‘Against the day’? What day?
Joe went back to the house and shut the door.
He’s left summat.
On the sill of the chimney, next to where Treacle Walker had been sitting, were Joe’s old pyjamas, folded, and a rolled-up comic.
He lifted the pyjamas, and put them down again. The smell, even his own, was too much, and there was another, sickly sour, like the inside of Treacle Walker’s coat.
He took the comic to the other side of the fire basket and opened it. It was a Knockout he had not read.
He saw Kiddo the Boy King, and Daffy the Cowboy ’Tec, and Handy Andy the Odd Job Man, and Deed-a-Day Danny, and Daddy Dolittle; and Our Ernie came home and said WHAT’S FOR TEA, MA? and his Pa said DAFT, I CALL IT. and Charlie the caterpillar said IT IS AND ALL. Then he turned the page to Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit. At the side was OO-ER, CHUMS. WHIZZY’S LOOSE. HOW WILL OUR HERO GET OUT OF THIS ONE? But the story squares for the pictures were all empty, blank, nothing inside.
He looked at the rest of the comic. Everything else was there.
What the heck?
Joe put the Knockout down.
But I’ll reckon him up. Rump and stump, I shall. Rump and stump. I shall that.
Joe went upstairs and stood in front of the mirror.
He felt the glass. It was smooth, without flaw. He could see himself and the room, the cupboard and his bed, the chimney and the door beside, the window and the sky. He went round to the back. It was one piece of black, hard wood; no nails, no screws. He went to the front. The glass had no framing. There were no sides, nowhere that joined, nothing that could be prised apart.
Joe ran downstairs. He took his knife and hacked and snapped and tugged a branch from the pear tree and levered a granite cobble from the paving of the yard and carried it up to the room in both hands. He stood a step away from the glass and held the cobble above his head.
‘Right! Cop this, you great nowt!’
With all his strength Joe threw the cobble at the glass.
It hit, and dropped to the floor. The glass did not break. The mirror sang.
He still had the pebbles in his pockets. He took his catapult, put a pebble in the leather pouch, drew back the elastic and fired. The pebble skipped and whined off the glint. He took another. He fired harder. And harder. And harder, harder, harder.
Then there were no pebbles left. His wrists ached and were unsteady. His thumbs had no feeling.
He took his marbles and shot them, faster and faster, even his blood alley, until the floor ran with marbles and pebbles. The mirror was unmarked.
He had only his dobber, the biggest alley with the coloured fire twisting inside. But he could not. Not the dobber.
He put the dobber and his catapult in his pocket and felt for the donkey stone. The roughness was firm on his palm. He weighed the balance, gripped, and smashed the donkey stone onto the glass.
There was no sound. His hand went into the mirror, and the blow dragged him after. He flowed through the mirror. The cold of the passing was none he had ever known.
He stumbled onto the floor of the room. He turned to the mirror. The mirror was not there; only a box of darkness, without surface, without depth. The chimney was in front of him; the door to one side; the cupboard and his bed on the other; the window; but all were the wrong way about. He went to the window.
There was the yard; and the valley; but the gate was to the right, not the left; and so were Barn Croft and Pool Field and Big Meadow and the track. And the track bent the wrong way down to the brook and up to the heath.
He looked back into the room. There was a mirror in the corner.