Lynne Ellison's The Green Bronze Mirror

by Christopher Posner

on.

  'Is there anywhere I can sleep?' she asked the chief, who roared with laughter and was about to give her a very vulgar reply, but she gave him a cold glance which sobered him up. His wife-the tall solid woman-came forward and, beckoning to Karen, she led her to the back of the cave where there was a pile of furs, hidden behind a bluff of rock.

  'There y'are,' she said, 'if ye can sleep wi' this noise goin' on.'

  Wearily Karen flung herself down though no sleep came to her as she lay listening to the men singing raucous songs around the fire. After half an hour Kleon came quickly round behind the rocks and shook her.

  'I'm not asleep.'

  'I thought you were. Listen, I've been talking to the chief and he knows where we can find Math-whatsit.'

  'Oh, smashing! Where?'

  Kleon repeated the directions. They were to go to a stone ring ten miles away and there they would find him. The chief seemed to be sure that they would have no trouble. 'There's another thing, though,' Kleon continued. 'I don't trust these men at all.'

  'Me neither. So you think we ought to slip off tonight, is that it?'

  'Yes. I was hoping there'd be another exit, say, at the back of the cave.’

  'Even if there is they'll soon miss us if they come in here to sleep.'

  'Not if we make dummies out of these furs and cover them up. They'll be too drunk to notice the difference.'

  'All right. We can try anyway.'

  They heaped up the furs to look as if there were people sleeping under them, and then slipped to the back of the cave to explore the possibilities of escape. They found themselves going down a long tunnel, damp and dripping, that led back into the hillside, and they had to tread carefully because of lumps of slippery rock on the earth floor. All about them was a wet, fusty smell.

  About four hundred yards from the main cave a draught of sweet night air blew down on the backs of their necks and they looked quickly up to see a hole in the tunnel roof and the starry sky above.

  'Can we get up there?' she asked Kleon.

  He nodded. 'I think so. Look, the tunnel wall's climbable just here. I could reach across and grab the edge of the hole.'

  He scaled the wall easily and balanced precariously as he felt for the edge. Karen thought he must fall, but at the last minute he managed to get a handhold and swung outwards. His feet thrashed wildly, and slowly rose above Karen's head as he forced himself up. Finally he vanished from sight altogether, and a moment later his head reappeared.

  He reached down. 'Can you climb that wall?'

  Since she looked like having to, Karen said, 'Yes,' with what she hoped was cheerful assurance.

  It was not as difficult as it had seemed at first glance, for there were plenty of crevices. When she was near enough Kleon caught her wrist and hauled her up with remorseless strength, so that all at once she was sprawled on the dewy grass. Stifling a giggle, she stood up. They were on the very top of the hill, and in the valley below all was shadow. The flat hilltops in the distance were silvered in the moonlight, looking unreal and fairylike in the white stillness. Somewhere down in the valley an owl hooted.

  Kleon put a finger to his lips for silence, and set off down the slope in the opposite direction to that of the cave-mouth. They broke into a run over the velvety grass, trying to tread on tiptoe and avoid kicking rocks. Once, when Karen caught up with him, Kleon told her that they must get down among the trees in the valley as the men might find they were gone any minute.

  ‘When she was near enough, Kleon caught her wrist and hauled her up with remorseless strength’

  Karen ran faster. It was easier going when the ground became more level, and soon they were pushing through thickets and brushwood. A river ran down among the trees, and Kleon told Karen to follow him upstream through the water. This would put dogs off the scent if the men did choose to track them. Obediently Karen took her sandals in one hand and waded into the shallows. The water was icy cold and she curled her toes around the smooth pebbles on the bottom. There was mud near the shore, soft and silty, but a strip of stones ran down the middle, and they had stepped into the stream on those because they held no footprints.

  They splashed upstream for about half a mile and then Kleon chose a jutting rock to climb out over. He was still being meticulously careful over footprints. Karen was glad to come out for her feet were by now feeling very numb. She sat down and rubbed them with her warm hands, and the feeling gradually came back along with pins-and-needles. When she had got going again, a delicious warmth flowed through her that was only partly due to the kiss of encouragement Kleon gave her before they set out again. It would have been fun if only it hadn't all been so important.

  Ten miles was a long way, especially in the dead of night and over very rough country, trackless hills with thickly wooded valleys in between. Plodding on, Karen was almost too weary to be excited by the time they stumbled up the last slope and saw the ring in a hollow below them.

  The sky was paling towards dawn, and the stars were fading. A faint glow appeared on the horizon, glimmering between the dark fir trees around the ring. Karen stood very still, watching the glow turn rosy and gold. There was a blue mist down in the valley, rising in veils of vapour. The fir trees whispered and swayed in the breeze, and as the first sun ray struck the great altar-stone in the centre of the ring, Karen became aware of a third person on the scene. In the shadow thrown by the fir trees stood a tall, kingly man, dressed in a tattered robe of faded green, and crowned with oak-leaves.

  XV

  MATH-GIDDON STROKED HIS BEARD REFLECTIVELY AS Karen told him about the mirror. 'Yes,' he said at length, 'it was my son's mirror. He was always doing things like that, you know. I suppose you would consider them practical jokes. That mirror was his masterpiece. I never fully understood it myself. Now, the question is, how do you reverse its effect?'

  'Do you know? If you can't, I'm finished.'

  'Oh, probably. Can you find the mirror again?'

  Karen thought back. With luck, it would still be on the beach, where she had thrown it. 'I could probably find it,' she said.

  The old man started on a rough description of what he would have to do with the mirror. 'I should have to ...er ... exorcize it, as it were. Not a very good word, but it's the nearest to my meaning that I can get. Then, once you've found it, you've just got to look into it again, and it should take you back to wherever you came from. But if anyone else has touched it since you left it, you're here for ever, I'm afraid.'

  Karen wondered if he was serious. All this talk about exorcism and not having touched the mirror sounded crazy to her, but she couldn't very well ask him if he was pulling her leg. 'Shall I go and look for it now?' she suggested, her tiredness temporarily forgotten.

  'I don't see why not. I can start working on it now. It shouldn't take long. By the time you find it I'll be finished. Are you hungry, by the way?' He led the way down the hill to a wattle-and-daub hut in a grove of trees. Three ponies grazed nearby, and a row of beehives stood against the sunny side of the house. The morning sun had warmed the grove already, and the bees were blundering out to seek the flowers. The air vibrated with their droning hum.

  'Sit down outside,' Math-Giddon said. 'There's hardly any room inside. Time was when I'd have a better place than this, and more respect too, before ever the Roman came. They put my son to the sword, and my brother too, we who have ruled here hundreds of years!'

  ‘MATH-GIDDON STROKED HIS BEARD REFLECTIVELY’

  'I'm sorry .. .'Karen said. She could think of nothing else to say to this bitter, grey-haired old man who walked like a king.

  'Ah, well,' he said eventually, and stooped through the low doorway of the hut. Karen sat down on a little bank, between clumps of larkspur and ox-eye daisies; then she lay back on the soft grass and watched a bee, hanging on invisible gauze wings, drift from flower to flower.

  The old man gave them chunks of bread and ham, washed down with a little wine, and
they devoured it all ravenously, for they were very hungry. Afterwards he whistled up the three ponies, bridled two, and handed Karen and Kleon the reins.

  'I presume you're going to the beach with her?' he asked Kleon

  'Naturally. Listen, I want to ask you something. Karen, you go ahead and I'll catch up.'

  .'Oh, all right.' Karen was puzzled, and wondered what Kleon could want with Math-Giddon. She clicked her tongue at the pony, and it ambled off at a comfortable pace, while she let her hips swing to and fro in rhythm with its plodding walk.

  Left behind, Kleon turned to the Druid. 'I didn't want her to hear,' he said, 'in case it doesn't come off. I don't suppose you can get me to her twentieth- century place too?' He looked hopefully at the old man. 'It'd have to be so I knew how to get on there-their money and this television thing she's always telling me about and all that. Could you do it?'

  The old man looked at him very hard for a minute. 'Are you prepared to go through with that for a girl? Are you quite sure?'

  Kleon nodded.

  Hmm. I had a feeling you'd ask me that when I saw you holding her hand. How old are you?'

  'Eighteen.'

  'Only that? You look older. Well, never mind. Come inside.'

  Karen was down at the beach and had just started to root among the furze bushes when she heard a terrific clatter of pebbles and a horse's hard breathing.

  It was Kleon. He had galloped the pony all the way from