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himself? What if he was trapped somewhere?
    What if he was lying under water?
    I closed my eyes and wandered through every room in Henrietta’s house in my mind. There was nothing dangerous in any of them, really. Nor in the garden.
    You could maybe get stuck in the mangle in the basement, but for that you would almost need to be two people. There was an old clothes chest in one of the bedrooms where somebody Signe’s age could get stuck, perhaps suffocate after a while… But no, not Erland. It would be easy for him to lift the lid.
    So where was he, then?
    It was not until I had been lying silently in the dark for a quite a while that I noticed the noise. I realized that I had heard it several times without understanding what it could be.
    Now I noticed that it came from somewhere far away, and it sounded like when you cry with your mouth closed. It was just a cry without a word or tone. I wasn’t even sure if it was a cry for help, but I was sure about one thing: the voice belonged to Erland.

The glass in each of the mirrors was not the still, polished surface it had been before.

Chapter Fourteen
T HE M IRROR N EVER L IES
    T he wardrobe was as dark as ever, but something had happened. The glass in each of the mirrors was not the still, polished surface it had been before. Now shadows were billowing there, like blood swirling through water or thunderclouds being chased across the sky by a storm.
    Erland was in the house of mirrors, I was sure of it. I could hear him screaming.
    The transformation took longer this time, and the shift in the light did not offer any relief, as it had done before. On the contrary.
    When I stepped out of the wardrobe I almost crashed into Hetty. She was standing just outside the door, dripping wet and shivering.
    “He came through,” she said weakly. “I don’t know where he is.”
    The same wordless cry sounded from somewhere in the house again. Now I could hear both fear and pain in it. Erland sounded like an animal.
    “We’ll find him,” I said, trying to steady my voice. “Do you have any dry clothes that you can change into?”
    She nodded. “In my room.”
    For the first time I got to see Hetty’s room, which was a mirror image of the same room on the second floor that I had chosen for myself. The bed was the same, and even a couple of the paintings above the chest of drawers. Apart from the reversal, the main difference was that Hetty’s room felt a lot more like a home than mine.
    I helped Hetty out of her soaking-wet clothes while she stood on the carpet, shaking from the cold. The water poured from her, as if she had been fished out of the sea moments before.
    “What happened?” I said. “Where did all the water come from?”
    She looked at me quickly, her eyes frightened.
    “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I think it’s him who does it.”
    Hetty was taller than me now, and looked almostWilma’s age. When she wriggled out of the singlet with stiff, jerky movements I saw that she had grown tiny breasts.
    I rubbed her dry with a cotton throw that I found on the bed and helped her into underwear and bodice, wool stockings with garters, blouse and skirt. I had never seen such clothes before, but Hetty pulled them on with practised movements.
    When she had pulled on a knitted cardigan and buttoned it up to her chin she stopped shivering.
    “How did he find the way here?” she asked. “Did you show him?”
    I shook my head. “Erland eavesdrops,” I said. “He sneaks around people and snoops out their secrets.”
    Hetty stood up, straightened the cardigan, and inhaled deeply. Then she closed her eyes for a moment, as if she was composing herself.
    “Erland is a good boy,” she said, reaching her hand out to me. “It’s not his fault that it’s inside him that darkness gathers.”
    I had never thought about Erland in that way, but it was true. He was an empty space where a darkness of varying depth mingled with blackness.
    Hand in hand we walked along the