By the time Emma had climbed up to the spare room, Charlie had settled himself back in the rocker and placed his hand on the window. It was in exactly the same position as before, all five lingers splayed out on the glass. The mirror lay on a table beside him.
"Charlie, what are you doing?" asked Emma, becoming more and more puzzled.
"Alice started it," Charlie said awkwardly. "She felt Matilda's hand, just here, and heard her voice."
"Matilda?" Emma didn't know anyone by that name.
"The girl in Badlock," Charlie said with slight impatience.
"Sorry, I'd forgotten her," Emma confessed.
Charlie obviously hadn't forgotten.
"I mean it's not as if I've ever seen her," Emma said defensively. "But why have you got to keep your hand there? It's going blue."
"She wanted to talk to me," Charlie explained. "And, Em, I really want to see her again."
"Ohhh." Emma understood at last. "So that's why you want to get into Badlock."
"I want to get BILLY," Charlie stressed, "but I'm hoping to see Matilda as well."
"Try the mirror."
"It's broken, Em. I'm sorry, but I don't think it will work."
Emma's look of dismay made Charlie feel guilty and then, suddenly, her face lit up. "Charlie, look!" She pointed at the mirror.
Throughout the night Claerwen had kept Charlie company, nestled on a duster that Alice had left on a shelf. But now the moth was busily skimming over the cracked glass. The rapid movement of her silver-white wings began to cause shafts of brilliant reflected light to stream out of the mirror. The glass was now so bright they could barely look at it.
"She's mending it!" Forgetting the windowpane for a moment, Charlie screwed up his eyes and stared at the mirror. But it was too bright! He got up and rubbed his tired eyes.
Emma's sight was still as sharp as a bird's. She couldn't tear her gaze away from the dazzling glass. "It's fading, Charlie," she said. "The crack. It's disappearing."
"Claerwen, you've done it," marveled Charlie as the moth, her task complete, left the mirror and settled on his shoulder.
The blinding light became a manageable shine and Charlie's eyes could at last rest on the mirror. There was nothing there, of course. No reflection of his face or the room behind him. The Mirror of Amoret didn't work like that.
"Can it help you to travel now, Charlie?" Emma asked hopefully. "Like Amoret?"
Charlie nodded. "I used it once and saw my father. I nearly reached him, but because of the spell laid over him, I couldn't quite. And then Olivia took the mirror from my hand because I made a dreadful sound and she thought I was dying."
"I won't do that," Emma promised. "Unless you think I should."
"No, no. Don't touch the mirror, whatever happens. Claerwen will bring us both back, me and Billy."
Emma watched Charlie's face. If anyone looked spellbound, he did. She wondered if she should let him go into Badlock looking the way he did, shocked and already almost gone.
"Look into the mirror," Charlie chanted, remembering Uncle Paton's words.
"Look into the mirror, and the person you wish to see will appear. If you want to find that person, look again, and the mirror will take you to them, wherever you are."
"So all you have to do is to think of Billy, and you'll see him in the mirror, and then"—Emma took a breath—"and then, you'll be traveling."
"Yes." Charlie's voice was so quiet, Emma could hardly hear him.
Charlie wasn't thinking of Billy. He kept seeing the face that he had wanted to see ever since he had returned from that first journey into the past.
"Is he there?" asked Emma, who could see only a misty glow on the surface of the mirror.
"Mmmm," Charlie muttered absently, but the face beginning to appear in the glass wasn't Billy's. It belonged to a girl, a girl with large tobacco brown eyes and soft black curls.
"Matilda," Charlie murmured.
An electric shock passed through Charlie's fingers and he almost dropped the mirror. The handle became red-hot so that he had to use both hands to cling to it.
"What is it?" cried Emma, alarmed by Charlie's grimace of pain.
And then he was gone.
Emma stared at the space Charlie had occupied only a minute ago. She hadn't expected him to vanish quite so quickly. Once before, she had seen him travel, but then his body had remained exactly where it was; it was only his mind that had traveled.
Charlie had progressed. His endowment must he stronger, thought Emma, for his traveling to have become so fast.
But for Charlie, it wasn't like that at all.
18. REMBRANDT'S FLY
A journey with Amoret's mirror was nothing like traveling through a painting.
By the time Charlie had reached his destination, his head had been filled with images that would never desert him: golden sand hills as smooth as velvet, a camel racing through trees with a tiny boy riding him, domed cities, and a sea the color of sapphires.
And then Charlie was standing in a castle of white stone where a duel was taking place between a boy of African descent in crimson and a yellow-haired youth in emerald green. The clash of swords rang in Charlie's ears as he was torn from the scene and drifted in a vast gray ocean; above him an orange sail flapped in the wind. He glimpsed white cliffs, an endless forest, and a blood-red castle.
And now Charlie was falling, tumbling, twisting in an avalanche of rocks, flying across a barren landscape where black towers leaned into a stormy sky.
"Badlock," Charlie cried as the wind tossed him through the air. He was hurtling toward a mountain that rose before him like a curtain of stone. But before he hit the mountain, Charlie was lifted above a palace of black marble where flames streamed from iron brackets set into the wall. And then he was falling, falling, falling....
Someone screamed. Charlie shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He was sitting on a very soft carpet patterned in rich colors.
"Charlie Bone!" said a shocked voice.
Charlie turned his head. And there was Matilda perched on the end of a four-poster bed. She was wearing the same buttercup yellow dress that she had worn the last time Charlie saw her.
"Hello!" Charlie found himself grinning happily, even though his head still ached and he felt bruised all over.
Matilda slipped off the bed and gently helped Charlie to his feet. "I am so very pleased to see you," she said.
"But I thought you would arrive through my grandfather's painting."
Charlie held up the mirror. "I used this."
"Oh!" Matilda looked astonished. "But I've seen that here, in my grandfather's spell room. It was a long time ago, and I was very young."
Charlie frowned at the mirror. "How can it be in two places at once?"
"No, no." Matilda shook her head. "The enchanter took it back to your world.
He told me he had buried it there for the future. How did you find it?"
"It's a long story." Charlie turned the mirror over and over in his hands.
"I'd like to know its history."
"Perhaps you will one day." Matilda took Charlie's hand and pulled him down to sit beside her on the bed. "I can't tell you how happy I am to see you,"
she said, looking deep into his eyes. "You didn't hear me, did you, when I touched a window in the picture of your house?"
Charlie shook his head regretfully. "There's a woman named Alice in our house. She's a kind of guardian angel. She heard your voice. She senses things, and she has an affect on people. My grandma's a bully and a grump usually, but since Alice came she's been all slow and sleepy."
"The enchanter can do that, too," said Matilda, "but he doesn't often bother.
My grandmother has a temper and so does my brother. But the enchanter watches with amusement when they rant and rave."
They smiled at each other and Charlie wished the moment would last forever.
He could imagine himself living here, in this incredible room with its green marble walls, its soft, bright carpets and gleaming black furniture.