CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“She hurt my baby,” my mum whis-pered. She dug her fin-ger-nails into her palms, mouth twisted into a knot. “The ha-tred I felt for her … I just wished I’d done it long ago, be-fore she had a chance to snare you too.”
I shook my head. This couldn’t be hap-pen-ing.
In both worlds, my mum was a killer.
“Or-lagh was try-ing to help me,” I said, my voice high and thin.
“She be-lieved she was try-ing to help you, Penny. But I knew it would de-stroy you, the way it had me.”
I knew I should be dis-gusted with her. I should re-vile her ac-tions, be-cause they were wrong, so deeply wrong—she had taken a life. And yet some-thing pri-mal and ten-der in-side of me glowed with it.
My mother did love me. She loved me so un-be-liev-ably much that she would kill any-one who hurt a hair on my head. She would do any-thing to pro-tect me.
How could I hate her? This was what I wanted from her all along, wasn’t it?
“How did you do it?” I fix-ated on the lo-gis-tics to avoid the painful, un-set-tling emo-tions roil-ing in my rib cage. “Do you have a knife or some-thing?”
“Mir-rors can be shat-tered,” she mut-tered, as though it were ir-rel-e-vant. “And shards can be blades.”
I rubbed my sting-ing eyes. The tears had stopped, and some of the adren-a-line was ebbing away, and I felt over-whelm-in-gly ex-hausted. It was a side ef-fect of feel-ing safe, I re-al-ized. Be-cause even though this sit-u-a-tion was any-thing but safe, I felt pro-tected none-the-less. A li-on-ess and her cub. I longed to rest my head in her lap and fall asleep, curled up like a cat as she stroked my hair.
I thought again of Aunt Polly when my cousin Pippa was a baby.
You’re a good girl, such a good girl. Feath-ery eye-lashes drift-ing care-lessly shut, the smell of milk and baby sick on the air.
I had wanted it so much I felt like I might die from the pain of it.
Again I forced my brain to fo-cus on facts, not emo-tions. If we were go-ing to get out of this—so that I might have those mo-ments for real—I needed all the facts pos-si-ble to for-mu-late a plan. I couldn’t be dis-tracted by yearn-ing right now.
“Were they all you?” I asked of the mur-ders. “Celia and Lyle and An-gus?”
She slipped back into that trance-like state, as though try-ing to shield her-self from guilt or shame. “When I first de-stroyed Cam-ran’s paint-ing, it felt like I had cre-ated a kind of open-ing back into the real world. Those tears in the can-vas sent new air rush-ing in, and it struck me that I might be able to climb out of them.” Some-thing in me leaped up, like a flame to flint. “But by the time I re-al-ized what was hap-pen-ing, they’d started to seal over again. I couldn’t even get a fin-ger-tip through.”
I re-mem-bered how en-tirely rav-aged Celia and Lyle’s paint-ings had been, side by side on the gallery wall, most of the can-vas in ru-ins. Un-der-stand-ing swelled into a full cir-cle. “So you wrecked two more, this time mak-ing far larger holes to try and climb through.”
“It sounds cruel, but they had lived long lives. And in truth, I would have done any-thing to get to you.” I saw her bat-tle the lump in her throat. “Any-thing in the world, Penny.”
“But it didn’t work.” Ob-vi-ously—we were still here. “Why did you wait so long be-tween Cam-ran and those next at-tacks?”
“It took me that long to find more por-traits. I think the labyrinth un-der-stood what I was try-ing to do, that I was try-ing to com-pro-mise it in or-der to free my-self, and it kind of twisted and rerouted ev-ery-thing to dis-ori-ent me. For nearly a week I was trapped in the same mir-rored cor-ri-dor.”
I couldn’t think too deeply about the hellscape we were trapped in with-out feel-ing nau-seous; un-set-tled on a fun-da-men-tal level. “And Davina’s eye…?”
“That was on pur-pose.” A de-fi-ant smirk. “I saw her strip you half-naked in the mas-ter and sub-ject class.”
It was a hideous thing to have done, but my mind was fo-cused on some-thing else.
What other mo-ments be-tween Davina and I might she have seen?
My cheeks burned hot and fu-ri-ous. “Did you see any-thing … af-ter that? With Davina?”
“Not in any of the mir-rors, no.” The re-lief that our mo-ment in the gallery re-mained a se-cret was a cool ice pack on my face. “Why? What hap-pened?”
“We kind of reached a truce,” I said quickly. “She bat-tled the swans to help me get in here.”
Mum pursed her lips at this. “Two decades in here, watch-ing you suf-fer from afar, has kind of in-ten-si-fied those over-pro-tec-tive ma-ter-nal in-stincts. I can’t say I re-gret it. She hurt you.”
The words were a blan-ket wrapped around me in the cold depths of win-ter.
This is all I wanted, I thought, cup-ping the feel-ing to my chest like a sin-gle lit can-dle.
But there was one more ques-tion—one I had been avoid-ing, be-cause I was afraid the an-swer might shat-ter this re-union.
“So why did you wound my face? Why all the lit-tle cuts and scars?” I mum-bled, fin-gers go-ing to the pur-ple wound bi-sect-ing my cheek.
Si-lence spread out over sev-eral mo-ments like frost over the Great Lawn. Then, fi-nally, she sighed and said, “Des-per-a-tion. I needed to lure you here, some-how. I needed to make you afraid enough that you would some-how find your way be-hind the por-traits.”
Sur-prise jumped in my chest. I didn’t un-der-stand this rea-son-ing at all.
“Why would you want me to come here?” I asked, baf-fled. “You said your-self that we’re stuck. That you’ve tried for years to break free.”
She took a deep, steady-ing breath. “Be-cause I think I’ve fig-ured it out. I think de-stroy-ing your own por-trait is such a pow-er-ful act that it could cre-ate a hole in the seam large enough to climb through. When I was carv-ing up An-gus Ar-ras, this ver-sion of him that ex-ists back here found me. We strug-gled and fought, and he man-aged to grab hold of my mir-ror shard. I was stand-ing in front of his por-trait, and when he lunged at my face with the blade, I moved out of the way at the last sec-ond.
“When the mir-ror slashed into the can-vas by An-gus’s own hand, there was this huge flash of white light, and this hideous scream-ing noise that didn’t come from ei-ther of us. An-gus died in-stantly, and his can-vas glowed sil-ver-white for sev-eral sec-onds longer than usual, the light flood-ing through the huge hole he’d un-wit-tingly cre-ated. But I’d been blinded by the flash, and I didn’t move quick enough to get through.”
I tried to process all of this, but there was a miss-ing piece.
“Why did you lure me back here, though? Couldn’t you have just tried it again with some-body else’s can-vas? Now that you know how to do it?”
She shook her head, tuck-ing a loose lock of white-gray hair be-hind her ear. “The chances of some-how find-ing one of the other sub-jects be-hind here, let alone trick-ing them into stab-bing their own por-trait, were in-cred-i-bly slim. I was try-ing, of course. But then you ar-rived.”
Was I just be-ing slow? Or did none of this make any sense?
“Okay … so how does this help us?” I replied, and for once I didn’t seem to care about look-ing or feel-ing stupid. “If I de-stroy my own paint-ing, it’ll de-stroy me too. I’m still stuck.”
Af-ter a fleet-ing burst of ag-o-niz-ing res-ig-na-tion, Mum’s eyes flut-tered shut.
And then I un-der-stood.
“No. You don’t mean…”
She was go-ing to sac-ri-fice her-self.
“I can de-stroy my own paint-ing and give you enough time to climb out.” Her voice was so heavy it pressed down on my chest like a phys-i-cal pres-ence. “We just need to find the other ver-sion of you so you can step through to-gether. So you can both be free.”
“But you’ll die.” My heart felt like it was cav-ing in on it-self.
She opened her eyes at last. “But you’ll live.”
Shak-ing my head fiercely, I whim-pered like a wounded rab-bit. I couldn’t make it this far, to fi-nally meet the mother I had al-ways craved, only for her to be snatched away from me so soon. “I can’t let you do that.”
“I’ve had a while to pon-der the al-ter-na-tives, but I don’t think we have any choice.”
My mind scram-bled for flaws, loop-holes, any-thing to high-light how ter-ri-ble this idea re-ally was. “What about Davina? I’ll be free, but she won’t. She has no-body back here to of-fer them-selves as a sac-ri-fi-cial lamb. I don’t want her to be in dan-ger.”
“She won’t be. The only dan-ger is me. I’m the one wield-ing the blade. With me gone, no-body will have any rea-son to hurt her through the por-trait. The oth-ers back here … they won’t go slash-ing up the por-traits just to try and poke a fin-ger through. By all ac-counts, their other selves are do-ing rather well in the real world.” Again that aw-ful twist of the lips, so pained and des-per-ate. “Their chil-dren aren’t suf-fer-ing, like you were.”
Wrap-ping my arms around my knees like a lost child, I pressed my fore-head into my thighs and felt the warm rush of tears once more. “Mum, I … I can’t say good-bye to you. I want you. This you. I want us to-gether, out there, liv-ing. This can’t be the only way.”
“Oh, my love.” She crawled over to me, wrap-ping her arms around my hunched form. “By all means, if you can find an-other one … I’m all ears.”
I thought and thought and thought. I thought for so long that days might have gone by in the real world, weeks, but no other al-ter-na-tives ap-peared.
Where had I ar-rived in the un-der-world? Could I find that ex-act spot again, and hope it took me to the lake?
But I had been un-con-scious when I fi-nally slipped through the ether. I had no idea how it hap-pened, in ac-tu-al-ity, and I didn’t think it would work the same in re-verse—fall-ing un-con-scious into the bot-tom of the lake did not seem like a fan-tas-tic plan.
So it was one of three op-tions: cer-tain drown-ing, liv-ing in the un-der-world in per-pe-tu-ity, or los-ing the mother I had wanted since I was a child.