When the rich voice told Jasmine to keep her eyes forward and pretend everything was normal, she did it. She knew it must be the voice of the lady who had looked through the hole beside the painting in Silver Mary's home.
But it was so weird to hear that big empty cave echoing beside her where there should only be close, secret wood and plaster walls. “Why shouldn’t I look?” she asked.
But the voice only said, “Clip clip, my dear. Get along to your home.”
Jasmine had not stopped walking. Step after step she took toward home, and all the time she felt the big empty space beside her, and the presence of the dark-haired lady. She was a little girl in the dark and she finally felt a tingle of fear like the ringing of bells far away.
I’m Clara and I’m walking downstairs with my candle to check on my Nutcracker, she told herself. Popster had taken her to see the Nutcracker every year since she was three.
But the voice of the lady reassured her. “Simply don’t look, my dear. Keep walking, there’s a love.”
Everything was fine if the lady was beside her. No need to whistle or do anything but keep walking. Did she hear a hiss or did she only imagine it? Her right hand reached out and brushed reassuring plaster and wood.
She gasped, then settled down. A gloved hand had taken her left hand reassuringly. She walked in comfortable silence with the pretty lady from the picture holding her hand. Very soon, Jasmine expected to see the sliver of light from the little door into Yako and Popster’s bedroom. It was taking a long time to show up. The corridors were never completely dark but the small yellow-orange flame-shaped bulbs cast only a very dim glow.
Why shouldn’t she look? She trusted the lady but she was curious. When she finally felt the left hand wall return and knew she was past whatever it was, she sneaked just one quick look back.
She snatched her gaze back as if her face had been scalded!
She hadn’t been walking past an empty cave at all, it was full of monsters! They’d been dead quiet and she hadn’t even felt them the way she could usually feel the energy of people. Some had horns, some had bumpy red skin like a roasted lobster (which Jasmine would never eat because it was so mean to put them into the boiling water alive), some looked like ordinary people, some even were really pretty.
They were demons, that’s what they were, she’d just walked past a cave full of demons! They were jammed in there so crazy and crowded it hurt her eyes to look at them.
Small heart pattering, Jasmine looked straight ahead. There was the sliver of light from the little door. She hurried forward, the gloved hand still holding hers, and pulled it open. There was the bedroom, just one step now away now.
The gloved hand held tight to hers and wouldn’t let her cross the threshold.
Afraid now, Jasmine turned and in the dim light, looked up at the pretty face of the lady from the picture.
The tall form knelt beside her and earnest eyes looked into hers. Jasmine felt her heart skid in her chest.
“Well done, my dear,” the rich voice said. “But you looked, did you not?”
Shyly, Jasmine nodded. The lady sighed.
“Well, it was to be expected, I suppose. But the Bronze Ones did not see you looking, so that’s alright.”
Stolen novel; please report.
“Are you magic?” Jasmine asked. “Are you a fairy?” Then, in a breathless rush, “Are you my fairy godmother?”
The lady laughed a merry laugh. “Hardly. Oh no indeed. No, I’m afraid that I can’t tell you exactly what I am, not yet. But I can assure you I am on the side of the heroes. I am a manifestation of what you would call God, dear child.”
Jasmine’s face went long with distress. “But there isn’t a God, not prob’ly. Popster says he doesn’t ‘have a subscription to any notions like God’ but I can believe whatever I want to believe and he’ll love me and Yako is a Buddhist and Sid Hartha Got My Buddha isn’t god, is he?”
The lady regarded her affectionately. “Whether there is truly a God, my love, I am not the one to tell you. I certainly have never met Him. Or Her. But be that as it may. I haven’t properly introduced myself. My full proper name is Theophania, but you may call me, as most do, Tiffany.”
She held out a gloved hand and Jasmine shook it. “I’m Jasmine Miyazuki Rainbow Bear. Do you make the lamps with the rainbow glass? I think they’re so pretty.”
“I’m afraid I don’t, but I agree with you, they’re delightful. Your name is quite a mouthful, my love.”
“You should just call me Jasmine.”
“I gathered as much. Now Jasmine, I have something dreadfully important to tell you. Can you listen and be very brave?”
Jasmine looked her in the eye. “Can you please let go my hand first and how ‘bout you come through the door and meet my Pop and my Yako?”
Tiffany instantly released her hand. “Rude of me. I do apologize. As for your parents, you may give them my love, but I can only walk between the worlds for now, though that will change and soon. Are you ready to hear?”
Jasmine studied her for another instant, then made the kind of decision which came so easily to her. Kissing Tiffany on the cheek, she said, “You’re good.” Then, just like RJ would have, she said, “I’m all ears.”
Tiffany’s cheek took on a bright rose bloom. “Tis simply this. The world will change soon and many frightening things will happen. You will need to be brave. The demons you saw will soon be able to leave their world and come into yours. Until that happens, and even, perhaps most especially, after that happens, it is very important that you continue to walk these corridors between the worlds. Let these cool twisty passages become as familiar to you as your own nursery.”
Jasmine thought she meant a nursery for plants, but she kept listening. “You’re a very special child,” Tiffany continued. “I’d not have thought it possible for anyone to see me peeping at dear Mary, but you did. So, pray continue the homespun magic which you do, my child.”
Jasmine liked that Tiffany used such adult words with her. She knew that homespun didn’t mean like President Lincoln’s clothes when he was a little boy in a log cabin. Tiffany thought Jasmine worked magic!
Then she frowned. “Will I see those demon guys again?”
“I’m afraid you might. But they cannot do anything to you as long as you ignore them. I don’t think they could touch you even if you did look, but it’s better if they think you see them as little as any normal human would. You will see other and better magical things. Can you risk a spot of ugliness for the chance of seeing great beauty?”
“They weren’t super ugly or anything,” Jasmine explained. “Just weird. And I couldn’t feel them. I thought the place I was walking past was just empty.”
Tiffany looked at her with something like awe. “You are a very special child indeed. Please, please keep exploring these pathways. You probably don’t even need this but…” She reached out and touched the small door behind Jasmine. “There. I’ve marked your little door such that you can always always find your way back to it, no matter where you go.”
Tiffany’s magic was like roses wreathing the door. But Jasmine didn’t need it: the sweet feel of her own home was like praline candy. “I already know how to find it,” she assured Tiffany.
“I suspected as much, but I’ll leave my mark stand, if I may. You or someone might need it someday. And now, I have one last favor to ask, and then I must go, though I shall see you again, I know it. Mary Hammond has a son, a boy much like you in spirit. I hope you will play with him and be great friends.”
Jasmine shrugged. “Sure,” she said. Boys could be a pain in the hoo-hah, but if Tiffany asked, she could do it. (When she later met Giles, she was surprised to find he was already a grownup.)
Tiffany shook her hand again. “Off you go, then, love, to your home. You may tell your parents anything you wish, but it were best if you do not speak of it outside this special building. Ta, love.” And she faded into the dark and was gone.
Jasmine was pretty sure Tiffany had just walked away but she might have disappeared, poof.
It was a serious but radiant Jasmine who emerged into her home a moment later to find both RJ and Hiyako still deeply absorbed in their art. She was bursting and couldn’t wait to tell them, but she went and got clay and shaped herself a beautiful fairy head while she waited.