“I once asked Professor Hawkins what it was about mirrors that drew him so powerfully to them. He told me that it was not simply the mirrors themselves, beautiful though they were, but the mystery they held in their depths, a mystery that moved ancient people to awe and wonder…”
* * *
Despite his best intentions, Simon found it all too much. His health was slowly improving, but his emotions were still skewed, and the least thing could set him off. He wandered off now before tears flowed and he made a fool of himself.
Recently, he’d been back to see Dad’s mountain-climbing doctor, who’d been able to shed new light on his illness. Since Simon had been to see him, he’d had another case of the same mysterious ailment come through his door—a young woman in her twenties, a distance runner, suddenly laid low with all the same symptoms. News of the baffling syndrome had begun to surface in the medical literature. A wave of similar cases had been reported recently on the west coast—perfectly well people suddenly afflicted by an elusive ailment that compromised their immune systems, and caused debilitating fatigue and impaired cognitive function.
They called it myalgic encephalomyelitis—ME for short. The doctor had copied an article with case studies of kids Simon’s age who’d fallen victim to it. Their stories were eerily like his. There was speculation in the medical community that the underlying cause was a ‘stealth virus’ affecting the brain, perhaps triggered by sensitivity to one or more of the many new chemicals introduced into the environment in recent years. There was no known cure but rest and time.
He was not the old Simon—not by a long shot. The slightest stress would plunge him instantly back, the changing of the seasons suddenly waken the sleeping beast again. But, somehow, having a name to put to it, and knowing that others also struggled with the mystery of it, made him feel less alone.
According to Abbey’s dad, diseases like ME had been recorded down through history, the earliest dating back to ancient Egypt.
He often wondered what connection there might have been between his illness and events surrounding the Egyptian mirror. Not that the mirror had caused his illness; he’d been unwell before he ever saw it. And when it was at its worst, the mirror was hidden in the frozen ground in Mr. Hawkins’ garden.
But perhaps the mystery of the illness had opened him to other mysteries, had made him more receptive to the mirror’s magic than he would have been otherwise. Sickness had snatched him from the day-to-day world and dropped him into a night country, where primitive forces were still at play beneath the surface of things.
The opening ceremony had extended long past closing time, and the museum was deserted. He drifted like a ghost through the darkened gallery. He settled in front of a display of metalwork from the late Middle Ages, drawn to a small silver mirror that formed part of a toiletry set for travelers. There were glass mirrors at the time, Mr. Hawkins said in his book, but the quality of the glass was poor and the reflections were flawed. People called them shadowface mirrors, and preferred the metal ones.
He had passed the “Soul Catchers” manuscript on to Cameron, who had recently found a publisher for it. He’d asked if he could have the manuscript back when they were done. It had become part of him.
Abbey came up quietly behind him, her reflection joining his in the glass.
“Are you all right, Simon?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Feel like a walk?”
“Yeah.”
As they drifted off through the gallery, their reflections leapt from case to case and Cameron’s voice dwindled to a murmur in the distance.
They emerged at last onto the landing. Without either of them saying a word, they started up the stairs. The centuries sloughed away, and they stood again at the top, at the entrance to the Egyptian Gallery. A deep silence had settled over all, as though the very building held its breath.
They passed slowly through the shadowed gallery, quietly reclaiming it from the ghosts that inhabited it now. Spears of sunlight crept silently across the creaky floor. Echoes of the spell they’d spoken that night hung like cobwebs in the high corners of the room, too out of reach for time to sweep away.
Outside the mummy room, they paused and peered down into the case containing the magical objects found hidden under the floor of the dwelling in the pyramid workers’ town. Alongside the tattered mask, the ivory clappers, and the small clay figurines, the snake wand lay rigid and still on its velvet bed.
As they entered the mummy room they stared down at the spot where Alice Loudon had last stood. Crossing to the mummy case, they gazed silently through the glass. The mummy slept her long sleep, undisturbed by mortal joys and fears. He saw a peace in her face he had not seen before.
The lid of the coffin hung suspended in the air above her as if by magic. A horizontal band of hieroglyphs ran around all four sides. At the head of the long side, facing him, two eyes were painted on the lid. Standing on tiptoe, he glimpsed the band of hieroglyphs that ran along the top of the lid. It was here, where the name of the deceased was traditionally written, that Cameron had found the magician’s name—Mereret. Knowing the name had been crucial to the working of the spell.
They wandered over to the nearby case, where the objects that had been found with the mummy were on display. A shaft of sunlight edged up the side of the case to look in with them. The broken necklace had been restored, and lay in place alongside the collection of amulets that had been found tucked in the mummy’s wrappings. But there was a recent addition as well. To make room for it the others had been shifted slightly, so that the dark outlines of their former positions showed like shadows beside them on the sun-bleached velvet.
It was a bronze mirror, about the size of a dinner plate. A green patina of corrosion lay smoothly over its surface, as if it had been dipped in time and transformed. The descriptive card beneath it read simply: Bronze Mirror, Middle Kingdom, Egypt, c. 1,800 B.C.
Simon could have filled a book with all it might have said.
Looking down at it now, he remembered his first sight of it hanging on the wall in the front room the day he first brought Mr. Hawkins his dinner. He thought of all that had happened after: the night in the Loudon’s yard when Abbey had lifted it free of its shallow grave and held it up gleaming in the moonlight; the vision he’d seen in it of Alice Loudon at the vanity; the final confrontation here, when it had blazed like the sun as Cameron held it before her and the words of the spell resounded through the room. All of it now was part of the mirror’s history, part of the mystery sealed beneath its shrouded surface.
For a long while, he thought he knew what had happened that night. Their combined magic had simply proved more powerful than hers. But recently Cameron had wondered aloud if they actually had overcome her. Weak though she was, she said, there had been a force at Alice Loudon’s command that surpassed anything they could bring against her. Perhaps it had always been a matter between Alice Loudon and the mirror. And in the end, she had simply allowed herself to be called back home.
“The mirror is an opening in time,” said Cameron. “The entrance to a realm we cannot even begin to imagine. Alice Loudon was an immortal being, fallen for a moment into time with all its joy and pain, and then taken back in again.”
As he looked down at the eye inscribed on the mirror’s face, Simon imagined her standing there now, one eye pressed up against the opening—like the eyes peering out at Cameron through the broken wall. He jerked back.
“What is it?” said Abbey.
“Just a little spooked,” he said.
“We should be going,” she said. “They’ll be wondering where we are.”
As they turned and started back his arm brushed the corner of a case, and the frayed bracelet on his wrist snapped and fell with a sigh to the floor. As Abbey stooped to pick it up, he glanced back at the gallery one last time.
He caught a sudden glint from
the case. It was there just a moment, and then it was gone. It was only the sunlight glinting off the glass case, he told himself. But it was all he could do to keep from running back to look down at the mirror again.
“Time to go, Simon,” said Abbey.
She took his hand in hers and they turned and walked together out of the gallery. The only sound in the silent room was the whisper of their footsteps on the echoing stairs.
About the Author
Michael Bedard is a multi-award-winning author of middle-grade and young-adult novels that blend his love of literature with a flair for the ominous. His novels include A Darker Magic, The Green Man, and Redwork, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award and the CLA Book of the Year Award for Children. Michael was born and raised in Toronto, where he still lives.
The Egyptian Mirror Page 21