I said, ‘We should examine the looking glass; it may be somehow enchanted.’
‘I sense the power of magic here,’ Annella agreed.
‘Let’s bolt the door we came in through,’ I said. ‘Then we can examine this place in relative safety.’
‘You push the door closed and slide the iron bolt home with a rasp and a click. Strangely, you do not now feel safer in this place but less so – as if you have walked into a trap.’
‘Oh shit,’ I said. ‘Well, there’s nothing for it but to take a look around.’
‘I will keep watch on the far door,’ said Torvid.
‘You approach the mirror. In its surface, slightly foxed by time, your frightened faces stare back at you, with the chamber in the background.’
‘What if we try and take the mirror off the wall? Could there be something behind it?’
Adam rolled the dice. ‘You carefully lift the mirror away from the wall, its iron frame chilly in your hands.’
‘Fucking hell, don’t drop it, whatever you do, you two.’
‘Without letting the glass fall, you lower the mirror carefully to the ground. It was suspended from a fine steel chain, which looped over a hooked spike driven deep into the stone.’
‘Is there anything on the back of the mirror? A note, maybe?’
‘You turn the looking glass and examine its reverse side. Faintly, on the wooden surface, you can see runes, which appear to have been scratched or etched into the wood.’
‘I can read runes!’ Annella exclaimed. ‘I learned in magic college. Can I understand these ones?’
Again, the dice clicked on the table. Adam smiled, and for a second he was just Adam again, not the all-powerful Dungeon Master. ‘You are able to decipher them. The inscription reads, “All is not what it seems.”’
‘Cryptic, much? I don’t see that that’s much help, to be honest.’
‘Maybe we should hang the mirror back on the wall,’ I suggested, ‘and check that the reflection of the room is accurate. Maybe there’s some weird spell going on.’
‘Oooh, good shout!’
‘Carefully, you replace the mirror and step back. Again, you see your puzzled faces, the tapestries on the opposite wall, the flickering oil lamps.’
‘What about the chest?’ I said. ‘Didn’t we see a chest, when we came into the room? Is it there in the reflection?’
Again, Adam’s smile flashed out. ‘In the reflection, the chest is positioned centrally, but in the room itself it is in the corner, near the door through which you entered.’
‘Let’s move it and see what happens!’
‘Torvid and I will do it,’ Annella said hastily. ‘Galena, you stay looking in the mirror and tell us when we’ve got it in the right place.’
‘You tug and heave the heavy chest, but once it begins to move, it slides freely over the rush matting. Galena watches your stooped backs and straining arms, until at last she says—’
‘Stop! You’ve got it!’
‘All at once, the mirror moves, opening away from the wall with a creak. Beyond, you see brilliant light, and you are powerless to resists its enchanted pull. You step forward, through the gap in the wall, and you hear a sound like a thunderclap as the magic portal slams closed behind you. Galena, you are alone – at least that is what you think at first. Then you see before you a figure, wrapped in a rich dark velvet cloak, a jewelled circlet on his dark hair.’
‘Lord Brandrel!’ exclaimed Tim.
‘Of course, we wouldn’t be there to see what happened next,’ Lana said.
‘Maybe we should step outside while Adam and Zoë – I mean, while Lord Brandrel and Galena – fight it out?’ suggested Freddie.
‘But I want to know what happens,’ Archie protested.
‘Ssshh,’ Nat hissed.
‘But you guys are in the party,’ I said. ‘I can’t just… How would it work normally, Adam? You’re in charge.’
‘Well,’ Adam said slowly, ‘we wouldn’t normally have split the party, but all of you have seen what’s been going on with the other group, so… Ouch!’
‘Sorry,’ Freddie said. ‘Was that your ankle? My foot must have slipped.’
Kelly came over with a tray laden with a bottle of prosecco and seven glasses. ‘Alice sent this over. She mentioned that her office happens to be free right now.’
‘We’ll step in there, shall we, Zoë?’ Adam said. ‘Unless you’d rather…’
But Freddie had already poured the wine, and he handed a glass to me and one to Adam. ‘Off you go then. Come back soon and tell us what happened.’
‘But…’ I began, but it was too late. Adam had picked up his glass and headed purposefully off in the direction of the tiny cubicle that held Alice’s desk, a filing cabinet that no one ever filed anything in, because all our admin was online now, and often other random crap as well. Today there was a hoover in there, a stack of samples of hard seltzer that a supplier had sent to see how it went down with the punters, and a crate of orange pumpkins we’d ordered in for the family Halloween event.
There was barely room for Adam and me to squeeze in, but we did, pulling the door closed behind us.
Suddenly, he seemed very close to me and very tall. I looked up at him, and he looked down at me, and then we both looked away again and took great gulps of our drinks. Adam hadn’t brought any of his notes, I noticed, although I could see his hand tightly clenched around a few of the translucent multi-sided dice.
He cleared his throat. ‘Lord Brandrel is alone in this strange room with you. You don’t know what form of sorcery has brought you here, or what your fate will be. You feel your gaze irresistibly drawn to his, and you wonder if this is part of the same magic that created the mirror illusion.’
My gaze was irresistibly drawn to Adam’s, just like he said. His eyes were the deepest green and his brows were two black arches above them. He had the most ridiculously long eyelashes, I noticed, and they were black too, like his beard, standing out against his pale skin.
‘Why have you brought me here?’ Galena demanded.
‘I think you might wish to ask yourself why you came,’ countered Lord Brandrel.
‘I – and my companions, who wait without – are here to rescue the maiden Zarah, who was captured by your troops from the village.’
‘I think you’ll find,’ said Lord Brandrel, ‘that Zarah merely wished to escape her overbearing mother and is not in any kind of captivity. Rather, she is gainfully employed here at the castle as a kitchen maid.’
‘But – but you captured her. You intended to force her to become your bride!’
‘I did no such thing. She came here of her own free will, escorted by my soldiers. However, I cannot deny that stewardship of this castle is a lonely life, and should I find someone to share it with me, my heart would be lighter.’
‘But I am a fighter!’ Galena said. ‘I will not set aside my freedom for any man.’
‘And I shall make no serf of any woman!’ blazed Lord Brandrel. ‘I seek an equal in all ways, to fight alongside me, share my board and my bed and my riches, even as she shares my heart.’
I felt a tightness in my throat, and swallowed to try and make it go away.
‘So long as she’s willing to share her cat with me,’ said Adam.
I tried to find Galena inside me, but I couldn’t. It seemed like she had… not vanished, exactly, but melted, back into the part of me that had imagined her in the first place.
‘There’s just one thing,’ I said. ‘What star sign are you – I mean, is Lord Brandrel?’
‘Truly it astounds me,’ Lord Brandrel said, stroking his beard, ‘that a woman so fierce and learned should put her faith in superstition.’
‘Even so. How should I be expected to plight my troth to one who will not indulge an innocent fancy?’
Adam laughed. His whole face seemed to come alive, the stillness and wariness all gone. ‘I’m Aquarius, you numpty. Same as you.’
‘Well,’ I sai
d, ‘I guess that has potential. Aquarius man and Aquarius woman is one of the better matches. Our shared fascination with the spiritual world means we’ll never tire of exploring wider issues together, and we’ll have a rich, fulfilling and inventive sex life.’
I was making it up, just like Fabian’s paid writers had been, but it was totally worth it to see Adam blush.
‘Come on,’ he said, putting his glass down on a corner of Alice’s desk. ‘I want to show you something.’
Before I could ask what, he’d set my glass down next to his, put his arm round my shoulders and guided me out of Alice’s office. And then the closeness and warmth of his body and the juniper scent of his skin was so strange and new and wonderful I don’t think I would have been able to say anything if I’d tried. Adam led me into the lobby with the four doors opening off it – one to the kitchen, one to the bar, one to the stairs that led to my flat and one to the garden.
‘It’s like being back in the D&D game,’ I said, regaining the power of speech. ‘Four doors lead out from the chamber. Which one will you pick?’
Adam laughed. ‘Don’t take the piss. We’re going outside.’
The beer garden was empty – no smokers had ventured out that night, which wasn’t surprising, as it was bitterly cold. The night air bit through the thin fabric of my dress, and I was glad of Adam’s warm body next to me. The cold didn’t seem to bother him at all, even though he was dressed no more warmly than I was.
We stood there for a moment, our breath forming clouds of vapour that drifted away like ghosts. The garden smelled of damp earth, fallen leaves, the last of the cooking smells being pumped out by the kitchen extractor fan and a distant bonfire. The bird table was deserted and the parasols folded. I could hear a hum of voices from inside the pub, and the faint popping of firecrackers somewhere out in the night.
‘Well, this is romantic,’ I teased.
‘Zoë! Look up.’
I tilted my head, and everything changed. Above us, the clear autumn sky was pitch black but spangled with stars. A thin crescent moon like one of Frazzle’s claws hung over the rooftops. On the horizon, the lights of an aeroplane beginning its descent blinked steadily.
‘See that bright star just there.’ Adam pointed up into the darkness.
‘I can see loads of stars.’
‘There. In the middle of that dark bit of sky.’
I followed the long line of his arm, pressing my head against his shoulder to keep warm and also so I could look the same way he was looking.
‘I think so.’
‘That’s Beta Aquarii, the brightest star in the constellation of Aquarius. It’s about six hundred light years away. The dimmer one close to it, Alpha Aquarii, is a hundred times as big as our sun. It’s the right time of the year to see them, and we’re lucky it’s such a clear night. The third one is called Gamma Aquarii.’
‘It’s… I never knew you could actually see it,’ I said. ‘I mean, I knew Aquarius was a constellation and everything, but I thought you needed to work for NASA or at least have a telescope.’
‘When I was a kid I used to dream of working for NASA. I thought I’d fly to the moon or be an astrophysicist or something. But I do have a telescope.’
‘Is that a telescope in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’
Adam pressed me closer, and I could feel the laughter shaking his body. Making this man laugh could get quite addictive, I realised.
‘Tell me more about the stars,’ I said.
‘Their Arabic names are all to do with luck. The luck of kings, the lucky star of hidden things. So if you want to wish on a star, you should pick one of those.’
‘Isn’t wishing on stars a load of bollocks, like astrology?’
‘I couldn’t possibly say. Maybe we should try it, then we’d have scientific proof.’
‘Okay. You first.’
‘We should do it together.’
I nodded, knowing that Adam would be able to feel the movement of my head where it pressed against him. His arm squeezed me closer and we stood in silence for a couple of seconds.
‘What did you wish?’ he asked.
‘I can’t tell you! If I do it stops the magic working.’
‘But what about our scientific proof?’
I turned around within the circle of Adam’s arm and looked up at him, and he looked down at me. He was smiling, and in the darkness it looked like his eyes were sparkling. I felt something shift inside of me, like I was melting, even though it was so cold.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I wished you’d kiss me.’
‘Funny, that. So did I.’
And suddenly his other arm was around me, too, and both my hands were reaching up to pull him close, so I could press the whole warm, strong length of him against me. My fingers touched his hair, surprisingly soft and silky. The clean man-smell of him joined all the other smells of the night, and as his lips touched mine it was like Aquarius and all the other constellations started spinning round and round at once – although I knew I’d never be able to tell Adam that was how it felt, because he’d say they were stars and planets in orbit and spinning was exactly what they did all the time.
Thirty
‘So what happened after that?’ Dani gasped. We were in the gym and taking it in turns on the rowing machine, and she was a couple of hundred metres into her go, and really giving it some.
‘Shall I wait until you’ve finished?’
‘No, distract me!’
I laughed. ‘Keep going – you’ve got this. Okay, so we went back indoors and finished the D&D game.’
‘No way!’
‘Well, we couldn’t not. We’d left the others all on tenterhooks waiting to know what happened with Galena and Lord Brandrel.’
Dani half-laughed, half-panted.
‘Except it turned out they weren’t, really. They were waiting to find out what had happened with me and Adam. Turns out they’d all been in on it, since the party for Tansy and Josh when nothing happened. Basically it feels like everyone who’s ever been in the Ginger Cat has been trying to set us up for ages. A hundred metres to go.’
‘Oh God, I’m dying.’
‘Just a few more strokes. So we went back into the bar and everyone went all quiet, you know how that happens? But Adam had his arm round me still and it was fine. No one said anything, they just looked at us like we were their late-developing babies who were finally taking their first steps or something.’
Dani finished her row and collapsed, laughing, on the floor.
‘Right, you’re up,’ she said, when she’d got her breath back a bit.
‘But don’t you want to hear what happened next?’
‘You can tell me in a thousand metres’ time.’
‘You’re so harsh!’ I grumbled, climbing onto the rower and gripping the handle, before taking a deep breath and starting.
‘I’m going to need to be,’ Dani said. ‘I’ve signed up to do a fitness instructor course and once I’m qualified I can jack in my shitty job at the dental surgery and actually do something I love. So you’re going to have to let me practise on you.’
‘That’s amazing,’ I panted. ‘You’ll be brilliant.’
‘Nice long strokes,’ Dani said. ‘Try and control your breathing. Yeah, to be honest I just don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. It was only when Mike said he was looking to take on someone to help him, because the gym’s getting so busy, that I had this light-bulb moment and I was like, “That could be me.” Not right away, obviously; I’ll have to qualify first and it’s really hard.’
‘So are you and Mike…?’
‘Push with your legs, Zoë. Come on, nearly there. Oh my God, isn’t he just the most amazing person in the world? I couldn’t believe it when he said yes when I asked him out. I was so nervous I was literally shaking. And we went on this proper old-fashioned date to the movies and then out for pizza. And he didn’t nag me when I had extra cheese on mine like Fabian would’ve done. And he
actually listens when I talk to him.’
She glanced over her shoulder to the rack of barbells, where Mike was patiently talking a new client through correct squat form, and I noticed that she had that look on her face again, all wide-eyed and happy, like she was looking at the promised land or something.
‘One thousand metres.’ I folded down over my legs, which appeared to have turned into two strands of wet spaghetti, and waited until I could breathe a bit more normally. ‘That’s so cool, Dani. Honestly, you guys are perfect for each other.’
‘Right.’ Dani hopped back onto the rower and tightened the straps on the footrests. ‘Now carry on telling me about Adam.’
I downed some water and towelled my sweating face. I could see in the full-length mirror that my hair had frizzed wildly and my cheeks looked like a pair of tomatoes, but I didn’t care.
‘Yeah, so like I said, we finished the D&D game and we had another couple of drinks, and everyone was totally itching to ask if we’d snogged, but they didn’t. I guess they didn’t need to, really.’
It had been pretty obvious, I reckoned, because every time I looked at Adam his face broke into the most enormous, cheesy grin, and I know mine must’ve done the same. And his hand kept reaching for mine under the table, and his touch sent such amazing shocks of pleasure right the way through me I probably looked like I was radioactive.
‘Stop mooning and keep talking!’
‘Sorry. It’s just… I can’t stop thinking about him. Robbie gave me such a telling-off this morning because I was singing along to “Now That I Found You” on my phone and he said I sounded like a constipated cat.’
Dani gasped out a laugh. ‘So did you shag?’
‘We… It feels so weird talking about it!’
I let myself return to the memory of that night, as I’d done over and over again for the past five days. It was like taking a precious new thing I’d saved up for ages to buy out of its box and gazing at it, turning it over and over, unable to believe it was mine at last. Or like when Frazzle first came to live with me, and I’d wake up in the morning and for a second I would have forgotten I had a cat, and then I opened my eyes and there he was, and I felt like I might burst with happiness.
Thank You, Next: A perfect, uplifting and funny romantic comedy Page 26