Chapter 46 Rui
Rui
The mirror expelled her unceremoniously onto the other side.
Rui collapsed onto the cold, hard floor, shaking as sobs racked her body. The sting from her other-mother’s words persisted
in her heart. She didn’t know if she could ever forgive herself for what happened that night four years ago. But her father
was right. Her mother had offered her life. It was a gift. One Rui had never wanted but couldn’t refuse or discard. All she
could do was use it to lead a meaningful life, and it was up to her to define that meaning.
She glanced around the small room she’d fallen into. It was dimly lit like a theater, each wall covered with mirrors. There
were mirrors you could fit in your pocket and larger ones the size of a tall cabinet. Some were plain and simply designed,
the kind of mirrors you could get at a local discount store, but there was one wall on the far side where the mirrors were
more ornate, with intricate carvings on the wooden and metal frames.
But it wasn’t the difference in sizes or design or even the presence of so many in one room that threw Rui off. The weirdest
thing was that instead of reflecting what was in front of them, each piece of glass functioned like a screen, displaying moving
images like scenes from a film.
She stared at the plain rectangular mirror-screen on the wall closest to her. A six-year-old Rui was slipping a small pouch
with her tooth in it under her pillow. She remembered this moment: she’d lost her first baby tooth and was hoping to lay a
trap to catch a tooth fairy to prove to her classmates at her mundane school that tooth fairies existed.
Rui went from mirror to mirror, revisiting her childhood and adolescence.
There she was at the movies with her parents, stuffing her face with caramel popcorn; there she was with Ada, celebrating with soup dumplings after they both cast their very first spell.
And there was Zizi doing one of his silly dances to make her laugh.
It didn’t escape her notice that the memories on this wall were happy ones.
As she moved to another wall, something tugged at her wrist. The red thread was glowing again. She was beginning to doubt
that Zizi was the one who’d tied it there. The thread had saved her earlier by leading her to the mirror in the alleyway,
and she didn’t think he had magic like that.
The tug drew her to the far wall with the ornate mirrors. The mirrors seemed older than the others.
Rui squinted. One mirror showed a figure standing in a frosty black pine forest.
Lei Ying?
The young woman was wearing a purple hanfu, just like in Rui’s dreams and in the painting in the Fourth King’s bedroom. The
uncanny resemblance between Lei Ying and herself was too obvious to ignore. If the previous mirrors had shown her memories
from when she was younger, did this memory also belong to her? Was it from a different life she had led in the past?
The same disorienting feeling she’d had in the Fourth King’s bedroom rushed over her. The glass rippled, and her vision distorted.
She felt her world slanting forward, and she was falling, snow spiraling around her in a hush of white.