“That’s… that’s one of the things you talked about,” Javier said. “Before.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“It wasn’t this big.”
“It’s going to eat us, isn’t it?” Javier asked, sounding as calm as I felt.
“Yeah, it is.” Our hands found each other and gripped tight.
The small, scuttling mirror-geld went by, clinging to the wall above our heads. We both ducked instinctively. I saysmall,but it was easily as long as I was tall. It had feet like a gecko, if geckos had human hands instead of toes. Each hand spread its fingers, digging into irregularities in the stone.
It occurred to me that Javier hadseenthe mirror-geld grab me, and yet he’d run toward it, not back. With no time to think, he’d still run toward a monstrous horror to save me.
How could you not love a man like that?
The mirror-geld raised its hands in a wave, folding some inward like an insect’s legs. We flinched back. But each inward hand only raised an index finger and held it over a face’s lips.
Quiet? It wants us to be quiet? But why—
Footsteps clattered down the secret stair. I heard the sound ofsomething knocking on wood, and the head of the Queen’s guard said, “What the devil?”
Oh. That’s why.
We stood there in absolute silence, Javier, the mirror-gelds, and I. They didn’t seem to breathe, and we tried not to. There were two guards, judging by the sounds, and every time one moved, it sounded as if they were standing directly behind me.
Whatever’s between us isn’t actually stone. Plaster, maybe. I suppose that’s the beauty of the mirror-stuff, it all looks the same.
Finally a disgusted voice said, “Well, they didn’t get out this way,” followed by footsteps going up, followed by silence.
All of us sagged with relief, even the big mirror-geld. The arms lowered, and the faces relaxed, their eyelids drooping.
Then it drew itself up, putting its hand-feet more firmly under it, and began to move backward. It made beckoning gestures with a dozen arms as it went.
I looked at Javier. He looked at me. We had uttered some variant ofnow what do we do?so many times that neither of us needed to say it out loud.
“No idea,” he said.
“Me neither.”
We followed the mirror-geld, but we didn’t let go of each other’s hands.
The passage widened gradually as we walked, its edges becoming softer and more organic looking, a tunnel rather than a hallway. The mirror-geld widened as well, and I realized just how compressed it had been. It slumped downward and out to the sides, forming a shape rather like a caterpillar, if a caterpillar were nine feet tall and six feet wide. The hands that enclosed the faces were overhung by a bulky mass of mirror-flesh, seamed together in a patchwork of undifferentiated flesh, studded with dozens of eyes. It looked like a head of sorts, although Saint Adder only knew if it kept a brain there or if it even needed a brain.And how would it geta brain anyway? You’d have to take one out and hold it up between two mirrors, wouldn’t you?
(Granted, I’d removed brains before, in the course of dissections, but I didn’t go waving them at mirrors afterward.)
It must have taken years to grow to that size, if it was only made of parts that fell off between two mirrors. And the fact that the individual bitshadn’tdissolved meant… what? That they were fundamentally different than a regular reflection? That they stayed alive if there were enough of them squished together? That the process somehow woke them up?
It seemed unlikely that I was going to stay alive long enough to find the answer.
Whenever we slowed, the hands would beckon again. At one point, we reached a cross tunnel, and the mirror-geld held up its arms crossed at the wrists and shook its gigantic head back and forth in exaggerated warning. I could feel Javier thinking about bolting, and gripped his hand more tightly.
“I’m not sure it’s going to eat us,” I said. “It could have picked us both up and dragged us out if that’s what it wanted.”
“I don’t trust it.”
“I’m not suggesting we do. But it’s bigger and faster and a lot stronger, so I suggest we do what it says for now.”
