I hear a gasp, then whispers.
Hands point to the stage, but I do not look, will not look. I walk toward the exit, faster, but it seems farther away with each step.
At last I reach it and push aside the curtain. And face a silver wall.
In the silver, I see a reflection of the stage behind me. The Magician has opened the box. He is looking over the audience at me, or at the silver wall. In the mirror, a boy with white-yellow hair and thin eyes stares out at me.
I look over my shoulder … but there’s no boy. I am the boy.
I look back at the silver, and now I am a taller boy with leopard-spot tattoos on my neck. Leather straps cross my chest, and a sword is strapped to my back. I reach back to touch it, and the hand of the boy in the mirror reaches in sync with me. The reflection touches the sword, but I feel nothing. I look for the sword—and this time when I look back at the silver, I am a girl with feathers in my hair and glittering scales on my arms.
I reach to touch the reflection—and melt into it. Cold slices through me as I walk forward. Light pricks my eyes. I block my eyes with my arm and squint until my eyes adjust to the stabs of light.
I am behind the Magician on the stage.
The box, fully open, is in front of him. He flourishes his cape and then beckons with one finger. It is many-jointed, and it curls like a snake. I know without seeing his face that he is smiling.
The audience stares at me with their unblinking painted eyes.
A boy walks onto the stage, slowly and stiffly, as if he were pulled by puppet strings. He’s young, not yet a man, and he has dark hair and dark skin. He wears an embroidered gold shirt. And I know he is about to die.
I want to warn him. Or stop him. Or force him to run away with me, far, far away until we can’t hear the tinny sound of the carousel or feel the painted eyes of the audience.
But ropes wrap around my body, weaving themselves around my wrists, elbows, legs … tighter, tighter, until I cannot even shudder. I am lifted into the air and watch from above as the boy climbs into the box and lies down. The Magician closes the box.
He lifts a saw over his head. He turns, showing the saw to the front, the left, the right. It is the saw of a woodcutter. Candlelight dances over the blade, caressing it.
The audience is hushed, expectant, excited. I feel it in the air.
The Magician begins to saw the box in half, and blood drips onto the stage and runs in a river that douses the candles. I swing from the rafters as smoke rises. It thickens and curls around me. Obscuring the stage, it shapes itself into a snake and a hand and a cat …
Eve woke in a hospital bed.
She lifted her hand. She hadn’t been strapped down this time. Spreading her fingers, she didn’t see leaves or bark. Maybe she had only imagined it. Or maybe the doctors had fixed her. She wondered if she looked the same. Her hands went to her face, and she touched the shape of her cheekbones, her chin, her forehead. She wondered how much time had passed.
“Want a mirror?” Aunt Nicki asked.
Eve started. She hadn’t noticed Aunt Nicki was there. Aunt Nicki was curled on a chair next to the hospital bed. She had an array of empty, stained coffee cups next to her and a magazine on her lap. Searching her purse, Aunt Nicki produced a small case. She flipped it open and held the mirror up to Eve’s face.
She didn’t see the antlered girl, or the boy with the leopard tattoos, or anyone from a photo on the bulletin board. She saw only the face she remembered, the girl with green eyes.
“Neat trick you pulled,” Aunt Nicki said. “Don’t do it again. Can’t put a lilac bush—or whatever you were—on the witness stand.”
Eve felt her cheek, and her fingers touched smooth skin. “More surgeries?”
“You changed yourself back. Don’t you remember? Never mind. Don’t answer that. Clearly you don’t, and no, I am not going to play twenty questions with you so you can figure out how much time you lost. You’ll only forget again, so what’s the point?”
Eve turned her face away from the mirror and stared through the bars of the hospital bed at the blank wall. This room did not have windows. Beside her, machines beeped in a steady rhythm. She had an IV attached to her arm. She heard Aunt Nicki’s chair creak, and then rustling, as if Aunt Nicki were searching through her purse again.
“Okay, I need the details,” Aunt Nicki said. Paper crinkled, and a pen clicked.
Eve didn’t turn her head. “It’s real, isn’t it? The people that I see …” Her voice sounded dead to her ears. She felt so very tired, as if all the pain and surprise and fear had been drained out of her, replaced by the saline that dripped into her veins through the needle in her arm.
“Faces? Names? Locations? Come on, I know the visions aren’t fun. Don’t let them be pointless too. Share with your auntie.”
Eve listened to the heart monitor and told Aunt Nicki every detail she could remember—the smoke, the audience with the painted eyes, the boy in the box, the silver mirror and her changing reflections. Aunt Nicki scribbled notes as Eve talked, the pen skritching over the paper. Eve also heard the click of a voice recorder, and she knew she was being filmed by at least two security cameras focused on the hospital bed.
“Great,” Aunt Nicki said. “Photo time.” She dumped the tablet onto Eve’s lap. Eve tried to prop herself up on her elbows. An alarm shrieked. Aunt Nicki silenced it and waved away the guard and nurse who had shoved through the door side by side.
Aunt Nicki picked up the tablet and scrolled to the first face. “Do you recognize her?”
Eve shook her head.
Aunt Nicki slid to the next photo.
Another shake.
Next photo.
No.
Next.
No.
Next.
No.
Another. And another. And another.
“Yes.” Eve studied the boy with the embroidered gold shirt. “Yes, this is the one I saw.”
Aunt Nicki was silent for a moment.
Eve turned her head to look at her. Her face looked raw, pain clear on her features. She then switched off the tablet and stowed it in her bag. She didn’t meet Eve’s eyes.
“I knew him,” Aunt Nicki said quietly. “He was one of the best.” She stood and put her bag over her shoulder. “You should sleep now.”
Eve thought of the smoke and the box. “I don’t think I can.”
Aunt Nicki smiled, but it was a cold smile. She twisted a dial on the IV. “You will.” She left the room. The door closed behind her.
Eve watched the monitor as her heart rate slowed, and she faded into dreamless darkness.
Chapter Fifteen
As Malcolm talked to the nurses outside her room, Eve shed her blue hospital gown and dressed in ordinary clothes. She raked a brush through her hair and thought of the boy in the golden shirt. He’d admired the acrobats: three men with red-and-orange feathers that had either sprouted from their skin or been sewn into it. They’d been practicing a routine where they’d tossed one another into the air and rode the wind high above the carnival tent, spinning and swirling before plummeting in a dive that ended in a tumble. All three had been more graceful than birds, silent in their aerial dance. One had unfurled a ribbon from his wrist. Another had caught it and swung, and then they’d painted the sky with silks of ruby, emerald, and gold. Flipping over one another, they’d woven the ribbons into a circle that they then let flutter to the ground. Hands outstretched, the boy in gold had caught the circle of ribbons. He’d then flown into the sky with it—without hidden wires, a trapeze, or ribbons to lift him—and met the acrobats in the air.