“I went through the looking glass,” I said to myself.
Askell chuckled. “It took me a good deal of time and effort to get you here,” he murmured, stroking his damaged ear menacingly.
I said nothing.
“What did you encounter before reaching the Sunken Castle?” he asked. “Dragons? Skeletons? Monsters?”
I clenched my fists. “The three little pigs,” I said.
Askell’s eyes went wide for a moment, but his cool, angry demeanor soon returned. “Tim, Tom, and Jim,” he said. “But you didn’t encounter the wolf?”
I said nothing.
“You still haven’t figured it out?” he said.
“Figured what out?” I snarled.
Askell smirked. “That the wolf is you.”
Rage seethed inside me and I tried to attack him. Askell stretched out his hand and pushed it into my chest, stopping me in my tracks.
His hooked nose was like the beak of a vulture. And on his feet were a pair of horrible metal shoes inlaid with silver and gold. One look and you could tell the shoes were made magical in an age long, long ago.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I hissed at him. “You were a pillar of salt. You were taken away by the Others. Your people.”
“They’re not my people, Finley,” he said. “I’m not one of the Others. I’m someone like you. Actually, I’m more like you than anyone else in the world. This world — and the other one.”
I clenched my fists even tighter. “We delivered you to Oberon and Arthur,” I said. “The Others came to take you home and punish you for murdering one of them. I saw them take you away in their fleet across the sea.”
“Then let’s just say that they changed their minds later on,” Askell said.
“Who freed you?” I demanded.
Askell smiled. “I have good friends, you see,” he said. “And now, here I am in the last place you would have thought to find me. Inside your head.”
I shook my head. Askell laughed even louder.
“Yes, we’re really there,” he said. “To get here, you had to tear a ticket for the Incognito Bus and take a trip.”
I remembered that my name had been written as the bus’s destination.
Askell noticed my confusion. “Say it isn’t so!” he chided. “You — the great Borderpassing Finley who strides across two worlds — didn’t even realize you’re asleep! And in your ignorance, you’ve allowed me to join you in your own most intimate place: your Sunken Castle!”
I shook my head again. I couldn’t believe it. It was a trick. It had to be. “Where are Aiby and her father?” I asked. “And where is Doug? And all the others who were supposed to be at the meeting?”
“Oh, Finley, Finley,” he said. “We took care of them well before your arrival. You needn’t worry about it, believe me. Each of them is like a closed chapter in a nearly finished book. And I’ll be writing the final chapter soon enough.”
“They’re behind the other mirrors, aren’t they?” I asked.
“No. Only you and I are in this castle,” Askell said. “I’ve been waiting for you. Only you.”
“But why?” I asked. “And for what?”
“When are you going to stop being so mad at me, Finley McPhee?” he said. “It took all my skill to get you to come here. I had to convince you to leave Applecross, get on the Incognito Bus, and fall asleep — all to get you to the precise place where I was waiting for you.”
The cot creaked as Askell shifted to reach inside his pocket. He produced Aiby’s diary from the same pocket where I kept her diary, in the same jeans. “I had to rearrange various journal entries, remove some pages, and cross out all the words I didn’t want you to read. But it was worth the effort, because here you are!”
He tossed the diary at my feet as proof of his act. I bent down slowly while keeping my eyes on Askell and picked it up.
“Diaries are a useful item for leaving directions for travelers, don’t you think?” Askell said. “What did I write again? Wait, let me recall: ‘The trials to get there are three. Discouraged you mustn’t be. Only a true hero will pass and be free.’ Not bad, eh?”
I grimaced. “Coward.”
“Don’t be silly,” Askell said. “All I did was write it. It was you who decided to interpret its meaning the way you wanted to upon reading it. Just as all the others did.”
“The others?” I said. “Meb?”
“Yes, her, too,” Askell said.
I knew Askell was getting at something, but I wasn’t certain what. Then again, I understood almost nothing about anything that was happening to me.
“Don’t you understand?” Askell asked.
I said nothing.
“You’re a tough nut to crack, Finley,” Askell said. “In this way, we’re very much alike — the two of us, I mean.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” Askell said flatly. “You saw it yourself. In the mirror.”
“I saw you in the mirror,” I argued. “And other strangers who are probably trapped in other rooms like this one.”
“The mirrors simply showed you yourself, Finley,” Askell said. “All seven of the people you are.”
“I’m not seven people!” I shouted.
Askell frowned. “All of us are,” he said. “All of us hear voices in our head. You’ve never heard a voice? Someone who’s you, but who’s not really you, who talks to you and gives you advice? Oh, I refuse to believe it’s never happened to you. It happens to everyone. We all have those voices. The Voice of Magic, the Voice of Time, Friends, Places, Fortune, Those Who Are Gone …”
While he spoke, I pictured the drawers in Aiby’s Secretary desk. I began to fear that Askell was right.
“… And then, of course, we have our Voice of Darkness,” Askell said excitedly. “Something awful. The voice that we want to keep quiet. Closed off, hidden deep down in a Sunken Castle of our own creation where no one else can ever reach it.” Semueld Askell rose to his feet and faced me. “And your Voice of Darkness, Finley McPhee … is me.”
It was too much. I held my head between my hands and squeezed it as hard as I could.
Too much information.
Too many lies. Too many mysteries.
I couldn’t trust any of it. No one. Nothing.
I squeezed my head until it throbbed with pain. I lowered my hands and slowly met my adversary’s eyes.
“Nothing to say, young McPhee?” he asked me.
“Just one thing,” I said through clenched teeth.
I would’ve liked to tell him that I didn’t believe him and that whatever this place was he’d brought me to, I would escape. I wanted to say it mattered little whether it was in my head or in the Hollow World or at the top of the tallest mountain on Earth. I would have liked to tell him that even if I couldn’t rescue Aiby, she would rescue me, because she and I were indivisible and nothing could ever separate us. And that even if I, or Aiby, or her father, or Meb, or Doug couldn’t save me, then Patches would. I wanted to say that even if all else failed, and I was doomed to die, I would make sure that it’d be the end of him as well. The end of Semueld Askell.
But I didn’t believe that. Not any of it. So I only had one thing to tell him.
“If you truly are my Voice of Darkness, do you know what that means, Semueld?” I said to him.
“That you chose the wrong side,” Semueld replied. “The Enchanted Emporium will be destroyed. And once it’s gone —”
This time, I was the one who laughed.
“Then you haven’t figured it out?” I said, shaking with fear and anger.
Askell narrowed his eyes at me. “What?” he spat.
“That if you’re my Voice of Darkness,” I hissed at him, “then that means I’m yours. And I’m ready to fight you.”
Askell flinch
ed. It was nearly imperceptible, but he definitely flinched. And that meant I was right: Askell had a reason to be afraid of me, just like I had a reason to fear him.
This time, our battle would have nothing to do with the keys to the shop. There would be no secret Ark to locate, no Others to keep under control. Nor did it have anything to do with anyone else on either side of the fight.
It was just us. Me and him.
Man to man.
I watched his expression turn from fear to irritation, then to rage, then to a mask of indifference. “You surprise me, Finley,” he said. “Unfortunately that’s not how it works.”
“No?” I asked, still smiling.
“No. The way it works is that now you’ve come here, and there’s no way you can get out,” Askell said. He pointed at the well. “Not through there.” He pointed at the mirror. “Nor through there. It’s a Mirror Prison: one comes in, one goes out. And the person who leaves will certainly not be you.”
Without looking away from me, Askell leaned his back against the mirror and slowly began to pass through it.
“You’ve got water here,” Askell said. “The berries from that tree are bitter, but they will sustain you. You’ll be bored to death, but you won’t die. Give me a smile, Finley McPhee, and in twenty years maybe I’ll bring you a book to read.”
I charged at him, but it was no use. Askell had passed all the way through the mirror, which closed around him like a pool of water. Once he was on the other side, he shook the hilt of Lightning Launcher, which was still stuck in the glass, bowed mockingly, and walked away.
I sat down on the cot. There I was, all alone — with only my thoughts to keep me company.
I’d been cheated every which way. I hadn’t saved Aiby, her father, or Doug. And now I knew even less about all of them than I did before this doomed quest had even begun.
Nothing I’d read in Aiby’s Carbon Copy Diary was what she’d written. None of them had ever been here. Or perhaps they’d never left.
The Hall of Mirrors.
One enters. One leaves.
I stared at my image in the mirror and refused to blink even when my eyes began to water.
“Patches! Patches!” I cried. “Go get help, boy!”
He couldn’t hear me, but that didn’t stop me from calling his name until my voice grew hoarse.
I felt like I was losing my mind. I examined the cell inch by inch in search of some sort of clue.
I tried to accept the things I saw. I tried to believe that this little room was really a prison. If that were true, then there’d be at least six other cells around me, linked together by one mirror on the ceiling in the Hall of Mirrors. Even though it all seemed so utterly complicated, I kept thinking, kept trying to reason everything out inside my head. While I was inside my own head. I thought about the seven voices, the seven drawers, and the seven mirrors. My mind reeled.
I shoved my hands in my pockets. To my surprise, I found the Transmogrifier in one. It must have slipped into my pocket when my jeans were in the suitcase! I realized.
Trembling with fear and faint hope, I got up from the cot. I was already imagining myself transformed into something that could go down into that well and …
I peered down the well’s sides. Nothing but darkness.
I stretched out my arms and felt the sides. They were smooth and damp.
Maybe a bird could make it, I thought. I could transform into a bird and fly down.
No, I thought. A bat. Birds can’t see in the dark, but bats can. With echolocation, maybe I could find a way to flee this prison.
My heart beat wildly as a multitude of panicked thoughts assailed me.
How long will the transformation last?
How long did I remain Patches?
What will happen to me if the effect of the Transmogrifier ends when I am in a tiny pipe, underground, or who knows where?
I closed my eyes and tried to focus.
“One comes in, one goes out,” I said, repeating Askell’s words.
To leave the cell, someone else has to enter it, I realized. But who?
Askell again?
The wolf?
The little girl?
The man with the quill pen?
The knight with the fishing pole?
Someone else entirely?
I had never felt so alone.
I gripped the Transmogrifier and thought.
And thought some more.
I refused to let myself despair.
Then I burst into tears. I cried buckets.
Everything had just become too much. It was too big for me.
Time passed. I didn’t know how much. I had no way to tell.
I drank from the well and ate a couple of berries. At least Askell had been telling the truth about the berries. They were the most bitter-tasting thing I’d ever had to swallow.
I banged on the translucent surface of the mirror and called for Patches again. I wondered why the light was always the same, day or night, both inside my prison and outside.
“Do you hear me?” I screamed at the other mirrors.
Nothing.
More time passed. And I thought.
Eventually I decided that I, Finley McPhee, was the Voice of Time. That meant my Voice of Magic had to be the wolf — the one who scared the three little pigs. That very fairy tale was the one my grandmother had always told me to get me to fall asleep when I was younger. And there was a picture of a wolf in Aiby’s drawer, along with the swimsuit and the key.
So all of it was true.
The voices, Finley, I thought. Focus on the voices. Keep figuring out who you are.
“The knight with the fishing pole,” I thought aloud.
I loved to go fishing. Before Aiby arrived, it was my favorite thing. I’d even been held back at school because I’d gone fishing for seventy-one straight days instead of attending school. It was something I was ashamed of, so perhaps that’s why my image was facing away from me.
No, I decided. I’m happy when I’m fishing. Sure, I feel bad about skipping school now, but at the time I felt completely at peace in my secret place down by the water.
That meant the knight was the Voice of Places.
“The old man and the donkey has to be my Voice of Those Who Are Gone,” I said. “I don’t know why Patches would be a golden donkey, but nothing else makes sense for that one.”
And Askell is my Voice of Darkness, I thought. Even though I knew it was true, I couldn’t bring myself say it. But I accepted it.
Two of them remained: the Voice of Friends and the Voice of Fate. One had to be the nineteenth century gentleman with the quill. The other had to be the little girl. While she looked a little like Aiby, I didn’t feel at all like we were friends.
“The little girl must be Fate,” I decided.
I wondered how the old guy could be a friend. It felt like guessing …
I smiled. It was all wrong. It made no sense.
I couldn’t believe anything Askell had told me. His frightened face gave that fact away when he realized that I knew I was his Voice of Darkness just like he was mine.
And then there was what Mr. Tommy had told me. “He said I’m the third type of hero,” I murmured. “The one who doesn’t need magical objects or a coadjutor. The one who can do everything by himself.”
I had to get myself out of that prison. I had to figure out where I was. I had to get myself back home. And then I would find out where the others were. I’d find out why Askell had said they were closed chapters in a nearly finished book.
I had to rescue them. If it was still possible, that is. If they still needed rescuing.
“They knew about it,” I muttered. “The Lilys knew they would get caught. That’s why they prepared my suitcase. And left me Angelica. That’s why they didn�
�t invite me to the meeting. And why they didn’t invite Meb.”
Meb was still there at the Enchanted Emporium. Waiting. At least she was safe. That comforted me.
It was a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. Small and insignificant, just like that little ant that was walking across the floor of the cell by my feet.
“Wait a second!” I said. “How did you get in here?”
I dove to the ground to examine it more closely. There was no doubt about it. It really was an ant.
One comes in, I thought. One goes out.
Where had this ant come in? From under the mirror? From the well? Maybe from the crack in the wall that the water was dripping from?
I swallowed hard. Becoming an ant was much better than becoming a bat and flying down a well that probably didn’t have an exit.
On hands and knees, I followed the ant all around the room without ever losing sight of it. I examined every square inch of the cell in search of a crack, a passage, or some slight opening.
And then I found it: a tiny crack in the wall near the base of the mirror.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t leave now,” I told the ant. Ever so gently, I lifted the ant from the floor and carried it to the other side of the well. With that done, I grabbed the Transmogrifier and pressed it to my forehead.
It’s incredible how long it takes an ant to get out of a pair of jeans. Every fold becomes a mountain. It’s kind of like steering a boat in the middle of the ocean. But I did it.
In case you’ve never experienced what it’s like to be an ant, let me explain: you feel the air vibrate around you like some sort of enticing music and a pleasant scent combined. And if you follow that resonant scent, you generally get where you want to go.
During my experience as an ant, I can remember thinking about only two things: food and home.
The scent of home came from the wall, near the tiny chink next to the mirror that I’d found. I slipped inside and crawled on my little feet through a dark, microscopic maze, guided only by that indefinable tug toward “home.” As I skittered along, I tried very hard not to imagine what would happen if the transformation was reversed while I was still inside such a small space.
The Thief of Mirrors: 4 (Enchanted Emporium) Page 8
