Page 32 of Hemlock & Silver

Watching her was unsettling. Since the real woman’s back was to the mirror, the reflected woman had no face, only a bare suggestion of features under blank grayness.

Bits of her body kept flickering light and dark as she moved.

I could hear the rustle of linens, but I wasn’t sure if it came from the reflected bed or was being transmitted through the mirror.

When she had finished making the bed, she turned and went toward the washroom, carrying towels.

I could tell the exact moment that she stepped out of the mirror’s view, because the reflected woman halted.

She was solid gray from head to toe, and she stood unmoving with her head bowed over the stack of towels.

I watched her for several seconds, and then, like a soap bubble popping out of existence, she vanished.

I’m not too proud to admit that I yelped.

What happened? I wondered. The giddiness I’d been feeling was still there, but it was mixed uncomfortably with alarm. When I’d been very small, my father used to throw me in the air and catch me, while I shrieked in delighted terror. This felt oddly similar.

A beam of light pierced the shadow, and I realized that I could see the maid again, or at least her back half, sticking out of the washroom.

The light was coming from the mirror over the washbasin, projecting a band of color and brilliance into the room.

She must have opened the curtain there. Had her reflection vanished because it needed to be in another mirror somewhere else?

Do you only ever have one reflection, then? So what happens if there are two mirrors? Or twenty?

I would commit murder for a research partner…

The washbasin curtain closed, and the maid flickered out of existence again, then reappeared almost immediately, significantly closer, as if she’d teleported.

She walked across the room toward me, half-dark, half-light, like a festival clown.

I shrank back as she approached, though she still gave no sign of seeing me.

A moment later, she stepped into shadow, and I waited for her to vanish again.

Except she didn’t. She stood silently, her whole body such a smooth gray that it was hard to tell where her clothes left off and skin began.

Her head hung down, the basket clutched in one hand, her other arm dangling limply.

She should have looked like a statue, but somehow she didn’t.

The overall impression was of a human standing very, very still.

It was deeply creepy.

Hang on… if the maid was walking across the room and stepped out of the mirror’s range, shouldn’t this reflection be in midstride?

She wasn’t. She stood with her feet together, which meant that she had moved independently, at least a little, when she reached the shadows.

I took another step back and swallowed hard.

I don’t know how long I stood there watching her. It felt like years. I kept waiting for her to disappear, off to reflect in some other glass, but she didn’t. Wherever the maid had gone, it had no mirrors.

Saints, maybe she’s gone to bed early. That reflection could be here for hours.

I didn’t think I could handle hours.

The implications slowly began to sink in. If your reflection stayed beside the last mirror you passed, what happened if you died ? Was the mirror-world full of shades left behind the dying?

There had been a mirror in my mother’s bedroom. If I went through it, would I find her body, wracked with the pains of childbirth, crouched just beyond the frame?

A shudder went through me at the thought. Then I remembered the little hand mirror that I use to see if a patient is still breathing. If that sliver of glass was enough to trap a reflection, then Saint Adder’s infirmary must be waist-deep in the dead.

Unless it’s just a reflection of their nostrils, I thought, and bit the side of my hand to control what threatened to be hysterical laughter.

“Right,” I said, my voice high and flat in my own ears. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

Well. Take stock. How much room was there? Could I inch past the motionless reflection and reach the exit?

She was half blocking the narrow entryway, and there wasn’t a great deal of room to get by. I was quite certain that I didn’t want to touch her. I kept waiting for her to reach out and grab me. There was no reason to think that she would, but there was no reason to think that she wouldn’t either.

I pressed myself flat against the wall and wormed my way past, hardly daring to breathe. At one point I had to pass within an inch of her shoulder. I could actually feel the gray chill radiating off her. (Would it have been better or worse if she were warm? I don’t know.)

When I was finally out of range, I backed toward the mirror, not taking my eyes off the gray woman until my shoulder hit the cold glass. I closed my eyes and stepped through.

Safely back on this side, I moved to one side and leaned against the wall. It seemed important for some reason that the mirror not be able to see me. Not that the gray woman would necessarily be able to see me, but… well, anyway, I was happier against the wall.

It wasn’t until my heart had stopped racing that I realized that I was still holding the reflection of the book in my right hand.