The Mirror After the Cavern

by Jeffrey Quyle

The girl pursed her lips, thinking, then held up a finger, motioning for him to wait, as he clearly understood. She disappeared from view, and Silas wondered what she had gone off to do. Was she going to find others, to show him to others. Perhaps, his stomach lurched at the thought, perhaps she was going to summon guards to come catch a glimpse of him, so that they would recognize him to arrest him. As if anyone needed any more than a description of his eyes, he sourly reminded himself.

  The girl reappeared. She held up a writing pad and a stylus. She smiled at the mirror, then stared down at the pad and wrote on it.

  “My name is Jade,” the pad showed, when she flipped it for him to see.

  “Hi Jade,” Silas mouthed the words with a smile.

  The girl pointed at Silas. “Who?” she mouthed the single syllable back at him.

  “Si-las,” he tried to enunciate his name with exaggerated motions of his mouth.

  The girl scribbled on her pad.

  “Simon?” it asked.

  The boy shook his head. He pressed the tip of one finger against the glass, then wrote a backwards S, followed by a backward I, complete with a dot carefully shown atop. He followed with the remaining letters, drawn slowly and repeatedly.

  “Silas?” another line of writing appeared on the pad.

  He nodded approval, with a smile and a thumbs-up gesture.

  “I’m in the palace,” she wrote.

  Silas nodded acknowledgement.

  “Where are you?” she wrote.

  It was a difficult question for him to answer, without speech or writing tools on his end. He thought for a second, then lifted the mirror and stood up. He held the mirror at arm’s length from his head, and slowly swiveled in a semicircle, so that she could see the caravan park in the background behind him.

  “Silas, you look good from any angle!” Hooves, the caravan’s animal handler, was watching Silas’s long look in the mirror. To an uninformed observer, it appeared that Silas was extremely interesting in watching himself in the mirror, and so the man’s jibe at Silas’s seeming self-absorption.

  Silas hastily sat back down, then looked into the mirror. “I’ve got to go!” he mouthed the words, waved farewell, then put the mirror back in his pack.

  He left the pack and left the camp, walking into town to the armory, where he practiced with the locals, doing neither well nor poorly as he retained the lessons he had been taught, and began to learn additional nuances about the ways blades were used in sport. And he thought about the girl in the mirror.

  The next day, Silas took his pack with him. It was the final full day the caravan would be on the island. He went down to the pier where the pearl divers worked, and looked into his mirror. The room with the yellow and pink wallpaper was nearly empty – he saw a maid dusting furniture – so he tucked the mirror away, and watched the working shift of divers methodically disappear from the float as they slid below the surface of the harbor waters in pursuit of the smooth white pearls that were their livelihood.

  An hour later he looked again, and saw the princess, alone in the room, about to put on her underclothes. Silas watched, goggle-eyed for a second more than he knew he should have stared, then he flipped the mirror over and slipped it back into the dark interior of his pack.

  He left the pier to go find a food vendor for lunch, and in the afternoon, he looked into the mirror for a third time. Jade was nearby, sitting in front of the mirror, but not looking into it. Silas watched, sure that she would turn to look in the mirror at any moment, allowing their communication to recommence.

  She slid a finger along her cheek and the side of her nose, absently rubbing an itch, then glanced at the mirror for a momentary check, before she dropped her hand from her face and swung around to devote her full attention to Silas.

  “Are you alright?” she wrote a note. He nodded his head.

  “Where are you?” was her next note on her pad.

  Silas raised the mirror and again gave her a panorama view of the background around him.

  “My sister, Mata, is one of the girls who dives for pearls there,” Jade punctuated her note with exclamation points. “You should meet her.”

  Silas nodded his head in agreement. He wished he had a pad of paper to send a return message to the girl.

  “You’re a friend to the Wind Word Speaker?” she asked. He nodded.

  “Will you be coming back to the palace again soon?” she wanted to know.

  He showed an unhappy face as he shook his head in the negative.

  “Are you leaving the island?” she wrote her next question, with a tear drop drawn to denote her sadness. Silas nodded slowly.

  “Will this mirror still work when you go farther away?” the girl on the other end of the unique conversation asked.

  Silas could only shrug. He hoped so, and gave a prayerful motion to indicate his hope.

  Jade laughed.

  “Could you learn how to write notes?” she asked.

  He laughed in response, then nodded vigorously.

  A group of new pearl divers stepped onto the landward end of the pier. Silas turned the mirror to show the group to Jade.

  “There’s my sister, in that group!” she wrote. “Tell her I said ‘hi’!”

  Silas gave her a thumbs-up, then waved good bye. He slid the mirror back in his pack, then watched the women approach.

  “Is one of you Mata, the sister of Jade?” he asked as they came in close proximity, before they climbed down into their waiting boat.

  One girl stopped, as the others moved on. “My name’s Mata. How did you know?”

  It was the girl with the wavy hair, the girl he had watched during his entire stay on Amenozume.

  Chapter 24

  Silas was speaking to Mata, the pearl diving girl he had exchanged glances with for days. She was the sister of the girl he had spotted through his magical mirror. The coincidence was unbelievable.

  “You’re Jade’s sister?” Silas asked in amazement.

  “Mata, are you coming?” a voice asked from the waiting boat that was prepared to leave for the pearl diving platform.

  “I have to go. What do you need?” Mata asked, indecision on her face as she edged towards the ladder to the boat below.

  “I’ll talk to you when you’re done,” Silas waved her away. “Go on. We’ll talk later,” he promised.

  He didn’t really have anything to tell her, other than to pass along a greeting from her sister. But he wanted to talk to her, to hear her speak, to find out what life was like as a pearl diver, and to know why she had looked at him every time they saw each other.

  Silas went back to the harbor while Mata was spending her shift on the diving platform, so that he could buy some food to satisfy his hunger. When finished snacking, he walked back and sat at the end of the pier as the women out on the float in the harbor continued to gracefully slip into and out of the water.

  When the next shift of women came sauntering down the pier, Silas knew that Mata’s shift was ending. He waited as the boat carried the new divers out, and brought the old divers back.

  Mata was the last to climb up the ladder, and Silas received numerous glances from the other divers as they walked by, on their way to take their haul of pearls for sale to the Guild buyers at the end of the pier.

  “What did you say your name was?” Mata asked after she arrived on the deck.

  “Silas. I’m with a traveling caravan,” he said. He held out a hand to shake in greeting.

  “Don’t touch me; not yet. I can’t do anything until I go sell my pearls to the Guild,” she explained. “If they see me with you, they may inspect you for smuggled pearls. Just follow me,” she told him.

  Silas was not inspected by the Guild buyers, who spent only a few seconds looking at Mata’s small handful of pearls before dropping a few small coins in her hand.

  She walked away shaking her head in annoyance at the pittance she had collected.

  “Can we go someplace to talk?” Silas asked as he stepped up t
o walk beside her.

  “I need to go home to put some clothes on,” she diffidently gestured at her swimming attire. “I’ll meet you at Braxton’s in half an hour,” she told him, then slipped away up a side street a moment later.

  Silas slowly walked towards Braxton’s, a nearby pub that had seating inside and outside. He took a seat at a small outdoor table that was relatively isolated from the other tables with diners, then he ordered a mug of fruit juice to sip on and nurse as he waited for Mata to arrive.

  “What’s your name again?” Mata asked when she finally slipped into the seat opposite Silas.

  “I’m Silas,” her replied.

  “Why are your eyes that way?” she bluntly asked.

  A waiter from the tavern stopped at the table and took Mata’s order for a drink.

  “Your eyes?” she prompted when the man left the table.

  “I was in a caravan in the mountains,” Silas began.

  “On the mainland?” Mata wanted to know. “I’ve never been to the mainland.”

  “Yes, it was on the mainland,” Silas agreed, and he recounted an abbreviated version of the fall into the cavern, and the gasses he had experienced.

  Mata questioned his story as he spoke, and she mentioned events from her life, causing Silas to ask her questions. The day passed on and they ate a meal, then the sun began to fall and they continued to talk. Silas learned about Jade and Mata, two sisters whose mother had died two years earlier, and how they had gone their separate ways while still feeling affection for one another. And Mata learned all about Silas’s disappointments while hoping to be a Seeker and a Speaker.

  The pub closed down when the moon was high overhead, and the pair left their table.

  “You can come to my rooming house, but just to talk,” Mata told Silas, using a firm voice. They ended up sitting on the roof of her shabby building, watching the stars and the moon move overhead, while they talked about how their lives might be better someday – as they dreamed, and how the world could be better, if other people were considerate, and how they didn’t know all the answers they needed yet, but hoped to find them.

  When the eastern horizon started to brighten, Silas realized that the night was over, and that he needed to return to the caravan to prepare for departure. He sat next to Mata with his arm around her shoulders and told her he had to leave. They hugged in the warmest of manners without romance, friends through the torrent of words and secrets and emotions they had shared during the magical moonlit night, and then Silas traipsed down the stairs of the building and trod through the empty streets of the city, on his return to the caravan location.

  It felt like a dream, he told himself. Mata and he had shared so much. They had spoken of their disappointments and the dreams that hadn’t come true. Silas had revealed his disappointments, and Mata had shared hers. She had spoken of Jade’s dreams of living in the palace, and how their mother had paid for music and dance lessons so that Jade would be accomplished – and her dream had miraculously come true. Connections through her classes had led to introductions with others in the noble classes of the city, and had taken her to a ball where she had danced with a young earl whose sister was in court.

  And then their mother had died of an illness. Jade had given as much money as she had to help Mata, and diving had provided enough for her to live on the edge of comfort. Her small apartment was in a safe part of the city, and the fishermen sometimes gave her small fish for free, and so she got by. But she dreamed of owning a boat of her own, so that she might go fishing or provide ferry services, or just live with complete freedom.

  Just as Silas wanted freedom. He’d found a version of it by roaming the countryside with the caravan, she’d pointed out to him – an insight he’d not ever pieced together on his own. He understood her and she understood him.

  “What has the cock dragged in?” Lucer was the acting guard for the morning shift at the caravan, and he’d spotted the weary Silas stumbling towards his wagon. “I wouldn’t have pegged you to be the one out at the taverns until the sun rise.”

  Lucer stepped in closer to Silas and sniffed. “You don’t smell like ale. Was it something else?” the man gave a low guttural laugh.

  “I just talked to a friend,” Silas sighed, then lurched past Lucer and into his wagon bed, where he immediately fell asleep.

  He didn’t sleep long, before Hron’s hunger pangs awoke him. He shambled to the corral and fed his mule friend, then lazily prepared his wagon for its planned departure.

  “You need to pick up the pace Silas, or the caravan’s going to miss the ferry, and after a fortnight on this island, we are not going to miss the ferry,” Prima spoke to him sharply as Silas fiddled with the covers over his remaining mirror merchandise.

  Silas hurried his efforts, and brought his wagon into line for departure just after the others had gotten their own wagons in place. And with that they set off, leaving behind patches of turf where the grass had yellowed from being covered so unusually long by its tenants.

  When they rode down to the dock of the restored ferry, they arrived with time to spare.

  “Everyone go purchase your food from the vendors,” Prima ordered them all, to make up for the lunch that the cook wouldn’t be able to prepare during the midday loading of the ferry.

  When Silas roamed in search of food, he stumbled upon a cart vendor who sold the last thing the boy expected to find – sausages served on bread rolls, with spicy meat sauce poured over them. He bought one and thought of his friend Jimes, not far away in the palace, who clearly had no knowledge of the vendor’s goods for sale.

  Back in the academy at Heathrin, Jimes had been known for few things more than his boasts about the peculiar cuisine of his small hometown, Cincinn, in a remote corner of Avaleen, where a spicy meat sauce called chili was seemingly eaten as an every-day staple, according to Jimes. The boy had gone to the academy kitchens and produced sample pots of chili from time to time to share with his friends and to relieve his own cravings.

  “Jimes! You need to come try this chili! It’s as good as yours!” Silas laughed as he ate a bite. He was sleepy and relaxed and the words came out loudly. And they felt funny too, somehow. Silas had imagined Jimes hearing him and being shocked by the discovery of his craved food so nearby; he felt the words leave his mouth, but he’d strangely felt them with his mouth and his throat, his chest and even his mind, while his vision had seemed momentarily clouded with yellow and purple, the colors that seemed to have taken over his life.

  “Silas? Is that your voice?” Silas’s laughter cut off and the smile left his face. He heard Jimes respond!

  Silas whirled around, looking for his friend to be nearby. Jimes was nowhere in sight, and there was no place nearby for him to hide.

  “Jimes?” Silas focused intently as he spoke. “Where are you?” he asked. The speech felt strange, as it had just before.

  “This is Jimes, the Speaker of the palace at Amenozume. Who is speaking? Please identify yourself,” Jimes answered.

  “Jimes,” Silas spoke cautiously. “This is Silas. Where are you?”

  I’m in my Speaker’s tower. Silas, where are you? What are you doing?” there were notes of confusion and perhaps even fear in both their voices, as they tried to understand what impossibility was occurring.

  “I’m down at the docks in Amenozume. We’re waiting to board the ferry,” Silas answered. “I just bought chili from a food vendor down here, and I thought of you. And,” he let the sentence dangle, unfinished.

  “Are you using the Wind Word abilities?” Jimes asked. “How can you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t try. It can’t be,” Silas stuttered through incomplete answers.

  “What have you done? You’re a Speaker! This is bloody wonderful! You’re a Speaker!” Jimes said, new emotions rising in his voice.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Silas. “It just happened.”

  “Silas, get your head on your shoulders and get over here!” Pr
ima’s voice called from the caravan.

  “I have to go. I’ll see if I can do this again,” Silas promised Jimes, not sure if his words had traveled in the Wind Word way. He was distracted by Prima’s implied reprimand.

  “What is in that tail of yours?” Prima asked as Silas ran over, still holding his uneaten portion of his impromptu meal.

  “I was just a Speaker! I sent a message to my Wind Word friend in the palace!” the words burst out of Silas’s mouth.

  “You what?” Prima’s expression and tone of voice changed. He grabbed Silas’s arm. “What did you just do?”

  Silas wasn’t sure if Prima was surprised or pleased or doubting or angry. But he was clearly and immediately totally attentive.

  “I just said something to my friend the Speaker in the palace, and he heard me from here. We just had a conversation. I don’t know how I did it; I don’t know if I could do it again,” Silas was unsure what he had done or what to say or what the consequences would be. Something momentous was happening in real time in life, and he didn’t know quite how to react.

  “Get your wagon on the ferry, and we’ll talk about this later,” Prima released his arm and patted him on the shoulder in friendly fashion. “Hooves, have we got all the loose animals?” Prima shouted out to his next target of attention and moved on.

  Silas stood, dumbfounded for a moment. He had apparently really used the Speakers’ powers. It couldn’t be some fevered figment of his imagination, nor was it his sleepy mind – his mind was not the least bit sleepy any longer.

  He had done something impossible – he had used the power without breathing the green fumes of the caverns beneath the Temple of Krusima. But Krusima had perhaps unleashed the yellow and purple fumes upon him in the other cavern that he had unintentionally visited – perhaps the end result was the same, with some different nuances. Nuances like his knife and his eyes and the mirrors and his healing colors, he listed the strange occurrences to himself with a roll of his eyes.

  If he spoke to Jimes – and he had – without the usual way to acquire the power, did that mean he might not be subject to the same rules or limitations? His mind was hurling in one direction – he might be able to speak to Mata.