Page 34 of Spring's Arcana
The rushing filled her ears. Nat’s stomach gave a sudden sickening sideways lurch, and the pretty cup with its fluted sides leapt free. It fell, somersaulting lazily, and she would have dived to rescue it but she couldn’t move. Her hair lifted on a hot dry draft, and her feet hit something so hard the shock jolted in her hips and shoulders. She staggered, a tinkling crash echoing against hardsurfaces, bouncing back and forth, and a wilderness of green-clad figures sprouted around her.
What the fucking hell?
Nat screamed.
SHOW ME
It was only mirrors. Nat’s yell petered away as soon as she realized as much, but the fact that she was suddenly standing on dull black floor, trapped between two sheets of reflective glass, wasn’t comforting at all.
I fell. I definitely fell. Trapdoor?But she hadn’t landed asprawl, and there was no sign of the pretty porcelain cup, or the parquet, or the plants. Or the fireplace.
Or the sorcerer.
The mirrors marched away facing each other, and in the near distance her own reflection stood, staring with wild white-ringed eyes. She was wringing her hands, and for a moment she looked a little like her mother. The likeness was a swift punch to her gut and she bent over, retching violently.
“Oh, I had me a giiiiiiirl…”The voice, desiccated but deep and resonant, echoed down the glass-walled hall. “In a tiiiiiiiny jeweled box…”
Nat reached blindly for the left-hand wall, trying to steady herself. Pain flowered up her arm and she let out another miserable little cry tinged with bile, staggering away.
“Careful,” the sorcerer’s voice crooned. “I won’t harm you, Drozdova, and they’ll show you what you want to know. But mirrors are hungry, hungry things.”
Her fingers were bleeding, tiny razor cuts. Nat cradled her hand against her chest and straightened, slowly. If she had her boots she could kick one of these fucking glass sheets, but Coco’s heels might not stand up to that sort of treatment and if the goddamn thingswere magic what was to say they wouldn’t ignore clothing and bite the skin it protected?
She stood for what felt like a very long while, her breath coming in great shuddering gasps. Every so often she heard distant popping, or creaking. Maybe it was the wind—but she had a sudden, uncomfortable mental image of mirrors moving on invisible, well-oiled grooves, reflecting indistinct bluish light from somewhere above, sheets of silvered glass sinking and rising to re-form in a different pattern.
She’d read a book about a priestess in a labyrinth once, the heroine navigating by memorizing turnings. But that only worked if you had an eidetic memory and someone willing to teach you.
Nat was, as usual, completely on her own.
Finally, she hopped forward, nervously, her unwounded hand doing its best to keep her skirt away from the smooth wall. The faint noises were unsettling. Was the passageway shrinking behind her? She couldn’t even see the source of the light because the ceiling was mirrored too, and seeing herself repeated into infinity was disorienting, to say the least.
What would happen if the soft blue glow failed?
Sometimes, Nat, your imagination just works too well.
Most times, in fact. She watched her reflection draw nearer. Mirror-Nat was wearing a bitter little smile, probably what she looked like while Mom was lecturing her about “those crazy ideas” and “be a big girl, Natchenka.”
But if Mom wasn’t human, and Momknew,why had she said those things? If she was protecting her daughter, maybe she could have given Nat something other than disbelief for armor.
Maybe once she’d found the thing that would fix Mom’s illness, she could ask all the questions. Maybe then Maria Drozdova, the undisputed queen of the little yellow house, would even answer.
Maybe then Nat could start her own life, even if it was in a shitty apartment shared with six other people also working dead-end jobs.
It was a lot ofmaybes,but as good a goal as any she’d ever had. So Nat closed her eyes, breathing hard, and tried to remember that long-ago fictional priestess.
Arha. That was her name, only it wasn’t.Of course, she’d lost her labyrinth once a man came along. That was how it always went.
But assuming Nat was in the right place to find the Knife, she had a chance.
When she opened her eyes again the light had dimmed a little, from that frost-stinging blue-white to a warmer glow. The mirrors on either side had gone dark, and maybe the dry mummy-skeleton dude was behind one of them watching her.
Nat stepped forward. It felt like the right thing to do, and her reflection gave an encouraging smile. She had to hand it to Coco, the dress made Nat look like she halfway knew what she was doing, and even with her hair a mess it wasn’t that bad. Mom might not tell her tostraighten up, Natchenka, you’re not a serf, for God’s sake.
Once or twice Nat’s tongue had burned with a reply she didn’t dare eventhinktoo loudly. Her reflection grew somber as she stepped closer and found she was in a T-junction, mirrored hallways stretching to either side.
Leo said people lost in the woods just went in circles, thinking they were choosing randomly but really just following their dominant hand. She would have turned left, except the mirror at the end of the opposite passage turned hazy. It was like watching a TV screen resolve its focus, and Nat let out a harsh, cawing breath.
The picture firmed. Her mother was ambling down a snowy street, beautiful dancer’s hands in the pockets of a long dark furry coat. Next to her a man paced, bending close and obviously attempting to make her smile. Mama turned her head, her profile sharp-serene, and gazed up at him. He leaned in for a kiss, and something about the set of his shoulders was familiar.
