Page 31 of Hemlock & Silver

The cat made a noise that might have been “hmmph!’” though I couldn’t tell if it was because he accepted my apology, or didn’t accept it, or was simply nipping at the base of his tail in a slightly obscene fashion.

I turned back to the mirror, my eye caught by the frame itself.

The inside was brilliant gilt, but the outer edges were featureless gray, with only a line of shadow to differentiate them from the dark paint on the wall.

When I ran my fingers over the grayness, it felt smooth and cold, but it was the slightly grainy smoothness of a river rock, not the slickness of gilded wood.

The line between gold and gray was ruler straight.

It’s all so crisp , I thought despairingly.

Hitting your head is supposed to make things vague and fuzzy, and this very much wasn’t.

Nor did it have the disjointed quality of a hallucination.

I had experienced those once or twice in the course of my experiments, and none of them had looked anything like this.

The book on the bedside table caught my eye again. I wonder if the writing inside is mirrored, too? I picked it up and opened it, but there was no writing at all, only the smooth, cold gray on every page.

I looked over my shoulder at the mirror again, half expecting to see the book there levitating in midair, but it was still sitting on the nightstand.

A thought began to tease at the corner of my mind. I set down the book and walked to the washroom. The curtain fabric was the same color as the wall, but it moved easily under my hand.

When I pulled it back, the alcove was very dark, except for the mirror over the basin, which blazed like a window to some exotic country.

Several inches of wall and floor by the door glowed with light, but most of the room lay in shadow.

The basin itself had a sharp line drawn across it, white porcelain giving way to featureless gray.

“Cat,” I said, stepping back. “Cat, I’ve got it! It’s gray where the mirror can’t see it!” The sheer irrationality of this statement jarred me, so I hastily amended, “Where it can’t be reflected in the mirror, I mean.”

“You were closer to the truth the first time,” said the cat, dropping his hind leg, “but yes.”

I went to the balcony door and looked out.

The sky beyond was a clear, hard blue, but there were small wedges of darkness cut out of it, looking unsettlingly like sharp black teeth.

The ground was darker still, a solid bar of shadow lying across the horizon.

I turned away quickly and went to the hallway door instead.

On the far side of the door was a deep gray version of the world I knew. I drew back, alarmed. Gray tiles, gray walls, gray railing—all the color of cold charcoal.

“Is it all like this?” I asked the cat, whispering now. There was something unnerving about the corridor. It was too easy to imagine all the doors of the house opening into gray rooms beyond, all the textures flattened down to that strange cold smoothness. “Everywhere that isn’t reflected?”

“Everywhere I’ve been,” said the cat, just as quietly.

“But the whole world ?” I pictured the desert outside lying chill and quiet, all the bushes and gnarled trees like black ceramic versions of themselves, stretching down to a blank gray sea. “Does anything… anyone… live here?”

“Oh yes,” said the cat. “Things live here. You don’t want to meet them.” He leaped down from the bed and approached the mirror. “Time to be getting back.”

I followed the cat obediently and reached out to the mirror. I half expected my hand to sink into it like water, but instead my fingertips stopped on the polished surface. “How does this work?”

“Closing your eyes helps,” the cat said.

I closed my eyes and reached out again. This time there was no resistance, only a chill, metallic feeling that traveled up my arm.

I almost opened my eyes, then had a sudden vision of the glass becoming solid inside my arm and decided that particular experiment could wait until later.

I stepped forward, bumping my shoulder on the frame, and then the inside of my skull went thin and silver and I almost stopped (but what if I got stuck?) so I kept walking until my knees bumped into the chest at the foot of the bed.

I opened my eyes. The room looked the same, but the shadows were only shadows, not bands of darkness. When I turned around, my reflection met my eyes, looking flushed and baffled and excited and a little frightened.

I did it. I’m back.

I was in the mirror.

There’s a whole world in the mirror. A whole different world.

I turned around, went up to the mirror, and closed my eyes. Then I reached out my hand and didn’t encounter glass, only that cold metallic feeling again. I pulled my hand back and opened my eyes.

My reflection gazed back at me, looking as stunned and gleeful as I felt.

I dropped onto the bed and found myself laughing with the sheer delight of discovery.

If you’ve never felt this, I don’t really know how to explain it.

Like a small child surrounded by presents, maybe.

Everywhere you look, there’s something new to see and get excited about.

My chest felt as if it were full of ecstatic bees.

Saints have mercy, there’s so much to learn!

“I’ll write a book,” I said out loud. “Two books. Ten books. Oh, no one’s going to believe it, but if I take enough people through—”

“That’ll end well,” said the cat. “Invite me to the stoning when they decide you’re a witch.”

This threw a certain amount of cold water on my enthusiasm. “All right, maybe I won’t be able to publish. But I can make notes.”

“Do what you wish,” said the cat, trotting out onto the balcony. He was over the railing with the flip of a gray tail—gone.

Damn it, I had more questions for him. Not that I had any idea what questions to ask, come to that, and the cat had made his opinion of uninteresting questions abundantly clear. Still, I’d probably be able to find him later. Find a talking cat…? my brain whispered. Do you hear yourself?

I ignored it.

The first question was how safe it was to go through the mirror. If I opened my eyes halfway through, would I get sliced in half? This seemed like a very important point to iron out first. Preferably without losing any parts of my anatomy.

I snatched a quill pen off my desk and approached the mirror. I closed my eyes and slowly extended my hand, the quill in front of me, until I felt the cold, silvery tingle of the mirror on my fingers. I pulled back until it stopped, then opened my eyes.

The quill was sticking out of the mirror. I could see myself and the lower half of the quill reflected, but I couldn’t see the rest of it. I tugged experimentally.

It felt as if the quill was stuck in glue.

It came out slowly, the individual barbs bending back, then finally popped out.

I touched it. It failed to explode or fall apart.

This was promising, but probably not enough to risk a limb on.

I would hate to learn that, for example, blood didn’t flow from one side of the mirror to the other.

But why would it matter if my eyes are open or closed? And how can the mirror tell?

Because it’s magic, my brain whispered.

I still didn’t believe in magic, but I didn’t believe in it a lot less strongly than I had before falling through a mirror. If only I had someone else to help, we could see if their gaze affected it while my eyes were closed.

I thought briefly about summoning Aaron or Javier and asking them to assist me. I was reasonably sure they wouldn’t denounce me as a witch.

Fairly sure.

Not actually sure at all.

Saints! I wish Scand were here. My old tutor would have loved this.

Since I couldn’t think of a way to answer the question of observation, I shelved it and wondered what to do next. No, that’s not quite right—I could think of a thousand things to do; I just didn’t know where to start .

I looked over at the book on my nightstand, then at the one in the mirror, and realized that the reflected one was turned about ninety degrees. Of course, I’d picked it up and set it down, hadn’t I? And now they didn’t match.

I looked back and forth again. It was a small thing, but strangely eerie. Mirrors—well— mirror things. It’s what they do . The difference felt like a flaw in the world.

I reached out and turned the real book sideways, then looked back to the mirror.

It was now an exact reflection of the real book.

“Aha!” I could go into the mirror and change a reflected object’s position, but if I moved that object in the real world, the reflection reverted back. Or at least, so it seemed.

I spent about ten minutes testing this theory, stepping into the mirror, moving the book, and stepping back out. By the end, I was pretty well convinced.

I was holding the reflected book when I caught a glimpse of movement in the reflected mirror.

I jumped back instinctively, pressing myself into the gray area.

If someone had come into the room, I really didn’t want them to see me cavorting inside the mirror.

As the cat had said, that was the sort of thing that got you stoned as a witch.

A moment later, someone walked past me, on both sides of the mirror.

It was one of the housemaids. She crossed the reflected room, holding a basket of sheets under one arm, and began stripping the bed.

She didn’t seem to notice me. I inched sideways until I could retreat into the deeper alcove of the doorway, but she never looked around, even though I was right there.

Well, of course not. She can’t look around unless the real her looks around.