The Oversight

by Charlie Fletcher

  The passage was ill-lit but not entirely dark, and as she stood there, unnoticed, Lucy saw a brief shiny reflection of one of the boxed candles on the other wall, and realised she was looking at an eyeball peering at the crowd through a small hole in the canvas.

  She smiled at it, thinking it must be Georgiana, but at that moment the doors at the end of the passage flung open to reveal the brightly lit inner sanctum. The people flowed happily from the dim tunnel into the auditorium, which was little more than a small stage hung with black velvet curtains looking out over ranks of thin benches arranged in front of it.

  By the time Lucy got into the place, the seats had all been taken and she had to find a space against one of the walls, squashed between a fat boy who smelled of cabbage and a fatter woman who breathed entirely through her nose in a series of excited nasal wheezes, close-set eyes bright with anticipation.

  “I hope he cuts someone in half,” she said to the fat boy. “I do so like it when they cuts a pretty lady in bits, though they always have to go and put her together again…”

  The lights dimmed suddenly, and the flares in front of the stage brightened. Georgiana pirouetted on and swept her hand towards the wings. She looked glorious, thought Lucy, her heartbreakingly pale face and perfect eyes offset by a deep green silk costume which showed off both her colouring and her body to great effect.

  “Whoar!” said the fat boy. “Whoar! If she ain’t a pippin!”

  The fatter woman reached behind Lucy and smacked his head sharply.

  “Shush now!” she hissed. “He’s coming…”

  “My lords, my ladies and my most welcome gentlemen,” said Georgiana in a voice clear and sharp as cut crystal. “I give you Na-Barno Eagle, not just the Great Wizard of the South, but the greatest wizard in Great Britain itself!”

  The crowd roared in good-natured approval, entering into the spirit of the thing, and began stamping their feet and clapping their hands in a rhythm that got slowly faster and faster and louder and louder until–at the very moment Lucy knew the rhythm would break–there was a bright magnesium flash and an explosion of white smoke revealing Na-Barno where a moment before Georgiana had been. It was quite as if she had instantly changed into him, for she was nowhere to be seen.

  The crowd roared even louder and the show began.

  Querulous and odd though he might have been at the Showman’s Drumhead, Lucy had to admit he was very different on-stage as he ran effortlessly through a series of tricks and turns. He made coins appear and disappear. He filled cups with water and then showed that they were empty. Then he made them rise into the air unaided. Then he poured water from an empty cup and filled a jug. Then he upended the jug and showed it was still empty. Then he made the jug turn into a pink sugar mouse which he gave to a little girl on the front row. He did not cut anyone in half, but he did lie Georgiana on a plank between two sawhorses, and then remove sawhorses and plank, leaving her floating in the air, so wholly that he was able to demonstrate the fact she was not supported by anything other than his “power” by passing one of his juggling rings round her from feet to head and back.

  In fact it all went superbly until he reached behind himself and whipped the cover off the magical Moor and commanded him to “wake and hold open the veil between this world and the next!”

  For a moment nothing happened, and the crowd stared at the torso and head which Eagle had revealed. The Moor wore a sky blue turban with a large spangled brooch on it and a crimson jacket, brocaded in gold and sewn with brilliants which sparkled in the glow of the footlights. He bent forward as if looking at his hands resting on a board in front of him.

  The board was angled so that the crowd could see it, and inscribed with the letters of the alphabet, in gold against a black background. Additionally the words “YES”, “NO” and “IT IS HIDDEN” and “I MUST REST” were written around the edge of the alphabet. The Moor’s hand pointed at “I MUST REST”.

  “AWAKE, MIGHTY ONE!” shouted Eagle, putting his hand on the Moor’s shoulder.

  There was a slight metallic click, and then, as he removed his hand, the Moor’s wooden head slowly began to tilt backwards so that it was looking at the audience, or would have been if its eyes weren’t still shut. It was a black face, cunningly sculpted to give a sense of haughty power, totally unrelieved by colour except for the lips which were a startling crimson.

  “AWAKE!” bellowed Eagle.

  The room was silent, everyone holding their breath. The Moor’s head came to a stuttering halt, seemingly stuck as it kept ticking back and then meeting some resistance and dropping a fraction forward again.

  “He’s resting,” whispered a voice in the crowd. “Just like my broken mangle’s resting.”

  And just as a suppressed titter began to spread out in the darkness, Eagle touched the shoulder of the Moor once again, and the head jerked and the eyes flew open revealing a flash of white as the jaw flopped, revealing lifelike teeth, made from bone, and the shiny red cavern of the mouth beyond.

  The audience gasped.

  The Moor’s finger moved jerkily and rested on the “NO”.

  “No!” cried Eagle with what Lucy thought was an overly naked show of relief. “He is not resting! See, he has said so, and his eyes are open! Who has a question to tax the ancient wisdom and unparalleled perception of my friend?”

  Before anyone could answer, the Moor started to judder, his eye blinking faster and faster in counterpoint to his mouth, which began to open and close with increasingly loud snapping noises.

  Someone sniggered, and Eagle waved his hands and gamely made as if this was an expected part of the show.

  “He senses a presence!”

  The head now began to rock backward and forward, and the whole effect would have been tragically like someone having a fit had it not been for the growingly humorous spectacle of the large turban slowly slipping drunkenly over the Moor’s face. Eagle’s hand darted out and caught it before it fell to the ground.

  “A… er, an oppressive presence,” he cried. “The Moor is reacting to the presence of an ill-wisher who is upsetting the mystic balance in the room! Who is it? We must ask you to leave…”

  At that, there was a snapping noise and the head of the Moor swivelled sideways, the eyes stuck wide open and the mouth snapped shut.

  To Lucy’s horror, the Moor’s finger rose off the table and pointed inexorably at her.

  A cold shudder went down her back as the wooden face stared in unblinking, silent accusation.

  Lucy was a survivor, and what she did next she did on instinct, without conscious thought: as heads turned and eyes started trying to pierce the gloom and see what or who the automaton was pointing at in the shadows at the edge of the tent, she went slow-but-fast and slipped behind the backs of the crowd and moved a good ten feet away before stopping.

  And so it was that the crowd focused its displeasure on the fat boy who had been standing next to her.

  “Oi, fatty!” shouted a cheery voice from the darkness. “What’s your game?”

  “It’s not me,” he squawked. “I done nothing!”

  “He looks like an ill-wisher!” shouted another. “Wishes ill to every pie he meets!”

  The crowd laughed and hooted as the boy’s face reddened into a pretty exact impression of a beetroot. Lucy, with her habit of looking in the direction other people weren’t, saw Eagle take advantage of the distraction to throw the cover back over the Moor and look beseechingly off to the side of the stage.

  In a moment, it was clear that he had been looking for Georgiana to rescue him, for she appeared from the wings, walking solemnly, as if in church, with her eyes shut. The crowd hushed itself, drawn by her blind silence as she moved inexorably to the edge of the stage.

  “She’s gonna fall off!” whispered a woman beside Lucy. But she didn’t. She stopped with her foot hovering over the drop, and then, without opening her eyes, stepped back and stood quite still.

  “Quiet please, ladies and gentle
men,” said Eagle in an urgent voice. “The spirit of the Moor has taken refuge in this, the frail vessel of my only daughter. It has done so to protect itself against ill-wishers as it has done before… but my friends, if you will ask your questions, perhaps the Moor will speak through her!”

  Georgiana’s eyes began to agitate behind her closed lids and her head began to wobble slightly. Eagle leapt forward and placed his hand on her head.

  “Oh great mage!” he cried. “Will you speak through this fair girl?”

  The fair girl’s eyes opened and stared at Eagle. Her mouth opened and out of it came a deep, guttural man’s voice wholly at odds with her delicate looks.

  “Vaig a parlar amb vostè, fort mag,” she rumbled, the voice seeming to come from the bowels of the earth, “a través d’aquest bonic vaixell!”

  “I will speak for you, mighty wizard,” translated Eagle, his eyes wide with excitement as he looked out at the crowd. “Through this beautiful vessel!”

  The crowd oohed appreciatively. Eagle turned back to Georgiana.

  “And will you let her speak in her own voice?” he asked. “So the ladies and gentlemen here assembled can partake of your great wisdom?”

  Georgiana’s eyes raked the crowd haughtily, and then she gave one decisive nod.

  “Si!” she boomed. “Deixi que és així! Let it be so.”

  The contrast between the rough man’s voice and her gentle tones could not have been greater, or delighted the audience more. Lucy saw them nodding and leaning forward in their seats.

  “Who has a question?” said Eagle.

  No one wanted to be the first to raise their hand, though there was a good deal of muttering and nudging. Eagle pointed at a man in the audience.

  “You, sir–do you have a question?”

  It was the man who had been encouraged to enquire about the whereabouts of a scythe. His wife giggled and nudged him.

  “You have lost something perhaps?” said Georgiana, her blindfolded head casting about, as if trying to catch a scent.

  “Er, well,” mumbled the man, clearly unhappy at being the centre of attention.

  “Don’t say anything!” commanded Eagle. “The Moor will tell you what you have lost, and where it is!”

  Eagle turned to Georgiana and gently pointed her towards the man.

  “Great Moor, can you tell him exactly what he has lost?”

  The tent was quiet as Georgiana reached an open hand out towards the man, as if feeling for him in the air.

  “It is a tool,” she said.

  The man nodded.

  The crowd saw this and murmured appreciatively.

  “It is a sharp tool. I see a blade which has been honed many times,” said Georgiana.

  The crowd looked at the man who nodded again. The crowd murmured more loudly and looked back to Georgiana.

  “It is a not a knife,” she said.

  The man shook his head. The crowd held its breath.

  “It is not an axe,” she said.

  Again he shook his head. The crowd held on.

  “It is…” she said. “It is…”

  Her hand kneaded the air once again.

  “It is a scythe,” she said.

  “Yes!” said the man, and the crowd roared with appreciation. Hands slapped him on the back as if it was he who had got something right, and others applauded Georgiana.

  Lucy could not work out how Georgiana had done it. Even if she had overheard the man’s wife in the passage before the show began, how had she identified him in the dark both then and now, when she was blindfolded? It didn’t make sense.

  “Your scythe was not lent. Your scythe was stolen by a tinker who came past your house while you were away seeing someone called Jed. No. Jethro. You were seeing someone called Jethro and the tinker saw your scythe and took it,” said Georgiana. “Am I right?”

  The man looked at his wife, mouth open in shock.

  “How’d she know about Jethro?” he said wonderingly.

  “Bloody tinkers,” said his wife.

  “Am I right?” repeated Georgiana more insistently.

  “Yes,” said the man, “I lost my scythe and thought it was Jethro who had lent it to someone, but he died afore I could ask. But I got no blessed idea how you know that!”

  The crowd burst into a round of spontaneous applause. Lucy agreed with the man: she had no idea how Georgiana had known all that either unless she really could read minds.

  Which was impossible.

  But only impossible in the way that her glinting was impossible. So perhaps Georgiana had a similar ability which she used to help her father pull off these mind-reading tricks, the trick of course being that it wasn’t a trick. Only impossibility. Or rather, only an impossibility for a natural person. For someone with what Sara Falk had called supranatural powers, perhaps not so very hard at all…

  And this, she thought, might be the reason she had such a strange feeling when she was around Georgiana. Perhaps the frisson she had felt, the strange mixture of excitement and caution was simply the result of like calling to like, blood to blood, a conversation taking place beneath the level of actual thought.

  And if she could read minds, Lucy wondered, would she perhaps be able to read hers? Because if she could and would, and if Lucy could trust her enough to let her in–another big question–then could she perhaps help her fill in the worrying blank spots in her memory? With that in mind, Lucy settled back into the shadows and watched closely as Georgiana proceeded to read more minds and bring more messages from the other side.

  CHAPTER 49

  A MOSAIC OF DESPAIR

  Mr Sharp stared down at hundreds of shards of broken glass. In them, as in a fractured mosaic, he saw pieces of himself looking back, haloed by the bright gas lamps of the Red Library. He looked tired. He looked worried. He looked, in fact, exactly what he felt like–fractured, damaged and not entirely himself.

  Emmet’s dark head swung into view over his shoulder, multiplied in a hundred miniature reflections. Mr Sharp turned and saw that the clay man was holding another tiny sliver of glass, and was looking for somewhere to place it.

  They had finished cleaning the room, collecting all the fragments of the broken mirror from inside the Murano Cabinet and had begun painstakingly to grade them by size and shape, laying them out on the newly cleared tables in the centre of the library. Mr Sharp intended to order the splinters in such a way that it would be easier to reconstitute the broken mirror piece by piece.

  That was the plan.

  Looking down at the assorted shards, he wondered, not for the first time since they had begun, if he was becoming as distracted as Sara. Perhaps, he thought, this was a kind of madness.

  Emmet laid his jag of mirror on the table and went to fetch another piece. Mr Sharp knew Emmet never needed to sleep or rest, and somehow the thought of the golem working slowly and methodically until the job was done gave him hope.

  The door creaked, and Cook looked in. Her eyes widened as she took in the nature and scale of the project they were involved in.

  “What exactly,” she said with a dangerous pause in the middle of the phrase, like someone carefully cocking the hammer on a perilously hair-triggered gun, “are you doing?”

  “What you see,” replied Mr Sharp shortly.

  “This is no time to be playing at jigsaws,” Cook said.

  Mr Sharp and Emmet carried on with their painstaking sorting of the shards.

  “You cannot mend glass,” said Cook, an edge creeping into her voice.

  Mr Sharp would have much rather she had not burst in on him while his project was so close to its infancy and looked so obviously unfinishable. He would have preferred it if it hadn’t been so obvious what he was planning to do. Her disapproval was not going to change his mind, but it would lend a strain to the next few days that he and the whole house could have done much better without.

  “You cannot mend a broken mirror,” she insisted. “No more than you can unroast a chicken. When
a chicken is roasted, it’s roasted. When a mirror is broken, it’s done for. You may as well go to the glazier and order new glass, though why you see fit to mend the cabinet when there is so much else that is more pressing and demanding of our time, I do not know.”

  He pointed at the interior of the cabinet, one side silvered with the surviving mirror, the other showing the wood where the glass on the table had once been intact.

  “If I put a new mirror in there, it will not hold the pathway that Lucy took out of here,” he said. “This old glass holds the resonance of that.”

  Cook shook her head slowly at him.

  “You cannot do what you are planning. Since the Disaster we have forbidden it, and for good cause.”

  He said nothing. There was little reason to engage in an argument when his mind was fixed.

  Cook’s eyes had been judging tough characters from before he had been born, and the look she scoured over him told him that and much else besides, little of it at that moment to his credit.

  “Well. You are stone mad,” she said decisively. “And I won’t have it.”

  “And I won’t discuss it,” he said.

  They stared at each other.

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll see what the others have to say about that.”

  The door bounced on its hinges as she stormed out.

  Emmet carried on methodically sorting the glass. Mr Sharp continued for a few minutes, until the uncharacteristic flush of colour had left his cheeks and his breathing had calmed to normal. Then he stepped away from the table.

  “I will return soon,” he said. Emmet nodded slightly, so slightly that even one as keen-eyed as Mr Sharp wondered if he’d imagined it.

  He found Cook in the kitchen, furiously stabbing the range with a poker, riddling the coals in the grate back to fiery life.

  “If there’s another way,” he said. “Tell me and I will gladly follow it. But there isn’t.”