Valkyrie grinned. “Yep. That was pretty cool. Really bad breath, though. Like, disgusting.”
“Eww.”
“And I’ve been to an alternate universe.”
“Seriously? Like on Star Trek?”
Valkyrie laughed. “Since when do you know about Star Trek?”
Carol looked around, like someone might be listening, then leaned in. “Don’t tell your parents, but Mum loves Star Trek. When we were kids, we used to watch the reruns of the original series, Next Generation, DS9... She liked Voyager more than we did, and none of us liked Enterprise... But she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s a Trekkie, so...”
“I promise I won’t tell, no matter how amused it might make me.”
“Thank you. So what was the alternate universe like? Are there evil versions of everybody? Is there an evil version of me?”
Valkyrie laughed. “Sadly, no. Our histories ran parallel up to a few hundred years ago, so none of us have been born.”
“Oh. That sucks.” Carol ate another chip. “Wouldn’t it be cool to find out what your evil version would be like?”
Valkyrie made a face. “Not really...”
She walked Carol back to her house and they finished off the bag of chips. Carol told her about this guy she liked in college, and they giggled and laughed and when Carol walked to her front door, she had a bounce in her step, and looked lighter than her frame would suggest. Smiling to herself, Valkyrie took the little lane down to the beach and walked back to her house along the sand. She got to her room, the reflection went back into the mirror, and she stripped down to underwear and a T-shirt and climbed into bed. Sleep came quickly.
She didn’t know what time it was when the throbbing in her arm woke her, but it was still dark as she lunged out of bed. She grabbed her phone and her ring off the bedside table and stumbled to the wardrobe. The world flickered around her and a wave of dizziness sent her into the mirror. Her ring fell from her grip. She reached for her black clothes as the reflection stepped out and then the bedroom was gone and Valkyrie was falling through empty space. She hit the ground and rolled, sprawling on to her back.
Her house was gone. She sat up, groaning, looking down towards the pier as the waves crashed and churned. The modern houses were gone. Old walls crumbled beside dirt tracks instead of roads.
She sat there on the untamed grass, in her underwear and a T-shirt, her phone clutched in her hand. She didn’t have her protective clothing. She didn’t have her Necromancer ring. The only thing she’d managed to do right was release her reflection, so at least her family wouldn’t notice her departure. That was something, at least.
“Looks like we’re in trouble,” her own voice said, and she whipped around to see her reflection sitting behind her.
“You should have given me space,” Valkyrie said, her voice tight.
“I’m sorry,” said the reflection.
“The whole point of your existence is to stay behind, for God’s sake. What use are you if we’re both missing? Mum’s going to freak out.”
“Or she might just assume that you left for school early.”
Valkyrie glared. “Have we ever done that before?”
“No,” it admitted, “but with all the talk of exams lately, she might believe you’re taking it seriously.”
“So she’s going to believe I got up an hour earlier because I wanted some study time?”
The reflection shrugged. “People believe what they want to believe so long as it’s reasonable. But I’m sorry. I should have waited in the mirror until you were gone. I don’t know why I tried to help you up. There might be something wrong with me again.”
Valkyrie didn’t say anything. She was being unfair and she knew it.
“OK,” she said at last, “the plan. The plan is to stay out of sight until we’re pulled back. We need to stay within arm’s reach at all times, all right? I don’t know how long we’ll be here.”
“You’re cold. You need clothes.”
“You need clothes, too. I don’t want you running around in a strange dimension half naked. I have my modesty to protect.”
Valkyrie checked her phone, more out of curiosity than any expectation that it would actually work. No signal and no Internet. She tried to find her position on a map but the phone informed her she could not be located. Out of the two things she had grabbed, why couldn’t she have dropped the phone instead of the ring? The ring at least would have worked.
They found a clothes line that apparently belonged to a big fat man. The trousers were a fine length but they were far too wide, so Valkyrie had to use a piece of string as a belt. The coat was fine, though she had to roll the sleeves up a little. The boots were the worst, though. They were battered and tattered and much too big. But at least she had boots. The reflection was barefoot, and didn’t have a coat, but it did find some loose change in one of its pockets so at least now they had money – even though they had no idea how much the coins were worth.
They were heading for the next town over. The plan was to keep to the back roads and they were succeeding admirably, as every road so far looked like a back road.
“What time is it?” the reflection asked.
“Why, do you have somewhere to be?”
“I’m just asking because your first visit here lasted twenty minutes. We’ve been here hours. It’s nearly dawn.”
“Yeah,” Valkyrie said. “I noticed. Nadir said this echo thing will build its own pattern, but I have no idea how to work it out.”
“We could be here for days.”
“Yeah,” said Valkyrie, her mood failing to lift.
Dawn split the night sky and glorious orange spilled across the horizon. They saw farmers in fields working with mules and horses, sweating in the morning sun. It was just like travelling back in time.
“I wonder if the whole world is like this,” she said. “There has to be one country where things have progressed, where things have been invented. Life evolves, right? It doesn’t just stay in one place and that’s that.”
“It does if you’re a slave,” said the reflection. “That’s what the mortals are in this dimension, aren’t they? Slaves. The sorcerers keep magic for themselves, their lives evolve and their society progresses, but for mortals? They’re kept down here in the mud. They aren’t allowed up.”
Valkyrie looked at it. “That sucks.”
“Yes, it does.”
They got to the next village and bought some bread. Their money didn’t stretch very far, but it was enough to satisfy Valkyrie’s hunger. People looked at them oddly, seeing a set of twins in badly fitting clothes, but didn’t bother them, and Valkyrie and the reflection stayed out of the way as much as possible. The houses here were the same as in Haggard, and the