The Slanted Worlds (16 page)

The bracelet was surprisingly light—he knew that from wearing it himself. His fingers touched the coolness of its silver, the intricate serpent, the finely delicate clasp. With infinite care he crouched closer, using his very fingertips, barely breathing, unfastening the clasp with a smooth movement he could hardly believe himself capable of.

The bracelet opened.

Jake widened the gap, drew it up, over Venn's bony white wrist.

So softly.

So carefully.

An explosion of knocking at the bedroom door made him leap back in terror.

“Venn! Are you there. VENN?”

Venn woke, rolled, stood.

Jake was already on the floor; he dived under the bed, thick dust in his hair and eyes.

His heart was hammering; he saw Venn's feet on the carpet, the door opening.

“What? What's wrong?”

“Sarah's gone!” Wharton's voice. Jake grinned. Those ridiculous slippers.

“Gone? Where?”

Wharton's answer sounded breathless with apprehension. “Rebecca says she's found out about the coin. I think she may have gone after it. Into the Summerland.”

Under the bed, Jake's fingers gripped the bracelet tight.

Venn's fury, when it came, was an animal's fury.

An animal's pain.

“Are you sure about this?” Gideon stood at the edge of the Wood, flint knife in his belt, his ragged coat green as lichen, his skin smeared with whorls and patterns of mud. Leaves clotted his pale hair.

“Yes,” she said. “I'm sure. Hurry.”

His eyes were restless, constantly glancing into the rain-swept Wood. She wondered, for a second, if he had betrayed her. But all he said was: “Right. Let's go.”

The ground was awash, the small streams in the wood bursting their banks. She followed him to the edge, ducking under bare low branches, under the pliant stems of brambles.

Then she paused, tugged up her hood, and looked back.

In the Abbey the lights were lit in Venn's room. Someone opened the window up there and yelled something, a command of anger and fear.

But the wind snatched the words away.

“That was Venn,” Gideon said. “I think he was calling you.”

She turned her back on the house, quickly, not to hear. “I know,” she said.

With Moll gone, I confess I feel somewhat low. So I have decided to attempt one last great exploit. I have no bracelet, and accept I may never return. But if I succeed I will see what no man living has seen.

Because, since I have spoken with Oberon Venn, only the mysteries of the future interest me.

Diary of John Harcourt Symmes

H
E OPENED THE
garage quickly, dragged the rickety doors wide.

A green tarpaulin covered the motorbike; he had tugged it off and was pulling the black helmet over his head when Rebecca's voice came sharp behind him.

“Jake. Where are you going?”

He barely looked around. “The village.”

“Now? But Venn . . .”

“Stuff Venn.” He felt the bracelet safely inside his sleeve. Now he had to find them, those three replicants. He had to confront them. Before he left. Before he went for his father. He was in no mood to talk.

“I'm coming with you.” She was already tucking her long red hair into the other helmet, fastening the chin strap.

“No way.”

She sat astride Piers's bike and looked at him. “Get on.”

“Look . . .”

“Have you got any sort of license? Because I have.”

He glared at her. “I thought you were busy helping Maskelyne.”

“He doesn't need me.” Her voice was never this harsh. As she took the keys from him, found one and started the bike engine, he watched her, unmoving. Then, through the roaring revs he said quietly, “Are you really jealous of a mirror?”

Rebecca clicked down her visor so that he saw only his warped black reflection.

“Get on,” she said. “And shut up.”

Wharton heard the roar of the bike; he ran to a window and saw the dark machine slither down the flooded drive.

“Jake!” he yelled stupidly.
“Jake!”

What the hell was happening to everyone? Had they all gone mad? He turned and cannoned into Piers. The little man was almost in tears, his small hands clasped together, clutching at his scarlet waistcoat.

“George! Venn's going in after her! Do something!”

“After Sarah? But . . .”

“He'll take me with him, I know he will!
To the Summerland!
Oh, I can't tell you how much
I hate it in there! Last time they almost tore me to shreds! I'm a homebody, George, a brownie, a cook, a pwca that lives under the stairs! I'm not for the big adventures. You have to talk to him!”

“Wait. Let me think.” Wharton turned, anxious. “First I have to open the gates. Jake's gone out on the bike.”

“MY bike!”

“Will you stop thinking about yourself, Piers, for just one tiny second! Open the gates! Please!”

Piers huffed and turned. He stalked down the kitchen corridor and into the scullery with its rows of surveillance cameras and bells, and flicked a switch.

The gate camera lit. Rain trickled relentlessly across its screen.

“There they are,” Wharton muttered.

Blurred and dim, the bike approached slowly, skidding around fallen branches.

“Who's with him?” Piers said. Then: “That girl! Didn't expect that, did you?”

Wharton hadn't, but he made no sign. “Let them out.”

“But why . . .”

“The replicants. He's going to find the replicants. He needs to know what they mean.”

Silent with surprise, Piers reached out and pressed the button for the gates. Together they watched the metal barrier jerk open, water dripping from the wrought-iron arabesques; watched the grainy image of the motorcycle flash through, speeding up.

Faintly, Wharton thought he heard a yell of acknowledgment.

As the gates closed, Piers said somberly, “I wish I could escape that easily. I wish I could just fly out of the window, like Peter bloody Pan.”

“Well, you can't.” Venn's voice was arctic.

They turned, and saw he was standing in the doorway, his dark coat on, wearing boots, a small pack on his back. “You're coming with me. We have to find Sarah before she gets to that coin.”

Piers clutched his hands together. “Excellency, I beg . . .”

Venn's face was white. He lifted his hand, pushing up his dark sleeve. “Don't you see?”

Piers groaned. For a bewildered second Wharton didn't understand; then Venn said, “She stole the bracelet when I was asleep. It must have been her.” He was strangely calm, as if the betrayal was too terrible even to think about now. “You're coming, Piers. I need you.”

To his own surprise Wharton stepped forward; Piers ducked behind him instantly.

Wharton said, “You need him here. You can't leave Maskelyne alone with the mirror. And the manuscript—it has to be deciphered.”

Venn gave him a ferocious stare. “Who asked you, teacher?”

“Take me instead.”

Piers gasped.

Venn's eyes narrowed. “
What?
You're a mortal.”

Afterward Wharton never knew if he had said it for her sake or his own.

“So is Sarah. If you're going after her, I want to be there. I don't want anything to happen to her. So take me.”

Of course I had to cancel the séance.

I hastily drew the curtain on the mirror, pretended illness, had all lights lit, the astonished and chattering clients ushered out. I was so flustered I could barely speak, so my discomfort at least would have been convincing to them.

Because all the time, even with the black silk veil flung over the glass, I knew he was still there.

The new disturbing apparition.

Watching me.

Finally, when I was alone among the scattered chairs and the discarded handkerchiefs, I locked the door and stood staring at the shrouded surface.

“And who is Janus?” I whispered.

No answer.

So I reached out and removed the veil.

He was sitting in a dark room, sideways to me. A slight man, not old, not young, wearing some neat uniform like a Hungarian hussar. Small round lenses covered his eyes. His hair was lank, just a little too long.

He said, “I have wondered about you. About Symmes. There was a young girl he took to live with him, did you know that? Her name was Moll. . . .”

I drew myself up, indignant. “She was just some urchin of the streets. I am Symmes's daughter.”

“So you don't know what happened to her?”

“She probably ran away.”

He smiled, infuriatingly calm. “I could tell you. It would astonish you.”

“I don't have the least interest.”

“Really?” He raised both hands and joined the tips of his fingers together. “Do you know where I am, Miss Symmes? I am so far in your future that I am almost another species. I am no ghost, no vision. I am the ruler of the world.”

Such a peculiar apparition. Whatever he was, I found him most unappealing.

He leaned forward. “I calculate that you will already have received a message from David Wilde. This is known to be the year he spoke to you. What I want to know is where he is and what message he has asked you to pass to his son. A simple request.”

I smoothed a stray hair from my brow and managed a vinegary smile. “I am not in the habit, sir, of breaking the confidences of my . . . spiritual friends. Or of obeying the orders of strangers. Certainly not gentlemen who claim to be tyrants in some future realm.” I thought that quite a neat turn of phrase, and maybe my complaisance showed, because he seemed to gather himself, drawing back slightly, like a snake before it strikes.

“Where is David Wilde? In what era is he hiding from me?”

I sighed, and turned. “I will cover this glass, sir. As a ghost I find you tiresome, and you frighten my clients away. I trust you will have the goodness to disappear before I return to it.”

I reached up and took the dark cloth and it was then, as I laid it deliberately upon the obsidian mirror, that I knew I was lost.

Because his hand came out of the glass and caught my wrist.

“I think not, madam,” he whispered.

At first it was just ordinary woodland.

Bare trees under a gray sky, the undergrowth of brambles and bracken, the tiny green points of early spring bulbs hiding at the foot of white willow trunks. Sarah followed Gideon silently, her ears alert for every snapped twig, every fleeting bird.

Overhead the sky was a leaden lid, windblown showers gusting from the moors.

Her boots crunched a frozen puddle; then the bare trees were around her and she ducked under their branches.

Gideon walked warily. The path led downwards, as if the Wood followed some deep hidden combe; gradually she saw banks of exposed earth, hollowed with rabbit holes.

At a turn in the path darkened by a thicket of holly, Gideon stopped.

“What?” she whispered.

He glanced around; she saw his anxiety. “I don't understand this. We should be inside by now.”

“Inside?”

“The Summerland.”

She remembered the other time she had stepped fleetingly into the Shee dimension, the strange instant transition from winter to a world where the summer never ended. She stared into the trees. “Does it change? Does the border move?”

“Not unless they want it to.” He frowned. “Are you wearing anything magical? Anything enchanted?”

She shrugged. “No.”

“Leave the pack.”

“No! It has food and water in it. If I eat anything Shee, you know they've got me forever.”

He hissed in frustration. Then he said, “Let's try this way.”

As the Wood deepened, the trees seemed taller, their branches meshing far above the combe. The sunken lane became a knee-deep trough of dead leaves, as if oak and elm and rowan shed thousands here each winter and they never rotted, accumulating through centuries. Sarah felt herself sink into their wet softness, deep, up to her waist, and for a moment before Gideon grabbed her she was afraid that she would fall and be suffocated under them all, like some lost wanderer in a fairy tale. And then the leaves thinned, and the path was a slippery incline of cobbles, rainwater gushing down it.

Gideon's hair was soaked; he turned up the collar of his green coat in silent misery.

“What's the matter with the world?” he whispered.

“Might she know we're here?” Sarah caught his arm, stopped him.

The thought turned him sick. “I don't know. It could be just that the Summerland has reconfigured—it's always changing, just like she is. Always changing but always the same. And since she got so angry with Venn, the rain has dripped and soaked the whole Wood. As if she wants to drown all mortals.”

Sarah frowned. “Come on. We have to keep going.”

By the bottom of the combe the path was a streambed they waded through. It trickled into a green clearing, the grass lush and long, soaked with floodwater.

In the very center stood a circular well, the empty bucket tipped by its side.