The Door in the Moon (23 page)

The long room above the river was dim; the fire had died during the night and only a few dull ashes lay in the hearth. Without another word Moll crossed the dusty floor and twitched the cover from the mirror. And as soon as he saw his own dim face in it, Jake knew what was puzzling him.

“At last!” David almost ran to it. “I've searched for this so hard! Where . . . how did you find it?”

Moll shrugged. “Research. Saw a drawing in one of the books on Versailles. Room full of mirrors, hundreds of them. And this one among them, bold as brass. As if it was staring out at me saying
Here I am. Come and find me
. So we came. Brought it here before the palace got trashed. Those crazy citizens out there can make a hell of a mess.”

David put his hand out and touched the mirror.

The obsidian glass gave a small ripple, barely seen.

“It recognizes you,” Jake breathed.

“Not him. The bracelet,” Gideon muttered.

David nodded. He reached into his dirty lace coat and pulled out the bracelet he had carried for so long on a silver chain, then slipped in onto his wrist and clicked it shut.

Venn lifted his own arm and the two snakes stared at each other. “First time together since we messed up the experiment,” David muttered. “So long ago.” Then, as if it took all his summoned courage to ask the question, he looked at Venn. “Exactly how long since I've been gone, O?”

It was Jake who answered. “One year, ten months, nine days.”

“My God. Is that all?”

“All? It was forever!”

Fear was back in his father's eyes. “Yes, but don't you see, Jake? For me . . . here and in Florence . . . it's been longer. Maybe three, four years. I'm years older than I should be. When I go back . . . will I have lost time, or gained it?”

For a moment they all shared the puzzling impossibility of it.

It was Gideon who broke the spell. “It doesn't matter now. We need to hurry,” he said uneasily. “Who knows what the Shee are doing back there.”

“Right.” Venn turned, purposeful. “Sarah, take my hand. You too, Gideon. We
journey
together. Jake and David, all of us, linked in one line. With the two bracelets it should be possible. And we go directly into the mirror.”

He adjusted the controls carefully on each of the bracelets, synchronizing them, and showed David the small ammonite in the top of the silver frame.

“Amazing,” David muttered.

Venn nodded, and turned to the mirror. “Can you hear us, Piers? Maskelyne? Can anyone hear?”

Next to him, Sarah watched.

The darkness of the mirror altered. Something drifted in its depths, like a dark leaf falling from a branch. For some reason it sent a dread through her. She stepped closer, staring hard, but only her own face, pale and tired and strangely thin, stared back at her. And then Jake said, “What the hell is that?” and she realized that the mirror was no longer black.

It was green.

A deep gloom, as if it reflected the very depths of the Wood.

Venn swore a bitter oath. “The Shee are in the Abbey.”

She saw that there were tendrils of ivy over the surface of the glass; that a great tree root had splintered the floor beside it.

“Where's Maskelyne? And Rebecca?”

Venn's face was dark, and she wondered if he had feared this all along. “That's a good question.” He turned. “We go. Now!”

Without waiting for an answer he grabbed Sarah's hand, and she quickly caught up Gideon's. Jake held on tight to his father. Then he turned and held out a hand to Moll.

“Coming?” he said.

She shrugged, tugging the red cap from her curly hair and tossing it down. “Might as well. Already missed the last omnibus, Jake.”

He gripped her small dirty fingers.

“Here goes,” David muttered, nervous. Jake held him tight.

They walked forward.

And all around them, the mirror exploded into vacuum.

When the Wood shall enfold the World, then there shall be wonders told.

There shall be dreams and diamonds.

There shall be a kiss through the smallest chink of time.

From
The Scrutiny of Secrets
by Mortimer Dee

R
EBECCA RAISED HER
head wearily and said, “Light. At last.”

Outside, beyond the green gloom of the Wood, they saw the light of dawn.

Everywhere on turrets and branches and boughs, the birds of Wintercombe burst into song.

The shortest night was ending, the sun was rising. She longed for it, and yet in a way she was dreading it too, because this would be Midsummer Day, and the scorching heat of summer would crisp the leaves of the gorse and the bracken, and it would be the day of her greatest power.

“Can't you do anything at all?”

“I've tried.” Maskelyne dragged leaves from his dark hair. He looked angry, bitter with defeat. “Believe me. But even I can't challenge the power of the Shee on this day.”

They had crawled and wormed their way along the Monk's Walk until they could get no farther. Now, sitting exhausted against the cool wall under the windows Rebecca peered ahead into dimness. The lab where the mirror leaned was inaccessible; a sheer mass of bramble had sprouted into a dark portcullis completely blocking the passageway.

They had no way of knowing how things were beyond, and she was worried about Lorenzo, but certainly the cats were still there. Even as Rebecca looked now she saw a black paw emerge from the brambles, and then, flattened almost to the floor, a small head with green eyes looking at them.

The cat mewed urgently.

“What does it say?” she hissed.

Maskelyne looked at it gloomily. “I have no idea.”

“Piers would know.”

“I'm not Piers.” But he was listening, intently. Then he said, “I think I can hear the baby crying.”

She shook her head in despair, imagining the cradle wreathed in leaves, the Shee with their long fingers bending over Lorenzo in fascination. “
What if they take him!
We need to get through!”

Remembering, she snatched the small wooden bird from her pocket. “You! You might get through.”

“No way!” The creature opened its eyes wide. “Are you crazy? This place is infested. If even one of them lays eyes on me . . .”

Even as it spoke it gave a cheep of terror and fled back in.

Maskelyne knelt, alert.

Something had jumped in the dimness of the stone corridor. Then it was on the sill; a small wet toad with pimpled skin.

It flicked a long tongue out, caught a fly and ate it. And quite suddenly became a small man in a rapidly changing series of clothes—doublet, dark suit with top hat, red waistcoat, and finally lab coat, as if he had rippled through an imaginary wardrobe and selected the right outfit. His gold earring glinted in the coming light.

“Piers, for God's sake!” Rebecca leaped up. “Where have you
been
so long! Where's George?”

“Down below.” Piers scratched his skin, which still had too many warts, irritably. “Take a look.”

She leaned out of the pointed window, and saw the rocks clustered with watching Shee, Summer in a dress as white as a swan, a man hanging desperately on the most precarious of handholds.

She put her hand to her mouth.

And screamed as he fell.

Wharton heard her. He thought it was his own terror, the scream that was torn from him, or the screech of the faery queen's laughter. Then all the breath went out of him as he hit the rock face and slid and grabbed and slid.

Blood oozed on his fingers; winded, he blinked grit from his eyes.

He yelled and swore and slipped again.

He couldn't see, daren't look up or down because the Shee would cluster on him now like flies on a carcass.

He was finished.

“George!” The cry was Rebecca's; it rang oddly in the crannies of the cavern. He rubbed his stinging eyes on his sleeve. Was he even the right way up? Was his neck broken? He had no idea.

Something hit him with a smack on the shoulder. He grabbed it like a lifeline, hauled himself around, and then he was climbing, faster than he had thought he could ever climb again, knees tight, ankles locked, hands gripping the rope, and it was a strange spell-rope too, all made of bines and bramble, but he had no time to think of that, because around him the Shee hung and laughed and watched, butterfly-bright.

Where was Summer?

He reached the window. Hands grabbed him; he was hauled roughly in and at once crashed to the stone floor with a moan of relief.

“Where is she?” Maskelyne hissed.

Rebecca was leaning out, looking up. “There.”

On the topmost gable of the house a white bird perched. A swan? Long-necked, elegant, it watched them with dark, careless eyes, and then, as the red glimmer of dawn touched it, it rose up and opened its wings wide.

The feathers were tipped with crimson, like blood.

Wharton pulled his head back in and looked at the clogged corridor. “What do we do now?”

Rebecca considered the tangle of brambles, and turned to Piers. “We need to be small, Piers. Really, really small. Can you do that?”

Piers flexed his fingers. “Here we go again. Ready?”

And then something happened that she had no words for, and when it was over had no idea if it had really happened. Because how could the brambles have become so enormous, and the gaps between them suddenly so wide? How could she have been running like that, flat and fleet, and how could her heart have pounded and her eyesight been so sharp and the colors all lost? How could fear become a creature so huge, with green eyes and whiskers, a thing that picked her up with a velvet mouth, and carried her, shaking her, dumping her, flattened, under one paw?

“. . . hear what I said, Primo! Let her go right now!”

The cat leaped back, mewing with sulky venom.

Breathless, she was sprawled face-down on the lab floor, and Wharton was helping her up. “Are you okay? Bloody cat! That could have been so . . . nasty.”

She caught her breath. “Did we just . . . ? I mean, was that really—”

“Best not to ask.” He turned, quickly. “At least we're in.”

Indeed, they were in the lab, and it was untouched by the spell of the Wood. In fact, the tendrils of ivy and branches turned back sharply at the door as if at some solid invisible barrier, and she saw one or two cool-eyed and silver-haired Shee beyond, staring in with calm curiosity, as if Maskelyne had guarded the mirror with every spell he knew.

Pushing past Piers, she hurried to the cradle.

Lorenzo was awake, eyes wide and dark, but lying quietly. Hugging him with loving abandon was the marmoset, Horatio, his tail wrapped cozily around the baby's feet.

“Look at that!” she breathed.

Maskelyne said, “Becky. Come quick.”

The mirror shivered. The malachite webbing tensed. The air hummed with a rising frequency.

“They're coming back!” Wharton was already there, eager. “Jake's coming back. Thank God!”

The mirror opened.

So dark, so far and deep was its vacuum, they felt all the world would be sucked into it.

And then, without another movement, there they were—Venn and Sarah and Gideon, standing in the room, and with them came a strange smell, a flicker of alien light, and it made Rebecca think of the one time she had
journeyed,
and the terrible heat and stench of Florence, and the wonder of that past world.

Venn took one look at the green gloom in the corridor and said, “I knew it.”

Gideon whistled. “They've been busy. The place is overrun!”

But the others were silent. It was Sarah who turned and stared and turned again. And then said, “Where's Jake? And David?”

In fact Jake was standing in a street.

For a moment he felt no emotion but surprise, and then a dreadful fear crawled through him, until he knew his father's hand was tight on his and nothing else mattered.

David swore. “Oh no. Surely not again . . .”

Jake saw that Moll was there, but not the others. And he knew this street. He had seen it in Victorian times, when John Harcourt Symmes had lived here, and he had seen it bombed into oblivion when Symmes's daughter, Alicia, had gripped his hand from under its rubble.

But today it was just a quiet, moonlit London square, its trees shadowy, its chimneys silver, its cobbles wet from a recent shower of rain.

David breathed out. “Moll,” he said. “What have you done?”

“It's not another kidnap, cullies. Just a little detour,” she said breezily. “Just want to show you the old gaffe, Jake. Won't take a sec.”

She ran across the road.

“What's she up to?” David whispered.

“You really never know.” Jake went to follow, then saw her suddenly step back into the shadow of a lamppost and wave them into stillness. A sturdy policeman was plodding down the pavement, rattling the area gates and closing any that were open, humming tunelessly under his breath.

What year was this? Jake guessed, by the clop of distant carriages and the dim advertisements, that it was possibly only a few months before Alicia would come to claim her inheritance.

When the man had turned the corner, they flitted noiselessly across and up the three steps to Symmes's front door.

Moll took out a key and slid it into the lock, turning it quickly.

Inside, the hall was dark; she lit the gaslamp and turned up the flame until it was steady and they saw the dim tiled hall and the stairs.

“Good Lord.” David looked around fondly. “Never thought I'd get to see this house again. I was here with Symmes, Jake, for at least a year, working on the mirror.”

“Yes. I know.” Nagged by a growing unease, Jake was watching Moll. She grinned, and slipped her cold hand in his. “Come on.”

The rooms downstairs were dim, the furniture shrouded with ghostly coverings.

She led them to the familiar door of Symmes's study, and opened it. On the threshold she stood back with a proud smile. “There you go, Jake. Cop a load of that.”