Chapter 41 #2
“Look,” I whispered, hoping once more that I wasn’t just seeing things, but that there really was light.
Except…
I turned. I looked around me at what little I could see. Strained my ears and held my breath.
I was alone.
“Cook?” I called, my heart crashing to my heels, the fear ready to devour me again.
Cook wasn’t there. I could barely make out the stone blocks of the wall, and the darkness I’d come from, nothing else.
“Cook—are you there?!” I called at the top of my lungs, even knowing I wasn’t going to get an answer. Cook was long gone.
I walked ahead on my own.
Not sure if it was the sight of that light, or if my body had already become immune to the fear, but I wasn’t shaking.
My mind was quiet for once, my instincts numb.
The light became brighter and brighter the farther I went until I found myself in another round room made of stone blocks, with not one portal in the middle but three.
Wait, no—not portals.
They were not the same as the holes made of tree roots.
From afar, they looked like archways made of glass.
From close up, they weren’t quite doors, either.
Each structure was carved entirely from stone, tall and heavy, with rectangular bodies that curved into smooth, rounded tops.
Their frames were thick, weathered at the edges but still precise.
The two on my right stood intact, the glass in them shimmering faintly in the dim light cast by the three torches mounted on the walls.
Almost like large mirrors, but not quite.
The glass of the one farthest to the left was broken, the pieces of it still on the floor, on this side of the room, and…on the other.
Something like a cold wind came over me, from my toes up to my head. It emptied my lungs and it caused my heart to miss beats.
Something like a memory.
There was nothing behind the stone structures—I double-checked just to make sure. There was nothing behind any of them, yet when I stood in their front, I clearly saw the room behind the broken glass.
Curiouser and curiouser.
My legs carried me forward this time without my having to think. I stepped onto the broken glass, went right through the archway and to the other side, like I knew for a fact that that’s where I was headed all along.
The other side was the same room, but different.
No—the other side was the same room, in a different time.
Sunlight slipped through the many cracks on the domed ceiling here, and the stone blocks didn’t look half as lifeless as they had back there. The darkness had a different quality here—lighter. Alive still.
And the three archways were indeed mirrors.
A cry escaped me and I didn’t know why my body was shaking as badly as it was. I finally had hope that I wasn’t going to die here, yet it felt like my skin was being peeled off my flesh slowly, and the pain wasn’t even mine or of today. It was older but still as intense.
I fell on my knees in front of the mirrors, the one on my right broken, the other two intact, showing me my reflection in strange ways. The left was of me, moving the way I did now, but each movement reflected a second later, and my limbs, my body turned to a blur as it did.
The one in the middle showed me a faded version of myself, the colors on me dark, muted, like I was only half there.
At the top of the stone arches, three words were engraved: Break - And - Forsake.
I knew those words. I’d read them before—I was eleven-hours certain that I’d read them before. Like that, too, engraved on the smooth surface of gray stone. I’d read those words and now they were here again, but they weren’t the only ones.
While I sat there on my legs in front of the mirrors, the reflections on the first two changed.
They still showed me, but each a different version. The first Ora was standing with her feet apart and her fists against her hips, her chin raised, her eyes fierce. She was strong, and I knew this just by reading the lines of her expression. She was powerful, unafraid. She had courage.
The second one didn’t.
The mirror in the middle had changed, too, while I was busy trying to stay conscious.
Only this Ora had her arms around herself, and she wasn’t looking at me at all.
She was looking around, as if she was in a different place altogether, and she was waiting for something to happen. Waiting for someone to attack.
She was afraid. She was terrified.
“Don’t forsake me,” I thought she whispered, and those words I’d heard before, too. They were locked somewhere in my mind and I couldn’t access them, but they were there.
Then the pieces of the third mirror glistened, taking my attention. I waited with my breath held to see what they would show me, but there were too many broken pieces, scattered on this side of the floor and the other.
Was that the challenge here, I wondered? Had I broken this mirror to get through in the forward trials? Would I need to build it up again, mend it, before the trial was through?
I dragged myself closer, hope blooming in my chest, but just as I was about to grab the first piece of glass, my eyes caught something else glistening on the frame of the mirror, on both sides.
Words handwritten in silver ink.
If you can name what you gave away, said the left—and the right, your debt might be paid in full today.
I read the words again and again, and somehow, I understood them. Somehow, when I stood up, I saw so much more than what was around me—I saw myself, dressed in the same uniform, standing the same way I was standing now, breaking the glass, walking through to the other side.
As I did, even if it was just a memory, I felt something ripping out of me, cut out of me as if by an invisible sword, and there was nothing I could do to stop it, nothing I could do to make myself less empty.
Master Talik’s face was at the center of my mind next—incomplete, he’d said. I was incomplete. The trial took from me, from all of us. Whatever we were forced to give away to complete this trial, the trial took it.
But what in the Holy Hour had I given away?
The face of the Red Queen came back to me all of a sudden, and a scream escaped my lips. The pain hovered just there, over me, and I knew it was coming. It always did when I dreamed about her.
What did you do-what did you do-what did you do, I chanted, but there was no answer, no way to know. She’d done something, yes, but I’d done something, too.
I’d given something away to win this trial. I was indeed incomplete, just like Master Talik said. And finally, I knew why.
Tears streamed down from my eyes, even though I didn’t feel like crying. It was just my body operating on old habits, I figured, because I’d need to care to cry, and I didn’t.
I didn’t care when Reggie died.
I didn’t care about anyone crying, and I’d seen plenty of tears other than my own.
I didn’t really care about March, either—unless it had something to do with me.
I didn’t care about Helen when she fell or the others when they mourned.
I didn’t care about my parents.
I didn’t care about the world. If I could have run away from the Labyrinth that first night when March found me, I would have. Whether I’d doom the entire world or not—I simply did not care.
Because of this. Because of here. Because of what I’d given away.
The word came out only on the third try because I couldn’t draw in enough air to speak properly. I could name what I gave away without trouble, and the word this mirror was looking for was, “Compassion.”
That’s what I’d given away. I remembered it, though I didn’t. I remembered the hole it had left behind. The emptiness that used to be full. I remembered that.
Then the pain began.
It was like before, like having my skin peeled off my flesh, except then it had been only a memory, and now it was real.
It didn’t last long, but while it did, I couldn’t even fall to the floor, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t blink, couldn’t scream.
I could only sit there with my limbs locked, watching with my mouth wide open as the pieces of the broken mirror raised themselves in the air without anybody touching them, and took their place again inside the frame.
Warmth filled me from head to toe as the glass shimmered with a soft chime, and all the lines where it had been broken disappeared, from the bottom all the way to the top.
The pain retreated all at once, and I felt like I was by the lake, sitting there on the grass with the sun on my face, breathing. Existing. Alive.
The third mirror was brand new again, the words on the frame gone, the reflection on the glass of me, smiling. An Ora with a soft smile and soft eyes, clearly proud.
Of me.
“I was so afraid,” I whispered to myself.
I’d been so afraid of this trial that I hadn’t even considered it might be the only one to give me something back, instead of taking more of what was left of me. I’d been so, so afraid…
A bell rang somewhere behind me, and I turned to see that a tunnel had opened on the wall across. There had been nothing there before but stone blocks.
It was the door.
The door had opened. The tower had finally given me a way out because I’d unwon. The trial was over, and I was still breathing.
My entire body shook when I made it to my feet.
I ran as fast as I could, and I didn’t look back at any of the other Oras watching me from the mirrors.