Chapter 21 Through the Glass
Through the Glass
Maggie’s mild bullying tactics involved gentle nagging and purposefully dropping the temperature of the room by a good ten degrees with her haunting capabilities.
It worked to coax Sage from her room and guide her closer to the fireplace downstairs.
Sage finally joined her housekeeper at the kitchen table after being lured by roast potatoes and gravy, followed by a cup of tea and a game of cards.
Sage’s heart wasn’t in it, though. Dismay was a painful, heavy knot in the pit of her stomach, and embarrassment ached in a red flush.
It might have been almost midnight, but there was little point in trying to sleep.
“I wish you’d confide in me, Treasure. You really are terrible for keeping your troubles to yourself.” Maggie spoke softly, but Sage could hear the determination in her voice. “To drop three games on the trot, that’s most unlike you.”
“Do you think you’re a good person, Maggs?” Sage blurted it out before she could stop herself, throwing her hand of cards down onto the table.
Maggie startled at the question. “Beg pardon, madam?”
“By that, I mean…” Sage swallowed, trying to figure out how to end the sentence in a way that wasn’t entirely mortifying. “I mean, do you think some people are ever just…cursed? From the very beginning? That love isn’t meant for them. That they’re not supposed to be happy?”
Maggie tilted her head, then glanced out the window at the huge silhouette of the beanstalk. “Is this connected to all the bothersome antics of this pesky enchantment?”
Sage only shrugged.
Maggie smiled sadly, the silhouette of her silvery expression wavering in the candlelit kitchen.
“Truth be told, I’ve wondered the same thing myself during many a night spent in contemplation.
” She played with the hem of her apron. “Sometimes it has felt as though I must have committed some ghastly sin to end up living in such a strange loop. Ensnared the way that I am, bereft of a true love and void of companionship in a greater capacity than whoever claims this house. Surely such a fate would scarce befall a virtuous woman, would it?”
Sage flared with defensiveness for her dear friend, sweetness and generosity personified.
“That’s not true. There was nothing you could have done to affect your fate, Maggs.
Your death couldn’t be helped, for one. Tuberculosis was highly contagious and there was no effective treatment in your day.
You’re not at fault for any part of your fate.
It’s terrible, that’s for sure, but it’s entirely out of your control. ”
Maggie nodded. “And I know that, deep down. It’s only in my darkest hours that such fancies take hold. My meaning, Sage, is that if you don’t think it of me and my fate, then why should it be any different for yourself?”
Sage didn’t have a response to that. It was not the same. Maggie had not wielded unforgivable dark magic against those she loved. Maggie was unfairly caught up in some kind of messy, fate-twisting mistake, while Sage’s curse was warranted and inevitable, as a witch.
The housekeeper leaned forwards and placed an ice-cold but comforting palm over Sage’s scrunched fist.
“Luck may be unknowable, but love is much simpler. It is not a proud critic, Sage. It is generous and good. We’re all of us supposed to find it along the way. It’s usually there for the taking, should we only pause to acknowledge the loveliness that we’ve discovered.”
“Usually there,” Sage said, echoing Maggie’s choice of words, “not always.”
A sad sort of quiet blanketed the kitchen. The candles flickered between the two women.
“Nobody, and I mean nobody—not even you, Treasure—is born cursed,” Maggie said softly.
“Some folks find that dreadful things are written into their story, make no mistake.” She gestured down at herself, the shape of the chair visible behind her translucent arms and frilly apron.
“This life in which we all find ourselves, whether ghostly or corporeal, can at the best of times be cruel and unkind and unfair, something rotten. You’re acquainted with such great grief, what with the loss that you’ve suffered,” Maggie said with a shake of her head, gathering the cards from the table to shuffle them together again.
“But you hear this, Sage Hemlock: That casts no reflection on whether you yourself are made up of a good or a bad sort of magic.” She began to divide the cards between them again for a fresh game.
“Some of us are dealt an unkind hand, but the cards you’re given aren’t up to you.
What you do with them once they’re dealt, that part is yours to decide. ”
Sage could only sniff and push up her glasses.
“Sorry, Maggs. Don’t know what’s come over me, all of this deplorable pondering.
” Maggie was doing her best to brighten her mood, but the ghost was fighting a losing battle.
A sleepy headache drummed at Sage’s temples, and a sickly sort of sadness was making everything feel heavy.
“I think I might go to bed. Do you mind? It’s been quite a day. Quite a week, actually.”
“Not at all, Treasure,” Maggie said kindly, rising to the faint outline of her feet. “But allow me to draw you a bath first, will you? Then you’ll retire straight to sleep. It’ll do you a world of good to warm your bones and fill your lungs with healing lavender.”
Maggie was right. She usually was, especially when it came to anything remotely comforting or good for the soul—neither of which were Sage’s speciality.
Sage had never been particularly good at looking after herself.
It had been a fortunate stroke of luck that her house had come with a benevolent and naturally maternal housekeeping ghost and that her best friend seemed to enjoy keeping a close, protective eye on her in the outside world.
Sage lay in the hot bath, tendrils of steam wrapping her limbs in a mist of herbal smells and warmth.
She wasn’t sure how long she stayed there, replaying the moments over and over from the past few hours that had changed everything so starkly.
Casimir and her siblings felt a million miles away now.
Lilara’s new words tangled with Maggie’s opinions until they all felt too loud, too contradictory, and Sage plunged herself under the water to try to clear her mind.
Eventually, she pulled herself out of the tub and gathered up the fluffy towel that Maggie had left for her on the radiator, droplets running down the back of her shoulders and damp red ringlets clinging to the nape of her neck.
She turned to the mirror to retie the scrunchie that was hopelessly attempting to keep her curls in one place.
The scrunchie fell to the floor.
Sage’s hands flew out to grip the sink.
Behind the foggy glass, the mirror’s reflection wavered, distinct and unmissable, the same as it had the morning after the book had come to her. Like water, the glass rippled in rivulets.
Sage leaned in and frantically cleared away the fog with her forearm.
But the glass, rather than showing Sage’s own face against the pale blue tiles of her bathroom, had turned dark—almost entirely black, in fact, save for small circles of blurred gold that lit the image.
They gave just enough light for Sage to recognize what she was looking at.
The mirrors had come as a pair. She and Casimir had bought them together, but she had decided only one was necessary to feature in the exhibition.
With Sage’s outright refusal to use her magic to refresh or update the charm connection strung between the two mirrors, much to Casimir’s annoyance, there hadn’t been a lot of point in displaying them together, so Sage had taken the other one home to replace her old bathroom mirror.
It was pretty. But as she squinted closer, nose almost pressed against the glass, Sage balked. The link was now very much working.
She gripped both of the gilded sides wildly.
Rather than its own setting, her mirror was showing the reflection of the mirror placed within the exhibition—the one hung opposite Lilara’s cloak and beneath the spotlights which stayed on overnight at the museum.
She could see the edge of the wooden cabinets, the shelves of other curiosities, the welcome plaque of gold writing.
Sage squinted, eyes glazing over as she tried to be absolutely certain.
But, yes, the faintly lit outline of the cloak’s hooded silhouette was indisputable, thrown over the faceless mannequin, casting it in shadow.
This must be part of the spell. The reflective connection between the two locations had never shown itself like this before, like a direct portal of sight.
There had to be a reason for it. Sage snatched for her glasses, balanced on the side of the bath, hastily unfolded them and shoved them onto the bridge of her nose in order to observe as best she could.
She screamed.
There was a face beneath the hood of the cloak.
It gazed back at her, wide-eyed, open-mouthed.
Barely lit, the spotlights only caught the shape of the chin.
The bridge of the nose, the weight of the brow, a soft but strong profile.
The eyes looked dark and round on a face that was ghostly pale but full of fire, black hair hanging heavily and wildly, unkempt and dripping wet.
Sage felt as though her heart was seconds from bursting through her own chest. Fear welled solidly in her throat. Her hands flew to the mirror, pressed against the glass.
“Lilara?”
The edges of the mirror frame bit into her palms as she strained to see and understand, and Lilara Mournfell stared back from the darkness, holding Sage’s own gaze mercilessly.
“Sage? Sage? Are you quite well, madam?” Maggie’s voice came from the other side of the door.
Sage blinked, vision clearing, chest heaving.
As she steadied herself, tried to slow her breathing, rationality came creeping back.
And she saw only herself, reflected back against the shape of Lilara’s cloak on the other end, making her appear as though inside it, wearing it.
It was her that the mirrors had shown, her own reflection imposed in front of the cloak in a combination of the two mirrors.
“I’m fine…” Sage croaked to Maggie.
Was she really there, at the museum? Some form of astral projection enchantment doubling her form, draping the cloak around her shoulders as she stood beneath it?
Or was it mere chance and luck, the incidental hanging that they had chosen for the mirror so perfect to position her reflection in such a way?
A trick of the light when the image of the dark bathroom and the dark museum came together?
She couldn’t be certain, but the next chapter of the spell had finally unfolded, with such a jolt of surprise and blurring of reality that, for the first time since Lilara’s enchantment arrived, its presence truly scared her.
From years of study, Sage was familiar with the fact that nearly all fairy tales took a deeply sinister turn to deliver their message or moral.
The purple bloom of Laurel’s bruises, the dripping blood from Casimir’s cheek, the hidden wounds of Robin’s hand—they were all that she could see.
As the droplets of water still clinging to her skin turned icy cold and made her shiver, it dawned on Sage that she had reached such a turning point.
Finally, Sage knew what Lilara was attempting to show her. What she was trying to remind her of at the heart of the spell and could reinforce now that she was truly alone. No one was here to persuade her away from the truth, to distract her with the sparkle of a life and love not meant for her.
The heavy herbal scents, damp air and heat of the small bathroom sent her swaying. She was breathing in shallow gasps. Stepping back towards the sink to anchor herself against it, she looked into the mirror once more.
Her reflection fitted perfectly again to hang the cloak around her shoulders. This was her costume, her character. Lilara was keen to remind her that she had not been left out of the spell’s story at all. Sage would always be the witch.
And in the realm of fairy tales that they had found themselves living within, witches were frightening, clever, scheming and dangerous. Best left alone to their bitterness, trouble and wrath.
Witches in fairy stories were always, always wicked.