Falcon Quinn and the Black Mirror

by Jennifer Finney Boylan

  “You have ten seconds,” said the Crow. “Ten seconds! You must make your choice, Falcon. Choose your fate!”

  But Falcon just stumbled backward, blind to everything except his agony. He took one step, then another. Then his foot banged against something, and he turned around to see the Black Mirror, yawning over his head. For a moment he stood there, entranced by the black surface of the mirror, feeling it pulling him closer and closer. Seek soul, said a voice, and he knew that it was not his father’s voice he was hearing this time but his own.

  Falcon paused before the mirror, looking into its black, lifeless depths. The ticking of the clock in the Tower of Souls pounded in his ears. Then Falcon saw something flickering in the heart of the mirror: the flash of moving wings, and the piercing truth of a pair of haunting, hunted eyes.

  28

  THE BEAR ON THE MOON

  After the first puff of smoke cleared from the cannon, all the students looked around, wondering which of their comrades had fallen. Instead a large chunk of stone fell out of the Upper School’s boundary wall and crumbled on the ground behind them. It seemed very strange that the cannon had somehow managed to miss all of them. Mrs. Redflint looked at them with a strange smile.

  Then the young monsters yelled and scattered. Some, like Pearl and Ankh-hoptet, rushed forward into the crowd of ex-monsters and teachers, brandishing stingers and curses; others fell back and climbed through the hole in the wall to use it as part of their defense. Mortia and Crumble and Molda and Putrude fell into the Zombie Snap and staggered forward, getting their fingers around the throat of Merideath/Pinky, whom they would have strangled on the spot if Mr. Hake hadn’t grabbed them with his twisting tentacles and hurled them over the Upper School wall. Elaine Screamish stood in the center of things, wailing for all she was worth. But then Mr. Shale approached her and placed his rough red hands upon her neck. There was a pulse of red light, and then Elaine’s voice completely vanished.

  “I thought I told you,” said Mr. Shale, “to shaddap.”

  Destynee was just about to rush forward and engulf Mr. Shale with some of her slime when the moth man suddenly picked her up with his hands and dragged her off. “It goes to the Wellness Center,” he said. “It gets its injection.”

  “What injection?” shouted Destynee. “You let me go!”

  “It will learn about its injection,” said the moth man.

  He took her to the waiting room of the Wellness Center. Two guards stood at the door: Dr. Ziegfield-Gruff and Miss Wordswaste-Phinney. On the floor nearby was Lincoln Pugh, still unconscious, wrapped in a blanket.

  “It stays here,” said the moth man. “It gets its injection and stops.”

  “Stops what?” said Destynee.

  “Stops everything.” He exited through the door and stormed off.

  From outside came the sound of explosions, the cannon going off again, bolts of lightning flashing through the air. It wouldn’t be long, Destynee thought, before the room filled with her fallen friends. It had been insane, she now realized, to think that their little band of monsters, made weak from their days of imprisonment in the dungeon, could overthrow the school.

  Still, it wasn’t a complete rout, at least not yet. From where she sat, Destynee could see a large group of ex-monsters being driven back by the zombies. The zombie girls had apparently charged from behind the wall of the Upper School, where they’d been thrown by Mr. Hake. She saw Pearl buzzing around the writhing tentacles of the Terrible Kraken, stinging him, then quickly darting away. With each sting, Mr. Hake made a horrible gurgling sound, and his tentacles flopped around in agony.

  The moth man drew near the entrance to the Wellness Center again, and Destynee watched through the window as the creature had a heated discussion with Miss Wordswaste-Phinney and Dr. Ziegfield-Gruff. Apparently the other teachers were needed in the battle more urgently than the acting headmaster, because these other two stormed back toward the front lines while Mr. Pupae took over guard duty in front of the Wellness Center.

  “So sad,” said Lincoln Pugh, opening his eyes. “All crazy.”

  “You’re awake,” said Destynee.

  “Oh, I’ve been awake for an hour now, maybe more. But it made more sense to pretend to be in that silly coma. That way I’ve stayed safe from danger.”

  “You’re a coward,” said Destynee.

  “I’m the only one here who wants to get better. The only one here who realizes the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “That this is an asylum,” said Lincoln Pugh. “Run by the patients.”

  “What patients?”

  “Why, all of them,” said Lincoln Pugh. “That’s why there aren’t any real doctors here. They’ve all been killed. By these people who think they’re creatures, or something. It’s all very sad. I’m the only sane one left. Me!”

  There were sounds of more explosions outside. Destynee looked out the window and saw Augusten Krumpet being chased by a large crowd of ex-minotaurs and throwing fairy dust over his shoulder as he ran. One of the boys paused for a moment, his eyelids drooping, and then he fell over.

  “Why don’t you believe?” said Destynee.

  “Believe? Believe in what?”

  “In monsters,” said Destynee. “In yourself.”

  “Because there are no such things as monsters, of course,” said Lincoln. “These are phantasms of the unconscious, made visible by our disorders.”

  “But why would we all see the same things?” asked Destynee.

  “What?” said Lincoln Pugh.

  “I see Max, the Sasquatch,” said Destynee, as the bigfoot ran past the window. “What do you see?”

  “Well, he looks like a Sasquatch to me,” said Lincoln. “But that’s just the nature of my sickness.”

  “He looks like a Sasquatch to everybody. We all see him.”

  “But that doesn’t make him real, does it?” said Lincoln. “That just means we live in a small society of lunatics, a group of people who have left the Reality Stream entirely!”

  “Maybe sanity,” said Destynee, “is when you fit into the world where you find yourself.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Lincoln Pugh. “You think I’m going to let them define me? A bunch of crazy people?”

  “I know how you feel, Linky,” said Destynee. “I didn’t want to be a giant enchanted slug either. I wanted to be a vampire. Because my friends were all vampires. But then I saw what they were like—Merideath and the others. How mean they were. They turned their backs on me when they found out what I was. They almost tricked me into thinking like they do. Into turning my back too.”

  “Not listening,” said Lincoln Pugh.

  “But you know what, Linky? I’ve got something those girls will never have. You know what I have?” She looked at Lincoln Pugh proudly. “I have a molten, burning slime that I can burn people’s faces off with.” She smiled happily. “In fact, when they come for me? To try to give me this injection, or whatever it is? I’m going to dissolve into burning slime. It’s one of my many talents. You know what else I can do? I can dissolve into slime and move under doorways. And re-form myself on the other side. That’s another thing that I can do!”

  Lincoln Pugh raised one finger to his temple and moved it around in a small circle. “Cuckoo, cuckoo,” he said.

  “What can you do, Lincoln Pugh?” She looked at him seriously. “Tell me.”

  “What can I do?” He looked astonished. “Why—I can do multiplication out to five places in my head. I can recite pi up to three hundred digits! I can estimate the velocity and mass of moving objects without a calculator!”

  “That’s good stuff,” said Destynee. “And you should be proud of yourself for that. But you know what else you can do? You can tear a door off its hinges. You can climb trees without a ladder! You know how I know that? Because I’ve seen you. When you’re a werebear!”

  The door to the exam room swung open. “Come along, Sluggles,” said Algol with a hideous grin. “We’
ve got an injection for you now. An ’orrible injection!”

  “Fine,” said Destynee, and stood up.

  “That’s a nice girl,” said Algol.

  “Destynee,” said Lincoln, “aren’t you afraid?”

  “Of course I’m afraid,” said Destynee as she left the room. “But at least I know what I am. I’m a giant enchanted slug, Lincoln. A giant enchanted slug. What are you?”

  She walked through the swinging door.

  Lincoln looked out the window. It was late afternoon now, and he could see that the moon had risen and was just coming out from behind a puffy dark cloud. For a moment he sat watching the moon, thinking over the words Destynee had said. The whole thing was extraordinary, really, when he thought about it.

  Then he realized that someone was standing next to him, staring. “Oh,” said Lincoln Pugh. “You startled me.”

  The moth man’s mouth twitched. “It gives us that,” he said.

  “What?” said Lincoln Pugh.

  “It gives us the blanket,” he said. “The woolens. So soft. So chewable!”

  “You want—” Lincoln looked at the blanket he was wrapped in.

  “It gives us that,” said the moth man, more insistently.

  At this moment the moon came out from behind the cloud. Lincoln Pugh looked at the distant satellite. He’d always heard people talk about the man in the moon, a phrase he’d thought of as silly, the kind of thing you’d say only if you didn’t have a good grounding in reality.

  But it did look like a face, a little. If you used your imagination.

  “You want it, you can have it,” said Lincoln, handing over the blanket. The moth man took the blanket, then sat down in a chair next to Lincoln and began to gnaw on the woolen threads.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said Mr. Pupae.

  But Lincoln Pugh wasn’t looking at the moth man. He was thinking about the words Destynee had spoken before Algol had taken her away, and about the friends he’d made at the Academy since he’d arrived, about Jonny Frankenstein and Ankh-hoptet and Falcon Quinn.

  But most of all he was thinking about the face of the man on the moon. The light shone into his eyes.

  Hey, thought Lincoln Pugh with astonishment and recognition. I know whose face that is. It’s mine.

  29

  WHAT THE MOCKINGBIRD SAID

  The wings fluttered in the dark, inky mirror, and Falcon squinted, trying to see the thing that gazed back at him. In the shadows he saw the flicker once again of the enormous wings, the eyes staring out at him—one a laser blue, the other midnight black, surrounded by a dark, sickly amber. He reached forward and touched the surface. The mirror was like a pool of shining quicksilver, and its surface rippled with expanding circles beneath Falcon’s fingers. Then he felt the magnetic pull from the mirror’s heart again, and he stepped into the silvery mirror and entered its dark, soft world.

  Falcon was aware of falling through the darkness, as if he had stepped off a cliff. Light from the other side of the Black Mirror shone over his head like a skylight. Things flickered and floated all around him now—shadows of monsters he had never seen before—dwarves and fire giants and things that looked like manta rays floating in the air on pulsing, luxuriant wings. There was a giant tick and a hydra-headed snake and a hellhound and a frost worm.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, he heard the voices of the school administrators discussing the properties of the Black Mirror.

  Once one is in, said Mrs. Redflint, it is very difficult to get out.

  Once you’re inside the mirror, said Mr. Hake, you need to get out quickly. Or else you get absorbed! Like liquid into a sponge!

  A signpost loomed out of the darkness, and the sign with pointing fingers spun like a wheel, urging Falcon toward every possible end. He knew what he was seeing now: the campus of the Upper School of the Academy for Monsters. This was the world he would live in if he chose his father’s path, if he embraced his legacy as a being of the dark world, a world of enchanted creatures and miraculous beasts, living in strange splendor—but also living in fear, always wondering whether the guardians were lying in wait, planning his destruction.

  Then he saw flags flying and bright light shining, and he caught a fleeting glimmer of his mother’s world. Light played off the stones of the Hidden City, a place without monsters, a place without nightmares or sadness. Would that be such a bad life, if he chose this world instead?

  Then he saw light rising into the sky, and he knew that somewhere, more monsters had been turned into rising stars. He saw an ancient windmill on the shoulder of a mountain, the sails endlessly whirling around and around.

  Now his mother and his father, Vega and the Crow, stood on opposite sides of the world within the mirror. Each of them beckoned to him. All he would have to do would be to take one of their hands, and his choice would be made.

  He drew near to his parents, his hand extended. Pick one, he thought. Did it matter, in the end, which one he chose? The important thing was to stop feeling torn, to be one person, to be whole.

  He reached toward the Crow, and the headmaster smiled. At last, son, he said. At last!

  Then Falcon drew his hand back and held it toward his mother. He heard the sound of that piano song in his mind. Solace. Ocean waves crashed upon the shore.

  Then he pulled his hand back once again. Falcon imagined the gears of the tower clock turning inside him, all those teeth interlocking with each other, just as the lives of monsters and guardians and human beings intermesh with each other.

  It’s stupid to have to choose one heart, Falcon thought, if you’re a two-hearted being.

  A creature stepped out of the darkness and looked him in the eyes. It was a smaller-than-average thirteen-year-old boy, with blond, curly hair and a wicked smile. He was expecting to see some wildly misshapen thing, a wyvern or a balor or a dragon, or some other thing for which he did not even have a name. Instead he just saw his own face, surrounded now with light. There was a halo around his head. But still: he was his same self. No matter what he became, he’d still be Falcon Quinn.

  That monster, Falcon thought, that thing I’ve been becoming. From the very beginning, it was only me.

  And with this, two great, broad wings burst out from beneath the dead skin on Falcon’s back, and spread magnificently into the air.

  They pulsed once, then twice.

  Falcon Quinn began to rise, spiraling upward in the darkness. There was the sound of glass shattering and falling in shards upon the floor as Falcon swept out of the mirror and back into the heart of the Tower of Souls.

  I have wings, thought Falcon Quinn. I have wings!

  “Falcon?” said the Crow, amazed. He was still standing next to the imprisoned Jonny. “Falcon?”

  But Falcon flew over his father’s head, and out the arch on the north side of the tower, and into empty space. The thoughtclock fell upon the floor and shattered.

  The Crow, standing beneath one of the arches of the Tower of Souls, watched his son whirling and flying in the twilight.

  He’s an angel, he thought, looking at the child. Falcon is an angel.

  Below, on the campus of the Academy, the battle raged. The Crow could see the distant forms of teachers and students and monsters engulfing each other in smoke, turning each other to stone, casting balls of ice and fire through the air. Still, for all that, the battle was almost over, he thought. It would not take much longer.

  He climbed onto the stone balcony, preparing to jump. Then the soaring silhouette of the boy caught his eye once more. It was remarkable to see—the great white wings freed at last, the soft glow around the boy’s head.

  An angel, yes, the Crow thought. Of course. He should have seen this long ago—but it had been so long since any child at the Academy had developed an angelic nature that he had almost forgotten this diagnosis. It was a rare thing, a child whose monstrosity was celestial.

  But what kind of angel? he thought. He was glad for Falcon’s sake that the boy had made his ch
oice. Surely that was what had enabled the wings to break free, his realization at last that he could choose his own fate.

  There are all kinds of angels, the Crow thought, angels of light, as well as angels of chaos. Falcon’s form was clear at last, but it was still uncertain what the boy would do with his powers, and in what direction his future might take him.

  He turned to Jonny, still bound in his cords. “What did you do with the girl?” he said. “Did you really set her free? I find that hard to believe.”

  Jonny struggled and shouted with his mouthless voice. Then he fell silent, and just looked at the Crow with his large, liquid eyes. He nodded.

  “Why, because you loved her?” said the Crow.

  Jonny Frankenstein shook his head.

  “You didn’t do it for her, did you?” said the Crow. “You did it for him. You did it for Falcon. As a favor, for the boy you were sent here to betray.”

  The prisoner nodded his head again.

  “Remarkable,” said the Crow. He pointed at Jonny with his long, bony finger, and a beam of light burned from the finger to Jonny’s face. The Crow cut him a mouth, as if carving a jack-o’-lantern, and then used the same beam to cut the cords.

  “I’m sending you back to her,” said the Crow, “to deliver a message. Tell her that the boy has made his choice, and that he has chosen neither of us. Or, rather, that he has chosen us both. The child is an angel. The balance of power remains intact.”

  “You’re not going to kill me?” said Jonny.

  “Falcon chose not to destroy you,” said the Crow, “and I will honor his decision. I’ll let the queen you deceived decide what to do with you herself.”

  He pointed his finger at Jonny again, then enveloped him with a dark smoke. A moment later, Jonny was transformed into a large black mockingbird.

  “Aww,” he said, moving his head around to get a good look at this new form and flapping his wings in dismay.