Sia forced herself to look through the peephole.
A hooded figure stood outside the door. It held something in one hand. Sia cursed the landlord of the apartment complex for failing to replace the light bulb outside her door. The only light came from the lampposts on the front lawn of the complex, unhelpfully blocked by whoever stood between her door and the lawn.
“What?” she snapped, her voice higher than she’d wanted. “We’ve got a Bible study session in here. No distractions!”
Lame, sure, but it was the safest thing she could think of at the moment. She hoped it gave the impression that there were many people with her, albeit quiet ones. In truth, she had no husband, no kids, no family to speak of. The guy she was seeing swung by twice a week and never stayed for breakfast—and she’d thought she’d wanted it that way.
Whoever was outside of her door did not knock again. Sia pressed her face against the door and watched the motionless figure through the peephole. A moment later, with a quick glance in all directions, the stranger knelt down, disappearing for a horrific moment from Sia’s line of vision. When the figure stood up again, it held nothing. It turned around and walked through the lawn and to a vehicle parked across the street near the far curb.
For a long while, Sia could not decide what was worse: to open the door and encounter the mystery, or to wait for someone more dangerous to discover it outside of her home and use it against her.
Fear-tinged curiosity won. She opened the door and found a small square mirror leaning against the doorframe. Someone had written across its surface with a black marker.
The reporter gazed at her reflection as it peeked back at her through the letters. The eyes that stared back at hers were crystal blue and heavy-lidded from a lack of sleep. A tic on one eyelid distracted her. Its excited pounding kept rhythm as she read the mirror’s message.
. . .
The hooded figure deposited the last mirror of the night in the shadows of the entrance of a two-story brick house with blue shutters and dead azaleas. Luckily the driveway had been shoveled of recent snow; while it was impossible to not leave footprints, she did not have to wallow through snow to get to the door. She paused, then scribbled the same note on the bottom of this mirror. Khalil would understand, she prayed. Khalil would forgive.
Most importantly, perhaps Khalil would hope again.
She didn’t tarry. Her last encounter with her best friend was still branded in her mind; she tiptoed around the memory as one would tread around a sleeping lion. She lingered long enough at the door to catch the strain of Khalil’s voice. He was speaking to someone, and the someone giggled flirtatiously in return. Lexi couldn’t help but smile. He’d be okay. She did not knock on his door. Best not to interrupt anything. Khalil had always boasted that he was a nocturnal animal. He’d open the door at some point to get some air or have a smoke; he’d see the mirror before morning.
So Lexi turned away and got back into the pick-up, an anxious wolf sitting up in the seat and sniffing her all over before she revved up the ignition and drove away.
It was a half hour later when the red-scarfed man, doing his rounds, stopped at Khalil’s door and stole away the mirror.
33 / The Firefly Tree
“There is a vast melancholy in the canticles of the wolves, melancholy and infinite as the forest, endless as those long nights of winter and yet that ghastly sadness, that mourning for their own, irremediable appetites, can never move the heart for not one phrase in it hints at the possibility of redemption.”
–Angela Carter, The Company of Wolves
A glimmer in the forest caught the old man’s eye. He stiffened. An animal’s eye, he reasoned. What else would catch the moonlight so? It had been months since he’d last seen anyone else taking a daytime stroll in the woods—much less at night. Most people feared the darkness.
Some people feared, more wisely, the things that lurked in the darkness.
Gabriel feared both, and with good reason. He walked anyway. That had always been his way. He had a complicated history with the woodlands of the world. He’d met his share of the Cyclops and Circes that lurked within.
And the world seemed to never run out of monsters.
Winter softened the forest. It brightened the darkness with a white skin of snow draped on the roots and limbs of the trees. The half-moon’s light shafted through the overhead canopy and saturated the night in hues of dusky blue, slit by shadowy tree lines.
He continued to walk; his feet found their own volition and circled him back to the familiar spot off the beaten path where he’d seen the glimmer. Back to the gnarled bark of the Firefly Tree, a memorial of a place where fireflies—as unbelievable as fairies these days—were known to once exist. The old man caught the glint of light again and hid behind another tree, cursing beneath his breath that he’d chosen this night of all nights to leave the white wolf back home. He waited. His silence and stealth emerged from deep within, an echo of his younger days as a guerrilla fighter.
He heard nothing.
. . .
Yin’s ears pricked at the noise. In one fluid movement, nearly wraith-like, the white wolf uncurled herself from the hearth rug. She stood motionless, head raised and tail bristling, her eyes glittering like ebony stones and fixed on the window. Gabriel had left the light on in the adjoining kitchen. Yin didn’t need it to sense the creature approaching tonight, as it had some nights before. Never this close, however.
It smelt of sulfur and stardust.
. . .
Gabriel stepped out from behind the trunk to confront what waited within the darkness.
It took him a moment to realize what he beheld, and one more moment to believe it. His face gazed back at him from the base of the Firefly Tree, the smooth glass of the mirror resting against the trunk as if it were the most natural place for it to be. The wind sang through the trees and dislodged a handful of snow from the Firefly Tree’s lower branches. A cluster of white flakes dropped down on the mirror’s surface—from the old man’s vantage, the snow landed right upon the reflection of his left cheek—and slid earthward, melting almost upon impact.
Gabriel gazed at his reflection as it wept without him.
His heart began to pound. He strode quickly towards the tree and knelt on the snow, picking up the mirror and turning it carefully around in his hands. There could only be one explanation for this. One person who could make such a mirror and sign it with the scrawling message of YOU ARE NOT A FREAK. One person who would think to leave it here, at the base of the tree she’d long ago named the Firefly Tree.
The real Gabriel wept, too.
. . .
The white wolf’s guttural snarls, barely muted from behind the filmed glass of the windows, made the red-scarfed man smirk. The beast sounded like a tractor caught in the stubborn embrace of a muddied field, the kind that rattles and rumbles when stuck. The closer he came to the edge of the house, the lower and throatier the growls became.
Perhaps the white she-wolf remembered his scent; after all, he’d known where Lexi lived even before he’d met her. Now he knew where her friends lived, too, thanks to the address book he’d found after breaking into her abandoned apartment.
He smiled. Since when was the big bad wolf afraid of the red-clothed human?
. . .
Gabriel walked home with his heart bursting. For a while, he had walked around the neighborhood, too excited to sit still, needing time to think. A part of him wished, fiercely, that he’d taken the mirror with him, both as a reminder of hope and as a physical link to Lexi. The logical portion of his brain, however, commended him on having the restraint to bury it beneath the snow under the Firefly Tree until he could retrieve it less conspicuously.
Hope blinded him. Joy unraveled his defenses. Lexi wasn’t in another time-zone, he sensed. She’d lied about the wedding, the relocation, the workload. To think that his granddaughter had the pluck and perseverance to do such a thing! Now he knew exactly where she was, as unbelievable
as the notion seemed, and he needed—whether she wanted it or not—to help her.
It only took a split second for this newfound hope to vanish, scattered like smoke or stardust. Gabriel froze in the center of the driveway leading to his house, one foot not quite on the ground. It was difficult, suddenly, to breathe.
In the center of the front lawn, hung from its hind feet, a blood-drenched white wolf dangled from a tree.
. . .
The red-scarfed man’s orders had been clear. His role was to keep the situation “contained.” The interpretation of the word, they told him, depended on circumstance. They were to win. The others were to lose. Whatever the cost.
He shrugged away his conscience. There could only be one big bad wolf, anyway.
. . .
Gabriel cut the wolf down and carried her into the house, strengthened by his desperation. He eased her onto the rug before the hearth, stirring up the embers of the dying fire to warm her. He paused only to lock the front door behind him, securing all three bolts. Retrieving his pistol from within a lidded kettle in a kitchen cabinet, he reached behind his back and tucked it, loaded and secured, into the waistband of his pants.
He noted, with a cold and rational calculation, how everything in the house was intact. His tenants were one on a month-long vacation. The kitchen light was on as he’d left it, the rooms untouched, the household objects unmoved. Yet someone had opened the door he must have stupidly left unlocked. Someone had entered or lured Yin out. And someone had beaten her and hung her from the tree.
Heart heavy, he knelt by Yin and touched her fur, crooning to her all the while. The wolf’s eyes opened at the sound of his voice. She lay still under his touch. Her tail thumped to see him, one of the habits she’d long ago picked up from the dogs of the neighborhood. He went and soaked some towels, then returned to gently rub her fur. The towels soaked most of the blood. He cleaned the wounds as best as he could.
Questions flitted through his mind like flies, big and black and foul. Who could overpower a wolf without killing it? Who would? And why? As far as Gabriel knew, the country’s mirror-makers were retired, behind bars, or dead—or hidden away somewhere, as Lexi was. Paranoia had neighbors retreating into their homes and hiding their families; no one would have come to help him or his unusual pet even if they’d been awake to witness something. Whoever could string up a wolf would have no difficulty killing it, though they very nearly had; Yin’s treatment was a warning, a message. Political connotations seemed tragically coincidental. What did the agencies have to fear from an old man with a shattered family? They would have to know. Yet this had happened too swiftly, too many things in parallel. No one would have had time to report him even if they had somehow seen him with the mirror in the woods. So what did they want from him?
What did they want from Lexi?
They wanted it badly enough to brutalize her wolf and terrify her grandfather. A comatose mother and convict father weren’t enough. It chilled Gabriel more than anything else. He’d thought he’d outlived war.
Ultimately, war outlived everyone.
Gabriel went upstairs to the bedroom and unearthed a suitcase, listening to Yin growling weakly by the hearth in pain or in retaliation. Warm clothing. Food. Towels and a first-aid kit. Antiseptic spray for the wolf. He wouldn’t need to bring much else. All the notebooks and equipment had been hidden in the bowels of the factory; from the look of things, Lexi had found them already.
He picked up his cellphone and called his granddaughter. The call would not go through. He recalled with a sinking heart that El Greco was notorious for its bad reception. THE HOUSE IS BEING WATCHED, he texted her. DON’T COME BACK. I’LL COME TO YOU.
#OnceUponALegend
“We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs,
tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence.
Thou shalt not is soon forgotten,
but Once upon a time lasts forever.”
–Philip Pullman
Pappou had driven Lexi home—the only kindergartener suspended in the history of the school—and had heard enough from the principal, substitute teacher, and Lexi herself about the nature of the drawing. He, too, had seen Miss Sanders’ spiraling horns in the reflection of the principal’s office windows. He realized with a sickening jolt, as he assured the frazzled teacher that Lexi had watched too many reruns of Fantasia, that his dark-haired, dark-eyed granddaughter was a rare and dangerous creature.
She could See.
They arrived home to an empty house. Lexi’s father was working at the factory and her mother was out running errands. Pappou poured himself and his granddaughter tall glasses of lemonade and took Lexi outside. They sat together on the porch swing out front, fringed with birdsong and dappled sunlight. Pappou planted his feet firmly on the wooden floorboards. Lexi perched on the edge of the swing and swung her legs back and forth in opposite directions, listening to her pink Pocahontas-emblazoned sneakers swish against each other.
“Did you See the things you drew in school today?” Pappou asked, to be sure.
The little girl looked up at him with her bright gazelle eyes. She nodded.
“Were you scared of Miss Sanders?”
“No.” Lexi shrugged. “Sometimes she can be a little weird but she’s never yelled at me.”
“Do you like her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She’s not nice like Mama.”
“You are a very insightful little girl,” Pappou praised her. “But you have to be careful. There are some things you and I can see… but others don’t. Those are the things you see in mirrors, or reflected in glass. These are things you must not mention.”
“Why not?”
“Most people don’t like talking about them. They don’t feel comfortable.”
“Why not?”
“Well, not everyone believes these things exist. The things we see are not common; they should not be common knowledge. It is like the story of Santa Claus. You and I know he does not exist—that he is a metaphor. You know this because you are a special child; you sought to discover the truth yourself. But all of the other children do not know that. And we’ve discussed that you should not tell them the truth because it is not their time to hear it. It would make them sad without good reason. Just so, it is better for us that we do not tell people about these extra things we see.”
“When will they figure it out? When can I talk about it?”
“Some of them will never know.” Pappou paused. “Some must never know, because they will think we are different. People sometimes do bad things to people whom they consider to be different.”
Lexi’s legs stopped swinging. “Why?”
“Why, indeed.” The old man sat for a moment, slouched forward, his elbows propped on his knees and his chin resting on his fists. “Perhaps to make us appreciate the nicer people more.”
“Pappou?”
He swiveled his head to look at Lexi.
“Why did Miss Sanders get scared?”
Pappou scratched his nose. He told Lexi to wait on the porch swing and he went into the house. He came out a few minutes later, carrying a big cardboard box. He set it down on the floorboards and sat down next to her on the swing. Something yipped from within. Lexi gasped as the box wiggled.
“I have something for you,” Pappou said. “Two somethings. I want you to love them both, for they are equally faultless. But when you look at either one of them, I want you to remember a story. Usually, Man teaches Dog. We forget what Dog can teach Man.” He reached down and opened the cardboard box. “A Cherokee legend says that there is a fight going on within every single human being. Each of us has two wolves living inside of us. One wolf is evil. It is anger, greed, jealousy, ego, arrogance, resentment, lies, and regret.” Pappou lifted out a tiny wolf pup, its fur as black as ink. It squirmed and waved a tiny paw. “These things spring from a place of fear. Sometimes when people are scared, they become scary.”
Lexi squealed with delight as her grandfather placed the pup in her hands.
Pappou reached into the box a second time and pulled out a second pup, this one’s fur as white as snow. “The second wolf is good. It is love, joy, humility, kindness, generosity, integrity, and truth.” He gave Lexi this one, too, so that she cradled one wolf pup in each arm. “These are the two wolves that fight inside you, each one trying to conquer the other, each one trying to prove it is the strongest. Like Yin and Yang.”
Lexi burrowed her head into their lush soft fur, breathing their woodsy scent. The black pup bit her finger with his toothless gums. She giggled. “Yang,” she repeated happily.
“For the black wolf? Yin might be a more suitable name.”
“Yang,” the little girl insisted, cradling the pup closer.
“Yang,” her grandfather conceded with a shrug. He ruffled the ears of the white she-wolf. “I suppose that makes this one Yin.” He smiled. “I suppose only a child could realize that labels don’t really matter.”
“Pappou?”
He looked over at his granddaughter. She stared into the black puppy’s eyes.
“Which one wins?”
“The one you feed,” he said.
34 / Gabriel
“Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
The Wake Up (The Seers Book 1) Page 16
