Snow, Blood, and Envy

by Haus, Jean

  The dealer pivots his laptop on an angle. “My, my just looking at them makes me realize your stepmother is quite the collector. That said some of these have to be reproductions.”

  I drum my long nails on the glass. “Why do you say that?”

  “The pristine shape they’re in and their ages don’t coincide.” He enlarges a picture. “This pedestal style with a Greek goddess would have to be over two thousand years old. A mirror from that period in such perfect shape? It has to be a reproduction, although a very good one I must say.”

  “Are they all reproductions?” Jai asks.

  “No, no. I don’t think this one is.” He enlarges it. “Well, look at the image in that one. The camera warped it a bit but how interesting.”

  I lean forward expecting to see my own face, instead the sight in the mirror has me grabbing the counter for support.

  Chapter 38~Snow

  She is blurry and wavy, but the blonde hair, wispy sleeves, and the huge bell skirt are evident. She’s also quite pretty. Recalling when I took the picture, I grip the counter. No one had been in the room with me, much less some strange girl. How the hell had she gotten in the picture?

  “Interesting,” the dealer says. “Her attire matches the same time period of the mirror, Victorian.” His eyes light up. “A costume party perhaps?”

  “Ah, yeah,” I say as sweat breaks across my forehead. I’m having trouble standing. Jai raises a brow at me. I try to shrug. It comes off as more of a wobble.

  “Oh, here’s something rather interesting,” the dealer exclaims. “Your stepmother does know her mirrors.” My stomach rolls as he zooms in on the small bowl like thing that had been over the note. He taps the counter. The large ring on his finger clinks on the glass and my nerves. “This one is definitely a reproduction.”

  “Why?” Jai asks.

  Good thing he’s asking questions because my brain’s still in shock over that girl in the mirror.

  “Well, if it were real, it would date back eight thousand years. A mirror from one of the first civilizations in a private collection? I don’t think so.” At Jai’s dumbfounded expression he continues, “The first mirrors were found in Catal Huyuk, an excavation site in Turkey. Made out of polished obsidian, volcanic glass, they look like that.” He points to Mali’s bowl.

  Nausea churns my stomach.

  Jai frowns at the man. “How do you know all this stuff?”

  The man raises his sagging chin. “In my old life, life before retirement, I worked for several large museums…Boston, Chicago, even New York. And although my doctorate degree is in Egyptology that,” he points at the bowl, “is a well known artifact.” The man glances at me. His brow wrinkles. “My dear, you’re white as a ghost. Is something amiss? Do you need to sit?”

  “No, no I’m fine.” I release my grip from the edge of the counter. I have to get out of here. Now. The fear of fainting has suddenly become a daily thing lately. “We have to get going.” I force myself to put one foot in front of the other. Jai follows. “I’ll keep the Baroque mirror in mind.”

  “Oh, please do.” He rushes to open the door for us. “Here’s a card.”

  Since I stand like an idiot, Jai takes the card for me. The dealer waves from the window as we pull away. I wave back then hightail it out of there. A few blocks from the shop, I pull to the curb and lay my head on the steering wheel. I force myself to breathe. I’m on the brink of hyperventilating.

  “What’s wrong?” Jai asks.

  “Everything,” I mouth into the leather.

  “Did I miss something?”

  I beat my forehead against the wheel. Too bad, it doesn’t knock me out. I’d do anything to stop the whirling thoughts of my brain.

  “Nivi?”

  “The picture…there wasn’t anyone in the room with me. I took it when Chang and Ping helped me get into the penthouse.”

  Silence fills the car until Jai asks, “You sure?”

  I snap up. “Yes, I’m sure. Why do you think I’m freaking out?”

  “Maybe—maybe there is a picture of the girl in the room and it’s just a reflection.”

  “No,” I moan. “I wish, but there isn’t any picture in that room.”

  “So what are you saying exactly?”

  “I don’t know. The girl, that mirror, the one from eight thousand years ago and her room, every time I go in there, it freaks me out. Something’s not right.”

  “What are you talking about?” His expression becomes skeptical. “Magic? Ghosts? What?” His forehead creases more with each word.

  “I don’t know!” I fall back and cover my face with my hands.

  He lets out a sigh. “You’re exhausted. Your mind’s not seeing this right.”

  My fist pounds on the dashboard. “Don’t be condescending with me.”

  He opens his mouth then snaps it shut before saying, “Okay, how about we talk about this later? After some rest and food.”

  I refuse to look at him and pull away from the curb. Maybe my father and Mali are right. I am going nuts. But I’m sure, no one, nor had any picture of a girl been in the room with me.

  Soon Jai’s even breathing reverberates in the car’s quiet interior. Desperate for a distraction from the whirl in my head, I reach into my backpack and search for my iPod. Several songs later, a red marker on the side of the road comes into view. I stop and put the SUV into four-wheel drive low. After a hard turn, we’re bouncing through the snow.

  Jai eyes open at a particularly hard bounce. He looks around at the snow-covered landscape. “Where are you going?”

  “To the cabin,” I respond. Though we’re on the road, I think, we drive through a winter wonderland. Last night’s snowstorm covers everything. A smooth carpet of white fluff is before us. The trees from their trunks to the tips of their branches are white velvet. The mountains in the distance are pale peaks. Lit by streams of sunlight, we coast through a sparkly tunnel. I reach for my sunglasses. “I wasn’t kidding when I said it was in a remote location.”

  Chapter 39~Snow

  Under several inches of snow, the key laid in the planter like always. Freezing, I stand with the cold metal in my palm. Though the remoteness of the cabin is perfect, I’m not sure I can handle the memories. Last time I’d been here, my mother was alive. Alive and vibrant. Alive and perfect. Alive and the center of my world. My father had informed me he hired someone to take care of the cabin. I’d told him it didn’t matter. I would never go there again.

  But here I am.

  Jai shuffles in the snow behind me. His leg—him waiting in the cold—forces me to insert the key. I push the door open and my heart squeezes.

  The table piled with her books, a mix of romances, mysteries, and memoirs with their torn covers and worn pages, assault me first. A reminiscence of her sitting on the porch at sunset with the top one in her hand flashes through my mind. Sunlight glints off her blond hair. Green mountains are in the background. The image, her in the dusky light, is so lovely and so very, very cruel.

  I wait for Jai to go in first then force myself across the threshold.

  The books are the first trip down memory lane. The old plaid couch, the green recliner, and the basket with games poking out of it, bring her back to me. Images I’ve locked away explode through me. Even the cabin itself with its rough wood floors and walls has me choking. I stumble past Jai and mumble, “Have a seat. I’ll get some wood.” I pass through the kitchen, refusing to look. Yet, the smell of baking cookies, hot chocolate, pancakes, and her linger in my mind.

  In the back entrance, I collapse on the woodpile. The memories, however small, are too much. Coarse bark bites into my palms. My body trembles and rough wood scrapes my cheek. I try to concentrate on the physical pain, but anguish, powerful and raw, comes out of me in gasps. Saliva and tears travel down the bark and pool on the floor. No matter how many therapists, no matter how much time passes, no matter what I do, I can’t face her death. I’ve missed her every day, every hour, every minute. Every
damn second.

  “Nivi?”

  I stare at the snowshoes and skis hanging on the wall, and the image of her holding my eleven-year-old hand as I trudge through the snow suffocates me.

  “Nivi?” he repeats.

  I can’t get up. “What?”

  His uneven gait sounds on the steps. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” my voice cracks. “No, not really.”

  “You haven’t been back since?”

  He doesn’t need to say her death. We both know what he means. Still, I don’t reveal my stubbornness. “You think my father would come here?” The question comes out with a sob.

  “Oh Nivi,” he says softly.

  My name comes from somewhere above. Somewhere close. When his hand brushes through my hair, a well opens up inside of me and I burst. My sobs go from silent to ear splitting.

  His hands pull gently at my shoulders. At first, my fingers cling to the bark. Once I’m in his arms, I cling to him. Unwanted memories shudder through then erupt out of me. He holds me while my soul releases its sorrow and my tears and snot pour onto his coat. Somehow, it’s better with him holding me. We stand there in the cold long enough for my eyes to dry and my breathing to return to normal. Long enough for me to get a grip on my emotions.

  I step back with my eyes on the ground. “You’ve got to be freezing.” I wipe my face with a coat sleeve. “You shouldn’t be on your leg for so long.” Silence. My eyes stay glued to the ground.

  At last, he says, “I’ll just take some wood while I’m back here.” He lifts logs, two under each arm, and wobbles up the steps.

  I put my hands on the remaining pile and gulp in air for several minutes before finally piling my own arms with logs. In the main room, Jai stands with his arm braced on the mantle. The crackle of wood makes me pause.

  “I found the matches and kindling,” he says, gesturing to the bin on the hearth.

  I can’t detect any smoke coming out into the room, but I still ask, “Did you open the damper?” He nods. “Oh, good, I’ll go start the wood burner in the kitchen.” Feeling like wood myself, I back up toward the kitchen stove, which also heats the cabin. I stuff five logs in and start the fire the way my mother had shown me. Once done, I make my way to the pantry.

  Since my mother worried about the possibility of a snow in, she kept the shelves stocked with freeze-dried goods. I rummage through bags of food: lasagna, noodles and chicken, scrambled eggs, chili, and beef stew before deciding on macaroni and cheese for lunch. Freeze-dried food isn’t the best, but with the state of our cash and the distance of a grocery store, it will do. I ignore the memories of my mother shopping for the stuff, her asking me what meals looked best. If I don’t keep myself in control, I’ll be bawling in each room, at each open drawer, at the contents of a closet.

  On the heavy bathroom door, I find a checklist from the man who’s been keeping up the cabin. Things like gutters cleaned, wood on porch stairs replaced, smoke detectors, and fireplace have red checks next to them. Good, I won’t have to worry about that stuff.

  I open the door. Like always during winter the bathroom is a balmy fifty-eight degrees. Several solar panels attached to the back of the house—too much snow on the roof—heat only this room and the space underneath, so the pipes, plumbing, and pump won’t freeze. My mother had wanted to go entirely rustic, but she couldn’t ignore the ease of a modern bathroom and put a purchase agreement on the place minutes after opening the door to the tiled room. Drinking water, from bottles to gallons, is stored on the shelf next to the sink so it stays in liquid form.

  After stoking the fire, I go and peek in on Jai. He lies on the couch with one of her books in his hands. My breath catches at the sight. Two days of rest for his leg, three at the most, and we’re moving on. Back in the kitchen, between the rows of rustic cabinets and the stove at the end, I pull a pan out and wonder if I can take three days of memories assaulting me at every turn. I slam the metal down on the stove. Jai’s leg needs to heal. I’ll just have to deal with it.

  It takes forever for the water to reach a boil. Once the room warms up a bit, I shed my coat and wait alone. After almost an hour, I pass Jai a paper bowl, no way I’m doing dishes, full of reconstituted macaroni and cheese and a half frozen juice box.

  He grins, but his eyes are heavy. “Ah, a chef in the house,” he says and sits up.

  I go to the comfy green chair. “As long as it only needs boiling water, we’re good. Anything more and we’ll starve.”

  He takes a big bite. “Not bad.”

  I dig my plastic spoon into the cheesy mush. “Survival food. The name doesn’t imply good, just edible.” He grins at me and takes another bite. I notice the bruises on his face have yellowed and the small gash under his eye has started to flake.

  He finishes chewing and points the spoon to the shelves full of books under the window. “You read a lot?”

  Macaroni sticks in my throat. I wash it down with a sip of slushy apple juice. “I read sometimes. Most of the books were my mother’s.”

  “Oh,” he says and looks away at bringing up the touchy topic.

  I sigh. “She’d read anything. She was a librarian.” Luckily with my father’s generous child support, she could live comfortably employed at something she loved.

  He still stares at the shelves. “I wondered about the wide variety,” his dark eyes meet mine. “Sorry.”

  My fingers clench the spoon. “It’s going to happen. You don’t have to tiptoe around my…discomfort.” I fill my mouth with a huge spoonful of mush.

  The room is painfully silent with chewing and the crackle of the fire until he asks, “Have you thought anymore about the girl in the picture?”

  My spoon pauses. “No.” I kind of lie because driving here I forced myself not to think about it. “But she wasn’t there.” The words come out like steel.

  “I believe you. There just has to be a logical explanation. Like a picture over a picture or something. Strange things can happen in cyber space.”

  “Maybe,” I concede and leave the discussion alone because in reality something is wrong, very wrong with the girl in the mirror. I can’t explain why, but I can feel it.

  We eat and then read, him a mystery, me a graphic novel. Well, he reads. The words just swirl before my eyes. The girl in the mirror, the murdered stepmother, the mirror collection, and Mali’s sometimes-different youthful reflection all connect somehow. Yet, I’m having a hard time making the connection. Does my stepmother murder for youth? The girl in the mirror has me thinking of voodoo or something to keep her young. That seems so ridiculous, so unbelievable. My brain pounds with trying to wrap my head around it.

  When I notice Jai asleep, I put the book on my lap, take a deep breath, and try to face the pain that has been pulsing under my skin since I stepped on the porch. I look around the cabin. At the pictures on the tables, the shelves of her books, the basket of games we played, and my heart constricts.

  What I’m I doing here?

  Surrounded by memories, I think I’d rather face Mali, Smith, and his gun than these reminiscences. I’ve kept such a tight leash on my emotions since May, but here they seem to be oozing out of me and crashing into me simultaneously from every direction.

  I have to force myself to get up and make the beds upstairs. The narrow stairs open to a small room with two twin beds on each side under a sloped pine ceiling. The next room, also small, has a double bed in the center. I pause before going in the room while remembering sneaking in and snuggling with my mother when I was young. Jai will have to sleep in that bed because I can’t.

  Chapter 40~Envy

  The bathroom’s serene except for the sneering woman in the mirror. She tears a plant in pieces and sneers at her reflection. The wrinkles have become permanent. Her face droops with deep lines. Her hands are webbed with age. Brown spots dot her skin.

  Time has run out.

  Even her magic can’t fix the tangle her skin has become.

  But soon she’
ll have the girl.

  Inside a bowl, she pulverizes leaves with a pestle. This will be the last time she makes the drug. It will soon course through the girl’s veins and prepare her for the transformation. Her knuckles scrape the side of the bowl and blood drips to the counter.

  Anger has her smearing the liquid across her reflection. She can still see the webbed grooves. Still see age’s curse.

  Giving into rage, she uses the pestle to smash the mirror.

  Chapter 41~Snow

  Jai slides his queen forward.

  I glance at his wooden expression then at the board. Why did he have to pick chess? With nothing to do, but stare at each other—which would so not be a good idea for me—I suggested a game from the basket. Why couldn’t he have picked Monopoly or checkers or anything but chess? I only got the game because of the Looney Tunes figures. I never wanted to be a chess champion or anything. I silence my internal whining and concentrate. My fingers hover over Sylvester, the knight of the set. I focus on the board instead of the dark eyes on me. Ah, he is after my bishop, Wiley Coyote. I move it.

  He grins at the move and captures my Wiley.

  Dang, I fell right into his trap. My lip curls as he sets the coyote to the side next to three Tweety pawns. “This is so unfair. You’re like a master and I suck.”

  Jai’s long fingers pushed a pawn forward. “Improvement takes practice and patience.”

  I glare at him in the shadowy light from the oil lamp. My angry look doesn’t help. Several moves later, most of my characters are on the side of the board and Jai says checkmate with a grin. Ignoring him and his smugness, I pack the game up in silence.

  It’s getting late. Through the living room window, the snow-covered mountains aren’t even visible in the blackness of night. Jai loads up the fire with more wood while I go to the kitchen and get his pills. For once, he doesn’t argue about taking his painkillers. Not ready to face the memories upstairs again, I curl back into my favorite chair and we both stare at the fire.