Chapter #13The Mirror by: Seuzz   The dark suit scratches, and you can't help chafing inside it. Irritation throbs at your temples, for you know what the problem is. It's your old, original imago, which you're wearing for the occasion. You always hated "church clothes," and being in your seventeen-year-old body brings it all back to you. It doesn't help that your old face had broken out in a fresh crop of zits before you'd last put it away, and that it was in desperate need of a haircut. You glare over at Joe and Frank, who are wearing their suits much better. Joe looks like a fashion model, of course, and Frank like an investment banker. Joe catches your stare, and his eyes glint a little with amusement. He's enjoying the fact that he's your senior in experience, and that at the moment he's also modeling something like three years seniority in age.
You're distracted by Kali coming out from Margaret's parlor. She closes the door behind her, takes a hard sniff, and bursts into tears. She puts one hand to her collar and with the other raises a crumpled tissue to her eyes; her mouth hangs open in a hard, silent sob. Miko takes her colleague in her arms; Kali snuffles wetly as Miko awkwardly tries leading her away.
"It didn't actually realize it was finally happening," Kali gasps as tears openly pour down her cheeks. "Not until ... not until I saw her! Oh, Miko! The state she's in!"
Miko shakes her head and coos sympathetically. "I know, Kali. I thought she'd be with us forever. She has been, you know."
The occasion is far too serious for morbid jokes, even in the privacy of your head, but they can't help forming, for you really do fear what you'll find inside Margaret's parlor. The old woman--who even in health was far more wizened and ugly than even a centenarian should be; who was bent almost double and never rose from her chair, unless it was to hobble feebly about the parlor with the aid of her walker--is going. Word had come last week that the Stellae's most senior and respected member was finally--
Pining for the fjords.
You kick it away, and hope no one marks the sudden pallor in your cheeks for what it is: shame at the horribly inappropriate line.
But she is finally going. Almost everyone else has been in to see her, and though Frank looked horribly drawn when he and Joe had emerged, no one has been as broken up as Kali. But then, she and Margaret were terribly close.
"Will," the old man says quietly to you, and you nod. Charles, the head of the order, will be the last to see her, but now it's your turn. Your feet feel very heavy as you go to the door.
You've never enjoyed your visits to Margaret, but no one--not even Kali--does. They are far too serious and far too harrowing to be "enjoyed." But you always felt stronger and better after them; and though you never went into them with a feeling of anticipation, lately you have exited them wishing that the next would come sooner than you knew it would. On your last visit, Margaret had even asked you point-blank what you thought of Lurga, now that you had more experience with that ousiarch. Now you know she was signaling that she wouldn't be with you much longer, and could no longer help you shoulder your burdens.
Tears stab at the back of your eyeballs, and you lower your lids to wipe them as you shut the door behind you.
The first thing you see when you look up again is Margaret's walker, now discarded next to the door. She won't need it any more. You wonder when, in her last illness, she would have used it.
You take a deep breath, steeling yourself, and raise your eyes to her chair.
It's empty.
Oh stars, you sigh to yourself. Where will she be laying?
You look over, to see Nash, looking very grave by--
You blink. The curtains are open, and so is the window. Light is pouring in, as it's never poured into this room, and with it the sharp air of the early spring, bringing the scent of freshly turned dirt and early buds. You suddenly realize that the oppressive atmosphere you've always found in this room is entirely absent.
That's when you see Margaret.
She's dressed in a pink bathrobe, and her white hair has been unbound and is trailing limply down around her shoulders. She is still a tiny thing, but she is standing with a ramrod-straight back, head high and shoulders squared. Her arms pump back and forth as she walks over to her wardrobe, taking tiny steps. She looks almost like one of those plastic, wind-up toys, and you half expect to see a key stuck into her back.
She says nothing as she opens the wardrobe, and opens a drawer within it. She rummages a bit, and draws out a small object. She turns toward you, and the saucer-like eyes behind her glasses are bright. Grave, but bright. And though her kitten-like face is still wizened, she looks no more than sixty years old.
"Will," she says, and though her voice rasps it is strong. "I have two gifts for you, and some rather blunt advice."
You swallow, for you're speechless at this entirely unexpected apparition, and can barely comprehend her words.
"You can take the male form and you can take the female form," she continues as your eyes bulge at her. "It doesn't matter which you take when the time comes, but if you take the latter--"
She holds out her hands, and from them you lift a silver broach.
"This was my mother's, and her mother's before her," Margaret says. "It is very old. You can take something new, and something borrowed and something blue, from others."
You look up into her unwinking gaze. Yes, this is very blunt. She's telling you to get married.
She doesn't linger on it. "Mr. Carnes has your other gift."
Nash steps forward with a little wooden box. You open it, and from it take a small disc. It's a hand mirror. Appropriate, you think.
"He prepared it to my specifications," Margaret says. "But you must finish it yourself. My advice is that you do so."
You look into it, but it only shows your face: pink and brown cheeks mottled with angry red spots, and straw-like hair sticking out every which way. "How do I finish it?" you ask.
"You, more than any member of our order, must know himself. You must be able to look directly at yourself, and see yourself, as you really are. Only then can you see what you must next become."
"This thing isn't like a pool, Will," Nash says. "It's like a clear stream, like Time itself. You have to know where you are on the stream, so you can know where the banks are, which bends to follow, which forks to take."
"But this will only show my imago," you say slowly.
"I told you that you must finish it," Margaret says gravely.
Your scalp crawls. "How can it show my anima," you ask, dreading the answer.
"That is how you finish it," she says.
Very briefly, you feel the atmosphere thicken. Resistance would not be futile, but you recognize the signs. "You just have to put your palm on it," Nash says. "And bring up that sigil you've got in you."
You do so, and your hand grows warm. Beneath it, the mirror, which is already so bright, grows even clearer, as though it's a hole into another world. You lift your hand, and look into it. "I'm so young," you murmur, and it's not your imago you're referring to.
"It seems that way because I am here with you," says Margaret. "But you have grown much. I pray you will grow much more. Consult it often, with wisdom, and you will."
"Thank you, ma'am," you murmur.
She lays her hands briefly on your arm in a blessing, and dismisses you.
* * * * *
"Can you explain it to me, Frank," you ask. He turns, the beer bottle to his lips, and raises an eyebrow.
You're in the garden now, and everyone--Kali included, though her cheeks are still stained by dried tears--is laughing easily in the bright air. You know wakes are supposed to be "fun," but it still feels inappropriate.
No, you realize, it doesn't feel inappropriate. What seems inappropriate is your odd conviction that the celebratory mood is wholly appropriate.
"Margaret," you say to Frank. "She didn't look ill. She never looked healthier."
"So?" he says.
"But if she was dying--"
"She wasn't dying, Will. She was just leaving. Finally."
"Do Stellae--? Do those of Lurga not ... die?"
"Well, sure, physically. But for them it's more like being born."
"I don't get it."
"It's springtime, Will," he says in a patient but slightly vexed voice. "She spent her entire life in the cloisters of Lurga, where it's winter. But now it's spring, and she's going forth to live."
"By dying?"
He just shrugs, and turns with a smile toward Joe's merry call from the ice chest.
To wake from this reverie: "The Boy from Before Everything, Part 2"    indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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