Mirror, Mirror

by Robb, J. D.

Frantically, she dug into her coat pocket for the small box of stick matches, saying, “Oh man, are you going to hate yourself in the morning, Morgan.”

  There weren’t many, maybe fifteen if she was lucky—she had to make each one count.

  Using only two, she identified one large and two small plastic bags, which she retrieved and emptied in the dark: a stocking cap, which she pulled on immediately, and a stiff, crusty, grease-stained bath towel that she snatched up gratefully.

  Contemplating how best to use her treasures, her thoughts hit on the wealth of cozy clothing in the back of her car and got the unexpected thrill of recalling the trunk she had now. It could contain an old blanket or a forgotten gallon of gas—she was ever the optimist. Spirits soared. Visions of traffic flares danced in her head. She took the keys from the ignition and broke out of the cold into the bitter freeze again.

  The small rear compartment held little—tools mostly, the spare tire—but she removed the thick rubber mat and draped it as well as she could over the driver’s seat before she got back in. Once her body heat warmed it, it would hold off the cold and retain her heat better than the cloth seat.

  “All right. Let’s see what we can do here,” she said aloud, combating the torment of silence. She shoved both legs into the large trash bag and tied the sweater loosely around her feet and ankles. Then, after wrapping the towel around her legs, she opened her coat and smoothed one small plastic bag over her lap, the other over her chest, and zipped herself in again. Hunching low and pulling her collar up high and tight, she drew her hands deep inside the sleeves and folded her arms across herself. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and began the hardest part of survival—waiting for help to arrive. “Okay.”

  While her muscles ached and convulsed she reminded herself over and over that “Sh-Shivering is my friend. This is m-my body expending energy and g-generating heat. It’s okay.”

  When her teeth stopped chattering and the spasms relaxed and became sporadic, the pain in her face was allowed to resurface—it was a challenge to think of it as a good thing.

  She kept her head angled to watch for cars from both directions, using the side mirror to check the rear. Her face pulsed. She got warmer. The red lights blinked . . . blinked . . . blinked . . .

  IT ROCKED HER AWAKE—THE WAKE OF AIR THE LARGE VAN created when it passed by, shook the car, and startled her eyes wide open.

  “No! No!” Her recollection was immediate, her panic acute. “Stop!”

  Arms flailing, she untangled herself and went straight for the horn. She pounded on it, and then swore violently. She watched the van’s taillights turn to red pinpoints in the dark. Inside her frenzy she noted the increase in visibility—the snow had stopped. She also registered the total lack of light around her. The battery was dead. “Shit and damn.”

  Tears stung her eyes before spilling over to her cheeks, and for the first time that night she felt real despair. Two solid minutes of good hard crying ensued—she was hopelessly stupid and naive and irresponsible and stupid and reckless and impulsive and stupid . . . and she was going to miss her date with Miles and she was going to die because anyone looking for her wouldn’t know to look for her in someone else’s car . . . with a dead battery and no emergency lights to draw their attention . . . and they’d drive right by like the van did and Miles would never know that she was in love with him and . . . She was stranded. She was going to die. She was going to miss their date and . . . She sniffed. Stranded.

  “What I needed is a rescue fire.” She sat up straight. “A big one. The kind stranded people on desert islands make for passing ships to see.”

  She sniffed again and slipped her hand into the pocket of her coat; smiled through the last of her tears. “The gift that keeps on giving.”

  She carried small boxes of matches everywhere she went; bought them in bulk and passed them out freely, liberally. To people on the streets, matches meant fire and fire meant warmth and warmth meant not freezing to death. Natalie knew this. She also knew a fire was as good as red flashing lights.

  She didn’t know how long she’d dozed off but she was awake now.

  Removing the layers of her cocoon with care to be used again once the fire was made, she then stuffed one of the small plastic bags with shreds of paper and other miscellaneous pieces of trash from the floor that might burn and braced herself for her next mission.

  THERE WERE NO STARS TO BE SEEN BUT THE SKY WAS MORE a dark gray than black—not useful to her ability to see but a comforting point of reference. She could see where up was.

  The wind had subsided considerably as well—blowing biting, irregular gusts that seemed almost tropical to those a while earlier.

  Using the car to feel her way inland, away from the road, she climbed over the brittle plow pile and then slipped and fell off the shoulder of the road. “Shit.” Getting to her feet again, her pumps no help and no protection against the snow, she envisioned the trees she’d seen earlier as she skidded sideways down the highway.

  She guesstimated they were twelve to twenty-five feet from the road and started counting her steps; hoping she was traveling in as straight a line as possible. Everyone knew that rule number one was don’t leave your car, but she couldn’t very well set it on fire, so staying nearby was as good as she could do.

  With her survival kit rolled up under one arm, she used the other to feel her way through what had become shades and shadows of darkness. Her only chance at a fire was to find a tree. If it was evergreen there was a good possibility of relatively dry ground—at least snowless ground—at its base. If not, she could push her luck and check for a second tree or clear space alongside the trunk and do her best.

  After twenty paces she made contact with a low-hanging limb; her cry of joyful surprise, soft as it was, echoed in the emptiness. Trailing the direction of the branch until her arm reached high over her head, she lost the connection and it was faith alone that powered the last few strides to the tree’s torso.

  And then, just as she was swallowing her disappointment that it was small and deciduous, her foot caught on something and had her tumbling again . . . into a low bush. Backing out quickly, needing most to stay dry, her hearing fixed on the sound of dry leaves rustling as she moved.

  “Dry leaves. Dry ground.”

  She half-chuckled when she couldn’t tell if she was trembling from cold or excitement but knew she needed to handle both simultaneously. So she went to work on a mental plan for the fire while she unrolled the rubber mat from the car adjacent to both the tree and bush. Feeling her way through every step, she used the not-so-crunchy-anymore towel to dry her feet and legs and pulled the large trash bag up over them; tying the sweater loosely around her feet and ankles once again. Not wanting to lose anything, she stuffed all but her bag of trash inside her coat, then got to her knees and sat back on her legs—her head went into the bush as far as she could get it.

  Missing the gloves she’d left in her car, she was aware of the pain in her numbing fingers as she walked them over the ground, gathering leaves the size of her thumb, searching for the driest spot. She spoke to them encouragingly. “That’s it, take your time. One more, good job. See how easy this is?” And when her search rustled the bush enough to drop snow down her neck, she came up straight again, brushed the top free of snow, and started over with a patience Job would admire.

  When at last she had her spot, she held one hand in place to guard it and reached back with the other for the precious box of matches. With only the tip of her finger to tell, she judged ten or twelve matches left in the box.

  “Okay.” After closing her eyes to concentrate—and pray—she used trembling, unfeeling fingers to open it, painstakingly fumble for a stick, and close it. She held her breath and waited for a break in the wind. Adrenaline put tip to box and forced the stroke to make a small explosion of light . . . that was gone as soon as it appeared.

  A frustrated moan popped in her throat and she swallowed it. She needed to stay calm. She lo
wered her forehead to the tops of her outstretched arms to gather herself and then began once more from the beginning, closing her eyes to concentrate, to pray . . . to arrive at the same result.

  Her head shot up suddenly, like an alert rabbit. She heard a new whirring sound, a not-wind drone coming her way, getting closer. A look back at beams of light coming up the road shot electricity to the tips of her toes and out her fingers—made her muscles spastic as she scrambled to get to her feet. Could she make it to the pavement in time to flag it down? Her first step brought her down with a cry and shout. “No, no, no!” Her feet were tied up in the sweater. “No, no, no. I’m here. I’m here.” Bag and sweater were off in a flash. “Help! Help me! I’m here.” She made it to her feet in time for its approach; to jump waving and screaming and to stagger into snow before it passed her by without slowing down.

  Natalie stood, stunned and confounded. What now? The question circled in her mind until her feet were shrieking in pain and instinct alone had her back-stepping to the mat. Hardly aware of it, she searched the dark for the towel and went about the business of surviving.

  She discovered that cupping her hands around the box provided marginal protection from the wind—but marginal wasn’t enough. She made a mini-dome with a hamburger wrapper—another blowout. But when a second attempt produced more than a spark, an actual flare, she gave it two more chances before moving on to option four—matchstick nine—which was to dig a small hole, a tiny fire pit of sorts.

  With fewer matches in the box it became easier to count them—there were four left.

  Looking up, she was startled to see . . . to be able to see, actually. The ambient light from the gray skies reflected off the white snow making it almost as bright as day. That which had been hidden from her in darkness had come to light. Trees and bushes had magically materialized while her attention had been elsewhere. Trees heavy with snow, balancing inches of snow on tiny limbs; the car at the road, a snow-topped boulder a few yards away; the road and the fields beyond—empty and stretching for miles—it all glistened as if littered with millions and billions of tiny diamonds.

  If she wasn’t so cold or so terrified it might have been exquisite—as it was: “It’s a good sign.”

  Putting the box back in her pocket for safekeeping, she took some time to scrape away as much of the frozen ground that a dull stick would allow and used more leaves and papers from the trash to build up the walls around it; tugged the paper canopy into place. Blindly, she skimmed stiff fingers over her handiwork and when she was sure she could do no better, she went for the matchbox once more.

  Match four was impressive but three looked, for a whole second, as if it might catch—charring the edge of a leaf. It was worth another try . . . but proved another failure.

  She squeezed tears from her eyes and clutched the matchbox, and the last of its contents, tight in the palm of her hand. The near-constant shivering was taking a toll on her strength; she was fatiguing. Even the choice to use or to save the last match was an extraordinary chore . . . until she came to understand that she wasn’t going to get any warmer, that conditions weren’t going to get any better than they were at that moment. There might not be a later in which to use it.

  “I’ve never been much of a saver anyway.”

  Sluggishly she came to the decision that, no, no better preparations could be made—what’s more, she didn’t have the energy. This time the lighting ceremony held more desperation than expectation; much less faith in the outcome. And when it was over, it was something of an odd relief.

  She’d done her best. She had fought . . . fought the young man, fought the cold and the night. She hadn’t given up . . . not on herself, not on her hope of surviving . . . not on her dream of being with Miles. She still hadn’t. As long as her heart beat there was always a chance—she truly believed that, with every molecule in every cell in her body. She believed. The thing was, she simply didn’t know what else she could do. She was too tired to walk; she wouldn’t make it to the road. The last best thing she could do was to stay as dry and as warm as she could for as long as she could, and wait, and trust that help would come before sleep.

  The mat had snow on it now, and while brushing it off still gave her some protection from the moisture of the snow, it had become a conductor of its freezing temperature. Wrapped in plastic and pieces of cotton and wool, she settled the least amount of her body mass on the mat as possible—the poorly covered soles of her feet and the base of her spine, with her back against the small slumbering tree.

  All that remained was the time it would take for her body to exhaust itself and stop shivering.

  “It’ll be all right,” she said, though it didn’t sound any more convincing out loud than it did in her head.

  Gently, slowly, and cherishing each one, she began to sort through memories of love and laughter, recalled friends both old and new. She prized her accomplishments and the gifts she’d received from others—her lids grew heavy and a warm, calm contentment spread through her at simply having known Miles.

  One corner of her mouth tipped upward and her heavy-lidded gaze lifted to the sky. The radiance, the soft lighting of the sky that she’d noticed earlier was . . . more, she thought, fancying that the once solid mass of heavy cloud cover that had unburdened itself of its snow was now pulling apart, separating and plumping up. Small patches of star-studded sky spread slowly as she watched through air so clear and crisp it all but crackled.

  As a matter of fact, everything around her was shimmering, shining . . . the word heavenly came to mind. Her lazy gaze fixed on two particular stars, low in the sky, moving, coming closer, and . . . no, not stars. Headlights registered. A car traveling in the far lane, on the other side of the median toward Beaumont . . . too far away to see her . . . too far away . . .

  “I’m still here.” The words floated from her in a cloud of warm air and were just as audible.

  In a trance, she tracked the vehicle with her eyes between slow, long blinks—until it drove into what looked like a spotlight on a stage—a curio that penetrated her groggy awareness.

  Once again, her vision turned aloft. Her lips, stiff and cracked, bowed at the sight of brilliant crepuscular rays streaming from the heavens. God rays. But not from the sun . . . not even from a full moon.

  More and more of the comet’s tail appeared before the last of the clouds broke away to reveal its true magnificence—a staggering light in a moonless night sky with a gloriously long, luminous tail.

  “The Christmas Comet.”

  She’d never seen anything like it. No one alive had seen it before—racing along on its epic orbit around the sun; pulling and rolling and shifting the molecules in the air, trailing ancient and magical dust in its wake.

  She’d read about it, seen pictures of other comets . . . There were those who believed ISON was the return of what was named the Star of Bethlehem—that it was this brilliant comet the magi followed so very, very long ago. And who knew, maybe it was.

  All Natalie knew, for sure and for certain, was that anything so extraordinary and beautiful was a singularity—a miraculous event. A miracle.

  “It just has to be . . .”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “I couldn’t believe it.” Miles wasn’t sure how many times he’d said it in the last three days but he still couldn’t believe it. “There she was, sitting under a tree, sound asleep. I couldn’t believe it.”

  See?

  Having made it through the worst of her ordeal, Natalie was now stable—all she had to do was wake up.

  “What made you turn around and go back?” asked Special Agent Palmer, sitting casually in the chair at the end of her hospital bed. He’d arrived several hours earlier on an assignment to first check on her condition and then give her some good news.

  “When I found her car at the side of the road, out of gas, with her not in it, I wanted to wring her neck. She knew better than to get out . . . and to stay in one place so we could find her. God, I was so mad.
” Instantly, his remembered anger bubbled in his veins, but it didn’t belong to Natalie anymore. “The best I could hope was that she’d set out for town, not too far, a few miles—I thought I’d catch her on the way in. Maybe she thought she could hitch a ride . . .

  “The first thing I found was an open convenience store with a couple police cruisers parked outside. Turns out two kids—a girl and a boy—did hitch a ride into town and when the driver stopped there for gas they took off in his van . . . with the gas he hadn’t paid for yet, which is what caught the attendant’s notice and why he called the cops so quick. By some miracle there was a patrol in the vicinity. They were collared inside twenty minutes. The kids and the van were then brought back for identification and that’s when I rolled up. When the driver said he’d picked ’em up a couple miles outside town, that they’d run out of gas, I asked him to describe the car. It was Natalie’s.”

  Agent Palmer chuckled and nodded. “So the kid didn’t really slip on the ice, land on his face, and break his own nose.” It wasn’t a question.

  Miles shook his head once and clenched his still sore fist. “Technically, I suppose, he slipped after his nose was broken.” He looked back into Palmer’s face, saw no judgment, and knew the infinitesimal dollop of guilt he felt was all his. “I haven’t hit anyone since I got out of the army thirteen years ago.”

  “So then you went back to her car,” said the DEA agent, leaping over the subject with ease, needing no further explanation.

  “I went back to their car where they’d left her.”

  “That’s when you saw her.”

  He nodded, perplexed. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it the first time I passed by. The storm was over.” Again he shook his head in wonder. “There she was, plain as day. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “Well, you weren’t the only one out looking . . . or the only one who missed seeing her. We were watching for her, too. We took that same road—we even saw the car, slowed down. It looked abandoned. Kills me to think she was only a few yards away.” His gaze shifted toward the bed. “She’s good people.”