The Slanted Worlds (20 page)

I recoiled in mock horror. “Not eat?”

“Never was I offered one mouthful. I believe they take a pill of some essential nutrients each morning. It would save a lot of time.”

I proffered the cake-stand again. “But it would not be much fun, Papa.”

He selected a Coffee Kiss. “Indeed not, Alicia.”

I sat back, and looked across at the obsidian mirror, where it leaned, safely veiled in the corner of my room. For a moment I had felt that someone was there within it, listening to us. I said, “Do you think I was right, to save you in that way? By telling the tyrant Janus what he wanted to know?”

My father licked coffee cream from his lips and dabbed them with the napkin. “My dear, you had no choice. And from what I know of David Wilde, and what I saw of Oberon Venn, they are men of resource and capacity.”

He put the cup back on the tray. “Not to mention the arrogant and cocky Jake.”

He looked at the mirror, and smiled a rueful smile.

“Your career has been most adventurous, my dear. Truly, you are my daughter.”

I could not help a sigh of satisfaction.

“Will Jake come for the film?”

“I have no doubt he will.” He leaned forward and took my hand. “And when he does, we must be ready for him.”

There was no interval between the snow and the room, but she felt as though she had traveled miles and centuries to get there.

Slush slid from her shoes onto the deep crimson carpet.

A trickle of icy melt water ran from the ends of her cropped blond hair into her eyes.

Her hands dripped. She felt the chill of the high plateau thaw in her.

The room was warm and silent. It was high-ceilinged, the walls papered with an elaborately flowered design. In the vast hearth a fire roared over logs piled high and spitting.

Portraits lined the walls.

Sarah moved. She hurried to the fire and huddled over it; then she stripped off her soaked coat and scarf and gloves and boots and knelt in front of the flames until they scorched her skin and eyelids. The heat was glorious.

Only when she was warm through did she take a good look around.

Tall candelabra stood in the room, each with dozens of candles burning. They burned with a cool unchanging light. The candles did not flicker, and didn't grow any smaller. The windows were curtained with drapes of amber, tassels of knotted cord.

Around the walls were portraits, in frames of gold. She stood and walked under them, her feet deep in the soft carpet.

They were all of Summer.

Summer in a white dress. Summer in a crimson robe. Summer in a ruff and gown, her face lead-painted like some Elizabethan queen. Summer in a 1960s mini shift of black and white stripes, laughing out of the frame.

Sarah frowned.

Turning, she saw the table. It was laden with food, plates piled high with lobster and fish and spiced meats. A row of tureens stood there; she lifted one, and the vegetables steamed below.

She replaced the lid.

“You know, that is a very old ploy,” she said aloud. “It's in every fairy story going.”

No answer.

Then, in the corner of the room, she saw it. It sat on a small white table, a circular table smooth as the snow slope had been.

She crossed to it, reluctant.

The table was covered with a scatter of small objects. A bone, an acorn, a gold ring, a pile of white pearls like pebbles.

And among them, on small balled feet, a box.

A small lidded box with a key in its lock.

A box covered with red brocade.

She looked around.

The room was silent, the door closed, the windows shuttered.

She reached out.

She opened the box.

Oisin Venn did not age, he did not grow old.

He had wealth and land, and everything he turned his hand to prospered. And yet, late one night he came to the house of the priest and said, “Father, absolve me, for I am a great sinner.”

He sat by the fire. The holy man said, “God forgives all, my son.”

“He will not forgive me. For she offered me a choice of mortality or to be with the Shee forever, and I could not choose. So I have sworn to her that each of my descendants will face this choice, and that one day, one of them will be hers. I have betrayed all the unborn generations. For I dare not anger her.”

Chronicle of Wintercombe

“H
OW FAR?”
Piers almost ran around the table.

The dial remained at 1400.

“I don't know for sure. Far enough.” Maskelyne was infuriatingly calm, but even Piers could feel the fear in his stillness.

“Do something!”

“I am.” His fingers touched the controls that he had rigged up. Figures rippled across the screen.

“Oh my God.” Piers pressed his fists to his face. “We've lost them. Jake. Rebecca. Both the bracelets! Venn will absolutely
kill
me. No, not kill. Kill would be too easy. Imprison me in a tree for centuries. Saw me down and burn me on a bonfire. Grind my every atom into sawdust.”

Maskelyne flicked him an irritated look. “Always about you, isn't it, little man.”

“You can talk. You think the mirror belongs to you.”

“It does.”

“You wish! You can't even make it work properly!”

“I could once!” In a flash Maskelyne lost his temper; like a flicker of lightning he seemed to transform to a being of raw ferocity and dark fury. “Before I had to spend lifetimes plunging through time and space! Piecing my memories together again! What would you know about that loss, that terrible descent?”

Piers squared up. His chin jutted. “More than you might expect. I'm not all cooking and cleaning. I have a history too, so you can just—”

A mew silenced him.

He looked around.

A black cat stood there, tail in the air. It snarled at them both.

“Well.” Piers took a breath. Suddenly he was a little ashamed of himself. “Well, yes of course, you're right,” he muttered. “Not the time. Not the place.”

Maskelyne stepped back. The dangerous darkness seemed to gather inside him; he said nothing, but left the control panel and crossed to the mirror itself, gripping the silver frame with his fine-boned hands.

He stared in at emptiness. “All the world is in there,” he whispered. “All possible worlds. And I will
journey
in them all again.”

Piers watched him, curious. “Is it alive, that thing? You talk to it as if it can hear you.”

“As alive as your replicant cats, little man.”

With an effort Maskelyne looked away from the black glass. He stepped back, the reflection of the lab shrinking and rippling. Then he turned, and he was calm again, his voice husky and quiet.

“It seems clear that Jake has managed to
journey
back far enough to reach David. Perhaps their longing for each other reached out and touched, like the snake and its tail. Dee recorded a similar result. He calls it the
Magnetism of the heart.
”

“What!” Piers stared. Then he turned and ran to the desk and snatched up the Dee manuscript from under his pages of notes. “That's it! The heart! Oh my goodness. That means . . . this . . . and then this . . .” He scribbled letters furiously, and Maskelyne came and watched over his shoulder.

Then Piers stopped. “Do you see?”

“I see.”

Together they stared at the words that had emerged from the random mass of symbols like a sunlight through the fog of a wintry wood.

Let it be said the mirror is a way from heart to heart. For Time is defeated only by love.

Like a man who finds a path in a dark wood, and follows it to a lighted window, so is the journeyman.

Let the snake's eye open. Let the hearts reach out.

Piers looked up. Maskelyne nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said, his voice husky. “I remember. The snake's eye can be opened.”

“What do you mean . . . remember?”

A crash made the cat jump.

Then another.

Three separate crashes, as if a giant was beating at the door until the house shook.

Like the slow rumbling thunder of an avalanche, movement in the roots and depths of the earth itself.

“What's that?”
Piers breathed.

Maskelyne listened, alert. “The wood is walking,” he said. “Summer's revenge.”

“Dad.”

The word hurt. He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.

But to his astonishment the figure in the gray robe exploded into rage. “What the
hell
do you think you are doing, Jake!
Telling him you can cure the plague!
How do you think you can say that! These people are dying, don't you realize! Really dying! Babies, and women and little children, dying in agony of this filthy, endless disease and there's nothing, nothing any of us can do and you, you have the reckless, stupid arrogance to stand there and—”

“Dad.”
Jake's voice was soft. “Dad, it's all right. We're here now.” He stepped forward, giving one glance to Rebecca, where she crouched on a chair, watching with wide eyes. “It's all right.”

He reached out.

His father's hands, thin and oddly frail, grabbed him, pulled him close.

His father's face was muffled in his shoulder. He was sobbing, muttering, “Oh God. Jake.
Jake. I never thought I'd see you again.
”

Jake closed his eyes.

Rebecca bit her lip and blinked away tears.

For a long moment in the dark room no one said anything, as if just that holding, that watching, was enough.

Then, slowly, David Wilde pulled back. He managed a weak grin. “Look at me! Stupid. Hysteria.”

“It's all right.”

“It's been so long. On my own. So hard . . .”

“You don't have to say anything. I get it.” Jake gave a wry grin. “God, you look awful.”

His father laughed, a rusty, snatched gasp of relief. “Do I? You look great. So much . . . more grown-up.”

“I'm sorry about what I said. The plague. I just . . . I get carried away, caught up in the excitement. I know it's not a game. It must have been hell.”

David nodded. He cleared his throat, wiped his face with a dirty sleeve, and stepped back. “That's one word for it. The one they would use here.” He glanced at Rebecca. “Is this . . . ?”

“I'm Becky.” She stood and held out her hand; he took it and shook it, slightly bemused.

“Why are you both dressed like that?”

Jake said, “Bit of a mistake. We were trying to reach you through Alicia. I had no idea we could get this far.”

“And Venn? Where's Venn?”

“Gone into the Summerland after half a Greek coin. Look, I haven't got time to explain it all now—we need to get straight to the mirror and get you back home. With both the bracelets we should be able to do it, even in stages.”

Jake stopped. “What. What's wrong?”

David Wilde turned and walked to the window. He unlatched the shutter and let it swing wide; immediately heat entered the room on a ray of scorching sunlight. Swifts screamed outside, high over the houses.

“Il signore. His family. I can't just leave them.”

Jake stared.

“Don't look at me like that, Jake! I'm a doctor, it's my duty.”

“No!” Jake couldn't believe this.

“If I go, they'll die. I've been working day and night. I've managed to prepare a crude antibiotic—it's a tiny amount and the process is almost complete. If I could just . . .”

Before it could come again, the words, the flood of terror, Rebecca intervened. She took his hands and held them, and looked straight into his eyes. Jake was amazed at her strength.

“Listen to me, David. This is not your time. I'm a history student, I know about the Black Death. It raged through Europe and nothing and no one could stop it. It was there, it happened, it's over. It's not your fault, or your responsibility. If you stay, you'll die. And so will we, because I can't see Jake going back without you.”

David stared at her. She could see how exhausted he was, how worn to a shadow.

He said, “I lie awake at night and dream, you know. About the mirror. It torments me. What use is a time travel device if you don't use it? I could go back to Wintercombe, get the drugs, bring them here. Perhaps we could stop the epidemic, stop it spreading. Save thousands of lives. Change history. We could do that.” He stepped back, sat down on the meager bed, as if stunned. “Think of what we could do.”

She threw a worried glance at Jake. “Get burned for sorcery more like,” he snapped, and she had never been so glad of his self-assurance.

“What do we do?” she whispered.

“Get him home. That's all I care about.” He went to the window and looked down. The street was deserted, burning in the noonday heat. Only the swifts screeched in the eaves.

“And we need to go now. During the siesta.” He came back and knelt at David's feet. “Dad. Where is the mirror? You said you knew.”

His father looked at him. He drew a hand over his face and said, “Yes. I know. It's in the old palazzo.”

“Can we get there?”

“Il signore lives there. His official apartments are there. With his guards and his torture-rooms.” He frowned. “But Jake . . .”

“We go. Now.”

David stood, picked up the bird mask, and looked around. For the first time Jake took in the meager poverty of the room, its crucifix, its dusty jug of water, its bleached walls.

“You've got the bracelet?”

“On my wrist, always.” His father hesitated. “Jake . . . there's something I haven't told you.”

“Is there anything else you want to take? From here?”

There was a wooden chest at the end of the bed. Some garments were folded on it; Jake pulled one out. “Maybe we could use this as a cloak for Becky or . . .”

His voice died.

It wasn't a cloak.

It was a baby's shawl.

A small sharp cry rose from the woolen fabrics. He tugged the topmost blanket aside, and stared.

A baby gazed up at him. Its eyes were blue and wide.

Rebecca put a hand to her mouth.

“Who's this?” Jake whispered. He felt numb now. Dread lodged in him like something unswallowed.

David hesitated. Then he came over and picked the baby up, folding the coverings down around its face.

“This is Lorenzo, Jake. This is my son. Your brother.”

Venn felt the snow crash down on him like memory, as it had on Katra Simba, the weight of the past white and blank blotting everything out. It filled eyes and mouth and nose, it filled grasping hands, it swept even Leah's memory away and bowled him backward into the doorway that he knew led to Summer's house.