The Lasts and the Hall of Mirrors Read online

  The Lasts

  And the Hall of Mirrors

  By Tabitha Scott

  This work is copyrighted. No part of this book may be reproduced in

  any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  Copyright 2019 © by K. S. A. Butcher

  All rights reserved.

  Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada

  ASIN:

  Dedication:

  Dedicated to all the people who struggle, in whatever way, and wherever you may be.

  Table of Contents

  And the Hall of Mirrors

  Dedication:

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Magic SIM cards

  Chapter 2: The Locks

  Chapter 3: The Mirror

  Chapter 4: Weapons Storage?

  Chapter 5: Old Straw… Maybe?

  Chapter 6: Joseph

  Chapter 7: Home

  Chapter 8: The Witch House

  Chapter 9: Sister Margaret

  Chapter 10: Goldenbridge

  Chapter 11: The Scene

  Chapter 12: The Weapons Rack

  Chapter 13: Home

  Chapter 14: Dinner and Then Work

  Chapter 15: The Letter

  Chapter 16: How to Splinter an Entrance

  Chapter 17: Returning to the Graveyard

  Chapter 18: The Hazel

  Chapter 19: The Meeting

  Chapter 20: The Service

  Chapter 21: At the Graveside

  A call to readers:

  Acknowledgements:

  Disclaimer:

  Chapter 1: Magic SIM cards

  “Can you help me? I can’t find my sister.”

  “Oh, you’re lost, you poor little thing.” The young woman bent down to Clara’s face height.

  Clara had bailed up a young American couple near one of the stops for the hop on buses used for touring Dublin. It was early summer, but it had been raining, so there were only a few people around at the moment. Clara and her sister, Precipice, had watched for some time to pick out a worthwhile mark. It was the poorly guarded, open purse that had attracted them.

  “Where did you lose her, was it near here?” the woman asked.

  Clara was managing a good stream of tears, and had some of her nicer clothes on. This was a scam that they couldn’t have run with their normal street clothes, as they were after something special, so Clara had to look the part of a little lost girl, rather than the street urchin she was.

  “There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Precipice brushed between the two startled tourists, leaning down toward her sister with her pick grasped out of sight.

  “Penny!” Clara’s arms wrapped around her sister, hiding Precipice’ arm from view as the stolen cell phone was stowed into the inner pocket of Clara’s jacket.

  “Oh, you’ve found her! That’s lovely. Did you lose her for long?” the woman asked.

  “No, no, it weren’t more than five minutes, I looked away and she were gone,” Precipice answered. “Thank you for finding her. Come along, Lisa, we don’t want to be worrying the young couple.”

  Precipice began ferrying the mock tearful Clara away.

  “I hope she’s okay,” the woman called after them.

  When the two girls rounded a corner, they ran down a side street, and then down another laneway to be sure they were well out of sight.

  “They seemed nice.” Clara was regretful.

  “Don’t worry too much, they’re rich. They came here from America just for a holiday. They can afford to lose a phone. It’s almost compulsory – come to Ireland, lose your phone, they’ll talk about it for ages. Remember the two girls who stole our phone in Dublin, wasn’t that a lark. Good times.”

  Clara giggled.

  “Let’s see it now, I want to make sure it isn’t password protected.”

  Clara handed the phone to Precipice.

  “It’s pink,” Clara commented with a big smile on her face. “It looks pretty.”

  “Aye, no password either.” Precipice took the back cover off the phone and changed the SIM card for the one she had bought for the pay as you go account she had set up. The actual phone was beyond their means at the moment, but they’d told the store that they had a phone they could already use, and now they did.

  “Here, you’ve got a phone now, Clara.”

  “Good, but we have to return the card. You said we would.”

  “Okay, I’ll go see if they’re still there. You get changed, you know the plan.”

  Clara slipped into a nearby gutter while Precipice went to watch the couple still waiting for their bus. After a few minutes Clara – having changed into her street clothes – caught up with Precipice.

  “Here,” Precipice gave Clara the SIM card. “Give me back your phone though, if you get caught you don’t want it on you.”

  Precipice held out her hand, and Clara slapped the phone down in her sister’s open palm.

  “You know what to do.”

  Clara took the card and began skipping over toward the American couple. Precipice had explained the importance of SIM cards to her younger sister before they had gone looking for a phone. All the American woman’s phone numbers would be on the card, and maybe some personal notes and such. For most people the SIM card was more important than the phone. After she had found that out, Clara had insisted that they return the card from the phone since the girls wouldn’t need it, but Precipice had told her that if she wanted that to happen, then she had to do it herself.

  The plan was for Clara to just skip past and drop the SIM card in the handbag. The woman slung it toward her back rather than at her side, which was what made her such an easy mark. Returning the card would be much easier to do than plucking the phone out, which Precipice had done while the couple had been distracted by little, lost Lisa. However, when Clara was about half-way to her target, everything went wrong. The hop on tourist bus pulled up, and the small, loose crowd of people who had been milling around waiting for it, all converged around the entrance, including the American couple.

  Clara stopped, realising that her opportunity was lost. She squeezed the SIM card in her hand, wishing it to be in the woman’s purse. Then without thinking, she held her hand out, and as if it were stolen by the wind, the card was carried from Clara’s palm, reeling in circles in the air, as if little more than a leaf, until it found its way through the crowd of people to the open purse where Clara knew it belonged.

  The ten year old girl stood there and watched as the young couple climbed into the bus and then went up to the top story of the double decker to catch the view, not even aware that the woman’s phone was gone, or that the SIM card was there in her purse.

  “Wow. Just wow.” Precipice put her hand on her sister’s shoulder and pulled her to her side. “That, was an awesome bit of magic. Wow.”

  “You saw it too?” Clara looked up at her sister.

  “I saw it alright.”

  “Why didn’t anyone else see it?” Clara asked.

  The bus pulled away with the American couple not realising that the two Last girls were there watching them.

  “Maybe because they weren’t paying attention. But… wow, that was the real shebang.”

  Chapter 2: The Locks

  Clara and Precipice made their way back to their bolthole, the souterrain, an ancient underground dwelling that they had come upon almost two years before under the streets of Dublin. To gain access, they made their way down from the touristed main road of O’Connell street, to one of its side roads, and then off into a laneway used by local businesses for garbage pickup.

  The two girls waited until no one was passing by the end of the lanew
ay before slipping down past a broken grill that led into the sewers below. There, a few feet along, the brick lined wall was broken away, revealing an entrance to a vast limestone cavern. The girls made their way there while Precipice added the four numbers she knew to Clara’s phone – those being her own phone number, their tattoo artist friend Fianna’s phone number, Fianna’s boss Donnelly’s number, and that of Hartley Broke Nose, the Northside gang enforcer who had been friendly to the two girls.

  “There, all four numbers are entered. You’re set.” Precipice handed the phone back to her sister.

  “Do you think it has games on it, Precipice? It would be good if it has games.”

  “Bound to, you won’t have to borrow my phone to play Angry Birds anymore.”

  “That’ll be hatchet!” Clara beamed. “Hey, look there.”

  Clara had found the light app on her phone, and was pointing it ahead along the cavern to the tunnel entrance that lead to the souterrain. Both girls stopped short on the spot. There ahead of them wasn’t the shadowy entrance to their home – there was still a lot of shadow, but there was also a very substantial door, which you would only have noticed if you knew where to look. It was made of heavy beams of wood that could well have been discarded railway ties, and there were also very substantial, hinges, a handle… and a door lock.

  “What’s that?” Precipice asked.

  “It looks like a door.”

  “A very big door. Where did it come from? Did you imagine a door and make it happen magically, or something?

  “I didn’t do that,” Clara asserted. “Did you do that? You wanted a better door. Did you imagine that?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m not even sure if that’s how magic works.”

  The two girls looked at each other, but it was Clara who reacted quickest.

  “Túathal!” Clara screamed.

  Túathal Techtmar was a wraith, the ancient spirit of a long dead High King of Ireland. He had been sent by the Morrígan to look after the two young girls, and came whenever they called.

  “You need only whisper my name, young Miss Last.” Túathal Techtmar coalesced from the darkness ahead of them.

  “She likes to call you like that, it’s more immediate,” Precipice told Túathal.

  “Ah, and what immediacy am I required for?”

  The two girls turned to the door and pointed.

  “I suppose you are admiring my wood-work. It is a very solid door,” Túathal smirked.

  “And how are we to get in?” Clara swept her arms out to the sides, palms upward as she asked the question.

  Túathal rubbed the beard on his chin. “It would seem that a key may be needed.”

  “Aye, so where is this mysterious key?” Precipice played along.

  “As the elder Last, it is for you to find.” Túathal bowed to Precipice backing away into the shadows as he disappeared from view.

  Precipice and Clara stepped forward in panic.

  “What the?” Precipice exclaimed.

  “He’s locked us out of our home, Precipice!”

  “Aye, whatever is he thinking?” But Precipice already knew the answer, she grimaced to herself. “Though… he told us that I’m to find the key. It be a test of some kind.”

  The elder sister turned toward the door and went to inspect it. It had a heavy, old fashioned lock that would need a large, heavy key.

  “What do I do now?” Precipice asked herself.

  “Do you think he wants you to use magic?” Clara asked.

  “Aye, like what you did with the SIM card. I guess I need to use some sort of magical thing to find the key. Although…” Precipice tried to turn the handle of the door, hoping it might open and that the keys would be there on the other side, but the door was forcefully locked. “No, that were too easy, I have to use my noodle about this one.”

  As she took her hand away from the door, Precipice felt a slight tingling in the tips of her fingers, which almost disappeared when she withdrew it far enough. She hesitated for a moment, then moved her hand back toward the door again – until the tingling returned.

  Precipice held her hand there for some time, thinking, as she felt the sensation of whatever it was that her hand was feeling.

  “Clara, what did you feel when you made the SIM card move like you did?”

  “I don’t know, I just made it move. I had it in my hand, and wished it to where it went. Then it just went there.”

  “You don’t know how you did it?”

  “I just did it.”

  “You just did it,” Precipice murmured to herself. Then she moved her hand to the lock, and turned it, as though a key were there – when there wasn’t. The lock clicked, and the door swayed open less than half an inch. Surprised, Precipice pulled the massive door fully open, though it was so well balanced on its hinges and frame that the weight could barely be felt.

  “Oh, that were magic too!” Clara exclaimed.

  Beyond the door, Túathal waited for them, and beyond Túathal there was another door, every bit as formidable as the first.

  “Now it is your turn, young Last: one door for each sister.” Túathal moved out into the cavern to let Clara pass behind him.

  Clara looked to Precipice, but with a nod from her sister she went to the second door, closely followed by her cat, who was brushing against her legs wanting to be picked up. Ignoring the feline, Clara tentatively mimicked Precipice’ actions. The first time it didn’t work, but taking a deep breathe to calm herself she wished upon the magic, and on her second attempt the second lock clicked open.

  “That’s hatchet,” Clara whispered.

  “The locks were set by the Morrígan herself as a test for the two of you. You are both mistresses of locks now. There are other locks you must recognise – not all locks are human made. You must learn how to open them as well, but here ends your first lesson.”

  Chapter 3: The Mirror

  Túathal faded away into darkness again, leaving the two Last girls to their own devices. The girls were getting used to the wraith appearing and disappearing as he did. It was just Túathal.

  “Let’s see how we lock this thing up.” Precipice closed the first door behind them, and as she did the lock clicked shut. There was also a bar for extra security, so she put that in place for good measure. The second door closed in the same way.

  “That feels better,” Precipice commented. She had been worried about all the comings and goings of the strange magical beings that seemed to frequent the caverns outside the souterrain, including the Aes Sídhe – the faery soldiers who they had already fought once, and whom she was still very wary of despite the sometime aid they had given the girls. The doors gave the sisters a type of security they had not had in years.

  “It does feel better, doesn’t it, Precipice? No more rats, though, cat.” Clara had picked up the cat and was cuddling it.

  “No, no more rats.” Precipice was not unhappy about that. “Cat will have to scratch at the door when she wants to go out to hunt.”

  As the girls came out of the tunnel that led from their new doors to the souterrain proper, even in the dimness of the light it was clear that something had changed. Some of the light from their cell phones was reflecting back at them from the side of the chamber.

  “What’s that, Precipice?”

  “Well…” Watching her feet, as there was a lot of stuff on the floor, Precipice moved closer to the reflection. “… it’s a mirror, a dressing mirror.”

  The path to the new item was littered with weapons that the girls had taken out from the old storage pots that lay on one side of the chamber. The weapons had been in some of the pots for hundreds of years, kept in oil, which had stopped them from rusting. Precipice and Clara had gone through a few of the clay containers in the past, but now that they had need of weapons they had decided to take everything out of the pots to see exactly what there was. The girl’s had lain out everything on old newspapers that would soak up the oil and not make a mess of their place.
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  “Túathal must have put that there,” Clara said.

  “Aye, must have. Strange thing to leave here though. I mean, it’s nice, it’ll be good to have a mirror, but it’s not on the top of our list of things we need. Nowhere near.”

  “Aye, you’re right, and it’s so large too, almost as high as the ceiling.”

  “It’s an older style dressing mirror, nowadays they just put mirrors on a wall, but this one is a standalone. I’m not even sure they make them like that anymore.”

  “We’d have had a hard time putting one on a wall here.” Clara was looking around at the rough stonework that lined their bolthole. There wasn’t an area smooth enough to mount a mirror anywhere that she could see, and how would they put boltholes in stone work anyway?

  “Aye. This one works because of that, but it’s still a strange gift. I don’t know what to make of it,” Precipice said.

  “I bet it didn’t come from Túathal at all; I bet it’s from the Morrígan. Túathal said that she were here doing the locks or some such. I bet she popped in, saw we didn’t have a mirror, and thought to herself – blazes, gotta get those girls a mirror.”

  Precipice laughed. “Right, well, we’ve other things to do now. These weapons are all dried out, we need to move them out of the way before we cut a foot off, or somewhat.”

  “We need a cupboard or something to keep them in.”

  “Aye, but good luck getting one down here. I think once we work out what there is we’ll put the weapons we have no use for back in the oil pots. We’ll keep some of the others out in case we have need of them. We’ll write down what we have though, and where we put them. For now, we’ll just move them off to the side so that we don’t accidentally hurt ourselves.”

  “Aye,” Clara replied. “Though maybe we could get Túathal to build us a small weapons cupboard or something for the ones we keep out.”

  Precipice’ head popped up at that idea. “That be a thought. I wonder if he would?” Then she shrugged. “We can ask him later. I’ll get a pen and some paper. We’ll list the weapons we put back in the two pots. I’ll move them, you write down a description of each one.”