This story came to me at the end of June, exactly two days before I was about to leave on vacation. Even though I worked hard -I really did- to the last minute, I couldn't finish it then. The beach and the sea had nothing to do with it so I only returned to it when I came back home.
At just over 2700 words, it is quite a bit longer than my initial plans. Hopefully, this will not scare you away from it. Comments are welcome, as always. Thank you for reading!
a card from the Celtic Tarot of Giacinto Gaudenzi
In Mirrors, Darkly
He comes to
her in tarnished mirrors, her beloved, her lover, her never found one.
She carries
him in her mirrors, carefully wrapped in the softest sheep hides and wool
blankets, cradled at the bottom of a sturdy wooden trunk, underneath her good
dress, her beautiful blue dress.
Three mirrors
have broken over the years. Only two remain. She cares for them as she cares
for her eyes.
The mirrors
cannot be replaced. The magic lives only in them, the ones she has looked upon
when she has first seen him. She has broken the first two herself, once when
she tried to give him his freedom, one night when despair had been deeper than
her love for him. But he doesn’t want
freedom. He wants her.
At Johnsmas, when
she was fifteen, she jumped through the bonfire with the other girls; later
that night, her head resting on the pillow with seven different flowers
underneath –the ones the old healer woman had given her- she dreamt of a young
man with dark hair and bright eyes. A handsome stranger. In the dream, he smiled
to her and gave her a blue ribbon. When she woke, the ribbon was underneath her
pillow, among the faded blooms.
The whole
summer, the whole autumn, the faintest sound of steps had her lift her eyes in
hope and lower them again with a sigh every time. The old healer woman took her
as an apprentice, taught her how to choose the healing herbs, how to dry them,
how to use them. Two well-to-do men, neighbouring lairds, came and asked for
her hand in marriage. She turned them down, much to her uncle’s dismay. ‘We
needed their protection, not their spite,’ her uncle and sole guardian told
her. But she didn’t care. She was waiting for him.
He never came.
At Hallowe’en,
when she ran the third time around the stackyard, for a fleeting second somebody
caught her in a hard embrace. She could only see a shadow in the dark, she could
only feel a cold shape in the night, but she knew it was him, the lad from her dream. Inside, at midnight, her heart and
hand trembling, she lit the candles in her room with mirrors. When the last flame
sprung to life, he was in the mirror behind
her.
“You are
here,” she said, breathless, waiting to die.
His eyes brought
no terrors, only love.
“Yes, blossom.
I was waiting for you. Praying you would call me again.”
His voice was equally
in her mind and in the mirror. He was there, at last, and not there. The handsome
stranger from her dream. His rich
clothes were dirty, his white shirt was all bloodied.
“Are you
hurt?” she asked, fearful.
He smiled to
her like someone who’s been kept into darkness and was seeing the sun again. He
pulled his shirt open to show his unscarred chest.
“Only my
heart… My heart aches for you ever since I first saw you…”
“You’ve seen
me?”
“In the dream,
in midsummer… But you know about it… You’re wearing the ribbon I gave you…”
He reached out
as if he wanted to touch her hair but his hand stopped on the mirror’s glass. She
put her hand up to touch his, palm to palm, fingers to fingers.
“Who are you?’
she whispered. “Where are you?”
Those questions
he didn’t know how to answer. He couldn’t remember the answer, no matter how
hard he tried. All he knew was that she had saved him. Not why, not how, only
that, that had she not summoned him at that moment he would have been lost,
gone forever. She had saved him in her mirrors.
Now she is an
old maid, she is twenty-five, and she is still looking for him. For the body from which his soul has wandered. They are
looking together.
The other
lasses, her friends, have all met and married the boys they had seen in their midsummer
dreams. When she rejected a third suitor, her uncle disowned her.
Now she drives
her little covered cart, pulled by Billy Boy, her little donkey. In the cart,
she has everything, the mirrors, the herbs, the dress, her whole life.
She is a
healer now, she brings solace to the wounded, to the sick. While her potions,
and ointments and poultices do their good, she asks, “Have you heard of a boy, of a young man who is
perhaps sleeping, a boy who cannot awaken from his slumber?”
Nobody has
heard. Nobody knows. People look at her with wariness, as if her strange
questions could attract evil upon them, as if the herbs she has just used to save
their brothers, their mothers, their children could poison them instead.
“Are you dead?
Are you a spirit?” she keeps asking him.
“I don’t
know...” he answers, and that is the truth. What he knows is that she is the
one keeping him alive with her mirrors, with her love, that he would be lost
forever without her.
“Do you
remember something more?”
“Crows… I
remember crows… Darkness… And then only you, my beloved, my beacon in the night,
your candle showing me the way…”
“Are you here
in the Highlands?”
“Aye, blossom.
Must be the Highlands. Must’ve been a
battlefield...”
“There are
battlefields everywhere...” She sighs.
She wanders through
villages, through hamlets, visits lonely brochs, seeking stories about wars. About any unusual happenings. The clans fight each
other all the time. Sometimes she walks among the dead and closes their eyes before
the crows can eat them. Nobody harms her. Nothing harms her, not even her despair,
her loneliness, her love for him.
One night it
is Johnsmas again, and she stops on a hill. They have never reached this far
north. This hill is quiet but the neighbouring hills are lit with bonfires, and
the laird’s castle and the mote water are ablaze with the light from the flames.
The summer sun still lingers in the sky, painting it in hues of pink and gold,
and everything is so beautiful that her heart sings and weeps. She brings out
the big mirror, props it against the cart to face the distant bonfires. She
lights a candle. He comes to her.
For a while,
they watch the lights getting brighter and the skies getting darker, they watch
young ones dancing and long to dance too. He
is in the largest mirror, the one that holds him whole, and she leans onto it.
It is as if she leans on his chest, as if she can rest her head on his
shoulder.
“It is here,
blossom,” he says at last, his voice like the breeze in her hair. “This is
where I lie… Not in the ground. There, inside… I… know it.” She cannot tell if
there is a thrill or if there’s sadness in his voice. “But it is the final
night… You must hurry.”
She doesn’t
know what he means but her soul cringes.
She puts on
her best dress, the one she was saving for her wedding. She hides the smallest
mirror – a mere handheld trinket- inside her skirts. He is in that mirror. She takes her most potent herbs with her. She
runs.
“Please, can I
see him?” she asks the guards. “Your master?”
The guards exchange
heavy looks but let her pass. She runs inside.
There are
people in the austere hall, but they are not celebrating like the ones outside.
They have sombre faces. She passes a woman with rich clothes whose gaze pierces
her. She hurries to the big staircase that occupies the far wall.
“Who are you?”
the woman calls after her. She hurries more.
“Halt!” the woman
shouts.
A man stops
her, his hand like a blacksmith’s vice on her arm.
“Who are you?” the woman asks again, circling
her slowly, scrutinizing her face, her hair.
“I’m a
doctor,” she says quietly. “Perhaps your master… or someone else here… is ill…
I can help him…”
The woman
shudders, wariness deepening on her handsome face with a tinge of fury.
“I know you…” the woman says slowly. The
woman’s fine fingers touch her hair, pluck the blue ribbon from there.
She freezes.
More people
arrive, among them an old woman and an old man for whom everybody give way. They look noble and sad. They look inconsolable.
“I saw her that unholy night when he was brought home!” the young woman shrieks.
“That Hallowmas when he should have died and didn’t! I glimpsed her in the
mirror! It is she! She did this! She stole
him from me!”
The old woman
watches her with a warm curiosity.
“For ten years
the worms haven’t eaten him, yet he is not alive,” the younger woman wails. “How
can this be? It is her working! She’s
a witch!”
“I can save
him,” she says quietly. If I can return his soul to his body then
maybe he can be saved. “I am a
doctor.” Her eyes are pleading. Her soul is trembling.
“Don’t let her
touch him! Nobody can heal such wounds! Only a witch! Seize her!”
The old woman,
the old man look at each other, look at her and she can see hope for their son in
their eyes.
The old woman speaks at last, with much frailty.
“You are exactly
how he has described you, lass. When he spoke of you, he had the light of God
on his face. Can you save him?”
These gentle
words ignite more anger from the younger woman.
“No! He was betrothed
to me!” Two big men can barely hold
the woman. “He should have died ten years ago! We bury him tomorrow! He is
dead! He is dead! Better dead than
with her!”
And other ungodly
words that she cannot hear because she covers her ears as, at a sign of the old
woman, she is led into a room upstairs
and left alone.
She is not
alone.
It is not a
bedroom, it is arranged for a wake. The bed is not a bed, it is a catafalque.
He, her beloved, lies on it.
She tiptoes to
his side, her breathing shy, as if not to disturb him.
Aye, it is he, her beautiful one. To see him like
this, in flesh, after such a long time, turns her knees into honey. She wants to
just lie down next to him and rest for a while.
There is no
time. They want to bury him.
She takes the
mirror out. Her heart cringes when she catches in the mirror the look of horror
on his face at the sight of his own body. On his beautiful face, his eye
sockets are gaping wounds.
He nods to
her.
“I’ve seen you
heal worse,” he says. “Do your magic, blossom.”
She smiles to
him, but her heart is heavy.
“Soon, my love,”
he says holding his hand for her to touch it as he always does. The mirror is
so small, it barely shows his hand. She kisses it. Then she breaks the mirror.
She starts
cleaning his empty eye sockets and humming the old song. She cannot help that
her tears fall on the herbs and on the ointments and mix with them. She moves
to the deep gash on his chest, the gash that hasn’t rotten for ten years, the
gash that shows his still heart. While she sews him with the thread of herbs, her
tears trickle down her lips where the old song is, and fall on his heart, and
she sews her tears inside him. She never stops singing to him.
When she is
finished, it is dawn again.
She leans in
one more time and kisses his new eyelids. She puts her ear to his chest and
listens. His heart’s beat is steady, quiet, but she knows that he is not in there yet; she has to
return to her cart and break the last mirror. Free his spirit so it can return to his
body.
She steals
into the corridor, down the stairs. The hall is empty, apart from a sleeping
guard. She hopes to go unnoticed, at least until she is far outside in the
hills. The rustling of her skirts seems thunder, twin to her heart.
Behind her,
she hears hurried steps, whispers, voices that grow with trepidation. She doesn’t turn.
She is almost
at the gate when she hears what she fears most.
“Stop! Stop
the witch!”
She is seized
and held. She kicks, she scratches, she pulls. They hold her, they hit her,
they shove her to the ground. Pain explodes in her shoulder, in her head. A woman’s
shoe pushes her painful cheek, turning her face upwards. She whimpers, stricken
by the dark terror that now she won’t reach the last mirror anymore.
“Please,” she
says. “Please… He will be fine now… He is yours… Please, I only need to-”
“No! He is dead. And you will burn next to his pyre,
witch.” The woman laughs, a gritty, wintry
laugh. “So fitting, isn’t it? Take her!”
She is bound
and dragged, her beautiful blue dress torn in rags and tatters on the stone
floors. She wonders if he would hear
her if she screams now. But they are inside and the last mirror is far on the
hill. Where is the old woman, the one who has spoken to her so gently? The old
man who had his hopes in her?
They’ve
crossed the courtyard, she can see the grass, the hills. She still waits,
hoping to get closer. And if he hears
her? What can he do? How can he escape that accursed mirror that has been his
salvation and his damnation?
The guards
haul her in a cart, tie her with heavy chains. More people gather. They only look at her with
cold curiosity. The woman looks at her with hatred, making sure she sees the
blue ribbon in her hair.
“Please…” she
says. “He will be well…”
She looks at
the guards, trying to find a flicker of compassion in their eyes. She thinks
she can see something.
“Please, save
your young master…”
A man comes
from inside, running.
“The Old
Master has taken ill. He cannot bear the thought of saying goodbye to his son…”
“Please, he doesn’t have to say goodbye…
I can-”
“Proceed
without him,” the woman says. “The sooner this ends, the better. And shut her
up even if you cut her tongue. She will not need it anyway.”
That’s when she
starts screaming, she screams his
name, the name no one here knows because she chose it for him when he couldn’t
remember his name, she screams, she bites their hands, and screams until they
tie the gag and then she can only sob as they take her away because this is a
bad goodbye, this is just an awful goodbye.
The stake is
already there. They tie her.
The ties don’t
have to be so tight but they are and they bite in her flesh. The guards don’t
look in her eyes. She cannot speak but she tries speaking with her eyes. Nobody
looks in her eyes, nobody except for the woman whose eyes are pure hatred, the
woman who wears the ribbon that belongs to her.
They pile more
wood at her feet while they wait. While she waits, she wills herself to die, before
she can see the flames.
She barely
notices the new clamour.
“Stop!”
There are
shouts but they aren’t angry. She hears scattered cheers.
“Cease your
crimes!”
Is she
dreaming this voice? Is she dead already, in Heaven?
She looks up.
It is he. He walks leaning just a
little onto the old man and the old woman. Guards follow them, keeping the
eager crowd at bay.
It is he.
Only the ropes
keep her from falling. When the ropes are cut, it doesn’t matter for she’s in
his arms.
“Blossom,” he
says, and her knees turn into honey. He strokes her hair, he kisses her
eyelids. He cannot stop. He won’t stop. “Blossom,” he says, laughing softly.
“This Billy Boy… When I heard you, I urged him to start the cart, to knock down
the mirror. He listened to me, for once…”
