#everything is true

The library was grey stone, rug laden and plush inside, drapes and tapestries thick on the walls.

Nibs the Scribe turned out to be a very old and strange little man, about five feet tall, but stooped with age. He had an odd blunt face and a slopping forehead and stood before Helix, examining her like a shop keeper with new merchandise, while quizzing both she and Jinx “And it names her to the cover?” he asked Jinx.

“That it did, Nibs old friend, my own eyes told the tale.”

“And you have how many for years when it finds you?” the little man queried Helix

“I was nine,” said Helix, working her way through the grammar.

“And then you must be over here and we are see” the little man decided, and sat them down at a table while he got a trolley out and disappeared into the bookshelves.

“Jinx,” said Helix desperately, “you have to tell me what the shit, man; I am way out of my element here. Or my head” she muttered.

“Right y'are, I s'pose, “ sighed Jinx, “well.. it's the Book, innit? Ye ought never 'ave come by it Helix, lostling or no.”

“What? Dude, speak English.”

“Look you, there are many of your people that are compatible with the All Side, but have never woken up to it or found their way here. We call them Lostlings. Now that Book is from the All Side, and designed for a .. a strange Working, and fit for a specific mindset at a certain age. And you, lost me lass, come along at that age, all trimmed to suit it, and find the one that I mislaid.”

No pin dared drop as Helix sat looking at him.

“Yeah right,” she said, finally. “Jesus Christ, where are we even sitting right now? How can this really… really? I mean… really??” Helix looked around herself “did you like, y'know, put acid in my coffee?”

Jinx tilted his head, “Do yas truly not believe in spellcraft 'n' gods? Amazing.”

“Magic.” Helix said slowly, “Is just. Science. I don't. Understand.”

Jinx looked at her as if gauging her ability to reason. Finally he said “Then do you understand that each of the particles in The Book which you found is a Worked Creation, and each of those is its own limited consciousness? With a body and a will to direct it? And there are among us beings whose bodies have stopped aging, whose minds are redesigned? And can you understand that the One Side which you are from is .. is a spectrum out of the available rainbow? And that the Laws of Physics as you call them that you are just now grasping are only a ninth of the Laws that govern the Single-Yet-Multi-'Verse?”

Helix was quiet a minute, thinking. “Nnn… nano-bots, genetic manipulation, multidimensional string theory?” she ventured, and then was forced to sit for several minutes trying to tell Jinx everything she could remember understanding about nanotechnology and string theory.

Jinx looked at her for a minute, and burst out laughing. “That. Is. Amazing. I mean not really, no, but, you've gotten so much closer so quickly. I mean, yes, some of what you said are the things I said… in the way that a rubber ball is the same thing as it's surface area. I s'pose you might, if you were taught by a specialist for a few years, be able to understand the basics of even maybe most of it, given enough tutoring.. and perhaps a few modifications.” Jinx paused. “No, challenged me lass, you'd best stick to calling it magic,” he said, finally.

Helix sat as Too Good to Be True and Too Frightening to Be True and Too Real to Be Untrue fought a small tournament in her skull. She leaned back into the safe cushions of disbelief “Come on, Jinx, I gotta stop this nonsense and go back. Or maybe I wake up from this ricockulousness and go get my passport?”

“Passport! Shite! Thank you for reminding me. Stay here” and with that, Jinx got up and hurried off into the books.

Helix, hardly having slept in so long, put her head down on the table, trying to digest it all. "Oh no, it's not magic," she thought sarcastically, as her mind gently closed the shutters on her and took itself off for a nap, "it's just that they've figured out how to actually cut her in half."

Helix woke up face down on a wooden table surrounded by books, saw the time, and panicked. And when she finished panicking about the possibility of missing her passport appointment, and considered where she was and what she could be panicking about instead, she collapsed sideways off her chair in a fit of laughter.

Jinx poked his head out from around a huge pile of books, and said, “Well, laughter's rarely a dangerous or permanent affliction” and returned to being one of two stacks of books having a conversation. Helix subsided to giggles.

"I bet he really could so turn himself into a stack of books," she thought in delirious delight, "With science. And a wand." and she giggled some more. Gradually she remembered her appointment and wondered aloud, “Do I even need a passport anymore? Am I even in the real world anymore? HA!” she suddenly burst out, “LET'S SEE THE N.S.A. RECORD THIS CONVERSATION!” and she hopped up and did a little dance around the room, pumping her fists triumphantly.

Jinx and Nibs looked at her like a pair of dog-sitters worried the aged poodle they're watching might not live 'til the Mctaggarty's vacation ended. Concluding she wouldn't die of whatever was wrong with her, they turned back to their research.

Helix wound down like a top, coming to rest back on her chair. “Seriously though,” she said after a moment of quiet, “should I still be trying to get to my passport appointment?”

Jinx didn't look up from reading “Of course you should, only not yet, you've got a while still.”

“I think,” said Helix, “and I could be wrong here, but I think it's quite soon, actually. It's just, I worked so hard to get my appointment”

Now Jinx looked up. “What are you on about, confusing me lass? I made yer appointment. For tomorrow night. That is to say, at this point, much later this evening.”

“No, but, and I'm really fairly certain about this part, I made an appointment to get my passport for ten thirty this morning.”

“And more requirements for bring All Side License offices is having All Side provisional permit, One Side passport, and One Side birth certificate.” Nibs interjected, finger holding his place on the page. Jinx and Helix stared at each other in shared dawning of comprehension.

“Oh no,” moaned Helix. “Profusions of Paperwork Perfidy!” Jinx swore. Nibs caught on to the situation. “And how many time is between now and FIRST passport appointment?” he asked.

Jinx and Nibs (who turned out to be surprisingly spry) rushed around, filling Helix’s hands with a cascade of items and her head with a hopeless jumble of descriptions while they argued about some problem concerning dual transfers that escaped Helix entirely.

“Aye, Jinx, and if she is not making the return- Helix you, this is being 17b schedule of acquaintance and a new seeing eye, take- then she is open advantage to the twins and being a card in the hand of the Lord,” said Nibs, giving Helix a sheaf of papers and a small rectangular box.

“Yes and truly, Oh Nibs, therefore- Here, Helix, red is Unacknowledged blue is All-ignored, never wear both at once- therefore back she comes with them to cancel such, and that's an end to that!” said Jinx pressing two rings into Helix’s hand. “I don't see a more likely way, Oh my me no” Jinx concluded, apparently winning the argument. “Alright, dashing me lass, you're kitted up proper, if a touch old fashioned. Let's see if we can set up a meeting with the Looking Glass Twins.” He stood still and lifted his hat long enough to pull an eyepatch down into place. “let's see,” he said staring into space, “which one, which one, right… next scheduled location… damn. What about her sister… right, right…. no…still no… brilliant!” He raised the eyepatch, tucking it back under the edge of his hat. Then he held his wrist up to his mouth and said, “Jingo! Jingo! Heeeeeere Jingo!” and shook the belled bracelet he wore.

Jinx had a lot of bits and bobs about his outfit, but was very quiet when he moved. Helix had never heard any bells from Jinx yet, but this one tinkled now. Jinx paused a moment and winked at Helix “They never come on the first call, you know” and shook the bell again. “Jingo!”

There was an answering tinkling sound, which grew louder. All three of them turned towards the sound, and after a few seconds, a dust mote there seemed to rapidly grow until a small black cat wearing a slender spiked collar with a tiny silver bell appeared to leap into the room from somewhere that was simultaneously six feet from them and very far away.

She ignored Nibs completely, walked distrustfully around Helix, and wound between Jinx's legs. He leaned down and rubbed her ears and said, “There's a precious pretty, now. I've an errand for you, lady kitling” The cat stopped purring and sat with her back to him, tail lashing. “Now, don't be like that, Jingo me kit, it's even one you'll like, just like old times” The little cat put her nose in the air. “Easy and fun, I promises, sweetest, come along.” Jingo sniffed and ignored him for a second, then turned her head over her shoulder and looked at him. Jinx grinned “So, see my little lovely… I need you to break a bathroom mirror in the One Side.”

A minute later, they stood in front of a full length mirror in another room. Jinx, who was kneeling, finished giving Jingo some kind of complicated coordinates, and bumped foreheads with the diminutive feline. Jingo tamped down like a leopard seconds away from dinner, and did her entrance in reverse, simultaneously leaping six feet and a million miles away into nothingness.

Jinx stood. “And now to earn a smile from the Lady.” So saying, Jinx pinched a coin from the air and flipped it, calling “heads!” then, slapping it on his wrist, lifted his hand to reveal it tails. Before them, the mirror flashed, and the reflection of a woman stepped from the edge of the mirror into view. Helix looked around. There was no woman in the room with them. She looked back in the mirror. There was very definitely a woman standing there, in a white sun dress, with platinum hair. A tiny dragon of liquid silver hovered over her shoulder.

Spying Jinx, she laughed. “Oh Jinx, of course it's you, you silly thing; what happened to my scheduled mirror?”

“Ah, weell, I am ever loath to postulate, but I s'pose it could be that my Jingo may have crossed paths with it.”

“Clever Sir, and should I wonder the mirror I default into be shared by the Left Hand of the Lady? Oh well done, sir, good game!” and she laughed again. “And so?” she said, “I do have Work, you know.”

“A small boon of you and your sister, if you would be so kind?”

“Well enough, do you have the means?” she asked, petting her little dragon on the snout.

“Aye” Jinx held out his hand and Nibs gave him the small mirror he carried.

“Step forward, please,” the mirror lady said. Jinx did so, and pointed the mirror in his hand at the one on the wall. In the reflection, there was an infinite series of the woman in the wall mirror, who turned her back on them to face an image of her own back in the reflection of the hand mirror. Then she reached into the reflection of the hand mirror and laid her hand on her own shoulder.

Next to Jake, from the mirror Jinx held, a woman's hand reached out, and into the mirror on the wall. It grasped the refection of the woman by the shoulder and pulled her out of the wall mirror into the room with them, then withdrew back into the hand mirror with a shattering sound, as the lady in the room let go of the reflection she'd pulled from the image of the hand mirror and pulled her own hand of the mirror on the wall. It sort of looked like an infinite line of women with their hands on the shoulder of the woman in front all took a step backwards, and then there were only two: the woman now in the Library with them and her reflection where she had been. The woman turned around, so that both she and her reflection were facing Jinx.

The pair were identical in every way, except, Helix noticed, the little dragon actually in the room with them looked like it was made of living cut diamond instead of mercury.

Jinx swept his hat low in a bow, “Shimmering Ladies, I present a guest of mine, Helix the One Sider; Helix me lass, meet the Looking Glass Twins, Glimmer and Gleam,” he leaned over and said out of the side of his mouth, “Ye can tell 'em apart by their wee beasties, Flect and Fract”

“Uh, nice to meet you,” said Helix while Jinx grimaced at her uninspired phrasing. The twins giggled in unison.

“Now Ladies, I have a wee boon to ask: it seems young Helix has an appointment in the One Side that she cannot make, nor miss, if perhaps you would bless me with a favor and see her safely to her room in London, and let her pass back through on the return?”

“Oh Jinx, smuggling lostlings are you?” The lady in the mirror chimed in, “And you're sure you need both ways? One would be easier.”

“Oh my me yes, both ways, and no mistake.”

“What then for our troubles, Oh Jinx on High, the least not that we've missed an appointment of our own?” asked the lady in the room.

“Why, my gratitude, of course! Which is not so very inconsiderable, no?”

“Ah Jinx,” said the one in the mirror “We'll have need of better coin than that.”

“Well then, I could tell you something worth the trouble if you like, and call it even.”

“Hmm.” The sisters looked at each other, like one woman staring into her own reflection.

“Fair play,” said the one in the room, at last, “Share your news, Jinx of All, and we shall guide your lostling home and back, oath-unbroken.”

“Oath-unbroken, this there is: The Ix have waked, and threaten the calm of All and most; even the Dame's Right Hand fidgets.”