THROUGH THE MIRROR
WILLOW
Idrop to my knees.
In the reflection, I see the reverse of my room.
The bed, the dresser, the sneakers I was wearing earlier before I traded them for my house slippers kicked to the side.
But there’s also a puppy. He’s on the bigger size, with floppy ears and a coloring that reminds me of a dachshund only with longer legs and a thicker shape rather than looking like a sausage dog.
And his eyes…
It wasn’t a trick of the camera’s flash. They’re not just orange. Unless I’m seeing things, it looks like he has little flames licking at his pupils.
What the…
I glance around a second time, making sure I’m not insane. In the room? No puppy. In the mirror? Definitely puppy.
As if he wants to make sure I don’t miss him, he plops down on his back legs, opens his mouth, and lets out an encouraging bark.
A bark—and smoke.
I gasp.
Curls of smoke slip out of his nostrils, like he’s some kind of miniature dragon or, holy crap, he really is on fire.
And he’s in the mirror. How did a puppy get in the mirror?
How can I help him?
Pretending that I don’t see a living creature beyond the mirror’s glass doesn’t even occur to me. He’s there, he needs help, and my first instinct—after I get over my shock—is to touch my fingers to the glass and see if the puppy responds to the gesture.
Okay. On the one hand? He does. The second I crawl toward the mirror, my fingers ghosting over the glass, he hops back up so that he’s on four feet, his pointed tailing whipping and wagging, he’s that excited.
He’s excited. Me? I should’ve grabbed my phone, called Daphne, and seen if she would take the train into town to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. I don’t, though. Leaving my phone where it is, I touch the mirror, and that’s all it takes.
One touch. My fingers make contact with the glass, but instead of actually finding resistance because, you know, it’s a mirror, my fingers go through the pane.
I’m so shocked at the strange sensation—it’s cold, but not wet, even though I can’t shake the sensation that there’s liquor sucking on my fingers like it’s some sort of giant squishy—that I try to yank my hand out.
It, uh… it doesn’t work.
In fact, the more I try, the more I panic, and the more it keeps sucking me in until, suddenly, I’m being pulled all the way through.
I swear, it’s like someone’s grabbed my fingers, tugging me forward, but all I see is the wide-eyed look of surprise on my face and the puppy running in circles just beyond the glass before I’m falling.
Falling.
Falling…
I close my eyes as I scream. No reason not to. Wherever I’ve gone, it’s pitch-black for the lifetime it feels like I’m tumbling into nothingness until, an eternity later that might’ve only been ten seconds, I’m stunned by sudden daylight behind my eyelids an instant before I fall to the ground.
The hard ground.
Ow.
I hit my side, staying curled up in the fetal position for a few seconds while I make sure that I’m still breathing.
That I didn’t break anything, even though the fall was no picnic.
I’ve been cushioned by something somewhat soft.
The air around me has enough of a gentle breeze carrying the scent of flowers and earth and outside that I know that’s where I am even if I have no idea where I am.
I groan, staying on the ground. I hear something rustle… the grass under my ass, maybe… before a familiar yip.
The puppy, I think. Well. If I’m going to pull an Alice and fall through a looking glass, at least I managed to make my way to the poor pup that was stuck inside.
I flutter my eyes open just in time for a scaling hot tongue to swipe its way up my cheek.
“Sir?” I croak because, well, my parents spent a lot of time in my youth instilling manners into me.
I don’t know what his name is—or if he even has one—but something tells me that he’s a boy dog, and he seems pretty sweet and eager.
He’s a precious little sir, even if his hot breath stinks like rotten eggs as he pants inches away from my face. “A little personal space, please.”
A little personal space while I figure out if I lost my mind…
Sir drops to his rump again, tongue lolling out of his mouth. This close, I can see the slight puff of smoke that escapes it. His eyes flicker, and I blink. When I open my eyes again, they’re still orange, though the fire—and the smoke—is gone.
For now.
I push myself up to a seated position, shocked that my dull ache is already fading. It’s adrenaline, I decide. The adrenaline that coursed through me when I started my tumble must be hiding the fact that I, like, broke my collarbone or something.
Just in case, I give it a casual rub while taking in my surroundings.
After a long, quiet moment, I have no choice but to admit that fate has a funny sense of humor. I told Mr. Z that I wanted adventure. That I missed the outside. That I basically wanted to commune with nature.
That’s exactly what I’m doing now.
The ground I landed on? It’s a patch of pretty wildflowers, grown so closely together in a variety of colors—purple, gold, blue, red, orange—that they were an impromptu mattress for me on top of the grass in the clearing I’ve found myself in.
In every direction, I see trees. Tall, slender trees with some bare branches, others blooming with new leaves.
Weird. It’s the end of July, but these trees look like it’s the end of winter.
How is that possible?
I don’t know. Instinctively, I can tell that I’m nowhere near my condo.
I don’t even know if this is New Jersey; at least, not New Jersey when I left it, based on the coloring of the trees.
It’s pleasant out, not hot, which makes me wonder what it’ll be like when the temperature drops and I’m wearing nothing more than a basic yellow tee and short shorts.
Assuming I’m stuck here—wherever here is—once it gets dark out.
Oh, boy.
It’s definitely not dark now which is weird because, yeah…
I was getting ready for bed when I saw the puppy in the mirror.
As much as I exaggerated how long that fall took, there’s no way that twelve hours passed, but it’s definitely late morning where I am.
I can just sense how early it is, though it’s hard to tell thanks to the way the trees blot out the sun.
There are still enough sunbeams filtering through the leaves to guess at the time, and that it’s morning instead of late evening is just one other weird thing that I don’t want to think about right now.
Instead, because he’s the only living thing in sight in these strange woods, I reach down, extending a careful hand toward Sir’s head. He gives me another encouraging bark, and as though I can understand him, I know he’s giving me the all-clear to reach down and pat his head.
So I do.
“Where are we, boy?” I murmur. “And how do I get home?”
His floppy ears perk up at the word “home”.
Ducking out from under my hand, he does this odd little half-run, half-jump, gallop thing as he runs about ten feet away. He stops, rearing back on his hind legs, ears flopping as he uses his paws to bat at… at…
Huh. I don’t know what that is. It’s shimmering, wavy, kind of like exhaust in the summer or an oil slick in the condo’s parking lot because Mr. Singh’s car is leaking.
About the size and shape of the mirror in my room, I’m just wondering if it could possibly be the other side of the mirror when, the instant Sir’s paw hits it, it winks out of sight before I could check it out.
Hmm. Okay, then.
Don’t know what that was about, but seeing the strange portal thing only makes the super improbable thing I was secretly thinking just a little more likely.
I’m a teacher first, but I’m a reader always.
I’m a huge fan of reading fantasy books, but one of my favorite genres is a well-written portal fantasy.
Where the everyday, ordinary heroine finds her way to a world like any other because fate willed it.
She has her adventure, maybe falls in love, and has to decide between staying in the world she came to save with her new friends, her new love, and her new life, or returning to the boring one she left behind.
A puppy with fiery eyes that breathes smoke sometimes? That’s not normal. That’s pretty fantastical if you ask me, but why am I here? What do I do now? Where do I go?
And, since I like to read fairy tales and fantasies, not live them, how do I get home?
I think about how I asked Sir and he showed me that portal-shaped whatever-it-was. If that was my way out, it’s gone now. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do at all, but it’s at that moment that it finally hits me that I’m missing one of my slippers.
It must have fallen off when I, you know, fell. Looking around the small clearing, I see the white slipper on its side not too far from where Sir is standing on all fours, waiting expectantly for me to notice him again.
He can wait. I need my slipper first.
I’ve got some tender tootsies. I don’t like bringing outside shoes into my inside space—something you learn to do when you think about what you step in on the New York streets everyday—and I’ve always kept a pair of slippers nearby to change into after I leave home and come back.
I don’t like to be barefoot if I can help it, especially if I’m stuck outside.
I start to hop over to my slipper, but my balance has never been the best. I stumble and my foot lands on the ground.
A second later, there’s a small white-and-yellow daisy next to my big toe.
I lift my foot. Beneath it, I see a poppy that springs up without me weighing it down.
That was weird. Neither one of those flowers were there before.
I take another step.
Two little bluebells appear, sticking out between the space between my pinkie toe and the one next to it.
“What the…”
Slowly, I shift on my heel, looking at the spot where I fell. I thought I was lucky enough to land in the only area of this clearing where the wildflowers grew. They were thick enough to break my fall, but now that I’m looking at it…