The Dickens Mirror (9 page)

The snow is a new detail, too. Of course, there is snow everywhere these days, and cold. But she doesn’t think that’s it.
There was also a valley
. Which is odd because she’s never seen one in her life. The only valleys she knows are those she’s read about in that book she and Tony loved, all about Staffa and the monster in the cave and the Isle of Mull and mountains and soaring eagles and black cliffs edging the sea. (She would dearly love to see an eagle. She would love to
be
an eagle and fly away from this awful place. Skim an indigo sea and then climb and climb and test the limits of the sky.)

In this dream, the snow was relentless, coming down in buckets. She’d been freezing, too, dressed in very odd clothes. “Parka.” The word is so strange on her tongue. “Duct … 
tape
?” Or was that
duck
? And … “Jeans.” She runs a hand over a thigh and feels coarse wool, the slide of thin linen drawers beneath boys’ trousers. She thinks
jeans
are trousers.
How odd
. In her dream, that other Tony had also worn similar clothes:
Parka. Jeans. Although the muffler
—she caresses the loose coil of wool around her neck with a thumb—
was exactly the same. Green, wasn’t it?
That other
Tony had given her, the other Rima, the muffler—
scarf
, he called it—twining it around her neck. This was exactly what
her
Tony had done, snatching up a green woolen snake from a pile of castoffs. (Weeks ago? Months? She can’t recall.)
This will keep you warm
, her Tony had said.
All you need now is a pair of proper mittens
.

One hand caressing her muffler, she concentrates on teasing images from the general swirl in her mind.
Snow. A valley. Other people …
“Bode,” she whispers, and feels the shock thrill through her.
He’d
been in that nightmare valley, too, though so different: hair shorter, different and very odd clothes … dark green. A lot of pockets.

All right, that’s not so surprising. You’ve known Bode all your life, ever since Coram’s
. No mystery there. She and Tony and Bode had been foundlings together: orphans growing up in the same sprawling hospital. Did that explain the others in the dream? All roughly her age … although wasn’t one a
little
girl? A flash of blonde pigtails and very blue eyes.
Dark blue, like mine, though with a fleck of bright color
. Copper? Gold?

There was a boy who stood out, too, though his face was indistinct.
His eyes were queer. Stormy
. Did that mean gray? She’s not sure. It’s a word that occurred to the
other
Rima, and now it’s stuck in her brain like gristle caught between her teeth. Something else about that boy.
When I think about him, I feel a tug. In the dream, he’s important to that other Rima. She cares for him
. Something happened to him, too, as well as to the other Rima. She just doesn’t know what, but she thinks …

Oh
. She claps a hand to her mouth to catch a moan. “That Rima
dies
. She dies in the dark.” Or is close to dying.
Is
dying right this very second?
No, no
. Gulping back a sob, she smears a fine line of sudden sweat from her upper lip.
Don’t be absurd. That
would mean the dream’s still going on; it’s happening right now in some other reality
. “But I’m awake.” Her hands clench, the ragged nails biting into her palms, but this is good, because
that
pain is real; it’s no dream. “I’m awake and this is not happening; I am
not
that Rima, and this
never
happ—”

Tony suddenly moans, a long and frightened lowing, and she hears him begin to thrash.
God
. She lurches around the slats to kneel by his side. His breathing’s ragged.
Fever?
She lays a hand on his forehead, meaning to check …

A white blaze breaks over her mind, the full force of his dream smashing like the blow of a hammer. Her head snaps back, and she actually gasps. For the briefest moment—in the background of what she sees—she is
positive
there is that
same
bright burst of fire that sheeted through her own dream, except it is very close, right in front of her eyes: a searing gush that incinerates flesh from bones in seconds.

There are other images, too many to grab hold of, and Tony, still asleep and in the grip of this nightmare, is trying to scream now because something monstrous
is
coming for him, scuttling not out of the ice but from a … a
mirror
, and then there’s a face—lean and wolfish, with purple eyes—leering in his mind.

At that instant, right before he wakes and strikes her in his panic, what she thinks is,
My God. I
know
you
.

NOW, SLEEPLESS, SHE
was as certain of
that
—that she did indeed know this woman—as she’d been less than a half hour ago.
But where from? Where have I seen that woman before?

Sighing, Rima sat up. Maybe a turn in the cold night air
would clear her head, blow away the cobwebs of that nightmare. Noiselessly, she rose, slipping into a thick woolen shirt. The shirt had a rip, and her socks needed darning, and she would dearly love a pair of mittens. After lacing on her cloddish hobnails and checking on Tony one more time, she wrapped herself in her green muffler and bulky coat and cautiously picked her way around sleeping children as she headed for the far catwalk. In the past, when there were still trains and regular deliveries, men would maneuver iron cars along high rails between the different retort-houses and offload coal through shoots. Nowadays, with no trains coming, the catwalks were the staging point for bodies destined for the flames. Already sweating—it was either wear the clothes or carry them, and she needed both hands free—she climbed down an iron ladder to a large brick room. Long-idled, huge bridles, gigantic iron scoops once used to dump a charge of coals into the furnace, depended from the ceiling. Down here and so much closer to the furnace, the air was sweltering and the orange-yellow light bright enough to scorch tears. Blinking, she averted her eyes and hurried to a side door.

That first step, from jungle heat to mind-numbing cold and the constant snow, was always a jolt that stole her breath. Driven in near-horizontal sheets, snow stung her eyes, and she could feel the sweat on her neck already chilling. Spilling from the retort-house’s windows, squares of orange light throbbed on the snow. The outside brick wall was toasty, warm enough to melt the snow back a good foot, although days when bodies were in short supply could also mean daggers of ice frilling the retort’s eaves.

She began trudging against icy gusts through Battersea’s grounds, tossing a look back every few feet to make certain she didn’t lose sight of the retort. Her heavy boots stumped through
calf-high drifts. After a minute, she was panting and fresh sweat lathered her neck. Already getting tired, too. Her heart thumped in her temples.

Have to do something about Tony
. Pulling up, she stood, hugging herself and breathing hard. But other than trying to draw the sickness out, which he wouldn’t allow, what could she do?
Maybe Bode will have an idea
. Tomorrow, when she and Tony went to the asylum for bodies, she’d get Bode alone to talk. She wondered if he’d had the nightmare, too.
Wager he has
. But then what did that …

And that was when the wind suddenly died and the snow stopped.

What?
Startled, Rima threw a look at the sky. No stray flakes. No icy wind. Nothing. But the
air
was trembling. It glimmered like water over black ice and then …

Oh God
. Her throat tried to squeeze shut.
No, you don’t belong here, not yet. Why should I see you in my dream, and
now
?

Of course, there was no answer, though she really did think that
it
was a thing, with a purpose. After all, it had just chased her and that boy with the stormy eyes through a nightmare, and then followed her here, into her waking life, ready or not.

Where there had been snow and gloom … now, there was only the fog.

Imagine Her Surprise

NO. STAY BACK
.
She felt herself cringing.
I’m not ready. Go back into my nightmare where you belong. I don’t want to die
.

The Peculiar only hovered. This close—only feet away—she could see that it was solid, with straight, crisp edges, and motionless as a pristine curtain or blank piece of paper. She noticed, too, that this area had brightened, the air glowing with a milky glare. The Peculiar had an odor, too, one she recognized because she got a noseful every day from every corpse: old blood and rotting purge.

Odd sound trickling from the fog, though. Something
fizzy
, like bicarbonate. Despite her fear, she felt herself leaning forward, trying to parse it. Were those
voices
?

With no warning, the Peculiar dimpled, drawing in on itself as if a giant mouth were on the other side and had decided to inhale. Before she had time to react, something
shot
out.

Throwing up her arms, she floundered back a step and nearly came down on her rear, but then she got a good look and her mouth fell open.

“My
God
,” she said, dropping to her haunches. Purring, the large orange cat nuzzled her hands and began to weave back and forth across her knees. “Where did you come from?” She hadn’t seen a cat in
ages
. Other than London’s endless supply of rats (the eating kind, not Rima and Tony and their ilk) and assorted vermin (cockroaches, principally), there were no animals. Everything else had been eaten.
But now here’s a cat, come from the fog
. She ruffled the animal’s ears, felt its rumble deepen. Could she keep it? Hide it somehow? Considering the cat’s sudden appearance, it felt wrong to eat the animal. On the other hand, the cat would need food, and they weren’t catching enough rats to keep themselves going as it was.

Or have
you
sent this cat as a sign?
She eyed the Peculiar. Maybe the cat’s from north London, the other side of the Thames?
Are you trying to show me there’s something worth trying for?

Beneath her hands, the cat suddenly spat and arched. Flinching, Rima quickly clambered to her feet, worried the animal would bite, but it was prancing, its gaze riveted to the fog.
Another animal? A person?
Really, she was hoping for an animal, preferably one she wouldn’t feel bad about eating. Though she’d skin this cat, if she had to.

Imagine her surprise.

London Falling

no not that way cut like this

God, couldn’t that nasty little voice
shut
it? “Under my skin, under my skin …” The words, those insane lyrics, skated on a breathy undertone, the tune tangling in her mind like a ball of yarn mauled by a lunatic kitten. Her mouth was foul as a sewer from that gutter swill Kramer called morning tea. Her head throbbed, the pounding worse than before. The voices were much louder, too, like squirmers teeming in her brain:

so never digging around a Goodwill ghost-bin

black echoes kill you nine ways to Sunday

you ever stop to think that maybe God’s just a kid

that’s not your father

a whisper, like blood, leaves a stain

can’t you see how sick she is

and we’re the dolls

Ever since that morning’s session, she’d felt this anvil of doom on her skull that matched the pressure in her chest. The voices were worse, even her mother’s popping up from memory,
something overheard from a long-ago argument,

that’s not your father

which she never had understood. Why her mother

can’t you see how sick she is

should torment her—so odd.

Kramer’s mesmeric passes weren’t helping at all, though of course he blamed
her
:
If you’d only take your medicine, Elizabeth
. Kramer was a slithery spider with a ruined face and serpent’s hiss, who wanted nothing more than to scuttle through her brain and its dark, secret clefts, picking, probing,
pickpickpick …

Well, not just yet
. Squatting cross-legged on her filthy mattress, she grit her teeth and tried coring through a dull pink grin of scar tissue on her left forearm.
Get out of this accursed asylum and find the Mirror, determine which symbols will build me the
Now
I need, and leave this wretched London behind
. Yet no matter how hard she dug, there was no sparkle of pain, no

B
LOOD OF
M
Y
B
LOOD

blood. They kept her nails trimmed so short, she’d have better luck peeling a lemon with a thimble. She’d once considered using her teeth to gnaw through skin and down into muscle and through the stubborn fibrous tubes of arteries and veins, but she wasn’t insane; she didn’t want to
die
, no matter what Kramer said about those other slashes on her arms. (Those awful black stitches were the handiwork of the surgeon, Connell, the quack who’d mended her like a tatty piece of burlap.) Kramer insisted she must’ve made those cuts, and it was only luck that Constable Doyle happened by to save her from bleeding to death.

Luck? Oh
yes
, she was just
sooo
lucky to have landed in Bedlam
with all these lunatics. And
happened by
? Happened by
where
? She couldn’t recall. All she could remember was that she’d been running, running, running from

the whisper-man

a monster? Or had it been—the image of a man, black hair, glasses, glimmered through her mind—had it been her
father
? Wishing to
use
her for something? Or perhaps—now this was a lunatic thought—put something vital
in
her,
hide
it away for safekeeping?