The Accidental Highwayman (25 page)

“Not I,” said Lily. The last I remember I was sittin' at the looking glass—it might have been Saturday—inspecting of my complexion, as girls do. Then it's a dream after that. I dreamt my reflection was a-speaking back to me, and we had a lovely chat. It was ever so flattering.”

“To be expected,” said Gruntle. “You're a beautiful womanling.” Then he blushed so much his bottom lit up pink.

She curtsied to him, then continued her recollection. “'Ave you ever had one of them dreams that seems perfectly real, so that waking is all confusion, because you thought yourself awake already? This was the other way about. I thought it was all a dream, but seems it was
happening
. I begun to have regular chats with the looking glass, and it told me terrible things about you, Morgana, some what I didn't understand about politics and royal obligations, and some what I understood only too well.”

Here, she looked at me from beneath her pale eyelashes, and it was her turn to blush. I was mystified as to what she meant, but decided it was probably best not to know.

“In this dream, me and the mirror were fast friends, and I came to understand a lady lived inside it, and only borrowed my reflection to speak through. We had ever so many chats about things, and I found I wasn't much interested in poor suffering Morgana any longer. This seemed to upset the mirror-lady. She loved to
talk
about you. But she didn't
love
you, that was clear. It pizened my thinkin', it did.”

Here she shyly reached out to Morgana, and the princess took her hand with both of her own and smiled the sad half smile. Lily continued, addressing her friend: “I remember there was a bit in the dream about my tortoise comb, for I couldn't find it, and the lady in the mirror thought she'd seen you take it. You know, from 'er side of the glass. But she must have been mistook, for it turned up soon enough. Then I don't remember anything until last night.”

“You need not go on, if it distresses you,” said Morgana, when she saw tears spill down Lily's scratched cheek.

“I'd take it as a favor to confess the whole dream,” said Lily, “if you can bear to hear it. Last night I remember sitting at the looking glass as I'd been doing, and
this
time, the lady reached through. Her arm was all of a mirror as I recall. A nightmare, tell the truth. But at the time she said such things as I thought was kindness itself. She said I ought to give dear Morgana my tortoise comb as an offering of friendship, and set her down before the glass to see how well it suited her lovely black hair. She took my hand in hers, as you done with mine.”

All of us were thrilled with horror at the idea of Lily's slender fingers clasped in that hard, cold grip. Morgana let go of Lily, as if her own hands might turn to glass.

“Well, there it is. I took of 'er advice, called you inside, and bade you sit before the glass. Do you know, I don't think I've ever seen you do it before?”

“In truth,” said Morgana, “my appearance means nothing at all to me, for I am disguised.”

“That hexplains it, then,” said Lily. “Though I think I'd know you well enough without it. Anyroads, you know the rest. It weren't a dream after all. When you sat down and looked into the glass and that arm come snaking out and caught you by the hair, I must have awoke, for I was all confusion. I recall a struggle, and Fred come rushing through the window, and then there was a tap on my nut and I suppose I dreamed proper, after that.”

So saying, Lily sat on the bottom step of the wagon, nearly crushing the admiring Gruntle.

“There you have it,” said I. “Nothing makes plain sense anymore, the world has gone mad, and I'm fair certain we are
all
asleep. There can be no other explanation.”

But Morgana began to pace, a few steps away and a few steps back, pinching her chin with her fingers. Then she addressed Lily.

“Didst thou—did you, that is—call Kit a lubber?”

“I don't recall,” said Lily.

“She did,” said I. “And correctly, for I've never been to sea.”

“All is clear,” Morgana cried. “Few can conjure with such power, and only one speaks like a sailor. Lily, you were possessed by the One-Eyed Duchess. That you survived the experience speaks well of your spirit and everyone else's quick actions.

“We call such enchanted objects ‘phantolorums,'
*
” she went on. “They are used to communicate between the worlds. I should have thought of it myself. The looking glass was backed in silver, of course. The fey metal. It was like a porthole penetrating the cage of gold that kept us safe. She discovered it, and used it to attract your attention and enchant you, Lily. She would have preferred to lure
me
before it, but I had no reason to look into the glass, and so did not. She might not have had the same power over me in any case. So she gained a confederate, taking over your will.”

“That's narsty,” Lily observed. “I owe her a clip on the bonce.”

“I daresay,” Morgana agreed. “So in amongst us was this phantolorum. The episode with the comb must have been some error on her part; she almost lost control of you. I suspect she intended to poison your mind against me, so that you would eagerly help her to pull me through, rather than resist the attempt.”

“Pull you through!” I cried. “You wouldn't even fit through that glass! That crawling arm filled up the frame.”

“She didn't require my entire body, Kit. What she wanted was only my soul.”

The implications of this made me ill. Had the Duchess succeeded, we would have rushed into the wagon and found Morgana lifeless, and Lily all battered and bloody upon the floor, and we would have assumed the worst—that Lily had slain her dear friend!

“You understand the implications of this,” Morgana said to me, and I had again that uneasy sense that she had read my mind. “When Lily misplaced her comb, the enmity with which the Duchess had divided us burst out
outside
the caravan, where she could make no use of it. But she is cunning. She was able to turn the incident to her advantage and use the selfsame comb to lure me before the looking glass, after all. The rest you know.”

“What a diabolical cow,” said I, and was immediately ashamed. Speak ill of one woman and you speak ill of them all, as Master Rattle had once observed. “That is, how cruel of her. How entirely wicked.”

“She hasn't a soul of her own, you know,” Morgana said. I think she felt sympathy for the creature who had almost slain her. “You recall the Duchess is my great-great-great-great-aunt. That means our souls come from the same lode. She could take mine and be almost entirely restored …
That's
why she wanted to capture me! Of course!”

“I don't understand it,” said I.

“I don't understand
any
thing,” said Lily.

“When the Duchess sent her gryphons after us, she hoped to carry me back to Faerie through her agents, for she cannot cross over herself without a soul. This much we knew. Frustrated in the attempt, she changed tactics, and tried to lure me before the phantolorum and drag out my soul.

“Her purpose is clear to me now: Marriage unites the souls of the betrothed. She needs mine
before the wedding takes place,
or it's of little use to her, stuck to another. So it's become a race between my father and the Duchess to capture my soul.”

“We're in the race as well,” said I. “Where is Willum? We must away!”

*   *   *

The remainder of the day passed without event as far as our party was concerned, but things were happening abroad in the land. Morgana received a bee from a sympathizer some ten leagues behind us that said a mad English officer was scouring the countryside for a whistling highwayman matching my description. I was reminded that I had practiced my riding with Midnight in places where people could watch, and cursed myself for a fool. Still, thirty miles of poor roads and winding lanes was a safe distance, in those days. As long as we didn't tarry, we could be well away across the sea ere he caught us up.

Later, she received another bee with the interesting intelligence that there had been a fight between two parties of goblings. The combatants had been wearing the crest of the Faerie king on one side, and the Duchess of the Red Seas on the other. So fierce was the combat that a manling had heard the noise and seen what transpired. The local feyín, thinking of the Eldritch Law, had confused his mind so that he thought he'd dreamed the whole thing. I wonder now how many of our dreams are thus produced.

During a brief pause in the middle of the day, Morgana asked to look at the enchanted map.

“It's come true,” said she, examining the illustrations along the route. “There is Lily on the rope, but I think it meant she would perform a balancing act of a different kind. And the sketch after it with a face inside an oval is a looking glass, and now that things have come to pass, I can recognize Lily in the reflection. Look you—the road ahead winds along as ours does, and there is the portcullis gate. But were not the looking glass and the gate beside each other? Now there is another drawing between them.”

“I don't like this map,” said I, glancing at the hanged man. “It laughs at us but doesn't inform us.”

“We aren't using it properly,” Morgana said. “Ordinarily they are studied by scryers and sages, who can find portents in every line. I don't have that knowledge.”

“But if there is a new picture added in, does that not mean we have changed our fate in some way?”

“Or someone else has. It represents a complication.”

We put our heads together to look at the new picture. I could smell her hair, like rain. Which meant she could smell mine. I imagined my hair must smell like my hat, which object had endured the tortures of the damned. Without thinking, I leaned away a trifle, to avoid offending her nose.

“You smell like your horse,” she said. A dozen protests sprang to my lips, but I spake not.

She puzzled over the drawing awhile, and then held it before my eyes. “Does that not look like Magda?”

It did indeed. A hook-nosed, hook-chinned creature with a hump, weazened and bent.

“I'd like to see her again,” said I. “I have many questions to ask her, and I miss little Demon acutely. He's a fine pup. You would like him.”

“I know him well,” Morgana said. “A fine pup, and a formidable one.” There must have been two dogs by that name, I thought. How could she know
my
Demon? Unless Magda had told her of him, of course. Still,
formidable
might be the very
last
word to describe Demon—or the second to last after
tall
.

*   *   *

Within pistol-shot of the town where we were to perform, Uncle Cornelius called a halt. He wished to go over our equipment and make all ready. This we did, and it was agreed that we would dine early, in case the show went so poorly that we felt obligated to flee town in the night.

Morgana was all nerves again. She didn't eat any supper. Lily cajoled her and made light of our worries, even going so far as to offer Morgana the tortoise comb.

“It's just a bit of cow horn, really,” Lily said. “I got it from a suitor, and only keeps it from sentimentalist value. But 'e's in the past and your hair's a mare's nest, so you 'ave it. When it grows back in you can wear it proud.”

“When it grows back in?” Morgana said.

“Only yesterday it was shorn right down to the scalp on your crown, 'adn't you noticed? Our Kit's no barber.”

By way of response, Morgana untied the kerchief from around her brow, and a waterfall of dark, shining hair came down. It was completely restored, with no evidence of my hasty tonsuring. But I observed a narrow band of white among the black, sweeping back from her temple.

“I'll be,” Lily exclaimed. “That's magic, that is!”

“
My
magic,” said Willum, freshly returned from scouting the area around the town. He puffed out his chest and looked rather pleased. “Ordinarily I only use that comprimaunt to inflict mange on badgers, but do it backwards and you get some lovely tresses. I had to repeat it three times,” he added, giving me a dark look.

Still, even with the comb tucked into her piled-up hair for good luck, Morgana could not escape worrying. Eventually she sat by herself on an overturned butter-churn, and I thought it was my turn to attempt to improve her mood.

“We're safe from attack,” said I. “No enemies for miles about. Willum said there are some pixies, but they haven't been pressed into the king's service. They're just ordinary miniature green flying people. If our collective disguise as Puggle's Spectacular is effective, they won't think twice about us. It's an excellent test of our scheme, I think.”

Morgana shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut.