Sisters of Glass

by Naomi Cyprus

  She hated lying to her father, but she hated the idea of a future without magic, without glass, without freedom, even more.

  After Mr. Bardak had gathered up the last of their stock and headed off to the market, Nalah opened the closet where her father kept his tools. She pushed aside the thick apron and the heavy gloves, and lifted out the headband with the black glass visor. Those were just his ordinary tools. She was going to need something a bit more extraordinary.

  She ran her fingertips over the old wood at the bottom of the closet, tapping and pushing until she found the loose board. It lifted out easily. Behind it there was an old metal box about the length of Nalah’s arm. She wriggled it out and laid it on the worktop, tugging at the lid. It gave an unpleasant, rusty screech, like a final protest, before it opened.

  Inside were an ordinary-looking, red leather-bound book and a soft brown pouch. Nalah picked up the book. Strangely, she remembered it being more impressive than this. There was almost no need to hide it in the closet—the Hokmet would never know it was Xerxes Bardak’s famous Technical and Magical Aspects of Thauma Glasswork unless they looked inside and saw her great-grandfather’s name on the first page. Along with her regular bedtime stories, Nalah remembered her father telling her all about their famous ancestor, whose leadership and glassworking abilities were so great that the tales about him sometimes veered into the mythical. In the days leading up to the Thauma War, he had been both an inspiring speaker for peace and a man who could make seeing glass eyes for the blind and mirrors that reflected only the truth.

  Papa had once told her that his grandmother swore Xerxes had been able to work wonders with more than just glass. But that was impossible. Everyone knew that. Even if a Thauma’s parents came from two different clans—as Nalah’s did—the Thauma would inherit the talent from only one of them, usually the father. No, it wasn’t true. It was just another nice story to help her sleep at night—the idea that there was once someone in her family who had been free to practice his craft and speak his mind.

  Nalah moved the book aside and emptied the contents of the pouch onto the worktop. The tools inside were small, fine things made of silver, now tarnished, and dusty glass: a pair of pliers, some pointed calipers, an eyepiece that swiveled to swap between two magnifying lenses.

  There was no putting it off any longer. She took out the shard of mirror and laid it on the workbench in front of her, careful not to cut herself on its razor-sharp edge. The splintering rainbow sheen never seemed to keep still, even when Nalah held her breath and there was no movement anywhere in the workshop.

  She leaned down to peer at the shard, using a pair of tongs to carefully turn it over and over. If this were an ordinary mirror, she would need to make the glass sheet first and then paint the liquid metal onto the back—but was that how this one had been made? With a bit of luck, Great-Grandpa Xerxes would have something to say about magic mirrors.

  Nalah turned the shard glass-side-up and screwed the eyepiece into her eye to study it. When she swiveled to the second lens, the shard seemed to vibrate, as if it were about to shatter. Nalah jerked away from the worktop, almost toppling off her stool—but the shard lay still and unbroken.

  “What is that?” she wondered aloud. Curious, she fished the cobalt-blue glass falcon out of her pocket and looked at it through the eyepiece. It seemed to be vibrating too, though only very slightly. She could see pulsating blue and silver streaks across its surface: the moonstone and turquoise she’d used to imbue it with the powers of protection and luck. She couldn’t help grinning to herself—Xerxes’s lens could see her magic. That meant it was working!

  “I might actually be doing the right thing,” she told the falcon. “Your luck has to rub off on me sometime, right?”

  She looked through the eyepiece at the mirror shard once more, studying the particular streams of color and shapes that flitted across its surface. “Green-yellow, spitting like a firework . . . ,” she muttered, alternating between looking through the lens, writing down what she saw, and searching through Xerxes’s book. “Lavender-purple that looks like ink in water. Bright white, hard to look at—”

  She read her notes, then the page in the book, and then her notes again.

  “Got you,” she whispered. She’d found a match.

  “Transcendent Glass,” read the title at the top of the page.

  “All magic objects bend reality,” the first line began.

  But uniquely among glassworks, Transcendent Glass allows the user to see beyond reality. A mirror or bowl of Transcendent Glass is a powerful, dangerous thing that must be kept safe from those who would use it unwisely. I fear that looking too long or too often into what lies beyond our world may damage the fabric of reality.

  I include here the active ingredients, and a theoretical method for creating Transcendent Glass—yet this is for academic purposes only. Any glassworker considering making a Transcendent Glass object should be utterly certain of its intended use before attempting such a thing.

  Nalah sat back, a long breath whistling between her teeth.

  Perhaps this was a mistake.

  What exactly did Zachary Tam plan to do with the mirror when it was finished?

  Nalah remembered learning of the Thauma Wars, when the Thauma had fought each other for control over the country, maybe the whole world. In the stories, there were Thauma objects so powerful they had to be destroyed, or hidden. It was because of what happened in that very war that a new war emerged: the war against the Thaumas themselves. Nalah had read that the men who led the clans in battle had been arrested and sentenced to death by a group of nonmagical folk—men and women who’d been caught in the crossfire. It was those same angry, bitter people who eventually established the Hokmet and, little by little, erased Thauma magic from the land.

  Suddenly Halan wondered if, in this case, the Hokmet might be right. Perhaps using Thauma magic to make this mirror was dangerous. Too dangerous.

  But Tam had been a friend of her mother’s, and was clearly an expert in Thauma artifacts. Surely he would know better than to use the mirror as a weapon? And if it was only an heirloom, something to keep hidden in his house like all the rest, there was no harm in it, was there?

  “What do you think?” she asked the falcon.

  The falcon’s slightly tilted head looked back at her. It felt like it was saying, I think you can do this.

  “I dunno, it depends what you’re up to,” said a voice.

  Nalah whirled around, her heart in her throat.

  Marcus Cutter was standing in the doorway to the workshop, his arms folded.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded, blocking his view of the worktop, hoping he wouldn’t see the book or the shard of glass. “Why aren’t you at the market?”

  “Really? Why am I not at the market?” Marcus smirked.

  “I’m busy. I’m sick. I couldn’t risk it after yesterday,” Nalah blurted out. Then she cringed.

  “You just told me three different things,” Marcus said. “I don’t need a magic handkerchief to tell you’re lying to me. Not this time.”

  “What?” Nalah frowned.

  Marcus came into the room, and Nalah tried to shift so that she would keep herself between him and the shard. “Yesterday. You said you went on an errand for your dad and stopped at a café. You remember how the handkerchief I gave you stank of peppermint?”

  “Oh,” said Nalah, as it all became clear. She wanted to kick herself. “A lie-detecting handkerchief. ‘Great to have on a first date’—or for spying on your friends,” she added bitterly.

  To her surprise, the smug look on Marcus’s face faded. “Hey, I’m not the one who’s sneaking around,” he said. “I just wanted to know what you were up to. Maybe I can help.”

  “You can’t,” Nalah said desperately. “I’m sorry I lied. But you have to go. I’m fine, but this could be . . . trouble.”

  “Oh, trouble? Well, now I’m definitely not going anywhere,” said Marcus, thrusting his
hands into the pockets of his trousers. “You know how much I love trouble.”

  “You can’t help me,” Nalah said again.

  “Well, someone needs to. You look like you’ve been through a sandstorm.”

  Nalah reached up and touched her messy hair self-consciously. “Go away, Marcus!” she growled.

  “Fine,” Marcus said with a shrug. “I guess I’ll just tell your father about this little project you’re working on the next time I see him.”

  Nalah glared at him. “Why, you . . .” She clenched her fists at her sides, helpless in the face of this nosy, meddlesome boy. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Because,” Marcus replied in a low voice, “I think you’re already alone too much.”

  Fury rose inside Nalah. But he just looked at her with those puppy-dog eyes and she felt her anger deflate. She sighed, and let her fists relax again. Maybe he was right. The mirror was a big project; it might not be the worst thing to have an assistant. Even if it was Marcus Cutter. “Oh, all right,” she said. “But you have to promise me you won’t tell Papa, or anyone. I could get in deep trouble.” She glanced down at the mirror shard again, moving out of the way so that Marcus could see it too. “Not to mention, there’s a chance I could destroy reality.”

  “Cool,” Marcus said, his eyes glinting.

  A few hours later, Marcus and Nalah were strolling along the promenade, looking out across the beach toward the jewel-blue Hadar Sea. Nalah pulled her headscarf closer around her face and blinked in the glare of the afternoon sun, wishing she had a pair of sunglasses. She shifted the basket on her arm and made sure its contents were covered with the blanket.

  “Here?” Marcus said, adjusting the hat he’d borrowed from Mr. Bardak’s closet. “Really?”

  “Right here, according to Great-Grandpa Xerxes,” said Nalah. She lowered her voice. “He said the best place to find cryptocrystals and heliothysts near New Hadar was on the beach at its widest point, where the palace ruins line up with the Fissure. The palace isn’t there anymore, but look.” She pointed up to the hill where Tam’s mansion stood, then down at their feet, where a great crack ran deep through the pavement and vanished into the sand of the beach. “This is it. I’m certain.”

  “Well, at least it’s a nice day for a ‘picnic,’” Marcus said.

  There were a few other people on the beach, mostly couples walking arm in arm or snuggling together on chairs or blankets and looking out at the sea. And here she was with Marcus.

  Oh, yuck, she thought.

  Nalah wondered if any of the beachgoers were actually enforcers. They didn’t always wear their uniforms so they could blend in undercover. Would they patrol the beach, like they supposedly guarded the mines and the forests, to prevent Thaumas from gathering materials?

  Nalah led the way down onto the beach, to a spot where she felt she was right in the center of the area Great-Grandpa Xerxes had specified. She and Marcus spread a blanket out, and Nalah sat on the edge of it.

  “All right. You keep watch,” she said, fishing in the basket and pulling out an empty jar, a trowel, and Great-Grandpa Xerxes’s silver eyepiece. “I’m going to . . . make a sand castle now. Tell me if anyone’s coming.”

  “See? You did need me, Bardak,” said Marcus, settling down beside her with his face to the city and pulling a peach from one of his pockets. Nalah stuck her tongue out at him. His smug face was even worse when he was right.

  She filled the jar with sand and tipped it out to make a sand castle tower, for the look of the thing. Then, when she was certain nobody was watching, she scooped up a tiny amount of sand on the trowel, spread it to form a layer only one grain thick, and then bent to study it through the eyepiece.

  Through Great-Grandpa Xerxes’s lens, the sand glowed and the grains seemed to dance. No wonder he’d recommended this stretch of beach. Nalah risked a look along the sand through the eyepiece, seeing the whole thing shimmer like a belt of stars between the land and sea.

  On her trowel, she quickly separated the dim, unmagical shards of rock and seashell from the glowing crystals, and then she started trying to sort them by the color of their glow or the weird effect they had on her vision.

  The sand was quartzite, the kind that made up most of the sand in the kingdom. Perfect for making glass, and able to carry magic, but not special in itself. Then there were small amounts of red rose quartz and garnet, and tiny specks of turquoise, zircon and olivine, spinel and sillimanite.

  And there was the heliothyst, sparking like a badly wired electrical connection. There were only three grains of it in the whole trowelful of sand.

  Using her tweezers, Nalah transferred all three tiny specks into the empty jar, and then sat up, her back already aching.

  “This is going to take a while,” she said under her breath.

  “Did you find some?” Marcus turned and squinted into the jar. “Is that it? It just looks like sand to me.”

  “It is sand.” Nalah rolled her eyes—but secretly enjoyed the fact that, for once, Marcus didn’t know everything. “Sand isn’t one thing, it’s a hundred thousand different things.”

  “And how much do we need to collect, again?”

  “Two full jars. Of each crystal.”

  Nalah and Marcus both looked down at the three grains of sand.

  “You’re right,” Marcus said. “This is going to take a while.”

  Melt the heliothyst and cryptocrystal together. Keep the mixture in a covered crucible. Melt down the base quartz. Add the mixture. Incantation. Remelt. Keep the temperature steady. . . .

  “Nalah? Nalah, wake up.”

  Nalah blinked and sat up, trying to focus on her father’s face. The past day and a half had flown by in a blur. She’d been up all night sorting the jars of sand that she’d carried home from the beach. Then she and Marcus had gone back that morning and spent the whole day doing the same thing. Her shoes, her hair, even her fingernails were full of sand, and her eyes hurt. If she never returned to the beach for the rest of her life, it would be too soon.

  But she had two jars of heliothyst and two jars of cryptocrystal.

  She was ready.

  “Hi! Sorry, I’m awake,” she said.

  Nalah picked up her spoon and hurriedly swallowed the last few mouthfuls of her soup, feeling vaguely guilty that she’d let it get cold. Great-Grandpa Xerxes’s instructions for forming the Transcendent Mirror were circling her mind like seagulls. They sounded so simple, but the consequences for getting any step wrong—shattering at best, a possible tear in the fabric of reality at worst—were steep.

  “You’re really not feeling well, are you?” Her father reached over and squeezed her hand. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

  “Not much,” she admitted.

  Mr. Bardak cleared both their bowls from the kitchen table and started washing them under the dribbly tap. “Maybe I should take you to the doctor,” he said.

  “No, Papa, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Nalah said quickly. “I’ll feel better tomorrow, you’ll see.”

  Her father turned and gave her a long look. Nalah attempted to look sick enough not to have to go to the market in the morning, but not so sick she had to go to the doctor. She had no idea if she was doing it right, but her father smiled.

  “All right,” he said. “Well, I’m off to bed. Try to get some rest.”

  “I will, Papa,” Nalah said. “I’m just going to find my book. I’ll put the lamps out and be up in a minute.”

  Her father planted a kiss on the top of her head and went up the stairs, his footsteps heavy and slow. Nalah watched him go.

  Everything will be better tomorrow, Papa.

  She should start work at once. She had to study Great-Grandpa Xerxes’s instructions again, and double-check that the ingredients were prepared—

  Tap, tap. Tap-tap-tap!

  Nalah jolted awake, disoriented for a second. She must have fallen asleep again. The clock read midnight—and there was someone tapping on the wi
ndow. A face, pale in the moonlight, looked in.

  With a sigh of relief, Nalah opened the door, and Marcus stepped in.

  “Are you ready?” he asked, with the cheeriness of someone who had actually slept in the last two days. It was irritating, but even so, Nalah found herself grinning back at him, a glowing-hot ball of anticipation forming in her chest. Then she pressed her hands together and tried to breathe slowly. If she lost control and zapped the Transcendent Glass with the power she’d let loose on the market stall . . .

  Well, she wasn’t sure what would happen, but she guessed it would be bad.

  Nalah put out the lamps in the kitchen before they went into the workshop, so her father wouldn’t know she was still awake. Unless he checked in her room, or looked out of the back window and saw the light from the workshop, or came downstairs . . .

  But there was no time to dwell on the possibilities. She had a job to do.

  She lit the furnace and Marcus helped her pump it with the long-handled bellows until it was burning red-hot. They brought the ingredients and laid them on the worktop in a neat row.

  Nalah cracked her knuckles. Then she poured the jars of heliothyst and cryptocrystal into a crucible, careful to shake out every last white grain. She needed to melt down the magical and nonmagical ingredients separately in two different crucibles, and then mix them together. That was the tricky part. If she hadn’t done her measurements correctly, the two components wouldn’t meld, and she’d be left with a cloudy, nonmagical mess rather than the makings of a Transcendent Mirror. Once the mixture was ready, she’d pour it into the frame and let it cool. At least, that was the plan.

  Taking a deep breath, Nalah pulled the black glass visor on and flipped it down over her face. “Let’s do this,” she said. “And remember to shield your eyes,” she told Marcus. “I don’t want to have to explain to your mother how she ended up with a blind weaver for a son.” In the gloom, she saw him cover his face with a scarf.

  She grabbed the first crucible with the long iron tongs and placed it in the furnace.

  The magical grains melted in moments, faster than anything Nalah had ever seen before. They flowed together into a molten circle of pure white, almost too bright to look at even through the black visor.