The Mirror of Her Dreams (3 page)

While he dialled the number, she left the cubicle and closed the door. She had the impression that she was never going to see him again. But she tried not to let it bother her: she often felt that way. The walk home was worse than the one to work had been.

There was more wind, and it lashed the rain against her legs, through every gap it could find or make in her coat, past the edges of her bandana into her face. In half a block, her shoes were full of water; before she was halfway home, her sweater was sticking, cold and clammy, to her skin. She could hardly see where she was going.

But she knew the way automatically: habit carried her back to her condo building. Its glassy front in the rain looked like a spattered pool of dark water, reflecting nothing except the idea of death in its depths. The security guards saw her coming, but they didn't find her interesting enough to open the doors for her. She pushed her way into the lobby, bringing a gust of wind and a spray of rain with her, and paused for a few moments to catch her breath and wipe the water from her face. Then, without looking up, she headed towards the elevators.

Now that she was no longer walking hard, she began to feel chilled. There was a wall mirror in the elevator: she took off her bandana and studied her face while she rode up to her floor. Her eyes looked especially large and vulnerable against the cold pallor of her skin and the faint blue of her lips. So much of her was real, then: she could be made pale by wind and wet and cold. But the chill went too deep for that reassurance.

As she left the elevator and walked down the carpeted hall to her apartment, she realized she was going to have a bad night.

In her rooms, with the door locked, and the curtains drawn to close out the sensation that she was beneath the surface of the pool she had seen in the windows from the outside, she turned on all the lights and began to strip off her clothes. The mirrors showed her to herself: she was pale everywhere. The dampness of her flesh made it look as pallid as wax.

Candles were made of wax. Some dolls were carved of wax. Wax was used to make moulds for castings. Not people.

It was going to be a
very
bad night.

She had never been able to find the proof she needed in her own physical sensations. She could easily believe that a reflection might feel cold, or warmth, or pain; yet it didn't exist. Nevertheless, she took a hot shower, trying to drive away the chill. She dried her hair thoroughly, and put on a flannel shirt, a pair of thick, soft corduroy pants, and sheepskin moccasins so that she would stay warm. Then, in an effort to hold her trouble back, she forced herself to fix and eat a meal.

But her attempts to take care of herself had as much effect as usual-that is to say, none. A shower, warm clothes, and a hot meal couldn't get the chill out of her heart-a detail she regarded as unimportant. In fact, that was part of the problem: nothing that happened to her mattered at all. If she were to die of pneumonia, it might be an inconvenience to other people-to her father, for example, or to Rev Thatcher-but to her it would not make the slightest difference.

This was going to be one of those nights when she could feel herself fading out of existence like an inane dream.

If she sat where she was and closed her eyes, it would happen. First she would hear her father talking past her as if she weren't there. Then she would notice the behaviour of the servants, who treated her as a figment of her father's imagination, as someone who only lived and breathed because he said she did, rather than as an actual and present individual. And then her mother-

Her mother, who was herself as passive, as non-existent, as talent, experience, and determination could make her.

In her mind, with her eyes closed, Terisa would be a child again, six or seven years old, and she would hobble into the huge dining room where her parents were entertaining several of her father's business associates in their best clothes-she would go into the dining room because she had fallen on the stairs and scraped her knee and horrified herself with how much she was bleeding, and her mother would look at her without seeing her at all, would look right through her with no more expression on her face than a waxwork figure, and would make everything meaningless. 'Go to your room, child,' she would say in a voice as empty as a hole in her heart. 'Your father and I have guests.' Learn to be like me. Before it's too late.

Terisa had been struggling to believe in herself for years. She didn't close her eyes. Instead, she went into her living room and pulled a chair close to the nearest wall of mirrors. There she seated herself, her knees against the glass, her face so near it that she risked raising a veil of mist between herself and her reflection. In that position, she watched every line and shade and flicker of her image. Perhaps she would be able to keep her reality in one piece. And if she failed, she would at least be able to see herself come to an end.

The last time she had suffered one of these attacks, she had sat and stared at herself until well past midnight, when the sensation that she was evaporating had finally left her. Now she was sure she wouldn't last so long. Last night, she had dreamed -and in the dream she had been as passive as she was now, as unable to do anything except watch. The quiet ache of that recognition weakened her. Already, she thought she could discern the edges of her face blurring out of actuality.

Without warning, she saw a man in the mirror.

He wasn't reflected in the mirror: he was
in
the mirror. He was behind her startled image-and moving forward as if he were floundering through a torrent.

He was a young man, perhaps only a few years older than she was, and he wore a large brown jerkin, brown pants, and leather boots. His face was attractive, though his expression was foolish with surprise and hope.

He was looking straight at her.

For an instant, his mouth stretched soundlessly as if he were trying to shout through the glass. Then his arms flailed. He looked like he was losing his balance; but his movements expressed an authority which had nothing to do with falling.

Instinctively, she dropped her head into her lap, covered it with her arms.

The mirror in front of her made no noise as it shattered.

She felt the glass spray from the wall, felt splinters tug at her shirt as they blew past. Like a flurry of ice, they tinkled against the opposite wall and fell to the carpet. A brief gust of wind as cold as winter puffed at her with the broken glass, then stopped.

When she looked up, she saw the young man stretched headlong on the floor beside her chair. A dusting of glass chips made his hair glitter. From his position, he looked like he had taken a dive into the room through the wall. But his right foot from mid-calf down was missing. At first, she thought it was still in the wall: his calf, and his boot, seemed to be cut off flat at the plane of the wall. Then she saw that the end of his leg was actually a couple of inches from the wall.

There was no blood. He didn't appear to be in pain.

With a whooshing breath, he pushed himself up from the floor so that he could look at her. His right calf seemed to be stuck where it was; but the rest of him moved normally.

He was frowning intensely. But when she met his gaze, his face broke into a helpless smile.

'I'm Geraden,' he said. 'This isn't where I'm supposed to be.'

WITHOUT QUITE REALIZING what she was doing, she pushed her chair back and stood up. Involuntarily, she retreated. Her feet in her bedroom slippers made faint crunching noises as they ground slivers of glass into the carpet. The wall where the mirror had been glued was splotched and discoloured: it looked diseased. The remaining mirrors echoed her at herself. But she kept her eyes on the man sprawled in front of her.

He was gaping at her in amazement. But his smile didn't fade, and he made no attempt to get up.

'I've done it again, haven't I?' he murmured. 'I
swear I
did everything right-but any Master can do this kind of translation, and I've gone wrong again somehow.'

She ought to be afraid of him: she understood that distinctly. His appearance there in her living room was violent and impossible. But instead of fear she felt only bafflement and wonder. He seemed to have the strange ability to bypass logic, normality. In her dream, she had not been afraid of death-

'How did you get in here?' she asked so softly that she could barely hear herself. 'What do you mean, this isn't where you're supposed to be?'

At once, his expression became contrite. 'I'm sorry. I hope I didn't frighten you.' There was tension in his voice, a fear or excitement of his own. But in spite of his tightness he sounded gentle, even kind. 'I don't know what went wrong. I did everything right, I swear it. I'm not supposed to be here at all. I'm looking for someone-'

Then for the first time he looked away from her.

'-completely different.'

As his gaze scanned the room, his jaw dropped, and his face filled up with alarm. Reflected back at himself from all sides, he recoiled, flinching as though he had been struck. The knotted muscles of his throat strangled a cry. A fundamental panic seemed to overwhelm him: for a second, he cowered on the rug, grovelled in front of her.

But then, apparently, he realized that he hadn't been harmed. He lifted his head, and the fear on his features changed to astonishment, awe. He peered at himself in the mirrors as if he were being transformed.

Spellbound by his intense and inexplicable reactions, she watched him and didn't speak.

After a long moment, he fought his attention back to her. With an effort, he cleared his throat. In a tone of constrained and artificial calm, he said, 'I see you use mirrors too.'

A shiver ran through her. 'I don't know what you're talking about,' she said. 'I don't have any idea what you're doing here. How do you know I'm not the right person?'

'Good question.' His grin stretched wider. He looked like he enjoyed the sight of her. 'Of course you can't be. I mean, how is that possible? Unless everyone has misunderstood the augury. Maybe this room pulled me away from where I should be. Did you know I was going to try this?'

Terisa didn't want to repeat herself. Instead of continuing to mention that she had no idea what he meant, she asked, 'Why don't you get up? You look a little silly, lying there on the floor.'

One thing about him pleased her immediately: he seemed to hear her when she spoke, not simply when it happened to suit his train of thought. 'I would like to,' he said somewhat sheepishly, 'but I can't.' He gestured towards his truncated right leg. They won't let go of my ankle. They
better
not let go. I would never get back.' His expression echoed the mercurial changes of direction in his mind. 'Although I don't know how I'm going to face them when I do get back. They'll never believe I haven't done it all wrong again.'

Still studying him for some sign that what was happening made sense, she inquired, 'You've had this problem before?'

He nodded glumly, then shook his head. 'Not this exact problem. I've never tried to translate myself before. The fact is, it isn't commonly done. The last one I can remember was when Adept Havelock made himself mad. But that was a special case. He was using a flat glass-trying to translate himself without actually going anywhere, if you see what I mean.'

He looked around again. 'Of course you do. Flat glass,' he breathed as though her mirrors were wonderful. 'It's lovely. And you haven't lost your mind. I haven't lost
my
mind. I had no idea Imagers like you existed.

'At any rate,' he resumed, 'the theory of inter-Image translation is sound, and there are lots of cases recorded. Most people just don't want to take the risk. Since I made the mirror-if I step all the way through, they might not be able to bring me back. Only an Adept can use other people's mirrors-and Havelock is mad.

'But never mind that.' He pushed his digression aside. 'It just looks like I haven't been able to make it work.

The fact is,' he concluded, 'I've never been able to make anything work. That's why they chose me-part of the reason, anyway. If something went wrong and I didn't get back, they wouldn't lose anybody valuable.'

Baffled as she was by this conversation, her training with Rev Thatcher came to her aid. He had taught her to ask the questions he expected or wanted. 'Where are you supposed to be?' Again she shivered. 'Who am I supposed to be?'