“Hullo!” said the lady, pausing from the tapestry upon which she was engaged. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
The Lady of Shalott was of an indeterminate age and might once have been plain before the rigors of artistic interpretation got working on her. This was the annoying side of the Feedback Loop; irrespective of how she had once looked or even wanted to look, she was now a Pre-Raphaelite beauty with long flaxen tresses, flowing white gowns and a silver forehead band. She wasn’t the only one to be physically morphed by reader expectation. Miss Havisham was now elderly whether she liked it or not, and Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker and smoked a ridiculously large pipe. The problem wasn’t just confined to the classics. Harry Potter was seriously pissed off that he’d have to spend the rest of his life looking like Daniel Radcliffe.
“Good afternoon, my lady,” I said, curtsying. “I would like to conduct more research.”
“Such adherence to duty is much to be admired,” replied the lady. “How are your readings going?”
“Over a thousand,” I returned, lying spectacularly. If I didn’t pretend to be popular, she’d never have granted me access.
“That’s wonderful news. Make good use of the time. I could get into a lot of trouble for this.”
Satisfied, she left her tapestry and summoned me to the window that faced Camelot. The Lady of Shalott took great care not to look out of the window but instead gently stroked a mirror that was held in a large bronze hanger and angled it towards the windows, as if to see the view outside. But this mirror wasn’t like other mirrors; the surface grew misty, turned the color of slate, then displayed an image quite unlike the reflection one might expect.
“Usual place?” she asked.
“Usual place.”
The image coalesced into a suburban street in the Old Town of Swindon, and the Lady of Shalott touched me on the shoulder.
“I’ll leave you to it,” she told me, and quietly returned to her tapestry, which seemed to depict David Hasselhoff in various episodes from Baywatch, Series 2.
I stared into the mirror. The image flickered occasionally and was mildly desaturated in color, but it was otherwise clear and sharp.
“Left forty-five degrees.”
The mirror shifted to look up the suburban road to the house where Thursday and Landen lived. But this wasn’t a book somewhere, or a memory. This was the RealWorld, the Outland. The Lady of Shalott uniquely possessed a window into reality and could see whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted to. Great lives, great events—even Baywatch. The images she saw were woven into a tapestry, and she couldn’t look outside her own window on pain of death. It was all a bit weird, but that’s Tennyson for you.
The view was live, and aside from the fact that it was mute, was almost as good as being there.
“Move forward six yards.”
The viewpoint moved forward to a front door that was very familiar to me. I had a similar front door in my own book, but my version didn’t have peeling paint or the random fine crackle that natural weathering brings. I sensed my heart beat faster.
“Go inside.”
The viewpoint drifted through the door, where the hall was less familiar. Thursday and Landen’s real house was only ever described briefly to the ghostwriter who wrote my series, so the interior was different. I jumped as someone moved past the mirror. It was a young girl aged no more than twelve, and she looked very serious for her years. This would have been Thursday and Landen’s daughter, Tuesday, as brilliant as Uncle Mycroft but in the “confusing petulant” state of pubescence. Nothing was right and everything was wrong. If it wasn’t problems over the revectoring of electrogravitational field theory, it was her brother, Friday, whom she regarded as a total loser and layabout.
“Advance two yards.”
The viewpoint moved forward to the hall table. I could see that Thursday was not in, as her bag, keys, cell phone and battered leather jacket were absent. It didn’t say she was missing; only that she wasn’t at home right now.
“Advance six yards, rotate left twenty degrees.”
The viewpoint moved into the kitchen, where a man was sitting at the table attempting to help Tuesday with her GSD uni-Scripture homework. He was graying at the temples and had a kindly face that was very familiar. This was Landen Parke-Laine, Thursday’s husband. I blinked as my eyes moistened. They were talking, and he laughed. I couldn’t hear him, but imagined as best I could how he might have sounded. Sort of like . . . music.
“One-twenty degrees to the right, pull out a yard.”
The mirror did as I asked so I could see the family scene. I didn’t have this. None of this. No husband, no children. Despite the real Thursday’s wishes that Landen would be included in the series after I took over, he wasn’t—and neither were any of the children. Thursday was overridden by a senator named Jobsworth over at the Council of Genres. So they reverted to the previous plan and had Landen continue to die in a house fire in the first chapter of The Eyre Affair, a clumsy attempt to give purpose to the written Thursday’s fictitious crime fighting. The plot device might have been clunky, but the loss had been exceptionally well written; I felt it every minute of every day. Being fictional is a double-edged sword. You get to savor the really good times over and over, but the same is true of the bad. For every defeat of the Goliath Corporation, there is the loss of Miss Havisham, and for every moment in Mycroft’s company there is a day in the Crimea. The delight at returning Jane Eyre to her book and thwarting Acheron is forever tempered by the inevitable loss of Landen, again and again forever.
So I stood there, staring at what should have been mine. I wanted to be with the children I should have been allowed to have and to spend my life expending time and energy in the glorious hope that I would one day become parentally redundant. In my bleaker moments, Pickwick and Mrs. Malaprop attempted to console me by explaining I had loss only to give relevance to what drove my character through the narrative, but it was meager consolation. I should have had a written Landen and written children to keep me company.
I watched Landen for several more minutes. Every movement, every nuance. I watched how he spoke to Tuesday with humor and infinite patience. I watched how he scratched his ear, how he laughed, how he smiled.
Friday joined them. My would-be son was a fine fellow—handsome like his father. Perhaps a bit rudderless at that age, but thought and function would eventually arrive in the fullness of time. I wanted to give him some guidance, but he had his mother for that. The real me. The real her. Besides, the mirror saw only in one direction. They had no idea that I was there, no idea that I felt as I did. I watched for a few more minutes, until Landen got up and walked to the sink, drew himself a glass of water and stared out the window.
“Pull out into the garden three yards, right ninety degrees.”
My viewpoint drifted through the kitchen wall, and after a brief glimpse of central-heating pipes and a bored-looking mouse, I was now outside looking at Landen, who was just on the other side of the window. Although he couldn’t see me, we were staring into each other’s eyes.