Chapter 41 #2
The boy yanked the darkest eclipse around them, burying them in night.
“What—?” The woman broke off at the inhuman growl.
The boy swung her around and thrust his mirror out. The woman held hers high. Her mirror trembled, and the boy grabbed her free hand and held it tight. They stood side by side as the darkness cloaked them.
The first thing to pierce the darkness was the pungent, bonfire scent of rotting flesh. The woman stiffened, and the boy squeezed her hand.
“It’s all right,” he whispered.
“It kills with a touch,” she said.
“It won’t touch you.”
“But—”
“You have to look at it.” The boy’s voice was firm, a solid thing for the woman to hold onto. “Look it in the eyes and don’t look away. No matter what happens, don’t look away.”
“But if it touches us. If it—”
“Lia. Listen.” The black smoke crept along the edges of the mirrors, and the wind shuddered at the hot breath sliding through the boy’s darkness.
“If you look away, you die. You have to stare into the mirror. Into the darkest part of its eyes. You have to look at it and recognize it. Do you understand?”
“No! How do you know?”
The boy smiled wryly as a face appeared in the mirror he held aloft. He looked into the thing’s eyes. “I have a lot of experience with mirrors.”
The woman flinched. But the boy held her hand tightly, and she stared into the compact.
The thing was back. Its bone-white, bloodless face.
Its leather-dry skin. Its hollow eye sockets.
It was a malevolent husk whose being tunneled into the depths of hell.
The woman stared into the empty eye sockets and didn’t look away.
Even when it reached out and wrapped its fingers around her throat, she didn’t look away. Even as blood dripped from scratches on her skin, she didn’t look away.
The boy watched his own mirror. The wind circled him, rubbing over his cheek, soothing the hard, pained beating of his pulse.
The thing in his mirror was a familiar face.
It was her.
His mirror, all grown up.
He contended with her almost every day.
She smiled her cat’s-caught-a-mouse smile. She was his twin. The mirror his parents had made. The one he’d destroyed on his fourth birthday for being a soulless, empty replica where a person should’ve been.
She leaned forward and whispered in his ear.
The wind couldn’t hear, but it could read lips.
“Poor Jacob. Lost his sister, lost himself, lost his father, lost in the shelves. Lost . . .” She looked to the right and smiled at the citrus and pearl dust scented woman.
“Lost his love, because losing is what he does.”
He watched her, staring into her eyes as his mirror laughed. The wind rubbed his cheek. The boy didn’t lose everything. He’d never lost the wind.
“You’re all alone. Even if she’s with you, you’re still alone.”
The boy stared at his mirror. The wind shuddered. His eyes gleamed black, and darkness crackled around him.
“I’m alone,” he whispered.
His mirror laughed. “I know.”
The boy smiled, and the mirror stopped laughing. “But if I’m alone, then why are you here?”
She gasped and then screamed, rushing at the mirror. It shattered, and she was gone.
The wind purred, curling around the boy. Perhaps he was learning. A human being was always alone and never alone. It was one of the quandaries of their existence.
The boy looked over at the woman. Her cheeks were pale. Her neck was covered in bloody scratches. The mirror had fragmented in her hand.
She looked over at the boy, and when he smiled, she dropped the mirror and threw her arms around him.
He gripped her tightly.
“He said I was hate.”
The boy rubbed a circle over her back. “It’s all right.”
“He said I’d cover the world in blood. That I would kill my brothers. My father. That I was . . . that I loved to hurt others. That I was hate.”
“Are you?” the boy asked. “Will you?” He never shied away from hard questions.
She shook her head and then dropped it to his chest. “I don’t know. I stared at it, and it became me.”
The boy sighed and kept rubbing his hand in a gentle circle on her back. “Maybe since you know what you can become, you’ll decide not to.”
The woman nodded and pressed her cheek to his heart.
The wind swept past their embrace and curled around the lyre. It was propped against a shelf, covered in a thin layer of dust. The wind plucked one of the strings, and the note shimmered in the air.
The boy looked up and then smiled at the vibrating string.
“You found it.”
The woman turned her head and smiled at the Bard’s lyre. “We found it. What are you going to do with it?”
“Play it. What else?”
The woman smiled. “Jacob?”
“Hmm?” His hand trailed down her back and rested on her hip.
“Will you ask another favor?”
The boy’s hand stilled. “Do you want me to?”
The citrus and pearl dust scented woman stared at the lyre.
The wind ran along the silk-smooth strings.
The instrument was a powerful object. It could make a being desire anything.
Anyone. It could bring grown men to their knees.
It could make armies throw themselves off a cliff chasing the object of their desire.
She had more than paid for the boy’s favor. Their debt was settled. They didn’t need to meet again.
She smiled up at the boy. “Yes. I’d like that.”
The boy’s smile stretched into the one that made him look as if he could fly. “Then I will.”