It felt as if the quill was stuck in glue. It came out slowly, the individual barbs bending back, then finally popped out. I touched it. It failed to explode or fall apart. This was promising, but probably not enough to risk a limb on. I would hate to learn that, for example, blood didn’t flow from one side of the mirror to the other.
But why would it matter if my eyes are open or closed? And how can the mirror tell?
Because it’s magic,my brain whispered.
I still didn’t believe in magic, but I didn’t believe in it a lot less strongly than I had before falling through a mirror. If only I had someone else to help, we could see if their gaze affected it while my eyes were closed.
I thought briefly about summoning Aaron or Javier and asking them to assist me. I was reasonably sure they wouldn’t denounce me as a witch.
Fairly sure.
Not actually sure at all.
Saints! I wish Scand were here.My old tutor would have loved this.
Since I couldn’t think of a way to answer the question of observation, I shelved it and wondered what to do next. No, that’s not quite right—I could think of a thousand things to do; I just didn’t know where tostart.
I looked over at the book on my nightstand, then at the one in the mirror, and realized that the reflected one was turned about ninety degrees. Of course, I’d picked it up and set it down, hadn’t I? And now they didn’t match.
I looked back and forth again. It was a small thing, but strangely eerie. Mirrors—well—mirrorthings. It’s what theydo. The difference felt like a flaw in the world.
I reached out and turned the real book sideways, then looked back to the mirror.
It was now an exact reflection of the real book.
“Aha!”I could go into the mirror and change a reflected object’s position, but if I moved that object in the real world, the reflection reverted back. Or at least, so it seemed.
I spent about ten minutes testing this theory, stepping into the mirror, moving the book, and stepping back out. By the end, I was pretty well convinced.
I was holding the reflected book when I caught a glimpse of movement in the reflected mirror. I jumped back instinctively, pressing myself into the gray area. If someone had come into the room, I really didn’t want them to see me cavorting inside the mirror. As the cat had said, that was the sort of thing that got you stoned as a witch.
A moment later, someone walked past me, on both sides of the mirror.
It was one of the housemaids. She crossed the reflected room, holding a basket of sheets under one arm, and began stripping the bed. She didn’t seem to notice me. I inched sideways until I couldretreat into the deeper alcove of the doorway, but she never looked around, even though I was right there.
Well, of course not. She can’t look around unless the real her looks around.
Watching her was unsettling. Since the real woman’s back was to the mirror, the reflected woman had no face, only a bare suggestion of features under blank grayness. Bits of her body kept flickering light and dark as she moved. I could hear the rustle of linens, but I wasn’t sure if it came from the reflected bed or was being transmitted through the mirror.
When she had finished making the bed, she turned and went toward the washroom, carrying towels. I could tell the exact moment that she stepped out of the mirror’s view, because the reflected woman halted. She was solid gray from head to toe, and she stood unmoving with her head bowed over the stack of towels. I watched her for several seconds, and then, like a soap bubble popping out of existence, she vanished.
I’m not too proud to admit that I yelped.
What happened?I wondered. The giddiness I’d been feeling was still there, but it was mixed uncomfortably with alarm. When I’d been very small, my father used to throw me in the air and catch me, while I shrieked in delighted terror. This felt oddly similar.
A beam of light pierced the shadow, and I realized that I could see the maid again, or at least her back half, sticking out of the washroom. The light was coming from the mirror over the washbasin, projecting a band of color and brilliance into the room. She must have opened the curtain there. Had her reflection vanished because it needed to be in another mirror somewhere else?
Do you only ever have one reflection, then? So what happens if there aretwomirrors? Or twenty?
I would commit murder for a research partner…
The washbasin curtain closed, and the maid flickered out of existence again, then reappeared almost immediately, significantly closer, as if she’d teleported. She walked across the room towardme, half-dark, half-light, like a festival clown. I shrank back as she approached, though she still gave no sign of seeing me.
A moment later, she stepped into shadow, and I waited for her to vanish again.
Except she didn’t. She stood silently, her whole body such a smooth gray that it was hard to tell where her clothes left off and skin began. Her head hung down, the basket clutched in one hand, her other arm dangling limply. She should have looked like a statue, but somehow she didn’t. The overall impression was of a human standing very, very still.
It wasdeeplycreepy.
