by J M Fraser
“I’ve noticed something.” Henry Stoddard’s booming voice startled her mushy heart into her throat.
She wiped her eyes in her sleeve. “Do you take pride in stalking me? Sometimes a person wants to be alone.”
“Maybe you only think you do.” The sorcerer settled down beside her. For whatever reason, he’d dressed in a dark, heavy cloak even though she’d fled to a summery scene in the World of Mortal Dreams, hoping to wash her sadness away with warm rays of sunshine.
“I’ve dressed symbolically,” he said.
She scooted as far away as she could get without falling off the log. “We’ll never get along well if you try picking thoughts out of my head.”
He chuckled. “Are you saying we’ll get along if I don’t?”
She didn’t see any point in responding to his babble. Perhaps if she ignored him, he’d go away.
“I won’t stay long.” Stoddard pointed toward the horizon, the sleeve of his cloak hanging low like that of the grim reaper.
She followed his motion, gazing all the way to the point where grassy field met hazy sky. The mystery hung heavy in the air for so long she finally relented and spoke. “What am I looking for?”
“You’ll notice the tiniest speck a little right of center.”
She found it. A gray smudge marring an otherwise perfect horizon.
Henry swung his arm, and the smudge disappeared. “I erase what little I can, but the void scatters and reforms every time.”
Another wave of sobs overcame her. “My mother’s dreams could get swept away again at any moment.” She could only choke out her words between gasps.
“Let that serve as your motivation, Rebecca. Don’t the words carved in stone hold that everything lost might be recovered?”
“You believe in the prophecy I’ve been chasing?”
Henry boomed his laugh across the empty field. “Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t. But here’s something to chew on. Word has it, only the prophesied girl, Rebecca, will have visions of the coming apocalypse. You wouldn’t happen to know such a girl, would you?”
“Are you saying you believe…in me?”
“I’m just an old fool. What I believe is of little moment, except as a straw for a young woman with faltering resolve to grasp.”
He was right. A vote of confidence, even from a scoundrel, made the air somewhat easier to breathe. “You’ve done me a service, sir. May I ask why?”
“Perhaps I’m making up for earlier transgressions. The world turns best when everyone is in harmony.”
Even after all these years, the reminder of what Henry had caused in Salem stirred her anger like a hornets’ nest. “Certain transgressions are so unforgivable as to never be erased.”
The sorcerer stood. He towered over her with folded arms and a harsh glare. “Harden your heart the same way whenever you and Brian must part. You’ll find the sailing smoother.”
Rebecca bunched her fists. “How would you know we just parted unless you’ve been playing the Peeping Tom?”
“One need only look at your red eyes, dear. I haven’t been spying, and I surely don’t need an enlightening rod to figure things out.”
Enlightening rod. Rebecca had gone years without hearing the term until Brian showed her the one he’d found. And here was Henry mentioning an enlightening rod as well. She’d never believed in coincidences and wasn’t about to start now. “What do you know of such things?”
“I know the stories passed from mouth to mouth. An angel—some say a demon—created them over a thousand years ago. Most rods lost their power, and those still working are fickle. The holders must have the right blood coursing through their veins to get any use out of them.”
She should have known he wouldn’t say anything useful.
“Well, I suppose you came here for solitude.” Stoddard began walking away.
“Good. Find someone else to stalk.”
But he stopped and turned to her. “Oh, I just remembered one other thing. Aislinn is the one who set this prophecy of yours in stone, is she not?”
“What of it?”
“Supposedly she fashioned an enlightening rod to be used by the chosen one. They say she used a spell to disguise it as a ribbon.”
Brian’s ribbon! She started off the log.
The sorcerer vanished.
Chapter 32
“You’ll love my witch’s special.” Aunt April plunged a spatula into her mixing bowl and stirred with a vengeance until she’d created a horrific pink mush with streaks of yellow. The individual elements were fine on their own—hamburger, mashed potatoes, peaches, catsup, mustard. But all mixed together?
Her concoction did smell like pizza. Props to her for creating the right aroma, but Brian couldn’t get past the visual. He eased his chair from the kitchen table. “I’m not eating any.”
“Stay put.” She continued her frenzied attack on the food pyramid, frowning when the mess turned orange. So she grabbed the catsup bottle and squirted another liberal dose into the bowl, presumably for better coloring although the pukey result hardly bolstered his appetite.
“Seriously, April.”
“You did ask me to conjure something, didn’t you?”
“Not exactly.” A week had passed since a demon/imp/phooka or whatever deposited him on the doorstep of the condo. End of road trip. Gabriella had even sent his Kia along for the ride, leaving it at the curb. April claimed he’d driven back, saying she saw him pull up, sit in the car endlessly, and then wobble over to the steps. Thought he’d been out drinking. Yeah, right.
Since then, he’d seen no sign of Rebecca other than dreams fading to dust every morning. She’d started rationing her waking-world visits like a squirrel down to her last few acorns. How many did she have left? What would happen when she used them all up?
He needed another go at Nebraska without missing his upcoming midterms. Just a quick in and out long enough for him to get at that mirror, go back to Salem, figure out the secrets he was still supposed to learn, and free Rebecca from whatever spell was keeping her from establishing permanent residence in his waking life.
If Gabriella could send him careening hundreds of miles east in the blink of an eye and Rebecca could pop from one place to another like a flickering light bulb, there had to be a way for an ordinary guy to do the same. “I need a World of Mortal Dreams bus pass, April.”
“And I’m supposed to help?” She set the spatula down, rummaged in a drawer, and came out with an ice-cream scoop, eyeballing him like a drill sergeant in the process. Lecture time. But how seriously could he take a woman wearing a short leather skirt and a T-shirt listing the ten fairy tales most in need of the f word?
#8: Who are you, and what have you done with my f***ing grandmother?—Red Riding Hood.
“Picture a chessboard,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Do you think the queen wants the rook badgering her for information he should figure out on his own?”
“Huh?”
“Exactly.” She scooped a few orange blobs out of the bowl and piled them onto his plate. “Next time, maybe I’ll try whipping something up that makes you smarter.”
He poked at the mush with a fork. “I’ve got a ribbon for that.”
“Really? Then how come you don’t know the world has more mirrors than the one you found in Nebraska?”
Well, duh. Good question. “You mean—”
“I’m late for my shift at the diner.” April headed out of the kitchen, grabbed her jacket off a chair, and made a beeline to the front door.
He raced after her. “Are we talking any mirror?”
“Think duets.”
Before he could get another word in, she was out the door, ushering in a cold draft tempered by a winter scent best described as chestnuts roasting in an open fire. Conjured or real? The witches in Brian’s life might have been stingy with their answers to simple questions, but they sure were good at spicing up the atmosphere.
* * *
Grainger Hall,
a masterpiece of contemporary architecture, had been reduced to a hulking shadow even from a distance of a few hundred feet. A swirling curtain of snow hid the curved atrium entryway, the checkerboard pattern of beige and gray facing, the stark, rectangular windows—every modern touch that had defeated Brian’s previous attempts to think of the vast, winged, vaguely medieval complex as a castle. Now the blizzard played into his fantasy, transforming Grainger and its grounds into the sort of winter-wonderland scene where fairy tales happened.
But midterms were about to happen, too. He had a study-group meeting—a last-minute stab at readying himself for a macroeconomics test in the company of several students as bewildered by the textbook as he was. Why had he skipped all those classes?
He hurried toward the entrance, fighting the bitter wind with every step.
A hooded girl caught up with him. The bangs poking down from her hood were red. She stood a head shorter.
He tried to speak. To say her name.
His mouth wouldn’t work.
The girl veered away. Rebecca? A look-alike? A fantasy? A dream? She headed around the side of the building and disappeared into the storm.
But wait. Did she sweep her arm toward something just before fading from his vision?
Those two buildings across the street. Positioned so close together the walls almost touched.
Think duets.
Thanks for the idea, random Rebecca look-alike! Brian turned from the hall and hurried back to the condo.
* * *
Mirrors.
They had one in the bathroom over the sink and another attached to April’s dressing table. Brian went into her bedroom to check that one out. A wooden frame rising from the table encased the mirror. Eight wood screws held it in place.
He ran to the kitchen. Rummaged through a drawer overflowing with batteries, clipped coupons, tape dispensers, and…a Phillips screwdriver.
He hurried back to the dresser and went to work, managing to unscrew the frame without destroying the thing. He lugged it into the bathroom. Eyed the mirror already hanging on the wall above the sink basin.
Now what?
Make a duet.
Yeah. Two mirrors across from each other, creating an endless loop of reflections just waiting to pull him into a different dimension.
He got a stool from the kitchen and propped the dresser mirror on it, leaning it almost upright against the wall so it faced the sink mirror head on. The reflections were truly endless, becoming smaller and smaller, like fractals in a chaos experiment.
Alrighty then. He wanted a portal, didn’t he?
Brian took a deep breath and stepped between the mirrors.
Chapter 33
Brian turned from the medicine-cabinet mirror on his right to April’s dresser mirror on his left. A light above the cabinet flickered from one reflection to the next in an endless series of blinks. Other than that, nothing special happened.
He closed his eyes. Opened them.
Nope.
He stood in the same ordinary bathroom as before.
What did he expect would happen? If teleportation were as easy as standing between two mirrors, nobody would have bothered inventing the spoked wheel.
The floor trembled.
Yeah, right. His imagination wanted him to believe this crazy idea so much he thought he’d just noticed—
The floor shook.
Brian lost his balance and fell against April’s mirror.
A flash. The light of a thousand suns.
He clamped his eyes shut. Afterimages glowed green, yellow, red.
The colors faded to gray.
A mild breeze ruffled his hair. Crickets chirped.
Yes! Dueling mirrors rocked! He’d been delivered to her cabin.
A chicken clucked.
Huh?
He reopened his eyes to a full moon, casting just enough grudging light to reveal a semicircle of rustic cabins at the edge of a forest.
Salem, not Nebraska.
He staggered backward into something hard, then groped his hand across the rough wooden top of the well—smack dab in the village center.
Somebody’s heavy palm came down on his shoulder, igniting every nerve in his body. He nearly fell into the well.
“I ain’t no ghost, son.” Mr. Buck-Ninety-Two himself, the gas station attendant from Sidney, stood grinning at his side. The man came to the party in jeans, a flannel shirt, and his Gulf cap, as if he’d slipped out the back of his store, straight into colonial Salem. “Why are you gaping at me?”
“Because your business has been boarded up for years.”
The news flash wiped the smile off the man’s face. He lifted his head to the sky. Spread his arms. “Did I ask to learn the future?”
No answer boomed down.
The man shrugged, found his grin again, extended a hand. “Name’s Hal.”
“I’m Brian.”
Hal shook with a crushing grip and a sharp gleam in his eye. “My store seemed fine ten minutes ago when I closed my eyes for a spell.”
“When was that?”
“June 3, 1945.”
No way. Another Agatha Christie moment.
Or Walt Whitman.
But who was dreaming this time?
Brian whipped the reality meter out of his pocket. The Saint Brigit coin warmed, then cooled, switching from gold to silver and back in the process. That could only mean one thing. “So I’m asleep, and everyone here is awake?”
“This ain’t my time and place neither, son.” Hal opened his fist, revealing his own matching coin.
“What? Where did you—”
“Breathe, son. You’re turning blue.”
Brian inhaled. Cabin smoke. Barn animals.
He exhaled. “That’s Rebecca’s coin, right? You talked me into driving north. Then you filled my tank with just enough gas to—”
“Think of me as a tour guide.” Hal motioned to one of the cabins. Torchlight cast an orange glow over the porch, where three bonneted girls huddled in conversation under a blanket. “You’ll know the one on the right,” he said. “Left one, too, I reckon, but they’re both younger here.”
Both, as in Rebecca and…? Brian started forward but stopped, weighted down by a thousand questions. “How much can you tell me about all of this?”
“Where would I start?”
“How about Rebecca?”
Hal moved his hand to his chin and rubbed. Like he didn’t know her. “The name sounds familiar, but a lot of folks wander through my station. Anything special about the girl?”
“Everything’s special about her. Come on, man, what’s going—”
Poof. One second Hal stood at his side, and the next…
Brian gaped into the empty space the station attendant left behind.
A colonial woman approached from the cabins. She walked past Brian as if he wasn’t there. The woman filled her bucket and headed back without giving him a second glance.
He’d been down this path before. Rebecca was the only one who noticed him when he fell into Salem the last time. And she had to be one of the three on the porch now, right?
He hurried over. “Rebecca?”
Somebody hit the mute button on the cosmic remote. His voice barely reached his own ears.
Meanwhile, the tone of the girls on the stairs climbed the anger scale, from snappy to annoyed to ticked off to shrill.
He got close enough to recognize all three of them.
Close enough to shudder.
Rebecca and Abigail were at war over something, with Betty Parris cowering in the middle. No good could come of this. Not only was Abigail the definition of malevolence, history remembered both her and her cousin in a bad way. Their possession triggered the Salem witch hysteria.
Or would trigger it soon?
Brian plowed forward. “Oomph.” He bumped into what felt like a wall of balloons. Invisible, squeaky, but unrelenting. They pushed him back.
Not ten feet away, Rebecca leveled a take-no
-prisoners glare across the blanket at Abigail. “You stole my quill pen and hid it in a log.”
“So what?” The phooka, stalker, goblin, or whatever met Rebecca’s angry glance with narrowing eyes. “You want to steal my Henry.”
Rebecca flicked a hand, as if batting a fly away. “I’ll have nothing to do with the man.”
“Lured him here, you did,” Abigail growled.
“I did not. Besides, you’re too young for Henry, you silly sot.”
“Liar.”
The fight had to stop before girls started getting twitchy, Puritans panicked, and the hangings began. Brian threw himself against the barrier.
It swatted him back, like a giant ping-pong paddle.
He came down hard on one knee.
And Abigail noticed. She caught his eye, sneered, waved.
Wham. The barrier knocked him on his back. He banged his head. Saw stars.
“Please don’t tell Master Stoddard we filched the pen.” Betty’s voice squeaked out from deep beneath the blanket, where she’d been shrinking. “He’ll take the switch to us.”
“Stop whining,” Abigail said.
Brian staggered to his feet.
Thick, menacing silence radiated from the porch.
Angry eyes glared back and forth.
Abigail broke into the world’s most malicious smile. She mouthed something.
Rebecca arched her brows. “A nightmare you’re wanting instead of a switching from Henry?”
“Art thou not a witch who can cast one?” Abigail said.
If nostril’s could flare fire, Rebecca’s were ready. “Who dares call me a witch?”
“All of Salem will when I spread the word. Unless…you give Betty a nightmare.”
“A what?” Betty’s eyes had gotten wide as saucers.
“Hush, girl,” Abigail growled.
Rebecca crossed her arms. “Even if I were a witch, I would never try such a thing. A coven banishes any member who attempts an unauthorized curse.”
Abigail laughed, and not in a good way. “A settlement hangs any exposed witch, no matter what she does.”
Betty started to rise from the step. “We’d never tell a soul about you, would we, Abby?”
“Says who?” Abigail clamped a hand on the girl’s shoulder and shoved her back down.
