The Tiger in the Mirror
Christopher woke on the Neverfear feeling ravenously hungry.
They sat at the table in the galley and ate what they could find.
It turned out that Jacques, tasked with stocking the boat in Lithia, had ordered almost nothing but chillis: three sacks of them and a box of salt.
But there was some bread and butter, and some dried fire-fish, tiny as Christopher’s little finger, and a single slice of ham.
‘Well, I don’t know what humans eat!’ said Jacques.
‘Such things are beneath my notice! I had to guess.’ He demanded that Christopher crush the chillis with a pestle and mortar into balls, which he ate slowly, licking them and huffing in pleasure.
‘It is the dragon equivalent of ice cream,’ he said. ‘Delectable.’
‘My father loves fire-fish,’ said Anya quietly as they ate. ‘So does Koo. I always save him the tails.’
They were quiet for a while.
‘Christopher – what happens if we fail?’
‘We won’t,’ he said.
‘But if we do?’
‘They’ll kill Irian. That’s why we can’t fail. We’ll do whatever it takes.’
Whatever it takes: those words are often spoken, but very rarely are they meant.
Usually they mean something else: We’ll do what feels reasonable and safe within the limits of tradition and the approval of those in authority and fashion, plus a careful consideration of profit and loss and a sensible amount of energy.
That is not what Christopher Forrester meant.
He meant: Whatever it takes. He would travel across the world for Irian Guinne: the woman who had given him a home in the Archipelago.
Ratwin came suddenly bounding down the steps of the boat into the galley kitchen. ‘It is heres! It is heres! The bird came and tooks the belt! It lefts the final task! Opens it! Opens it!’
This is your final task. Bring me a golden apple of the Hesperides orchard.
Do not loiter. There is very little time. Irian Guinne is alive. She will not remain so if you fail.
Anya gave a valiant attempt at a laugh. ‘Ah. To be honest,’ she said, ‘I was hoping for something less deadly.’
‘Why? What’s in the orchard of the Hesperides?’
‘A snake,’ said Anya. ‘It’s one of the stories Gallia told me growing up. And not one of the nice, lullaby-type bedtime stories.’
Ratwin sighed. ‘Hercules was sents to steals three golden apples, ons the Island of Polytemus. They is valuable beyond wordings.’
‘And did he do it?’
‘Yes. He trickeds the god Atlas into helping hims.’
‘Right.’ There was a brief pause. ‘I don’t think that’s really an option for us,’ said Christopher.
‘Hercules.’ Anya was staring into space. ‘Didn’t Hercules also have to tame a Cerberus?’
Ratwin looked at Anya. ‘You thinks there is some connections?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why these particular things, do you think?’
‘They is all items of golds,’ said Ratwin. ‘Perhaps they is gold-hoarders, these Astorians, like the dragons?’
‘But there’s something more. Something about Hercules.’ She dug her fist into her temple. ‘Hercules – someone I love was talking about him.’
‘I told you that Hercules stole the Belt of Hippolyta,’ said Jacques.
‘No, not you,’ said Anya rather tactlessly. ‘Before that. It was in Glimt – my father, I think? He said something about the fendthorn, but I can’t remember what—’
She never finished the sentence. She looked up – and then she screamed. It was a long shriek of pure horror.
‘The mirror!’
Christopher whipped round to face the mirror hanging on the wall.
In the reflection was his face and Anya’s – and behind them, watching, the face of a tiger. Its teeth were bared and its black eyes were fixed on him. The pupils were flames. He spun round: there was nothing. But in the reflection the tiger began to pace towards them, drawing back its lips.
Instinctively Christopher snatched up the pestle from the mortar and hurled it at the mirror. The glass shattered with a splintering crash and shards flew across the galley.
‘Smash the mirrors!’ he roared. ‘Before it comes through!’
Anya tore ahead of him into the bathroom.
The mirror hung over the sink. She looked wildly around for something to smash it with.
Her own face stared back at her as she cast about: soap, towels, nothing strong enough.
Behind her reflection a figure appeared: the tiger stalked towards her.
It lifted its claws to the mirror. Anya watched, paralysed with terror, as with the hideous shriek of nail on glass it scratched four deep gashes down the surface.
Anya screamed. Still screaming, she drove her elbow, hard, over and over into the mirror. With the crack of a pistol shot the glass shattered and the tiger vanished.
Christopher ran through the boat. There was a mirror in the narrow passageway below deck: a flicker of orange and black movement in its depths, and a sound of animal breathing coming closer. Christopher yelled; with a great jerk he wrenched the mirror free of the wall and stamped on it.
He and Anya collided in the bedroom, where a small mirror hung, a square in a tarnished silver frame.
It was fixed high on the wall at Nighthand’s head height, and neither could see in it clearly.
Christopher snatched it down, but Jacques was suddenly fluttering in his face, his voice high and urgent.
‘Wait! Don’t smash them all! Keep one!’
‘Get out of the way, Jacques! This isn’t the time to be vain!’
‘It’s not that, fool! You may need it! Don’t smash it – cover it with a cloth.’
‘You don’t understand! It can come through!’
‘It cannot! It can only come through the mirror if you summon it! Only if you call out to it to come to you!’
There was a single beat – then Christopher dragged a blanket from the bed, bundled it around the mirror, shoved it in a cupboard and slammed it shut. He stood staring at the cupboard.
‘You need have no worry,’ said Jacques. ‘It cannot hear you if it cannot see you.’
‘You know about the tiger?’
‘I do. Now check every room, every cupboard, for mirrors.’
‘There are nones,’ said Ratwin, pacing into the bedroom behind them. Her green face was tight with fear. ‘You is safes now. I knows the boats well.’
‘I knew it! I knew I saw something in the mirrors!’ said Anya. ‘It was watching us!’
‘I think we should double-check the boat,’ said Christopher.
‘Do so. I shall makes teadrinks, in the galley. And we will takes it on the decks, and Jacques will tell us alls he knows.’
Anya checked inside every possible surface for hidden mirrors while Christopher swept up the pieces of broken glass, wrapped them in a sack and threw them overboard.
By the time they sat on the deck half an hour later the wild drumbeat of Christopher’s heart had slowed. But the image of the creature – its intense malevolence, its look of hunger – had not faded.
‘Jacques, you know what that thing was,’ said Christopher. ‘Tell us.’
‘All those old enough to remember the antique times know the Tiger in the Mirror. I do not know where it came from, nor how many there are. Do they have cubs? Or is it just the one ancient beast? But I know it is a spy to exceed all spies, for it can move between any mirror in the world. It can travel outside Glimouria without using the waybetweens.’
‘So it could go to London?’ Christopher thought of his father, alone in the flat at home.
‘It could, if it wished. And what it can see, it can also hear. But for it to spy, the name of the person it seeks must be spoken before the mirror.’
‘I think you said Christopher’s name, Jacques, and yours,’ said Anya. ‘When you were talking about your biography.’
Jacques flushed. ‘I believe the Astorians sent it to spy on you. I believe it is how they have known where you are at any time: the Tiger has been listening.’
‘But why would it show itself now?’
‘Perhaps a warning. Perhaps to terrify you into speed.’
‘Perhapses,’ said Ratwin, ‘to stops you doings whatever you was doing when it appeared.’
‘Eating chilli?’ said Jacques. ‘Let them dare try it!’
‘And you’re sure it can’t come through?’ said Christopher.
‘It cannot. It is like the vampire; it must be invited. Then it can kill with a single swipe of its claws, and take its meal back into the mirror.’
Ratwin got to her feet and strode towards the tiller. ‘If them bandits who have Irian haves in their hands such a horrifical creatures,’ she said, ‘we must speeds-up and speeds-on.’