The Slanted Worlds

by Catherine Fisher

  Venn, leaning on the filing cabinet, stood upright. He walked slowly into the very heart of the labyrinth and stood beside her, and the dark glass showed her his face, subtly warped. He said quietly, “How can I trust you, Sarah? How can I ever be sure of you? What we want is so different.”

  “What we want is the same.” She turned on him. “Jake back. David found. Leah saved.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you give me the mirror.”

  He smiled, remote. “You make it all sound so easy.” He gazed at the dark reflection of the room, the mess of machinery, Piers sitting exhausted and cross-legged among the tangle. “You! What do you say?”

  “I think she’s right, Excellency.”

  Venn took the bracelet from Sarah’s hand and held it up in his frostbitten fingers. She saw how its silver enigma angered him, how frustration and despair were eating him away. Without looking at her, his voice a low snarl, he said, “Do it.”

  She turned fast, grabbed Wharton, and shook him awake. “George. Get dressed. Get the car. Quick.”

  High on the moors, the air was frosty in the dawn. The sun was barely up, struggling through a great bank of cloud in the east, and as the car rocked and bounced along the frozen track, she had to grab the map to keep it open on her lap. “Be careful!”

  Wharton drove grimly. “What about my suspension! Are you sure it’s up here?”

  “So Piers says.”

  How Piers had found out where the scarred man was living, she had no idea. But the rutted track led to a gate tied with rope, and as she jumped out to open it, she saw the stunted trees of a small pine copse, and beyond, far on the horizon, pale as a diamond, the sea.

  She stopped, astonished.

  “Sarah?”

  She had never seen a sea so beautiful. She stared at it in utter delight. Wharton got out of the car and came up behind her. He said quietly, “So how is the sea different at the End of the world?”

  “It just is.”

  “You could tell me.” He sounded fascinated. “You should tell us, Sarah, about how it is there. About what Janus has . . . will do to the world. Maybe the mistakes need never be made . . .”

  She glanced at him then, at his wide-eyed curiosity, thinking again how naïve these people were, in their green world with their clean water and ancient buildings and comfortable, convenient lives. How to them the future was something that they would never see. A story, nothing more.

  For a fierce, angry moment she just wanted to shock him violently out of his complacency. But she made herself shake her head. “Not now, George. I couldn’t even begin.”

  Before he could answer, she had unlooped the rope and pulled the gate open, lifting its heavy metal bars out of the stiff mud. “Leave the car. This track’s too narrow.”

  He took the keys and let the door slam, loud and alien in the silent morning. The track was lined with gorse bushes, their furzy branches already green, and small sturdy bluebells lurked in the bottom of the scrappy, sheep-gnawed hedge. Walking down, Sarah felt the soft rustle and brush of the rough grass against her legs calming her, the wind whipping her coat wide.

  Wharton came behind, watching her. He knew she had almost told him something then, had been on the edge of some revelation, and drawn back. The girl who could become invisible still held so many secrets. Now she was pointing into the wind. “That must be it.”

  A small Devon long-house of whitened stone, its lichened roof below them in a fold of the hills.

  “It looks quiet.”

  “Not empty. The chimney.”

  A thin wisp of smoke dissipated as he looked.

  They hurried down the steep track. Opening the gate, Sarah walked up to the door and raised her hand, but before she could knock, it was opened.

  Maskelyne stood there, winding a scarf around his neck. He wore a dark coat. She saw the livid scar that disfigured his face, and behind him, in the gloom of the interior, a table set with scattered pieces like an abandoned board game.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, his voice choked with eagerness. “Let’s go.”

  10

  I will arise when the Three shall call me.

  And when the Wood shall Walk.

  Tombstone in Old Wintercombe Churchyard

  IN THE POLICE van driving across London, Jake was chained to the burly sergeant and squashed against the window. It was raining, a cold relentless downpour, and the streets were sloping sheets of gray, of tilted umbrellas and glossy slick awnings.

  He had seen this era in black and white so often its colors surprised him now; the soft reds and greens of women’s clothing, the huge advertisements painted on walls, the navy uniforms of a file of schoolchildren crossing the road. The last in the line, a little boy, turned and stared at him.

  “Shouldn’t those kids . . . children, be evacuated?” Jake said.

  “Some of ’em come back. Others never left. Can’t stand the quiet.” The sergeant too was gazing out in a silence. Finally, shaking his head, he said, “Bloody war. God knows how it will end.”

  Jake kept still. Like God, he did know how it would end. Looking at the shattered houses, the bombed streets, the weary defiance of the people, he was tempted to say something, to offer comfort, to just mutter It’s all right. You’ll win. It surprised him; usually he took care not to feel sorry for people. Also, it would be stupid, and just provoke the man’s scorn. So he kept his mouth shut and concentrated on his plan. Get close to the mirror. And then . . . if somehow he could activate it . . . But if Allenby was there, if Allenby saw . . .

  He shrugged. Nothing he could do about that. Allenby would see a boy disappear into a pulsating blackness and hopefully would never know how it was done.

  And then what? He would have journeyed blindly, without the bracelet. He thought of Maskelyne’s terrifying story of being stretched endlessly across centuries, of arriving agonizingly slowly, atom by atom, into a new and unguessable place, while time sped past him like a film on fast-forward. That would happen to him. He could end up anywhere.

  He fidgeted against the big warm body squashed in beside him.

  “Keep still,” the sergeant muttered. “Bloody nuisance.”

  In the front, Allenby turned, the leather seat squeaking. “We’re nearly there. You look worried, Jake.”

  “So would you,” he growled, “facing the gallows.”

  It was hard to recognize the bombed-out street. He remembered it from Symmes’s time, a neat square with a garden in the middle where he had hidden with Moll. Now the place was a wasteland of bricks, a broken chimney sticking up, small bent people moving slowly over the surface, heads down, picking up anything they could find.

  Jake said, “Her body . . .”

  “Not found yet. Right, stop here. This is it.”

  There was hastily erected white tape around part of the site. Three policemen stood guard. Inside that, over part of the demolished house was a green-gray camouflaged tent, its door fastened shut.

  As Jake struggled out, rain spattered on the roof of the car, and far off over the dome of St. Paul’s the sun came out in a splash of blue sky between the floating barrage balloons.

  The sergeant looked at Allenby, who shrugged. “Unlock the chain. Keep the handcuffs.”

  Jake watched as the link between them was undone, tugged out, and disappeared into the sergeant’s pocket.

  Allenby watched too. “This is your last chance with me, Jake. One more mistake, one more stupid escape bid and it’s out of my hands.”

  He knew that.

  They stumbled and picked their way over the bomb site. Jake glanced around, rapidly trying to take in everything in sight. Where was Gideon? Where was Venn? They had to be here. They had to be trying to save him.

  The doorway to the camouflaged tent yawned before him like a dark portal.


  He hurried toward it, eager, thinking he glimpsed within the black slab of the mirror.

  Something smacked into the side of his face.

  He turned, furious. “Hey!”

  A small blue football bounced away into rubble.

  “Sorry.” A small boy in gray shorts and a school blazer stood there gazing at him. Just behind, knee-deep among the bricks, two of the identical triplets smiled.

  Jake stared. “You!”

  The sergeant scowled. “Clear off, you kids.”

  “No . . . Wait!” Jake made a move toward them. The handcuffs clinked. “You were the ones in the Underground shelter . . . You said . . .”

  “Hello, Jake Wilde. Don’t forget the Black Fox.”

  “You said that before. What does it mean . . .”

  “Or the Man with the Eyes of a Crow.”

  The third child came so close he could have touched him. “Or the Box of Red Brocade.”

  Jake dropped his voice to a whisper. “Who are you? Where are you from?”

  The tiny boy put his bullet head on one side and smiled up at him, spectacles bright with the clear, daunting stare of infancy. “Don’t you know, Jake?”

  “Are you from Summer? Are you Shee?”

  The boy smiled pityingly. He reached up on his highest tiptoes and put his lips to Jake’s ear; Jake had to bend to hear the words. “We are Janus, Jake. That’s who we are.”

  He jerked back, heart hammering. The child nodded, poised and secret. “You see, Jake. We know all your problems. We can give you what you want, Jake. We can give you your father.”

  Jake kept still. Made himself say: “And in return?”

  The children drew together and held hands. They sang:

  Don’t let Sarah destroy the mirror

  destroy the mirror

  destroy the mirror.

  Don’t let Sarah destroy the mirror

  ee I ee I o.

  “Clear off, you kids!” the sergeant roared.

  They fled, laughing and giggling across the brickfield.

  Jake stared after them. Then he was grabbed and forced inside the camouflaged door.

  Maskelyne walked into the brightness of the labyrinth and stared around, at the mirror festooned with cable, at Piers in his white coat, at three of the black cats sleeping in the tangle of malachite-green webbing.

  Piers eyed him, sour as acid. “Oh great. So you’re back again.”

  “You can’t do this without me.” The scarred man crossed to the desk and picked up the bracelet. He turned it, and in his fine fingers it seemed almost to move and rotate with delicate precision. “It’s about time you realized that.”

  Venn was standing in an agitated stillness in the shadows. He came forward and faced Maskelyne, his hair a blond brightness in the strong lights. Maskelyne seemed a shadow before him, a dark copy, a reflection, thinner, barely there.

  “Did you create the mirror?” Venn breathed. “How did it come to you, all those years ago, before Symmes stole it? Did you really dig it from some forgotten grave?”

  Maskelyne did not answer. Instead he said quietly, “It knows I’m here.”

  “Good Lord,” Wharton muttered, eyes wide.

  Because the silver frame of the obsidian glass was indeed strangely alight, the slanted silver inscription no one could read running with ripples of energy.

  The lights flickered. One of the cats sat up and spat.

  Piers muttered, “Output has just increased. One kilowatt, and rising.”

  Venn didn’t move. “Do you know,” he said, his voice arctic, “how to get to exactly when Jake is?”

  Maskelyne lifted the bracelet. “I think I could find out,” he said.

  Well, it was just what I wanted.

  A haunted house!

  I cleaned it, had the furniture repaired, engaged a maidservant and a cook, had such fun buying some new carpets and curtains in the smart new department stores of Oxford Street. I opened the shutters and the windows and let the foggy air of London in to invigorate it.

  What I did next will surprise you, though. I had posters and invitations printed, on pale violet card, with gilt letters. They read:

  Madam Alicia

  Spiritualist and Medium.

  Do you have a loved one on the Other Side?

  Madam Alicia can help you.

  Séances, scrying, the tables and the cups.

  Respectable and reasonable rates.

  Discretion guaranteed.

  It may appear amateur now, but at the time I was delighted with it, and thought myself the height of fashion.

  Because of course I had to have some source of income.

  And I had always wanted to see ghosts.

  It was my secret. I had never told anyone, certainly not my hideous uncle and simpering aunt. But always, as far back as I can remember, I had desired desperately one glimpse of the supernatural. I haunted graveyards and crossroads, hoping for a vision of a girl faint as a cobweb, a headless horseman, a faery funeral crossing the road between the muddy carriage wheels. The idea of ghosts did not frighten me. On the contrary, I burned for such an experience. It seemed to me as if they must be still all around, like the echoes of people, doing the things they had always done, for years, barely knowing they were dead, still absorbed in their lives. An old man who lived in the village had a reputation for second sight, and once I managed to ask him about it. He told me he saw many spirits. Some were easy to see, he said, or even speak to. Others—the older ones, in ruff and gown and breeches—were so very pale they were nothing more than a disturbance of the air, like the ripple above a hot plate.

  And their voices, he said, were like the rustle of the breeze in oak leaves, a high whisper that no one but him could hear.

  I had read all the Gothic novels, every weird tale. I had no talent to make a living out of, no accomplishments. But as soon as I had seen the house, with its fine paneling and stately rooms, I had had the idea.

  I would set myself up as a medium, and become rich! London was full of such practitioners. It was the height of fashion for ladies to visit séances or mesmerists, to be thrilled when the glass moved on the tabletop and spelled out mysterious messages. It would be easy to arrange such things, to deliver messages—true or false—from the dead.

  There would be a delicious and necessary degree of deception, of course. But maybe one day, if I sought and practiced hard, a ghost would truly come to me.

  I gazed at myself in the dark mirror, proud and hugging myself in delight.

  What could possibly go wrong!

  “Are you sure?” Venn leaned over the desk, intent.

  “As I can be. Operate this”—Maskelyne indicated a small switch—“and the mirror will allow us to see where he is.”

  “We’ll be looking through it?” Wharton too was fascinated. “How?”

  “The bracelet has been there. The mirror remembers.”

  At the back of the huddle Sarah glanced at Piers. The small man was officiously tidying away all the tools and wiring he could find. Catching her eye, he muttered, “I would have worked that out. Eventually.”

  “Of course you would,” she said, soothing.

  The aggrieved look died instantly. “You think so?”

  “Yes. And Piers—no one will solve Dee’s ciphers but you.”

  He seemed to swell with pride. One of the black cats stopped licking itself to watch, its green eyes slants of scorn.

  Venn straightened. Without another word, he clicked the switch.

  They saw a dim, greenish interior, its walls rippling.

  “What is that?” For a moment Sarah had no idea.

  “A tent,” Wharton breathed, “and look!”

  The door was opened and fastened back. Beyond it they saw the bombed street, a glimpse of devastated wartime London.


  Jake was shoved in. He was dirty and unkempt and there was a desperate look in his eyes that scared Sarah at once. His hands were cuffed together.

  “Right.” Venn turned at once. “This is what we do.”

  To see the mirror again sent a thrill of relief and purpose through him.

  Its tilted black surface looked exactly the same—there was no scratch, no crack in its perfection, its dark depths showed nothing. Even the silver frame was here, dented and battered, but recognizable.

  Jake looked his weary reflection in the face. How to do this?

  Allenby, behind him, said, “Is this it?”

  “Yes.” He turned. “I want the handcuffs off. And no one in here but you and me.”

  The inspector considered him. Then he turned. “Evans, outside.”

  “Guv . . .”

  “I can handle this. Stay in the street. No one comes past the roadblock.”

  With one last glare at Jake, the sergeant marched out. They heard him clambering awkwardly over the rubble.

  Allenby brought out the leather fob with the key to the handcuffs. But he held it tight.

  “First, explain to me what you’re going to do.”

  Jake took a deep breath. “You’re in over your head, Inspector. Alicia wasn’t a spy, she was a double agent. Both she and I work for British Intelligence.”

  Allenby’s gaze didn’t flicker. Did he believe it? Jake let his imagination race. “The mirror is a highly secret communication device and must not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. I can use it now . . . this minute . . . to contact . . . my superiors. Unlock me.”

  Allenby didn’t move. But he lit up a cigarette and his yellow fingers were shaky. “How do I know . . .”

  “You don’t know. I’ve had enough of this. Unlock me. Or your career is over.”

  In the silence Jake was aware of the vast and wounded city outside, the hundreds of thousands of people all around him, working and injured and scared, not knowing that here, in its heart, was the black hole that could eat them all.