Through the Looking Glass
Chapter Twenty-Four
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Leo
L eo didn’t have long to savor Ceri’s confession—and how wonderful it felt to confess himself—before the whispering started.
It seemed to be coming from just outside the door of the dining hall. Leo took his things with him to investigate. Regardless of what it was, he needed to find some place to store each object separately, per Ceri’s instructions. He figured he’d try Professor Idris’s office first. If he was wrong about this being a different time, he’d find the storage boxes there.
And if he was right, well, he’d have to make do with spreading the items around the school. Since Idris’s office was a good distance from all the places he’d likely need to go, he’d leave the ring, the most dangerous object, there.
As Leo reached the door, the whispering resolved into speech.
“ Come closer ,” it said.
It was a woman’s voice. For a moment, Leo thought it might be Ceri, but the voice was too low.
“ I need you. Closer. ”
Leo hesitated, his hand over the handle to the door. Something rattled within his bag.
Leo looked down to see what it was, and the doorknob began to turn back and forth.
The door wasn’t locked or even lockable as far as Leo could tell. Why wasn’t it opening?
He reached into the bag. The locket was humming with some kind of energy. When he withdrew it, the door rattled violently in its hinges.
“ CLOSER! ” the voice screamed.
Leo took off running. He ran into the toilets.
They didn’t have a lock.
He ran into a stall and locked it behind him.
He took out the journal and furiously scribbled a message to Ceri, begging for help.
The whispering was here.
He was trapped in here. He had to get out.
He burst open the toilet stall (nothing there) and ran from the toilets, through the dining hall to the door into the courtyard as the door burst open behind him. He didn’t have the nerve to look back, but he could sense it back there: something large and fast and angry.
Leo sprinted across the courtyard, past the yew, and into the dormitory on the other side.
He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t know if he was still being chased.
He ran up the stairs and down the corridor to Ceri’s door.
It wasn’t her door, really, not yet, but it felt like the right place. He didn’t know how, but he knew it would be open.
He was right.
Leo slammed the door shut and locked it. He could hear movement in the hallway beyond and the clinking of metal in the bag as the locket tried to free itself again.
He sank to his knees in front of the door, peering through the keyhole.
As he saw what was chasing him lumber forward, he froze in fear.
It was a tarasque. A creature of myth with the head of a lion and an armored body that breathed poison and ate its enemies whole.
It had haunted his dreams since childhood. His parents had a book of Gallic children’s stories they liked to read to the young ones, and most of Leo’s siblings had loved it.
But not Leo.
The image of the tarasque terrified him then and now.
The poison breath, he realized.
He stripped the sheets from the bed and stuffed them under the doorframe and into the keyhole, his hands shaking.
Could it hear him? Could it hear the locket?
Did it know he was here?
In the hall, the tarasque roared. Leo heard it gallop up and down the corridor, scratching and banging at the doors.
Finally, it reached his.
It crashed into the door.
Once. Twice. Again and again.
Leo backed away as silently as he could, reaching behind him until his collision with a side table nearly gave him a heart attack.
And then, just as quickly as the tarasque had come, it left.
Leo collapsed onto the bare mattress. What the hell was happening here?
When his nerves had calmed enough to allow him to sit up, he emptied the bag onto the bed and raised the magimeter to the locket.
The reading was off the scale.
He pointed to each object in turn. Low readings on everything else except for the ring, which swung the needle to the high end of the meter so quickly, Leo was afraid it would break it.
He took out the pen to mark it down, but then he realized the problem:
He had left the journal in the dining hall.
It took Leo the better part of the day to work up the nerve to return for the journal.
The tarasque hadn’t been back, although he’d heard the whispering again a couple of times.
Leo didn’t understand it, but it seemed the whispering woman and the tarasque couldn’t sense him in this room. Were they one and the same? He wasn’t sure. The tarasque had come after the whispering began, but the whispering had happened on its own as well.
Leo kicked himself for leaving the journal. Although he supposed he’d need to return to the dining hall at some point to eat, regardless.
He went into the bathroom to have a sip of water from the sink. Leo had never been in Ceri’s version of the room, but he imagined the razor and beard shavings in the sink were unlikely to be hers.
He reached for the towel to dry his hands, and when he turned back, there she was in the looking glass.
“Ceri?” he called, looking around the room in confusion.
She was gone.
But she was just there. He had seen her. He was certain it was her. Perhaps this room was a connection of some kind between his world and hers, just like the journal was.
He tried scratching a message onto the wall with his pen.
It’s Leo. I’m here.
“Ceri, I’m here. Can you hear me?”
He was afraid to raise his voice higher than a whisper.
No response.
He lay back down on the bed, thinking hard. The objects were still together, and Ceri had said that was a problem. But they were also active, at least some of them, and Leo worried that if he did what he wanted to—which was flush as many as he could down the toilet and chuck the rest out the window—that he would need them again and wouldn’t be able to find them.
They seemed to be somewhat safe in this room, at least. Maybe if he left them here, he’d be able to retrieve the journal without attracting the notice of whatever was out there.
Could that really be a tarasque? The monster in the story book had been roughly the size of a house. It had destroyed entire villages and was practically unstoppable because of its armor.
But the tarasque Leo had seen had fit in the hallway and had failed to even knock down a door.
Maybe it was a baby.
Or maybe it was Leo’s worst nightmare come to life. There were few in Loegria who had ever even heard of tarasques, as he'd discovered while playing a drinking game with some of the other doctoral candidates last year. This place seemed to have been made for him in some way. Could it be that the tarasque was made for him too?
For what purpose?
Leo had read about curses that bent reality. He felt it was fair to say he was experiencing that. But while the rules may have changed, he believed there still must have been rules.
The tarasque of legend had been tamed by a woman who doused it in water blessed by the Gods. She’d then been able to put a collar on it, and she kept it as a pet.
Maybe this tarasque could be tamed the same way.
He had no blessed water, but maybe the blessing had been less important. He retrieved the horn from the bag (its reading was marginally higher than earlier, or maybe he was misremembering) and filled it at the sink.
As he left the bathroom, he thought he saw Ceri again, but maybe it was only what he wanted to see.
He needed the journal. It was his only hope of getting back to her.
He listened at the door. There was nothing nearby.
He opened it and crept into the hallway.
The sun was going down by the time he reached the courtyard. It seemed time, however different it was in this place, wasn’t frozen.
No tarasque in the courtyard. He stuck close to the wall on the side that was still intact anyway.
He could enter the library here rather than cutting across the courtyard to the dining hall door. The library hadn’t fought him before, and the stacks offered more protection than the open courtyard did.
He opened the library door.
No tarasque. No whispers.
No, there were whispers. But they were different.
It was a language Leo didn’t recognize. There were several voices of varying age and gender. They seemed—kind? Leo wasn’t sure. It could be some kind of trap. Maybe the whispering woman had realized he was too frightened of her to go along with what she wanted and had changed tactics.
Leo walked away from the whispers. They grew more urgent for a moment, but then subsided.
He made it into the hallway outside of the library with the statue of the phoenix, still unbroken.
It wasn’t far now. Just one more corridor and then—
There it was. The tarasque.
Leo ducked behind the statue. Had it seen him?
The only sound was the pounding of Leo’s heart. Could he manage to make himself take a look?
Hesitantly, Leo peered out.
The tarasque was gone.
Not gone.
Behind him. It was right behind him.
Leo yelled and ran, tossing the contents of the horn over his shoulder.
He heard a strange squeal and the thunder of six heavy paws crashing into the wall.
He dared to turn and look.
The wing of the phoenix statue was shattered on the ground. Could he have been the one to break it?
There was no time to consider it. The tarasque was there on the ground too, crouching. It didn’t seem to be able to move, but for how long would it stay that way?
He wanted to run away from this object of his childhood nightmares, but it looked so sad and small there, its lion head bent low. It had been reduced from a creature of pure terror to something Leo pitied.
He understood then why Martha had reached out to it to tame it. He’d always wondered why she didn’t kill the monster and take its head like they usually did in stories, but now he understood.
Leo reached out his hand.
The tarasque lifted its head in surprise. Then it nuzzled against Leo’s arm.
“Would you come with me?” asked Leo. “I think I’m in danger here. I could use a protector.”
The tarasque leaned back and stood, assessing Leo.
Leo knew he didn’t look much like a hero of legend. He didn’t cut an impressive figure. He wore no suit of armor. He carried no sword.
But neither had Martha, and she’d conquered the tarasque.
No, not conquered. Befriended.
The tarasque walked beside him, waiting.
“Is that a ‘yes’?” asked Leo.
By way of response, the tarasque knelt to him.
Maybe he could do this. Maybe Leo could survive this and find his way back home, back to his research. Back to Professor Marin. Back to the family he should really write to more often.
Back to Ceri.
Leo heard the whispering woman on the way back from the dining hall with the journal and a bag full of the food he’d found that would last several days (bread, dried meat, hard cheese, and raw fruits and vegetables. It wouldn’t make for fine dining, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.)
But with the tarasque at his side, Leo was nearly unafraid. He ignored the whispers and was able to make it back to the room without incident.
He hesitated at the door. Should he bring the tarasque inside? Would that alter whatever protection it offered?
The tarasque was licking its armored paws. He couldn’t just leave it out there.
He brought it in and spread one of the sheets he’d ripped from the bed on the other bed for it.
It accepted this offering, curling up into a ball on the bed like a cat.
A very large, armored, poisoned-breathed cat.
With the notebook finally there, he first left a message for Ceri. He told her everything that had just happened: the whispering woman, the forgotten journal, taming the tarasque, and the whispers in the library, and then he shared with her his idea.
I believe both the ring and the locket are at work here based on the readings (with the occasional input from the horn, but its readings are so low by comparison, I’m uncertain).
Based on the readings now with the tarasque in the room, I believe the ring is tied to it, which means the locket must be tied to the whispering woman.
I believe the ring has the power to make our fears become reality, and I think I can use this to help find a way home—
Not your fears. Your nightmares. It brings your nightmares to life. You have to get rid of it. It makes all the other objects more dangerous.
Ceri. It was so good to see her writing again.
Nightmares? That’s even better. I can try to guide my dreams. Some elves do nothing else every time they sleep. Admittedly, I haven’t quite mastered it, but it’s worth a shot. I can dream of coming home.
It won’t work. Idris says it has to be a nightmare.
What if I were to dream of coming home—but without my pants?
That doesn’t sound like a nightmare to me.
Leo didn’t know what to say to that.
Alison thinks you should try it. Try to dream of coming home pants-less with all the objects in tow.
It’s night now here. I’ll give it a try. Wish me luck.
I wish to see you pants-less.
If you keep writing like that, I’ll be having a different kind of dream entirely.
Leo tried not to think of Ceri’s innuendo. It truly could have the power to derail his process of entering into an elvish trance.
Especially since he wanted very much to think about what she had in mind.
Leo lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. At least he felt safe in here with the tarasque.
He had always had trouble entering the state of meditation required to trance. He’d tried all the usual techniques—counting breaths, feeling his body, reaching out and connecting with the ancestors—and he’d just come away more anxious than before, often with new anxieties about whether he was breathing right or whether he’d somehow been born without a spiritual sense.
Perhaps it was just the exhaustion from an unnaturally long day, but the trance came easily to him this time.
He guided his thoughts to the lab in his time. He walked past the library on the way there, seeing the broken statue to ensure he didn’t just end up moving rooms in this time. He pictured himself there in the lab with the objects spread out on his desk. The others were standing around.
He dared to picture Ceri, but he did not let himself think of her.
And then he looked down.
Bare, pale legs.
And no underwear.
He covered his shame as the others pointed and laughed.
Then he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When he woke, he was still in Ceri’s room.
Godsdammit. It hadn’t worked.
Or had it?
Leo reached for the lamp beside the bed, but instead he found a candlestick. He was alone in the room.
The tarasque had gone.
Leo was sad to see it go, but clearly something had happened. He checked the objects: both the ring and locket were missing.
Then he checked the journal.
I have some news: we think we know what’s happening to you, at least some of it. It’s the same thing that happened to Idris and his friends last night. We don’t know what each object does, but we do know that the doll is tied to a child that will cause choking. It’s the most dangerous after the ring, but Idris thinks we can help you decurse it. He’s trying to find a way to do it without magic, unless you know how to use magic and just never told us?
There was also a fire (the lighter, we’re guessing), and the dagger must have caused a trail of blood. Neither of those things had an actual impact on our world, but we have no idea what they will do in yours. It’s less clear what the locket and the horn do, but we’re still trying to figure it out.
It’s getting late here. I hope the nightmare works and I see you tomorrow. If not, we’ll find a way.
All of that is deeply alarming.
I’m still here, but the tarasque, ring, and locket are gone. Check the lab. Hopefully the tarasque has not come, but if it has and it’s no longer tame, I used water to tame it.
The room is different. The beds have changed, and it seems like the ‘lectrics are gone. I don’t see any lamps or outlets of any kind.
I think I may have gone even further back.
The lighter is reading higher than the other objects now. Thoughts on whether that’s related to the time shift?
I’m going to explore today. If the ring was causing the danger, and it’s gone now, I’m hoping I’ll be in a better position to do something about my predicament.
P.S. It was hard not to dream about you last night.
Leo closed the journal. He hadn’t made it back, but he had proved at least one thing: he had some power to affect this world.
There were strings here to be pulled on.
All he had to do was find the right one.