The Angels' Mirror Pack 2: Books Four through Seven

by Harmony L. Courtney

  Paloma tried to calculate the year in her head based on what she knew of Oskar Schindler, and finally gave up. “What year was this?”

  “Well, Oskar was born in 1908, and Geoffrey was born in October of 1937, so… at eight, it would have been… about 1945.”

  “So then, what…,” Edward began, then cut himself off.

  “Well, for one, an interesting thing in history to think about: while Oskar was saving the lives of his factory workers in Poland, Geoffrey and Maude were meeting for the first time; both Polish Jews, and meeting the Wishart-Laurent and Schwartz families… Christians and Christian Jews who, they say, helped lead them to Christ, eventually.”

  “Wait, but-”

  Jason surged forward in his seat toward the man. “But the mirror. Did either of them see the….”

  “Maude had become friends with Shannen Rose… Steven’s daughter. She was eight, and so the two of them played some at the Wishart-Laurent place. He sisters Eve Angela and Deborah Eve were yet to be born, but Shannen was pregnant when Maude moved in. Peter’s daughter, Jeanette, Shalom and Jerusha’s daughter, Rachel, and Michael’s daughter, Rose Marie, were frequent playmates, as well. Shalom’s son Elliott, was only a baby at the time… about five months older than Eve Angela, once she was born. So, Otto and Geoffrey were outnumbered in that circle, finding male friends elsewhere in the building. Their ties, though, culturally, kept the families together. And both attest to seeing the mirror one day – “a scary yet beautiful towering flash of light hiding in the corner under the wings of an angel,” as Maude called it.”

  Paloma’s heart sped up more and more as Masao continued to speak, and she wondered what thrills and thoughts must be going through the rest of their minds. Me’chelle’s hand dropped from hers a moment, and then grasped it once more.

  “The mirror was gone before little Eve was born. It was a Tuesday, Maude said, when she heard some of her uncle’s friends in the hallway, and so she had gone to greet them. They had met in passing; she thought, maybe he will come, too. But this did not happen. They went right past her, as if not there, and so she shrugged and went back inside. Geoffrey heard them, too. His family lived directly upstairs from the Wishart-Laurents; the apartment right above it, while the Pytlaks lived two doors down. He said he heard yelling, and shouting; a first from downstairs, and Maude nodded. Yes, she told me, she heard it, too, but she turned the gramophone on to try to drown it out.”

  Masao looked down at his notes again, taking a deep breath. “The next day, their families were having dinner at Steven and Shannen’s, and Mr. Pytlak – Maude’s father, not the baseball player – asked what had happened to the mirror. And Liraz Schwartz, the mother-in-law, she said, ‘baseball! I hate baseball! And I hate gambling even more,’ and then, she walloped Steven on the arm. So the Pytlaks and Schindlers left. They didn’t know what had happened, but they didn’t want to get involved in a dispute inside of their friends’ family. And after a while, Steven moved out. Came back every so often, but didn’t stay there. For a whole year, it went on like this, before he moved back in, and it was like nothing had ever happened.”

  “But why would…? I don’t recall ever reading or hearing anything about some sort of separation,” Jason said, running a hand through his hair. “I mean… why wouldn’t that be mentioned in any…?”

  “We didn’t have their diaries, Jason, remember,” Edward said, his eyes beginning to droop: a sure sign of mental exhaustion; possibly a headache coming on. “We had the neighbors’ and even at that, we don’t know enough to concretely say who all was involved in…”

  He stopped; sighed. Rolled his neck, then suggested they get out to stretch and think before resuming.

  “’Cause I don’t know about any of you, but I’m exhausted just thinking about it, and we haven’t even gotten to the Hebrew yet,” he said softly, to which they all agreed.

  “So I’m going over to Winco there,” he said, pointing across the parking lot, “and getting something to drink. Anyone wants to join me, come on. Otherwise, why don’t we meet back here in fifteen or twenty minutes?”

  Jason walked with Edward over to the store in silence, his mind running faster than he even thought possible.

  The story unfolding inside the Stuart van was barely fathomable, given what they’d already known about the mirror, and Rose’s family. Did she know? Had Masao called and told her that they’d met a couple who had known her siblings? Her nieces and nephews?

  Did she know they’d met a couple who witnessed the mirror’s disappearance, on some level? People who had heard firsthand about Steven’s gambling problem?

  But, no.

  Masao and Anouk Chanel knew better than to add to Rose’s stress while she was still struggling with defeating her addictions and maintaining a healthy pregnancy. They had to be gentle and wise; they knew more than some what it was like to struggle in life. They had faced their own challenges, though much different… and they had made it. Rose would make it, too, and so, God willing, would her child.

  As they reached the doors, they swung a left into the first aisle, not bothering to grab a cart on the way. Several minutes later, loaded down with a couple of sodas and some dried fruit and nuts, they were headed back to the van.

  The sky, already overcast before, was now spitting drizzle down onto them, and Jason, for one, was thankful. He paused in some gravel and lifted his face to the moisture, and just allowed it to soak in as Edward stood there waiting for him.

  “Isn’t it good to be alive,” he asked his brother-in-law. “After everything else; after all we’ve been through, isn’t it just… glorious?”

  A small brown bird – he could only guess it was a chickadee, it moved so fast – flittered past them, causing him to jump, almost dropping his bag of snacks, and they continued on. By the time they got back to the van, everyone had arrived but Paloma.

  “She went to the other store across the way,” Me’chelle told them when Edward asked of her whereabouts.

  Jason looked over their group, wondering what the future held for them.

  To the average observer, he guessed they looked average; possibly even a bit motley. All had dressed up, but each couple had their own style; their own way of interpreting clothing… and the women’s hair couldn’t be more different from one another’s if they’d tried.

  While Me’chelle sported five or six different colors now in her weave, highlighting her unique blonde hair, Anouk Chanel’s dark hair was sleek and pulled back tightly into a bun. Paloma’s hair, when she returned, bottle of water in hand, had begun to frizz in the rain, the escaped tendrils of her now whitening red-blonde curls framing her round face. They were three very different heights, with Me’chelle several inches taller than Paloma, who was a couple inches taller than Anouk Chanel.

  He, Edward, and Masao, too, were quite different. While each had short hair, the cuts were different, and the colors, too. Masao, with his just recently white-bespeckled black hair, he with his brown, and Edward with his now white-blonde hair. While he and Edward were of average height or a bit taller, Masao was a good five inches shorter than himself, and much thinner than either of them, in spite of his stocky-looking face.

  The rain was coming down more intensely now, and they climbed back into the van; resumed their prior posts and readied themselves for the rest of Masao’s story.

  “As I was saying,” the man said, as though no interruption had occurred at all, “Steven was gone for a year, then was back… nobody asked where he had been; Geoffrey said, in those days, you just assumed or you avoided trying to learn anything. His mother was not happy around gossip, and so she stayed clear. His father certainly did not need to know, though, Geoffrey said, he learned his father had confronted Mr. Wishart-Laurent once in private. And so, for many more years, the families remained friends, even after the strange business with the mirror and Steven’s disappearance and reappearance. Geoffrey and Maude married the day after her seventeenth birthday, and had five kids by the ti
me Steven died. Liraz Schwartz and Shannen Wishart-Laurent finished raising those girls, and the youngest, Deborah, died at the age of eleven, the same year Maude had her second baby.”

  Jason opened a packet of dried pineapple to munch on as they continued to listen, occasionally offering some to the women in the seat behind him.

  “”To make a long story short, many years later, they moved to Oceanside, California, and somehow, they reconnected with one George Rowland Woods… that is, Pinky Woods. Ran into him at a party when they were visiting Los Angeles, Maude said, and in time, became his friends. His wife stayed in Rutland, I guess, from what they said,” Masao told them, turning the page in his notebook. “Mostly, they wrote letters back and forth, Geoffrey and Pinky, and then, one day, they got a phone call from his daughter, Mary Margaret, that he had died. Heart disease. They were devastated.”

  A car pulled in next to the van, momentarily distracting Jason from Masao’s story, and he forced himself to pay attention.

  Masao paused to check something in his notes, then began again.

  “I tell you, Woods went a long way from his Watertown, Connecticut birth to his death in Los Angeles. I mean, Geoffrey says Woods used to invite him over to his Kenmore Square apartment, and there were all those photos of Pinky with his brother, Frank. A few with his parents, with Mary Catherine, who he later married; with his other brothers, but mostly, with Frank. But anyway,” Masao continued, looking at his notes again. “But he did not know until he was in Los Angeles that Pinky’s the one who bought the mirror. Maude told him it was pretty, but they never said they’d seen it before; not to him. And in the end, when Woods died, instead of giving the mirror to his wife, he bequeathed it to Geoffrey and Maude… who were still living in Oceanside, California.”

  Edward let out a low whistle, and Jason dropped the soda he’d just recapped as Masao’s words sank in. He looked behind him to his wife, sister, and Anouk Chanel, to see that they were holding hands. Paloma’s face was paler than its normal self, and she looked like she was going to faint.

  “Sis, you alright?”

  Suddenly, all attention was on Paloma, who nodded weakly.

  What was going on? This seemed like more than stress. This seemed like – well, he wasn’t sure, but what?

  He pulled his new August Quaternion Rhythm cell out, turned the hologram on, and, moving his finger across the bottom screen, where the menus were, told it to dial the hospital.

  Man, technology has changed, he thought as he waited for the hospital to pick up. I remember when there was no such thing as cell phones, and now, this? I don’t even know what quaternion technology is… some math thing way too much for me to try to process.

  “Yes, I’m here with my sister outside of the Chang’s on 82nd, and something just… isn’t computing. We received some news that has been overwhelming, and she looks weak, pale, like she’s going to faint,” he told the woman who finally answered as he watched his sister close her eyes.

  Conversely, he felt all eyes on him, aside from her.

  “No, it has been good news, for the most part; just a lot to take in,” he answered, wishing the woman would hurry up. “Is there something you can recommend? She can’t even seem to keep her eyes open now. It’s like she was shocked into being tired all of a sudden. I’ve never… heard or seen anything like-”

  “Well, I understand you have other people with health concerns, ma’am,” he said after he was able to speak again. “I have a consent form to speak with-”

  “Yes, that’s right. We’re close. And her husband’s here, too, if that helps,” he told her, and she asked to speak with him.

  Jason handed the phone to Edward, careful not to stick his thumb inside the hologram, making sure the ear buds went with it. The woman’s wavery face shimmered a moment, a miniature that reminded him of watching cartoons on his IPod when he was younger.

  “Yes, this is Edward Stuart, and we’re calling on behalf of my wife, Paloma, who is here in the van with us,” his brother-in-law said as the phone shifted hands.

  “No, she’s in the back seat,” he heard Edward say. “Fine, I’ll pass it back for you to see for yourself.”

  Suddenly, the phone was being passed backward again, past Jason to Me’chelle, who held the phone in front of Paloma’s now-drooping head. Edward kept the ear buds in the front seat, and now, all in the vehicle could speak with the woman.

  “How is her heart rate,” she asked, her nasally voice grating on Jason’s nerves. Anouk Chanel pulled the medical bag from where it was snapped into the van and did a quick vitals swipe.

  “Her heartbeat is close to seventy, but her temperature is almost two degrees too low, and her blood pressure is low, too. Lower than normal, anyway, for her. It’s one ten over seventy,” she read from the printout that the machine gave her.

  After several questions to find out about medications, none of which Paloma was taking, the woman finally sighed.

  “Will she awaken,” she asked. Me’chelle gently shook Paloma, and her eyes moved, and then finally fluttered open. “Good, keep her awake, and get fluids going. See if that helps. If she isn’t feeling better in an hour or two, bring her on in.”

  Me’chelle nodded, said thank you, and hung up, and, as a group, they helped Paloma stay awake. As she finished the water she’d bought, Edward drove around to the Winco parking lot and Jason ran in to get more.

  But how much was enough, or too much?

  He grabbed ten bottles, figuring she could drink what she was able, and there would be extra for the rest of them, too. And so, as he stood in line waiting for a checkout booth, he began to pray.

  He prayed for his sister, and for the return of her health; he prayed for the Schindlers, and for their extended family and friend base. He prayed for the courage to hear the rest of what Masao was trying to tell them… what God was trying to tell them… and he prayed that the Hebrew language would continue to unfold for them. Become less of a golem; more tangible to them in their journey. For the mirror to become less an obsessive otaku, and more an otaku of fandom and following for Jesus and what He was doing in their lives; for what He was revealing. Last, but not least, as the line moved forward, he prayed for wisdom to continue without hesitation whichever way He led.

  It was all he could do, standing there, hope soaring and hindrances attempting to weigh him down, and so, he chose Jesus. Faith. Wisdom from above. Patience. And he chose, come what may, to continue on the path he believed they were meant to walk.

  Thirty Eight

  Paloma awakened to see everyone, including someone on Jason’s ridiculously bizarre new Rhythm phone, watching her. The woman on the other end, blurry but with a distinctive voice, was talking to Me’chelle, telling her to give Paloma more water. Then she hung up.

  Anouk Chanel brought the water bottle Paloma had purchased earlier to her lips and helped her sit up to drink it, and Edward carefully pulled into traffic, only to maneuver into the Winco parking lot around the corner. Soon, Jason was jumping out of the van and bringing back more water than she knew what to do with.

  He handed her a second bottle as soon as he got in, and waited until she’d drunk it to speak.

  “So, should we wait to finish this conversation,” he asked. “Your health is more important than the other stuff right now. I’d feel terrible if something were to-“

  “No, I’m okay,” she said, her voice feeling hoarse. “I think I’m just… overwhelmed, but please… Masao, will you continue? Please?”

  “Are you certain, my niece,” he asked, smiling tenderly at her. “I would not wish to cause a problem,” he said.

  “Please,” she asked again. “I’ll keep drinking water, but… please?”

  “Alright, then,” he said. “There is not much to say left regarding Geoffrey and Maude Schindler, other than that Ken Traylor bought it from them when they moved. Geoffrey said that was in…” he paused to check his notebook, “eighty-six.”

  “Okay,” she heard Jason say;
saw his head moving as he spoke, “so now we know how the mirror got from somewhere in the Pyrenees of France to Gloucester, to Boston, to LA to Oceanside to Portland… and now, of course to Vancouver.”

  He tilted his head to look at her a moment, and she moved to drink from the third water bottle now.

  If she kept this up, she’d have to get to a restroom sooner than she’d like, but better that than feel like she would faint again, or whatever that was.

  “And so, now, to what we’ve been waiting for so patiently,” Masao said, turning a few pages in his notebook as he spoke. “You already know the small message was from Timothy, yes?”

  He waited a moment as everyone nodded, then continued. “Well, this was same writing, I believe. Similar strokes… but many times longer. And because it is old, of course, I have to do my best in guessing vowels, since they were not always – even very often – present.”

  “So,” he continued, “I will read what I have found so far, and you may judge for yourselves.”

  “That sounds fair,” Edward said before taking a sip of soda. Jason leaned against the side of the van door to face Masao again and crossed his arms as Paloma drank more water.

  To the person that finds this,” Masao began. “Blessings from God the Father in Jesus Christ. As He is and was a mystery, so, too, is this mirror, though I do not understand what produced this difference from others I have fashioned.”

  He paused a moment to clear his throat. Jason silently offered him a water, and he accepted, but did not drink as yet.

  “I first noticed it was different as I was putting the finishing touches on the angel’s head. A sudden storm came, and two great nieces were nearby in my workshop with me. One, Eustace, was playing a harp, and the other, Galya, somehow fell backward. To my astonishment, the mirror swallowed her up. I heard music coming from it, even with the sounds of the storm.”