The Dickens Mirror

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “Well …” He opens to the page he’s been reading. “To me, Plath is more about living in the moment. She was writing about how aware she was of every second and how that completely freaked her out, especially since each was precious, singular. Like you always have to be aware of the fact that the end might be just around the corner. You know, walk out of this shop, get hit by a bus … it’s over. Life turns on a dime. So you can’t waste a single second or let one go by without realizing just how remarkable this—all of life—is.” His eyes play over the shop, the books, and then drift back to her face. “When the Now is gone, it’s gone, and no getting it back, no do-overs or second chances. And what if you let pass the one Now that was so special, you’ll never see its like again? Where your life could go one way or another, only your chance slipped past because you weren’t paying attention?”

  For some reason, tears sting the backs of her eyes. Don’t cry, you nut. What is there to cry about? She has to swallow around a sudden knot. “That’s so sad. It sounds … final.”

  “Yeah.” His face is still, and his eyes shine. A moment passes, and then he says, “My unit’s shipping out in ten days. Afghanistan? They say advisory role and training and support, but we’ll be armed and on patrol with the ANA—Afghan National Army. We’ll get shot for sure. So I think a lot about what if. You know, not making it back. Thing about this Dickens Mirror thing that lady wrote? Friend of mine read it and says I’m in it, and so is my brother and his girlfriend. You know, our names? Except, in the book, we’re all dead. We’re ghosts.”

  She thinks back to the writer: Or I’m just messing with your head. At that, she feels an eerie, almost surreal sensation that is not a tug but breathless and expectant all the same. As if this moment is … a pivot, a branch-point in time: one Emma goes this way, another goes that, still a third does something different, and on into infinity.

  “Kind of freaked me out,” he says. “Made me think where I’m headed and how I might not make it back.” After another, longer pause, an edge of scarlet bleeds over his jaw. “That wasn’t a pickup line.”

  “I know that.” She slicks her lips. “My friend said I’m in the book, too. I mean, not … not”—she stumbles a little—“you know, a character based on me or anything, or even, you know, me.” God, babble much? “That would be impossible, right?”

  “Not if you believe the book.”

  “Well … but it’s a book. It’s made up.”

  “But I think that’s her point. We could be book-people hanging out in the real world, or this could all be something one or both of us wrote ourselves. Or we’re real people visiting a book-world, or we live in a Now, an alternate timeline that’s a near double for another. In the end, how would you know?”

  “You would just have to. I mean, all we’ve got are our perceptions to tell us what’s real.”

  “Dreams feel real when you’re in them.”

  She could’ve sworn that was her thought. Or was it from a movie? She can’t recall.

  “So, since you’re in this lady’s book, too … I mean, your name …” When his mouth quirks, she sees a dimple in the left corner. “Does that ever bother you?” he asks. “When writers do that?”

  “Oh yeah.” She tells him about Jane Austen, but now she knows: she is so never reading this Dickens Mirror crap, even if they make a movie out of it. “So what happens to them?”

  “Dunno.” His muscular shoulders rise and fall. “I haven’t read it. I might not, actually. I don’t know if I want to find out what happens to that guy with my name.”

  “So why are you here? Why bother getting the book, or having her sign it?”

  “Just felt …” He shakes his head. “Like this was where I was supposed to be, right now.” He lets out a little laugh. “In this Now, I guess. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

  “Oh.” She knows she could end this right here. Settle back. Some desultory chitchat. For God’s sake, he’s a soldier and he’s leaving the country. She’s got a test to study for.

  But at that moment, there is that tiny mental ding. Not an alarm, but it does get her attention, and then the big-sister voice whispers a suggestion.

  “Look,” she says, “you want to get a coffee? We can hang at the café and you can get your book signed. I have a friend up there anyway.” She adds, quickly, “This isn’t a meet-cute, okay? I’d rather take out my tonsils with a fork.”

  “Me too,” he says, and does her the favor of not smiling.

  They’ll have coffee. He’ll get his book signed. The author is actually an interesting lady. Even spent time in the military, so the writer and he hit it off. The writer tells him to be safe, keep in touch if he wants. She’s also a little goofy, but Emma knows a couple glass artists with some screws that need tightening. (When Lily spots him, she will do the whole eyebrow he-is-so-HOT thing, which Emma will pray he doesn’t see, and he doesn’t seem to—or, if he does, won’t let on.)

  Most of all, it will definitely not be meet-cute.

  But there will be a moment, and it will be a perfect Now, because it might also be the last.

  As they walk out—Lily’s already fluttered off with some bogus excuse, which is completely stupid, like Emma and this guy are going to lip-lock right there—he says, “I like your necklace. Where’d you get it?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve always had it.” She toys with the glass pendant on its beaded chain. “Since I was twelve, anyway. It’s why I’m so interested in glass. I want to figure out how the artist did it. You know, put a whole galaxy in there.”

  “It’s beautiful.” He cups it in a hand, but his eyes fix on hers. “Like a message in a bottle.”

  “Or a Now.” Why has she said that? Why is her heart pounding like Superior thrashing Devil’s Cauldron, ba-boom, ba-boom? “I mean, if you could bottle a single, perfect moment.”

  “Yes, and if you could”—and now … he touches her, very gently, running the side of a thumb over that slight thread of a scar under her chin—“I’ll settle for this.”

  NOW

  IT IS HIGH summer. The sky is so bright the blue’s paled nearly to white. Brassy sunlight splashes the cliffs and spills hot and molten over Rima’s shoulders. Threading around black basalt boulders and through tall cliff grass and stands of hot pink thrift is hard work, especially with the basket. She’d be sweating more if not for the wind, clean and cold with a salt tang, coming off the water. Rounding a corner, she heads for a large thumb of sparkling gray-black rock at the far end of a bluff densely carpeted with yellow bird’s-foot trefoil, where she stops to rest.

  This promontory is the island’s tallest, and juts out in a massive overhang, well clear of a jumble of sharp boulders. Below, waves thrash the shoreline in rhythmic thumps and booms that send up huge founts of white spray. To her left, though, is a crescent-shaped tidal loch with a dark-sand beach where the boys will bring in the boat. A perfect spot for a picnic. The water’s calm enough for the scuttling plovers and snipes to poke at the sand. At the loch’s edge, she spots the sleek, oily roll of an otter.

  Puffing a little, she sets down her basket. “Hot,” she says, then sighs as a cool tongue of sea wind licks sweat from her neck. “Thank you, Emma, but that wasn’t a hint.”

  Of course, Emma doesn’t answer. Rima keeps hoping that, someday, the other girl might. On the other hand, maybe Emma’s out of practice. She’s in so many other things now. In a way, she and the shadows are everything. And what is that like, to be so … expansive? Perhaps a body is too limiting now, like trying to cram yourself into a whalebone corset.

  Resting, she watches deep orange and black Slender Scotch Burnets float over yellow trefoil, the moths flitting from flower to flower. Bright gold spangles dance on the sea and cut tears. Shading her eyes, she looks to the southwest, her gaze skimming over the lower, slightly humped hills of Little Colonsay to the deep green hummock that is Staffa. From here, she can just make out the island’s massive hexagonal pillars, rising from the surface li
ke stilts upon which the rest of the island is balanced. If she looks a little off-center, she can even make out the occasional black flit of puffins darting in and out of the island’s cliffs. It is the very picture of everything she has read and can remember.

  “You know the one bird I’ve not seen yet?” she murmurs as her eyes skim the far horizon. Only want to check, see if it’s still there. “I’ve yet to see a single golden eagle. Isn’t that …” The word odd curls like a snail on her tongue.

  Beyond Staffa, there is nothing but mist on the ruler-straight blue line of their horizon.

  Her stomach shrinks in a queer little clench. The sea’s always misty; don’t be ridiculous. It’s not the Peculiar. Of course, there’s no way to be certain. They’ve never sailed that far, however far it really is. No call. Everything they need is here.

  “I know you wouldn’t let anything happen to us, not now.”She hears the slight quaver. “It’s only a little … unsettling.”

  Shouldn’t there also be other islands? “Look north and there ought to be Ulva,” she says, trying to dredge the pages up from memory. “Perhaps Coll or even Skye. At least …” How many islands in the Treshnish had that book mentioned? Eighteen from this shoreline alone? She couldn’t recall.

  But I’ve never been here. This is all what I’ve built up in my mind, from descriptions. From a few paragraphs in a long-ago book. She licks beaded sweat from her upper lip, and saliva pools under her tongue at the salt tang. Perhaps that’s why she’s not seen a single eagle: because there’s no firm picture of one in her mind.

  Or perhaps this is all we need. The most she could dream up, and this is a reasonable facsimile. Now that they’re here in this … dream? Illusion? She’s unsure what to call it, but she knows that the old story about the boom and roar of the island’s monster in his cathedral of black basalt, the one she and Tony heard once upon a time, isn’t a fairy tale. Or maybe it is, but not in this place. Staffa’s, what, six miles away? The sound shouldn’t carry, but it does, and at night, she will frequently wrap herself in a good blanket and sit out for a long time to listen to the distant ba-boom, ba-boom. Sometimes, she will think, for no reason at all, Matchi-Manitou, in his deep dark cave, or about a place called Devil’s Cauldron.

  “That’s you, isn’t it, Emma? Something from your Now?” She smiles a second later as the waves below intensify and grow very loud: BA-BOOM, BA-BOOM.

  She remembers London and the Peculiar. Of them all, she remembers everything of their past that is, to Tony and Bode, only a blur. As soon as they exited that tunnel, stepping from the dark into bright sun and a cool breeze, both boys behaved as if this was the way things had always been. There was their wood and stone cottage to the right, with rooms of belongings she didn’t recognize but which the boys treated as theirs. A short distance beyond stood a good strong croft and white shaggy sheep. There was a stone barn with two horses, plows; a vegetable garden, in full bloom; and even apple trees, which Rima was fairly certain shouldn’t grow here, but she wasn’t quibbling. They had food, a good well, and there was always plenty of wood to be had in copses of scruffy trees and wild rhododendron. There is rain when they need it, and bright sun when they don’t. The seasons change, and there’s always snow for Christmas.

  Yet even I’ve no idea how long we’ve been here. She holds out her hands, no longer as work-roughened but tanned and strong. Whatever happens, they’ll never be creamy and silken. No kid gloves for her. “A fine laaadeee,” she drawls, in an exaggerated singsong. One thing she’ll have on all those priggish ladies, presuming they ever existed: she hasn’t aged. Her hair never needs a trim. She is sixteen, probably for as long as she wishes, or even if she doesn’t.

  As soon as she saw the sea, she knew this all had to be the work of Emma and the shadows, plucking this fantasy from her mind and then building a world for them to live in. Emma and Eric and the others are in every leaf, every rock, every breath of wind, every flower, each and every bird. They are the sun by day, and the millions of stars at night. But they’re not gods, and she understands that this world has limits. For example, there’s a village not far away: a jumble of houses along an inlet with cobble streets. There are people, but their faces are rudimentary, so many blurs, like the blanks in that cave beneath Bedlam. The boys don’t seem to notice, and sometimes she has to bite her cheek to keep from screaming when Bode makes a joke and a blank throws back its head in a roar of laughter.

  But they don’t go often. This is enough world for them. Neither Tony nor Bode are curious about what lies beyond what they can see. She guesses it’s a small price to pay, and no different than the generations of real people who live their lives in such places, with no curiosity about the wider world.

  Although … at times … she thinks Bode has an inkling. She worries about him. She and Tony have each other, but Bode’s alone, and there are moments when she spies him staring out to sea, a wistful melancholy in the turn of his mouth, a sparrow of something dark spiriting through his eyes.

  Someday, Emma, if you can—if you remember how—maybe … let her suddenly walk up from the beach? Or across the high meadow?

  “It’s a lot to ask,” she says. “I think he was driven to protect Elizabeth. Perhaps, even … created that way? But Meme … she could have been different. So, your face, your body, but Meme’s … personality? Though I guess she didn’t have much.” She still remembered the jolt when she looked through those panops and saw the clay blank that was Meme. Not a monster under the skin, but close. “But maybe you could start her off, give her a push in the right direction, and then whatever she becomes will be because of us. Because of Bode.”

  A lot to ask. She isn’t ungrateful, truly, but it’s a little like pushing the limits of this world. No one has bothered them, and since she believes that McDermott or his many other selves is/are still out there, that must mean Emma and the others have closed them off somehow. No back doors, no tinkering, no stealing.

  She wonders about McDermott, though. He got away; he’s out there. If she had the power, would she stop trying to remake a Meredith who would not die? A daughter she would never lose? For that matter, how many times had McDermott remade himself?

  She’s thought a lot about this. The London Meredith found them all through dreams, including McDermott and his … well, Meredith of the Moment. But Meme didn’t know what it was to dream, and neither did Kramer or Doyle.

  Which means the ability to dream is the essential ingredient. Take away Meredith’s ability to dream and imagine—to go her own way—and there is no Meredith. You’d have only a shell, a blank. Someone like Meme, nothing more than a pale imitation. But it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, too. If you re-create Meredith in all her complexity, she must dream. Which means she will kill herself, eventually, because Lizzie’s fate is a constant, too.

  There are times when, if she closes her eyes, she swears she sees McDermott. He stands at a large window overlooking green pasture. In the distance, there is a little girl with corn-tassel curls and her cat, big and orange, beside her, and she is once more the child he remembers. Then he turns …

  And there she is: asleep. Perfect. No scars, not yet, and maybe never—and he is both afraid and so full of love his heart should burst. Please, God, he thinks as he bends to brush her lips in a kiss. Please, maybe this time …

  It hits her then that this might explain McDermott’s obsession with Emma: a creation that could dream and be set free to write her own life and escape destiny. Emma had mentioned a back door, so maybe he even visited her on occasion to see how she fared. Just … to observe from a distance.

  Perhaps this is why he’d never given up trying. McDermott must’ve wondered what might happen if he created a Meredith he would then make certain never to meet? If they never crossed paths, they would never have a daughter and then Meredith would live. Oh, he might be able to visit, drop in from time to time and look in on her, but her life would not include him—and of course, his Lizzie wouldn’t have a life at all
. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, that.

  Say he accomplished it, though. How then could McDermott live without Meredith? Would he even be McDermott then? Were Meredith and Lizzie necessary ingredients to make him, too?

  For that matter, would she have the strength to do the same … say, for Tony? Leave him be, set him free—and never, ever know that kind of love? She wants to think so, but the sudden hollowness in her chest gives the lie. Love was quite a selfish emotion, wasn’t it?

  And where is little Emma? Is her life rewriting itself even now? Or is she destined to always find herself back here, with us, in some fashion? Or perhaps, in some Now she will never know, Emma is a creation of the mind, only so many words on a page, each leading to their scripted, preconceived, and inevitable end …

  There’s a shout, distant but clear. Blinking, she looks away from that misty horizon and down to a spot closer in. The boat’s there, white sails full and cupping wind. Bode, muscular and bare-chested, is at the jib sheets … or is it the boom? God, she can never remember and doesn’t really care. Tony’s monkeying over the deck, and she sees the flash of his face as he tilts a look. Standing, she waves, then bends for her basket.

  Trudging back over the promontory, she watches moths rise in a spray of orange and black. But as she nears the edge where she’ll turn right and make her way down a corkscrew path to shore, a large shadow ripples over a near hill. A cloud? A little surprised, she looks up … and gasps.

  Gliding past, no more than fifty feet away but very low to the ground, the eagle is a dark bronze, almost as if it’s been dipped in sunlight, and massive, with wings that span an easy twelve feet from tip to tip. The eagle is close enough that she sees the yellow curve and black hook of its beak and wicked talons. Riding the air, the bird is absolutely silent. A cloud would make more noise. The eagle is also swift, and in three seconds, the bird’s swept behind a hill to the left.