by Holly Webb
“All right! They’re only little,” Robin protested. “I’m really hungry. School lunch was pasta with glue, again. I just ate the garlic bread.”
There were so few flapjacks left after he’d raided them that Emily and Rachel decided it was simpler just to take the rest of the tin upstairs, with a couple of bananas to go with them.
The stairs were probably the main difference from Rachel’s flat, Emily thought to herself as they went up to her room. She couldn’t imagine living all on one floor. Stairs were nice. They were good for sulking on when Robin was being a pain, and they were a very useful place to leave things that you needed to put away and just hadn’t quite got round to taking up to your room yet. Plus they were a good place for all the random paintings and odd old mirrors that her parents had collected over the years.
A lot of the paintings were ancient ones that Mum said had come from her parents’ house. They were so dark, Emily could hardly see what was in most of them – just a shadowy figure here and there, or a pale, ghostly face shining out of the dirt and thick, treacly varnish. There were framed school photos dotted in and out of them, and pictures that Lark and Lory and Emily and Robin had drawn over the years, but most of the paintings and mirrors had heavy wooden frames, carved with curls and scrolls, that were far more interesting than the murky images they held.
Emily’s favourite was an enormous mirror that stood on the landing at the top of the stairs, just before the little, rickety flight that led up to her room, which had been the attic once.
The mirror was on the wall between Lark’s room and Lory’s, and it looked ancient. It had a gold frame, like a garland of flowers twirled around the glass, and so carefully carved that you could see the stalks of all the flowers, and catch glimpses of tiny birds and mice lurking behind them. Little touches of faded paint brightened the petals and the birds’ feathers, and Emily loved it. It was a flattering mirror, too. Something about the light pouring in from the big window on the landing made the reflections glow with a softness that was like candlelight – like the light that the mirror had been made for. There were still candle holders nestled in the woodwork of the frame, with old stubs of candles in them. They made Emily feel that she ought to have her hair arranged in bunches of ringlets and wear long dresses with frilly petticoats.
Emily peered into the mirror as she and Rachel went past, scrunching up her wavy hair into a sort of topknot and expecting to see a Victorian version of herself staring back at her. Instead, she only saw herself, pink from sitting in the sun at lunchtime, her ponytail gone crooked. Emily made a face at herself as she tried to pull her ponytail straight.
Emily glanced round at Lark’s door, and Lory’s on the other side of the mirror. They reminded her that she and Rachel had better hurry up. Her sisters would be back soon, and they would be after a sugar boost too. Lark’s door looked a soft sage green today – it was a trick of the light on the landing; both her sisters’ rooms had doors that seemed to change colour. Lark’s could be anything from bright emerald to grey, and Lory’s went from creamy yellow to scarlet depending on which way you looked at it, and how hot a day it was. Today it was a burning sunset orange.
Robin’s door was always the same sky blue, but it moved. It didn’t really, of course; Emily knew that. It just seemed to, because of the shadows. She’d seen his door in between Lark’s room and Lory’s once, and her favourite mirror had been inside his room, hanging over his bed. That had been in the middle of the night, though, when she’d come down to go to the loo, so she’d probably been dreaming.
But it was that sort of house. Emily was used to it, but it did surprise people sometimes. Rachel was standing on the landing looking confused right now.
Emily pushed her gently in the direction of the little flight of stairs that led up to her attic bedroom. “Come on, I’m starving…”
Rachel blinked at her gratefully, and they hurried up the stairs together. Emily could hear thumping steps behind them, and she glanced back down to see Gruff following her, his huge grey wiry muzzle twitching hopefully. “Oh, all right. You can have a bit. But just a little bit. I’m hungry too, and I made them!”
Emily’s door never seemed to change colour. It was purple, and it was always exactly where she wanted it to be. She adored her bedroom. She knew that when she was little, she’d had a tiny little bedroom that opened off her parents’ room, on the floor below Lark and Lory. But somehow she couldn’t remember sleeping anywhere else. It wasn’t a massive bedroom – but it was Emily’s, and no one else’s. In a big family (especially a big family with two bossy older sisters and a little brother who could charm the birds out of the trees if he could be bothered to make the effort), that was something special. Her bed was tucked into the corner behind the door, and then there was room for a chest of drawers and not a lot else in the main part of the room – but there was the turret too. It bulged out of the end of the room, round, and not all that big. Dusty beams held up the pointy roof part, and Emily hung things off them sometimes – little strings of bells, and sparkly baubles and snowflakes at Christmas.
It was the windows that made it special, though. The glass in them was wavy – there was no other way to describe it. It was old, old glass, her dad had told her. Probably the original glass from when the house was built, nearly two hundred years before. It was greenish, and thick, and it rattled in the wind and let the cold draughts in, but Emily didn’t mind. When she sat at her table in the turret and stared out of those windows, the glass made it look as though she was gazing at forests, and palaces with turrets like hers – not the houses on the other side of the street. Emily sat on the cushioned bench around the windows watching, and dreamed, or sometimes she drew, stretching pieces of paper out across her table and trying to catch the shadowy fairy-tale places that she saw sideways through the glass. Her dad had framed one of the drawings, and he kept it on the wall in his tiny study. Emily’s mum said she was too imaginative, which Emily thought was very unfair, because obviously Emily’s drawing had come from her; she drew all the time. But she’d only said it after Emily’s teacher had sent home a note about unsatisfactory homework. Her mum and dad had been quite upset. They weren’t used to notes from school. Lark and Lory and Robin were all brilliantly clever. Emily wasn’t stupid, but she was a lot better at cooking and drawing than she was at things like maths.
Now if the homework was something that really needed concentrating on, Emily did it on the other side of the table, sitting on the bench seat and looking away from the windows. It didn’t work very well, though. She could still see the glass out of the corners of her eyes, and she could feel the stories going on behind her.
She and Rachel curled up on the window seat and nibbled flapjacks, with Gruff sitting on the floor between them, his huge head resting on the cushions so he could stare up at them with melty, loving eyes. It was impossible not to feed him when he looked like that, and he made it very clear that he wanted flapjack; he was not being fobbed off with banana. Banana was not for dogs.
“I wonder why he doesn’t get fat,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “Everyone feeds him. Even people in the street. Remember that little girl giving him her ice cream?”
Emily shuddered. “Of course I do. Her mum yelled at me for ages. She wouldn’t believe me when I said he hadn’t snatched it, and Gruff just stood there licking it off his whiskers and looking blissed out. It was awful.”
Gruff sniffed thoughtfully at the cushions in case he’d missed any crumbs, sighed heavily, and stalked away, clicking and thudding down the wooden stairs.
Emily leaned back against the windows, her cheek against the cool glass, and watched the thin, hazy clouds floating past, twisting themselves into fantastical shapes. She wondered if Rachel could see them, or if it was just her. Maybe there was something strange about her. No one else in her family seemed to see odd things out of the corners of their eyes. When she’d told Robin about the doors changing col
our he’d looked at her as if she was mad, and then snorted with laughter.
Still, Emily didn’t mind. She didn’t even mind that much that they were all cleverer than she was, though it did make school reports at the end of the year a bit depressing. She wouldn’t give up being dreamy and seeing things for being good at spelling.
“Rachel! Your dad called! He’s on his way round to pick you up.” Eva was shouting from the kitchen, and the girls sighed, and stretched, and clattered back down the stairs.
Emily only glanced into the mirror on the landing to see if her nose was still red – it felt as though she might have burned a bit in the sun, and she was hoping it wasn’t going to peel. She looked at herself anxiously – but she wasn’t there. The mirror was full of mist.
Emily blinked at it, wondering what had happened. Had her mum tried to clean the glass? It had always been mottled, spotted with dark patches, where the old glass was losing its silver, but it had never been greyish before. It hadn’t looked like this on her way up the stairs, either.
She took a step closer, looking into the misty surface, and lifted a hand to run her fingertips over the glass. Maybe it was just damp? The mirror wasn’t that far from the bathroom, and Lark and Lory both took ages in the shower, and left the bathroom all steamed up. But then Emily stopped, her fingers still reaching out to touch the glass, and she stared. She blinked in confusion, and looked back again.
In the mirror, gazing out at her, was a face.
Not hers.
Not even the oddly lit version of her own face that Emily had imagined she might see. This was someone completely different. The skin was pale – even paler than Lory and Lark – and the hair was a greenish-gold, swirling around the girl’s head with a thick flatness, like water weed floating in a river. Her eyes were a shallow, silvery green, glittering even in the dim light of the mirror-place. They were wild, exciting eyes, and the creature in the mirror was laughing, Emily was sure. Her lips were drawn back over pretty, pointed little teeth, and Emily could see a glimpse of the bright pink of her sharp tongue.
Emily lifted her hand again, wondering if her fingers would go through the mirror if she tried to touch the glass. Maybe it wasn’t glass at all any more. It looked almost like water. She brought her fingers closer, not quite daring to touch. What if the girl in the mirror caught Emily’s hand, and pulled her in? Or what if she didn’t? Wouldn’t that be almost worse?
“Who are you?” Emily whispered, running her fingertips over the flowers on the mirror frame and gasping as her fingers tingled, and a twining of white wild roses and dark ivy appeared around the girl in the mirror. Her greenish hair seemed to flush golden, like wheat stalks, and she smiled more widely, and the white rosebuds opened around her. Emily could smell them, a very faint, sweet, spicy scent that wafted out around the landing.
Where was she, this strange girl? Was there somewhere else behind the mirror? It was only Lory’s wardrobe behind that wall, Emily was quite sure. Unless – unless it was a different sort of place. The mirror felt so inviting, almost like a door. A door that was just a little open. Emily felt a small spark of excitement deep in the middle of her. Had she opened it? Had she made the mirror change?
She moved her fingers closer to the glass, wondering what it would feel like, and the girl in the mirror watched her eagerly, raising her own fingers, as though she wanted to touch them to Emily’s through the glass.
She looks like Lory, Emily thought dreamily, as her skin brushed the chill surface of the mirror. She blinked a little, and stared more closely, sharply at the girl. Was it Lory? Was this all some kind of a trick? Mum would kill Lory if she’d made a hole out of the back of her wardrobe.
But the eyes were different, Emily decided. Lory had golden-yellow eyes, with brown flecks in them, and this girl’s eyes were silvery-green. Besides, how would Lory fill her wardrobe with mist, and pale roses? It wasn’t Lory’s wardrobe she was staring into, it was somewhere else. Another place. And Emily wanted to go there too.
She pressed her fingers to the glass, feeling that eerie tingling again, and the girl in the mirror smiled at her. Her own white fingers stretched out to Emily’s, and Emily gasped as the icy glass seemed to soften and give under her fingertips. It rippled, and bubbled, and Emily felt something shiver through her, right the way to the ends of her hair.
Then it all stopped. The glass hardened and cleared, and there was only her own face staring back at her – white and frightened, but somehow excited too. And behind her in the mirror was Rachel, frowning with worry, her brownish hair and freckled nose looking strangely normal after that eerie girl.
Rachel was holding her arm, Emily realized. Her friend must have come back upstairs to see why she’d stopped, and grabbed her. Just as – just as something was about to happen. Emily wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or not.
“Are you all right? You look really funny.” Rachel took hold of Emily’s other arm, as though she was worried Emily might fall down. “Is that why you were looking in the mirror? You’ve gone ever so pale.” She moved a smidge backwards, but kept hold of Emily. “Are you going to be sick?”
“No … I don’t think so.” Emily closed her eyes for a second. There were odd sparkles and flashes at the back of them, like white flowers. What had happened? There had been a girl… She could hardly remember. It was as if the mist in the mirror had swirled through her head too – everything was vague, and all the shapes seemed wrong.
Emily shook her head firmly, and shivered as all the glittering lights swayed and whirled behind her eyes. “No. I’m OK.” She took a shaky step away from the mirror, and it seemed suddenly easier to breathe. She looked back at it – pretty as ever, the carvings delicate, the paint faded. There was nothing to show what had just happened.
Perhaps it hadn’t happened at all. Maybe Rachel was right.
Something cold nudged her hand, and Emily jumped.
“It’s only Gruff,” Rachel told her gently.
“Oh…” Emily patted the enormous dog on his grey head. “Hey, Gruff.”
“He just turned up, I didn’t even hear him coming,” Rachel murmured. “Oh, there’s my dad!” she added, as someone banged the mermaid door knocker. “Are you OK, Ems? I’ve got to go, you know what Dad’s like if you make him hang around.”
Emily nodded. “I’m fine, honestly.” She managed a grin. “Got up too fast, that’s all. I just need another flapjack!” She hurried down the stairs with Rachel and said goodbye looking almost normal. But when the door shut, her legs wobbled again, and she shivered.
Gruff let out a low, grumpy sort of growl, and pushed at her. He was so big, he fitted snugly just under her elbow. He squidged himself close and nudged Emily till she sat down on the bottom step of the stairs. Then he gazed at her suspiciously, as though he thought she might be about to keel over. He was squashing her feet, his heavy greyish head resting solemnly in her lap. She couldn’t move, pressed into the stairs by the weight of dog, as though he was guarding her.
Emily looked down at Gruff, his shining eyes as black as liquorice. Did he know what had happened? Had she imagined it all? “I wish you could tell me,” she murmured, under her breath, but Gruff just let out a steamy huff of breath and rubbed his muzzle against her leg. If he knew what had happened, he wasn’t saying.
That night, Emily lay in bed with Gruff stretched out just below her feet. He didn’t always sleep in her room, only sometimes, but he’d been following her around all day. He’d even sat on her feet during dinner. Luckily, with Lark and Lory complaining about a new teacher, the meal was noisy enough that no one really noticed how pale and quiet Emily was. Her mum did ask if she was all right, but Emily only said she was sleepy from the heat. It might even be true – maybe it was just the hot sun that was making her see weird things. But her bedroom windows were full of pictures even in the winter.
Perhaps there was something weird about her
? Emily shifted carefully, trying not to dislodge Gruff from her feet and burying her face into her pillow. Maybe she could see things that other people couldn’t? She scrunched her eyes more tightly closed. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to see anything strange. Especially not now, in the dark.
Maybe you’re a witch, she thought to herself as she sank into sleep.
Emily shifted, and sighed, and turned over, and Gruff huffed and wriggled and curled up further down the bed.
She began to dream, strange glimpses of a lush, leafy riverbank, overhung with willow trees. She was sitting in the shadows, not the full sun, watching the water as it flowed by. The river looked deep and dark along the central channel, but the banks sloped gently down, and the water glittered silvery as it rippled over the stones close to her feet. It looked like the mirror, she remembered vaguely, though which mirror, and why it was important, she didn’t know.
She crawled a little way forward, to see the water better, and lay down with her chin propped in her hands, to gaze into the shallows. Weeds were streaming in the gentle current, rippling like green silken ribbons, and she dipped her fingers in the water to stroke them.
Then she smiled delightedly as a tiny little see-through silvery fish darted past her fingers, followed by another, and another.
She was so absorbed watching the fish that she didn’t look up at first, when the girl came. Emily realized gradually that someone was sitting next to her, dipping their toes in the clear water and humming a little.
Emily looked round at her, trying to sit up, and gasped as the silken ribbon-weed bound itself tightly around her fingers, pulling her closer to the water.
The girl next to her clicked her tongue in irritation – whether at her or the weed, Emily wasn’t sure – and flung a handful of sandy mud into the clear water. The weed let go of Emily with a reluctant sucking sensation, and she pulled her hand away.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the girl. “I must have got twisted up in them somehow…” Her voice trailed away. She hadn’t got tangled up. The weeds had tried to hold on to her. And she knew the girl who was staring at her now. She had seen her before somewhere – that hair that was greenish-gold, like the water weed. The pointed ears and silvery eyes. But with the wispy, infuriating logic of dreams, Emily couldn’t remember where. She stared down at the water again, frowning and trying to think. The girl was still dabbling her toes in the shallows, and Emily gazed at them, suddenly realizing that they were webbed. Greenish fans of skin spread out between each of her long toes. Emily looked at the girl’s fingers, which were the same, and swallowed. Whoever she was, and wherever Emily had seen her before, she wasn’t human.
