I went out late Monday and Tuesday, crouched down in a yard next to the Tarkington house, and held my string-and-spoons key, moving it closer and farther from the last place I had seen the mirror. The gentle half-alive buzz in my hands told me it was still there. As a bonus, I found myself growing more and more attuned to the vibrations of that key. By Wednesday morning, I could sit in the coal cellar, stretch my arm out, and use the thing to find the direction of the mirror.
I felt more in control of events than I had all summer.
Which I suppose should have been a warning.
I hadn’t seen the mysterious couple again, though two of Brian’s friends reported talking to the woman. I knew that the house was enemy territory, but I needed answers. And just as they seemed to think that there were answers in this time because I was here, I figured my best source of information must be the past. Mr. Weston in the library had continued to be helpful, but he couldn’t find much. On the Beckett front, he found one family in the Manse Creek area in the nineteenth century, their only son was the Clive who died in the war. Since then, as the area grew, there were other births, deaths, and marriages of Becketts in the local churches, but not a single Clive.
The other project I told him I was working on was the local legend of Prince Harming, and he managed to dig up a mention of the story in a small-press chapbook from just a couple of years before, but it didn’t tell me much I didn’t know. A Manse Valley bogeyman, probably made up in reaction to the stories of children disappearing or being knocked over the head. The author had been able to find people who remembered skipping to those rhymes as far back as 1908.
As interesting as all this was, it wasn’t satisfying. Finding things out wasn’t the same as doing something.
The mirror was in enemy territory. It was time to take it back.
Five o’clock on Thursday morning, having packed for travel, I got up, skulked next door to the abandoned house, and climbed up to the roof of a shed, certain the strangers were upstairs. I wondered what could get adults out of their lives like this. Me, I was trapped. And I was a kid. What better things did I have to do than travel in time? But them? Didn’t they have jobs? What were they doing, out of their time, hiding in an abandoned house, hunting for answers from a kid who didn’t know any?
That mirror wasn’t supposed to be for them. It was for us kids.
I had to wait three hours. It was a miracle I wasn’t discovered. The man whose shed I was on came out around seven to pick tomatoes, and I had to freeze in place for long, cramped minutes. An hour after that, my two came slinking out the back door. I saw the man first, peering out, but I was low on the shed roof and he didn’t see me. A moment later, he and the woman slipped out and around the side of the house. They shared a few quick words in the space between that house and its neighbor, too quiet for me to hear, then he kissed her quickly and they headed in separate directions.
The man seemed agitated and poorly rested. He was definitely the same man with the yellow tie I had seen a month ago, nervous despite his quick smile.
The woman was different. She was worried too, but it was all focused on him. Before they parted, she fixed his collar and neatened his hair.
I let ten minutes go by before coming down. This was too important to mess up. I hopped the fence and approached the back door. Unlocked. Once inside, I saw that they had been trying to be smarter. Something was in the mirror’s place, a sheet covering it, but the real mirror, my spoons-and-string told me, was upstairs. I guessed the decoy was to lure me in, maybe give me a sense of safety.
Thanks to the weak-then-strong buzzing of the doorstop-turned-key in my hand, I found the mirror easily. They had kept the ruined frame on it, and just tilted it against one wall. The first thing I did was test my key. It worked exactly as it had in 1947; when I held it, the mirror was downtime cold, but if I put it in my pocket, the glass turned hot.
From the evidence, this was the room they had been squatting in. Though they had made the bed before leaving, I could see signs of their presence. They had come through with suitcases and changes of clothing.
I wrote them a note:
“Once I’m done with the mirror, it’s going back where it belongs. You know where that is. Who are you, and why are you following me? I’d stick around, but I don’t trust you. Please stay away. I’m going back to 1917 to save the baby. Then home. Leave me alone and let me do this. Kenny.”
I left it on the bed, hefted the mirror, and went downstairs.
There was no way I was going to hop fences in broad daylight carrying a four-foot-tall mirror, so I took my chances out the front way.
What I didn’t count on was Boyd Fenton and John Timson stepping out from behind the Tarkington fence just as I reached the sidewalk. “Well, look here, Johnny,” said Fenton, “we got some kind of burglary going on.”
“Look,” I said, “I just want to go my way in peace. I’m not hurting you—or anyone, really. Mind your own business.”
Fenton snorted. “Pal, you are my business. I’m getting five bucks a day to watch this place, and a twenty-dollar bonus if I catch you.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
Timson’s hands had been behind his back. Now he took out the baseball bat he was hiding. “Threats, probably,” he said. “But anything’s possible.”
“You’d be surprised,” I said. I took the spoons and string from my pocket and wrapped them around my hand.
Fenton laughed. “Look, Johnny, the little nosebleed’s got silver-spoon knuckles. What are you gonna do, reject, tap us to death?”
When you’ve dealt with bullies a lot, you fight twenty different battles in your head for every one you concede in the real world. You come up with a million fool-proof strategies you never have the guts to try out in person. And if you have a time-travel mirror whose rules you’ve figured out, you can add about ten more to that million.
I snaked my hand out as quickly as I could and tugged the end of the bat toward the mirror. It sunk inside.
Fenton took a half step back and made a tiny, quiet choking sound. I think Timson would have fallen back as well, but he was holding onto the bat. My arm went into the mirror up to my elbow, and though he got tense and almost began to tug back, he didn’t let go.
I did, and quickly pulled my arm out of the mirror, closing it.
As I had hoped it would, the part of the bat that was outside of the mirror pulled away, its top half lopped off in the Silverlands.
“Now,” I said, “want me to try that with your hands, or do you want to get lost?”
Timson’s face turned dark and he twisted to look at Fenton. “That was a two-dollar Louisville Slugger.”
Fenton, still staring at the mirror, said nothing.
Timson shook his head and turned to me. “I better be getting all the reward money for this,” he said, and launched himself at me.
I shoved the mirror toward the onrushing Timson, smashing it into his face, then grabbed it back, tucked it under my arm, turned, and ran to the backyard.
Next to the Tarkingtons was someone with a real love for berry bushes, and I held the mirror high as I thrashed my way through. Their fence was low. I tossed the mirror over and took a flying leap.
Almost made it, too.
Timson caught my ankle as I went over. I kicked him free, then tumbled sideways over the fence.
I went in so fast I was halfway to 1947 before the Silverlands slowed me down. I steadied myself against the cold, then stepped back uptime, to warm it out of me. When I turned to the swimming images in the 1957 exit, I could make out a patch of petunias the mirror had fallen into, and above them, sky. It was strange to be standing in the Silverlands, looking out and up at the same time.