One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [27]
“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