Chapter 10 #2
I gasped, leaning as far back from the mirror as I could. “But I didn’t… I didn’t mean to… can we close it?”
Granny Nightjar cocked her head sharply, like a bird. “Why would you wish to do this? You look for answers, do you not?”
“I… well, yeah, but… I don’t want… doors work both ways, don’t they? If I’ve opened this up, does that mean the Darkness can just… walk right through it?” The very thought made me want to smash the mirror on the spot, and flee the room.
But Granny Nightjar was shaking her head. “The portal does not open into a living space. You will not find the Darkness here in its current form. This is a door to a liminal space, you see? An in-between.”
“In between what?” I asked. I felt dizzy with fear and confusion. I was beginning to wish I’d never come, never looked for answers I didn’t want to find.
“In between sleep and awake, between dream and reality, between memory and experience,” Granny Nightjar sang.
Her head drooped for a moment, and after a few seconds of silence, I thought she might have fallen asleep.
After a few more seconds, I began to worry that she might actually have died.
I cleared my throat, but she didn’t stir.
“Uh, Miss…I mean, Granny? Granny Nightjar?”
There was no response. No movement. My pulse fluttered with panic.
As much as I didn’t want to get any closer to the mirror, I rose from my chair and leaned across the table, trying to get a better look.
I could no longer see the sparkle of Granny Nightjar’s eyes behind the veil, so either they were closed, or that odd sparkle had been extinguished—both possibilities only made me panic more.
I reached forward with one trembling hand.
“Granny Nightjar? Are you all right?” I tried again, to no avail.
My fingertips were just close enough to brush the veil, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead, I let my gaze drop to her hand resting on the table top. Did I dare touch her? What choice did I have? Whether this was a trance or a medical situation, I had to find out if she was okay. Holding my breath, I gently brushed the top of Granny Nightjar’s hand.
Her skin felt like paper, and she didn’t move.
I reached my fingers gently under her wrist, intending to feel for a pulse.
The moment my fingertip touched the underside of her wrist, Granny Nightjar reanimated.
A shuddering breath rattled through her, and her eyes behind the veil flew open, looking almost aflame now.
Her fingers clamped down around my hand with a shockingly powerful grip that I immediately began to pull against as my fight or flight kicked in, but no matter how hard I struggled, her fingers were like iron around my hand, cutting the circulation off to my fingers.
“What the—let go of… I can’t…” I stammered.
I sucked in a deep breath to shout to Leila for help, but before I could let out more than a strangled gasp of surprise, Granny Nightjar yanked on my arm so hard that I fell forward across the table, and only just stopped myself from landing directly on the mirror.
I stared down into it, my nose an inch from the surface, looking down into what looked like endless sky.
My breath should have fogged up the glass, but it didn’t—the surface beneath me stayed clear and flawless, as though the glass itself had vanished.
I strained to lift my face, and found Granny Nightjar’s face barely a breath away from my own.
Finally, I could see Granny Nightjar's face—barely, more clearly, and instantly wished that I couldn’t.
Her eyes were sunken into her skull, her cheekbones sharp, her skin so drooping and deeply wrinkled that it barely seemed able to cling to the bones beneath.
Her toothless mouth sagged open, and the breath that she blew into my face smelled of rot.
I swallowed back bile along with a strong desire to shriek.
“The door is not in the mirror,” Granny Nightjar whispered, her glowing, sunken eyes fixated on me.
“It is inside yourself, Little Bird, and you cannot close it, not now that it has been opened. For to close it would mean to cut yourself off for good from the answers you seek. You may only enter it through scrying surfaces—a mirror, still water, a crystal ball, a pane of glass. You cannot walk through it at every moment—only when you see the Darkness waiting for you on the other side.”
“But I… I don’t want to go to him,” I gasped. “I don’t… don’t want him to know that I—”
“You do not go to him as he is,” Granny Nightjar replied, her lips working furiously around the words. “You go to him as he was. Don’t you see? The bones and stones told you to go back, and so that is where the door takes you. Back. Into the past.”
“So I’m seeing… memories?”
“Near enough,” Granny Nightjar said, her head wobbling on her neck as she nodded, like she barely had the strength to hold it up.
“Each trip through the door will teach you, child, but you must be careful. Too many trips through the door, and you may not find your way back through. Too many trips, and he may realize that you’ve found a way to traverse his past. If he does, he may come to find you there. You must not let that happen.”
“But how… how do I know how many trips are too many?” I asked. “I don’t want to face him, I’m… not ready.”
“I cannot tell you. It is not a question of numbers, but of proximity. If you draw too close to him, pluck a string too near his core, overturn a stone too near to where he hides, then he will feel it.”
Horror was rising in me like a tide. I didn’t want to be here anymore.
I didn’t want the answers to the questions that brought me here.
All I wanted was for this wretched, terrifying woman to let go of me so that I could run out the door and never ever come back here.
I’d gone looking for trouble, and now trouble had found me, and I couldn’t just stand here, waiting for it to pounce.
“Please,” was all I managed to get out, “please let go of me. I don’t want to—”
“You have no choice now, Little Bird,” Granny Nightjar hissed, sending flecks of spit against the inside of her veil. “You must discover what you can, or you face him unarmed. No magic will help you if you do not understand the nature of your foe.”
“I don’t want a foe,” I mouthed.
“And yet one waits for you.”
I blinked the tears out of my eyes, and felt one roll down my cheek.
It shivered on the tip of my nose, and then fell toward the surface of the mirror.
It seemed to take an age to fall, and instead of splashing against the glass, I watched in horrified fascination as it just kept falling, down and down and down into the dark night, a faint sparkle until it disappeared altogether.
I was so distracted watching my tear vanish that it was a few seconds before I realized Granny Nightjar had released my wrist from her grip.
She settled back against her chair with a creaking sound, and then, with a single knock upon the table top, caused the candles to flare back to their former brightness.
When I looked back into the mirror, the endless dark of an alien sky was gone.
Only my pale, horrorstruck face remained to stare back at me.
I straightened up, and then fell back into my chair. Granny Nightjar blinked owlishly at me from beneath her veil. Then she leaned forward, smacking her lips.
She held out a hand. “Now, now. What have you brought for me?”
I stared at her. She’d scared the life out of me, left me with more questions than answers, and now she wanted me to pay her? I could have laughed if I wasn’t actively trying not to burst into tears.
Granny Nightjar knocked her knuckles impatiently on the table, and then thrust her hand closer, opening it and closing it. Swallowing the urge to scream, I reached down and picked up my bag, plunking it down into my lap, and unzipping the top. I stared down at the contents, mind swirling.
Like every moment since I’d entered Granny Nightjar’s presence, I felt like I was playing a game without knowing the rules.
How was I supposed to know what offering she would accept, and which she would consider an insult?
How did I know what she would consider valuable?
It wasn’t about material value. There was something else, something almost ineffable that would mark the object as worthy of passing into her hands.
I exhaled, trying to push all the bitter, frightened feelings out of my head, or at least into a back corner where I could ignore them.
Lacking as I was in the nuances of my magical education, I had at least grasped the basics; and I knew clearing my mind was the necessary first step to approaching almost any magical task.
It took longer than usual, but Granny Nightjar seemed content to wait.
Once I felt calmer and more focused, I closed my eyes, reached into the bag, and began feeling around inside it.
I wasn’t sure exactly what I was expecting to feel when I found the right object, but I expected to feel something.
My fingers skittered over the objects in the bag one by one, almost hovering, as though expecting to feel some kind of energy emanating from the right choice.
When that didn’t work, I started picking up the objects one at a time, and closing my hand around them, squeezing gently to see if I might sense anything that way.
But soon I had held every object I’d brought with me, and I was still clueless.
I glanced up at Granny Nightjar, who was now humming quietly to herself, and replacing the tarot cards in their pouch.
I was relieved to see their creepy illustrations vanish behind that protective layer of velvet.
I cleared my throat, and Granny Nightjar turned her moon-bright eyes on me. “I… I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what to… I thought I brought some things that might… but nothing feels right,” I admitted.
Granny looked at the bag in my lap and shook her head. “Not in there, child. Check your pockets.”
“My…?”
“Pockets! Your pockets!” She snapped her fingers again impatiently.
Utterly bewildered now, I started reaching into the pockets of my jeans, my sweatshirt, and finally, my coat. All of them were empty, except for the little pocket in my coat. I fished out the object inside, and held it cradled in my palm.
It was the piece of sea glass I’d found—the one that had washed up against my feet on the beach. I held it up, the question all over my face: surely you don’t mean this?
But to my surprise, Granny Nightjar’s face split into a toothless grin. She clapped her hands together like a small child, and then held them out toward me, her fingers opening and closing repeatedly in a covetous gesture.
I looked down at the sea glass again, as though expecting it to have transformed into something valuable while I’d been looking away—a diamond, perhaps, or a hunk of gold.
But it was still just an unremarkable piece of sea glass, cloudy and faintly blue, worn smooth by the battering of the tide.
I held it out to Granny Nightjar, who plucked it greedily from my palm, like a small child stealing a sweet, and immediately squirreled it away somewhere in the folds of her veil.
I stood up. “Well, um… thank you. I guess I should…”
Granny Nightjar nodded sagely at me, like I’d just said something profound. “Yes, you should. You are running out of time, Little Bird. Begin your journey, tread carefully, and do not journey too far, lest you cannot find your way back.”
Desperation welled in me, dredging up a hundred questions: where would my journey take me?
How was I supposed to know how far was too far?
What if I got lost? But I didn't ask any of them, because I already knew better than to expect the kind of straightforward answer I needed. Like so much of this new life I’d found myself in, I’d have to figure this out for myself.
“Goodbye, Granny Nightjar.”
“Goddess-speed, young one.”