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She was on the bank of the Stolen River. A breath ago she had been looking into the Boatman’s seemingly fond expression after managing to beat him in a game of chess and now she stood, ankles deep in the river muck. Baasha shivered and took a squelching step towards the city.
One foot in front of the other, without much thought she trudged toward home, the rooms above a bookstore she had managed to secure upon arriving to the city all those months ago. As she made it back to the city streets trailing muck behind her she garnered a few odd looks but she couldn’t muster the energy to care. She should count herself lucky that she didn’t wake up back in that box just to suffocate again and repeat the process. She just felt tired. Bone-tired in a way that she isn’t sure she’d ever felt before.
She hoped her landlord wouldn’t be in and try to make conversation with her. She didn’t think she could manage it at the moment. She trudged up to her doorway and fumbled her keys. She was shaking, she realized belatedly. Eventually, she managed to find the correct key on her ring and quickly made her way in and up the stairs.
Once inside her own rooms she shrugged off her coat, it felt like it was holding the cold from the other side close to her and it smelled like earth. She took a hesitant few steps further into her room. She let the coat drop to the floor in a heap and she briefly thought about the mud she was tracking across the floor. She looked back to see a trail of it leading to her. She hadn’t been that careless since before she could read. Making her mother’s already hard life harder was never tolerated.
She almost reached down to undo her laces and remove them but something stopped her. She’d never see that woman again. Or the man who she was told was her father. Or any friends or teachers from the surface. She stretched her cold and unpleasantly wet foot with a roll of her ankle and laughed.
She laughed until her ribs hurt and her eyes were bleary with tears. Eventually, she took a shaky breath and caught her own eye in the mirror. She was ghoulish. Her hair stuck to the sweat of her face, her clothing was disheveled and the river water had wicked to her knees. As she took her own appearance in, her face froze in that manic smile.
Without thought she grabbed the nearest object, a heavy history book and chucked it at the mirror. Her aim was off, instead taking a chunk of the wall off with the nail. The mirror dropped to the floor and shockingly failed to shatter. The laughter almost bubbled out of her again. She couldn’t even throw a proper fit.
Numbly she walked over to where the mirror sat against the wall on the floor. She dropped to her knees and thought vaguely that she should see if she could borrow a hammer to put the mirror back up. That she should get the wall repaired before her landlord could see the damage. She was tired though. She was so tired and for what? She could never leave the Neith, Poor Edward had just guaranteed that. All her work, all her effort and good intentions dissipated like smoke through her clenched fists. Like everything always did.
She saw the tears in the mirror before she felt them on her own face and looked away. Disgusting. Crying like it would fix anything. She dropped her gaze and slid onto the floor. She didn’t want to look at herself but she couldn’t muster the energy to get up. So, instead she closed her eyes and failed to will herself to stop crying.
After being in London for months she still had a hard time telling how much time was passing without a real day and night cycle. She felt like it had to have been a long time. Like she had wrung herself dry from all the pointless, useless, tears. She opened her eyes again expecting to see her bleary, snotty, crying face looking back at her but instead only saw a strange glare on the mirror.
She reached into her pocket for her handkerchief and dried her face. When she looked back the mirror’s strange glare suddenly seemed more odd. It was reflecting an almost . . . orange? No, golden light. Certainly without a source in her own rooms. She glanced to the window and saw nothing but the ordinary dingy lamplight from outside and looked back.
The color was as inviting as it was fascinating. Something about it defied any definition she could think of. She reached out to touch the glass. She extended her arm through the light like it was an open window. It was warm. Mostly. Like a perfect Spring day. She almost swore she could feel a gentle breeze. It couldn’t be though, they were underground-
She stared at her arm reaching into the mirror, through the glass, and stopped disbelieving that on the other side might be wind. That it might be sunlight that wasn’t hurting her. She touched her hand to the ground to feel grass beneath her fingers and dug her fingers in. She rolled onto her belly and stuck her other arm though. She could see it now, meadow, trees- maybe an orchard?
She pushed herself through the tight frame of her mirror, muddy feet slipping against the aged wooden floor and fingers gripped tightly against the lush grass on the other side of the mirror.
She scrambled ungracefully through and found herself lying in a meadow bathed in sunlight. She looked up without hesitation and saw the sun. She blinked. It didn’t hurt to look at. She silently corrected herself; she saw a sun.
She was sure she would be crying again if she had any tears left so instead giggles bubbled from her unhindered. She shucked her soaking boots and socks off to bury her toes into the sun-warmed grass. She looked into that beautiful mystery sun and she laughed. She raised her arms as if to greet it. She found it hard to pull her gaze away but her curiosity allowed her to manage it. Around her were woods, thick and untamed, vines branching over but not obstructing, mirrors of a variety of styles and ages. A thicket of berry bushes began a few feet behind her mirror.
They were deep red, they would have been tantalizingly perfect looking before she spent months living in a place that could only grow mushrooms. She reached out to pick a particularly succulent one and rolled it over in her hands. She’d already died once, if they were as delicious as they looked then it was well worth the risk. She popped it in her mouth.
The juice burst over her tongue and she couldn’t remember anything tasting better in her life. Briefly she thought of faerie stories and the warnings not to eat their food. She grinned. Too late. She pulled another bunch from the heavily laden branches and began to feast. The melancholy fog that lingered on her journey home from death seemed to leave her mind with every voracious bite.
So what if she couldn’t return to the surface? She thought as dark, nearly purple-black cherry juice ran down her jaw. With secrets like this just waiting to be uncovered, why would anyone choose to leave the Neith? A new plan then. Why open a clinic on the surface anyway? Even with all the money from the diamond she would never garner as much respect as her male peers just for having the luck to be born the way they were. No, it would only make sense to stay in London. People respected her. They needed her. Clara needed her.
She froze mid bite and painfully swallowed. She turned back to the meadow she had entered and felt relieved to see the back of her utilitarian mirror still standing there. She walked back and stood in front of the mirror. She needed to go back. She wiped her juice coated fingers on her already stained apron and took a final look at the indescribable sun. She grabbed her boots and shuffled back through the mirror, praying she would find her way back again.