Imaginary Friends

by John Marco

  “The mirror can only reflect what can be seen from this window,” he replied.

  But it doesn’t reflect what is seen from the window, I thought bitterly.

  “I cannot change the nature of the mirror,” he said after several minutes of stony silence.

  His tone came awfully close to a plea, and I felt the jolt of his words. But I still wasn’t ready to concede. Except . . .

  The nature of the mirror.

  I had thought that because I was creating the stage set, what I saw reflected in the mirror could be changed simply by wanting it to change. But I had forgotten a basic truth that every storyteller knows: Whether it is science or magic that creates the wonders in a story, there are rules that must be followed— and there are limits to what an object can do.

  That’s what he had been telling me—the mirror could only do this much and no more.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, already feeling the deep ache of disappointment.

  Hours passed. I kept my eyes on the mirror but didn’t see anything.

  Finally he asked, “Why did you want to see another field?”

  “I didn’t. Not exactly.” How to explain when I still wasn’t sure what I was talking to every day. “I just thought there might be a field on the other side of the village where the festivals were held and . . .” And I could see more of the people. I miss the people.

  Of course, I’d be looking at empty ground for much of the year, so maybe seeing a handful of people go up and down the road every day was a better choice after all.

  “Festivals?” he asked. “What is festivals?”

  As an unspoken apology, because he really did try to make my confinement as comfortable as possible, I told him about fairs and festivals. I told him about competitions that would be typical of a country fair. I told him about the game of horseshoes. I explained the concept of picnics. I tried to remember the various small celebrations humans had enjoyed, assigning one to every month. And feeling whimsical and impulsive, I told him about the famous rodeo tournaments that had been held in some villages.

  His delight was a tangible thread between us, and his thirst for details melded with my flights of imagination.

  For the first time, I saw him as something more than a jailer. I saw him as a friend.

  When I finally stood up, stiff from so many hours in the chair, he stepped back into the shadows.

  “Wait,” I said, rushing to the alcove.

  He stepped up to the threshold, his alarmed expression warning me even before I felt the invisible barrier that separated the alcove from my rooms.

  Whatever supplied me with breathable air, food, and clean water did not extend beyond my rooms. Did not extend into the alcove.

  Which meant that whatever he was didn’t need those things the way I did. Or maybe it meant that the environment that sustained me would be poison to him.

  That was one explanation for why he had never tried to enter the room. But there was another explanation, one I had feared from the very beginning of my imprisonment.

  “Are you real?” I asked.

  A long pause before he whispered, “I don’t know.”

  Then he was gone. I heard no door close, saw nothing change in the alcove, but I knew he was gone.

  Throughout a long, sleepless night, I thought about that moment, and just before I finally fell asleep, I realized something. Even though I was the one who had asked the question, he had been hoping I would also be the one who had the answer.

  6

  They didn’t plant barley and rye that year. At least, not in those fields.

  They made a Place of Festivals.

  Of course, I couldn’t see more than the strip of road and land that could be seen in the mirror. Not with my eyes anyway. But he came each morning with more information about what was being built and where it was in relation to the road, and as I put the pieces together, I could visualize the place.

  They had a racetrack that served as a place for athletic foot races as well as horse races. They had dug a reflection pond in the center of the racetrack and would use it as a skating rink during the cold months.

  They had other areas for games and competitions, but like the racetrack, those were things I couldn’t see.

  Closer to the road and on one side of the lane, they built an open-sided pavilion that served as both concert hall and dance floor.

  They built a small stone building on the other side of the lane. There was a bench along the side of the building that faced my tower, giving me a clear view of whoever sat there.

  I understood the purpose of every structure except the stone building, but no matter how I phrased the question, he refused to tell me what it was used for.

  I stopped asking once I realized that structure had a deep significance for him or his people. It was enough that the building drew the villagers to my little piece of the world.

  They seemed less uniform than when I’d first begun viewing the world through the mirror. Peggy still came every morning. Sometimes she sat alone on the bench outside the building, but, more often, someone else came along to chat for a few minutes. Friends who were no more than shadows and memories I held in my heart were alive again, looking exactly as I’d last seen them. But there were others as well, who had been conjured from some other well of memory. There were the angels, who varied in coloring but were all handsome, well-endowed young men. There were no female angels, but there were fairies, who were equally diverse in coloring and just as lovely as their angel counterparts. There were several who walked in the skin of the old Celtic god and seemed to be the groundskeepers for the Place of Festivals.

  Was it their confusion or mine that had declared all these things equally real?

  Did it matter?

  7

  Every month they held a Major Festival and a Minor Festival. They used some human celebrations, but most seemed to have no significance for them, despite the way most of them looked. So they didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, but there was a Crab Grass Festival in the summer. When I asked why, he said his people remembered crab grass causing a great deal of excitement in certain types of males, so it had to be important. Therefore, its existence was now formally celebrated.

  The rodeo tournament was a dubious success. There was no calf roping or bronc riding, and those participating in the jousting tried to strike a target attached to bales of hay rather than strike each other.

  When he told me about the barrel races, I agreed that, even though they were bulkier and not as fast on their feet, the centaurs did have an unfair advantage over the Quarter Horses because two heads were not always better than one and that next year there should be a separate event for each kind of participant.

  They had a Festival of Trout, a Festival of Deer, and a Festival of Turnips.

  I understood the trout and the deer. I didn’t want to know about the turnips.

  “Apples,” I said, as I watched Michael and his ever-present toolbox enter the stone building. “Next year you must have an Apple Harvest.”

  “Apple?”

  He had become braver, this god who stood in the shadows. More often than not, he stood closer to the barrier, and his expressions were easier to read.

  I closed my eyes and remembered apple—the glossy red skin, the white flesh of the fruit, the sweet juice, and the satisfying crunch. Of course, there were green apples and tarter varieties, but the reds had been my favorites, and for a few moments I relived the experience of eating an apple.

  That fall, people gathered at the small orchard that had appeared near the stone building. I spent the day watching them pick apples. Michael, Robert, and William organized the pickers and the distribution of ladders. Nadine and Pat organized the baskets that every family in the village had brought, fairly distributing the fruit, while Julie and Peggy bustled around the orchard with pitchers and glasses, offering water to the pickers. Lorna sat in the shade, playing her harp to entertain people as they came and went, and Merri and Annem
arie entertained the children with games and stories.

  I barely left the chair that day. And he never left the alcove.

  I wasn’t sure what he could see from that angle, but he seemed able to watch the reflection just as I did. That day, when I finally forced myself to look away from the mirror . . .

  I had never seen him so happy.

  That evening, when I reluctantly took a break, I found a bowl of ripe red apples on the table along with my dinner.

  8

  Seasons came and went, counting out the measured beat of years. The people in the mirror didn’t change. Neither did my companion. But I was a canvas upon which time painted.

  My health was failing. My body was failing. A walker that had been found somewhere allowed me to shuffle from bedroom to chair. The day was coming when I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed. The day was coming...

  “What happens when I’m no longer here?” I asked him after I had gotten comfortably settled in my chair.

  “No longer here?”

  “I’m old,” I told him gently. “I’m dying. I won’t be here much longer.” My gnarled hand pointed at the mirror. “What happens to that when I’m gone?”

  A long silence. Then, “Eleanor? Look out the window.”

  I shook my head.

  “Please,” he said. “Look out the window.”

  “Just got myself comfortable,” I grumbled. But I hoisted myself out of the chair and shuffled over to the window.

  The shutter mechanism was a little stiffer than I remembered. Or maybe I had simply gotten weaker. I got one side of the shutters opened and decided that was enough.

  Then I looked out the window and struggled to open the other side.

  The Place of Festivals.

  Peggy sat on the bench, chatting with Pat and William while Merri crouched nearby, pointing out some wildflowers to her two daughters. Robert and Michael and one of the angels were exchanging news. Nadine was in the Pavilion with Julie and Lorna, organizing baskets of something.

  “Must be a minor festival,” I muttered. But I couldn’t remember which one. Couldn’t even remember the month.

  Didn’t matter. The people were all there.

  “How?” I asked, not willing to look away. “How can I see them?”

  “They’re real now. At least, real in this other way.”

  I shuffled the walker a little so I could look at him but still easily watch the world.

  “When Armageddon swallowed the world, some of the Makers survived. Not many, but some.”

  “Makers?”

  “Beings like you.”

  Like me. “What are you?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

  “Are you aliens from another planet?”

  That surprised a laugh out of him. “No, Eleanor. We have been here since the world was young, a part of the world but always apart from the world. We did not have form, could not inhabit the space that was already filled. So we only had the shadows, the . . . reflections . . . of the world you knew. We existed, but we could not live. Not like you.

  “After Armageddon, the world was empty. There were no reflections. We did not want to exist in a dead place, so when we found some of the Makers, we used what we are to create small places where they could survive.”

  Four gray walls and four gray towers. A confinement shaped to order by the fevered dreams of a mind trying to save itself from self-destruction.

  “You used an image from my mind, didn’t you?” I asked. “Something I had projected as a tolerable kind of prison.”

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  “So not every place has the lily maid’s mirror.”

  “No, but each place had something in which to see the world reflected.”

  “Why?”

  “When the Makers looked upon the world directly, they could not see anything but the dead place.”

  The Land of Armageddon.

  But here, now, the river flowed clean and clear. Lilies bloomed along the banks. The people I’d known . . .

  “I provided you with shapes to inhabit?”

  “That was all most of the Makers were able to do. But a few, like you . . . an . . . echo . . . filled your remembering, so there was more than shape. There was . . . feeling.”

  An echo of friends long gone but still remembered. A village still inhabited by these good people. That wasn’t a bad legacy to give to the world.

  “Since you’re answering questions, will you tell me what that stone building is?” I asked.

  Some strong emotion, there and gone, filled his face. “A . . . temple?” He paused, looking thoughtful. “A place to sit quietly and give thanks.”

  “To you?”

  He jolted. “Me?”

  “Aren’t you the god who stands within the shadows?”

  He looked shocked.

  “No, Eleanor,” he stammered. “I am not the god here.”

  My turn to feel shock.

  “They call you the Lady of Shadows,” he said quietly. “You are one of the Makers who dreams the world, and the reflection of that dreaming is the place in which we live.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. If I’d known I’d been assigned the role of deity, would I have done things differently?

  Well, I wouldn’t have mentioned something as stupid as the rodeo tournament, but that didn’t last for more than a few years anyway.

  As I mulled over my promotion from prisoner to god, I thought of something. “If I’m the Maker, what are you?”

  “Companion?” He pondered for a minute, clearly trying to put his thoughts in order. “These places can only hold one Maker. It was all we could do. But we knew that Makers needed company, so some, like me, were chosen to remain with the Makers.”

  “Remain? Don’t you go down to the village when you leave here?”

  “No. I cannot leave this place. I am not like the Tenders who take care of your rooms. They can come and go. But I act as . . . go-between? . . . so I, too, am in between while I am companion. Once I leave here, I cannot come back.”

  “Then how did the people in the village know any of the things I’ve told you, described to you?”

  “I was go-between. There were ways to communicate, much as you and I do.”

  I had thought he’d been free to come and go, but he had been as much a prisoner as I. Had been as isolated as I. All these years, he’d had no one for company but me.

  “So I ask the question again: what happens when I’m gone?”

  “I will go down to the village and live with the others,” he replied. “Our place will stay as it was made.”

  We kept silent for a while and watched the world, already having said too much—and maybe not quite enough.

  When my old legs got too tired to stand, I shuffled back to the chair where I could watch the world in comfort.

  “There is something I would like to ask you,” he said once I was settled. “We could make a starting place that could be seen as reflection. Besides what we wanted for ourselves, we had wanted to give some comfort, some hope that the world was not so dead. All the Makers were warned not to look out the window. All were warned that they would be cursed if they did. And yet all of them looked. Some resisted for a long time. Some didn’t try to resist the temptation for a single turning of the sun. They looked—and nothing was the same. They stopped Making. Some broke and died. Some turned dark, and their Making was a terrible thing.”

  “What happened to your people?” I asked. “The ones who were caught in the dark Making?”

  “They did not inhabit the shapes, and the Making had no substance and faded away. But you. You looked, and you were still able to see the reflection in the mirror. You still continued Making. How did you do this?”

  How could I explain? It was more than being a storyteller, more than being accustomed to seeing worlds that didn’t exist anywhere except inside my head.

  An . . . echo . . . filled your remembering, so there was more than s
hape. There was . . . feeling.

  That’s what he had said. And that, I realized, was the answer.

  “When I looked in the mirror,” I told him, “I didn’t see with my eyes. I saw with my heart.”

  A moment’s silence. “Ah,” he said, as if I had explained a great mystery.

  We watched the world. I couldn’t tell if there was supposed to be a specific festival. People came and went, but the people I had loved remained, staying around the pavilion or the stone building, or crossing the road to stand on the river’s bank and raise a hand in greeting.

  Or farewell?

  “This place,” I said. “It’s an island in a river?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you call it?”

  He smiled. “The Island of Shalott.”

  “And the village?”

  The smile faded, and a touch of anxiety took its place. “It was never named.”

  I hadn’t understood my role. I’d thought of it as the village, assuming it already had a name that I was not aware of.

  A legacy. A word that would hold shining hope within its sound.

  “Camelot,” I said. “The village is called Camelot.”

  A hesitation. Then, timidly, he asked, “Do I have a name?”

  All these years he’d spent patiently waiting. Exiled by choice in order to give as much as he could, not just for my sake but for his own people. I thought of the faces and forms he’d worn over the years.

  “You are Lancelot Angel Greenman,” I said.

  His eyes widened. “So many names.”

  “You earned them.”

  Stunned pleasure.

  Not much time left. But enough.

  “I want you to do one last thing for me, Lancelot.”

  “Anything that I can.”

  “I want you to go down to the village. I want you to leave now.”

  He jerked forward. Reached out. Almost touched the barrier. “No.”

  “Yes. I want to know you’re safely in the village. I want to see you in the mirror, with the rest of my friends. Do this for me.”

  He lowered his arm but still hesitated. “What form should I wear?”