“Well do better tomorrow,” Dairine said. “We’ll find him then, and get him home. G’night.”
She wandered off toward her room, closing Nita’s door behind her.
Nita lay there for a while more. Kit? she said silently, out of desperate hope, nothing more.
Of course, no answer came.
She tried to sleep again, normally, but that was impossible for her now. All Nita could do was think about what Kit’s parents must be going through, and wait for six-thirty to come…
Reconstructions
The mirrors went on forever.
Kit and Ponch stood in a brittle glory of reflected light. Overhead was a bright gray sky, featureless. All around them, mirrors stood, as many mirrors as trees in a forest, set at a thousand different angles: tall ones, small ones, mirrors that reflected clearly, mirrors that bent the reflection awry; shadowy mirrors, dazzling ones, mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors, until the mind that looked at them began to flinch and sicken, hunting something that wasn’t just another reflection of itself.
Kit and Ponch wandered among them, searching for something, but Kit had forgotten what it was they were looking for, along with everything else. Ponch wasn’t sure what his master wanted—
wasn’t even all that sure, anymore, why they were there. Together the two of them wandered through the glittering wasteland, seeing their shapes slide and hide in the mirrors, images chasing images but never meeting, never touching, fleeing one another as soon as any got close enough to make contact. “—don’t want to—” “—when do you think he might—” “—that hurts, why do you have to—” Splinters of conversation and fragments of personality hid in the reflections and fled from mirror to mirror. Kit and Ponch moved slowly among them, looking in some, avoiding others.
Some had too many eyes to look into comfortably. Not all the eyes seemed human. It was as if alien logics looked out of some of them, either irrational or briefly revealing rationalities that were more painful than the human kind, and these were the glances that made Kit and Ponch shy away most hurriedly, looking for somewhere to hide. But there was nowhere. Light and merciless reflection filled everything; and everywhere the two of them walked, a soft rush of sound ran under all other sensation, like water running under the mirrored floor, a river of words and noises trapped there under the unforgiving ice. All they could do was walk and walk, the thoughts in their minds being washed away as fast as they formed by the relentless flow of sound. They could hear the voices of other wanderers, elsewhere in the maze, but there was no way to find them, no way even to tell where they were.
“—have to get out, if they don’t they’ll—” —find him, and when I do find him I’ll—“ They walked for a long time, seeking those other voices but never finding them. Finally, exhausted, Kit sat down against the ”trunk“ of a mirror-tree, leaned back, and closed his eyes. His mind was full of the painful rush of voices and noise; it was a relief just to sit here, his eyes closed so that he didn’t have to see the eyes in the mirrors, his body rocking a little and letting the motion distract him from the myriad other distractions around him that were fraying the fabric of his mind. Ponch sat down next to him, on guard and frightened, but not so frightened that he would leave his friend.
Finally someone came. Kit didn’t open his eyes; every time he did, he saw other eyes staring at him, and he couldn’t bear the invasiveness of their gaze. But he heard the footsteps even through the rush of noise.
Whoever it was stood there, not looking at them straight on — that much Kit could feel on his skin, even without looking.
“I asked you not to come,” it said.
But he had to
, said Ponch. And so I had to.
“I’ve filled this whole place with one version of what happened to me,” said whoever was speaking. “The Other followed me right in here, the way It always does… and now what happened to me has happened to It.” There was a kind of sorrowful amusement about the speaker’s voice. “I did a really good job this time. I don’t know how long It’ll be stuck in here. But no one can get out from inside: It’s sealed.”
We have to stay here forever, then
, Ponch said.
“I don’t know about you,” the voice said. “Your eyes aren’t anything like his, or the Other’s.
You’re something different. But me, and him, and the Other… yes, we’ll have to stay forever.“
If he has to stay forever
, Ponch said, then I’m not leaving.
And he lay down beside Kit, huddling close to him, and started to wait for forever.
Nita got her dad up at the usual time. She was already dressed for school at that point, having been unable to get to sleep. “Anything?” he said.
Nita shook her head. “I’ll call you,” she said, and she couldn’t bring herself to say much of anything else. Her dad hugged her and went to work.
She made her own breakfast and ate it, thinking over what had happened the night before. If Darryl put up that wall
, she thought, who’s he shutting out?
Or shutting in? There was always that possibility— that the Lone Power was in there with him again, right then, trying to destroy him one more time. And Kit and Ponch are stuck in there with them
…
Nita shuddered. But another problem had occurred to her, one that kept nagging at her now, though it wasn’t specifically about any kind of danger. How’s Darryl getting the kind of power he needs to do this kind of wizardry? Nita wondered. Especially since he’s not even a full wizard yet? Is it something to do with being an abdal — with the fact that there can be two of him? If there really are
It was a good question, whether co-location really did mean there were two of you, or just one of you in two places at the same time.
Even the manual hadn’t been as clear as Nita would have liked on the subject; the terminology got very dense. Or maybe I did…
She drank about half of a mug of tea, put it down. Anyway, that universe seemed farther away than the last one, somehow. He’s withdrawing. He’s doing it on purpose.
Why?
Nita mulled that over, but no clear answer suggested itself. Well, she thought at last, even when I do get in again this afternoon, it’s possible that brute force won’t work against that wall. I may have to try to get myself directly in sync with Darryl, the way I did before, when he was a clown.
The danger, of course, is that if I get too well synced with Darryl’s mind, then what’s happened to Kit will happen to me, too. And neither of us will ever get out…
That thought left Nita morbidly considering what would happen afterward in such a case. Both of them would simply have disappeared without a trace. What remained of their families would wind up going through endless anguish as the police investigated the disappearances… and they would never be able to share with anyone that they all knew exactly what had happened to their kids—
Nita pushed that idea away hard. That’s not an option, she thought.
Fine. So what is?
That endless wall was very much on her mind. If I’m going to do anything about it, anything that’ll let me get through it in time to find Kit, I’ve got to find a way to get there without walking forever and ever