Teller of Fate
Fourth Movement: Custodians of the Incunabulum
Chapter Thirty
* * *
Arms tightly at her side, feet together and pointed downward, Jane fell toward the scarlet panels of the immense sphere’s bottom.
She managed to keep her gaze on her path of descent. Wind roared in her ears. She fell, it seemed, an awfully long time, considering how close the center had to be.
Despite her rational certainty that she was following the right course, Jane was frightened. A mistake in judgement would be fatal.
The faceted tiles of the sphere, roiling with the scarlet liquid they held back, weren’t getting any nearer. Jane began to get a sense of the true size of the space she was trapped in.
It seemed that her worst fate might not be a swift death after impacting the platform above but falling forever and dying never having escaped her prison.
Just as fear was morphing into panic, the white light and that non-pain pressure again engulfed her.
* * *
With no other sense of transition, Jane found herself sliding feet first along an abrasive surface.
Her foot caught some protuberance and launched her into the air. She hit her head hard on something. The rest of the experience was one of intense disorientation as she flipped and tumbled, striking every part of her body it seemed, on something that hurt.
Momentum quickly bled away, and she was rolling along that surface. She could just make out that it was deep pile carpet.
Her trip finally ended as she came up hard against a wall.
Jane was on her back looking up at dark wainscoting. The rail at its top blocked any further view.
To her right, the hall she’d come down in such disorder seemed much the same. Textured wallpaper, chiefly a dark red with highlights of green and blue, finished the walls. The ceiling was tin in a pattern of concentric circles, painted ivory. Sconces spaced along the walls held fluted glass lamps in which flames burned steadily.
Evidence of her violent arrival was conspicuously absent.
So, Jane realized, was any pain. The injuries she was sure she had suffered should have had her in agony. She made to stand, moving very slowly, expecting the scream of bruises, torn ligaments, broken bones.
No stabs of discomfort greeted her. Not even a twinge troubled Jane as she stood.
She felt her head for a lump or blood or some other sign that she’d taken an impact that might have killed her and certainly should have rendered her unconscious. Nothing.
She wasn’t even dizzy.
Jane spent the next few moments feeling and stretching, searching for the tell-tale signs of injury. There were none. This was decidedly weird.
She needed to know where she was but first had to satisfy a curiosity about where she’d just come from.
As she followed her own back trail, Jane noticed that the carpet was a runner held in place with what looked like brass nails hammered into a floor of greenish-yellow flag stones. The carpet was plain and brown. The hall was wide, the ceiling high. She met no side passages or doors.
Jane walked for twenty minutes, long past the place he must have entered from, and still there was no end to the corridor.
Sighing, the Custodian of the Incunabulum realized there was going to be little in the way of satisfaction where her questions were concerned.
Wearily, she turned back.
After only ten minutes of walking, Jane was back at the spot where she’d come to rest and that wasn’t right. Either her sense of time was off, or this place had changed.
Given her lack of injury, and the lack of damage to the hall behind her, she decided the latter.
She also realized that she must still be a prisoner. Her respect for the skill of the Thief battled her disdain for his motive.
The hall she’d travelled down ended at another, identical hall that continued to the right and left. Not having any means of choosing a direction, and not really having anything better to do, Jane picked right.
The hall varied not at all for the first few minutes of brisk walking. Eventually, though, she spotted movement ahead. At first, she thought it was someone else in this place coming toward her.
Very quickly, it became plain that she was approaching a mirror; the movement she saw, her own. The Custodian quickened her pace, encouraged by the thought of any change in the monotony.
* * *
When details of the reflection began to emerge from the fog of distance, Jane’s progress first slowed, then stumbled to a halt.
What she saw reflected in the mirror wasn’t her. She was staring at a rather handsome male face. He was olive skinned, black hair slicked back and almost a foot taller than she.
He moved as she did, as if he really was her reflection. Jane remembered watching movies as a child where someone pretended to be someone else’s reflection. She didn’t find this nearly as amusing as she had then.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
Her ‘reflection’ mouthed the words exactly as she had.
She frowned.
He continued to stare, the slightest of upturns on the corners of his lips, the slightest crinkle at the outer corners of his eyes.
So, not a reflection then.
She walked closer to what she suspected was something other than just a mirror. He approached her, his gait matching hers exactly. She took the last step toward the mirror, left hand outstretched, fingers splayed.
Five pairs of fingertips met at the plane of the mirror. Touch told her it was glass; sight denied that. The bastard was still smiling; still looking down at her.
Jane backed off half a step, arm falling at her side. She studied the hall reflected in the mirror, looking for another falsehood that might explain the one she was experiencing.
At first, the reflection of the hall seemed a faithful image.
As Jane concentrated, though, she began to see something more; a ghost of something else was superimposed over the main reflection.
The more she stared, the more certain she was she was seeing the chamber beneath Airkhart Manor where the Incunabulum slept. By letting her focus go deeper into the image, it became clearer.
There was movement in that semi-occulted view. Someone was moving toward the pedestalled cage that trapped the Book. There was something wrong. At first, Jane thought the speed of the movement was due to an attempt at stealth, but it was too slow even for that.
Jane was looking at a time dilated scene. She was seeing the actual moment of the theft of the Incunabulum.
The Custodian concentrated on what was happening, hoping to glean some insight into her captor. She assumed the image staring at her was him. That should mean that the figure slowly reaching for the cage that held the Book was him as well, only that person seemed shorter. She told herself it must be the distance.
Unless this was only a recording of the past, some way had to be found to stop the theft.
Minutes went by and the vague figure crept closer to the cage. Jane considered the disparities between herself and the ‘reflection’ before her.
Something was going on with the mirror, perhaps unplanned by the Thief. Maybe she could use that somehow.
Taking her eyes off the scene in the cellar, she turned her head and looked down the hall, trying to estimate how far back the Thief would have to be, were he on her side of the reflection.
Slowly she paced backwards, swiveling her head between reflection and reality as she went.
Her masculine reflection obliged her by retreating as she did, mimicking her movements, smug expression still in place.
Estimating the exact position became more difficult the farther she retreated from the mirror.
Jane wasn’t sure why she was doing this or what good it would do, only that she had to do something, and this was all she could think of.
A sharp tingling in Jane’s butt surprised her. It also told her she was on to something. She stopped moving and checked the mirror. She was about where the figure was.
Though only the mirror showed it, there was something here with her. She moved her body a bit more. The tingling increased, covering more of her. Invisible here, the figure was not intangible.
With the help of the now tiny image, she used the tingling to tell her how to align herself to the figure.
Jane anticipated problems, though. She was running out of room. The figure’s position seemed to overlap one wall of the hallway.
As she swung her body to her left and bent slightly forward, Jane saw that this was the case. She extended her left arm slowly, moving it in small circles as she did so, feeling for the tingle. As her hand reached out, she was sure she’d touch the wall and be blocked.
Her hand passed right into it, with no sensation at all. No time for surprise. Not now.
The last bit proved to be the trickiest. She was sure she needed to perfectly align herself to a figure that was slowly moving for…whatever…to happen.
It happened.
Jane’s vision flickered, and she was looking at the Incunabulum as her hands reached out for the lock on the cage it was in.
But it was all wrong. Everything was backwards. She turned to her right. The mirror was still there, blocking sight of the doorway that should have been on her left. She could clearly see her reflection. There was no sign of the Thief.
Jane was surprised to be in her own body.
She was still trapped; the mirror was proof of that, though she now had the means to do something about it. Quickly, she unlocked the cage and opened the book.
Getting the Incunabulum to make intentional, directed changes was a matter of finesse as well as knowing the language it was written in.
The top edges of its pages were notched and grooved in a particular pattern that allowed the initiated to find specific pages holding the information needed; an essential for reading a book whose changing letters and words changed the realities they described.
Jane felt along the pages’ tops until she recognized the series of grooves she wanted. Closing her eyes, she opened the book. There were raised dots along the top of each page as well. She felt along the row, muttering to herself. Satisfied, she opened her eyes.
Letters of red and black writhed and shifted under her gaze, morphing, shifting, twisting, whirling around and overtop one another.
So long as she didn’t blink, none of this would have any effect on reality. The Custodian narrowed her focus until she was looking at three adjacent characters. Slowly they settled down, changing less and less quickly.
When they reached the precise configuration she needed, Jane closed her eyes. A shudder ran through her: a bit of reality had changed. So far, so good.
Twice more, Jane found a page, an area, a few characters. Twice more, she stared until they changed to her satisfaction and shut her eyes to effect the change; twice more the shudder that indicated success.
On the last one, a hole opened in the wall to her left. Jane felt the wind of it pulling her and allowed herself a moment of triumph. She’d done it! She’d escaped this trap.
Jane allowed herself to be pulled toward the hole.
The wind was so strong it lifted her off her feet. She clung tightly to the Incunabulum as she went. As she passed into the hole, she felt a tearing sensation, as if her skin were being peeled off.
Jane screamed. She almost didn’t notice the Book being pulled from her hands.
The pain went on for a long time.
It vanished so suddenly she didn’t feel the impact of hitting another carpeted surface.
A loud crash, and Jane was showered with glittering shards of glass.
It must have been her fading consciousness. She was still in the damned hallway, only it was different. Everything was brighter somehow. Bits of the walls were reflecting the light, like they were becoming mirrors themselves. No, that wasn’t right.
The light was white, not the yellow of the gas lamps. The walls were becoming transparent. The light was coming through them.
She felt herself begin to sink as the floor became too insubstantial to bear her weight. Fighting fear, Jane tried to keep panic at bay.
‘Get to your feet. C’mon, damn it!’ she mentally scolded herself. Jane’s hand passed into the wall she tried to steady herself on, as if it were meringue rather than stone.
Jane continued to sink as she struggled. In the space of three heartbeats, everything vanished. She had held on to consciousness but wished she hadn’t. The only referent she had was the direction of the wind, which told her she was falling; falling in a white void that had no visible end.
— Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, August 2026
© Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved
