chest, an ever-present voice just beyond hearing telling her, help the wizard’s world—save the world from the danger—make the choice—use the key—the key—the key.
She didn’t want to. It was silly. A lump of amethyst couldn’t save a world, could it?
Conscience? Are you awake?
I am always awake, Mistress Lucy. I never sleep. It is quite boring whilst you are asleep, said the voice in her head.
You know about these things better than I do, she thought, ignoring the statement. Am I waiting for something?
Yes, for the opportune moment. The moment when it is correct for you to enter.
To enter? she asked.
To enter the door to the other world, he said, exasperated.
Ah, yes, the opportune moment. Conscience?
Yes, Mistress, he said through what sounded like gritted teeth.
Is there any way of making this opportune moment occur quicker? I’m bored lying here in my clothes.
There was an audible sigh in her head. What time is it?
She pressed the illuminating button on her watch.
The dial sprang to life with an eerie blue glow like the ghost of all times past, present and future.
It’s about thirty seconds to midnight, she thought.
Well, if I were you, I’d be patient for another thirty seconds or so. Midnight is when these things happen.
Lucy got up from her bed. The springs creaked in protest at her movement. She bent, tying the laces of her trainers, and stood shouldering the backpack she’d already prepared.
She had no idea how long she might be gone, so she’d packed a variety of odds and ends. She felt she’d covered all the bases: she had her purse (sadly mostly empty), string, scissors, spare clothes, a waterproof coat, a small pair of binoculars, some tinned food, eight sausages, bread, cheese, a bottle of mineral water, a can opener, a compass she’d found in a Christmas cracker and a rather blunt but serviceable knife. If that didn’t see her through most of the troubles the world threw at her, then she didn’t know what would.
She fingered the amethyst key she wore like a pendant on its leather thong around her neck. She stared at it, holding it to her eye, letting the dim light from the street filter through it. There were little swirls of mist moving around inside of the crystal, like oil scum on water. They almost looked alive, moving with purpose in, out and around each other in some great, unfathomable dance. Lucy had no idea what they were. They were unlike anything she’d ever seen or read about before.
It’s more magic, said Conscience, with an air of authority.
Just because I don’t understand the principles doesn’t make it magic. If you don’t understand it, a television could look like magic, but it isn’t. It’s only wires and electricity and some other jiggery-pokery. It’s not magic. There is an explanation for everything. I just don’t know what it is at the moment. But, she thought to herself with a determined air; I am going to find out.
The clock ticked ever nearer to midnight—the two arms coming together like a closing rift in time and space.
Ten seconds…nine…eight.
I’m scared. I’ve never done anything like this before, she thought. I mean, I’ve been camping in the past, with the Guides, but I’ve never really been on my own like this.
Can I let you in on a little secret?
Yes.
I’ve never done anything like this before either. Shall we face it together?
Yes, together.
She almost smiled; she wasn’t alone any more. She was compelled by that darn spell, but she didn’t have to face it alone. She had a friend.
Two…one…midnight. Lucy held her breath.
Nothing happened.
The clock struck the hour’s twelve chiming notes. The breath burned in her lungs as the final twelfth chime rang and fell silent.
Still nothing happened.
I thought you said these things occurred at midnight? Lucy said, peeved at her expectations being dashed.
Well, that’s what I assumed, Conscience said, a bit defensively.
The lamp, on Lucy’s bedside table, began to rattle her name. The whole room echoed with it as the lights flickered off and on.
Lucy steeled herself. It was just her name. It was nothing to be scared about. She had been waiting for this to happen, hadn’t she? She was compelled to do it.
“All right, I get the point,” she shouted at the unknown voice. “Where’s the door now?”
“Lucy!” it rattled back.
“In the bathroom again?”
“Lucy!” was the ghostly reply.
“Oh, very helpful,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her voice.
She opened the door a crack and peered onto the landing. She could hardly make out anything in the darkness, just the faint outline of the airing cupboard and the banisters. There was no sound from her mother’s room.
Her mother couldn’t have heard the voice. Maybe it was only for Lucy to hear? It was that, or her mother was sleeping very heavily.
Lucy opened the door a tiny bit wider, stepped out cautiously and then froze. Two green eyes stared at her from the bathroom doorway. They were only two feet from the floor. She didn’t think they were the eyes of the face in the window. These eyes were colder and less human. Although, on reflection, the eyes of the thing in the window were not very human either. Could this be a goblin or a fairy? Something to take her to the—supposed—magical land where the wizard sprang from? She really wanted to meet the wizard again; he’d have a lot of explaining to do.
“Hello?” she whispered at the apparition’s eyes.
No answer came. The eyes continued to stare at her, not blinking.
“Hello?” she tried again. “Are you here to guide me?”
The answer came, “Meow.”
Lucy stared harder into the darkness and let her eyes adjust to the dim light. The creature was small and furry, and had its leg thrown out at an odd angle, and was…
“Gus? Gus, you really scared me,” she berated the cat.
What is it? asked a timid voice in her head.
Can’t you see what it is?
No, I’m hiding.
Hiding—in my brain? she asked.
I’m hiding behind your insula.
You big coward, she thought at the spell, and then as an after-thought. Conscience? Where is my insula?
It’s a part of your brain. Part of the central cortex. It integrates your autonomic information, dealing with all the things you don’t bother to think about, which is just where I want to be right now—away from your over-active imagination. Goblins and fairies and other horrors, oh my!
It’s just Gus, she thought, in a more soothing tone.
Gus? Who’s Gus? asked Conscience.
Gus is the cat. His real name’s Asparagus, but that’s such a fuss to pronounce, so we usually call him just Gus.
I’m still not coming out.
She shouted at the cat, “Shoo Gus! Go on. Get out!”
The little, ginger tabby just sat in the doorway to the bathroom, licking himself, his small skull buried indecently in his crotch.
“Get out of the way you silly, old thing.”
Gus’ small, angled head rose above his bathing duties. His pink tongue stuck out between his needle-sharp teeth, and he viewed Lucy quizzically with his bottle green eyes.
“If you don’t get out of the way, then I won’t give you a toothful of gin,” she said.
Gus turned his head to one side, got up, and, as if it was his idea all along, slunk off down the stairs.
Do you often offer your pets alcoholic beverages as rewards for doing your bidding? asked Conscience.
No, she admitted. It seemed like the thing to say, and he did leave.
Well, that was very strange. Bits of your brain lit up that shouldn’t have done when you did that. So…try not to do it again.
Lucy stepped forward cautiously and entered the tiny bathroom. The tiles, that should have been a happy sky blue colour, were now grey in the small amount of light coming in through the window. The room smelled of mint, disinfectant and a very faint trace of sulphur, as if a firework had exploded in it a week ago. It was deathly quiet; the only sound was an inconstant drip-drip-plop from a leaking faucet.
“Hello? Is there anybody here from…err…that other place?” asked Lucy, hesitation in her voice.
There was only silence as a reply.
“Come on. Anybody? You must be here somewhere.” She was annoyed. They’d kept her awake all night, so she could enter this new world, and now they were playing hide and seek?
“Lucy!” the tap rattled.
“Ah, there you are,” said Lucy turning to address the chrome tap. “Now, what I want is for you to let me into this world on the other side…so to speak.” Damn, that sounded better in her head.
There was a very deep, loud “bang,” the kind usually preceded by lightning. The bathroom shook with the force of it. Lucy lost her footing on the mat as it skidded around the now moving room. She hit the floor with a bone shuddering crash. Her backpack dug into her, and her shoulder screamed in pain as she twisted on it.
She looked up from her prone position.
The leering face appeared again, this time in the bathroom mirror. Its piercing eyes shone out from the flat mirror surface like train headlights in a tunnel.
Lucy grabbed the bath tub and hauled herself upright.
“Don’t do that again, or I’ll hurt you.”
“Lucy!” it boomed, shaking all the bulbs in all the lights in the house.
“This is your last warning. Are you going to start talking properly or not? I know you can.”
“Lucy!” The word tore through the house like a demented poltergeist rattling all the windows and causing a car alarm two streets away to go off.
“Right. I warned you.”
Lucy stepped forward, grabbed the edges of the bathroom mirror, wrenched it from the wall and shook it.
The face pitched from one edge to the other, banging into the sides with a wet smacking sound.
“Owww, stop it. That hurts,” said the face in its own squeaky voice. “Come on, you’ll make me sea sick.”
Lucy stopped shaking the mirror and replaced it on its fitting.
“There, now that you’ve decided to talk to me instead of rattling the furniture we can have a proper conversation,” said Lucy, glowing with her small victory.
“It ain’t my fault, you know?” said the face, “I ’ave to do these things proper like. All the banging and crashing, do you think I like it? ’Corse I don’t. Gives me a headache, don’t it? But I have to obey the rules; otherwise all the forms I fill out at the end will all be wrong, see?”
“Forms?” she asked.
“You know, official stuff. Forms for the Agency of Guards, Watchers, Keepers of Keys, Mirror Daemons and Pookas. They get strict about these things.”
“And which one of those are you?”
“Me? I’m a Mirror Daemon.” It smiled.
“And cockney?”
“Well, it’s where I hangs out most often, London. I was in Buck Palace the other day, and you’ll never guess what, I scared the pants off the Duke of Edinburgh. There he was going to get a book and…”
“Right, I get it,” interrupted Lucy. “And your name is?”
“Quiziquoozelquotzelabub.”
“Quizi…Quotzi. Oh never mind. Can’t you just lie on the forms? I mean, no one will notice, will they? Come on, just let me in through this doorway quietly, please?”
“But these things have to be done proper,” whined the daemon.
“No more loud bangs! You’ll wake my mum up and then there will be an awful lot of explaining to do. And I’ll make you do it!”
“All right, all right, no more loud bangs. Well,” the daemon gave a sheepish look, “there might have to be one more loud bang. You know, to actually open the door. There ain’t much I can do about that one, you see?”
“Very well, Quizi…Quotzi…whatever your name is, but can we try to make it a “quiet,” loud bang?”
“Define a “quiet,” loud bang, please?”
Lucy sighed. “Just do it,” she said.
A final explosive bang shook the windows, rattled the floor, made the shampoo bottle fall into the bath and caused several dogs to start barking around the neighbourhood.
The face disappeared as if into a haze of fog. The mirror’s surface altered. It rippled like water on a pond. Several concentric circles appeared on it as if a droplet of water had just broken the static tension on the surface.
The compulsion spell in Lucy’s chest beat faster, demanding that she go through. Lucy’s emotions responded to the spell’s wants. Her heart cried, pleading, begging for her to help the wizard’s world.
Lucy stretched out a finger and touched the surface of the mirror. It was very cold, like touching ice, but it yielded to her questing finger. The freezing sensation crawled up her finger, over her hand and arm, causing the spell in her chest to leap with joy at the beginning of the quest.
I’m having second thoughts about this, said Conscience, still behind her insula.
Too late now—besides, we don’t really get a choice. We have to do it.
The mirror’s surface became a sticky liquid as if it were a mixture of steel and treacle. The mire congealed around her finger working its way up over her hand like a spider crawling on a pane of glass. She took a sharp breath as the painful, ice-liquid slid over her.
This must be what it’s like to drown in a frozen lake, she thought, as the mirror closed over her head.
I wouldn’t know, said Conscience.
Shut up! You really are not a lot of use at the moment, she thought, as the mirror snapped shut.
~
It was bright, almost too bright for Lucy to see anything, like the inside of a lit bulb. Her eyes made the slow adjustment to the newfound glare. She was in a corridor made of mirrors. The light was the reflection from a single candle, reflected and magnified to infinity. It was held, on a rather grubby candle stick, by the Mirror Daemon who stood in front of her.
Quiziquoozelquotzelabub was short
er than Lucy would have imagined, but he was impressive none the less. Made entirely of glass shards connected by strands of blue fire, he stood just three feet tall from his crystalline toes to his long reflective ears. His face was still pinched and malicious looking, but Lucy could now see that it wasn’t his fault. He was merely constructed that way, the same way that all cows look stupid and all small birds look quizzical. Mirror Daemons simply looked sharp and leering.
He raised the candle and bowed low to Lucy so that his hooked, glassy sliver of a nose almost scraped the floor.
“You’re the Lady Lucy, ain’t ya, cheeky face?” he said in a voice that sounded like breaking glass.
“And you,” said Lucy, “you must be Quizzi…Quotzi… I’m going to call you Q. Is that all right?”
“I got no problems with that, Lady Lucy. Sometimes, I can’t pronounce it myself. Why my mum couldn’t call me something easy like Azrael, I’ll never know.”
Lucy looked around. The mirror corridor was long; at least, she thought it might be long. It was difficult to tell with all the reflections.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“You’re in the Mirror Realm, ain’t you? The worlds’ reflection—the companion of the worlds—this is the world between worlds. Come on, before the Dimn knows you’re here,” said the little daemon as he beckoned her down the corridor.
“I don’t understand,” she said, striding after the scampering Mirror Daemon, “what is a world between worlds? I thought a world was a world.”
“Well, that shows what you know, don’t it? Let’s explain this so you can understand. Think of this world like a hallway in a hotel. Right? All the rooms are worlds like yours. The hallway is still there; it’s not a room. It’s what adjoins the rooms, see? It still exists, but it’s not a room as such. Get it?” he chinked.
“Not really,” she said. “Hallways are still rooms.”
“Well…this is not a room, is it?” said Q, a little flustered, “It’s a world between worlds. You know, your arguing with people is probably the reason you don’t have any friends? Hurry, before the Dimn finds you.”
“The Dimn? Who’s the Dimn?”
The Dimn? We don’t want him to find us! said Conscience, as she felt him quiver in her brain.
Ravens and Writing Desks Page 4