The seven hundred and seventy-seventh floor

When the lift finally stopped, Fia and Wren swayed from side to side, struggling to regain their balance. The doors in front of them slid open to reveal nothing but darkness on the floor beyond.

Fia looked up at the lift’s digital display, but the screen was blank. ‘Where are we?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Wren replied, letting go of Fia’s hand, ‘but this isn’t our floor.’ He pushed the button marked seventy, again, and again, nothing happened.

‘The lift’s broken.’

‘I know, but what else am I supposed to do?’ Wren hammered all the buttons, repeatedly, but none of them responded.

‘Dad said we should use the stairs if there’s an emergency.’

‘He meant if the tower is on fire, not an emergency like this. Something weird is going on here. The receptionist said he was sending us to floor seven hundred and seventy-seven, but that’s impossible – there aren’t that many floors. And you felt how fast the lift was moving.’ Wren reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen lit up as he raised the device to his face, but there was no signal. ‘I always have signal. This doesn’t make any sense.’

Fia had stopped listening to Wren. She was thinking about climbing down over seven hundred stories worth of stairs and didn’t much fancy it. A few weeks before, Dad had taken her and Wren to Trafalgar Square, and Fia’s legs had got tired just climbing the five stone steps up to the National Gallery. There was no way she’d make it down the billions of stairs she assumed it would take for them to get home.

‘We’re going to stay here,’ Wren said, shoving his phone back into his pocket. He took his backpack from his shoulders, set it down on the floor of the lift, and sat down on top of it. He wrapped his arms around his shins and pressed his forehead into his knees, hiding his face. This was a habit he’d only picked up, after their mum died. Now, whenever he was upset, he hid his face from Fia. But Fia wasn’t stupid. She saw the way his shoulders shook and knew exactly what was happening.

‘If we just wait here,’ Wren said, his voice muffled, ‘Dad will eventually notice we’ve gone missing. He has to, right? Then, he’ll call down to ask if anyone’s seen us, and the receptionist will tell him about the prank he’s pulled. Dad will come fetch us, we’ll all laugh, and everything will be ok. Actually, you know what, I bet Dad planned all this, for your birthday, or something.’

‘What if it’s a surprise party,’ Fia said, leaning out of the lift doors. ‘Maybe Granny and Granddad are hiding down the hall, and that’s why all the lights are off.’

As Fia peered into the seven hundred and seventy-seventh floor, her eyes began to adjust to the gloom. She couldn’t see much, except a jumble of bizarre silhouettes that she couldn’t quite distinguish. Nearby, there was something that looked like a cabinet, wooden, maybe, and loaded with… jam jars? The messiness of it all reminded her of one of Wren’s paintings. She screwed up her face. This was not the hallway of the seventieth floor, that was for sure.

‘What a load of rubbish,’ she whispered.

Rubbish? A voice boomed in the darkness. How dare you.

An invisible hand enveloped Fia’s body and ripped her from the lift. She landed in a heap on the floor. Before she or Wren could do anything, the lift doors cracked shut. Wren was gone. Fia was alone in the umbra.

‘Welcome, child,’ a voice said, sounding rather childlike, itself.

Fia stumbled to her feet. The chandelier above her head flickered to life. Flames spouted from the tips of each of its thirteen candles, as though the air around the wicks had been ordered to combust whenever someone entered the room. In the warm light, Fia could see that the doors to the lift had vanished. She really was all on her own.

‘I said, welcome, child,’ the childlike voice repeated.

Fia turned around and saw that the voice was coming from a huge, round mirror, floating in front of her. The mirror looked expensive but old, its bronze rim now coated in a teal patina. In the glass of the mirror, Fia could see her reflection. Except, it couldn’t have been her real reflection, because the Fia in the mirror was moving all on her own.

‘Who are you?’ Fia asked.

‘My master has not given me a name, but he said to think of me as your guide to the seven hundred and seventy-seventh floor,’ the Fia in the mirror replied.

‘Were you the one who grabbed me?’

The Fia in the mirror pounded her fists against the mirror’s invisible surface, as though she was trapped inside and wanted to escape. ‘As you can see,’ the mirror said, speaking through Fia’s reflection, ‘I can imitate image and sound within the confines of my glass, but the images I conjure have no corporeal form.’

Fia scowled at the mirror. ‘Stop it.’

‘Pardon?’

‘If you’re going to look like me and sound like me, then you need to stop talking funny. It’s creepy.’

‘I see.’ Fog fell over the mirror’s surface for a moment. When the fog lifted, Wren’s face had taken the place of Fia’s reflection. ‘Is that better?’ the mirror asked, mimicking Wren’s voice, perfectly.

‘Ewww, no!’ Fia stamped her feet. ‘That’s much, much worse.’

‘Well then, how should I look and sound?’

Fia thought for a moment, but only a moment, before answering, ‘Like a peacock.’

A fog fell over the mirror’s glass once more, then, the head of a peacock appeared, with a full train of blue and green tailfeathers, fanned-out, proudly, behind it. The bird glared at Fia through ancient amber eyes.

‘Happy now?’ the mirror asked, in a voice as shrill as a peacock’s siren call.

Fia nodded.

‘Then, please come with me to meet my master. He is the one that summoned you here, after all.’ The mirror began to float away, but Fia didn’t move. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Where are the rest of my presents?’ Fia peered around the room. It looked like she was in the backroom of a particularly disorganised antique shop. The whole place stunk of damp wicker and dusty cushions. Now that the cabinet she’d seen from the lift was right beside her, Fia saw that it was filled to the brim with glass bottles, jars, and vials. She picked up one of the smaller bottles and held it up to the candlelight. Inside the bottle was a ship, but not the kind she’d seen inside bottles before, with sails, a wooden hull, and some poor woman carved into the bow, as a figurehead. Instead, inside this bottle was a miniature aircraft carrier, complete with tiny planes and living, breathing soldiers. She watched as the tiny, uniformed men scurried around on the deck of the ship, fuelling the planes, clearing the runway, and getting everything ready for take-off. ‘I want this,’ she said.

‘Consider it yours.’

Fia shoved the bottle into the pocket of her school cardigan. The neck of the bottle jutted out of her pocket, and the weight of the glass stretched the fibres of the wool. She reached out, again, and grabbed a jar with a gingham lid from the cabinet. The jar was full of a thick fluid. Inside the fluid were three green pickles and a single eyeball. ‘And I want this, too.’

‘A wise choice.’

Fia shook the jar and watched as the eyeball bounced around, inside. It was the world’s strangest snow globe, but she liked it. She knew Wren would be jealous when he saw what she’d got. He’d never been given an eyeball or a battleship in a bottle for his birthday.