Work Text:
The carnival is all awash in lights and noise, gleaming things and shouting hawkers, a jostle of jangling bells and spiced and sugared treats and money changing hands. It's a spectalcle near identical to what Zeinys has known before, so identical it is like a ghost. Games and fortunes (although the latter ought to be most different, down here), sideshows and acts, creatures of all shapes and sizes. Would his sister not chide him for never getting to know the Neath outside his particular business?
When Zeinys seeks quiet, he finds a hall empty of the public. He expects art, but as he walks the length of the carpets he realizes that the frames are empty of pictures: only mirrors. Under each is a label written in a careful hand, and nothing more. Somehow, the tent walls are draped in a way to keep out most noise, and the rest of the carnival is very far away.
He turns to the one nearest him when he pauses, the smell of blood and dust in his nose. For a moment, his eyes flicker across the inscription before he steps forward: Heart's Mirror.
To Zeinys' surprise, there is nothing there: no reflection. All he can think is that can't be right. Where he expects to see his own face there is nothing gazing back. He steps closer, reaching out, intent to inspect it for magician's tricks, or to blink and find his face appeared when his foot catches on the carpet and he pitches forward, towards the glass, and then —
And then he is laying on the ground — or, he is laying somewhere cold, and hard, and after a few moments the gentle rocking of waves comes to him. With efforts he gets his hands beneath himself and is confused to realize that he is not dressed as he was moments before at the carnival. His tallit is draped around his shoulders, the fabric worn and comforting, and as Zeinys sits up he takes in that this place is quieter than anywhere he has ever been, as if it swallows up the sound whole.
It is a boat, as his balance told him, cutting through the waters of a silent black river. No eyes look upon him, as the passengers around are pale and shivering shades. As if it were the weight of gravity itself, Zeinys is bid to look at the far shore.
He has no belief on what death is like, afterwards, as the rabbis have not sought to discuss it. But as Zeinys grasps at his tallit for meager warmth he knows that is the place of the dead, though he does not know how he came to be here.
His voice a rasp, Zeinys begins to whisper, "She-ma yisrael, eloheinu, adonai echad," but before he can finish the prayer, the dark and empty eyes of the skeletal figure guiding the boat turn to him.
When Zeinys awakens, he's sprawled on the floor of the Hall of Mirrors, hat and cane abandoned on the rugs splayed on uneven dirt. He touches his shoulder, finding only his coat jacket there, and realizes he does not know what else he expected to find. When he closes his eyes, for the briefest time he glimpses placid black water and a game board, and when he opens them again the mirrors have eyes.
He scrambles to his feet, nearly tripping before he grabs his cane, and rushes back out into the Neath's dim nightlight. Around him, the carnival noise floods in as if it had never been gone. His heart races, his chest heaves, and Zeinys is as he ever was.
But he is not. His eyes are drawn to the cavern-ceiling far above, and his memories of the sun have been more fleeting since the day he came down below. Now they are all he will ever have.
The words on his lips fall unbidden, under his breath.
"Baruch shem kavod malchuto l’olam va-ed."
He does not look into a mirror again for nearly a month. It will not bring back what he has lost.