CHAPTER 14
Harmony pressed her face against the bars in an attempt to see who Heckler was talking to. If there was a chance they could help her, free her even, then she had to take it. However, self-preservation warned her to be cautious. She may well draw the wrong attention and end up in even hotter water.
“I can’t see properly. I need a mirror, or something reflective.”
She eyed the compartments of clutter. Surely, within his hoard, Heckler possessed a shaving mirror? Feeling confident she rifled through his collection of oddities until she happened upon a silver, hand mirror. It was remarkably similar to one Rose had owned when Harmony was much younger.
She doused the idea, that the two mirrors were one and the same, in rationality. Rose’s looking glass had been stolen from the ambulance years before. Harmony recalled her mother’s dramatics following the burglary; it was not a pretty memory...
Abruptly, Heckler began to shout. An argument was escalating beyond her confines. Harmony crossed to the window again and slipped the mirror through the bars. Contorting her arm as best she could, she endeavoured to catch a glimpse.
Sadly, no matter how she twisted her arm she just couldn’t find a helpful view. She pulled the mirror back inside and looked at her own reflection. Her brow was furled with frustration, her hair unkempt and her face unwashed. In short, she looked a mess.
This was the first time she had seen herself with brown hair and the feature caught her off-guard. It felt odd, as if a stranger were looking back at her.
“This is no good,” she griped. “I need to see who’s talking to Heckler…”
The mirror's shining surface instantly pulsed with light. Harmony watched as her reflection wavered and was replaced with a new sight. The gilded frame filled with an altered perspective; a bird’s eye view of Heckler's wagon.
“This is odd,” she commented. Harmony examined the silver frame. She felt confident the device was a digital; not unlike a smart-phone or tablet. That belief wavered a little when she failed to locate a power button or recharge socket. “Well, magic or Wi-Fi, this is super handy.”
Her questions faltered along with her composure as, with the flick of her finger, the image zoomed out. The bowtop caravan was not the only noteworthy detail the looking glass revealed. Beyond the snail-drawn carriage a brutish-pack of howlers blocked the road. Harmony dropped the hand mirror onto the bed. The picture vanished, returning to a simple reflection.
“I have to get out of here,” she whispered, panic rising in her chest. “He’ll hand me over to the wolves if I don’t run…”
Sensing her fear Articus stood, meowed for her attention and then ran over to the rear door. He rubbed his flank against the wooden barricade. As Harmony crossed the cabin and knelt by his side, a memory swam to the forefront of her mind; words spoken by Belladonna.
“You can produce anything I possess,” she recalled. “Does that really mean…anything?”
“Meow,” Articus encouraged.
“Can you summon the door this handle fits into?” she asked, offering up the golden doorknob.
Articus twitched his whiskers, the sparkling increased. He flicked his tail lazily across the bottom panel of the door. Harmony watched as, in the fur’s wake, the small ingress from Nova’s cottage appeared.
The instant Articus stepped aside she inserted the handle. She tried to open the door but it refused to move. Her thumb brushed the engraving.
“Latro Gradus,” she recited in a whisper. The handle turned without prompt…
Harmony felt a flicker of hope as the small door opened. The how and why of the door’s appearance could be mused over once she was safe. She lifted her bag and slipped on the cloak. Before she slithered out, Harmony added the mirror to her backpack. She did not consider taking the mirror to be stealing; rather it was compensation for the kidnapping.
Doing her best to remain silent she wriggled out of the portal and exited the caravan. She snatched the doorknob from of the socket and tossed it into her satchel. The instant she removed the handle the little door vanished, leaving a yawning-hole in the rear of Heckler’s wagon.
“Serves him right,” she smiled, feeling entitled to be a little mean.
Articus rubbed her leg with his flank. She glanced down and watched as he gestured with his tail towards the wagon’s front. A flurry of angry words spurred her into action. The howlers were beginning to lose patience with the four-armed man.
“Lead the way,” Harmony insisted.
The orange cat trotted ahead as they ventured off the road and headed into a forest of crystal trees. The ground began to slope upwards, rapidly steepening into a treacherous hillside.
The trees, which Harmony used as support on her climb up the hill, were dazzling in its construction. The vegetation was entirely transparent, from root to leaf. Harmony gazed at the inner workings; cells absorbed and sap flowed before her eyes.
One might have assumed such fantastical foliage would grow in equally magical shapes, yet the forms the plants took were much like the vegetation found in a rainforest. Towering trees laced together with draped vines and huge, tropical fan leaves.
As she ventured deeper into the jungle the transparency spread beyond the trees. Soon every plant, flower, leaf and mushroom also looked to be made of glass.
Sunlight bounced from the canopy and cascaded down to the flower-strewn floor. The beams of light reacted as they passed through the leaves, trunks and petals. Each ribbon of light fractured into a splay of rainbows.
“Is this an enchanted forest? It must be,” she proclaimed, shielding her eyes from the auric-sheen.
Articus meowed for her to hurry up, she was falling behind again. Harmony looked toward him and immediately burst into laughter. His backend was gigantic, magnified in one of the crystal-trees. Without waiting for her to catch up, he trotted off huffily.
Harmony had only taken a few steps in pursuit when a noise caused her to freeze. A twig broke; the snapping-sound still rang in her ears as she scanned her vicinity. It was conceivable the howlers had caught her already, though she prayed it wasn’t so.
She scoured the treeline but even after a long pause no wolf emerged. A metaphorical lightbulb switched on above her head, perhaps the hand mirror would be of use? She quickly retrieved the silver frame from her bag and stared into the reflection.
“Show me Heckler’s wagon.”
The surface rippled and once again the bowtop caravan came into focus. She breathed a sigh of relief, neither Heckler nor the howlers had moved; their conversation was still in full swing.
Satisfied her escape had gone unnoticed she deposited the mirror back into her bag. She scrabbled up the remainder of the hill and crested the summit. Articus was waiting at the top, sunning himself in her absence. He leapt up and immediately set off again.
Barely catching her breath she jogged to keep pace. The humid, jungle air was getting hotter by the second. The crystal-clear trees offered no shade from the climbing sun; no shadows to cool in.
As she chased the wishkamog she pushed past a peculiar plant. The shrubbery was covered in sizeable pods. The shucks reminded her of oversized butterfly-chrysalis. Each casing looked to be woven from silken threads, so delicate they could rupture with little effort.
As if hearing her thoughts, one of the bulbous-pods burst; stressed to decimation as she disrupted its branch. In an instant the air filled with millions of fluffy, white spores. They drifted on the breeze and swarmed around her, completely obscuring the world from sight. Blinded by the blizzard of seeds she was forced to stay still until the shoal of spores dissipated sufficiently.
As they cleared the first thing she saw was Articus. He watched her from a few feet away. Several of the floating seeds were attached to his fur and he did not look at all impressed.
“It was an accident,” she insisted. The cat rolled his eyes and beckoned for her to follow.
They left the storm of spores and began making their way down a treacherously-steep hill, the counter to the one she climbed. The descent was remarkably fast; this was mostly due to how slippery the banking was. More than once Harmony lost her footing entirely and tumbled down until she grabbed hold of a branch or root.
By the time she reached the bottom her dress was filthy and torn, her skin was scratched and she was bruised all over. Exhausted she collapsed onto the verdured-bank of a meandering stream. Harmony rolled onto her back and stared up through the canopy. The sky was cornflower-blue.
She smiled. No matter the location, the sky was always blue. This was a fact she found comforting, especially when Rose dragged her off to some far flung place. The one consistency in her life was the sky.
Articus flopped onto the ground. Apparently he was in need of a rest too. He languidly drooped across a flat, grey stone and gently flicked his tail as he watched her with lazy, half-closed eyes.
Harmony's stomach complained that she had skipped breakfast. She hadn’t eaten since the previous evening and the new day was already getting on.
She looked around, noting the plethora of translucent plants. Most of the river’s bank was occupied by more of the volatile pods. As beautiful as they were, they looked far from edible. This was fortunate because munching on strange, potentially poisonous, plants was a terrible idea.
She sat up and searched in her backpack for the mirror. In lieu of food checking on Heckler seemed a good distraction.
“Show me, Heckler.”
A jolt of shock surged through her. The scene had changed. Heckler was lying on the ground; he was battered, bruised and bleeding. The pack howlers were nowhere to be seen.
“Show me, the howlers,” she ordered. The mirror obliged.
At first she was confused. The image didn’t make sense. Then the sickening-thud of comprehension landed in her stomach...
The mirror showed the area around her. In a confusing, paradoxical-cascade she saw herself kneeling on the river bank. The image of her was looking into the mirror at another image, likewise peering into the mirror and so on to infinity…
This was already a hard enough concept to understand without added complications. The mirror also showed the howlers, sneaking up behind her.
Articus hissed and Harmony seized the moment of surprise to run. She leapt across the stream. As she lifted into the air the red cloak around her neck struck out and slapped the snapping jaws of an encroaching howler. The impact loosened several of his splinter-like teeth.
Harmony landed on the other side of the river and broke into a sprint. She headed straight for a bushel of pods. As she passed the delicate shrub her cloak caught for on a branch. She tugged it free and was on her way without looking back.
The brief entanglement of cloak and branch, even though it was tiny, caused the husk-heavy limb to shudder. The first chrysalis popped and ejected its contents into the air. The dense cloud of seeds engulfed the howlers.
As she ran, Articus by her side, the sound of bursting pods filled the forest. Her impact had begun an unstoppable chain reaction; which sounded a lot like corn popping. She laughed at the picture in her mind’s eye; howlers covered in the fluffy, white spores were far less of a threat.