Emily Feather and the Secret Mirror (2 page)

Emily nodded, staring at him rather blankly, and Robin sighed. “Don't be all miserable, Ems. I was trying to tell you stuff, that's all. You
wanted
to know.”

“I'm not. It's just – it's just all so different. Some of the time it's the same, and then you tell me things like that, and it makes me feel like I never knew any of you. Like I was stupid to even think I was your sister.”

Robin looked down at his muffin again, carefully ferreting around for more bits of chocolate. “You
are
my sister.”

Emily stared at him. “But I'm not!”

He shrugged. “Yes, you are. You've always been here. And you're usually a lot nicer to me than Lark and Lory, even if they do have the same parents as me.” He shoved the rest of the picked-apart muffin into his mouth and looked at Emily hopefully. “Can I have another one?” he asked, spraying crumbs. “Pleathe?”

Emily simply handed it to him. However much Lark and Lory and her mum and dad had tried to explain that they loved her, and they wanted her, and she was special, it had still left her feeling as though she'd been turned inside out and upside down. Robin's calm acceptance of it all – and his greed, which was exactly the same as it had always been – almost helped more.

“Do you think I'll ever know who my real parents are?” she asked him suddenly. Then she took a quick bite of muffin so as not to look too worried about his answer. He'd just proved that he felt like her little brother. She couldn't let him get too big for his boots.

“You could look for them…” Robin frowned, his thin, dark-red brows drawing together. “But – do you want to? I mean –” He shrugged. “They did leave you there, Ems. I don't know if … well. Maybe you wouldn't like them.”

“There must have been a reason,” Emily said shakily. Surely there had to have been a good one? Unless they just hadn't wanted her?

A tear fell on to the chocolatey crumbs, and Emily gulped.

Robin swallowed a huge bite of his second muffin and eyed her worriedly. “Do you want me to get Mum? She's in her workroom. She said she had an idea for a new design for a scarf…” He started to get up, backing away as though he thought the crying might be infectious.

“No,” Emily sniffed, shaking her head. “I'm all right. It's just scary – what if I am like my mum and dad, and they didn't care about me at all? I might turn out to be a horrible person too.”

Robin wrinkled his nose, thinking. “I suppose so. But you aren't horrible now, are you? Why should you turn into somebody else?”

“Because I feel like somebody else!” Emily cried. “Everything's changed!”

“No, it hasn't!” Robin glared at her. “It's exactly the same, except you know about it. That's all.”

Emily stared at him helplessly.
All?
She supposed he was right – but how could he think it was so easy?

Robin chased crumbs round the table with one finger. “You really are a very good cook. And you always knew you didn't get that from Mum or Dad, didn't you?” Their mother's home-made cakes were legendarily awful. All four of the children conspired to hide them at school cake sales, or they had until Emily had just taken over. Their dad didn't cook at all, except for sandwiches made out of toast and anything he could find in the fridge, when he wandered out of his study at three in the morning after wrestling with a difficult chapter.

Emily sighed. What Robin said was true. Then she smiled sweetly at him. “You aren't having another muffin, so don't even try.”

Emily made a mug of tea and put one of the chocolate-orange muffins on a plate. Then she headed for her dad's little study, which was cleverly fitted into a cubbyhole under the stairs. Although, thinking about it now, it was an awful lot bigger than it should have been. Emily picked a chocolate chip out of the muffin as she stared at the study door. There must be some sort of spell. The space under the stairs was just a tiny cupboard, really, so how was there room for a desk and a red velvet armchair? Let alone the piles and heaps and wobbling towers of books. Emily shook her head crossly. How had she never noticed these things before? She put out her hand to open the door. Her dad was working, but she reckoned that if she was lucky, with the tea and muffin as bribery, she might be able to get him to stop for a bit and talk to her.

When he and her mum had told her what the family really were last weekend, Emily had been so shocked she'd hardly asked any questions. The news was just too big and strange. After they had told her the truth, Emily had run away from them all, desperate to have some time alone to think. But the house, which was full of doors that led to nowhere, and everywhere, had somehow sensed the eruption of fear and magic from the family argument and shifted. Looking back now, of course, there had been odd hints of something strange about the house long before. Moments when Emily thought she saw something odd in a mirror. The way the clouded, swirly old glass in her bedroom windows seemed to have strange cities floating in it. Her dad's study. She should have known it wasn't just her imagination.

As Emily had raced up the stairs, they had changed into something strange and new. She had thought it was her parents trying to stop her, and kept running, until she burst out through one of the secret magical doors on to a riverbank somewhere elsewhere. The fairy world.

It hadn't taken long for the fairy people to find her. Over the years they had caught glimpses of her through the doors and wondered about this curious human child, almost in their world. Her arrival had been noted at once, and then there had been music, strange sweet singing, and Emily had fallen asleep. She'd woken to find herself in a palace, surrounded by beautiful, terrifying, hungry creatures, the Ladies of the fairy court.

These were the kind of evil ancient fairies who would happily keep human children as pets, as they were so full of energy and life. For fairies, who could live a very long time, the child's youth was a sort of tonic.
Like vitamin tablets
, Emily thought now. The Ladies had tried to feed Emily with the most delicious-looking fruit and berries, but her sisters had rescued her before she had eaten anything.

Emily shivered, thinking about it again. It was like Robin had just explained. She might not have got any older in the fairy country, but she would have been used up. Perhaps she would have just disappeared.

Emily had been making a sort of mental list of the things she wanted to know. She liked chatting to Robin, and Lark and Lory, but her dad was the best at explaining things – it was what he did for a living, after all. She opened the study door cautiously. Her dad could be very bad-tempered when he was working. If he was in the middle of a tricky bit, he was quite likely to yell, or throw a pencil at her. She needed to get in with the tea and the muffin quickly.

Ash wasn't at the computer – he was curled into the battered old armchair in the back corner of the room, scowling down at a notebook. As Emily peered round the door, he scowled at her instead.

“I brought you tea!” She held the mug out enticingly. “And I made muffins!”

“What have you broken?” her dad asked suspiciously. “Please don't tell me it's the TV again.”

“I haven't broken anything.” Emily put the muffin down on top of his notebook and smiled hopefully. “I just want to talk to you. Ask you things. Please?”

Ash looked at her thoughtfully, and took the tea and the muffin, sliding the notebook on to the floor. “I'd been expecting you to ask before, Ems. I know we owe you an explanation. More of one than you got last week, anyway. I've been waiting for you to be ready.”

Emily nodded gratefully, and her dad squashed himself to one side of the armchair, making a gap that she could curl into. She leaned against him, catching the dry, smoky scent that she had always thought was soap, or aftershave. Now she suspected it might just be the smell of him.

“So, are there secret things you can't tell me then?” Emily asked curiously.

“Of course. There always are. Everyone has secrets. But they are things I wouldn't tell Lark, or Lory, or Robin either.”

Emily nodded. That was reasonable. Her family's whole life was based on secrets. Some of them would have to be kept.

Her dad took a gulp of tea, sighed happily, and smiled down at her. “And there are some things I just don't know. Mysteries. You're unique, Emily – a human child who has lived with fairies all her life – and who's gone through the doors and come back again. You may have seen things even I don't know about.”

Emily leaned back against him, wriggling under his arm so that he had to sip his tea carefully around her. “I don't really understand why you all live here.” Emily's fingers dug tight into her dad's sweater, without her really thinking about it. Keeping hold of him. “Why don't you live … over there? Why is this house so important?”
And why did you bring me into it
… she added silently.

Her dad took a gulp of tea and reached over the arm of the chair to set the mug down. Then he wrapped his arm around her tightly. “It's a gatehouse. Full of doors. To our land, and others.”

Emily wriggled round to stare up at him sharply. “Other places as well? What other lands?”

He sighed. “Don't take it as an invitation to go exploring again, Emily. We never meant for you to be able to get through the first time. Most of the doors are closed. Sealed shut. They only open when they must, and even I don't know what's beyond them. But most of the doors are to my own world. This house was built when the town here grew and spread out into the countryside, and the quiet, secret places weren't so quiet any more. It was built to protect the doors. To protect the lands from each other. I guard the house, for the king.”

“There's a king?” Emily whispered, her voice suddenly full of excitement. “A fairy king, really? And a queen too?” She imagined a palace, with little towers crowned with flags. Fountains splashing. Games, and dances, and the fairy queen, the most beautiful creature in the world…

“No.” Her father's voice dropped sadly, and he stroked her hair. “No, our queen died, many years ago.”

“Oh…”

“Which is why the Ladies are so strong, and so dangerous.” Emily's father moved his hand down to cup her face and lifted it up so he could look into her eyes. She shivered, seeing that his own had darkened again, the way they had done when she'd seen his real form.

“They're all fighting for power, you see. There's no queen, and the king might choose to marry again. One of them. Or their daughters, or sisters, or cousins. Everything is about family.”

“I suppose so,” Emily muttered. Everything always was.

Her father was still staring into her eyes, and even though she tried to look away, she couldn't. “You are part of my family,” he told her seriously. “And I want you safe. Stay away from the doors, Emily.” He sighed at her. “I can't believe you've grown so quickly. It seems only yesterday I found you. You must promise me you'll stay away from the doors.”

“I promise…” Emily blinked thoughtfully. “Are there any others? More doors? Or are these the only ones?”

“There are more…” her father admitted. “Not many. And not all of them known. There are secret doors, hidden here and there. The king would have them all sealed if he could, but our world doesn't work well with bars and chains. It needs to breathe, so there are little openings that appear, here and there. The doors in this house are the true gateways, where any visitors can come and go.”

“Are there lots of visitors?” Emily asked him, trying to remember people she'd seen in the house, friends of her parents. Had they all been fairies too? Travelling between the worlds?

“Some … but not many. Our world doesn't mix well with this one. Our magic is too dangerous. A fairy lost or loose out here is a disaster.” He patted her cheek. “And the same for a human child over there, Ems. Only those with permission from the king go through. No one else.”

“But if there are secret doors—” Emily began, but her father interrupted, his voice hardening.

“Anyone who uses those doors is a danger, and must be stopped. The worlds don't mix.”

“Oh…” Emily hesitated. “But, I mean, I used one of the doors, and I wasn't meant to. I didn't have permission from the king.”

“And look what happened,” her father pointed out gently. “It wasn't your fault but your mother had to go and beg forgiveness from Lady Anstis. Lark and Lory could have been bound over to her as servants for the way they behaved. And who knows what would have happened to you.”

“I'm sorry.” She hadn't known. She hadn't realized. Which one had been Anstis? Emily wondered. The dark-haired one, she guessed. The one with the beautiful wings like a peacock butterfly, and that perfect crimson silk dress. The one whose nails had lengthened to dark claws when she had come stalking after Emily, as Lark and Lory flew her away back home. “Did Mum have to – have to do anything bad?”

“No.” Her father hugged her tightly. “She said it was all very polite. They drank tea, and discussed how difficult it was to bring up children well in this awful place. But we owe her a favour now, Ems, you see.”

Emily shuddered, remembering the way Lady Anstis had moved, jerky and strange, as though her legs bent backwards like a goat's. What sort of favour might she want?

“Does that mean I can never go back?” she asked longingly, and her father sighed.

“You want to, don't you?”

“Yes.” Emily nodded. “All the time.” She glanced up at him warily. “Every time I go past the mirror on the landing, I want to touch it, to see if I can go through. But I don't even see the girl with the greeny-gold hair in it any more. She's gone. Some of the other pictures move, and I still see the doors changing around sometimes. But that mirror's not even misty.”

“We changed the guard spells,” her father murmured, “when we realized that you could get through the doors. You shouldn't have been able to, but the magic in the house has grown up with you now. The doors know you. And now you've crossed over and come back, the magic is even stronger inside you. Be careful, Emily.”

“Careful of what?” Emily frowned up at him, and her father shrugged helplessly.

“Just – be careful.” He shook his head at her anxiously, and Emily slipped off the chair, gently kissing the grey wing of hair over his ear.

“I promise I will.” It was the second promise Emily had made him, and as she took away his empty plate, she thought to herself that she had no idea how to keep either one.

 

“Did you understand that homework?” Emily's best friend Rachel asked. “The comprehension? I didn't think some of the questions made sense. It took me ages, and I still don't think I got it right.”

Emily stared at her, desperately trying to remember the homework. She hadn't really been paying attention to Rachel chattering as they walked to school. Now that they were in Year Six, she and Rachel walked together, without their parents – except on days when Rachel had been staying at her dad's flat, which was on the other side of town. Emily loved the chance to gossip about school. The only downside was they had to take Robin with them. But he was running along ahead of them like he usually did, ridiculously fast.
How could I not have noticed how fast he is?
Emily thought suddenly, watching him stop and whirl round, almost in mid-air.
How could I not have seen that he's different?

On a normal day, Emily and Rachel chatted all the way to school, but Emily realized she'd hardly said anything this morning. She'd been trying to get her head round everything her dad had told her.

The thing was, even though she knew it was dangerous, Emily desperately wanted to go back through the doors. She could still feel the pull of that strange place. Maybe it was enough to have breathed the air? Part of the fairy world was inside her already. She couldn't help wanting to understand it better, that tiny spark of magic inside her.

Mostly, she wanted to see more of the people. Not so much those grand, terrifying Ladies. They had been beautiful – like fairy princesses in books. But now looking back, Emily thought an awful lot of their beauty and charm must be built on spells. Emily was more interested in the others: the tree people who had found her on the riverbank, and the brownie creatures who had worked as servants in the palace. Most of all, Emily wanted to see the girl in the mirror again. She had been the first fairy that Emily had ever seen – apart from the fairies she lived with and didn't know about, anyway. Emily had glimpsed her in the mirror on the landing between Lark's room and Lory's. A pale, curious face, trailing odd greenish, flattish sort of hair. The girl had been looking out at Emily, watching her.