Mirror Magic

by Claire Fayers

  Ava tossed her head and sniffed. ‘Nobody is completely ordinary. The Book chose you – that’s got to mean something.’

  Maybe it did mean something, but Howell didn’t know what. He didn’t feel any more magical because The Book had chosen him.

  Lunette moved hats aside and reached for her bag. ‘Would you like a Sunday hat, Howell? Humans dress up on Sundays – it’s the tradition.’

  Howell tried to tug his shirt straight. If humans cared less about what things looked like and more about how things actually were, their world might be very different, he thought.

  He walked to the window and looked out. The morning was bright and there was even a thread of mist twisting across the garden, shimmering where the sunlight glanced off it. He stretched his arms, easing the stiffness out of his shoulders. He was in the human world – this ought to be an adventure.

  He turned back to the table. Ava had promised breakfast, but she was opening The Book instead.

  Where were you? You’re supposed to be my guardians. All sorts of bad things are or will be happening, and my guardians only care about hats and breakfast.

  ‘We’re here now, aren’t we?’ Howell said. ‘If Ava and I are your guardians, you ought to explain what’s going on. Why is Mr Bones after you?’

  ‘And what about Lord Skinner?’ Ava added. ‘Why did Lord Skinner invite Matthew and me back to Wyse?’

  I told you, I don’t do the past.

  Howell rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘All right. What if we investigate? Suppose we do it very carefully and find out exactly what’s going on here. What will we learn?’

  The Book was still for a moment. The first Sherlock Holmes story will be written in 1887. Mr Bones knows where you are. You’ll have to wait until 1897 for Dracula, but you’ll have Jekyll and Hyde by 1886. What is written must come to pass.

  ‘I think it means it can’t tell you,’ Lunette said. ‘Either that or it’s going wrong again.’

  I am quite well, thank you. You’re not listening. It’s this world that is going wrong. It’s forgotten what it’s like to have magic.

  The words faded.

  Howell sat and stared at the blank page. He didn’t know what ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ was, but What is written must come to pass – those were the last words of the covenant.

  Lunette patted him on the shoulder. ‘We’ll be safe here while we work it out. As I said, I’ve never known Mr Bones to leave Unwyse. He won’t find us here.’

  Mr Bones might be the least of their worries right now, Howell thought. He leaned his elbows on the table either side of The Book.

  ‘Book,’ he said again, ‘why does Mr Bones want you?’

  The Book didn’t respond.

  ‘Breakfast,’ Matthew said, ‘and then church. We’ll discuss all this later.’

  They’d have to discuss loads of things later, Howell thought, such as what in the Unworld were they going to do?

  The church pews were crowded that morning, almost the whole town whispering about the Unworld. Mr Footer was absent, though, Ava noticed – and so was Lord Skinner. His pew stood noticeably empty at the front.

  Charles waved at Ava as the Brunels came in, and mouthed something at her, which she couldn’t make out. She waved back, wishing the service was over already so they could talk. They needed a plan.

  She fidgeted through the sermon, barely hearing a word.

  Where was Lord Skinner this morning? In hiding? That didn’t seem likely. The man was a complete mystery, Ava thought. He lived alone, he’d never mentioned any family or anything about his life.

  Actually, there was something. Ava sat up straighter. That very first evening she and Matthew had dined with him, he’d told them Waning Crescent had once been a museum to magic and when he’d ‘moved back’ he’d decided to keep all the mirrors as a reminder. He’d moved back – which meant he’d lived here once before. Maybe his whole family had come from Wyse originally.

  The chords of the final hymn made Ava jump. She scrambled for her hymn book, almost dropping it in her haste. That was odd – the book was bright green. Hadn’t it been brown a moment ago?

  Then a bird burst out of the flower arrangement at the front of the church, swooped over the heads of the startled congregation and flew out of the door.

  ‘Must have been sleeping right through my sermon,’ Reverend Stowe joked, but his laughter sounded forced and he edged away from the flowers as if they’d become poisonous.

  The moment the service finished, people streamed out of the church, pushing one another in their haste.

  ‘Everyone’s talking about Fair Folk,’ Charles said, making his way across to join Ava. ‘They all think we’re under attack.’

  ‘That’s silly. Nothing’s happened yet.’

  ‘It doesn’t take much to get people gossiping,’ Charles said.

  Reverend Stowe shook hands with them at the door. ‘It’s nice to see you’re making friends.’ He leaned closer and added in a whisper, ‘I hear there was some excitement last night.’

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ Matthew said, his hand on Ava’s back.

  She dug her heels into the mat.

  ‘Actually, Reverend Stowe,’ she said, ‘you might be able to help. Somebody said Lord Skinner came from Wyse originally and moved away before coming back here. Is that true?’

  Reverend Stowe gave her a confused smile. ‘I believe it is. I couldn’t say for sure, however. As I said, I’ve only been in Wyse a few years myself.’

  Fortunately, they didn’t have to rely on Reverend Stowe’s memory. ‘Does the church have family records?’ Ava asked. She glanced at Charles and saw him nodding. ‘Maybe we could take a look this afternoon.’

  CHAPTER 18

  British people always talk about the weather. They always have and they always will. They’re never satisfied, either. It’s either too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry or too windy. I have no idea why they do this. Maybe it distracts them from more important considerations, such as the fact that the world is quite possibly doomed.

  The Book

  The weather felt wrong that afternoon, more autumn than summer. Little strands of mist curled around the house and drifted in through the door when Ava opened it to let Charles in, and the air outside smelled of apples, as if someone was baking a pie.

  Howell wore a flat cap similar to Charles’s except he kept his low over his ears, and Lunette had chosen a giant, floppy creation covered in spiky, bright green net.

  ‘I’d still prefer it if you and Howell stayed in the house,’ Matthew said.

  Lunette tucked her hand through his arm. ‘Nonsense. We’ll be far safer with you, and we want to help.’

  Matthew’s cheeks turned pink. ‘Um. Well, yes, I suppose . . .’

  Ava grinned to see him flustered.

  ‘If anyone asks,’ Matthew said, ‘and they won’t because we’re all British here and far too polite, you’re my cousins, visiting from Cambridgeshire. If they want to know what it’s like there, say that it rains a lot.’

  The sound of organ music greeted them as they made their way between gravestones to the church doors.

  ‘Reverend Stowe practises when no one is around,’ Charles said, wincing at a thunderous series of wrong notes. He banged on the door, then opened it without waiting for an answer.

  The organ stopped, mercifully, and Reverend Stowe came hurrying to meet them a moment later.

  ‘Hello,’ Matthew said. ‘I’ve brought my cousins – from Cambridge.’

  The reverend paused when he saw Lunette and Howell. Lunette raised her hand in a wave.

  ‘Cambridge, yes of course,’ Reverend Stowe said, rubbing his forehead. ‘We’re all cousins in one sense. Do come on in. I’m sorry not to have seen you at the service this morning. I see you’ve brought your dog too.’

  Ava picked Mrs Footer up. ‘I’m sorry. We couldn’t leave her in the house. She gets . . . um, lonely.’

  Reverend Stowe scratched his head. ‘There’s a saying
,’ he said eventually. ‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies. I wouldn’t want anyone to have to lie in a house of God.’ He clapped his hands, suddenly brisk and businesslike. ‘So, you want to see the parish records. Births, marriages, deaths, that sort of thing. We have records going back several hundred years in the church office. I’ll just leave you alone with the books while I make some tea, shall I?’

  ‘Why do people keep wanting to make tea?’ Howell asked after Reverend Stowe had bustled away, leaving them in the office with a stack of dusty books, a tea tray and an open tin of biscuits. ‘It doesn’t even taste nice.’

  Ava took the first book off the pile. ‘It’s polite, and it makes us feel useful when we don’t know what else to do.’ She remembered what that was like from the weeks after her parents’ death. She’d lost count of the cups of tea she’d made then.

  ‘Ava, you can pour the tea,’ Charles instructed. ‘Everyone take a book each. Start with the newest ones and work back. We’re looking for any reference to the Skinner family.’

  Ava slapped her book back down. It had been her idea to come here, not Charles’s, and now he was taking over.

  Howell looked up at her and grimaced to show he understood, but Charles already had his head in a book and didn’t notice.

  ‘It doesn’t matter who does what,’ Lunette said quietly. ‘We’re a team.’

  Ava didn’t remember agreeing to be on a team with Charles, but for the next hour they all read in near silence. Matthew skimmed through pages, running his finger down each column. Howell and Lunette read more slowly, and Charles would have been quicker, but he kept looking over their shoulders to see if they’d found anything.

  Ava mouthed some of the names as she read. Footer, Brown, Jones, Cowden. But not a single Skinner.

  Three full pots of tea later, they’d gone through all the registers and they’d found nothing. Ava sighed as she stacked the registers back in the cupboard.

  ‘It was a good idea,’ Charles said.

  ‘I know it was a good idea. A whole family couldn’t live here and not have anyone get married or have children.’

  ‘Or die,’ Charles said.

  Ava froze with her hand on the last book. ‘Charles, you’re a genius.’

  Reverend Stowe was playing the organ again when they left. He paused to walk them to the door. The churchyard looked more autumnal than ever with threads of mist weaving between the gravestones. Ava wrapped her arms round herself and shivered as a cold breeze caught her.

  ‘May we look around the churchyard on the way out?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Reverend Stowe loitered in the doorway, looking at Lunette and Howell as if he wanted to say something, but didn’t know where to start. ‘Some people fear the unknown,’ he said at last. ‘But in the end it’s always better to be shaped by our kindness than our fear.’ He shook hands with Lunette. ‘I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay and get home safely. To Cambridgeshire, I mean, of course.’

  ‘Why was he helping us?’ Howell asked Ava.

  She adjusted her coat and wrapped Mrs Footer’s lead back round her hand. ‘I don’t know. I think he’s just a nice man.’ She headed down the path between the gravestones, pausing to look at each one. She was still irritated at Charles taking over the investigation. ‘Sometimes, people are nice in this world.’

  ‘I didn’t say they weren’t.’

  His voice cracked on the last word. ‘What’s wrong?’ Ava asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ He sat down heavily on a gravestone. ‘You saw the skeleton, didn’t you? It was horrible. What if it goes after Master Tudur? He hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s probably worrying about me right now. I was happy enough working in the House of Forgotten Mirrors. It wasn’t the best job, but it was better than Waxing Gibbous. And now I’m stuck here in your world with no idea what’s happening back home. I don’t even know whether it’ll ever be safe to return.’

  It was the most Ava had heard him say in one go. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think.’ She really hadn’t. She’d thought it was bad moving from Cambridgeshire to Wyse, but at least she was in the same world.

  ‘You’ll go back,’ she said. ‘We’ll find out what’s going on, we’ll save the covenant and the two worlds.’

  Saving the covenant, however, didn’t seem the best thing for the Unworld when it meant they had to keep producing enchantments for the human world.

  ‘Ava,’ Charles called.

  She waved to show she’d heard him. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said to Howell. ‘We’ll sort all this out.’

  Howell raised his head. ‘How?’

  Ava didn’t know what to say to that. Fortunately, Charles shouted again.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, and hurried across, towing Mrs Footer behind.

  A red frog hopped across the path, followed by a squirrel – at least, Ava thought it was a squirrel. It moved too quickly and all she saw was the tip of an orange tail vanishing up a tree. A bird shrieked, sounding almost human.

  Charles stood in front of a gravestone so old that the writing was barely legible. The other stones in this patch were all overgrown and covered with moss, but this stone was clean, the grass around it was neatly trimmed. And a small vase of white flowers stood in front of it.

  Ava crouched to read the inscription.

  Mr Ephraim Skinner

  1562–1602

  And his wife Abigail

  1570–1602

  Much loved father and mother

  Mr Skinner, not Lord Skinner.

  ‘Lord Skinner’s first name is Ephraim, isn’t it?’ she said. She sat back on her heels, gazing at the cold stone.

  ‘They both died young,’ Lunette said. ‘Poor things.’

  Younger than her own parents, Ava thought, and so long ago that the dates were almost meaningless to her – but not meaningless to whoever tended this grave. She bent to look closer at the writing beneath the two names and a shock of cold went through her. Usually, gravestones had some verse from the Bible. This one had a verse, but she was sure it didn’t come from the Bible.

  When you’re angry, when you’re sad,

  Put it in the mirror and you won’t feel so bad.

  CHAPTER 19

  Is anyone even listening to me? No? Didn’t think so.

  Park Road, Wyse. Mist brushes across a flower bed and all the roses turn bright green.

  New Theatre Street. A cat tears down the street at high speed, followed by another. And another. And another. Cats can usually tell when something is wrong.

  Really, you need to start paying attention.

  The Book

  They walked back along the main streets. Being Sunday, all the shops were shut, and only a few groups of holidaymakers were strolling, complaining about the weather. Mist in July when it should have been bright sunshine.

  Ava paused to let Mrs Footer sniff a lamp post. ‘When you’re angry, when you’re sad . . . I’d never heard of that poem before we came to Wyse,’ she said, ‘now it seems to be everywhere.’

  ‘It’s an odd choice for a gravestone,’ Charles agreed. He wrote as he walked, and occasionally stopped to pick something up from the ground and examine it before throwing it away. ‘The stone said father and mother. That means there must have been children. I wonder what happened to them?’

  Ava stepped to one side to avoid a group of ladies in a shimmering rainbow of dresses. Matthew raised his hat to them.

  ‘We’re visiting from Cambridge,’ Lunette said brightly. ‘It rains a lot.’

  The ladies gave her odd looks and walked on.

  Lunette stopped outside a shop window. ‘I never knew people needed so many teapots and tiny mirrors.’

  ‘They don’t,’ Charles said, stopping beside her. ‘Holidaymakers buy them because they’re enchanted. But, of course, magic only works in Wyse, so, as soon as they leave, their souvenirs go back to being ordinary teapots and mirrors.’

  ‘If they’re lucky,’ Howell said. ‘We use all sorts of ru
bbish in our enchanted goods. Roses from dead leaves, food made from . . .’ He broke off with a quick grimace. ‘No, you probably don’t want to know how enchanted food is made.’ He studied the window, frowning. ‘Charles, Ava, how many of these shops do you have?’

  Charles counted on his fingers. ‘Eight. Nine if you count the tourist information office.’

  ‘That can’t be right.’ Howell stared closer at the window. ‘We make enchantments by the thousand in Waxing Gibbous. Where do they all go, if they don’t come to your shops?’

  ‘They don’t go anywhere else,’ Charles sighed. ‘Like I said, enchantments don’t work outside Wyse.’

  Ava watched her breath turn to mist on the shop window. ‘But if you’re making all those enchantments in Unwyse, and only a small number make it into the shops here . . .’

  ‘What’s happening to the rest of them?’ finished Matthew.

  They were no closer to finding answers the next morning as Ava prepared to go to the Footers’ house to work. She dressed slowly, her stomach churning with nerves at the thought of facing Mr Footer. Worse still, though, was the prospect of Matthew going to Waning Crescent. When she thought of him alone with Lord Skinner, her skin crawled.

  ‘Any advice, Book?’ she asked.

  A few pale words appeared. Don’t go through strange doors.

  Not exactly useful.

  Matthew pulled his tie straight. ‘We’ll be fine. We have to carry on as normal or people will wonder.’

  Ava didn’t care if people wondered. ‘I’ll go to work. You stay here.’

  ‘And have Lord Skinner come here looking for me?’ Matthew put his hands on Ava’s shoulders and gazed down at her, his face serious. ‘I’ll be careful, I promise.’ He turned to Lunette, his expression softening. ‘I’m sorry we have to leave you. Stay in the house, don’t answer the door to anyone and we’ll return as soon as we can.’

  Lunette nodded. Unlike Howell, she didn’t appear too worried, or maybe she was just covering it up better. ‘We’ll be fine,’ she said. She put a grey top hat on Matthew’s head. ‘A protection hat. It will help a little.’