Crossroads (31 page)

My fault.

My grievous fault.

"There," said Silky, leaning exhaustedly on the heavy iron pick.

Clem stood beside him, staring at the mirror and shaking his head.

"I don’t believe it," he said, reaching to touch the unbroken but clouded glass.

"Don’t!" said Silky, slapping his hand away.

Clem frowned, studying the ornate and intricate carvings on the equally unmarred frame. There wasn’t a scratch on it, not even any dust clinging to the varnished surface.

"I don’t get it," said Clem. "How could that thing have survived the cave-in?"

Silky sighed. "It isn’t that easy to destroy something from Otherworld."

"Something from where?"

Silky nodded toward the dark glass. "I told you. That’s where that thing came from. The same place I did."

"And where’s that, exactly?"

"The same place the money came from. Otherworld. Through the mirror." Silky nodded again. "I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the truth. Me, and No Legs, and the others, we all come through there, and Shandan held down the fort, all these years. If it hadn’t been for him we’d none of us survived. Likely no one would, or at least those that did would wish to hell they hadn’t."

"And you say Shandan’s still in there?" said Clem, clearly unconvinced.

"He’s in there, all right."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because if he wasn’t that mirror wouldn’t be dark. Wait here while I grab him something to eat."           

"Are you serious?"

Silky nodded, turning toward the stairs. Clem was close on his heels.

"I’ll give you a hand," he said, when Silky eyed him curiously.

In the kitchen Clem watched silently as the old man ladled out a big bowl of canned stew and placed crackers on the platter around it, handing it all to Clem. Outside the window sunlight glittered on the tops of small rollers.

"He’s gonna come out and get this?" asked Clem, scrunching up his face.

"Nope. But he’ll take it, right enough. Come on."

Silky led the way back down the stairs and motioned for Clem to set the platter on the stones at the base of the mirror. Clem backed away as Silky rapped a knuckle on the glass.

Nothing happened.

Clem stared at Silky.

Silky rapped again.

"Maybe it’s broke," suggested Clem, doubtfully.

Silky glared at him. "Does it look broke?"

Clem shrugged. "It don’t look exactly like a mirror. I mean it don’t reflect anything."

"Be glad it doesn’t," said Silky, rapping harder.

Clem gasped as the glass near the bottom of the mirror began to bulge. Silky nodded knowingly as gnarly white fingers stretched through the gelatinous pane and wrapped around the platter, dragging it back into the mirror. Clem stared at Silky, his eyes wide.

"Believe me now?" asked the old man.

Clem rubbed his chin thoughtfully, leaning to peer into the dark space between the mirror and the foundation. "I reckon I don’t have much choice."

He noticed that own his hands were shaking, and he shoved them into his pockets. 

"How come a guy that can make money out of thin air has to get you to cook his meals for him?"

Silky rubbed the back of his neck to loosen tight muscles there. "I don’t think it’s ever been about the food. It ain’t like I bring him haute cuisine. I think it’s more just the knowing that at least a couple or three times a day he’s going to be in contact with another living person, one he knows and trusts, on the other side of the glass."

"He never speaks?"

Silky shook his head. "There’s nothing to say anymore. We’ve known each other longer than you can imagine."

"You keep saying that. How long are we talking?"

Silky shrugged. "You know how long man’s been here?"

Clem frowned. "You talking Bible been here or science been here?"

Silky chuckled. "Science."

"That long?"

"Way before that."

"I reckon that would kind of talk you out," admitted Clem.

"Come on upstairs," said Silky, slapping him on the back. "I’ll buy you a drink."

"That was really Shandan Graves’ hand?" asked Clem, as he fell into a chair in Silky’s living room and accepted the raw whiskey. "The man the island is named after?"

Silky nodded.         

"Just what’s he doing in there, then?" asked Clem.

"Protecting us."

"From what?"

Silky took a long draw on his own whiskey, then rolled the glass slowly between his fingers. "Forty years ago by your counting some of us made a break from Otherworld."

"Who’s we?"

"Me, No Legs, Fat Tish, Shandan, and a few others. We all made it but Shandan, but he knew all along he wasn’t going to be able to cross over."

"How come?"

"Because someone had to stay on the other side and keep the door closed or else us getting away would accomplish nothing. Hell would just follow us here."

"Otherworld is hell?"

Silky sighed. "Not all of it. In fact there was a time it was like paradise, but ever since the Mogul took over it started
becoming
hell. Otherworld is where you go to when you dream."

"I don’t like dreaming," said Clem, frowning.

"No one does anymore. Not many good dreams since the Mogul took over. Because the people responsible for those good dreams-us-we're all dead or under the control of the Mogul. And we all knew that even if the last of us left managed to hide out anywhere else on Otherworld it was only a matter of time until he found us. Our hope was that coming here would be a permanent escape. We didn’t realize... Shandan didn’t tell us that he couldn’t come with us until it was too late."

"So if he dies, that door opens."

Silky nodded.

"And he’s dying," said Clem.

"He ain’t acting too healthy, and shit’s been happening."

"Shit like what?"

"Fat Tish and some of the others are dead. Maybe No Legs. Maybe all the others."

"Who killed em?"

"Grigs, I suspect," said Silky.

"But how did they get here if Shandan is still guarding the mirror?" asked Clem.

"I don’t know. I suspect that the Mogul has managed to make a mirror of his own. Only I don’t think it’s as good as one of Shandan’s mirrors. Probably all the Mogul can manage is to get his Grigs across and maybe part of himself. Like a shadow.."

"But you haven’t told me why you had to cross over to begin with. What did this Mogul do?"

Silky took another long draw on his whiskey, leaning back in his chair.

"Like I say, years ago Otherworld was a paradise. There was no crime because everyone pretty much had everything they needed. There was no hunger. No war. Then the Mogul came, and things changed."

"Where did he come from?"

"I don’t know," said Silky.

But Clem got the idea that he did know. He just wasn’t saying.

"Anyway," said Silky, "he showed up with a whole contingent of Grigs. He took the elders and the men and women he wanted. He took all the visionaries, and the soothsayers, the shape-shifters, and finally the creators. All of them."

"The what?" said Clem, shaking his head.

Silky sighed. "On Otherworld there is no
technology
the way you know it here, but we aren’t a bunch of backward savages. Otherworlders are born with unique talents. You’d call ‘em magic. Anyway, the Mogul came and took the men he wanted and the women that pleased him, and he murdered all the rest. We were taken to a place he called the Citadel, a big castle-like building. It’s not something I like to remember."

"What about these creators. What did he want with them?"

"That’s where he gets his power from. The Originals."

"I don’t understand."

"The Mogul found a way to use the energy that powers our talents to empower
himself.
First he was happy with turning all the dreams on Otherworld into nightmares, but then I think he realized that all those dreams represented people on other worlds, worlds that he only controlled half of. The dreaming half. He wants it all. He wants to cross into the other worlds and control them the way he does Otherworld."

"What kind of talent do you have?" asked Clem, frowning. "You never told me you had anything special about you."

"I’m a shape-shifter," said Silky.

Clem made a disbelieving face. "You mean you can change like into a frog or something? Come on."

"I can’t change my body into something that small," said Silky, lifting the bottle of whiskey and holding it out to Clem.

Clem started to reach for the bottle, but he jerked back when Silky’s arm began to
melt
. Clem tried to merge with the wall behind him as Silky poured the liquor into his shaking glass with a hand that looked like a fleshy flipper. Then Silky withdrew the bottle and his arm returned to normal. Clem downed the liquor in one shot.

"How did you think I got back and forth to the mainland before you came?" asked Silky.

Clem stared blankly at the arm that was now just an arm again, shaking his head. "I figured you had a boat around before I got here-"

"And you never saw it?"

"I never give it a lot of thought, I guess," said Clem, wondering how the hell he hadn’t.

"None of the shape-shifters on Otherworld can do anything like that anymore, if there even are any left," said Silky, sadly. "Because the Mogul sucks all of their power away for his own ends."

"Why doesn’t Shandan  just destroy the mirrors over there?"

"Until the Hall of Mirrors we created only dreams
,
and dreams fade with the wakening. They do not have to be destroyed. The Hall is something else altogether. For the first time a creator created something real and lasting. And Shandan discovered to his grief and ours that it’s not that easy to destroy something real once it’s been created by an Original. Believe me we all thought of it, and Shandan tried. Damn, but he tried. He succeeded in grinding one mirror to dust, but the problem is as soon as he tries to do that to another mirror
that
one recreates itself out of the dust."

"Then there must be some other way to beat this Mogul."

"If there is Shandan hasn’t found it in forty years, and he was always the most powerful of all of us. Even together we were barely able to break away and make our escape. Shandan has been able to hide the mirrors from the Mogul all this time, or block his getting to them, but now that the Mogul has found a way to send the Grigs across things have changed. Those little bastards murdered my friends. I think all of them except me may be gone now."

"Human beings aren’t exactly defenseless, you know."

Silky made a low, humorless laugh. "Yes, you are."

"Well, I don’t know about that. Just how many of these Grigs does this Mogul have?"

"It isn’t numbers you have to worry about. The Grigs are evil little shits. They can rip a man to shreds with their teeth, and their claws can tear through metal like it was cardboard. Enough of them would be almost unstoppable, and the Mogul can create them at will, but once he controls all of Otherworld and the Hall of Mirrors there’s no telling what he’ll be able to create. Grigs might be the least of our worries."

Suddenly the ground shook beneath them, the ceiling beams grumbled and creaked, and Clem was sure the house was about to collapse over them. He struggled to his feet, dragging Silky up with him, shoving the old man toward the door, but Silky shook him off, and Clem followed the old man down the cracked and crumbling cellar stairs.

"Look!" shouted Silky, waving toward the mirror as they staggered onto the basement floor.

The glass was suddenly translucent, and Clem had a clear picture of a man at least as old as Silky, but tall, with broad shoulders that-though bowed-still exhibited a powerful inner strength, and flashing blue eyes beneath a broad, noble forehead shaded by perfectly white hair. Behind the man lay what appeared to be a long hall filled with mirrors. The man reached right through the glass with a gnarly warding hand, and even over the crashing sound of furniture above their heads they could hear his powerful bass voice screaming.

"Run!"

Chapter 41

Kira, Jen, and Sheila stood on the perimeter of the enclave watching the Lost dance for Max and his wife. Eerie music that sounded like soft bagpipes playing something oriental wafted through the clearing, but Sheila could not see where it came from or who might be playing it. Flickering lights-like UFOs the size of butterflies-flittered over their heads and in and out amongst the dancers, bright even under the frond-shaded glow of the twin suns. The Whinegrass made a strange but somehow joyful noise beneath the dancer’s feet. Sheila watched Max and his wife and smiled.

"At least she isn’t crying to go home right now," she said.

The Elder sidled next to her.

"No," she said, "and her sickness does not afflict her here."

Sheila frowned. "She’s dying."

The Elder nodded. "She will yet die, but not from her disease."

"You mean if she stays here she’ll get better?" asked Sheila.

"If we survive. She is already getting better. We have no disease on Otherworld. It has never existed here. It cannot. We have... other things. Although there was a time we did not have them, either."

"Because of the Mogul, you mean," said Kira.

The Elder nodded.

"Have you told her?" asked Sheila.

"There is no need. She will sense it in herself soon enough. When she does, she will ask, and I will explain, but for now the Lost are as much a medicine to her as this place, and she and her husband to them. They have taken to calling them the Mama and the Papa, names I gave them. The Lost do not understand why the names are fitting, but they sense it is so. I call them the Lost for many reasons. Perhaps at last they themselves have found something important, though."