THROUGH THE MIRROR #2
Is it just me, or does it look like the flowers grew in the shape of a curled-on-their-side human body? Kind of like they sprouted into being an instant before I hit the earth?
I blink.
That… that’s not possible. Flowers bursting into existence wherever I touch the floor… that’s not possible.
Then again, falling into a mirror because I felt sorry for a puppy trapped on the other side? That’s not supposed to be possible, either, is it?
As if agreeing with me, Sir barks twice.
He barks twice, wags his tail, and, making sure I’m watching him, he turns and dashes off into the trees in front of me.
No. He’s so small, and this world is weird, and I came after him because I thought he needed help… what if he still does?
What do I do now? No clue, but that doesn’t stop me from jogging over to my fallen slipper, jamming my foot inside of it, and purposely ignoring each of the different blossoms that now track each of the steps I took to get to my shoe.
Here’s the deal. However it happened, I definitely fell through a mirror. I didn’t chase a white rabbit into another realm, but a dark brown puppy with orange eyes that smokes when he barks instead. He just took off, and because there’s nothing else I can think to do, I follow after him.
The puppy is trying to kill me.
Not intentionally, I don’t think. He seems far too happy about all of this to get the gist that I’m a human woman who hasn’t run since high school, and I’ve almost lost my house slippers twice more since taking off after him.
I have to, though.
Do you believe in magic…
Don’t know if my landlord was some kind of mindreader or what, but only just…
today? Wow, that was today… only just today he reminded me how he asked me if I believed in magic and I had told him I did.
I’d be a bit of a hypocrite if I pretended like there was a logical, rational reason why Sir’s eyes seem to flicker like fire or that every time my bare foot touches the ground, wildflowers spring up in my wake.
I need to keep my shoes on. In case someone is chasing after me as I chase after the pup, a trail of pink and purple and gold flowers would be a big ol’ neon arrow, letting them know I’ve gone this way.
Of course, that’s assuming there’s anyone else in the forest. It seems empty enough, with the closely grown trees shielding so much of the sun from me that, as the forest grows darker, I notice that it isn’t that I haven’t found another person.
I don’t hear anything at all. No rustles in the bushes that cover the ground, or squirrels scampering over the way-too-many trees.
No birdsong. No tiny creatures hiding from the excitable puppy and the human that is barely keeping up with him.
It’s eerily quiet for so long as I allow the puppy to guide me to who-knows-where that the sound of someone—or something—snapping a brunch off to my side is so loud, my heart leaps up to my throat as I go suddenly still.
It wasn’t a small snap. It was a big ol’ crunch like something big stepped on a fallen branch.
I pause, waiting for the sound to fade. It doesn’t. In fact, the sound gets louder, the snapping more frequent, and I just know that I’m a sitting duck, standing there in between two trees where anyone coming this way could see me.
I want to think they could be helpful. Like, someone else has to be in these woods, knowing where they’re going, right? I followed Sir because I wanted to believe he know where he’s going, and maybe he has an owner somewhere nearby who can help me.
But Sir… he’s dropped low to the dirty, his belly against the grass as he growls softly under his breath.
Not a friend, then, huh? I don’t think so, and when a huge freaking shadow appears out of nowhere, I know I’m right.
What the hell makes a shadow that big?
Welp. I can tell you.
It’s a cyclops.
Okay. When I was a girl, I had one of those phases that most of us do. Some get into horses. Some become obsessed with the Titanic. Others convince themselves they’re witches. Me? I was all in on Greek mythology.
I’ll tell you this, though: you don’t need to have been the weird kid who could tell the difference between Heracles and Hercules to know what a cyclops looks like.
Considering the creature that’s lumbering through the woods, dragging a club behind him, has one cloudy eye set in the middle of his massive forehead, it’s obvious he’s a cyclops, if possibly a blinded one.
It’s equally as obvious that he’s naked.
Would a loincloth have killed him? Considering his dick is almost as big as his club, maybe he couldn’t find one big enough to hide him. Do they make king-sized sheets in a world that has honest-to-God cyclops living in it? Don’t know. Don’t care.
All I know is that, if he can see me, I don’t want him to.
I have just enough time to drop down, grab Sir, and duck behind a tree, clutching the puppy to my chest. He nips at my finger; more playful than he’s trying to hurt, though I don’t think he’s happy I grabbed him. I had to. If the cyclops steps on him, he’d be a puppy pancake.
Still, I move my fingers away from his teeth.
Sir barks, and my heart nearly falls out of my ass.
The cyclops might be blind, but he has ears, and there’s no way he didn’t hear that.
I mean, I closed my hand around Sir’s muzzle, hoping he’ll hush this time and that the cyclops will keep on going without seeing us, but when the ground rattles so hard that I feel the shake in my bones, it’s all I can do to swallow my whimper.
Still holding tightly to Sir, I peek my head around the tree.
The cyclops has stopped. His head moves slowly, nose twitching as he tries to sniff us out. His eye looks even more ruined head-on, and I squeeze Sir as the cyclops picks up his club and slams it into the ground again.
“Who?” he booms, his voice so deep, it’s hard to make out the word. It’s English, though, and I know that because I can understand it when he howls, “Who goes there?” He draws in a breath. “It smells like flowers out here. It smells like spring.”
Spring? It should be summer, and it seems like the tail end of winter, but spring?
Another smash, and another strangled scream.
“Who are you?” he rages.
Nobody.
Excuse me?
Okay. Now I know I’ve really lost it. I have a cyclops treating his club like it’s a meat tenderizer and I might just be the meat, a puppy who is back to breathing out wisps of smoke through his nose, and a trip through the mirror that had to have happened because, tired as I am, I pinched myself and I’m still awake.
And now this? A soft, slightly accented, lyrically beautiful woman’s voice just whispered the word “nobody” in my head… my chest… I don’t know, I can’t quite pinpoint where it came from other than to say inside of me.
What the heck?
Do it, says the voice. Tell him it’s nobody.
Um. Sure.
Okay.
“Nobody,” I squeak.
“Nobody,” the cyclops grunts, lowering his club to his side. “It’s always nobody.”
I wait for him to rage again, turning toward the tree we’re still hiding behind. To my surprise, he continues on his way. It’s that easy. He stumbles through the gap between the trees, going on his way as if that was enough to satisfy him.
I wait. Long enough that Sir gets antsy and I have to risk setting him down on the dirt again, and I wait. When it becomes clear that we had one heck of a lucky break and the monster isn’t going to return, I decide that I definitely did hear someone speaking to me inside of my head.
Here goes nothing…
Hello? Are you there?
When no one answers, I figure I imagined the voice, and then—
I’m not ready to awake just yet. I need a few more moments for my beauty sleep, to prepare myself.
Polyphemus could wake the dead, says the voice, a delicate little chuckle that says she amuses herself even as she adds, and I would know.
But, for now, you’ve found his hound. Trust him to get you home.
There’s a finality to her tone that warns against asking any questions.
Trust the hound?
I look down at Sir who is currently lifting his leg, peeing against the tree next to me.
Relief mixed with amusement mixed with disbelief has a laugh bubbling up in my throat.
He can’t possibly be the hound that the voice means, can he?
Though, to be fair, that isn’t any more insane of an idea than trusting the disembodied voice that suddenly decided to start speaking from inside of me, is it?