Hunter Brown and the Eye of Ends

by Chris Miller

  She was already beside me, drawing random hearts and flowers on the surface of the mirror. Her eyes lit up like a child’s with a new toy at Christmas and she drew a pair of glasses and a mustache over the reflection of her face.

  A moment later, words began to appear in the colorful ink behind the surface of the mirror, as if someone had written them in from the other side. The words were written backwards and read:

  My end is my beginning,

  my beginning is my end.

  Find me in my reflection

  beyond the…

  “A riddle?” Desi asked, raising an eyebrow. “Your father loved riddles.”

  “But this one isn’t finished,” Trista said.

  “That’s because the last words of the riddle are the answer, I think,” I said. “It’s like a password. I think we’re supposed to write the answer on the mirror.”

  “Yes, but what is it a password to?” Desi wondered.

  “To finding whoever made this mirror,” I said thoughtfully.

  “You mean your father?” Trista asked.

  I shrugged, but I was thinking the same thing.

  “Well, you’d better be sure of the answer before you write it. If your father made this mirror, he likely didn’t make it without taking precautions.”

  “Meaning what?” Trista asked.

  “Meaning,” Desi answered firmly, “he probably put traps in the room for anyone who didn’t answer correctly.”

  Our eyes darted nervously around, scrutinizing every corner of the space. Suddenly, my imagination got the better of me; nothing could be trusted anymore. The floor could give way, the ceiling might cave in, the room might flood…any number of dismal ends might come to us if we got the answer wrong. There was no way of knowing for sure, but that’s what made it all the more nerve-racking.

  “Okay, let’s think about it for a while,” I said in the calmest voice I could muster. My dad had made some pretty difficult riddles for me in the past, but none of them would ever be as important as this one.

  I ran through a series of potential answers in my mind.

  “What rhymes with end?” I asked aloud.

  Trista rattled off a long list before I could think of one.

  “Send, bend, lend, depend, tend, mend, pretend, ascend, spend, contend, descend, suspend….”

  “Whoa, slow down!” I shouted, stopping her short. “Okay, that’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. We have to start somewhere else. Let’s go back over the first lines; there’s got to be a clue there.”

  I began repeating the riddle aloud a few times in hopes it would help the answer come.

  “My end is my beginning…” I said.

  “My beginning is my end,” Trista continued.

  “That’s it!” I shouted, in a sudden burst of enthusiasm. “A palindrome.”

  Trista looked blankly at me.

  “A palindrome is a word that can be read two ways: forward and backward. It’s kinda like a reflection, only with letters….”

  “You mean like the phrase Xaul helped us solve?” Trista said, her eyes lighting up with excitement. “The one where we wrote the same letters down in the cave?”

  I nodded.

  “So, you think the answer is the word palindrome?” Desi asked, not sounding completely convinced.

  “Find me in my reflection, beyond the palindrome,” I said aloud, trying it on for size. “It might be it.”

  “Yes, but how sure are you? It doesn’t even rhyme.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have to rhyme to be a riddle, but still…something doesn’t feel quite right.”

  We sat for several minutes, silently debating different phrases. Everyone had their own opinion of the riddle. There were far too many answers to choose from. Unfortunately, none of them sounded in the least bit right until Trista blurted out something I had forgotten entirely.

  “Mirror Rim!” Trista said, at last. “Isn’t that the phrase your father wrote in his Writ? It’s a palindoo-hicky, or whatever that word is. Isn’t it?”

  “You’re right!” I said excitedly. “Mirror Rim is spelled the same backward and forward.”

  “And a mirror shows your ‘reflection’ too,” Trista added.

  “Find me in my reflection, beyond the Mirror Rim. Is that it?” Desi asked.

  “It sounds better than anything else I’ve come up with,” I answered. “It’s either that or we give up.”

  We took a vote and agreed to give it a shot. Trista and Desi stepped back toward the stairs just in case our answer was wrong. They would have a chance to escape if a trap presented itself.

  When everyone was ready, I wrote the answer to the riddle onto the mirror’s surface. I took care to write the letters backwards to match the previous words that appeared above it. As the last letter was completed, the words disappeared and my reflection vanished from the black mirror completely. I backed away from the mirror, wondering if I had gotten it wrong. Then, with a dazzling flash, the mirror lit up with an infinite nest of neon blue rings that made it appear like a tunnel through the wall.

  “He did it!” Desi smiled so wide she almost laughed. “He actually did it!”

  Now that it was safe, Trista and Desi joined me in front of the tunnel of light.

  “So this mirror is a portal to my father’s world?” I asked.

  “There’s only one way to be sure,” Desi answered. “You have to pass through it. If this is your father’s mirror, he won’t be far from the other side.”

  We decided I should go alone. Desi felt it was best that she and Trista stay behind to guard the mirror from unwanted intruders. After all, Belac couldn’t be far, and there was always Vogler. If something went wrong, she would reach me on the Symbio device.

  “How do I enter?” I asked.

  “Just step through,” Desi replied.

  I swallowed nervously at the thought and glanced at the tunnel ahead of me in the mirror. After years of wondering, I was perhaps one step away from discovering the mystery of my father’s disappearance.

  “Hunter, wait,” Trista begged. “How do you know it’s safe? I mean, how do you know there is even a way to come back? What if you get lost in the mirror like…like your father?”

  “The mirror should have two sides,” Desi offered. “Pay attention to where it is you arrive. That will also be your way back out.”

  “Okay then,” I said, my heart racing so fast my fingers trembled from the excitement. “I’ll be back.”

  “We’ll be waiting,” Trista said, wringing her hands nervously in front of her.

  Slowly, I approached the mirror, intent on finishing the quest I had begun. I took a deep breath and raised my foot. I stepped into the mirror and time slowed to a crawl until it seemed as if I had frozen in space halfway between the world behind and the world that lay ahead. Though I couldn’t move, the lights of the tunnel began to move toward me and past me, slowly at first—then quicker and quicker until they were nothing but a blur of solid light around me.

  ********

  I was frozen now, captured on a brilliant blank canvas of pure white light. Everything my senses perceived felt fresh and new. Words I could not understand began to take voice as whispers all around me. As the cryptic words were spoken, shapes began to form out of thin air like the first, loosely sketched lines, outlining a yet-to-be masterpiece. All at once this budding world burst into life as vibrant colors filled in a new layer of definition. When the sweeping transformation was finally complete, I found myself finishing my original step through the mirror to arrive in a magnificent, glass-domed room.

  From its panoramic view, the room appeared to be atop the highest tower of an impressive, modern facility. A lush, rolling landscape stretched off into the distance far below me, warmed beneath the billowing, pink-lit clouds of a soft sunset sky. The view outsid
e was breathtaking.

  Inside, however, was an entirely different story—a pack rat’s paradise. An infestation of books and loose papers held together what otherwise would have been an unrelated assortment of found items, from the commonplace to the extraordinary. Half of the things, I couldn’t even identify, though I supposed that was the function of the notes taped to many of them—an attempt at cataloging the collection. Whatever the intent, the disorderly piles transformed what otherwise could have been a state-of-the-art research lab into a state-of-the-art disaster zone.

  Remembering Desi’s advice, I checked the wall behind me for the other side of the mirror. I was relieved to see a free-standing mirror set up amongst the junk heaps behind me. This would be my doorway back to Solandria if all went well.

  “What is this place?” I marveled aloud, turning slowly to take in the bizarre setting.

  “Somewhere you should not be,” came the unexpected reply from over my shoulder. Though I hadn’t heard the voice since I was twelve, I recognized it in a heartbeat. It was the voice of my father.

  Chapter 20

  My Father’s World

  I must have imagined the reunion with my father a million times over. He’d walk up the sidewalk, through the front door and back into our lives, wrapping me up in a great bear hug. All the missing years would be explained, all the hurts forgiven and our family would return to normal once again. I should have learned the lesson by now that we rarely get what we expect.

  “Dad?” I whispered, spinning around to scan the room for any sign of him. A head of thick blond hair peeked out from behind a particularly tall stack of books, and I looked into my father’s piercing blue eyes for the first time in what felt like a lifetime.

  “Son…it’s really you!” Dad said, looking as shocked as if he’d just been visited by a ghost from his past. “What are you doing here?”

  “Dad!” I shouted, all at once feeling like a child again. Overwhelmed by the emotions, I found myself giving in to the boyish urge to run over and tackle my long-lost father. Whatever obstacles had been stacked between us toppled easily as I raced toward my father; nothing would stop me from reaching him. Unfortunately, “nothing” did.

  “Hunter, wait!” Dad warned, raising his arms to halt me.

  As I fell forward toward his outstretched arms, I unexpectedly found myself grasping thin air, having somehow passed right through him, crashing awkwardly on the floor. I was stunned.

  Dad laughed as he apologized, “Sorry about that. I was trying to tell you that you can’t touch me here.” Being the one with the bruises, I somehow missed the humor of the situation.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, rubbing my shoulder. “Why? What’s happened to you?” From where I sat sprawled on the ground, he looked well enough to me—just like I remembered him, only with slightly longer hair than before. He was still standing in the exact spot I’d seen him, so I knew I hadn’t missed him. That’s when a horrible thought suddenly crashed in on me. I gulped before giving the idea a voice.

  “You’re not…I mean, are you…?” I couldn’t bring myself to suggest it.

  “Dead?” Dad finished my words for me. He laughed at this too. “No! Far from it, in fact.”

  “But, I just fell right through you—like you’re a ghost,” I said in disbelief, picking myself up off the floor. “People don’t just walk through each other. It’s impossible.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s my fault. I haven’t gotten around to building interrelational collisions between humans into my design yet. Being the only one here, it really hasn’t been an urgent need. I’m not entirely sure this place can handle it. I wasn’t ready for this yet. Everything seems stable but….” His mind started to wander and he acted for a moment as if he forgot I was there.

  I stared at him blankly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Dad smiled, ignoring my confusion, and took a step back to look me over. “Look at you. You’ve grown so much,” he said, letting out a sigh. “It’s so great to see you, son! I never expected to see you again. Not here, anyway. Not yet.”

  “Dad,” I said with growing uncertainty, “where exactly is ‘here’?”

  “Well you’re in… uh,” Dad paused awkwardly, searching for a suitable explanation to my question. “Funny. I guess I’ve been too busy creating this place to think of ever giving it a name. Now that you’re here, maybe you can help me choose a name for my world.”

  My design…creating this place…my world? It took a minute for the full meaning of Dad’s collective words to completely sink in.

  “Hold on,” I said. “You mean to tell me that you created all this?” I motioned toward the dream-like world outside the glass dome walls.

  “Well…yes,” Dad stated plainly. “Of course, not all of it turned out so great to begin with. My first attempts were nothing to write home about, but I’ve slowly been getting the hang of it.”

  “The hang of what?”

  “Authorship.”

  “But…you can’t…. I mean, that’s not…. How?” I spat out.

  Dad smiled back, unfazed by my perceived ignorance. “Just because you’ve never seen something done before, doesn’t mean that it’s not possible. Great minds ask the hard questions and don’t settle for the easy answers. Like you, Hunter. Finding me should have been next to impossible. Goodness knows I tried hard to make it tough, covering my tracks, setting security points. I don’t know how you did it, but somehow you found me. You obviously didn’t settle for the easy explanations.”

  I could feel my dad’s evident sense of pride as he exclaimed, “You’re a regular chip off the old block, son!” He started to reach out with a fist to deliver a friendly punch on my shoulder, like he always used to when he was still home. But he stopped short, remembering the gesture couldn’t connect with me in this other-world environment.

  Sensing I was even more confused than before, Dad tried taking a new approach. Gathering up a collection of drawings from a table, Dad rolled them up and then beckoned for me to follow.

  “Walk with me, son. There’s something I want to show you.”

  He didn’t have to ask me twice. I readily accepted, eager to learn anything that he might have to share.

  “Just watch your step,” Dad requested. “Contrary to what you might think, this mess does have a bit of order to it.”

  I followed in Dad’s footsteps as he picked a way through his precarious maze of “organized chaos.”

  “Let’s start with what you already know about Solandria,” Dad said as we walked. He nodded toward my belt and the Veritas hilt hanging from its clasp. “You’ve already been introduced to the Codebearers, I see.”

  “Yes. Found them—or, I guess they found me—at the end of the last school year,” I replied. “At least in Destiny’s time, I should say.”

  “That’s right. I forgot about the variable time sync between Solandria and the Veil. To be honest, I still haven’t figured out how my world relates back to the others. How long has it been?”

  “Too long,” I answered, coming to a standstill. “It’s been three years, Dad…and counting. You left us three years ago.”

  This news seemed to have a sobering effect on him. He paused for a moment and flashed a weak smile at me. “Has it really been that long?” he said softly. “Of course it has, look at you—you’re all grown up now. Practically a man!”

  If only it were just time lost between us. The pain went so much deeper than that, filling up the awkward silence we found ourselves in.

  “What’s done is done,” Dad abruptly concluded. Turning his head toward our unnamed destination, he pushed on. “You’re here and that’s what matters now.”

  It was clearly much more complicated than that but, not knowing what else to say, I kept quiet and fell back in step.

  “When you trained with the Resistance, did they teach
you anything about the origins of Solandria?” Dad asked.

  “Yeah,” I forced myself to join in the conversation, pushing aside my conflicting emotions. “I learned about the Code of Life under Captain Samryee, about how nothing comes from nothing and all that.”

  “Samryee, as in Samryee Thordin?” Dad said with surprising interest.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Dad smiled and nodded his head knowingly. “Captain Sam…how’s that for moving up the ranks?”

  “So, it’s true then,” I said, connecting the dots. “You did serve alongside Sam in the Resistance, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. With him and a good many others. I remember Sam from the few missions we were on together. He’s kind of a hard guy to forget.”

  I nodded in agreement, feeling my own sense of swelling pride at having confirmed my father’s authenticity as a Codebearer. Hadn’t Aviad himself said my father was a skilled warrior? An immediate bond began to re-form; I could already imagine the talks we could have swapping our battle stories and braving new adventures together.

  Dad’s pace had slowed noticeably and I saw a far-off look in his eyes as if he were lost in memories. “So many good people serving with the Resistance…. It’s just...bah,” he shook his head, letting the thought trail off unfinished.

  “Just what, Dad?” I pressed.

  “It goes back to what I was saying, Hunter. I think too many people stop asking questions when they feel the answers will be too hard to confront. They want to stay with their comfortable assumptions. I couldn’t do that.”

  I got the sense that what he was saying was somehow related to what the other Codebearers, and more recently Xaul, had alluded to about my father’s past—some kind of falling out with the Resistance. With what snippets I had gleaned from their accounts, I had an idea that I would be nosing into a sensitive subject, but I wanted to hear the full story from Dad himself.

  Gathering my courage, I asked, “Is that why you left the Resistance?”

  My question had as gentle an effect as tossing a cup of cold water into his face. He looked shocked, even hurt by what I’d implied. Whatever fondness he might have momentarily entertained toward his Codebearer days was suddenly washed away to reveal a deep-seated emotional scar.