The Obsidian Mirror

by Catherine Fisher

  He had asked her once, what they were. She had kissed his forehead and said, “They are the enemy, sweet boy.”

  A voice said, “You would be a fool to jump.”

  He wobbled, then crouched and turned, furious. “Don’t creep up on me!”

  The Shee, waiting in the dark branches of a pine, smiled its charming smile. It was a male, gracefully dressed in blue and silver, its long hair tied back. “What are you looking at? May I see?”

  They all had this childish curiosity. He said, “A car. Someone’s parked it here. And I think they’ve come inside.”

  He could see from the snow that the car had been here a while. It was a dark, sleek machine, and its skin gave out no heat.

  The Shee wandered over to the gates and Gideon jumped down beside it. The creature indicated with a long finger. “Look.”

  The gates were open; as far apart as a man could slither. They swung, slightly, in the icy wind. The camera was already clotted with snow. Gideon said, “What is that thing?”

  “Venn’s scrying device.” The Shee gave a languid grin. “It will see nothing today. Not even these.”

  They both gazed at the footprints that led through the gap between the snowy gates, and up the dark, clogged drive.

  A man’s. And the splayed spoor of the wolf.

  The whine rose in Jake’s teeth and nerves. It shivered down his spine. He wanted to yell for it to stop, but he forced himself to keep still, his eyes fixed on Sarah. She was gazing into the mirror. He moved so he was behind her, but saw only blackness.

  “Nothing.”

  “Exactly.” Venn’s voice was breathless with triumph. “Nothing. No reflections. Nothing.”

  Sarah said, “A room. A man, thickset, with a mustache. He’s seen me. He’s talking to me.”

  The whine rose to screaming pitch. The web vibrated. Piers said quickly, “Shutting down.”

  “No!” Venn’s eyes were on the mirror, searching. “Not yet. Not till I see it. Where is it, Sarah? Where?”

  But she spoke, not to him but to the mirror. “Where is this? Who are you?”

  The answer came from no one in the room. It was a thin, pompous voice, oddly quailing. It said, “My name…my name is Symmes.”

  The Shee knelt and touched the footprints, sniffed them. Then it raised its hands to its ears. “What is that terrible whining cry?”

  Gideon was wondering that too. “Is it the world freezing up?”

  He had been with them so long, they had taught him to hear as they did. He could hear the cold night coming down, puddles on the graveled track hardening infinitely slowly, the icy crystals lengthening and creaking to a pitted surface. He could hear the birds edging on their frozen roosts, the blown barbs of their feathers, the blinks of their beady black eyes. He could hear the frost crisp over the windowpanes of Wintercombe.

  But this whine was worse than all of that.

  “Sounds like a human machine.” The Shee rose, disgusted.

  Gideon nodded. The creatures’ aversion to metal still pleased him, even after all this time. It was their one weakness. The Shee listened, snow dusting its thin shoulders, its moon-pale hair glimmering.

  “Summer will want us to investigate.” Gideon turned.

  The Shee’s eyes went sly. “Enter the Dwelling? Many have tried. Venn is too careful.”

  “For you, he is. But I might be able to….”

  “Summer forbids it.”

  It was a risk. They were treacherous beings—this one would betray him in an instant. So he said heavily, “You’re right. And after all, tonight, there’s the Feast.”

  The creature grinned, as he had known it would. “The Midwinter Feast! I’d forgotten! We must get back.”

  Its quicksilver mind would be full instantly of the promise of the music, the terrible, fascinating music of the Shee. The music that devoured lives and time and his own humanity, the music that enslaved him and haunted him and that he hungered for like a drug.

  “You go,” he said. “I’ll come later.”

  “I have to bring you. She’ll be furious.” Its bird-eyes flickered. He saw the small pointed teeth behind its smile.

  “I’ll follow you. I just want to see where these prints go.”

  It hesitated, tormented. Then nodded. “Very well. But be quick!” It turned, and its patchwork of clothes ebbed color, a magical camouflage, so that now it wore a suit of ermine and white velvet, the buttons on its coat silver crystals of ice. It stepped sideways, and was gone.

  Gideon kicked the gates shut.

  He ran, fast and hard, toward the house.

  The screech ratcheted up the scale, a nightmare howl that made Piers snatch his hands back and swear.

  Sparks cracked in the dark.

  “Turn it off!” Wharton yelled.

  Sarah was sucked flat against the web. Behind her, grabbing her arms, Venn said, “I can’t see him. Is he there? What does he look like?”

  She screamed. “I’m falling. I’m falling!!”

  The mirror was gone. It was a wild, gaping rent in the world. A scatter of objects lifted from the desk, flew, and were sucked straight in. With a vicious crack, part of the web came free, one green cable whipping past Jake’s head and vanishing with a bright blink like lightning.

  “Stop it!” Jake yelled.

  “Not yet.” Venn shoved him off. “I’ve got you, Sarah.”

  But she was fighting him, struggling back. Jake yelled, “Let her go!”

  He grabbed her. A fusillade of rivets cracked past him; he dragged her down. For a terrible unbalanced moment he and she and Venn were one tangled person, dragged and flung forward. The green web held them against it, but the force of the hole was too strong, it pulled hair, hands, breath like an immense invisible magnet, and then just as Jake could feel the agonizing suffocation rise to his throat, the whine cracked, and with an explosion that flung him backward off his feet the mirror came back.

  He staggered. The room roared with smoke. Wharton was yelling, “Fire!” In the corners of his eyes brilliant crackles of red were spurting up.

  Sarah pulled him up. She screamed something, but his ears were ringing.

  Flames whoomed into the roof. He saw Piers and Wharton appear and vanish through clouds of steam, a ferocious hissing, and then something seemed to pop in his head and his hearing came back, and the fire extinguishers were pumping fierce cascades of foam over the sparking cables, the flaring embers of books and circuits.

  And then, in a terrible sudden silence, there was only his breathing.

  When I came to I was lying in my room with my Indian servant applying stimulants to my brow. The room was oddly dark and stank of burning, with some of the furniture overturned, but strangely nothing seemed severely damaged. A few objects were strewn on the floor, smoldering.

  I sent Hassan out, righted my chair, and sat on it gaping vacantly at the mirror. I had seen a girl from another time and had spoken to her.

  We had conversed, across ages.

  It was then that I realized that not only my life had changed, but that the world had changed utterly. Out there gas lamps were being lit, men were hurrying out to taverns to buy their evening meal, theaters were opening their doors, the vast populace of London was teeming in the rainy streets.

  Yet here, in this solitary room in a house among a million others, I, John Harcourt Symmes, had broken open the boundaries of time and space.

  So when the brick crashed through my window I almost screamed with the sudden shock of it.

  It landed on my mahogany desk, scattering papers and books, and I leaped up and ran to the smashed star of the window and stared out.

  In the dim shrubbery to the side of my gate a dark figure flickered and was gone.

  Hassan came racing in, with the men I had hired. “Get out there,” I snapped at them. “And do your duty!”

  Quickly I closed the shutters and picked up the missile. It was a half brick, and I shuddered as I thought how it might have smashed the mirro
r itself to pieces. Tied to it with a length of dirty string was a note, which I unfolded. It read: “You have stolen from us and we will have our payment. And until we do, you will never sleep soundly again.”

  I crushed it in my fist and smiled. The poor wretch from the shop, perhaps. The first thing I would do was have him sought by the officers.

  And then, believe me, I would amaze the world.

  Soft steam hung in the dimness. Jake looked at Wharton, who stood breathless with his empty extinguisher, surveying the wreckage.

  Burnt-out wires glowed like cigarette tips.

  Ash drifted in an icy draft.

  Sarah hugged herself, the snake bracelet tight in her fist.

  Venn picked himself up and pushed past Jake. Ignoring everyone, he ducked through the safety web to the mirror, and when he reached it he put his hands against it, meeting his own contorted reflection.

  Piers came from the controls, a zigzag of soot on his forehead.

  “The mirror itself is undamaged,” he said. It was almost a plea. “It’s not the end.”

  Venn was staring at himself. His hands, maimed by frost, gripped the black glass. For a second Jake was sure he would grasp it tight and pick it up and throw it to floor, shattering it in a million pieces.

  But all he did was stare into his own blue eyes, his hands flat on the solid, unforgiving surface.

  He seemed to Sarah to be staring at the torment of his failure.

  And of hers.

  15

  If a speculum is polished sufficiently, it becomes invisible. For it doth reflect all about it, so that the eye sees only that which is shown, not the devyse that showeth it. And if a man becomes hard as diamond, faceted and flawed, he too will show nothing of himself, onlie the fractured images of his world.

  From The Scrutiny of Secrets by Mortimer Dee

  “I’LL TAKE IT,” Sarah said.

  Piers looked at her closely. “You’ve had as much of a shock, invisible girl, as him. You should go and rest. It’s almost midnight.”

  “The last thing I want is sleep.” She took the tray with the mug on it and turned to the door. The house was silent, its long corridors still. Wharton had finally gone to bed, and where Jake was she had no idea. Failure seemed to hang in the air, as acrid as the lingering stench of smoke. She was tired, and as she walked along the dim corridors, she still felt the terror of the mirror, dragging at her.

  But this had to be done.

  She knocked on the door.

  No answer. “Venn? It’s Sarah.”

  She knew he wasn’t asleep. She said, “Let me in. Piers has sent you tea. He’s worried stiff.”

  She balanced the tray and groped for the handle, her wrist encircled with a white ring where the snake had grasped it. She eased the door open.

  His room. She had expected a mess, like Jake’s, but it was spartan. Nothing on the shelves, no clothes, none of his prized ceramics. The furniture was black, modern, glossily lacquered. In all its surfaces reflected snow was falling.

  “Leave me alone, Sarah,” he said, his back to her.

  “You are so like Jake. Anyway, you don’t mean that. Part of you must be excited about what we did.”

  “Must I?” He was sitting in a chair facing the window.

  She put the tray on a table and turned. “I spoke to someone in the past. It’s a breakthrough! Piers will repair the damage.”

  “It’s over,” Venn said. “Burned out. Finished.”

  His voice chilled her. She walked over to him. “He says it looks worse than it is.”

  “He’s lying. You can take your money and go tomorrow. Where the hell you like.”

  “I don’t want to—” She stopped. Because he was holding a small revolver in his right hand, loose and careless. As she watched, he cocked the trigger back, and turned its muzzle into his stomach.

  The tiny click leaped in her heart.

  Tap.

  Tap, tap.

  Snow was falling on the window. Jake ignored it. He stared into the dim embers of his bedroom fire, the marmoset curled cozily on his lap.

  Had Sarah been lying? Maybe the first time, but this time he had heard that voice, that querulous question. Hadn’t he? After the confusion of the explosion he wasn’t even sure anymore.

  Was she really some mixed-up patient dragging them all into her madness? Not that Venn needed dragging. And if the Chronoptika had really swallowed his father, could they ever get him back again, especially after this disaster? Piers had been upbeat, but even he could see the damage. If only he could get close to the device on his own, maybe there was some way it would respond to him.

  Maybe now, tonight!

  Tap. Tap.

  The small noise filtered through his drowsiness. He focused on it, realizing suddenly that it was too regular for snow or wind. He put the monkey on his shoulder and went quickly over to the window and listened.

  Tap.

  Carefully he unlatched the shutter. Nothing. The sill was cluttered with his father’s books; he pushed them aside and knelt up there, Horatio’s arms wrapped firmly around his neck.

  Outside, snow fell in slow diagonals, twirling out of the dark. The Wood was a black emptiness against the sky.

  With an abruptness that made him yell and jerk back, a figure hauled itself over the sill and gazed in at him. He glimpsed a flicker of eyes, then the bang of a fist on the glass.

  Jake opened the casement.

  Gideon crouched outside, gripping tight to the ivy. He was white with cold.

  “You!” Jake stared.

  “I thought I told you to keep a window open!”

  Jake shrugged. “Get in before you fall.”

  “I can’t. You have to pull me in.”

  The wind roared between them. “Why the hell should I?” Jake snapped, irritated.

  “Because no one has, for centuries.” Gideon’s fingers slid, bone white on the ivy bines, his eyes green as the leaves. “And because I saved you from Summer and I paid for it. You owe me.”

  Jake stared at him.

  Then he leaned out and gripped the changeling’s hand, and hauled him in.

  Very quietly, so quiet she barely heard her own voice, Sarah said, “For God’s sake, be—”

  “Careful?” Venn didn’t look at her. “Too late. I should have been careful four years ago. Now maybe I should finish it here. Who would care?”

  “I would. And Piers.” She sat on the bed, stubbornly calm, staring him out. “Don’t be insane.”

  “That from a girl who thinks she can become invisible?”

  She didn’t smile. Instead she said, “Tell me about Leah.”

  It was an enormous risk. For a moment she thought he would really lift up the weapon and fire right in front of her, but then he waved the weapon a fraction to the right. “There she is. Look at her, Sarah.”

  The portrait was positioned so it could be seen from the bed. It was modern in style, a woman’s face, dark hair, high cheekbones, laughing at some private moment. Not beautiful but intelligent, and full of life. Sarah stared, fascinated.

  Venn said, “My family has a reputation. Half human, half Shee. Difficult. Untrustworthy. Since I was a boy I’d been used to loneliness. I didn’t care. I was consumed by ambition—I burned with curiosity about the world, wanted to go everywhere and see everything, to cram it all into me, to fill up the emptiness. I was never satisfied. Even after Katra Simba, after the honorary degrees and TV series and money and fame, I was empty. Not fully human. Until I met her. It was up on Dartmoor. I was driving home, late one night, and it was raining hard. Just up by the crossroads to Princetown the headlights raked over a car, with someone leaning over the open hood.

  “The rain was lashing down, so I pulled up behind and kept the headlights on full. Then this figure in a black hooded raincoat straightened up and yelled at me. ‘Don’t just bloody sit there. Get out and help!’”

  “That was her?”

  He nodded. “Oh, that was her. Caught in that fl
ash of light, behind the rain. Caught like a hare in the headlights. Wild and free.”

  He was silent, shuffling the gun loosely in his hands, so Sarah handed him the mug of tea. He took it, absently.

  “We were married for two years. I was a different man. It was as if some old nagging pain had been healed. Can you imagine that?”

  “I think so.” She curled up her legs and glanced again at the painting. Then at Venn. He laid the weapon on the table and the mug of tea next to it. He sat back. She could almost feel him gathering strength for what would come next.

  “The last time I saw her was beside a car too. But it was so different. Hot, dry, arid. A blazing sun. A road that looped around the mountains above a sea scored by luxury yachts and ferries. Wild and free, yes, and I was driving too fast. And the bend went on and on and my foot went down and then a truck was in front of us and I twisted the wheel…” His voice was a whisper. “The things you wish you could forget are the ones that stay with you. Her hair, all tangled in the grass. A small fly crawling on her forehead. Her eyes, looking at me. Not seeing me.”

  Sarah couldn’t move. It was as if the horror of his memories had woven a spell around them, had invaded the dark room.

  Snow piled and slid on the window. She forced her voice to the cliché. “You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

  “Blame?” He turned his gaze on her. “You have no idea. I don’t blame myself. I don’t exist anymore. I haven’t drawn a breath since that day. I’m buried as cold and as deep as she is.”

  His self-loathing filled the room with a numb despair. She glanced at the door. She desperately wanted Piers to walk in, or even Jake. Anyone. And yet this was her chance and she had to take advantage of it, now, without pity.

  “And so you think, with this device…?”

  He looked at her, sharp. “Always the device, Sarah.”

  “Well, I’m the one you’re experimenting on. Who made it anyway? This Symmes, he wasn’t the inventor.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe this man Maskelyne. Maybe Mortimer Dee. Maybe it’s even older. But I know Symmes got it to work.”