The Lion Tamer’s Daughter (29 page)

“Good luck,” I whispered, and she smiled, but as if she wasn't sure what I was talking about.

When I crossed the room on my way to the other lobby Monsieur Albert was sitting with his hands folded and his head bowed, as if he was praying. I went to the top of the stairs and beckoned to Melly and gave the thumbs-up to Eddie, to tell him that so far it had all gone as he'd fixed. But when Melly came climbing toward me I stood and gaped and almost forgot everything, because she wasn't Melly, she was Melanie. The room and the stairs were the other way round, and it was a green scarf she gave me, not a red one, and I knew with my mind that this was Melly because it had to be, but I still couldn't make myself believe it, especially when she smiled exactly the same smile when I wished her luck. I thought I'd known how like they were, but now that they'd got their hair the same I realized I hadn't, the likeness was so amazingly exact. I don't think even Janice could have told them apart. I'd finished tying the blindfold before I remembered to check back through the door and see what Monsieur Albert was up to, but he was still where I'd left him, huddled on his chair with the bald top of his head glistening with sweat. He looked up when he heard the door close and put his finger to his lips. I nodded to tell him everything was ready.

He pointed to the other lobby, so I went and fetched Melanie, leading her by the hand to the exact place he'd shown me. Then Melly. When they were back to back in front of the mirror he got up and went into each of the lobbies in turn and tried the outside doors to make sure I'd locked them. Then he came back and looked very carefully at the two girls, starting at their shoes and working up. He adjusted the shoulder of Melly's dress, and then spent some time comparing their hair. After a bit he took a small pair of scissors out of his pocket and snipped a wisp of hair off the back of Melanie's head and another by Melly's left ear. He was careful not to drop the stuff he'd cut, but took a brown envelope out of his pocket and popped it in. He was putting the envelope back when he seemed to change his mind and handed it to me. I put it in the back pocket of my jeans.

He pointed to tell me to go back behind the imaginary line on the floor, so I did that, checking over my shoulder that he was going back to his chair. He sat down and started to fish things out of his bag, first a piece of cloth which might once have been white but now was a sort of brownish cream with darker stains on it. He spread it carefully on the floor in front of him and then one at a time took several little packages out of the bag, unwrapped them, and arranged what was in them on the cloth. One was a small brass cup, which he placed upside down. Another looked like a chicken's foot, but very old and dried. There was a dark blue stone and a lump of something wrapped in a yellow bandage, like a mummy. I couldn't see what the other things were. I think there were seven of them. He put them in a circle and drew with his finger in the air between them, in the shape of a star, finishing where he'd begun over the cup. He took some powder out of a small tin box, shaking it into the palm of his hand, and dribbled it into the center of the circle in a thin stream, moving his hand so that it made some kind of pattern on the cloth. He sat staring at it for a while before he looked up and gave me the signal to remove the blindfolds.

I did that and went back to my place.

He raised his hand and made a circle with his finger in the air.

“You can turn round now,” I croaked.

They turned, opposite ways, moving exactly together as if they'd rehearsed and rehearsed it. They looked at each other just as if each of them was seeing herself in a mirror, and they each put up the same hand to fiddle with the same bit of hair, the way girls do when they spot themselves in a window or something. They smiled and put up both hands and touched, palm to palm. Their happiness was beautiful. It filled the room. I forgot my nerves and the stink of smoke and the awful dusty heat and just stared. Now at last I understood what Melanie had been telling me all along. She and Melly weren't two girls who happened to look amazingly like each other—they were one girl, only there happened to be two of her.

I didn't come to until I heard the bell ring. That reminded me that I'd got Monsieur Albert to keep an eye on as well, so as soon as I'd got the top buckle undone I looked to see what he was up to. He was crouched forward over the cloth, concentrating on it as if it was the only thing in the world, streaming with sweat and muttering under his breath.

When I looked back to the girls they had taken hold of each other's hands and were circling slowly round, face to face. I didn't know how many turns they'd done so now I really couldn't say which was which. They were still smiling, but now it wasn't simply and peacefully, like somebody waking from a good dream, but—I don't know—as if they were sharing a secret they knew, and no one else did.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Monsieur Albert ring the bell again, reaching out and picking it up and shaking it without stopping his muttering or looking away from the stuff on the cloth. I undid the second buckle and waited with my hands on the top of the cover ready to slide it round and off. It seemed to be quivering slightly under my touch, but that was probably only my nerves.

The girls were circling faster now, swinging each other round with their feet almost touching and their bodies leaning apart and their heads thrown back, laughing aloud too and circling faster and faster so that if either of them had made a mistake they'd have fallen in a heap, but they went on speeding up till they seemed to me to be moving faster than they could have possibly swung on their own, as if something had hold of them and was spinning them like a top till their shifts were a yellow dizzying blur …

The bell rang, long and loud. The cover was heavier than I'd expected and I thought for a moment that I was going to knock the mirror crooked but it stuck where it was as if it was bolted to the floor. I laid the cover on the table and began to fold it by feel, looking over my shoulder to watch the girls. They were slowing down, slowing down. They ought to have been too dizzy to stand, and they did look dazed, lost, but they were held. I could actually see that. Something was holding them, controlling them. I remembered what Monsieur Albert had said to Eddie, that they'd “do what they were compelled to do.”

I didn't like it. It scared me. Up to now I'd been nervous about the girls meeting because we'd built it up into such a big thing, and I'd been doubly nervous about it being up to me to spot whatever kind of trickery Monsieur Albert might get up to. But those were ordinary sorts of nerves. Now for the first time I really felt—I
knew
—that something was happening which there wasn't any kind of ordinary explanation for. Besides that, it meant that Monsieur Albert had actually known what he'd been talking about, and I'd better do exactly what he'd told me, or everything might go wrong.

I looked down and saw that I'd managed to fold the cover into a neat roll—it could almost have folded itself, because I hadn't been noticing what my hands were up to. I'd even fastened it with one of its buckles. I went back to my chair and sat down, hitching it forward a couple of inches as I did so—the way you do, but I did it on purpose, because it meant I could see a scrap more of the mirror in the reflection from the windowpane. I couldn't see the actual girls at all from where I sat, but they were right in the middle of the reflection, a bit wavy and hard to make out, but there all right. They were turning very slowly now, close together, with their hands under each other's elbows and their bodies almost touching.

As I watched, the light in the room changed. It seemed to happen almost in an instant as the sun went down and the golden shafts of sunlight at either end of the room went dim. I glanced at Monsieur Albert. I didn't want him to catch me staring at the reflection in the window, but he wasn't. He seemed to be in a sort of trance, stiff but quivering, with his hands held tense in front of his shoulders, cupped, palms forward, fingers spread, while he gazed unblinking at the girls. He wasn't seeing me at all, so I looked back at the window reflection.

I could see the girls better now. Before, I'd been looking through one shaft of dusty sunlight and they'd had the other one behind them, so they'd just been a couple of dark outlines. Now I could just about see their faces, both in profile because they'd stopped turning and were standing one with her back to the mirror and the other facing her. They looked solemn but not sad, like dancers in a dream.

Moving exactly together, they raised their hands and touched palms, the way they'd started their dance. Slowly they moved toward the mirror until the nearest one had her back right against it.

She didn't stop there. She went on, into the mirror. I'd only seen it with the cover on it, and even then it wasn't more than a couple of inches thick, but she slid right into it, slowly, her arms and hands going last of all. I could just see her left hand in the bit of mirror at the edge of the reflection, with the other girl's right hand resting on the glass. They stayed there and didn't move.

Monsieur Albert gave a sort of shuddering sigh, which reminded me again that I was supposed to be watching him too. He was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and gasping like a runner after a race. The sweat was dripping off the tip of his nose, his face glistened, and his shirt looked as if someone had turned a hose on him.

I looked at the reflection in the pane, and saw that the girl who was still in the room was backing slowly away from the mirror, still in her open-eyed dream. She stopped, and I watched her beginning to wake up. Her hand went up to her hair and fiddled with it, just like at the beginning. She smiled. She was happy. It had worked. It was all right.

She stayed like that, gazing at the mirror. I guessed she had to, that she couldn't look away until it was covered up, so I turned to Monsieur Albert, waiting for him to ring his bell, but he was busy with his things on the cloth again. He took the cup and put it, right way up this time, in the middle, and moved the other objects closer in around it. He took an envelope out of his pocket, shook something from it into his palm, and carefully poured whatever it was into the cup. He tucked the envelope into the bag. Then he took a small stone bottle out of the bag, uncorked it, and dripped two or three drops of liquid onto the other stuff in the cup.

He held his hands out over the cloth as if he was warming them at a fire, and concentrated. I could feel the effort of his concentration. I think a little smoke came out of the cup—I'm not sure …

And then I saw him relax. He straightened, and looked up, and smiled.

I don't know how to describe it, but it was obvious. He was watching something really nasty happen, and he was loving it.

I looked at the windowpane to see what he was seeing.

The whole of the middle of the room seemed much darker now—I'm not sure about that either, and anyway night comes quickly that far south. The girl was still there, in front of the mirror, just her shape against the light from the other window. She had her arm thrown up in front of her face as if she was fighting not to go on looking in the mirror but she couldn't help it. She was held, compelled …

I don't mean I could see anything holding her, but I could see
how
it was holding her, how it was stopping her getting her arm over her eyes, making her look, and then beginning to force her in toward the mirror, though she was leaning away from it, with her other arm up now, pushing at nothing, fighting not to get any nearer, but all the time being forced slowly in …

I didn't think. I just knew it was wrong. There wasn't any time for the cover. I jumped up and tried to knock the mirror over but it was like hitting a house. Monsieur Albert was screaming at me. I grabbed the tablecloth with both hands and swung it over the mirror. It floated out as if there'd been a wind underneath it, but I tugged it down my side and rushed round and took the girl by the arm and yanked at her.

For a moment she didn't budge, but then a flapping end of the cloth got in front of her face and she came with a rush and we both went sprawling back behind the mirror. As I fell I saw the girl's hand going out and grabbing the tablecloth to stop herself from falling, and pulling it clear just as Monsieur Albert came rushing across …

He stopped. No, he didn't. He
was
stopped. Dead. I was on my back and beginning to scramble up and I saw it happen. One moment he was going full tilt and the next he was stuck. He ought to have fallen flat on his face but he didn't, because he was held. Compelled.

Slowly he turned to face the mirror. He stared at it. His face was gray under the tan. He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, gave a little nod, and walked steadily into the mirror. It didn't take long. I don't know—ten seconds …

Then, far too late, I remembered the pager and fished it out and pressed the button. I finished scrambling up and knelt by the girl. She was lying on her front with her head turned sideways and her eyes closed. I could hear Eddie starting to break his way in through the door, but I couldn't leave her alone to go and unlock it. I felt I had to get her as far away from the mirror as possible, so I rolled her over and took her under the arms and dragged her down to the bottom of the room. I'd just got her there when Eddie and Mum came bursting in.

Eddie took a quick look round and ran to the other room. I heard him unlocking the door. Mum rushed down to where we were.

“Where've they gone?” she said. “Where's … Oh, God, what's happened to her? Which is this one?”

I just stood, shaking my head. I was shuddering, and sopping with sweat, and my head was pounding. I had a horrible sick feeling that I'd ruined everything, barging in like I had. Janice was there now, kneeling by the girl and sobbing, “Melly! Melly, darling! Is it you …?” And Eddie and the other man, Pierre, were talking, arguing behind us.