The Maiden in the Mirror

by Scott Hamerton

  Minerva grabbed the gunner by the arm and spun him around. He was much younger than she expected, possibly only a few years older than herself. He was however, much better developed. He wore no shirt, probably because of the glistening oil and gunpowder that neatly dirtied his torso. His smiling blue eyes glittered in the dim light of the dusty deck, and his fantastic sandy-blonde hair fell splendidly across his ears in gentle waves. Minerva had a bad habit of judging people based on how well their hair behaved.

  "Yes?" he asked quite calmly, with a wide smile.

  He has all his teeth, she thought, as her inner voice reminded her softly about the hold. "The hold!" she blurted.

  The gunner's expression twisted, obviously confused.

  "They're storing oil in the hold! That's how they shoot fire!"

  The gunner grinned wickedly. "I can hit that."

  "The black spot, right there," Minerva urged, trying to be helpful.

  "On my mark!" he shouted, bracing himself against the low ceiling.

  Minerva's throat constricted and her heart raced painfully as she watched Cloudscorch sail in for the kill. While she waited in terror, the shirtless gunner beside her emanated confidence. His fearlessness made her feel like he could do anything, but it was his raw strength that startled her, as he wrapped his arm around her head and pulled her into his chest in a sideways embrace that covered her ears. Pressed against his skin, she heard his heart beating and felt the warmth of his muscled body through her cheek.

  He also smelled sweetly of gunpowder and sweat.

  Just when she felt the enemy could come no closer, the Skyraker twisted and leaned, and Minerva gripped the gunner hard around the waist. His chest expanded with a lengthy inhale, tightening his hold on her. Then he paused, breath held, just long enough for her to enjoy it.

  "Fire!"

  She felt the words before she heard them, and she never forgot that moment. In truth, she never heard the cannons fire, or the splintering wood or the screams of the victims. All she heard was his breathing, calm and steady in a storm of total, thundering, chaos.

  Cloudscorch erupted into flame and began to sink. It fell slowly at first, until the fires took the sails and the crew, and then it dropped, faster and faster, leaving a trail of smoke and ash like a wavering headstone on the wind. Minerva was still clinging tightly to the gunner's waist when Cloudscorch met the forest floor in an explosion of victory.

  Chapter 9

  Tug of War

  The ecstatic gun crew swept Minerva up onto the upper deck. They peeled her hero from her arms at the same time, dragging him away to laud him for his achievement. As they stood in the clearing air, many voices called out for the hero of the fight, and a sudden pang of jealousy overtook her. She was the one that told him where to fire. They should be cheering for her, not him. In one swift moment, her topless, muscled hero became a callous and vapid villain.

  Minerva glowered venomously at the gunner as they jostled him about and congratulated him on his great decision. As she sat there fuming, he unexpectedly pushed the others away and strolled up to her, while his hatefully well-behaved hair flowed like majestic waves in the wind.

  "What's your name?" he asked with a smile.

  "Minerva," she replied, striving to emphasize her indignity.

  "Oh!" he declared with delight. "You're the girl!"

  The girl, her mind begged. She wanted to pull his hair and kick his shins.

  "Thanks, Minnie," he added, with sincerity.

  Minerva felt her face flush and she looked down in shame.

  "Stand aside!"

  The bellowing voice of Olbus split the crowd, and the massive man pushed his way towards her. He gripped Minerva roughly by the shoulder and hauled her towards the sterncastle.

  Minerva found herself practically rolling into Lintumen's cabin as Olbus shoved her inside. The old navigator looked up from a weighty tome, peering over the magnifying glass in his hand.

  "Purser! With me!" the boatswain ordered.

  Lintumen glanced down at Minerva as she caressed her sore shoulder, and then over at the boatswain. Not in any hurry to comply, he seemed to consider something to himself for a moment, and then rose with a steady grace. Minerva could have sworn he was smiling. Before the door closed entirely, Olbus threw a look at Minerva, somewhere between pity and fear, and then slammed the door shut and locked it.

  The locks are on the outside. Her mind repeated the fact several times to herself before the pieces fit together. The fearful look that the others gave Lintumen. The way that his meals came catered, and how he only left his cabin with an escort. The reason that he lacked windows.

  Lintumen was a prisoner, and they had just locked her in his cell.

  At first, she occupied herself by trying to deduce her crime, but came up with nothing, and pursuing the matter only frustrated her. She thought about the gunner for a time, but felt that he had betrayed her in some way. So, frustrated and angry, she sat down in Lintumen's seat and snooped through the articles on his cluttered table.

  Two things occupied the table in great quantity: books and loose papers. The loose papers appeared to contain notes regarding the content of the books, many of which were open or marked on assorted pages. She also noticed of a few vials of ink, several quills, a rock, some scissors, and two magnification lenses, one a loupe and the other a very large magnifying glass. The loupe—a small lens—consisted of a simple metal cylinder with no handle. In contrast, the magnifying glass boasted a beautiful golden frame with a wooden handle, and intricate leaf patterns engraved across it.

  Upon picking up the magnifying glass, Minerva felt the lingering warmth of Lintumen's hold.

  The open page before her was rough and smelled strongly like old paper. It was a rather large book with large text, leaving her to wonder why Lintumen needed to magnify it, especially considering that he wore spectacles. Glancing it over, it appeared to describe a method of creating rope from human hair.

  Minerva turned a few pages, enjoying the crinkle, but the topic persisted, so she put the glass over the page to magnify it, purely out of curiosity. She did her best to position the device to read the lettering, but the already large words blew up to unreadable proportions, even when she leaned her face down almost upon the page. When she sat back to properly view the book once more, a terrifying shiver went down Minerva's spine. No longer was the page full of text, as she had previously read. Rather, the words had shifted, as if the wobbling image in the magnifying glass actually caused the ink to move.

  A portrait now occupied the page, but the lines that formed it were not just lines. Rather, they emerged from repetitive sentences of many tiny words. The shoulders said slight and the neck said thin, over and over in long strands. Each freckle curved its name in a circle, like a snake biting its tail. Hope and fear filled the eyes. For the hair, many rolling coils covered the page, but only a single word described the feature.

  Brown.

  Upon the page, sketched from the terms that described her qualities, a portrait of Minerva mirrored her expression of disbelief.

  Minerva screamed, slammed the book closed, and then jumped from her seat to stand in the middle of the room. She scrutinized the book from afar while wielding the magnifying glass like a bludgeon. Another shriek leaped out of her when something outside abruptly clanged and creaked.

  Olbus opened the door. "With me," he demanded.

  For a moment, Minerva wasn't entirely certain if she should bring her new weapon with her or not, but decided to put it back on the table. She released it at arm's length, as far from the book as she could manage.

  On the deck of the Skyraker once more, Minerva found almost the entire crew milling about the scorched and blackened ship. The sails above flapped carelessly in the wind while the deck leaned back and forth. It was surprisingly serene considering the earlier chaos of the morning. In the center of the group, a long rope lay in a line along the length of the deck, wrapping back on itself several times. Lintumen sto
od at the far end with a thoughtful look, and Captain Glass stood next to him with a concerned expression. The crew split their attention between eyeing the rope, watching the captain, and throwing apprehensive glances her way.

  Olbus led Minerva down towards the captain with a solid grip on her shoulder. When she passed the other swabbies, none of them raised their faces. Luff and Leech looked her in the eye at least, but they seemed concerned.

  "Lintumen, please demonstrate your explanation," the captain said, as he turned towards the old man.

  "Of course, Captain," Lintumen replied, stroking his chin. "Minerva, take this," he added, reaching down to pick up the end of the rope. Several aging joints loudly protested his efforts.

  Minerva took the end of the rope when he held it out, expecting to have some great revelation take place at the same time, but it just felt like an ordinary rope. Lintumen then held took the captain's sword from the captain's scabbard without asking, holding it loosely. He placed his hand across Minerva's shoulders and moved her several paces back towards the middle of the rope, where he bent down and cut it.

  "Wait here," he said, and then walked back to his old position beside the captain, suspending the now shortened rope between the two of them. "Minerva, turn your back to me, keep your eyes towards the stern of the ship, and walk five paces."

  Given the thousands of terrible possibilities that had been running through her mind up until this point, that didn't seem so bad, she thought. As she strode, she felt the weight of the rope swaying behind her as Lintumen kept pace with his end.

  "Turn to face me."

  Minerva turned around to see Lintumen standing several steps forward, exactly as she expected, and together they returned to their starting positions.

  "Same thing, my dear. Five paces. No peeking."

  Again, she turned and paced five strides in the exact same fashion. It was no surprise to see Lintumen moved forward again at the end of her run, rope in hand.

  "Again," he said.

  Minerva developed the strange feeling that she was in a tug of war where only one side was participating.

  Five paces. Walk back.

  What was the point of this, her mind kept asking. If not for the fact that more than a hundred pairs of eyes were locked upon them both, she would have assumed that Lintumen was executing a bizarre prank with her playing the part of the fool. The situation appeared quite dire, however.

  Five paces. Walk back.

  Each time the same as the last. The same steps, the same sounds, the same interested look on Lintumen's face. The same concerned look on everyone else.

  Five paces. Walk back.

  Nothing changed. Ever. She questioned the validity of the act, as to her it appeared to be nothing more than the work of a charlatan.

  Five paces.

  Lintumen didn't call her to walk back, snapping Minerva out of her trance.

  The expressions of the crew had switched from concern to horror, and her stomach filled with an aching fear. Something important had just happened. Minerva looked over her shoulder to see Lintumen standing beside the captain, and he wasn't holding the rope, Captain Glass was. Neither of them had moved, and yet the rope was still in her hand, as though it had simply grown longer.

  Lintumen turned to the captain with a smug grin. "Burn this rope, and the other one," he explained.

  Captain Glass suddenly dropped the rope and wiped his hands on his coat. Lintumen slid over to Minerva, took the line from her hands and laid it on the deck, then turned to lead her back to the cabin. "Come along, my dear, we have much to talk about."

  Chapter 10

  Minerva the Magician

  With the door locked, and secure in his cell once more, Lintumen wore a very content expression. "Well, that occurred sooner than I suspected. Although if I'm honest, it's always too soon."

  "What was?" Minerva asked, revealing her panic in her voice.

  Lintumen didn't answer. He merely smiled and moved to sit behind the table, relocating the assorted items amid a drone of absentminded humming.

  "What just happened?" Minerva demanded.

  "Do you know what plummite is?"

  "No," she replied, easily distracted by his inquiry.

  "It's a rock, my dear."

  Minerva would have shouted something back in anger if she weren't so flustered that she couldn't even think straight. "So?" she asked.

  "Plummite is a very special sort of stone that doesn't fall down so much as it falls in a relative direction. It is a rock that defies expectation."

  "So, plummite can fall up?" she pondered, focusing on the nearest thought.

  Lintumen snapped his face into his unexpected smile. "Yes," he said, and then picked up a fist-sized rock from the table. Then he turned it over to reveal a red spot on the bottom and then let it go. Just like a falling stone, this fell from his grip, except that it sailed straight up into the ceiling, deflected off a beam and rocketed in the direction of its red spot. A cluttered shelf fell victim to the wayward vehicle's assault and was promptly smashed to pieces.

  Minerva ducked under the table as the stone blasted around the small space several times, cracking vials, vandalizing books, and generally making a mess. Lintumen laughed an awful, dry crackle before smacking the rock with a book, leaving it spinning in circles. He plucked the flying object out of the air with some effort to control its motion, and then set it back down on the table with a smile.

  "That's plummite?" Minerva asked, as she crawled out from under cover, wide-eyed.

  "No," said Lintumen.

  "I'm sorry?"

  "It's just a rock, my dear. Like any other that you would find laying in the dirt."

  "But then why did it fly about?"

  "I made it do that." Lintumen flipped the rock over and released it again. It didn't move. "Go on, take it. It's just a rock."

  "How did you make it move?" she asked, reaching for it.

  Turning it over in her hand, the rock did appear to be just an ordinary stone with a red dot on it. It felt cold and wet from whatever vial of acrid liquid it just smashed open. When she looked up at Lintumen, he wore a wicked sort of smile. It was the sort of smile employed by a trickster. One whose victim had just realized their foolhardy vulnerability. Immediately, the plummite jumped straight out of Minerva's hands.

  "Hit it in the air!" Lintumen yelled, dodging sideways as the stone bounced off the ceiling.

  Minerva snatched the first item off the table that she could reach and swung at the rock. The large and beautiful magnifying lens that she chose smashed across the plummeting stone, leaving the rock spinning in wide circles. Unfortunately, the glass that once formed the intricate lens fared much worse.

  "I'm sorry!" she pleaded in shock, as glass shards rained to the ground.

  Lintumen laughed boisterously and took the empty frame from her. He placed it lightly on the table and once again retrieved the bizarre stone.

  "Now, my dear, what do you believe is the case? Do you believe that this stone is plummite, and that I am somehow able to force its behavior to align with that of an ordinary rock, or do you believe that it is in fact an ordinary rock, and that I am somehow able to induce a behavior akin to the thing that I described as plummite?"

  Minerva really didn't know. "I don't know," she admitted. "Which is it?"

  "I don't know, either," he replied. "Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. What I do know is that you just participated in a very important test."

  "What test?"

  "To see if you're a magician."

  Minerva considered the implications of being a magician. As a label, it definitely wouldn't win her any friends. Most people considered magicians to be dangerous lunatics. In contrast, her parents had always been accepting of her, and it's not as if she currently had many friends. Her mind worked feverishly for a time before deciding how to proceed in the conversation.

  "Did I pass?" she asked.

  Lintumen looked at the scattered debris about the room, much of it
stained with various rainbow patterns from the now mixing vials. He casually picked up the rock that was maybe plummite and looked down at the red dot on its underside.

  "With flying colors," he said with a grin.

  "So, I can do magic?" she asked. "Like spells and curses?"

  Lintumen nodded enthusiastically.

  "Don't I need to know special words for that?"

  "Feel free to create some, if it helps."

  "I've heard that it involves a lot of rhyming and arm waving."

  "Gosh, I hope not. That sounds like an awful lot of work."

  "What about tools, like wands and cauldrons and potions and things?"

  "Oh sure, but who doesn't enjoy a fine cauldron or a sturdy stick for poking things?"

  "Give me an example," Minerva demanded, eyeing the old man suspiciously.

  "Well," Lintumen mused, thinking for a moment. "Do you know how this ship flies?"

  "Yes," she replied confidently. Minerva felt certain that Lintumen had an explanation that he wanted to give, but she was going to get her own reasoning out there first. "The riggers scrub the hammer sails, which are special sails made of spider silk. They must use a woolen broom, and that causes the sails to lift the ship up."

  "Do you know why scrubbing the sails does that?"

  "Because it infuses the cloth with a type of energy. It's the same thing as lightning, and the thing that makes your hair stand on end if you put on a woolly shirt on a dry day."

  Lintumen seemed to enjoy her answer, and left her time to enjoy it herself, but he didn't smile. "You're wrong."

  Minerva's elation deflated, but she stood defiant, ready to counter him.

  "You are correct in that there is, in fact, a type of energy in the world that lightning is made of, and that a woolen broom rubbed on cloth may create that energy, and that this energy may make your hair stand on end. You are also correct when you say that rubbing wool on the sail infuses it with this type of energy, and that the sails lift up as a result. However, the reason the sails lift up, the root reason, is because we believe that infusing them with the energy you describe will empower this ship with flight, so it does. However, without that belief, the sails are just cloth and the broom is just a broom."