With the lights on, the room looked a little less inviting. The counter was grimy, and a nearly empty package of bread sat moldering atop the microwave. Unidentifiable clumps of something black and glistening clung to the sides of the sink.
She began rummaging through the cupboards and found a bottle of dish soap, a can of coffee, and an old and chipped mug. Determinedly not thinking about anything much at all, Emily set about starting the coffee maker.
The familiar aroma of brewing coffee and the gurgle of the maker soothed her a little. Once or twice, the image of her stepfather barreling toward her with his shotgun tried to drift up to the surface of her mind, but she beat it back each time by sheer force of will.
Determined to keep moving, she used some of the dish soap and a moldy old sponge to scrub the inside of the sink while she waited for the coffee to brew.
A few minutes later, she was seated on the floor beside the space heater, a cup of coffee in her hands, and feeling like perhaps, just maybe, she might start to thaw out. The quiet solitude made her feel, at least momentarily, safer than she could remember feeling in months. She knew she should call Casey, but she just wasn’t ready to face the concerned looks and questions yet. What would she say to her? How could she say anything at all? She pulled out her phone and simply stared at it, caressing its smooth screen with the pad of her thumb, as she drank the slightly stale coffee.
At some point, between one sip and the next, Emily’s vision began to blur, and she blinked to clear it. A tear ran out of the corner of her left eye and fell from the tip of her nose.
For a moment, Emily wondered why her eyes were watering, then the gears in her head began to turn once more. The shock that had been offering its nebulous protection teetered on the razor edge of her emotions for another moment, then toppled. The damn broke apart, and the image of her mother’s small and lifeless body swam before her eyes.
And Emily began to cry.
She set her cup down gently on the cold linoleum beside her, wrapped her arms around her legs, and laid her head on her knees. She sobbed almost soundlessly. She wept as she never had when her mother was alive. She grieved for all the things that might have been, for all the things never said, for the time that could have been theirs—and wasn’t.
Image after image stole through her mind, each bringing a fresh stab of loss to her heart. Most were from before the time when her stepfather had entered their lives. They flitted past like the photos on her phone, in perfect focus long enough for only a glimpse before they were swept away to reveal the next.
Emily and her mother riding the Ferris wheel at the boardwalk in Atlantic City…
Flip…
Her mother taking her to buy her first pair of hockey skates…
Flip…
Emily coming home from school to find her mother in a drug-induced stupor on the sofa while yellowish vomit congealed in a stinking pool between her breasts…
Flip…
Emily standing petrified before a man dressed as Santa Claus at the mall and her mother clasping her hand in reassurance…
Flip…
Her mother, standing in the doorway to her room, brandishing Emily’s new iPod in one hand and screaming that they needed money and everyone would have to make sacrifices…
Flip…flip…flip…
The images came and went, came and went, without discrimination between the good or the bad. They washed over her as she wept, and she was helpless to do more than endure the relentless onslaught.
At last, the tears tapered off, and the images began to slow and fade. Emily wiped at her face and looked up, barely able to remember where she was or how she’d gotten there.
She spied the mug of coffee still beside her on the floor and picked it up. It was cold, but she sipped a little of it anyway. That small act seemed to calm her nerves.
She looked down at the phone still in her hand, and slipped it back into her pocket. She just couldn’t talk to anyone yet. Not until she was sure she had control of herself again. Maybe she would just stay here tonight. It was warm beside the heater, and she had coffee to drink. Maybe she could even find a cot or something somewhere in the warehouse. If nothing else, looking for one would give her something to do.
Relieved to have decided on something with which to distract herself, Emily got up, placed her cup neatly in the sink, and then paused, looking down at her backpack. She debated for a moment, looked out the window at the softly falling snow, then picked it up and slung it over her shoulders. She wasn’t exactly sure why, but leaving it here seemed like a very bad idea. Besides, it was comforting to feel its familiar weight against her back.
The break room’s only door led into a short hall that ended immediately to Emily’s right at the service door she’d seen outside. She turned left and followed the hall a few feet, navigating by the light that spilled out from the break room behind her. Another door on the right led into a small bathroom, complete with a shower stall. Perhaps, when she was done exploring, she’d shower in there. In for a penny and all that.
She continued, and, a few feet farther on, the hall opened up into the huge empty expanse of the main warehouse floor. It was nearly pitch black in here, and Emily fumbled for a moment, feeling the walls and searching for a light switch. At last, she found an entire bank of them and flicked them all on at once with the palm of one hand.
Huge rows of fluorescent lights came to life above a sight of utter chaos. Boxes were stacked helter skelter for as far as Emily could see. The piles were ten or twelve feet high in places, forming giant walls of cardboard in all directions. It looked like a labyrinth constructed in a lunatic millionaire’s basement. Here and there, dotted amongst the boxes, and in many cases teetering precariously on top of them, were plastic life-sized skeletons, false limbs that looked like they’d been torn from their owners by the hungry undead, and all manner of gruesome props for the House of Horrors. Far from being frightening, they only looked sad and tawdry beneath the harsh, white lights.
More because it was something to do than anything else, Emily began picking her way between the rows of boxes, reading the labels on some at random, and wondering a little at their macabre contents.
“Severed Heads.” “Zombie Brains.” “Eyeballs.” “Broomsticks.” “Bloody Jack-o-lanterns.” “Mutant Skulls.” “Alien Autopsy Kit.” And one that simply said “Clowns.”
She wended her way through the maze of stuff, turning down one aisle and then another. She didn’t worry about getting lost. She had always had a keen sense of location. It was part of what made her a good hockey player.
After a while, she found herself at the far side of the warehouse. Leaning against the wall, along nearly its entire length, glinted dozens of dusty mirrors.
The one in front of her now stretched her already slender frame into a twisted and misshapen wire. She turned right and began walking along the wall, watching her reflection change in the pieces of glass as she passed. It was strange, seeing the Hall of Mirrors disassembled and abandoned here. It was all strange, really. It was hard to believe now, in mid-December, with the snow falling outside and the bright fluorescents above, that this building could ever seem to be anything other than a dirty old warehouse full of shoddy plastic trinkets.
She passed a mirror that made her short and squat—a teenage maiden aunt.
This one made her look as if she were moving under water, rippling and warping her reflection like the surface of a pond.
She reached the end of the row and stared into the last mirror. Her reflection stared back, looking as plain and ordinary as she would in any other. She could see her mother in her narrow face, her slightly slanted green eyes, and the splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her dark hair was her father’s—or so Mom had told her. He’d been killed by a car bomb in Iraq when she was too young to remember. She’d never seen a picture of him. Her mother had thrown out all the photos in a fit of grief after the funeral—or so she’d also told Emily. Emily had he
r doubts, though.
Something behind Emily moved. She saw it in the mirror for just an instant, only the flicker of a shadow amidst the towers of boxes behind her, and then it was gone.
She turned around slowly, too worn out emotionally to feel any alarm, and for the first time in what seemed like hours, she thought of the boy.
“Hello?” she called into the warehouse. “Who’s there?” Her voice reverberated between the high ceiling and cement floor, giving her words a spooky, ghostly aura.
There was no answer.
She turned back to the mirror, and there he was, staring at her from the glass.
Emily felt no surprise. If anything, it seemed to her that this moment had been inevitable. She looked behind her again, but there was nothing there whose reflection could possibly look like a boy.
For the space of a minute, she shifted her gaze back and forth between the piles of junk behind her and the boy watching her patiently from his side of the glass, and wondered if everything that had happened since the end of the game was some sort of crazy hallucination. Perhaps she was, right now, sitting in some looney bin somewhere while doctors studied her brain and tried to figure out what had snapped. Maybe she’d never gone to Starbucks, had never gone home—maybe her mother wasn’t really…
It started as little more than a faint prickle at the back of her neck, the inside of her arms, deep in her thighs and calves. She met the boy’s gaze, and it was like he was right there in front of her. The feeling spread, turning into the old familiar thrum of electricity in her muscles.
“Hello?” she whispered, but she couldn’t hear her own voice over the low whine that was building in her head. The knowing hadn’t abandoned her. It hadn’t abandoned her at all. If anything, it was stronger than it had ever been.
Her muscles spasmed with the force of it. The whine in her head rose to a crescendo that made her feel as though she’d become some kind of weird human tuning fork. She began to shake uncontrollably, and the floor seemed to sway and heave beneath her feet, like the deck of a ship on rough seas.
She fell to her knees in front of the mirror, unable to tear her eyes away from the strange boy with the ponytail and the torn and ragged clothes. She could see every minute detail of his attire, from the thick red and black thread that had been used to mend his jeans and jacket, to the filth and tarnish on the old-fashioned fastenings.
He reached out toward her, and as he did, her own reflection in the mirror winked out. Only his face stared out of the dusty glass. His eyes were full of hope and sadness, and seemed the eyes of a much younger child. Those eyes spoke of suffering and loss, and Emily’s heart called out in recognition. She thought she saw the flicker of flames behind the boy, and then she was reaching out to him as well.
Their fingers met. She clasped his in her own, feeling their warm, rough reality, and wanting to give comfort as much as receive it. Such a simple action. Such a mundane, human gesture. And with that ordinary decision made, two worlds changed forever.
“Yes,” she whispered, and watched as the breath of that word fogged the glass between them, spreading until it filled the world with a cloudy, white mist.
Part Two: Starting Lineup
“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”
—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”
—William Shakespeare, As You Like It
“Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.”
—Socrates
Chapter Four
“Get up!”
Someone was kicking her.
“Get up already, or we’ll all be in trouble!”
“Let her be. If she can’t get up on her own, she won’t be wanted anyway.”
Emily’s mind swam sluggishly back up to consciousness as a tiny foot thudded into her ribs again. She opened her eyes and stared up into the gloom. The face of a small girl with dirty blonde hair stared back, dressed only in a filthy sheet tied around her shoulders that hung nearly to her bare feet.
“Finally!” the girl said with venom. “Come on. We’re pullin’ in now. Yeh’ll be left behind.”
She offered her hand to Emily and helped her to her feet. The girl’s grip was surprisingly strong for someone who seemed so undernourished.
Emily swayed and staggered, falling against the girl and causing her to shuffle back a few steps or risk being toppled.
“Hey!” she cried indignantly, and Emily clutched at her arm to steady herself as the ground shifted beneath her. The weight of her backpack tugged at her shoulders, threatening to make her overbalance again as the floor continued to roll.
“Where…are we?” she croaked. Her mouth was dry, and she felt her lips sting as she shaped the words. The girl gave her a strange look.
“Here! We’re heeeeere!” the girl drew out the last word, as if emphasizing it for someone who she suspected was rather dim. “’Ow long were yeh asleep, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Emily said truthfully. The girl clasped her hand and dragged her out of the dim room and into the bright sunshine.
“Come on! Yeh’re gonna get us all in trouble!”
Emily stumbled after the girl, blinking in the sudden glare and trying to clear her head. Was that a cockney accent she had? Almost, she thought, but not quite. Where the hell was she?
She found herself on a narrow deck that ran the length of a shabby boat, some forty feet long or so. The craft rocked gently from side to side as it turned in the water, wending its way between other larger ships and deeper into what looked like a bay.
Half a dozen other girls stood at the railing, watching as they approached a huge wooden pier that extended out over the water, and chattering excitedly. They were clad in the most peculiar collection of garments, ranging from little more than rags to colorful old-fashion finery that put Emily in mind of the costumes she’d seen at the Renaissance Fair two summers ago. Some looked reasonably well fed, while others, like the girl who had dragged her from the tiny cabin, seemed half starved. Whatever their appearance, the girls were conversing animatedly, without any obvious regard as to their various stations.
Emily’s companion let go of her hand and clutched the smooth wooden rail, leaning out over the water and craning her neck for a better view of the—city?—beyond the pier. From here, Emily could see little more than what looked like a stone wall and tower, just beyond the sandy beach.
She tried to follow the excited chatter of the other girls, but it was difficult. Several of them seemed to have strange accents Emily had never heard before in her life and were speaking rapidly. Others weren’t using any language Emily had ever heard before, either. She caught disconnected fragments amidst the babble, but they made little more sense than the rest.
“…I didn’t think it would be so huge…”
“…is that where she lives?”
“…what was that in the window?”
“…don’t be silly, you can’t…”
Emily touched the shoulder of the girl who had led her out onto the deck. She looked over at Emily, throwing her hair back out of her face with a jerk of her head.
“Yeah?”
“Where are we?” Emily asked again, barely able to raise her voice above a whisper. She licked her lips and swallowed with an audible click.
The girl gave her a strange look.
“Did yeh get ’it on the ’ead or somethin’?”
“Maybe,” Emily admitted, thinking of the time number 17 from Kennedy had knocked her face first into the boards during a power play.
The girl’s blue eyes widened, and her demeanor softened for a moment. “Sorry. I was only jokin’. Didn’t know. Didn’t mean nothin’ by it.” She paused, chewing her lip and apparently trying to deci
de how to phrase what she wanted to say.
“This,” she said at last, making a grand sweeping gesture that encompassed the whole of the bay and city beyond, “is Seven Skies.”
She paused for dramatic effect and seemed a trifle disappointed by Emily’s lack of reaction. “That,” she pointed at the stone wall and tower at the end of the bay, “is where she lives.”
This was clearly supposed to mean something to Emily too, but it didn’t. The girl looked thoroughly disconcerted by Emily’s continued unsatisfactory responses and narrowed her eyes at her suspiciously.
“She…who?” Emily asked.
“Jaisus! Yeh really don’t know? Why, Marianne, o’ course.” When she saw that this still had no effect on Emily, she scowled, lowered her voice, and said impressively, “The sorceress.”
Emily couldn’t help herself. She laughed. The girl’s eyes widened again, this time in shock, and she slapped a grubby hand over Emily’s mouth and looked up and down the length of the deck, as if to be sure no one had heard.
Apparently, no one had. The other girls went on talking as before, and the small knots of sailor men at either end of the boat went on with their work, wholly absorbed in bringing their charge into port.
“Are yeh mad?” she hissed at Emily, dropping her hand back to the rail and glowering ferociously. “D’yeh want to get a whippin’? Shut yer mouth, and I’ll explain la’er if yeh really don’t know.”
She turned back to watch the pier as it grew closer, and Emily stood beside her, following her gaze.
The moment at last gave Emily a chance to think. The girl’s answers not withstanding, she still had no idea where she was. Was she dreaming? Had she suffered some kind of head trauma?
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