The Slanted Worlds

by Catherine Fisher

“And . . . the bracelet.”

  “Indeed.” Summer smiled, and her smile was cool and the terror grew strong in him. “So you helped them without telling me. Without asking my permission. Do you know what I will do, Gideon, for that?”

  He knew. He had been a bird before, wind-blown, buffeted, pecked by the hosts of the Shee from one end of the Wood to another. He had been a fish, caught suffocating in a net; he had drowned endlessly in his own terror till he had torn himself free, and then the stabbing beaks of herons had caught him and thrown him and tossed him back. He had been a stone in the path, without a voice, without eyes, feeling only the pain of the Shee horses that rode over him. He had been trapped in the trunk of a tree, screaming in silent agony for centuries of no time.

  He knew exactly what she could do to him.

  He made himself stand tall. “Let me make up for it then. Tell me what you want, I’ll get it.”

  His arm was a wing now. She stroked the feathers. “Anything?”

  “Anything. Just . . .”

  “I want the silver bracelet, Gideon.”

  Gideon stared. “Venn wears it all the time.”

  “Not when he comes here.”

  Aghast, he said, “No. Then he leaves it locked in an iron safe. But . . .”

  She leaned against him. “I want the bracelet. Iron holds no pain for you.”

  Feathers broke out down his back, splitting the skin, tearing sinew, reworking his body. “Yes,” he gasped. “Yes, I’ll get it, please, just don’t . . .”

  She stepped back, turned, her voice bored now, cold as stone, as the Shee descended in screeching flocks through the branches. “Until you do Gideon, no more sleep. No more dreams. Gideon shall sleep no more.” She clapped her hands.

  “Come now, my people! Shall we hunt the wren? Shall we play?”

  I should have known it would not be easy.

  I did try. My advertisements brought many curious seekers, and I soon learned how simple it is to fool people. At my séances voices were heard, lights flickered, ghostly invisible hands drifted across the faces of my guests. In my trances I moaned and murmured and spoke in their own voices comforting messages from dead husbands and lost children. I read palms and consulted the tarot, I gazed long into crystals and traced out names and dates on the lettered tabletop.

  I soon had a reputation and a growing clientele.

  But after about two years of this I was restless and dissatisfied. Certainly I was making money. I dressed well, and wore the latest hats. But perhaps my conscience was beginning to trouble me, because although comforting the bereaved starts as a warm glow in the heart, it ends as the cold lies of a practiced charlatan.

  It was late one evening, after a particularly troubling session, that I entered the room where my father had worked. It was not a room I frequented, being small and dark, but that evening it seemed charged with a strange, silent expectancy. The maid had gone to bed—by now she was a trusted accomplice in my business—so I lit a small fire myself and then sat on the green ottoman by the window looking down at the street, the few late travelers hurrying home out of the dark and cold.

  The clock struck three a.m.

  At that moment, for no reason I can relate now, I turned my head. As if a voice had called me.

  The obsidian mirror stood facing me.

  In it I saw a figure, dark and warped. I was wearing the robe I often wore for séances, a fabulously exotic caftan of purple and turquoise velvet; my hair turbaned and fixed with a brooch of kingfisher wings.

  But with a chill of certainty I knew this reflection was not myself.

  My heart was beating so loud I could hear it; sweat broke out cold on my back.

  Was I, at last, seeing a ghost?

  I resolved not to be terrified, and managed to stand. There was a lit candle on the sill; I took it up, and came closer to the glass.

  The figure seemed to retreat from the light. I saw it was a man, in some dark, perhaps monkish robe. The candlelight threw strange, brilliant streaks of flame across the black glass.

  “Who are you?” I whispered.

  He came closer. I saw a man of average height, his face obscured by a hood, and behind him, as if in some other place, stone walls, a wooden bench, a table all laid with paraphernalia and alchemical apparatus.

  A sudden idea stabbed me with joy. “Are you . . . are you my father? Father, is that you?”

  He drew off the hood. “No,” he whispered.

  He was younger, brown-haired, stubbled, worn thin with anxiety. “Where are you?” he whispered. “And when?”

  “London. The year is 1904.”

  His shoulders sagged; he looked haggard with disappointment. He sat on the bench and behind him, through a small window, I saw the blue sky of some hot climate.

  “Are you a ghost?” I asked, quivering.

  He looked up. “I don’t know what I am anymore,” he said. And then: “My name is David Wilde.”

  It was Sarah who answered the door to the repeated, angry knock.

  Rebecca stood on the steps under a dripping, striped umbrella. “He’s here, isn’t he?” She pushed past into the tiled hall. “What’s happening? What the hell have you done with him?”

  Sarah glanced out into the rainy afternoon. Starlings were rising from the Wood in flocks.

  She shut the door and bolted it. “If you mean Maskelyne, yes he’s here.”

  “Why on earth couldn’t he call me! I’ve been waiting at the cottage for an hour.”

  “There’s no signal here. Besides, he’s busy. With the mirror.”

  The tall girl closed her umbrella. Sarah saw how her long red plait of hair was soaked, the way her anger had suddenly thawed to a bleak resentment. “The mirror. Always the mirror.”

  Sarah nodded. But she didn’t move, checking quickly there was no one around but one of the replicated cats, washing its tail on the dark wooden table. Then she ventured:

  “If it wasn’t for the mirror, he wouldn’t be here.”

  “He never is here!” Rebecca dumped the umbrella in the rack; a pool of water trickled from it across the tiles. “All he thinks about is how to reach the thing, and now he’s done that. They need him and he needs it.”

  “To do what? Journey?”

  Suspicious, Rebecca shrugged. “What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing. Except . . .” Sarah came closer. Rebecca always made her feel small, ridiculously petite. Folding her arms, she leaned back against the table and said, “Except that without the mirror, you’d have him all to yourself.”

  As soon as she’d said it, she knew it was too crude. She cursed herself silently.

  Rebecca’s suspicion became indignant certainty. “Don’t involve me in your crazy plots, Sarah. I know all about you, and where you’ve come from. Maskelyne says you’re dangerous, that you want to destroy the mirror. You’ll get no help from me. Now, where is he?”

  She stalked across the hall head high, and Sarah let her reach the corridor to the kitchen before saying, “Yes, I’m dangerous. But I’m not your enemy. The mirror is your enemy. Your rival. The fascinating, endlessly powerful Chronoptika.”

  Rebecca stopped, but didn’t turn.

  Sarah went on, relentless. “Venn, Jake, Maskelyne. They all think they need it. But they’ll become slaves to it, and believe me, I know that’s true, because I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen how the mirror can devour people, mind and soul, how it can swell and pulsate with its own power, how it can become a darkness that can—will—devour the world.” She took a step across the hall. “I’m going to stop that happening. You could help me.”

  Rebecca’s braid dripped rain on the tiles. Her jacket was patched with damp. She said, “Leave me out of this, Sarah. I’m not like you. I don’t care about saving the world. I’m just a girl in love with a ghost.”

  The
cat stopped washing and gazed at them both; Rebecca scooped it up and ran her hand over its black purring fur. Then she walked down the corridor, carrying it.

  The cat stared back over her shoulder.

  Sarah followed, thoughtful.

  The seed had been planted.

  It would have to be enough for now.

  Piers had set up the ancient film projector in the drawing room, and had cleared the wall of its paintings to use as a screen. He wound the restored film reel in expertly, humming, his red brocade waistcoat a cheery brilliance under the dirty lab coat.

  Venn paced. “Ready?”

  “Almost, Excellency.”

  Wharton was sitting on the leather sofa, feet up on the coffee table. “Like a Saturday matinee, this. Should have some popcorn, Piers.”

  As the two girls came in, he nodded at Rebecca in surprise. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” she muttered.

  He also saw how Sarah had what he had come to call her “plotting” face on—he raised his eyebrows at her now and she smiled quietly, sarcastically back.

  “I don’t remember inviting guests,” Venn said.

  Ignoring him, Rebecca went straight to Maskelyne. The scarred man stood near the window, his dark eyes on the silver bracelet Venn wore around his wrist.

  Quietly to Rebecca he said, “You should be in Exeter.”

  “Not when I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Nothing is going on. Except that my magic game worked.”

  She nodded, dumping her wet coat. “And you were too busy even to tell me.”

  “Right.” Piers flexed his fingers. “Are we all ready?”

  “Where’s Jake?” Sarah said.

  “Here.” He came in with the marmoset on his shoulder; it leaped to the curtain and raced up.

  To Sarah Jake looked tired, and strangely older, as if time in the past had moved differently, as if he had lived longer than the few days he had been there. But he wore his expensive clothes carelessly, and threw himself down next to Wharton.

  “Right.” Venn turned. “Get on with it.”

  Piers clicked the projector on, and the reels began to whirr. “Just to say this was almost impossible to get back. Corroded almost to nothing in places.”

  The room was dim; rain patterns moved on the windows. On the wall, shadows began to blur; Piers muttered and played with the focus, producing a rapidly shrinking fuzziness that made Wharton say, “What is that?”

  “People.” Jake watched, intent.

  “One person.” Venn came forward, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Sort it, Piers.”

  “Doing my best. Like I said, it’s in bits . . . How about . . . that.”

  With an abruptness that silenced them all, a man loomed from out of the darkness and was there looking out at them. A man in a dark place, wearing some sort of brown ragged robe.

  His outline flickered, vanishing briefly, reappearing with a jerky flicker slightly off center.

  Wharton sat up. Sarah stared.

  Rebecca looked around, wondering why they were all so silent.

  “Who is that?” she muttered.

  Rain pattered on the window.

  No one answered.

  Until Maskelyne said in his husky voice, “That’s Jake’s father.”

  13

  Janus has everything. We have nothing.

  He has spent years perfecting his knowledge of the Chronoptika—his hunger for its secrets is destroying us all. We believe that seconds before the final catastrophe he will enter the mirror and journey to a refuge he has carefully prepared. He will live on, safe in the past.

  Only we can break this cycle of despair. If we destroy the mirror, we destroy Janus.

  Illegal ZEUS transmission

  IT WAS DAVID’S idea to make the film.

  It might have been on our third time of speaking—or channeling, as I was delighted to call it.

  He insisted that he was no ghost, and I have to admit a slight sinking of the heart about that, because, after all, dreams are dreams. But when he explained to me that he was a man from the future, a man who had traveled in time, and had even once worked with my dear father, I was more than mollified.

  I was thrilled!

  “How is that possible?” I breathed.

  He shrugged. He always seemed to stand very close to the glass, to be almost able to reach out through it, but when I touched the obsidian surface it was hard and smooth as ever.

  “The mirror makes it possible,” he said. There was an anger in his voice. “If it wants to.”

  “Then . . . might I also journey?”

  “You don’t have this.” He raised his arm and I saw he wore a silver bracelet, curiously carved and worked, with an amber stone embedded in it. “It was what your father never had.”

  “But . . . you do. And you must have this mirror . . . so therefore . . .”

  The logic bewildered me. Was he gazing into the very same mirror as I was, but in some other age?

  He nodded. “Yes. I found the mirror again here, in Italy. Three journeys after I left your father. Three journeys the wrong way. Always backward. Always further in time from everything I loved. I dare not try again. And yet . . . I dare not stay here!”

  A ghost should not be anguished. But there was such pain in him that I felt as if the mirror somehow amplified his sorrow and his fear.

  “And . . . how is it you can talk to me?”

  “I don’t know.” He turned and paced, restless within that dark, curtained room. “Perhaps because I worked on the mirror with Symmes. Perhaps because you’re a medium, or some sort of sensitive. It’s crazy. In my own time I would have laughed at such things.”

  My heart swelled with pride. I had told him of my séances, though not of my deceptions. And yet surely—surely!—this proved I was indeed a true clairvoyant, a seer of spirits!

  Seconds after that, as he was about to speak again, his image faded. It left a mark in the mirror that I saw for days, a faint dissolving smudge in the glass.

  I sat on my divan that day and the next, watching the black enigmatic mirror, ignoring my clients, hoping and praying that he would come back, that it had not all been some illusion of my brain.

  But nothing happened.

  Gradually, I came to wonder if indeed I had ever seen him. To doubt myself. Until, two weeks later, on a rainy afternoon I came in from the theater, took off my hat and mackintosh, said, “Tea please, Edith,” and turned my head.

  There he was. As if he had never been gone.

  Perhaps, for him, there had been no gap. No interval of time. Because he spoke as if we had never ceased the conversation. He said, “I have a son, Alicia. A son called Jake, who will be searching for me. There is also a man, Oberon Venn, who needs me. So this is what I want you to do.”

  “Turn the volume up,” Venn growled. “Jake, sit down.”

  He couldn’t. He was standing close, his silhouette black against the flickering indistinct image. “How can it be him? How can it?”

  Wharton’s hand tugged him gently back. “Sit down, Jake. Let Piers get it right.”

  The image had frozen; now in the attentive, silent room it jerked to life again, became Dr. David Wilde, looking tired and haggard, unshaven, his eyes red-rimmed, his clothes a dirty surcoat of brown.

  And then he spoke.

  “Are you ready, Alicia?”

  Jake swallowed. The voice was a shiver of memory.

  Then a reply, faint on the soundtrack.

  “Quite ready, David. The machine is operating now, though I have no idea if I’m doing it right. Cinematographs are such new, awkward things, and this great contraption clatters so . . .”

  Jake drew in a sharp breath. Even at this distance, through the hiss and static, he knew her voice.

  The wo
man in the rubble had sounded just as quavering, just as self-assured.

  Piers said, “This is the very best I can do. The film is grainy and the sound quality—well, I have no idea what she was using or where she got it, but these were extremely early days for sound recording. It’s not synchronized—I can’t do anything about that.”

  Sarah glanced at Jake. He was transfixed, his eyes never leaving his father’s face. Venn too stared with a grim intensity.

  The man in the mirror stood looking out. When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper of static.

  “Are you there, Venn? Are you seeing this? I have to assume you are. I wish I could see you. You and Jake. Hi Jake . . . I wish I could be there with you, back at the Abbey, if that’s where you are.” He stepped closer, his voice coming seconds after his lips formed the words.

  “Is it winter there? God, I’d love to see some snow! Or just good British rain.” He lifted a hand, as if to the glass. “Just to walk across the moor again and breathe the fresh sea air! Instead of the endless scorching heat here, the humidity, the filthy mosquitoes that breed fevers and . . .”

  He stopped. Lifting his chin, he smiled, but it was a weak attempt. “Sorry. Getting maudlin. Talk to myself too much these days. You need facts, so I’ll get on.”

  “And the tape is running out so quickly!” Alicia muttered, louder on the soundtrack.

  “He looks ill,” Jake whispered.

  More than that, Sarah thought. He looked like a jaded, worn, weary man.

  “Venn, listen to me.” David came and gripped the frame of the mirror, looking through it with a determined stare. “After I left Symmes I journeyed. Three times. Each time I found the mirror, adjusted the bracelet, was as sure as I could be that I was doing everything right. Each time I ended up going backward.” He shivered. “A rat-infested tavern—sometime in the Civil War. I was arrested as soon as they saw me, because I appeared out of the air in a crowded place. They had me down for a sorcerer and a witch . . . Haven’t time to explain how I got away. I managed to bribe the magistrate, get to the mirror, and just journey, fast . . . I found myself in York, about ten years before that date . . .” He shrugged. “God, I wish I could see you.”