Page 4 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

Mirrors And Tunnels

We were most of the way to the gate before it hit me that I might finally learn the mystery of how my aunt got in and out of our house grounds.

Arcturus and I had long speculated about this.

Ankha’s dusty, fender-rusted, silver Jaguar rarely left the detached garage.

I’d only seen it twice without the canvas cover on it.

I’d never seen any other car parked on the road or in the drive, the rare times Ankha dropped by for one of her “inspections.” I’d never even seen her open the front gate, although I’d definitely seen her walk right up to it.

Now I trailed a few feet behind as she walked briskly up to the elaborate iron gate again. Before she reached it, however, she took a sharp right, and disappeared into the tall hedge that lined that side of the paved drive.

I looked for an opening there, some hint that Ankha might’ve squeezed between two of the densely growing bushes, but I saw nothing.

Then a large-knuckled hand, adorned with rings decorated with different-colored stones, emerged straight out of the center of the leafy wall, and grabbed the edge of my sweater.

The fingers yanked, and I yelped, and stumbled through.

I’d barely blinked when I found myself on the other side.

Nothing scratched my arms or face on the way through, and, even stranger, I now stood well away from the hedge, somehow crossing seven or eight feet in a single stride.

I stared down at myself, then around at the weed-choked courtyard with its sad little bird bath, and the gothic, stone structure I’d never discovered a precise purpose for.

Its sharp gables and spire pointed towards the sky, with three stone steps leading up to an iron-hinged door.

The inside couldn’t have been much larger than a portable toilet.

Like the side gate, that door always remained locked.

Now Ankha was unlocking it however, using a gold key that hung on a chain around her neck. She twisted the locking mechanism to the left, jerked on the handle, and the heavy door swung outward with a squeal on rusted hinges.

I moved closer to peer within.

I blinked and flinched when two green eyes stared back.

I was gazing at my own reflection in a floor-length, gold-framed mirror.

The frame was gorgeous, and looked old, covered in gilded roses, gilded butterflies, and writhing gold snakes.

The glass surface shone like it had been recently polished.

It stood on the otherwise-empty stone floor on a gold stand, surrounded by dingy walls half-covered in cobwebs.

Mirrors had always been one of the oddest things about our aunt’s Victorian house.

Odd, in that there were none.

Whoever’d designed and furnished the two-story monstrosity did it with no mirrors anywhere.

The bathrooms had no mirrors. None of the walls, doors, or closets had mirrors.

Stranger still, the few mirrors I’d brought home mysteriously disappeared, usually by the following morning, but sometimes within the hour.

Even the kitchen appliances were all of a dull yellow or cream, leaving no reflective surfaces.

Most of the windows were stained glass with iron frames.

Now here, in a locked gothic tower in Ankha’s front yard, was an enormous mirror that looked like an honest-to-God antique, possibly framed in solid gold.

My aunt caught hold of my arm. Her deceptively strong fingers tightened, and began pulling me roughly towards the mirror’s glass.

I tried to slow our progress, confused and now, disturbed.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Just do as you’re told,” Ankha sniped back. “No questions. I won’t be able to answer them, anyway.”

I struggled against my aunt’s fingers a few heartbeats longer.

My eyes widened sharply when she pushed her way through the mirror’s smooth surface. Her front-marching foot, wiry arms, and long nose went first. Her second foot and leg went all the way through next, breaching the glass as if it had been a still pool of water.

I might’ve made a squeak when my own arm and leg followed, pulled by my aunt’s insistent grip. As I passed through the opening, I glanced around at the gilded frame, the coiling snakes, the perfect-looking roses and birds.

Then I was on the other side.

My aunt released my arm.

I stood, panting, in a dark space. I gazed down the length of a dimly lit, dank-smelling corridor, which very much felt underground.

I stared around at the high, stone walls. Flaming torches stood in iron brackets, one roughly every eight feet until they receded in the distance.

After a few breaths, I looked behind me at a silver-framed, full-length mirror that looked identical to the other one, in everything but color. It even stood on its own stand, its silver frame covered in the same pattern of roses, snakes, birds, butterflies, and twisting vines.

There was no logical explanation for this.

I knew exactly what lay on the other side of that gothic structure in Ankha’s garden.

It was another stretch of weedy lawn, scattered rose bushes, a small pond choked with lilies and frogs, and eventually the wall with my parents’ grave stone.

Nothing about us being beneath the garden made sense, either.

I’d taken barely two steps. The height of the walls around us meant a fall would have hurt us badly, if not killed us outright.

The only explanation had to be supernatural.

Or a science so advanced, it might as well be.

I looked behind me a second time, but the silver mirror only glinted in the torchlight.

Nothing but a tall, blank wall of rough stone stood behind it.

I faced forward to watch tiny torchlights twinkle in the distance along the faintly curved wall. Some other light-source tinted the walls and floor a greenish-gold.

“Come along, come along,” my aunt tutted. “We’re late. How many times must I say it?”

My feet followed mechanically as Ankha led us down the corridor.

After we’d been walking for a number of minutes, a brighter light appeared at the end of the passage. It grew steadily larger as we approached.

Ankha continued to mutter under her breath, but I scarcely paid attention. Her words ran too close together for me to make them out, anyway. Every now and then, she’d raise her voice to urge me faster, and my legs obeyed the command but I barely heard that, either.

After the mirrors, she stopped us only once.

By then, the light ahead had grown to roughly the size of a cricket ball.

She turned on me sharply, forcing me to come to a dead stop.

“You’re not to speak when we arrive.” Ankha held up a menacing finger.

“Do you understand, girl? No foolish questions about where we are, what is happening, who is this or that, where I am taking you, why did this thing happen or that thing. Keep your mouth shut.” Her lips thinned. “They’ll only use it against us.”

My eyes continued to stare at the green and gold light up ahead.

“But where are?”

“No,” Ankha snapped. “Did you not just hear me? No questions. I still can’t answer them, and it would be the irony of all ironies if I got arrested for divulging too much now. You will obey me. Remain silent, until I say otherwise.”

I bit my lip, but my eyes finally went to hers. “Ankha, can’t you just spend one minute, while we’re alone?”

“No. Now vow it! Say you’ll obey, or we’re not taking another step! I’ll take you back to that wretched world, and you can spend another year being a witless fool.”

I felt my frustration twist into anger.

Still, by then, my curiosity burned hotter.

“Fine,” I said. “I won’t say a word when we get there.”

“Not until I say?”

“Not until you say,” I promised stonily.

My aunt nodded, once, but still stared at me with dissatisfaction in her eyes. From her expression, she trusted me as much as I did her. She turned away a beat later, and immediately resumed trotting towards the light.

She moved faster now, as if to make up for our short back and forth.

I sped my own steps to keep up. My jaw ground at being talked to like I was younger than Archie, but I had to remind myself she didn’t know me.

Not to mention, she had to be close to seventy, and she’d never had any kids of her own.

Maybe nineteen and thirteen were basically the same in her mind.

If it hadn’t been for the mirrors, the castle-like corridor, and the inexplicable gold light, I might have taken her up on her offer to return home, though.

I slowed my steps deliberately to lag behind her, and pulled out my phone.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t have a signal. The bar graph showed completely flat. Weirder, my screen flashed strangely after I woke it up, with lines running left to right in zig-zagging patterns.

When the electrical glitches didn’t get any better, I was about to stuff it back in my bag, but my aunt reached back before I’d noticed her looking and snatched it from my fingers. I watched, more shocked than angry even, as she put it in her coat pocket.

“No need for that,” she muttered in annoyance.

She glared at me, like I was a misbehaving dog.

I bit my lip, hard, and managed to refrain from snapping at her.

Thankfully, I was quickly distracted. We angled around the last of the sloping corridor, and beyond it stood a tall, stone arch, carved with what looked like runes. It struck me that they looked exactly like the symbols from Ankha’s kitchen clock.

The gold-green light came from the opening in that arch.

I followed Ankha through a cloud of the stuff. In the split second we were inside, it felt like breaking through a thin membrane, or maybe a sheen of water. There was a shock of cold…

…and then I was gasping as I emerged on the other side.

Sound exploded all around me.