“Trompe-l’oeils alive!” exclaimed Baron Melchior. “So this is where they lead to, your famous blue sandglasses? The hygienic conditions are appalling!” he said, shocked.
Thorn, on the other hand, didn’t even bat an eyelid; he had already buried his big nose in the workshop’s ledgers.
“Oh, that’s because you’re seeing the sandbeds from the outside,” the foreman said, calmly. “I can assure you that each one conforms entirely to public-health standards. And we give the place a sweep every day,” he stressed, with a hint of mischief in his voice. He moved over to the metal staircase adjoining the gangway. “It’s this way to access the hangar, lady and gents. We do have a goods lift, but it’s in need of a little mechanical servicing.”
“Watch where you put your feet,” Thorn warned, for Ophelia’s benefit.
She didn’t suffer from vertigo, but she took the warning seriously. There were many steps and they were narrow and badly lit, and there were many flights to tackle before reaching the ground. At each landing, she leaned over to take a better look at the hangar’s beds, from which some figures emerged, and into which others disappeared, through the muslin curtains, after one turn of a sandglass. Ophelia was still too high up and too far away to make them out clearly in the bluish light of the lamps, but she wondered how these people managed not to be conscious of their surroundings. Had none of them ever had the curiosity to open the curtains of their four-poster bed?
As she was continuing her descent, Ophelia felt a hot breath against her ear. She turned around and saw Thorn crossing the landing above. It wasn’t his breath Ophelia had sensed; he was too far away. Was it Vladislava following her that closely? She’d just had this thought when she was winded by a violent blow to the chest. She was so surprised that she didn’t immediately understand why the banister was slipping from under her fingers, why her feet were leaving the ground, and why her hair was splayed across her glasses.
She was falling. She was going to break her bones on an endless flight of steps.
With a feeling of complete unreality, Ophelia toppled backwards, unable to cling to anything but the sight of Thorn turning another page of the ledger. As she landed with all her weight, her lungs emptied of their air and a pain shot through her elbow like an electric current. She stared blankly, through her almost knocked-off glasses, at the mustachioed face looking down at her.
A policeman had rushed to catch her in his arms. “Okay, lung yady . . . young lady? Nothing broken?”
The policeman’s speech was a little garbled, under his handlebar moustache, and he was slightly cross-eyed, making him squint. Ophelia wasn’t about to forget that face; she probably owed her life to it.
“Y-yes,” she stammered in a tiny voice, still winded from the impact. “Thank you. Really.”
Finally looking up, Thorn frowned on seeing the policeman helping Ophelia to her feet. “I told you to watch out.”
“I did watch out,” Ophelia said, defensively. “It wasn’t my . . . ” She went quiet before finishing her sentence, and looked at the stairs she’d almost come flying down on her back. She was certain she’d been shoved by an invisible presence, but she refused to believe it was a deliberate act on the part of Vladislava. The disgraced Invisible had protected them from the Chroniclers, and Thorn was about to defend the cause of her clan. Laying into Ophelia now made no sense at all. Never set foot in the court ever again. And what if it wasn’t Vladislava who was in their midst right now?
Ophelia took the precaution of staying close to the policemen, particularly the one who had caught her in midair, while the foreman showed them around the place.
“It’s the principle of ‘pull pin—enjoy!’” he explained in a cheery voice that echoed across the hangar. “For a long time, we only produced the regular sandglasses, of the green or red collection. Round trips to standard destinations, you know. One day, Mother Hildegarde said to us, just like that: ‘Hey, viejecitos, what if we invented a sandglass that transported people straight into a dream?’ That’s what she’s like, the Mother. She always has completely crazy ideas, and she always finds a way of making them a reality.”
Chilled thanks to the hangar’s ice-cold temperature, they all moved together between the rows of beds. Ophelia found them impressive, close up: they looked like real boats, with their frames carved like prows and their vast white curtains like sails. The only way not to get lost in the middle of this stationary naval fleet was to follow the direction panels: “STANDARD ILLUSIONS FOR LADIES,” “STANDARD ILLUSIONS FOR MEN,” “ILLUSIONS OF YOUTH,” “SPECIAL CHILDREN’S ILLUSIONS,” “ILLUSIONS JUST FOR SERVANTS,” “LOYALTY BONUS ILLUSIONS,” etc.
“To create a sandglass,” continued the foreman, “Mother Hildegarde just has to take a sample of space on a mattress and slip it into a sandglass phial.”
“A sample of space?” Ophelia interrupted him.
“Yes, miss. I’d find it very tricky to explain to you what that looks like, but Mother Hildegarde has never got it wrong. The workshop makes the sandglasses so that all she has to do is seal the cover and prime the pin, once her work is done. We then place the mattress in here, in its pretty wooden frame, with suitably nice, clean sheets,” the foreman stressed, turning his smile towards Baron Melchior. “And when that’s done, a professional illusionist goes over there, to the depot,” he added, indicating a large industrial double door, at the back of the hangar. “He transforms these ordinary beds into wonderlands. I’ll let you be the judge of the result.”
Ophelia looked carefully at the sandbeds surrounding her. It was the most grotesque phantasmagoria she’d ever witnessed. Shadows kept on appearing and disappearing behind the muslin curtains: a crinoline dress tipped back from which there emerged two legs shaking with laughter, an old fogey bouncing on his mattress like a schoolboy, a bewigged silhouette sobbing with joy into his pillow. Some of them, in more than compromising positions, let out lascivious moans. Ophelia felt embarrassed for all these people as the policemen pulled aside the bed canopies, just for a brief inspection, but nothing, seemingly, could rouse them from their bewitchment.
“When I think that only yesterday I was here, among them!” Baron Melchior sighed, with dismay.
“But you’re a Mirage yourself,” Ophelia said, startled. “Isn’t it possible for you to break this kind of spell?”
“A Mirage is immune only to his or her own illusions, Miss Great Family Reader. They’re also the only ones with the power to cancel them. Hence, all of a Mirage’s creations disappear when they die. Ours is an ephemeral art,” he said with a melancholy smile, under his moustache. “It upsets me every time to think that neither my musical ties nor my perfumed jewelry nor my kaleidoscopic dresses will survive me!”
“Illusions all need a helping hand to work, you see?” the foreman continued. “A signal, if you like. It enters first through the eyes before reaching the brain. As long as you’re not looking at our ‘helping hand,’ you don’t see the illusion and don’t feel its effects.”
“You’re oversimplifying,” the baron protested, in a professorial tone. “Our illusions work preferentially by sight, but there are also auditory, tactile, or olfactory stimuli. We can create highly complex works of art, even if we don’t all specialize in the same areas. Depending on whether one is a landscape gardener, an interior designer, or a couturier, one will favor certain sensations over others. I grant you, however, that the eyes remain our preferred amplifier.”
Ophelia thought of Gail’s black monocle, which had the ability to filter all illusions.
“May I know the name of the professional illusionist who works for you?” asked Baron Melchior, indicating the nearest bed with his cane. “Having sampled these illusions from the inside, I can confirm that they are devilishly effective. I’ve always emerged deeply moved, and I’ve never been able to recall exactly why. It’s like waking from a marvelous dream that just leaves you with a very powerful impression.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. We’ve never come across him in the workshop; he only goes to the depot. Only Mother Hildegarde could tell you his name.”
Ophelia jumped. A policeman was suddenly shaking with an uncontrollable fit of the giggles while inspecting a sandbed. He threw his cocked hat into the air, did a little jig, and blew kisses to an imaginary audience, proclaiming at the top of his voice: “Life is beautiful, ladies and gentlemen!”
“Ah, that one has found our ‘helping hand,’” commented the foreman. “He must have looked up into the bed’s canopy.”
Thorn was so engrossed in his ledgers that he paid no attention to the policeman, who was now trying to entice one of his colleagues into a passionate waltz.
“With all this, we still haven’t found anyone,” Ophelia muttered to him. “What exactly are you looking for in those accounts?”
Thorn let out an exasperated groan, and Ophelia thought how she herself would have liked to have an object to read, anything to help her to accelerate the inquiry and feel less powerless.
“And the yellow sandglasses?” she asked, turning to the foreman. “Foster . . . A friend told me about them once. He said they were exactly like the blue sandglasses, but only one way, with no time limit. Do you produce them here?”
“Certainly not,” the foreman said, categorically. “It would be far too dangerous. The yellow sandglasses are a myth contrived to make servants dream, nothing more. Just imagine if you remained stuck within one of those illusions,” he said, indicating the policeman, who was still smiling beatifically. “You would die of pleasure, before even dying of dehydration! That said, someone with even the slightest skill could modify any sandglass,” he admitted, with a mischievous glint in his eye. “Installing an automatic turning mechanism isn’t simple, but it’s not impossible, either.”
Ophelia nodded, pensively. An automatic turning mechanism? That was probably it, the trap Archibald had detected on the sandglass, of which she’d read the pin.
“We have inspected all the sandbeds, sir,” announced a policeman, clicking his heels in front of Thorn. “Those reported missing are not to be found here.”
“Nothing in the depot to report, either,” said a second policeman, returning from the other side of the building.
Ophelia felt her throat tighten. Of course, she’d expected that, but she’d really hoped to see Archibald emerging from the canopy of a bed, yawning.
As for the foreman, he didn’t seem at all disappointed. He broke into a smile, revealing teeth in pitiful condition. “Jolly good! As you can see, our factory isn’t implicated in your case.”
“That is not true.”
Thorn had declared this as a simple statement of fact.