The Obsidian Mirror

by Catherine Fisher

Where they had come from he couldn’t tell; they were so much part of the shadow and the foliage. Tall and pale, male and female, it was as if they had always been there, and just some adjustment of the light had revealed them to him. Their faces were narrow and beautiful, their hair silvery-fair.

  They sat and lounged and leaned on branches or fallen logs, their clothes a crazy collection of fashions and fabrics, green and gold, modern and aged and patched. Their speech, from here, was the murmur of bees.

  “Who are they?” he whispered.

  Gideon was silent. Then he put his lips to Jake’s ear. “Don’t be fooled. They look like angels, but they’re demons. They’re the Shee.”

  Jake had no idea what that meant. But he did know, quite suddenly, that this was no longer his world. The twilit Wood was impossible, because it was only midday, and the moon that hung here unmoving should not be so young. His glance flickered. He saw oak leaves and rowan berries, and the flowers of creamy meadowsweet, all together, every season at once.

  And yet it was winter.

  Then, along the path, a young woman came walking. She strolled out of mist, wearing a brief, simple black dress. Her hair was black too, cropped short. Silver glinted at her ears. Her feet were bare, her lips red. She seemed about eighteen.

  Behind her, to Jake’s astonishment, strode Venn.

  The girl came to the Shee and turned lightly on her toes. She sat on a fallen log with her knees up and smiled as Venn stood over her and snapped, “If that’s all you’ll do for me…”

  “Why should I do more? What do I care about any human woman?”

  “She’s my wife.” His voice was low, as if he fought to keep it steady.

  “Was. She was.” The girl smiled, heartless. “And as you boasted yourself, you don’t need me anymore. You have your precious machine.”

  He shook his head. “I was wrong to say that. The machine—”

  “Is a failure.” She laughed, stretching out her bare foot. “I know. A chaos of forces that you have no chance of controlling. It’s already cost you your friend…now you’ll experiment on this new girl. How long before she too disappears from your world?”

  “I don’t care about the girl.” He watched her, his eyes cold. “Are you really still so jealous?”

  “Of a dead woman?” She laughed again, and some of the Shee laughed with her. It was a sound like the ripple of a hidden stream, and there was no humor in it. It chilled Jake. “Why should I be jealous?”

  She stretched out her hand and touched Venn’s face. “I could bring you back to us at any moment I choose. Is that what you want, Venn? To come home?”

  He stepped back. He said quietly, “I don’t need you, Summer. Leave the girl alone. The boy too. Leave all of us alone.”

  She stood, graceful and slender. “How can I do that, Venn? Light and Shadow. Sun and Moon. The winter king and the queen of summer. We belong together and we always have. You know you can never exist without me.”

  He glared angrily at her, but at the same instant Jake’s hand slid in the mud. A twig cracked.

  The Shee turned like cats.

  Summer was still. Then she took a step forward on her bare feet and lifted her hand and pointed directly at him. “Who dares to spy on me?”

  It was a whisper of venom. The hairs on Jake’s neck prickled. Her eyes were dark as an animal’s, without anything he recognized as human.

  Then Gideon muttered, “Leave a window open for me,” and stood up, leaves and dust falling from him. He walked out among the Shee.

  “I do, Summer. Just me.”

  Summer watched him. She let him come close, with no change of expression. She said softly, “Anyone else, Gideon, would pay dearly for that.”

  “I know.” He glanced at Venn. “I’m sorry. Just curious.”

  “Well, as it’s you, I forgive you. As the cat forgives the sparrow. As the owl forgives the mouse.”

  Gideon gasped. As Jake watched, he crumpled as if the breath had been struck out of him by a terrible blow; with a cry he fell on hands and knees into the forest mud, gasping and retching.

  Venn said, “Stop that!”

  “So you do have some feelings for them.” Summer came and stood over Gideon. “I envy you, Venn. Most times, they just bore me.”

  Gideon kinked and squirmed in agony. His fists gripped mud. Jake wanted to leap out and stand there shouting “Not him. Me,” but he didn’t, because Gideon gave a low, dragging moan and lay still.

  Summer bent over him. She put her arms around him. She kissed him, over and over, on the hair, the forehead, the eyes, and her remorse was sudden and baffling. “Dear child. Sweet child. Help him, everyone. Help him up.”

  The Shee clustered like flies. Their thin hands pulled at Gideon, tugged leaves from his hair. Their fingers, delicate as antennae, felt and picked at his clothes.

  Then Venn dragged him away. “Get your vermin off him. Let him alone.”

  Gideon dragged in a breath. He seemed still dizzy with the shock of pain, but he stood upright and tense, as if ready for anything that might come next, and Jake realized that there was no such thing as safety in Gideon’s world.

  Summer’s mood changed with breathtaking speed. “Time to go.” Now she was coy and amused. She took Gideon’s hand and tugged him down the path. “Come away, oh human child, to the waters and the wild…. Good-bye, Venn.” She blew him a kiss, walking backward. “Guard your lovely machine, Venn. Guard your darling children. Lock your doors and enchant your thresholds, Venn. Because one day, very soon, we will get in.”

  He said, “Not on my watch.”

  She vanished. They all vanished.

  Jake just couldn’t see them anymore. It was as if they had turned sideways and slipped through some slit in the air, even Gideon. Become sunshine and shadow.

  Only Venn stood in the clearing, ankle-deep in nettles.

  For a moment he waited, as if making sure he was alone.

  Then he turned toward Jake. “Get up,” he snarled. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Sarah flicked over a few pages, desperately impatient. The paper had been rubbed with finger marks, as if it had been read over and over. The writing was spiky and jagged with excitement.

  …dank and dismal. Even with my experiences of the filthy rookeries of the city, I found it fouler than foul. The cabman I had hired said, “Are you sure about this, guv?”

  “Sure,” I said. “But remember. Thirty minutes, no more. My life may depend on it.”

  He nodded at me and said, “Trust me, I’m no tommyflit.” Then he turned the cab, and it clopped away into the night.

  I groped down the alley, cane in hand, slipping in the running sewage, holding my handkerchief firmly to my face. Even so, the stench was stomach-churning. I came to an opening in the dingy wall and a solitary gas lamp flickered over the sign. SOLOMON’S COURT.

  Excitement made my heart thump. I fingered the half coin in my pocket, and the loaded revolver next to it. Then I edged into the courtyard.

  It was black as pitch. The houses—or warehouses—reared high into the fog. My footsteps seemed to shuffle and multiply in the enclosed space, as if there were others here, behind me.

  The pentangle was scratched on the wall beside a very small door down a few steps running with noisome liquids. I descended carefully, and rapped on the wood with my cane.

  I was breathless with excitement and avid for danger. These moments were what I lived for.

  The door opened.

  A sickly smell enfolded me, which I recognized immediately as opium. It was a vice I had sampled, but I loathed the way it robbed men of their intelligence, and had long abandoned it. I ducked inside. A stout woman in a red dress held out her hand. She no doubt expected money, but I handed her the broken coin. She brought it close to her eyes, and then, seeing what it was, thrust it back at me with almost a hiss of fear.

  “Follow me,” she croaked.

  The den was crowded, heaps of rags that were men and women lying sprawled
, the pipes through which they took the drug spilling from their fingers. Some moaned. I wondered in what nightmare of horrors their souls wandered. The woman brought me to a dismal corner at the back; she pulled a heavy curtain aside and stepped back, gesturing me to go on. I groped my way along a stinking corridor, and at the end, found an open door. Beyond that, a room.

  A small fire burned in a dark grate. Next to it a man rose to meet me.

  He was the strangest of creatures. A handsome dark-haired man, until he turned, and the flamelight revealed a jagged scar down the left side of his face, a terrible curve, as if some sword had slashed it. His eyes were dark as a rat’s, his hair long, his hands delicate and slender. He lifted one, and held it out; I gave him the half coin and he spared it one glance, slipping it into his pocket.

  “Mr. John Harcourt Symmes,” he said. His voice was curiously husky.

  I bowed. “You know of me, sir?”

  His calm stare unnerved me. He said…

  “Sarah! Are you in here?”

  A banging on the door. Sarah jumped. The sun had gone and the window seat was icy. She shoved the journal into her pocket and hustled the box back quickly in the cupboard.

  “Sarah!”

  “Yes…wait…coming,” she yelled, then hurtled out through the door. Straight into Wharton.

  He gasped. The girl had run out without warning. There was a crash and a flutter. He looked down and saw the newspaper with a small fat leather journal lying splayed on top of it on the wooden floorboards.

  “I’m so sorry,” he began, and she said, “No it’s me…”

  They both dived for the papers, but Wharton was quicker; politely he picked up the notebook and arranged its scattered and damaged pages to smooth order. Words and phrases caught his eye. He stopped, turned back. Surely he had seen…Chronoptika…

  He looked up. Sarah had the newspaper and her face was flushed. She handed it back to him, quickly. “Yours.”

  “Piers’s really.” He took it. Then he said, “Sarah, listen. I’ve just read an article in here and your photo is—”

  “Please.” She looked up at him with blue, urgent eyes. “Don’t tell anyone. I mean outside the house.”

  “Venn knows?”

  She nodded. “I ran away because I’m not mad. I’m not violent. I just need some time to sort myself out. Where they can’t find me.”

  Wharton felt deeply uneasy. What was Venn doing, harboring a girl so disturbed? He shrugged. “Well, it’s none of my business. I’m just en route to Shepton Mallet.” He realized he was still holding the journal, and she was looking at it with an anxious, hungry look. He held it out. “Yours.”

  She took it, just too quickly. He said, “Have you seen Jake?”

  “Not since earlier. We managed to break a mirror.” She moved to go past him, then paused. As if she’d made up her mind, she said, “Mr. Wharton, do you think his father is really dead?”

  Wharton folded the paper absently. “I have no idea. But if he is, I don’t think Venn murdered him.”

  She looked at him calmly. “Neither do I.”

  “That makes three of us,” Piers said, behind them.

  They turned and saw he was standing at the end of the corridor watching them, a black cat tucked under his arm. He grinned his sidelong grin.

  “Lunch is served.”

  9

  What is a reflection? Where doth it exist…in the eye, or in the glasse? What properties in the light return us to our selves? Is it divine revelation, or doth the devyl taunt us with our imperfections?

  Above all, this. How can any man be certayn that what he sees in the mirror is true?

  From The Scrutiny of Secrets by Mortimer Dee

  “THAT WAS DELICIOUS,” Wharton said.

  “So glad you enjoyed it.” Piers piled the dishes on a tray.

  “I’ll take those,” Sarah said quickly. She took the tray and went out with it. She hadn’t eaten much, Wharton thought, and she had seemed tense, on edge. Once, when something had howled far off in the Wood, she had almost jumped, and gone over to the window and stared out at the bleak day for a long time. People must be looking for her. Really, he ought just to phone the police.

  He said, “I’m sorry Jake is so late. He’s a bit…preoccupied.”

  Piers nodded. “Secretive?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “Hell to teach?”

  “Believe me, you have no idea.” Wharton stirred his coffee. “So, Mr. Piers. It must be pleasant having your niece here working with you.”

  Piers’s smile never flickered. Today he was wearing a butler’s outfit, smoothly black over a red waistcoat, the tailcoat ridiculously long. He had already tripped over it once. “Most pleasant, yes.”

  Now he leaned against the table.

  They gazed at each other; it was Wharton who broke first. He tapped the newspaper, suddenly impatient. “It’s odd then that there’s a picture of a girl in here who looks just like Sarah. A young woman who’s absconded from—”

  “I saw that.” Piers swept up the crumbs. “An amazing resemblance. They say everyone in the world has a double, you know. A sort of reflection of oneself.”

  “Do they?”

  “Of course, this other poor girl who’s run away…we don’t know what she’s running from. Those places must be hell. Not that His Excellency would care. He’s not the sort to hide fugitives.”

  “Unless she could be of some use to him.”

  Piers smiled, but it was a brittle effort. “Yes. Unless that.” His gaze fixed on the window. “Ah. Here they are.”

  Wharton stood and saw Venn stride swiftly out of the Wood, and to his surprise, Jake stalk behind him, obviously freezing, and even more obviously, furious.

  Piers turned hastily. “Whoops. I fear lunch might not be wanted. I’ll just take the rest of the dishes down.” Wharton held the door open for him and he stepped out with a tray, vanishing discreetly as Venn barged into the entrance hall in an icy draft that gusted right up the corridor. Jake hurtled after him, mid-shout.

  “I’ll make you talk to me! First off, you lied. All right, maybe you didn’t kill him. But you know what happened to him. This machine she was talking about…”

  “He’s not dead. He’s lost.”

  “Then find him. You’re the explorer. You can’t just—”

  “Jake.” It was the first time Venn had used his name. It stopped him. He saw that the tall man had turned at the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the banister, at bay like a trapped animal. “Jake, listen to me. Your father is lost. He’s not here. He’s not anywhere I can find him. He’s lost in time.”

  Jake shook his head. “What sort of rubbish is that?”

  “I wish it was. I wish to God I had never meddled with it. But I did and now I have to go on. Whatever it costs.” He looked weary and haggard, Wharton thought. No, haunted. He looked like a man who sees a ghost in every mirror. Except that there were no mirrors in this house.

  Venn turned away. “I’ll talk to you about this later.”

  “You’ll talk to me now!” Jake leaped up the stairs, right up to the man, so close that Wharton hurried forward. He had seen too many schoolboy brawls not to recognize the sudden urge for violence.

  Venn didn’t move. His eyes were as cold as winter. “I should get rid of you,” he breathed.

  There was a terrible moment of silence.

  Until the phone rang. It erupted like a small explosion in the charged air.

  They all looked at the old black telephone on its shelf in the hall, as if they barely remembered what it was.

  Then Piers had slid out of the kitchen and was answering, the abruptly cut-off ringing still echoing in the high vaulted ceiling.

  “Wintercombe Abbey,” he said, his voice prim and high. “Yes. Yes…Certainly. One moment please.” He turned to Jake and held out the receiver. “It’s for you.”

  Jake stared. Then he came and took it. At once Venn stalked up the stairs and slammed a distant door.
Piers glanced at Wharton and went back to the kitchen. After a moment, awkward, Wharton took himself off up the stairs too. At the landing he paused and looked down. Jake was talking quietly, into the receiver.

  Thank God for whoever that was.

  Because, for a moment there, it had all looked very nasty.

  “Sorry? Who is this?” Jake snapped.

  “You don’t know me, Mr. Wilde, so my name would mean nothing to you. But I have some information for you. Something you might dearly want to know.”

  The voice was a man’s, quiet, faintly husky.

  Jake leaned with his back against the paneled wall. “Like what?”

  There was a small breathy silence at the other end. A scratchy sound. Then the voice said, “I know where your father is.”

  Jake kept very still. His hand shook a little, as if he was holding the receiver too tight. He said, “Where?”

  “I can’t tell you that over the phone. The line might not be secure. You understand?”

  Another scratchy sound. Was someone listening in? Piers? Jake said, “Yes. Okay. But how do you know?”

  “I’m calling from the village. From the parking lot of the pub. Can you get here?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Come at once, Mr. Wilde. Come alone. Then I assure you, I will explain everything.”

  A click.

  Silence.

  He replaced the receiver slowly and looked around. Should he find Wharton? No time. And he didn’t want the hassle. He grabbed a coat that hung on a peg and went to the front door. It was warped with damp, and stiff; he pulled at it, but Piers said softly, “Going out again, Jake?”

  He swung around, fast. “Maybe.”

  The tiny, smiling man gave him the creeps. Always that mocking grin. As if he knew so much.

  “It’s just that Mr. Venn would rather you didn’t leave the estate at the moment. In your state of mind.”

  “Venn, or you?” Jake stepped forward. “Who’s really running this place, Piers? Because you seem to be the one in control around here.”

  “I assure you, I’m just the slave of the lamp. The controller of the cameras.”