All Mimsy were the Borogoves


Chapter One:

"This," he decided with exasperation, "is getting ridiculous."

No – make that worse than ridiculous. He had the distinct feeling that he was the victim of some bizarre and unfathomable joke – and that someone, somewhere, was busy laughing at him. He wasn’t laughing. Particularly since the room he’d stepped into appeared be just as peculiar as all the others had been. Pieces of it were crisply defined, sharp and certain with reality, while the rest dwindled into sketchy approximation – spaces where the colours lacked complexity, where the textures blurred and the objects that lurked there lacked comfortable definition. There was a desk, half in, half out of the transition; one end was square and solid, supporting a pattern of sprawled papers, of closed files and office equipment. The other end was bowed towards one corner, its supporting edge wavering upwards from a floor where the tiling shifted from utilitarian squares into something designed by Escher. It looked like someone’s office. The sort of someone who tacked a landscape calendar to his corkboard and stuck ‘to do’ lists on the walls.

He walked across to take a closer look; here, as everywhere else, the words and the letters were the wrong way round.

"Hello?" he called tentatively, just as he’d done in every room before. He’d disturbed something a few rooms back; something that had leapt from furniture and whipped away through a half open window before he could catch more than a glimpse of it. It had been nothing human, that much he was sure of - about the only thing he was sure of, other than perhaps his name.

Giles, he reminded himself firmly. Rupert Emrys Giles.

As long as he could remember that, he felt he wouldn’t be entirely lost.

No-one answered his call – although he had a sudden brief, and disturbing, impression of someone being in the room with him. He turned, but the image he thought he’d glimpsed had already vanished, stepping out of view without going anywhere at all.

"Definitely ridiculous," he decided, flicking along the hanging pages and frowning as he reached the one that only had writing down one edge, many of the words cut off halfway through. The rest of the paper – tacked up on the half of the wall that was suddenly painted brick and then just finger pliant paint – were blank. "Why on earth would anyone ..?"

Put up blank pages?

Build half a room one way, and the rest another?

Pay such attention to detail and yet get so many things wrong ..?

He’d been walking for what felt like hours, stumbling from one room to the next, stepping through doorways that promised one thing yet delivered another. He’d been opening doors that were wood and glass on one side, and nothing more than blank surfaces on the other; moving from tiles to carpet, to wood, to stone and back again, sometimes in the same room - rooms where sharp reality competed with theatrical impression and pure Dhalistical fantasy. He’d dipped in and out of them with bemusement - and hurriedly backed away from the place where everything had seemingly melted, dripping into distorted shape and rippled imagery.

Nothing felt right.

And he had absolutely no idea where he was – or where he was supposed to be, either.

He was looking – he thought he might be looking – for a library. He was sure it had to be around here somewhere. He had the feeling he’d been in it not so long ago. A good, solid, certain kind of place, with books that actually had text in them stacked on the shelves. A place where his footsteps didn’t echo as if they were slightly out of sync with each footfall, and where there weren’t – things - moving just at the edge of his vision. A place where surfaces felt the way they looked, where scent matched the things you smelled, and there was the constant, subtle sound of a real world keeping you company.

Here, he was drowning in the silence.

It was a silence that was occasionally broken by strange noises off, by odd sounds muffled by distance and that fell silent whenever he came close enough to catch what might be making them.

He’d thought, at first, that he was dreaming.

The place – wherever it was – had that feel to it. A feeling of unreality, of being not entirely there. The muzziness of his thoughts, the lack of clarity to his memories, had all supported that initial conclusion.

But dreams usually end.

Even nightmares race to heart pounding conclusions, and wake you in a cold sweat, a choked back scream in your throat.

This place just went – on.

And on.

And on.

Room after room, and all in no comprehensible order. Offices, lounges, bedrooms, boardrooms, deserted bars, seemingly endless corridors – and all them preferable to the glimpses he had caught of outside, the views from shimmering windows that promised sensible landscapes and became something else when you looked past the patches of light and into the dark beyond …

Something moved behind him and he spun round in alarm, catching – just for a moment – the impression of image that sank into the chair behind the desk, the shape that wasn’t there, but still made it bow back, made it shift and settle again.

The sight was eerie and decidedly unsettling. His heart had accelerated with alarm and his breathing sounded ragged and forced in the otherwise silent room. He took a moment to settle both, and then made himself walk round the desk and look down at the chair. It was still moving subtly, a creaking shift and sway that suggested it was occupied. But there was nobody in it. He confirmed the fact by reaching down and touching the back, sweeping the seat with his fingers – then jumped back in startlement as paper shuffled across the desk, sheets of it being lifted and turned.

"Oh good Lord," he gulped, pressing his hand to his chest in an effort to keep his heart from tearing out of it. Nothing else had moved, and nothing seemed to be actually threatening him – it was just the sheer unexpectedness of the activity that had triggered all his alarm bells.

He frowned over that while he waited for his moment of panic to subside. The phantom movements continued – but there was no sense of a ghost, no feeling of presence, no frigid air or unearthly energy. That somehow made it more unnerving, not less. He had a feeling he could have coped with a ghost. That encountering one would have somehow helped him focus the swirl of thoughts and memories that were dancing inside his head, just beyond his reach.

Where am I? he wondered, risking a wary glance out of the window at the side of the desk. There was a street below him – a paved street, with dingy buildings and parked cars. It appeared to be a street that went from urban uniformity to a crooked, angled menace only a short distance away. The daylight only seemed to fall on the pavement beneath the window; the rest of it was swallowed in a purpling gloom in which hints of shapes moved in and out of the shadows. Something rippled down the road, under the tarmac. A car bounced up as it passed. Something with too many legs hurtled out from under it – and a mouth opened in the pavement, snatched it and then closed again with a deep gurgling swallow.

Giles stepped back from the window with a shudder. This definitely wasn’t his world. He knew he didn’t belong here.

But nor did he know where here was.

He was about to turn and leave the room, to look for another exit off the seemingly endless corridors, when something caught his eye. There was a mirror on the far wall, placed to reflect the more coherent end of the room, and it was hanging slightly askew.

It was also glowing.

Only a little. Just enough to draw his attention, just enough to make him realise that the daylight was beginning to die away. Night was coming – and he had the feeling that night was not a time to be wandering these eerie halls alone. A sudden sense of danger caught at him, suggesting that to linger in this place past nightfall might be something he’d have cause to regret; he had to find a place to hide. A place he could barricade and defend.

But the mirror drew him, the light it offered tantalising him with an odd familiarity. There had been mirrors in all the other rooms, he realised, although he hadn’t paid them that much attention. This one was as mundane as all the rest – a simple rectangle of silvered glass with a plain, thin wooden frame. It was filled with an equally simple view of the room, and went on being filled with it, despite his stepping right up to it and getting in the way.

Rupert Giles blinked.

Swallowed hard

Then reached out a shaky hand to brush the cold smooth surface of the mirror – feeling it flex slightly under his touch. His reflection – such as it was – was barely visible. He was little more than a misted image, echoed in the surface of the glass rather than the silver that lay behind it. Through that, beyond that, he was looking at the inside of a room.

A room with at least three people in it.

One of them was seated in the swivel chair, while another was stood at his shoulder, carefully turning pages from the folder that they were both studying. The third was sitting on the corner of the desk, nodding thoughtfully at the silent conversation that was being exchanged. Outside, in the street, a street lamp was beginning to flicker into life.

Slowly, fearfully, Giles turned his head, in time to see the matching flicker flare into life outside his version of the room. The room that was still empty. The room that echoed the movements taking place within the translucent frame.

"Oh dear lord," he whispered, splaying his palm against the jellied surface of the glass to support himself as his knees threatened to give way. He was shaking, quivering both inside and out, his stomach churning and his whole body trembling with shock and realisation.

Everything suddenly made complete and horrifying sense.

The partially defined rooms.

The silence.

The way the furniture moved of its own accord. The reason the books were filled with empty pages and why their titles were printed on them in reverse.

The glimpses of an outside world that mocked the sanity of his own.

He wasn’t looking into a mirror.

He was looking out of one.


Night fell quickly in the world behind the mirrors. Realising that darkness was creeping on him apace, Giles had peeled himself away from the dingy glass and the squalid office it overlooked and gone looking for potential sanctuary. He was practically running by the time he found it, hounded by a sense of something stirring in the halls, of something that – should it catch a glimpse of him, should it sense his presence – would hunt him down without mercy.

He checked seemingly endless doors, racing through empty rooms and along twisted passages, trying not to look outside their darkening windows, or be caught by the tantalising images that now glowed brightly from inside the mirrored glass hanging on their walls. After finding – and rejecting – several furnished rooms with windows that were way too large, even if they only had a single door in and out, he eventually stumbled into somewhere much more promising.

The foyer of a hotel.

It was one of those old fashioned five star establishments with mirrored ceilings, gilt painted pillars and sofas that looked as if they could swallow you whole. The plush carpet was reproduced exactly, the mirrors above it producing a practically perfect reflection. There were paintings hanging in alcoves, a long low reception desk, and doors that opened into what looked an elevator car with mirrors on either side. There was also, he spotted with a distinct sense of relief, a decorative arrangements of shields and weapons hanging on one wall.

Something snuffled outside the foyer’s entry doors as he started to cross the carpet; not a particularly loud noise but one impossible to miss in the otherwise heavy silences. He froze in place for a moment, not daring to breath until what ever it was moved away. The need to run, the need to find a place of safety, nagged at him like an unreachable itch. Part of him was arguing that this large open space might be a good place to spend the night, with time to spot danger before it reached him and bolt holes and exits in practically every direction - but instinct was crying out for somewhere more secure, somewhere with sturdy walls and a defensible entry, somewhere hidden and out of the way.

Instinct – and possibly some of those elusive and unfocused memories - won the battle. He had the distinct feeling that if he saw what threatened him, it would be too late to do anything about it. His only chance was to hide. To make sure it didn’t see him at all.

A few moments later he was hitching a ride up in the elevator, two long daggers thrust into his belt, and a comfortingly heavy sword sitting in his left hand. He’d feared for a minute or two that he’d be unable to lay claim to, or even affect anything reflected by the mirrors, but the display had supplied him with just what he needed, and once the weapons were in his hands they seemed to have taken on his own, semi reflective properties. Looking back, he wondered if any of the hotel guests would spot that the reality of the display was no longer being reflected truthfully – but then he questioned whether anyone ever looked at a reflection that closely.

If they did, someone would have seen him by now.

Like the guests he shared the elevator with. They were crisp and clear in the mirrors, while his own image was little more than that of a ghost; he rode up in perfect comfort, occupying an empty car, while they shuffled and smiled awkwardly at each other, as hotel guests often do.

He stepped out of the car into a plushly furnished corridor, and hastily followed an unseen guest into their room. A typical hotel room, as it turned out. One high up in a tower block somewhere, its doubled glazed windows looking out across a cityscape filled with twinkling lights. It was hard to tell where, exactly, since most of the window space was almost immediately covered with a thick and heavy curtain. Giles was happy with that. He had no desire to see what lurked out in the night, and no wish to attract anything’s attention either. There was a large mirror occupying one wall, one in the passage by the door and another on the door of the wardrobe, which meant that the room was more or less reassuringly normal in all directions.

It also meant that when the guest dropped the latch on the door the action was clearly reflected, locking him in. He heaved a sigh of relief and moved a little more confidently into the room itself. A locked door was no guarantee of safety, of course, but it certainly lessened the chance of something finding him by accident. He didn’t understand the rules of this world he’d found himself in, and until he figured a few of them out, he was both vulnerable and at a distinct disadvantage. The hotel seemed to be a more stable setting among the shifting, random rooms that he’d been exploring earlier. Probably something to do with the multiplication of mirrors, and the many reflections which reinforced its sense of reality.

Whatever it was, he was grateful to find a moments respite in this strange and unsettling dimension, and …

Oh Lord.

The mirror on the wardrobe was offering him a rather unexpected vision of his room mate. She was blond, slightly plump, somewhere in her late twenties – and currently getting undressed right in front of him. He gulped and hastily looked away, casting round to see which of the two twin beds she’d chosen to occupy. The one nearest the window had the covers turned back, so he took a calculated moment or two to check the softness of the other mattress before climbing onto it and settling himself there, crossed legged with the sword lying across his knees. His reflected company had wandered into the bathroom by then; he heaved a small sigh of relief and leaned back against the headboard, vowing not to look when she wandered out again. It wasn’t fair to her, to have him sitting there, a silent and unseen voyeur – but it was too late to seek alternative accommodation. He needed to feel safe, and he needed to be somewhere where he could defend himself should the need arise.

Besides, there was something oddly comforting about her presence, a reassurance that there really was a world behind the mirrors – the real world, the one where he belonged. The memory of another blonde – of a pert smile and a very pretty face – surfaced from the murky haziness that currently flooded his past and he seized it with determination, closing his eyes and trying to focus on the tangled threads that lay around it. The young woman was important to him somehow. His consideration of her face stirred any number of emotions, including concern, pride and a fierce sense of protectiveness. There was a name that belonged with all that complexity and he teased it out with care, unraveling it from the almost overwhelming thoughts and feelings that surrounded her.

Buffy.

He lifted the memory of her name out of his mental fuzziness and laid it carefully beside his own.

Rupert Emrys Giles.

Buffy Ann Summers.

My Slayer.

The appellation fell into place with startling abruptness, almost as if he’d flicked a mental switch somewhere. Fragments of memory took shape around it. He was a Watcher. Buffy was his Slayer. Together they fought dark powers; the vampires, the demons, and the forces of evil …

He opened his eyes with a gasp, his heart racing and the sound of his breath harsh in the otherwise silent room. The sense of sudden terror that his recollections had stirred didn’t go away. There was – something – very close by. Something that moved with almost silent grace, that stalked through the passages with purposeful steps. Something that brought with it a creeping, menacing chill. Something hunting in the dark.

Hunting him.

Giles held his breath, the fingers of his left hand creeping to curl around the hilt of the sword while his heart pounded too loudly inside his chest. The menace crept closer, the cold oozing in under the door and the clarity of the reflection shifting and shimmering as whatever it was paused outside the room. For a long, nerve stretching moment it lingered there, a hint of claws clicking at the wood. Sweat slowly trickled down his forehead and into his eyes; he didn’t dare move to wipe it away.

He feared that, if he so much as breathed, he would give himself away …

A fearsome hiss and an unearthly howl suddenly shattered the silences; a sound like a rumble of thunder raced away down the passageway – and the soul shivering something followed it, charging in pursuit with a nerve wrenching growl and what sounded like a sudden clatter of spines.

Oh dear Lord

He relaxed back against the headboard with a disconcerted gulp, discovering that he was shaking from head to toe.

That was close.

Far, far too close for comfort.

The blonde came back, moving through the mirrors like a golden angel, taunting him with her indifference to the menace which had crept so close to her door. Would she have seen the thing if it had entered? Would she have seen the glass darken with its shadow? Or would his fate gone unnoticed in the real world?

Would anyone notice?

He was trapped, lost in a world he didn’t understand, with less than echoes of memory to guide and advise him. He couldn’t remember how or why he was wandering behind the mirrors, but something told him it hadn’t been of his own volition. Did his friends, his slayer, already think him dead – or had he just vanished from their lives without sign or sound, leaving no hint of where he might be?

He didn’t know – but nor was he about to give in to despair. He might not recall much about who and what he was, but it was enough to be certain of one thing; he had to find a way back. Find a way out.

Buffy needed him.


Chapter Two

Return to Index