Page 38 of Hemlock & Silver

The timing could not have been worse. He must have just been coming in the door, in the blind spot left by the mirror. An instant earlier and I’d have seen him, an instant later and he wouldn’t have seen me.

If I had the brains that the saints gave an oyster, as my grandmother used to say, I would have been terrified.

I would have remembered what the cat had said about being stoned as a witch.

I would have immediately started laying the groundwork to convince Javier that he was seeing things, that it was a trick of the light.

But my body was still echoing with the wild enthusiasm of discovery, and when I opened my mouth, what came out was “Saints! Javier, you have to see this, it’s incredible !”

I wouldn’t have thought that he could look any more astounded, but he managed. His eyebrows practically touched his hairline. He said, very carefully, “Did you just come out of the mirror?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding so vigorously that my hair flopped into my eyes. “There is something very, very strange going on with the mirrors here.” I waved at it.

Javier took a cautious step forward, then finally looked away from me, to the mirror. “Is it some kind of hidden door?”

“Not exactly. Give me your hand.” I reached out and caught his wrist. He resisted for only an instant, then let me take it. Either he trusted me, or he was too stunned to protest.

“Close your eyes,” I said. His eyes flicked back to me, then he warily obeyed.

I could feel the tension in his muscles as I knit our fingers together.

His hand was warm and dry and hard with calluses.

Mine was cold and sweaty, and I found a moment to be embarrassed by that, before I closed my eyes and put our hands into the mirror.

His bounced off the glass.

“Wait, what ?” My eyes snapped open, which accidentally proved that opening my eyes didn’t mean my fingers fell off.

The side of my hand was inside the silver, tingling with cold, but Javier’s knuckles lay against the mirror’s surface.

He opened his eyes, too, to see my hand submerged in the mirror as if it were water.

“What,” he said, quite calmly, “in the hell .”

“Oh, damn it,” I said, pulling back out.

“I can’t bring you through.” I knew that I could bring physical objects from the real world—I wasn’t naked on the other side of the mirror, so my clothes obviously transferred—but apparently living things were different.

“It’s because of the apple. The one I ate yesterday. I tripped and fell into the mirror.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Javier said, “or I have.”

“No, no. Well, that’s what I thought, too.” It appeared that Grayling had been right, that was unoriginal.

“Am I dreaming? Or hallucinating?”

Fine, all right, the cat probably had a reason for being so snide. I decided not to mention Grayling right away. Javier was having a hard enough time without adding a talking cat to the mix. “No, I thought that, too, but this is real. It’s really happening. The mirror is weird .”

His throat worked as he swallowed. “Is this witchcraft, then?”

“I don’t believe in witchcraft,” I said primly. “There’s always an explanation if you’re willing to study it.” I paused, then admitted, “I grant you, the explanation on this one is taking me a while.”

He shot me a glance, quick and sharp as a pinprick, and I realized belatedly that the question had really been are you a witch? I didn’t know if my answer had been correct or not. It was too late to turn back now, though. I was almost manic with the need to share my discovery.

Damn it, I have to get him through the mirror. Then he’ll understand, I’m sure of it.

In order to pass through the mirror, I’d eaten a mirror-apple. Did it have to be the apple, though? Grayling had said something about feeding the rooster mirror-food, which might mean that any food would work, as long as it was from the other side.

“Here,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “We can fix this, I think. You just have to eat this.”

“You want me… to eat… a raw potato ?”

“I suppose we could cook it,” I said doubtfully. Heat destroys a lot of substances, but could it really destroy being from the other side of the mirror?

“It’s a potato, ” he said again.

“It’s a mirror -potato! Look!” Its passage through the glass had rendered it pale tan, not silver, but a strange iridescence still shimmered over its skin.

Javier took the tuber from me, with the expression of a man who had stormed the gates of heaven and discovered a public privy on the far side. “Are you sure about this?”

“Of course I’m sure. Who ever heard of an iridescent potato?”

He made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. “Okay, that’s… fair. Somehow.” He pulled out his belt knife and carved off a slice. The potato flesh was chalk white, just like the apple had been.

“Err—” A thought occurred to me. “There’s a chance that if you eat it, you’ll be sick tonight. Like I was. It passes, though? I had toast this morning.”

“This has got to be a dream,” Javier said, almost to himself. He popped the potato into his mouth and chewed.

“What does it taste like?” I asked, leaning forward.

An expression of bafflement crossed his face. “It tastes… cold .”

“Yes! Exactly! Like mint or wintergreen, except not like that at all, right?”

“No. But also yes.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as if warding off a headache. “And this is poisoned?”

“I don’t think it’s actually poisoned. I think it’s just that the mirror-food doesn’t combine well with real food.

That’s my current guess, anyway. I didn’t get sick until I ate something, and then you saw what that was like last night.

” Another thought suddenly occurred to me. “Hang on, why are you in my room now?”

“I came to help with the letter,” he said. “When you didn’t answer the door, I was afraid that you’d taken ill again. I thought I’d just glance inside, and then you stepped out of the mirror.”

“Right, the letter.” I’d nearly forgotten. In fairness, it’s not like you haven’t had some distractions. “Thank you.”

He grunted. I assumed the strategic word mines were starting to run low.

“Now close your eyes and let’s see if this works.”

It was probably a measure of how thoroughly confused Javier was that he let me take his hand and lead him to the mirror again.

There was a very slight resistance as I pulled him through, as if the surface went briefly spongy, and then I was through and he was stumbling over the lip of the mirror after me.

I caught him before he could fall face-first onto the floor. He regained his footing, mumbling an automatic apology, and stared at the colorless walls. “What…? How…? ”

To give Javier credit, he accepted things much more quickly than I had.

I tried to explain everything I’d figured out about the gray, and by the time I reached the end, he was nodding slowly.

Possibly, he was quicker on the uptake than I was, or maybe he was simply chalking the whole thing up to magic.

I suppose it’s easier to accept things if you don’t know they’re impossible.

“Isn’t it amazing ?” I said, when I’d run out of explanation. Then I giggled. It was a perfectly normal giggle for a scholar who’s just discovered something fantastic, but it was a bit more maniacal than the average person was used to. I clamped my hand over my mouth and hoped he hadn’t noticed.

Javier did the same back-and-forth prowl of the bedroom that I had, before finally going to the door. “Is it just this room?”

“Oh no. There’s more. In fact, I think it might be the whole world.” I could feel the giggle trying to start up again and squelched it firmly. “Open the door and look.”

I crowded into the entryway behind him, so I was close enough to see his neck muscles tighten as he looked into the lightless hall. “That,” he said, “is not right.”

“Isn’t it creepy?” I asked delightedly.

He looked at me over his shoulder. “You are far too excited about this.”

“Well, yeah .” I waved my hands wildly, probably conveying nothing except unfocused enthusiasm. “Nobody’s ever discovered anything like this before. We’re like explorers who suddenly found a new continent. Except most continents already have people on them, so even more so.”

Javier frowned. “And there are no people here?”

“Ah… not exactly. Sometimes there are reflections of people, but it’s not quite the same.” I tried to explain about the reflections freezing in place, while his head tilted to one side like a confused dog.

He continued staring at me for some time after I finished, then finally said, “Are they dangerous?”

“I don’t think so?” Remembering how my skin had crawled when confronted with the maid’s reflection, I shrugged helplessly. “They don’t seem to do anything.”

Movement caught the corner of my eye. I had barely begun to turn when Javier put himself between me and whatever it was, one hand on his sword hilt, as reflexive as breathing.

A servant was coming out of a room two doors down. The hall was briefly splashed with light, then he turned and closed the door behind him. Three-quarters of the way through, he stopped, one hand still on the doorknob, and sagged in place, cut off from the mirror that animated him.

“There!” I said. “That’s one.”

Javier was braver than I was. He walked up to the reflection and studied it, peering into the gray face. Then, carefully, he reached out a fingertip and poked the servant in the shoulder.

I held my breath. Logically, nothing should happen. It wasn’t a person, it was just that the mirror took a little while to catch up to reality. There wasn’t a mind there to retaliate. Logically.

At that moment, caught between ebullience and terror, logic seemed like a very flimsy shield. If the reflection had suddenly woken, spoken, grabbed Javier’s hand, bitten his face off, anything—well, I’d have been shocked, but not actually surprised .

Nothing happened. Score one for logic.

“And he will stay like this?” Javier said. “For how long?”