I dug in. I’ve always been stubborn if rarely brave. In this instance, it only served to escalate our impasse, until I was formally summoned to a parley on the Satisfaction. The Witch was in the kitchen that day, I suddenly remember. Sitting at the table, while Mum stirred a pot on the stove. The Witch lunged into the hallway as I came down the stairs, her brittle black hair coiled on her head like a snake, a long bony finger pointing at my chest, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
‘What are you doing, you little horror?’ Her glare was icy. She breathed through her nose like a bull.
I ran around the bottom of the bannister and barged through the pantry’s black curtain without answering her. But I crept down to Mirrorland with a heavy heart. Being shouted at by the Witch seemed like a very bad omen indeed.
El and Ross were sitting cross-legged in the Captain’s Quarters. In the stern stood Annie, Mouse, Belle, and Old Joe Johnson, the barkeep of the Three-Fingered-Joe Saloon. The Clown representative, to my dismay, was not Dicky Grock, but Pogo. He squatted – grinning – next to the stern lantern, his long, white-gloved fingers clasped loosely between his legs.
‘We’ve called this parley to give the first mate the opportunity to take back what she said about God or face the consequences,’ El said. ‘What do you have to say, First Mate?’
‘I’m not taking anything back.’
‘Just say you take it back.’
‘No.’
El gave a long sigh. ‘Let’s vote. Annie?’
‘Punishment,’ Annie said, tossing her red hair and grinning with sharp teeth. When she growled at me, I blanched.
‘Punishment,’ Belle said, twisting a gold ribbon between her fingers, her expression sorrowful. ‘I’m so sorry, Cat, but you can’t believe in us and God – you have to pick.’
Old Joe voted the same, although he also looked sorry to have to do it. He’d lost a daughter my age in the last big Boomtown shootout. Pogo giggled loud and long before shouting ‘Punishment!’ louder and longer through his bullhorn. When they were in the Clown Café, the Clowns were passive, quiet, often afraid. But never in Mirrorland.
‘Quartermaster, how do you vote?’
Ross was only ever allowed on the Satisfaction during day voyages. It seemed to me hugely unfair that he be allowed an equal vote during parleys. He looked at me, and I saw that he was smiling. ‘Punishment.’
I stared at him until his smirk disappeared, his face flushed red, and he looked away. But inside, my hurt eclipsed even my dread.
‘Mouse?’
Mouse glanced left at El and Ross. ‘Forgiveness,’ she whispered.
‘Big surprise,’ El said. ‘So. Looks like the decision is punishment, First Mate.’ Something crept into her eyes then; it gleamed. And I became cold all over when I realised that it was fear.
‘What are you going to do?’
She marched towards me, one hand behind her back, and when she was close enough to touch, she wheeled her arm around and opened her fist.
I shrank from the small piece of black paper sitting in her palm.
‘You have to take it.’
‘I don’t want to.’
We had never used the Black Spot before. Its possibility was an ever-present threat, but until then that’s all it had been. It meant expulsion from Mirrorland. Permanent exile. I couldn’t believe that my going against El on this one thing – a thing I barely cared about – deserved such awfulness. I was horrified, paralysed with shock.
‘Take it,’ El said.
And so I did. Holding it between thumb and forefinger as if it burned.
‘We’ve decided you should be given one last chance to survive,’ El said, but that gleam told me I wouldn’t like it. ‘You’ve one minute to find a hiding place inside Mirrorland, but it has to be a good one. If we find you before one hour is up, you have to leave Mirrorland and you’ll never get to come back. Okay?’
I nodded. Even though it only felt like a stay of execution.
‘Go!’ Annie shouted.
‘Go!’ Pogo shouted. Black panda eyes in a chalk-white face; his bright red grin sealed around the bullhorn.
Ross laughed, Mouse cowered, and El’s eyes shone like silver marbles.
I turned and ran towards Boomtown, my fingers catching against the walls. The post office was too small. The teepees too obvious – and the Lakota Sioux too uncertain an ally. I began to slow, panicky and indecisive, heart hammering in my chest, rejecting any and all hiding places, until I’d run out of time, until I could hear my jubilantly furious punishers stampeding down the alleyway towards me. I ran along the boardwalk, barged through the marshal’s office door, and dove down behind the booking desk made out of old sofa cushions.
I was too frightened, too filled up with dread and inevitable doom, to do much more than cower when, seconds later, someone’s shadow loomed over mine. Mouse’s eyes were big and black and round in her white-painted face.
‘I knew you’d come here,’ she whispered. ‘I knew I’d find you here.’
I thought I could hear a smile in her voice, and I didn’t like it. I thought of all the times I’d been mean to her after El had been mean to me, and wondered if here, now, was where she’d decided to get revenge.
‘Don’t be scared,’ Mouse whispered, and now I could see her smile. Her teeth. ‘I’ll help you, Cat. I’ll save you.’
‘How?’ Because I could hear giggling getting louder, the scratching of Clown feet on stone. I could hear El’s ‘Let’s split up,’ Ross’s low and excited laugh.
Mouse scowled. ‘Ross is mean.’
‘No, he’s not. He’s—’
Her shadow put its hands on its hips. ‘Do you want me to help you?’
My nod was frantic. But she didn’t move, didn’t speak.
I swallowed. Felt the sting of more tears. ‘Ross
