Mirror, Mirror

by Robb, J. D.

  With a move so unexpected it took her breath away, Jack threw back the blanket and scooped her from the bed, standing her on her feet directly in front of him.

  “Martha, I doubt I will ever understand you but I know I will never stop loving you.”

  He did not wait for any protestation from her before he touched his lips to hers. It was her first glimpse of heaven, if heaven welcomed such human pleasures. Their bodies blended together as though it was exactly what God intended. Martha wound her arms around Jack’s neck and did her best to convince him that his touch was the answer to her fondest wish.

  When they drew apart, she did not step away but rested her head on his chest, and slid her hand down to rest there as well. After a moment, she leaned back and looked into his eyes. “Jack, let there be no doubt that your healing ability is a gift straight from heaven, not an oddity at all.”

  She welcomed his kiss again. After a long moment, Jack stepped back, breaking contact. He took her hands and they stood apart but thus connected.

  “Martha, let me go request the private parlor so we can have a meal and talk.”

  “If that is what you want.” It sounded so prosaic.

  With a glance at the bed he nodded. “I know exactly what I want but we both need time to think it through in a place where we are not so sorely tempted.”

  Martha’s blush convinced him she knew exactly what he meant. “Yes, I see. I would not be at all happy if my next adventure”—she paused and corrected herself—“our next adventure, started out in the wrong bed.”

  He laughed and grabbed his bag as they went through the door together.

  MARTHA FOLLOWED JACK TRESBERE DOWN THE STAIRS. There was no private parlor available; no magic could make that happen with the inn so crowded. They found a space in the corner of the common room, ate whatever was served, and talked most of the night. First she explained his misunderstanding of her comment after Edward’s healing. From then on they seemed to understand each other perfectly, speaking as they were with hearts overflowing with love.

  As the evening progressed, Martha Stepp was more and more convinced she had found the man she would spend her life with. The turning point was when she voiced her biggest concern. “I love you, Jack, but I do not know you as well as I would like.”

  “I understand.” Jack nodded. “But if we continue to talk this much we will know each other better tomorrow than we do today and even better the day after.” He was silent a moment. “But I worry that you are so bent on finding perfection. In the beds you test and the chairs. You have to know that I am not perfect and can never be.”

  Martha stood up and moved to sit beside him rather than across from him. She took his hand. “Jack, I was never looking for perfection, not in beds, chairs, or people.”

  Jack nodded, which she took as encouragement. “I was only ever hoping to find what was just right for me.” Martha leaned close and dared a quick kiss on his cheek. “And that is exactly what you are.”

  “Just right for you,” he whispered, his lips against her mouth.

  Someone cleared his throat and whether it was aimed at them or not, Jack and Martha drew away from each other a little.

  They talked about his gift of healing and soon Martha was sure Jack understood that she was ready and more than willing to embrace his gift as part of their life together.

  He broached his idea of traveling to the Canadas and seeing what that world had to offer them.

  Martha’s eyes grew wide with interest and she bit her lip to keep from grinning.

  Jack nodded as though that was all the answer he needed. They sat together in silence awhile, watching the fire. Eventually Jack spoke again. “Martha, I wonder if you can ever truly know someone you love until you have been married near forever.” It was Martha’s turn for an encouraging nod.

  “Loving someone and coming to know them better,” Jack went on, “I think that will be an adventure all its own.”

  “Oh, yes,” Martha said as if Jack had just given her a great gift, which, in a way he had. At that moment she realized fully that loving and learning about the other was the heart and soul of what their marriage would be.

  The innkeeper kept the fire fueled all night, the common room filled as it was by delayed travelers. It was close to dawn though not yet light when Martha fell asleep against Jack’s chest, his arm holding her close. He rested his cheek on the top of her head and fell asleep with the smell of oranges and soap in the air. Jack Tresbere hoped it would be the last scent he knew every night of his life.

  BEAUTY, SLEEPING

  ELAINE FOX

  For Tom and Ruth, a true love story.

  And for my wonderful mother.

  PROLOGUE

  “Who is that man, Daddy?” Cassandra pointed her five-year-old finger toward the screen, the corner of her blanket scrunched in her palm.

  “That’s the man who disappeared, honey.”

  She studied him. He looked like the hero in her favorite book, The Night Prince, the one her father read to her when she awoke scared from one of her many terrible dreams. The Night Prince understood as no one else did what frightened her.

  Some nights, however, reading Cassandra the book wasn’t enough, and her father, face creased with worry, would lift her from her bed, carry her downstairs, and let her fall asleep on his lap while he watched an old broadcast of The Odd Couple or M*A*S*H. Sometimes he’d even watch Bewitched, which was her favorite. The songs the shows started with and the canned laughter soothed her, making her feel like the world was safe again, even if only temporarily.

  But this night she’d had a particularly menacing dream. A monster had stolen someone she dearly loved and wouldn’t give him back. So her father brought her downstairs with him while he watched the eleven o’clock news. Normally she fell right back to sleep in his arms, but this time—maybe because there was no music or canned laughter—the monster in her dream had followed her into the waking world, and she kept her eyes peeled for peril in the shadows, alert to every movement in the corners of her eyes.

  Just when she was certain the dream ogre had morphed into the slithering shadow behind her, the one creeping so silently only she could tell it was there, a man’s face appeared on the television screen.

  He had a smile that knew her, and eyes that gazed with confidence into hers. He was the Night Prince, and for a moment she felt impossibly happy to see him.

  Then fear grabbed her as she remembered that the people on TV were saying the Night Prince had disappeared.

  “Is he coming back, Daddy?” She looked up at the side of his face.

  “Who, honey?”

  “That man. The man who disappeared.”

  She looked back at the screen. A woman was on, talking without moving anything but her lips.

  “I don’t know. I hope so.” Her father squeezed her tight.

  They showed the prince’s smiling face again and, despite her fears, she calmed. Cassandra smiled back and felt his presence banish the evil. Fear leapt away, as if scalded by boiling water, and the ogre was sent hissing into obscurity.

  Suddenly she knew where he was. He hadn’t disappeared, he’d gone into the dream world and chased off her ogre.

  She turned her head, looking bravely around the room with both eyes. It was bright from her father’s reading lamp. Friendly. The living room of the daytime, when coloring books and chocolate milk held sway.

  She put her thumb back into her mouth as the screen changed to a picture of a house, the most beautiful house she’d ever seen. Tall and white with a round turret on one side and black iron railings by the stairs and at the windows.

  She pointed again at the TV. “What’s that place?”

  “That’s where he lived.”

  She smiled. It was perfect, the perfect castle for her prince to live in. “He’ll come back, Daddy. He’ll go home, to that place.” She gazed with great certainty at the house on the TV. “I’m going to live with him there when I grow up.”

&
nbsp; “Really, honey? He’ll be an old man by then.”

  “No he won’t. He’ll wait for me. That’s what princes do.”

  Her father laughed, and all was right with the world.

  She never had nightmares again.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Fairies are a petty bunch. I know, because I’ve had the misfortune to associate with a number of them. My only friend—and I use the term loosely—is a fairy named Astrid, which she tells me means “godlike beauty and strength.”

  I call her Asta, which I tell her means “annoying little dog from The Thin Man movies.”

  She calls me Michael, because that’s my name. Or it was. Michael Prince. If she’s pissed at me she calls me Mike. If she wants me to be pissed at her, Mickey.

  We have that kind of relationship.

  Pissing off women is—was—something I was good at. Most of the time it was unintentional, but often enough I knew what I was doing. Now, though, since I’m down to just the one friend, I’ve rethought things and most of the time I try not to make Asta mad.

  See, I’m a ghost. Or something. People can’t see me, and time comes and goes. But I’m not dead. I’m just not here.

  Yeah, yeah, I hear you laughing. Fairies? Ghosts? This guy is batshit crazy.

  Maybe. I’m heading in that direction anyway. Regardless, here I am in all my spectral glory. So argue with that.

  The weird part is that I didn’t die. At least not in the conventional sense. I was turned into a ghost—poof!—by a malicious fairy. You see where I’m coming from here. Fairies—not what they’re cracked up to be.

  You hear a lot about “fairy tales” referring to some idyllic scenario that people wish would come true. But I’m here to tell you, you don’t want to go anywhere near a fairy tale, let alone a fairy.

  Here’s what happened. I was a basically good guy—and by “basically” I mean that my intentions were never to hurt anyone—just taking care of myself, which every self-help book in the world will tell you to do. I was nice to waitstaff and homeless people, never kicked a dog in my life, occasionally made people laugh, and got on with the business of living without asking a lot from other people.

  And I was single, so I dated. Sure, I was looking for that one special woman who would, I don’t know, complete me, have me walking on buttercups, talking to daisies, singing in the rain, that sort of thing. But I also enjoyed the not-so-special dates I had in the meantime.

  Until I met a woman who turned out to be my undoing.

  You see, unbeknownst to me—I’d like to stress that, Your Honor, because in my defense this story began when I was an infant and had zero control over things—I’d been cursed by an angry fairy to meet up with a poisoned spindle and die.

  My mother had this aunt—Aunt Malva, for whom the phrase “crazy old bat” was invented. Case in point, she called herself a fairy and warned people not to piss her off. In any case, nobody could stand Malva because she had a tendency to wreck every event she was invited to by getting mad at somebody or other and causing a scene. So when my parents had a christening party for me, they decided not to invite her. She was about two hundred years old by then, or okay, maybe ninety, so they didn’t think she’d care even if she managed to hear about it somehow.

  Well, turns out she did hear about it and threw one helluva fit. Cursed me in my cradle. Can you imagine? A little baby? Nobody took her seriously except my other great-aunt, Amelia, who then claimed to have altered the curse so that I wouldn’t die from the spindle, I’d just go into a kind of waking sleep.

  I heard about all of this later, when I was a teenager. I think we were at Malva’s funeral when Amelia decided to warn me that I was cursed to die, or sleep, or something, from being pricked by a poisoned spindle.

  The problem with this warning was threefold. A) I didn’t know what the hell a spindle was, let alone a poisoned one. B) It was way too ridiculous to take seriously—though it did prove useful in high school to convince cheerleaders that I was a Tragic Figure who they might want to, ah, console in some way. And C) It wouldn’t have mattered if I had known what a spindle was and took the curse seriously, because all of this was metaphor.

  Fucking semantics.

  So there I was, your average basically good guy, who happened not to be able to communicate very well and didn’t feel the need to fix that not-inconvenient condition, when I met up with Deirdra.

  Asta tells me Deirdra means “anger,” so I should have known. I told her Deirdra means “black-thong-under-white-pants” and she should have known.

  But anyway.

  Deirdra and I went on a few dates and she, like so many others, tried to crack my head open like a pecan to see what was inside. She asked lots of questions like, “What are you thinking?” or “What do you like best about me?” or “Why don’t you talk to your parents anymore?” Stuff I either A) didn’t know; B) didn’t care to know; or C) didn’t want to think about.

  Is that so wrong?

  YES.

  Ah, okay, here is Asta now, flickering like the mini aurora borealis she is.

  Tell them what you did.

  I’m sure they already know.

  Tell them anyway.

  Okay. I slept with Deirdra. Of course I did. I’m a guy. We’d gone on two, maybe three dates and the opportunity arose, so. Show me one other man who wouldn’t have done the same thing.

  Tell. Them. What. You did.

  It’s more what she did, but all right. One day she stops by—the dreaded “drop by.” I don’t know why women persist in doing this when it almost never yields a good result—and she finds me with another woman. Now, we’d never said we were exclusive—

  Did you ever say anything? Anything at all?

  We had perfectly nice conversations. That’s not the point. I was not caught in flagrante or anything. The other woman and I were simply having dinner on my patio. And Deirdra flew into a rage.

  I don’t mean she just got mad and started yelling. I mean she literally took flight around the patio, spitting sparks and dropping microburst tornados like hand grenades until the patio table overturned and hot coals burst into flame and my date ran screaming for her car. (Her shoes are still in the bushes by the patio fence, blown there by fairy fury. Go ahead, check.)

  Turns out her name was—is? I’m still not sure she was real—Deirdra Spindle. A poisoned Spindle, get it? I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that kind of wordplay should be allowed in curses.

  But I don’t make the rules.

  Or follow them.

  You know, a lot of people would consider that a good thing. Very American. Thinking outside the box.

  Which is all you can do outside the box these days. Considering you’re trapped in this house. [snickering] You can’t even retrieve that woman’s shoes from the bushes! [fairy laughter, making plaster dust rain from the ceiling]

  Fairies, you might be noticing, are not like angels. They don’t have to do good, or be nice, or help you see God, or even be on your side; nothing like that. They just do what they feel like, and most of the time they feel like messing with human beings. It amuses them.

  Hey, I’m trying to help.

  Don’t roll your eyes.

  How are you helping?

  I’ve sold your house.

  [stunned silence]

  Pay attention now, because this is important. People are coming, and one of them could change your life.

  I don’t have a life. I’m dead. Or something.

  Already with the arguing.

  Okay, okay, sorry. What’s important? How can these people change my life? Nobody can see or hear me, right? Wait. Are you going to let them see me? Hear me? Can they change me from being a ghost?

  Tell me what to do, Asta. I’ll do anything. Just tell me how not to blow this.

  [more fairy laughter]

  “THAT CAN’T BE GOOD,” THE GUY SAYS.

  The woman looks up as plaster dust floats down onto the skin of her arms. She brushes at it, her b
rows knit.

  Suddenly I’m in my dining room, looking at the most riveting woman I’ve ever seen.

  Jesus, that sounds asinine. But it’s true. It’s not that she’s beautiful, though she’s pretty, but we’re not talking magazine covers and movie stardom here. No, she’s more complex than that. She’s . . . a Shakespearian sonnet. An elegantly constructed math equation. She arrests the eye, then captivates the mind.

  I am a lot of things, but I do not exaggerate. Especially not about women.

  “And you’re going to have to kill those rosebushes. Holy crap, they’ve shredded my shirt just coming in the front door. It’s a wonder we could even get in the house.” The guy fingers some minuscule snag in his pink—that’s right, pink—polo shirt. (The pony emblem is lavender.) I hope he’s not the one important to me.

  He has dark hair that I’m sure he dyes. Nobody has hair all the same color, and besides, his face is older than that coif. He’s wearing pressed, factory-faded jeans, a Rolex watch, and worst of all, Italian leather shoes with no socks.

  You used to wear shoes with no socks.

  They were boat shoes, Asta. They’d have looked stupid with socks.

  “I like the rosebushes. They just need to be trimmed back a bit.” The woman turns toward him, her eyes speculative.

  You’re going to think this is a line—and God knows I’ve used lines like it—but the moment I hear her voice I know. She’s the important one.

  I don’t know how to tell you what it is, but there’s something about her. Something . . . significant.

  “Cass, we could barely open the door. You’re going to have to do something—the damn roses have taken over the house. It’s like a frickin’ flower fortress.”

  She laughs. “A flower fortress! I love it.”

  It’s a sexy laugh, low with just that little bit of huskiness to it that makes you think about mornings in bed.