Backward Glass Read online

  Lilly smiled, and I shrugged inwardly. They seemed to know what was going on. Best just to listen. Shivering despite the blankets, I sat, and when Lilly handed me some charred fish on a chipped, dirty plate, I wolfed it down.

  The others ate as well, and I stayed quiet for a while, listening to them talk. If you didn’t trouble about every word, John Wald became comprehensible. He gestured expressively as he spoke, perhaps used to not being understood.

  Lilly complimented John Wald on the fish. Peggy wondered if it was going to rain. At this, John raised an eyebrow and examined the sky before nodding.

  “I’ll have to get home before that in any case,” said Lilly.

  Peggy tossed her cigarette in the fire. “Not me. Mother’s gone to Auntie Nina’s again and the ogre will be brooding. I could stay out another night if I choose.”

  You’re supposed to go missing, I wanted to say. But there was something forbidding and sharp in Peggy’s manner. “Where’s Anthony?” I said at last. I would have much preferred to ask about Luka, but it didn’t seem the time yet.

  Peggy shrugged. “Back at home with mumsy and daddy-kins in the fierce familial embrace. Got away from the bad man, don’t you know, thanks to John Wald here.”

  I was silent for a long moment, trying to sort it out. I was shot; the pain still throbbed, burning if I shifted or tensed. I was in 1947. This was the thing Luka had been dreaming of for months. I could ask what they knew about the dead baby. I could do what Jimmy had been avoiding for weeks; I could ask about Peggy’s disappearance.

  But before any of those questions—and I felt like a traitor to Luka for acknowledging it, but it was true—before anything like that, came a much greater concern.

  “I have to get home,” I blurted. “My parents will be going nuts.”

  Lilly opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated.

  “Come on, Lil,” said Peggy. “Out with it. Rip the Band-Aid off already. Tell the kid he isn’t going home.”

  Six

  It took a while to get the full story. Peggy and Lilly kept interrupting each other, and then John Wald had to tell part of it in his half-English gibberish. But between the three of them, they managed over the next half hour or so to tell me everything.

  The trouble had started for them just about the way it had for us further into the future, with the disappearance of Anthony Currah.

  “It was the man who shot you,” said Peggy, “not that we knew that at the time. He came out of the future as far as we can tell. Seems able to get into the mirror. Caught Anthony alone. Screaming something about you, and being back from Wales of all places. Forced Anthony into the basement and through the mirror. Brought him back to now—1947—and hid him in the little cave. I came home to muddy footprints leading from my mirror and—nothing.” She abruptly stood up, took out a cigarette, and turned her back, walking a few paces away.

  “It was a terrible shock for poor Peg,” said Lilly in a lower voice. “To me as well. John had just come through my mirror the night before. I brought John to meet Peg when she came back to my 1937 to tell me about her mysterious footprints. Her parents—well, they’re not as … supervisory, I suppose, as most. John could hide out in the coach house for days, I reasoned. He helped us look. We scoured the countryside for days. Then it got worse. Peg came home to find her house broken into. I’ll bet you can guess the one thing that was stolen.”

  “The mirror.”

  “Exactly. Ripped from its frame. I think Peg must have been going wild. I was in my time, so apart from John, she was all on her own. No going back to get me.”

  “What happened next?”

  Peggy turned back toward us and fixed me with a hard but unreadable expression. “Anthony almost died is what happened next. The man made him put a doorstop in the mirror, then tied him up and left, taking the mirror with him.”

  “Five days he was gone,” said Lilly. “And Anthony tied up all that time in that little hole. If the rain hadn’t been making it through there, I’m sure he would have died.”

  “Five days,” I said. “Looking for me? Wait.” I held up my hands and tried to line the times up in my head. “This started, what, two weeks ago? That’s when Melissa and Keisha got attacked.”

  They made me tell them what I knew about those attacks. “But wait,” I said, looking at Lilly. “What about you? What happened when you tried to come through?” I looked back at the hole in the creek bank I had come out of. It wasn’t large, and was mostly hidden by grass and weeds. “If he took the mirror away, where did he put it?”

  Lilly opened her mouth to speak, then paused, thought for a moment, and tried it again. “That’s … part of what we need to talk to you about, Kenny. There’s a lot this man doesn’t understand about the mirror, we think, but some things he must understand better than we do.” She looked at my face and shook her head. “Oh, I mustn’t be making any sense at all. It was in water, Kenny. It was sunk in water. I found a doorstop in my mirror. Thinking it must have been left by Peg, I tried to come through, and I almost died. John says he’s seen exactly that happen. You know, of course, that terrible heat or cold you go through when you pass through the place in between. Somehow it’s worse when you pass from the mirror into water. It makes your muscles cramp and tighten. My lungs filled with water and I could barely drag myself back in time to save my life. I kept trying, but I could never go through. Wherever he had taken the mirror, he had sunk it in water.”

  “Why do you think he’s looking for you?” said Peggy abruptly, directing a steady gaze at me.

  “What?”

  “Why is he looking for you?”

  Kenny Maxwell killed my wife. I could still hear the words in my mind. I flicked a glance at John Wald, but he wasn’t entering into this part of the conversation. Could it be he hadn’t heard or hadn’t made out that accusation?

  “I don’t know,” I said. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it. What if it was true? Killed his wife. What if I deserved what he wanted to do to me? “What happened next?”

  Peggy turned away, finding something to look at up a bend in the creek. Lilly took over. “The man came back two days ago. Screaming. He thought Anthony was hiding things, mirror-secrets. He hauled Anthony out of the hole and into the creek where he had the mirror. I think he might have killed him, but Peggy heard.” Lilly gave a little smile. “Our Peg is brave, I think, however much she wants to hide it.”

  “Doesn’t take courage to scream and act the fool,” said Peggy, her back still turned to us.

  “As soon as he saw her,” said Lilly, “he dropped Anthony and ran for her, started screaming. This man she had never seen before in her life, babbling about how he’d found her at last, he’d save her, never let her go. Is it any wonder, she isn’t thrilled to be talking about it?”

  “I’m fine,” said Peggy. She walked back to us but didn’t sit. She ran a hand through her hair. “He kept screaming about how he’d tell me everything and make it right this time.”

  At last, as she told it, the man must have realized he was terrifying her. He tried to reassure her that he was only trying to “stop the bad things.” To prove his goodwill, he fished Anthony out of the creek, and the mirror as well. Tying Peggy as well—for her own good, he said—he brought them all back to the carriage house.

  “Then came the gun,” said Peggy. “He said it was all to make us happy again. If he could kill Kenny, everything would be peachy keen.”

  “He would have done it all, too, if it weren’t for John,” said Lilly, “though it cost him terribly.”

  Wald, also out looking for Anthony, returned to the carriage house in time to see the crazy man tying Peggy and Anthony to chairs. Wald attacked and they struggled. In the confusion, Anthony broke free and began to scream. People ran to help, but before they arrived, the crazy man escaped into the mirror.

  “How could he do that?” I
said. “I thought it was only the mirror kids? I thought it doesn’t let in any one older than sixteen?”

  Wald shook his head. “Does not choose.” I frowned, and he rubbed his chin as though choosing his words carefully. “When it chooses the first time, we must be young. And when our year of seven is done, we think the glass is done with us. But ten years on comes another year of the glass. And ten and ten and every ten. If we’re still alive, we’re still the children of the glass.”

  “So it depends on what’s his home time,” I said. “Right? You can always go back to the time you’re supposed to be in.” I shook my head to clear away the questions this new rule brought up. “Anyway, that must have been when he came to Anthony’s basement and got me.” I turned to Wald. “But you were there. Breaking into the house. How did you get there? You didn’t come through the mirror.”

  Wald gave a huge sigh and a sad, weary grin crossed his face. “The long path, lad. Pray thou never need foot it.”

  “He was arrested,” said Peggy. She threw her cigarette butt into the dying fire and stared at the embers. “They were all idiots. Wouldn’t listen to a thing I said. My father and Ben Wilkes from down the street came in to find me tied up and John bleeding from a nasty pistol whipping. I tried explaining, but—well, you know the neighborhood’s reputation. Missing children and the like.”

  John nodded, staring into the fire. “I canna blame them,” he said. “A good drubbing I took of it, too. That father of thine, hath a good kick in his foot.”

  John told of how he was arrested and charged with assault, breaking and entering, vagrancy, and half a dozen other crimes. Unable to prove his innocence, and carrying only serviceman’s papers from thirty years ago, he didn’t see the light of day until 1948.

  “So, wait,” I said. “That’s happening right now? I mean—it just happened, right? How are you here?”

  Peggy groaned. “Weren’t you listening? ‘The long path’? John waited. Yes, he’s in jail now, one of him. Awaiting trial. He’ll get out. Wait all the way until 1957 and come to help us. He broke into Anthony’s house last night—in ten years—to catch Prince Harming when he came through the mirror. If you had let him in instead of running, he could have helped you sooner. Gave us a shock when we saw him, I’ll tell you that for nothing, ten years older in a day.”

  He smiled ruefully and nodded.

  “So Prince Harming,” I said, “comes out of the mirror to kill me, and that’s when—”

  Wald nodded. “Would have been worse if thy Luka had not been there.”

  “Did … did she bite his cheek?”

  Wald chuckled at that. “A high harpy that one, and fond like gold a’ thee.”

  I told them I remembered some of the rest of it. “He escaped. And Luka followed while you stitched me up.”

  “Aye,” said Wald. “She could not wait it. She guessed the mad fool had footed up the years to menace thy friends. I called her to stay whilst I stitched thy side, but she’d have none a’ that. Rushed into the glass. Left one a thy doorstop strings that I might after-foot.”

  “And?” I looked at the girls.

  Peggy looked over at Lilly. “You’re the sweet one, Lil. You tell him.”

  “Tell me what?” I said.

  Lilly took a deep breath. “It’s the mirror, Kenny. Jimmy’s—in 1967. Prince Harming must have done it when he escaped after shooting you. It’s in water again. He’s thrown it in the lake.”

  Part Three

  The Mirror in the Lake, Summer 1947

  One

  And so began my summer of exile.

  I slept on the sofa beside the mirror, fifteen years before I was born.

  I was trapped. The mirror was in the lake. Lilly, Peggy, and John Wald took me to the carriage house to the mirror. They took me to 1957 where Anthony met us in his basement. Jimmy had described him as a husky overconfident kid, but he was sunken now, his eyes darting all around. He was desperate that we be quiet in case his mother heard us, and seemed happy when I took Lilly and John into the Silverlands in the direction of 1967.

  We couldn’t go through. The mirror and its cloud of image-fragments were dark. If I hadn’t been warned of what lay beyond, I might easily have died. John and Lilly held my shoulders as I tested it. The hand I stuck inside cramped agonizingly as the uptime heat gave way to chill water.

  Then they brought me back. To 1957 where Anthony apologized and said we couldn’t stay. To 1947 where Peggy said she’d bring blankets out to the carriage house and sneak me food when she could. John Wald retired for the evening to a shelter he’d built in the woods. Lilly and Peggy went back to their homes. I asked Lilly to leave a doorstop open to her time, just in case Prince Harming, whoever he was, tried to come back from the future. He seemed to be the only one of us who had the secret of getting into a mirror that lay in water.

  Most evenings, Peggy would head back to Lilly’s time, pulling out the doorstop, so John Wald and I could go forward into Anthony’s basement. From there, we would try the passage to 1967, but every time we went, the mirror was underwater. In daylight we could make out what we thought might be glimmers of sun through the water, but neither of us wanted to trust what it might be.

  Over the days, I learned John Wald’s strange story. He took me for walks in the woods, and in between teaching me how to build a simple shelter and make a meal from leaves and berries, he talked about his life and his long-ago year in the backward glass. By the middle of July, I could make pepperweed tea, dandelion salad, and a bland snack mix of nuts, seeds, and chewy stalks. I guessed he made a pretty decent wise old man, though I had been hoping for a little more wisdom about the way the Force worked and how to handle a lightsaber.

  I grew used to his talk. Lilly, who came often and tried to make my exile bearable, brought dictionaries, Shakespearean English, Scots-English, and we used them to puzzle out his words.

  He didn’t know exactly when he was born, sometime in the 1600s in a small village in the south of Scotland. He was the son of a blacksmith. His mirror, the same one that all of us used to travel back and forth between our decades, hung in the manor house of the local baron. It wasn’t until May of his year that John saw a child come through the mirror, then found that he too could enter it. His opportunities were few, but he took them where he could. In the end, he was tripped up by the mirror’s rules. Fed too much beer at a year-end celebration by a strange, scarred servant he didn’t know, he came back to the mirror too late and found himself trapped ten years in his own past.

  Fifteen years old, and all alone in the world, he still managed to make his way. He tried to change his future, as many of the mirror kids do, by approaching his younger self, but a horse kicked him in the head, and so he learned his lesson and didn’t try again. In the next few years, he fell in love with a girl in a neighboring village and ended up married with two children. Ten years onward, he saw his own self at the year-end feast, and realized that he, John Wald at twenty-five, was the strange servant who had kept his younger self out of the mirror. What else could he do? He had built a life. He didn’t want to lose it.

  Knowing he was trapping himself in the past, he became a willing participant in his own fate.

  “But didn’t it turn out?” I said. “You got to have your family, right?”

  He shook his head and told me more. Eight years after his year of the glass, the plague came to his small corner of the world. His children died, then his wife, pregnant with a third. “Her last words to me were, ‘John, will ye jig my belly? I haven’t felt it move in an age.’”

  He was quiet for a couple of days after that, but then one morning he took me out to pick what he called partridge berries and told me the rest. He had gone mad after the plague year. “We all did, those of us as lived. The world was dying ’round us.”

  He stopped and knelt by a clutch of low plants bearing red berries. “Here now. Pick thes
e. We’ll make a tea of it for pain.”

  “How did you end up here?” I said. It was the main question on my mind. “This is—hundreds of years from your time.”

  He tugged at a berry. “I found work digging graves and hauling dead. I stayed there, fitting my soul-broke body into the place it had grown up. And in that mad world, I came into a madder plan. I would wait until that cursed glass opened once more, but this time I’d go down and down the years, each time getting a child to take me through, ten years, ten years, ten years again.”

  Mostly Wald’s old face—how old? Fifty? Sixty?—seemed crinkled more with kindness and sorrow, but now a wild fire jumped in him.

  “I wanted the maker, see? There must, I thought, be some old wizard ahind the making of that glass. I’d place my hands athwart his reeky neck and twist the breath within him.”

  “So—what happened?”

  Satisfied that we had enough berries, he straightened and stretched his back. “Time zones, you call ’em,” he said. I gave him a blank look so he went on. “You’ve seen that space between the mirrors, and you know it’s long and full? In there I met a girl from the long-to-be, traveling back as I intended. We sat one night and talked, and she told me an answer to the thing I had always wondered. Did you ever not wonder, Kennit? What clock the mirror keeps? It’s always an hour before midnight it opens, you know, wherever in the world. This girl from another mirror told me about time zones. Think on it—back in my day, there was no agreed-upon time the world about. Noon was when the sun was overhead.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “See’st it not?” he said. “All along, I had been scheming to follow that mirror back to its making. Now I saw I had it back-and-front. That glass isn’t made in the long-ago, Kennit. It’s from the long-to-be.”

  I stopped, stunned. “It’s from the future?”

  “How can it be otherwise? It keeps its days to a tune not yet sung in my day.”