The Crow Behind the Mirror_Book One of the Mirror Wars

by Sean M. Hogan

  To her surprise, the ax had split the earth but there was no blood. No Joy.

  She looked around but found nothing. The cocky teen had disappeared. She turned to Khaba.

  Khaba’s mouth hung open, his eyes focusing upward toward the sky.

  She gazed up. “Holy…”

  Joy floated in the air above Khaba just out of his reach, grinning at him like a freshly gutted and carved jack o’ lantern. “Don’t think so highly of yourself, lizard king.” He performed a mocking midair bow for him.

  “He’s flying,” she whispered to herself, “he’s frickin’ flying…”

  Khaba roared, hurling his huge ax into the pink sky.

  Joy dodged gracefully as if he was a matador teasing a raging bull. He zipped through the air around Khaba like Peter Pan’s lost shadow, harassing him at any chance he could get.

  Khaba swiped at him with his claws and tail, hitting nothing but air.

  “Besides...” Joy scooped up a clump of snow, molded it into a snowball, and chucked it—hitting Khaba in the face. “If shedding blood is unavoidable no matter what path one takes.” He landed behind Khaba and pressed the dagger to his throat. “This way, only yours need be spilled.”

  “Don’t,” shouted Sharon. “Please, I don’t want anyone to die because of me. He can’t get to me now. It’s over. Let him go.”

  Khaba stared back at her in disbelief.

  Joy laughed. “Interesting, you’re full of surprises aren’t you, beautiful?”

  “Please,” she said. “Hasn’t there been enough death today?”

  “As you wish,” Joy said, removing the dagger from Khaba’s throat. “Want to know a little secret?” he asked, leaning in to Khaba’s reptilian earhole and whispering a devil’s whisper.

  Sharon couldn’t make out his words but guessed they weren’t pleasant ones when she saw Khaba’s whole body tremble.

  Joy pulled away from Khaba. “Remember, lizard king, the methods used to reach victory are of little consequence as only the living write history books. And those who have been forgotten by history are doomed to relive its atrocities. For the truth is as fuzzy as memory and the dead remember little.”

  Sharon spotted a party of pig-runs come rushing up the hill toward them. “Hey, we got company.” She pointed out for Joy with a few overexcited hops.

  “Looks like the cavalry has arrived,” said Joy, taking notice. “And since pig-runs aren’t full of magic like you, Khaba.” He stepped back behind the barrier and grabbed Sharon’s hand. “I think it’s time to go.”

  “You’ve forgotten who I am, boy,” said Khaba. “I am the god of rock and sand, and though the sand here has been buried by ice and snow, it still hears my call.” He extended his hand and the earth beneath his feet shook. Sand swirled up from the ground, floated to the air, and clumped together forming into a spear. “I will show you the power of a god.”

  “Not good.” She stepped back and tried to take another but Joy firmly held onto her hand. “What are you doing? Let go. We have to run.”

  “Just watch,” he told her.

  Khaba took hold of the spear and hurled it at Joy.

  Sharon flinched.

  Joy stood indifferent as the spear sped toward him.

  When the spear passed through the barrier the Pyramid of Life lit up with vibrant pulsing ripples of blue light. The sand lost shape and hold, falling to his feet like an emptied bucket of sand.

  She kicked away a small pile of sand off the tops of her shoes. “No foreign magic can pass through.”

  “So close and yet so far,” Joy said, levitating off the ground.

  A dozen of Khaba’s pig-run warriors ran to his side. “Kill the boy and recover the girl,” he ordered them.

  The magicless pig-runs rushed through the barrier.

  “How on earth are you flying?” Sharon asked, awestruck but still holding onto Joy’s hand.

  “It’s easy. Anyone can do it—including you,” said Joy. “Just think of a happy thought.” He lifted her up into the air with him.

  She felt the ground leave her feet. “I’m flying. We’re flying. Oh…”

  “Hold on tight.” Joy smiled down at her. “And whatever you do—don’t let go.”

  “…crap.”

  Khaba and his pig-runs stared back powerless as Sharon and Joy rose higher and higher until they were nothing but dots in the pink sky.

  ***

  “I suggest not looking down too,” said Joy.

  They flew through the pink sky, Sharon in Joy’s tight embrace, his arms wrapped around her waist like they were dancing at a ball made of formless drifting clouds.

  “Okay,” Sharon agreed, her chest barely containing her frantic heartbeat.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said, his voice steady and calm. “I won’t drop you. I promise.”

  She nodded and tried to peer through the clouds, but saw only white. It was if she and Joy were lost in an opaque mist, their world swallowed by hungry fog. “Can you fly me home? Or do I have to buy a ticket first?”

  He laughed. “What do I look like, an airplane?

  She sized him up head to toe. “Please tell me you’re not crazy. I can’t handle anymore crazy.”

  “My dear, there is no such thing as sane.”

  “Says the idiot who just took on an eight-foot-tall Komodo dragon with a battle-ax.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” he said, relaxing his grip a bit.

  She began to slip, forcing her to squeeze him tighter.

  He laughed.

  “Not funny,” said Sharon. “You can put me down now. Gently.”

  “As you wish, beautiful.”

  ***

  Joy and Sharon descended from the sky.

  Sharon clinched her eyes shut and didn’t open them till her feet touched the ground. When she did she found herself surrounded by ancient Egyptian ruins. Crumbled walls, fallen pillars, and eroded broken statues laid half-buried in the sand.

  She walked through the ruins, gliding her fingers over the large broken pieces of mud brick walls. She brushed her fingertips along faded painted carvings of animals. From a lizard to a wolf and shark. She frowned as her fingers came to a carving depicting a dragon devouring people.

  “Those are the spirit animals. The ones who created this world. The people here refer to them as gods. I believe you met one already.”

  She glanced at the carving of the lizard. So, this is Khaba? Then who are the others? More gods locked-in eternal struggles of power and control most likely, more souls she had no intention of meeting.

  “The hieroglyphs depict the genesis of the people here on Tuat.” He placed his hand over hers and guided her hand to a carving of a weathered image of a white horse.

  No, this isn’t a horse. It has a horn… A unicorn?

  “It’s really a tragic story of love. The legend. You see, the wolf fell in love with the unicorn. A creature of pure light who resided on the brightest star in the sky. The sun.”

  He inched in close to her. She could feel his hot breath on her skin. The first time a boy her age was this close to her. Her heart raced.

  “As a creature of the night he could never be with his love. So, he howled at the moon, her reflection, every night in sorrow when the sun set. That is, until one night when he could bear it no more. In his despair and grief, he made a deal with the dragon. A being of pure darkness. He asked the dragon to turn him and his love, the unicorn, into creatures that inhabited both the light and the dark. So, they could live out their days and nights together. Thus, man and woman were born.”

  Sharon’s eyes met with his for a breathless few seconds. “So, what’s the tragic part?” she asked, lost in his cocky gaze.

  “Dragons’ wishes come at a price. As humans, they were no longer immortal. When they died, they lost all memories of their love for each other. And when their souls came back, reincarnated in new human bodies, they were forced to find each other and fall in love all over again. They were forever trapped in an endle
ss cycle of love and death and longing.” He removed his hand from hers and stepped away. “Such is the fate of all men and women.”

  She smiled to herself and turned to face him. “Thanks for saving me back there, ummm... Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Joy.”

  “That’s an unusual name for a boy.”

  He peered into her eyes with unwavering confidence. “Think of it more as a title. My original name back on Earth was Jeff.”

  Her face lit up. “Hell, yes! Finally, I’m getting somewhere.” She rushed over to him and offered her hand. “Hello Jeff, the name’s Sharon Ashcraft, and I come from Earth too.”

  Joy just stared at her hand and cracked up, laughing until tears fell from his cheeks.

  Is he laughing at me? Sharon’s enthusiasm faded. “What’s so funny?”

  He wiped the tears from his cheeks with his sleeve. “Oh, it’s just the nerve of Morrie.”

  “You know Professor Morrie?”

  “Know him? He’s the reason I’m here.”

  “I’m lost.”

  Joy tilted his head to one side as if he was a dog hearing a strange sound for the first time. “I’m sure he lied to you about his motives for wanting to find your father. But he must have mentioned me before sending you.”

  She slowly shook her head with disbelief. “My father...”

  Joy jumped an impossible distance up one of the large sections of the walls, levitating to a gentle perch. He hopped along the pieces of broken wall until he found one suitably smooth and sat down. He took out an odd colored pear, like none Sharon had known back home, and slid out Khaba’s dagger and sliced himself a piece. “It’s not hard to figure out his plan,” he said, chewing on a slice of pear. “He must have hoped dear old Daddy would come to the rescue once his little girl got into hot water. Good plan, except he’s not even on this planet.” He pointed to himself with the tip of the blade. “I would’ve found him by now if he were.”

  She walked to the wall and rested her hands on her hips. “Why are you looking for my father?”

  He smirked down at her and tossed her a slice of the pear. “Because your father holds the second part of the equation.”

  “What?”

  He studied her clueless expression. “How much in the dark has Morrie kept you?”

  “Morrie didn’t send me here.” She sniffed the slice of pear. The sweet scent overtook her and she gobbled it up, her stomach growling from an absent breakfast.

  “Right, then how did you get through the mirror? Open sesame?”

  She looked away, unwilling to give an answer, unwilling to divulge any information about the crow. At least not until she knew more about Jeff and what he knew. “What does it matter? All I want is a way off this nightmare.”

  “You’re really not here to find your father?” he pried.

  “I could give a damn about that man,” Sharon snapped back. “I just want to get back home. If I find another mirror, can it take me back?” There has to be more than one if entire populations used them to migrate here.

  “Any mirror can take you to another mirror, no matter how far away, instantly. That is what they’re for.”

  “So, can you help me find one of those mirrors or not?” she asked, folding her arms, determined not to get a no for an answer.

  He sighed, massaging the back of his neck. “There’s no real point in doing that.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because you can’t use them, not like you are now. Your soul is still on the inside. You have to move it to the outside,” he said, holding out his glowing red crystal for Sharon to see.

  “And how do I do that exactly?” She peered at the exquisite crystal like it was a shimmering diamond at a jewelry store.

  Joy smiled a devil’s grin. “Perform the ritual.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The Shape of Sin

  QUIVERING TRANSLUCENT FLAMES engulfed the blood-red book. The book rested on smoldering firewood and glowing ash, poisoning the stale air with an aroma akin to roasting corpses. Death filled Eric’s nostrils, choking his lungs with gnashing cancerous black smoke. On the cover jacket of this ominous monolithic text, three circles overlapped. Circles engraved in the dyed leather hide of an animal that had not walked this world nor any other since before man could walk upright himself. Eric prodded the book, pushing it farther into the hellish fireplace with an iron poker, hoping the devil would take it back and see no need to forge another.

  A thunderstorm raged outside the cabin, bleaching the black starless night with flashes of streaking light that left afterimages in Eric’s eyes. Snow fell, cocooning the walls and the roof as if in preparations for some wicked metamorphosis. Dead tree branches raked across the frosted windows, scraping off the culmination of ice like sharkskin sanding off the paint of a passing fishing boat. The interior of the cabin was dark and lifeless. The only things of comfort being cobwebs and shriveled insect husks with hollow legs curled inward the way freshly murdered crabs turn sour on a midsummer’s day.

  Eric stared down at a piece of paper he clutched between his hands. The ritual page. No, his ritual page. The feel of its weight, overpowering, crushing. As if he held a list of names of all the damned souls of hell and their incriminating deeds. His deeds. It was too much to bear for another minute let alone an eternity. Like buzzing ravenous black flies eating holes through his brain, the temptation to burn the ritual page came flooding in.

  Be done with it, here and now, for all-time, he thought.Let it die with the boy.

  He held out the ritual page over the flames and waited for the smoke to vomit up and the paper to peel back in on itself the way a tarantula would in a fire pit. But to his shock and dismay, the flames did not consume the paper. They didn’t even singe it. Only danced wickedly around and through it as if the paper was a phantom’s handkerchief taunting him, reminding him of the invisible chains, padlocks, and heavy iron balls that ensnared his very spirit.

  Magic, horrid black magic. All the boy’s doing no doubt. To ensure his precious legacy.

  Eric glanced over his shoulder. Behind him Able slept peacefully, dwarfed in a red cushioned chair. Asleep he could pass as any other child, cute and innocently wrapped in a black bearskin blanket. Killing him now would take little effort. But would he stay dead? An ax to the skull didn’t even make a lasting impression. Not even a small scar rested where Eric implanted the blade just a few nights before.

  Able opened his eyes. “Have you finished burning the book?” he asked, awaking with a childish yawn.

  “Only the page of the ritual remains,” Eric answered, folding the page and sliding it down his pocket. The paper still cool to the touch despite its trip through the fire. “Everything else resides in here.” He pointed to his head.

  Able had instructed him to memorize and take to heart the contents of the red book. Dark secrets millenniums old, taboo magic and hideous research of the most blasphemous nature. And of course, Able’s life story. The memoirs of the child emperor’s blood-soaked rise to power on a forgotten world. In his own words, Able described in detail all the people he slaughtered and tortured to death without a hint of regret nor remorse. In fact, he bragged how he was responsible for the loss of more human lives than a hundred Antichrists. A death toll that reached far into the hundreds of thousands. A number Eric could not comprehend. Now all that remained of that devil’s bible and Able’s legacy was the ritual page and, of course, one other thing. Eric himself.

  “Good,” Able said, half-smiling. “You’ll need the ritual page when the time comes for you to choose your replacement.”

  Replacement? Eric felt the world falling beneath his feet. The thought of cursing someone else, sentencing them to eternal damnation in his stead turned his stomach rotten with disgust. No, unthinkable. I could never do such a thing.

  “Now watch carefully, it’ll be your turn in this chair one day,” said Able.

  Eric faced Able as a chill ran down his spine. No, it’s s
till too soon, I’m not ready yet. Still too much I don’t know. Still too much you’re hiding from me. He had to force the next words from his mouth. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? There must be something—”

  Able cut him off with a small burst of uncontrollable laughter. “Just three days ago, you wanted me dead and now this?” His laughter drained, his face tightened, and his eyes grew somber. “I know, sometimes solitude can be a harder fate to face than death. We are always alone, though. That is our punishment. An eternity with only our sin to keep us comfort. I was blessed in this regard since I performed the ritual as a child. But you’re going to be tempted to start a family, marry a pretty wife, and turn out a few brats.” He locked eyes with Eric, penetrating in his glare. “Do them a favor and don’t. But I’m wasting my breath. Because you already know the why, don’t you?”

  Eric went cold. “When do we get to the part where you die?”

  Able’s laughter returned. “Getting impatient, are we?”

  “I’m just getting sick of hearing your voice. You talk big immortal, but unlike you, I’m no child. And I certainly have no further intentions of playing your fool.”

  He took in Eric’s words, enjoying every second as if he was listening to his favorite tune plucked on a harp. “Oh?”

  Eric stood, taking up as much space in the room as he could, puffing out his chest and projecting his voice deep from within his belly. “Your secrets will die with me. And another thing, Able, I’m going to find a way to kill that thing... my sin. Because unlike you I am a survivor.”

  Able’s smile disappeared. “Quiet. It’s here.”

  Eric held the air in his lungs.

  Silence filled the room. For the longest time, there was nothing, just dead stale air and the soft beating of snow.

  Eric listened intensely, siphoning off his breaths in tiny soundless gasps, the way rabbits do in the presence of wolves.

  Then the ceiling planks began to crack and bend in aching squeals.

  His heart sank. Something’s on the roof. And…