The Angels' Mirror Pack 2: Books Four through Seven

by Harmony L. Courtney

  “Why,” Peter asked him, puzzled. “Why do you all of a sudden need a hundred dollars?”

  A few of his coworkers were now watching the exchange, and he prayed he’d still have a job after this scene.

  “Because my life depends on it, and so does my family.”

  “Your life? Oh, come on, now, Steven. Isn’t that being just a-“

  “No, it isn’t. I’m as serious as Rose’s “discerpearance,” Steven shouted before storming off. Twenty paces away, he turned back around. “I’m as serious as death.”

  Steven stalked away from Peter, fuming with every step.

  How dare he question me, question my motives, he thought as he hightailed it back to the office. How dare he think I’ve gone and done something criminal when all I’ve done is gotten in a little…

  He weaved between the other people heading his direction in order to move more quickly, as well as those heading the opposite direction. His pace intensified until he was sprinting.

  If Mr. Faires came back from his meeting early, all would be lost. He’d been able to pay his co-workers off again in order to cover up his extended absence at lunch, but he couldn’t keep up with everything. His money was running as thin as the lining in his pockets.

  Thankful that the ice from a few days prior had melted already, he made his way the last several blocks to work and, huffing, raced up the stairs and, taking a few deep breaths to try to slow his heartbeat and breathing down, opened the door, closing it silently behind him. He made his way over to his desk, glancing at Janice, Fred and Harold as he slid into his chair behind the typewriter.

  Fred, to his left, paused to switch pages before resuming the document he was typing up, refusing to acknowledge Steven’s presence. He studied the man for a moment; his long, narrow face not quite jiving with the paunch of his belly. The brown suit he wore, not quite the right size anymore.

  Janice, a tiny bird of a woman with dull brown eyes and dark blonde hair, stopped long enough to get up for water.

  “Mr. Faires ain’t back yet,” she said rather loudly, “but much as I need the money I can’t keep covering for you. No more,” she told him before heading back to her desk, which was directly in front of his own.

  And Harold?

  All he did was nod his bald, green-capped head as he continued to type.

  Steven shrugged as he continued to regulate his breathing, shuffling his papers around to find where he’d left off earlier in the day, and began to type.

  What have I gotten myself into, God? It’s as if Mary, Jesus, and the saints have forsaken me; as if You’ve forgotten me to my own selfish devices. I’ve been a fool, and I know it, but without Your help I can’t get out of this. It’s as if I’ve been sucked in the undertow of my own reckless behavior and others are beginning to feel that same pull, only for reasons they can’t even fathom, he prayed as his fingers danced across the keys. And just as he was turning to the next page, he heard the door behind him swinging open; heard Mr. Faires’ labored breathing from his ascent up the stairs.

  “Ah, my loyal… workers, at it… like the good, decent human… beings I know… you can be,” he said as he continued to puff for air. “And I need to… see you all… separately in… my office Monday morning. I will… post a schedule,” he continued, wiping his brow with a handkerchief.

  Mr. Faires then headed toward his office as Steven and his co-workers continued their typing. Other than the swift thud of his door, all Steven could hear were fingers hitting keys and papers rustling as he did his best to catch up on the work he’d missed.

  It certainly wouldn’t bode well for him to run behind so much that Mr. Faires actually took notice of the deficiency.

  But what was this about meetings on Monday? Did he suspect that something was amiss in his offices, or worse, had he seen Steven out and about after his lunchtime?

  How is it I didn’t even think of that possibility, Steven thought. How is it that it didn’t dawn on me that, while I’m out there and so is Mr. Faires, he and I might actually run into one another? That’d be my job, for sure… as if I can afford that on top of everything else.

  Paris, France… December 28, 1706

  “It’s difficult for me to believe, Sire, that you invited us back out of the charity of your heart,” Sir Gaspar said as he strolled the gardens of Versailles with King Louis.

  “Not that we are unappreciative of your invitations, Your Highness, I assure you,” he said, pausing to bow in deference even as he winced at his own words. They could get him killed, if the King took them badly. “I simply mean that-“

  “You simply mean you can see through my charade, is that it,” the King said jovially in return, his steps slowing a bit. “You’re right. I have motives other than new lunchtime companions, as you are well aware. But I did not wish to discuss the mirror in front of those who need not worry over such things.”

  The King paused where he was, near the head of the fountain, and reached for Sir Gaspar’s shoulder. “Hold a moment, if you will, please. There are others who must be in on this conversation, and I have called a gathering. We shall meet in the throne room at sundown. So for now, if you will kindly indulge an old man, I’d just like to rest a few moments here.”

  Sir Gaspar took a deep breath, then another, as he tried to calm his nerves. Sundown was approaching, but probably not for nearly another hour. He and Galya – who was currently entertaining the Marquise and her niece – had hoped to be on their way back to the quarters they had hired for their time here before the sun set in order to avoid any possible issues on the road.

  “Is something wrong,” King Louis asked him, tilting his chiseled-looking face up toward Gaspar as he moved to sit down. The movement was slow, and Gaspar realized then that the man’s years of war had likely done damage to his joints.

  Slowly taking a seat next to him, Gaspar began wondering where this was going. Why did others need to be involved, when it was his mirror? He had bought it honestly, without any knowledge of the power behind it, when James had been so desperate to remove it from the Château le Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He hadn’t even considered that perhaps instead of coming through the mirror, someone James and Louis had known may have disappeared through it. Not until Galya had begun talking about her family recently, not until the realization truly dawned on him that she’d left people behind on the other side.

  “Not wrong, exactly, Your Highness. I just thought my wife and I would be on our way prior to the sun setting.”

  “There are plenty of rooms here at the palace as I’m sure you are aware; while many are occupied, not all of them are. You shall stay here until the morrow; I insist, as your host, and your King.”

  Sir Gaspar turned more fully toward the King. “Sire, might I ask one question before there are others,” he said, watching the ever-present workers mill about from one area of the grounds to the other.

  “You may, though I may not have a suitable answer for you,” Louis said as he dusted something invisible off the thighs of his breeches. “As long as I may query you in return. Tournez sur est, comme ils disent, le fair-play, n'est-ce pas?”

  En effet, en effet, Sire. C'est vrai,” Sir Gaspar agreed, startled just a bit by the depth of King Louis’ brown eyes; they were keen; knowing; intense. “I wondered if… was there a particularly… personal reason that James and Mary held a sale for the artifact we have been discussing? Such as – how do I ask this? – il y a une disparition soudaine?”

  The King jolted in place, as if struck by lightning, and winced. For a moment, he rubbed at his temples, and then he forcibly relaxed his body. “You ask a difficult question, and in asking, my own has been answered. Galya is not from… she is not from this time and place,” he said.

  The words were a statement; there was no question they had answered one another’s questions.

  The two men’s eyes met once more, for the briefest of moments, and then the King glanced around them before he continued. “James’ oldest living son; a so
n long forgotten by most; a son he never really allowed himself to be close to emotionally but who was loyal to him most of his life, in spite of all that had transpired between them – which I refuse to get into – did, indeed, disappear. And it seems that not one woman has appeared, but two, as an exchange of sorts, to our time.”

  Two women? What did he mean, two women?

  “Apparently so, Your Majesty,” Sir Gaspar replied, feeling more confused than ever. “I never would have guessed.”

  “Nor would I, Young Man. Nor would I.”

  Galya sat with Françoise as they watched Françoise Charlotte finished brushing the little silver and white mare she had been riding, and smiled.

  “A beautiful horse,” she said, not for the first time.

  The horse’s temperament reminded her of her Great Uncle Timothy’s donkey, though the donkey had not been named, and the horse was Jezebel – a name that made Galya shudder to think about.

  Had they not read their history?

  Did they not understand that Jez’ebel, daughter to the Sido’nian king Ethba’al and harem wife to King Ahab, was a wicked woman? This horse, gentle and sweet, was nothing like her… she couldn’t be! At least, nothing like Galya imagined of her; the woman had been eaten by dogs after falling to her death from a window; a horrifying way to die for a woman who had made horrible the lives of those who believed in Yahweh.

  The horse couldn’t have been named Jezebel for the way it interacted… so perhaps, for its exquisite beauty. For even when she’d died, the woman had been made up enticingly, knowing she was to be killed but wanting to be beautiful even in death.

  “She is, is she not,” Françoise said as she clasped her pearls for the tenth time since they’d dismounted themselves, allowing groomers to brush down their horses. She made a motion for Galya to walk with her, and they made their way toward the front entrance of the palace. “Françoise Charlotte,” she called, pausing a moment. “Meet us inside, si vous le voulez bien, s'il vous plaît.”

  Moments before, the woman had finally caught her breath, admitting that she rode very rarely in her life.

  “Even as a child, this was not something I relished or did for enjoyment, but Françoise Charlotte enjoys it so,” she had said. “I find them exquisite creatures, but in truth, they rather terrify me. And I dare say, they seem to have the same effect on you, Dear.”

  And the Marquise had been right; she had never ridden a horse until after falling through the mirror, but how do you tell someone such a thing?

  You don’t.

  Not someone who you barely know, who may or may not be authentic with you; a royal; someone who, at any moment, could revoke your right to live with the wave of a hand. Galya had seen it too many times to dare to hope that Louis and Françoise were any different from Domitian, Trajan, Hadrian, and their sycophants’ decision-making regarding the Decapolis.

  Could she hope they were different? Yes. Would she ever believe it? She wasn’t so sure that she could, barring a miracle. Thank Yahweh for miracles, though. She had seen many, and Timothy had seen many more than she. He used to tell her stories of the miracles Yahweh had done by the hands of Paul and a myriad of other people she had read about, but never met. Some, who had even known Jesus personally and seen Him after rising from the dead!

  A shiver of delight ran down Galya’s arms, and she moved her hands toward her shoulders, wondering at the sudden cold she felt. She knew the weather was shifting; she could feel it, but had the temperature dropped so much without her notice?

  She followed the Marquise the rest of the way indoors, thankful for the protection of the indoors as the sun began to set. Though she had thought that Gaspar would have retrieved her to go back to their quarters by now, she would be patient.

  Perhaps there was more going on than met the eye, once more.

  Part One:

  Hebrews

  One

  Vancouver, Washington… December 28, 2024

  Edward followed Paloma, Masao, and Jason back up the stairs once more to do a final inspection of the rest of the mirror, thankful that the kids had somewhere else to be for the day.

  Had they really found something from Mary?

  And what’s more, a scroll or text of some kind from before his time; from before the mirror had been in Spain, even, perhaps? For it looked ancient; it looked and felt like it would fall apart anytime, but somehow, was still sturdy.

  The lettering – if indeed it was lettering, as they thought – was clear but for a few lines toward the bottom right edge of the document, and even still, there was hope it could be salvaged and read.

  But by whom?

  Who did they know that might be able to translate it, who wouldn’t automatically want to remove it from their possession, and instead of giving them the information on it, say nothing? Sure, he and Jason knew experts; so did their Rutherford Research part-timer, Malik, but were any of them that trustworthy?

  Edward pondered the quandary as he pulled his gloves back on; pondered it as he and Masao took a turn at seeking out more potential inclusions along the sides of the mirror. While Masao began on the left, he began on the right; while Masao decided to begin at the floor, Edward began where he had left off two hours earlier.

  In the near-silence, as he rubbed and rapped gently along the flaming wing on his designated side of the mirror, Edward continued pondering.

  He pondered so much that, when another popping sound indicated that Masao had found something, it took him a moment to register what had happened.

  “Ah, yes,” Masao announced. “It is another old one. Small,” he said, gently pulling out something that looked about the size of a business card.

  “My Hebrew is a bit rusty, but I believe this is familiar. I may be able to decipher it… though the other would take many days, if not weeks, to understand.”

  “Uncle Masao,” Paloma said from behind Edward. “You never told me you knew Hebrew!”

  “Well,” the man said, placing the fragment inside another of Jason’s plastic bags, “I studied it in college. I do not… how do I say? I am an otaku of heaven’s language, but it is as a golem to me; I must tease it out of my mind in order to remember. I must train myself once more for the longer script.”

  Otaku? Golem?

  What on earth is he talking about?

  Edward opened his mouth to ask, even as Masao continued, taking a seat in the solitary chair nearby.

  “Forgive me; I realize maybe I have spoken things you do not understand. first, otaku; it is a Japanese term. It basically means, in this context, to be a fan of something,” he began. “Many times, it means not only a fan, but an obsessive one,” he amended quickly.

  “I am a fan of Hebrew; it is a good language, a language God utilized to give us the Old Testament, at least in part. And a golem, this is Jewish; do not think I mean J. R. R. Tolkien’s character, Gollum. These are very different things,” he continued, laughing a moment before resuming.

  “In the Bible, golem referred to something unformed… when we look at God speaking to Jeremiah, telling him that He knew him before He created him, he was speaking of Jeremiah’s unformed self. And golem, at times, was also used to say, a creature without much shape; something made of stone, or sometimes clay.”

  “So what you’re saying is,” Jason finally said. “You enjoy Hebrew, but… I’m still confused about the reference to the… golem, is it?” He looked at the fragment again through the plastic bag, his eyebrows knitting together.

  “I think what he’s saying… forgive me if I’m wrong, Uncle,” Paloma said. “I think what he’s saying is that it is a hard thing to grasp, even though he likes and enjoys it, or appreciates it for what it is?”

  “Well, this is close enough to what I am meaning, yes,” the man, only a few years older than the rest of them, said, handing the fragment baggie back to Jason, who set it aside.

  “My father… he was a man of many interests, and few words,” Masao began again. “He did not read
a lot. He wished to read things that were not in Japanese, but he did not wish to learn other languages, or perhaps he could not. He has never told me, to this day…and so, he had me read to him many things as a child, and even until I was seventeen, when I moved to America to come to college. He can understand and speak some English, and still not read it,” he continued. “So either I translate, or stop and explain in Japanese whatever he understands not.”

  “I grew up learning many things he was not able to, or was not exposed to. He grew up working a terraced farm of dry rice, wheat, beans, peas, and sweet potatoes like his father and grandfather before him. His father, who I was named for, was drafted as a soldier to fight in World War II. He came home in a hayaoke – a casket put together quickly, for so many men were dying they were not made well,” he said.

  Edward saw the faraway look in the man’s eyes and wondered, not for the first time, what his life must have been like before moving to the United States. This was the most he had ever said altogether about his life, at least in Edward’s presence. Glancing around him, it was apparent that Jason and Paloma were just as intrigued.

  “My father is not an easy man to know; his heart has been hardened by many hard things, but still, he is kind in spite of his stubbornness and pride,” Masao continued.

  “He does not choose America for himself, but for his son. His wife, my mother, died when I was not yet five. She was pregnant again… against the government’s knowledge, and they told not even a doctor until it was too late. The baby was a girl; a girl they were not allowed to consider keeping, but she and my kaasama – my mother – died before the doctor arrived. I can still hear her wailing, and see the sorrow on my father’s face for the few moments he allowed emotion to show.”