I looked over my shoulder at the mirror again, half expecting to see the book there levitating in midair, but it was still sitting on the nightstand.
A thought began to tease at the corner of my mind. I set down the book and walked to the washroom. The curtain fabric was the same color as the wall, but it moved easily under my hand.
When I pulled it back, the alcove was very dark, except for the mirror over the basin, which blazed like a window to some exotic country. Several inches of wall and floor by the door glowed with light, but most of the room lay in shadow. The basin itself had asharp line drawn across it, white porcelain giving way to featureless gray.
“Cat,” I said, stepping back. “Cat, I’ve got it! It’s gray where the mirror can’t see it!” The sheer irrationality of this statement jarred me, so I hastily amended, “Where it can’t be reflected in the mirror, I mean.”
“You were closer to the truth the first time,” said the cat, dropping his hind leg, “but yes.”
I went to the balcony door and looked out. The sky beyond was a clear, hard blue, but there were small wedges of darkness cut out of it, looking unsettlingly like sharp black teeth. The ground was darker still, a solid bar of shadow lying across the horizon. I turned away quickly and went to the hallway door instead.
On the far side of the door was a deep gray version of the world I knew. I drew back, alarmed. Gray tiles, gray walls, gray railing—all the color of cold charcoal.
“Is it all like this?” I asked the cat, whispering now. There was something unnerving about the corridor. It was too easy to imagine all the doors of the house opening into gray rooms beyond, all the textures flattened down to that strange cold smoothness. “Everywhere that isn’t reflected?”
“Everywhere I’ve been,” said the cat, just as quietly.
“But the wholeworld?” I pictured the desert outside lying chill and quiet, all the bushes and gnarled trees like black ceramic versions of themselves, stretching down to a blank gray sea. “Does anything… anyone… live here?”
“Oh yes,” said the cat. “Things live here. You don’t want to meet them.” He leaped down from the bed and approached the mirror. “Time to be getting back.”
I followed the cat obediently and reached out to the mirror. I half expected my hand to sink into it like water, but instead my fingertips stopped on the polished surface. “How does this work?”
“Closing your eyes helps,” the cat said.
I closed my eyes and reached out again. This time there was noresistance, only a chill, metallic feeling that traveled up my arm. I almost opened my eyes, then had a sudden vision of the glass becoming solid inside my arm and decided that particular experiment could wait until later. I stepped forward, bumping my shoulder on the frame, and then the inside of my skull went thin and silver and I almost stopped (but what if I got stuck?) so I kept walking until my knees bumped into the chest at the foot of the bed.
I opened my eyes. The room looked the same, but the shadows were only shadows, not bands of darkness. When I turned around, my reflection met my eyes, looking flushed and baffled and excited and a little frightened.
I did it. I’m back.
I was in the mirror.
There’s a whole world in the mirror. A wholedifferentworld.
I turned around, went up to the mirror, and closed my eyes. Then I reached out my hand and didn’t encounter glass, only that cold metallic feeling again. I pulled my hand back and opened my eyes.
My reflection gazed back at me, looking as stunned and gleeful as I felt.
I dropped onto the bed and found myself laughing with the sheer delight of discovery. If you’ve never felt this, I don’t really know how to explain it. Like a small child surrounded by presents, maybe. Everywhere you look, there’s something new to see and get excited about. My chest felt as if it were full of ecstatic bees.Saints have mercy, there’s so much to learn!
“I’ll write a book,” I said out loud. “Two books.Tenbooks. Oh, no one’s going to believe it, but if I take enough people through—”
“That’ll end well,” said the cat. “Invite me to the stoning when they decide you’re a witch.”
This threw a certain amount of cold water on my enthusiasm. “All right, maybe I won’t be able to publish. But I can make notes.”
“Do what you wish,” said the cat, trotting out onto the balcony. He was over the railing with the flip of a gray tail—gone.
Damn it, I had more questions for him. Not that I had any idea what questions to ask, come to that, and the cat had made his opinion of uninteresting questions abundantly clear. Still, I’d probably be able to find him later.Find a talking cat…?my brain whispered.Do you hear yourself?
I ignored it.
The first question was how safe it was to go through the mirror. If I opened my eyes halfway through, would I get sliced in half? This seemed like a very important point to iron out first. Preferably without losing any parts of my anatomy.
I snatched a quill pen off my desk and approached the mirror. I closed my eyes and slowly extended my hand, the quill in front of me, until I felt the cold, silvery tingle of the mirror on my fingers. I pulled back until it stopped, then opened my eyes.
The quill was sticking out of the mirror. I could see myself and the lower half of the quill reflected, but I couldn’t see the rest of it. I tugged experimentally.
