El and Ross were sitting cross-legged in the Captain’s Quarters. In the stern stood Annie, Mouse, Belle, and Old Joe Johnson, the barkeep of the Three-Fingered-Joe Saloon. The Clown representative, to my dismay, was not Dicky Grock, but Pogo. He squatted – grinning – next to the stern lantern, his long, white-gloved fingers clasped loosely between his legs.
‘We’ve called this parley to give the first mate the opportunity to take back what she said about God or face the consequences,’ El said. ‘What do you have to say, First Mate?’
‘I’m not taking anything back.’
‘Just say you take it back.’
‘No.’
El gave a long sigh. ‘Let’s vote. Annie?’
‘Punishment,’ Annie said, tossing her red hair and grinning with sharp teeth. When she growled at me, I blanched.
‘Punishment,’ Belle said, twisting a gold ribbon between her fingers, her expression sorrowful. ‘I’m so sorry, Cat, but you can’t believe in us and God – you have to pick.’
Old Joe voted the same, although he also looked sorry to have to do it. He’d lost a daughter my age in the last big Boomtown shootout. Pogo giggled loud and long before shouting ‘Punishment!’ louder and longer through his bullhorn. When they were in the Clown Café, the Clowns were passive, quiet, often afraid. But never in Mirrorland.
‘Quartermaster, how do you vote?’
Ross was only ever allowed on the Satisfaction during day voyages. It seemed to me hugely unfair that he be allowed an equal vote during parleys. He looked at me, and I saw that he was smiling. ‘Punishment.’
I stared at him until his smirk disappeared, his face flushed red, and he looked away. But inside, my hurt eclipsed even my dread.
‘Mouse?’
Mouse glanced left at El and Ross. ‘Forgiveness,’ she whispered.
‘Big surprise,’ El said. ‘So. Looks like the decision is punishment, First Mate.’ Something crept into her eyes then; it gleamed. And I became cold all over when I realised that it was fear.
‘What are you going to do?’
She marched towards me, one hand behind her back, and when she was close enough to touch, she wheeled her arm around and opened her fist.
I shrank from the small piece of black paper sitting in her palm.
‘You have to take it.’
‘I don’t want to.’
We had never used the Black Spot before. Its possibility was an ever-present threat, but until then that’s all it had been. It meant expulsion from Mirrorland. Permanent exile. I couldn’t believe that my going against El on this one thing – a thing I barely cared about – deserved such awfulness. I was horrified, paralysed with shock.
‘Take it,’ El said.
And so I did. Holding it between thumb and forefinger as if it burned.
‘We’ve decided you should be given one last chance to survive,’ El said, but that gleam told me I wouldn’t like it. ‘You’ve one minute to find a hiding place inside Mirrorland, but it has to be a good one. If we find you before one hour is up, you have to leave Mirrorland and you’ll never get to come back. Okay?’
I nodded. Even though it only felt like a stay of execution.
‘Go!’ Annie shouted.
‘Go!’ Pogo shouted. Black panda eyes in a chalk-white face; his bright red grin sealed around the bullhorn.
Ross laughed, Mouse cowered, and El’s eyes shone like silver marbles.
I turned and ran towards Boomtown, my fingers catching against the walls. The post office was too small. The teepees too obvious – and the Lakota Sioux too uncertain an ally. I began to slow, panicky and indecisive, heart hammering in my chest, rejecting any and all hiding places, until I’d run out of time, until I could hear my jubilantly furious punishers stampeding down the alleyway towards me. I ran along the boardwalk, barged through the marshal’s office door, and dove down behind the booking desk made out of old sofa cushions.
I was too frightened, too filled up with dread and inevitable doom, to do much more than cower when, seconds later, someone’s shadow loomed over mine. Mouse’s eyes were big and black and round in her white-painted face.
‘I knew you’d come here,’ she whispered. ‘I knew I’d find you here.’
I thought I could hear a smile in her voice, and I didn’t like it. I thought of all the times I’d been mean to her after El had been mean to me, and wondered if here, now, was where she’d decided to get revenge.
‘Don’t be scared,’ Mouse whispered, and now I could see her smile. Her teeth. ‘I’ll help you, Cat. I’ll save you.’
‘How?’ Because I could hear giggling getting louder, the scratching of Clown feet on stone. I could hear El’s ‘Let’s split up,’ Ross’s low and excited laugh.
Mouse scowled. ‘Ross is mean.’
‘No, he’s not. He’s—’
Her shadow put its hands on its hips. ‘Do you want me to help you?’
My nod was frantic. But she didn’t move, didn’t speak.
I swallowed. Felt the sting of more tears. ‘Ross is mean,’ I whispered.
Mouse dropped down onto her knees beside me. ‘I’ll help you.’
‘How?’
Her smile was back. Ruby-red and wide. ‘You can be me. And I’ll be you.’
I shook my head, retreated farther behind the booking desk.
‘It’s easy!’ she said, eyes glittering as she stood again, spun around in a circle. ‘Look!’ And I saw that her baggy sack dress had been painted with clumsy red splodges to imitate the roses on the matching pinafores El and I wore. That she’d plaited her short hair into stumpy pigtails tied with string instead of ribbon. I saw, too, that she was excited. My predicament made her happy. And that made me shiver. There was a darkness to everyone and everything in Mirrorland. But Mouse had always been the exception.
She crawled behind the desk on her hands and knees. ‘Go and hide!’
When I didn’t, she loomed even closer.
‘You have to hide!’ I could still see the shine of her teeth, like the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. ‘It’s easy, Cat! If you’re quiet and small and scared in the dark, no one will ever see you. Go!’
I went. Back on the boardwalk, I could see big laughing shadows against the bricked-over door and the teepees, I could smell sweat and sugar and smoke. I could hear Ross’s laughter again, the joy in it. Frightened tears were running down my face as I ran into the Three-Fingered-Joe Saloon. The bar was an old TV box reinforced with bricks and broken wood covered with a tartan blanket. When I heard El shout my name, I jerked open the lid and climbed inside, crouched down on my knees, and buried my face in the blanket’s scratchy warmth.
The dark was nearly suffocating. Please, please, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut. Please don’t let them find me. Please.
Because what would I do without Mirrorland? Without Ross, Annie, Belle, and Mouse? The pirates, the cowboys, the Indians, and the Clowns? What would I do without Captain Henry? What would I do without El? I would be alone. I would be stuck inside a cold, grey, empty, frightening world.
An hour is an eternity if you spend it hiding in a box waiting for the very worst to happen. When the adrenaline started to wear off, it was replaced with a kind of weary doomed acceptance that returned as quickly to horror when I heard loud footsteps on the saloon’s floor.
Please. Please.
I heard the bony thud of knees. The shuffle of someone moving closer. Opening the lid.
It was El.
‘Please don’t tell,’ I whispered. ‘Please don’t make me leave Mirrorland and never ever come back. Please!’