In the Mirror (A Short Story)
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In the Mirror
by
Robin Lythgoe
Copyright © 2008 by Robin Lythgoe
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They said it was magical.
They said it was dangerous.
An ordinary-looking mirror, it was tall and fitted at its middle to an upright frame so that it could be tilted. A cheval it was called. The glass was old, clouded in some places, streaked in others. The most marvelous carvings of plants and animals adorned the dark mahogany cradling the glass. Peeking out from behind bits of foliage were glimpses of what were surely people. They had very human-looking eyes.
It had stood for years in his father's office. Even after all this time Ethan remembered his juvenile fascination with the figures. He would trace them with one stubby forefinger, only half aware of the the pungent scent of his father's pipe smoke and the clackety-clack of the old Underwood typewriter. Sometimes he imagined he saw things in the mirror: landscapes, usually, but once in a while he caught sight of a something or a someone.
"Come away from there, son," his father would say around the pipe clamped between his teeth, and more often than not he would devise a reason for Ethan to be otherwise engaged. "Would you mind asking your mother to bring me another cup of coffee?" he would ask, or "Has the mail arrived yet?"
When he was very small, distracting him was not particularly difficult, but then he learned to ask why.
"It's not safe for you to play around," came the reply.
"But why, Daddy?"
"Because you are a little boy, and the mirror is very special."
"Why?"
A tender, tolerant smile touched the older man's mouth. "Because it is magic," he said gently and seriously. "Magical things are rare and often tricky. They must be treated very carefully."
When Ethan got a little older and a little more devious, his father began locking the door to his office on those occasions he went out, which wasn't often. A writer, he worked at home and could be found bent over the old typewriter at any and all hours of the day. When Ethan was about twelve or thirteen years old, he snuck inside the office a few times, but the mirror was just a mirror and didn't produce any of the wonderful images he'd thought he'd once seen. It certainly didn't do anything that might be interpreted as dangerous.
So the years passed… Ethan's father continued to write; he won a few discreet awards for his talent but never became rich or famous, and Ethan's mother got a job in a beauty parlor to help pay the bills. Ethan grew up and, more by accident than by plan, he too took up a profession in the writing industry. Sometimes when he was plodding through the details of copy-editing he would find himself thinking about his father and wondering what it would be like to find one of his manuscripts in the stack on his desk.
Father had disappeared one day–just up and vanished. The police investigated, of course, and more news coverage than he'd ever received when he'd been–well, one didn't want to say 'alive,' because that presumed he was now dead. Which he might be, but who knew? His office had been tidied before his exit from their lives, his business affairs set in order, and a very strange letter addressed to Ethan had been taped to the frame of the old mirror.
"It is old. It could be dangerous if you are not careful. I would tell you to proceed with caution, but caution got you where you are today. Proceed with life, my son, and perhaps we will meet again on the other side. I finished my latest project. It is for you. Read it.
Love, your father..."
The project was another story, a book, and the subject was the mirror. It was without a doubt the best thing Ethan's father had ever written, full of magic and secrets, battles among the faeries and a fanciful twist about how these wars affected the daily lives of innocent and ignorant humans. Ethan loved it. He cried when he'd finished it, not because the end was particularly emotional or moving, but because it had ended. There should be more to it. Surely there was more.
He read the manuscript twice, then he put it away. Perhaps his father would return again and publish it, or Ethan would one day have it published in his father's name.
Only neither of those things happened.
Ethan grew older and more tired. He married and had four children, bought a nice little house in the suburbs, drove a minivan for a deplorable number of years and attended all the soccer games, piano recitals, and school plays that every good father attended. The children grew up and two of them married and produced grandchildren. There were family gatherings. Family newsletters. Family vacations. His mother died, the old house was sold, and the mirror came to live at his own house. And all along, Ethan loved his wife, loved his family, and struggled with a frustrating sense of dissatisfaction. How could perfection be so unutterably mundane?
The years went by, and technology grew right along with Ethan's waistline and the thickness of his glasses. His mother had given him the old Underwood, which now held a place of honor on a shelf while an ultra-slick laptop with all kinds of bells and whistles he had absolutely no use for occupied prime real estate on his desk. A desk in his office in his house, just like his father had once had. And the mirror – of course the mirror was there, too. It had to be, didn't it?
A beautiful piece of furniture, his wife wanted to move it to the bedroom, but Ethan refused. There was tradition. There was the sense of comfort he got from knowing it had been his father's. There was the fact, too, that its imperfect surface was wonderfully perfect for staring at when words escaped him, for Ethan, too, had finally given in to the invisible muse that whispered stories in his ears. He often wondered if his father had had the same muse, or if hundreds–thousands–of different ones existed. He wrote a story about that, and it sold to a nondescript little Atlantic anthology. Sometimes he would swivel his office chair around and, feet outstretched and arms folded over his chest, he would gaze at the mirror until something finally came to him. He made jokes with himself that his muse lived in the mirror and showed him things within it, visions for him to turn into words. A few more tales were bought by e-zines online that went out of business and left no trace of his small successes. He should have taken pictures of the tiny checks. Framed them, or put them in a scrapbook, maybe.
Creeping insomnia contributed to the free time available to spend on his own writing, and Ethan spent longer and longer looking at that old mirror. In its clouded surface–or perhaps just in his mind's eye–scenery unfolded, characters appeared, plots presented themselves. He was quietly satisfied with the results, but oh, how he wished he'd started earlier! How he wished he'd had the courage his father had when he'd devoted himself to his craft instead of selling out to a regular paycheck! He wished he was younger, too, better looking, smarter, bolder. It was all well and good to see adventures on the private little movie screen inside his head and write about them, but what would it be like to live them? What would it be like to race through the woods with a centaur on your heels? Or to steal a fabulous jewel from a tyrannical king? Drive a custom-made Aston Martin? Single-handedly defeat an entire outlaw gang and still keep the smoke-spewing train from going off the ruined bridge?
It was a funny thing, but sometimes when he looked in that mirror, Ethan could swear he was losing weight. The lines in his face faded and the gray in his hair became less. Much less. The other mirrors in the house rudely kept right on showing him his sixty-something appearance, and the one in the downstairs hall actually had the nerve to exaggerate. He stopped looking in that one entirely, and put to paper a story about mirrors. It didn't even compare to his father's work but it was entertaining enough that Satyr dot com bought it for thirty whole dollars.
Ethan took out his father's manuscript and read it again. He r
ead the strange letter, too, and taped it back to the top of the mirror, even though it covered up a particularly mischievous-looking someone and he would probably be scolded for sullying the lovely mahogany. He stood looking at it for a long time. Yellowed now, it bore the distinctive scent of old paper and the lingering fragrance of pipe smoke. Or maybe that was just his imagination. Either way, a sense of wistfulness stole over him. He wished he could see the crazy old man again, learn what had happened to him. The questions were decades old now, but he still wondered. Had his father deserted the family? Been kidnapped? Abducted by aliens?
Leaning his head against the mirror's frame, Ethan let his fingers wander over the figures carved on the opposite side. They were so smooth and so... fascinating. His thoughts