at the Mirror, I managed to get down from Sybelia myself, mostly by falling off. Poppy dismounted with a graceful slide. Berron patted the horse’s neck, whispered something in her ear, and Sybelia took off in the direction of the Fortress, leaving the three of us alone.
The trees of the Forest of Emeralds towered over us, yet their branches drooped as if exhausted.
I sympathized. No matter how much energy I gained from magic, watching Daniel disappear through the field of flowers had taken it out of me. We had gone in as a matched set of four: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed. We were going out as three.
Our set was broken. Was it wrong to take it personally?
Wherever Daniel had ended up, I had to find him. It was the only way I would get to yell at him until he promised to never do anything that stupid again.
The Mirror reflected everything distorted, from my dark hair streaked with gray, to my purple outfit, to my Doc Martens. “I’ll go first,” I said. We made a chain by holding hands; first me, then Poppy, then Berron.
I stepped through the wavy silver glass—
And fell.
I barely had time to cry out before I landed on a stone floor. I turned my head just in time to see Poppy falling through the Mirror behind me. I scrambled. “Watch out for Berron,” I called. The floor was cold, so cold. I pressed my hands against the stone and pushed myself up.
This was the room in the New-York Historical Society, the museum where we’d come through the Mirror in the first place.
Wasn’t it?
Except…
The room was black and white. Everything was black and white. The Mirror, black and white. All color drained. The room had been plain before, save for the Mirror, but it was plain beige and cream and brown, not this. In contrast to our surroundings, Poppy and I were a riot of color.
Poppy stood up slowly and brushed herself off. She turned, taking in the view of the entire room. “Has anyone else’s vision turned into a black-and-white movie? Grayscale? Whatever you call it?”
Berron got to his feet and took a startled step backwards. “What in the world—”
“Don’t say that,” I interrupted, getting up. “Say, ‘Zelda, I know exactly what’s going on.’”
“I sure as hell don’t,” he said.
I went to the door that opened into the New-York Historical Society hallway, threw it open.
The hallway was silent. Also colorless.
I ran to the end of the hallway, toward the public area. Found an entrance to the exhibit halls. Slammed into the push bar so hard the door ricocheted off the wall. I had to hold up a hand to stop it from rebounding on me.
Not a single person in sight. Only Tiffany lamps, the famous exhibit hall filled with them. I’d been there before, more than once, to be hypnotized by their glowing rainbow colors. Stained glass flowers and fruit and dragonflies in every jeweled tone. They stood where they always had, except they weren’t rainbow-colored anymore. The vivid glass was every shade of gray—and that’s when I realized the second thing wrong.
They weren’t lit.
Nothing was on. No lights. The illumination was coming from everywhere and nowhere, cold and whitish, like it was being filtered through a cloud.
It took a moment of standing there to realize the last thing bothering me.
There was no stink. Not even a background hint of it.
New York smells. Exhaust, river water, the Papaya King on the next block, the sweat of a million people crawling through concrete canyons. It’s not pretty. It’s a growling, belching, breathing thing that rolls and clings and follows you. But when it’s not there—
You notice.
“Zelda!” Berron called.
I turned. The door swung closed behind me with a noise like a slammed refrigerator. I stalked down the hallway to where Berron had stuck his head out of the room with the Mirror. “What is this?” I said. “Where are we? Why is there no color? Why is there light everywhere even though the lights don’t work?” I was breathing hard. I tried to slow down. “You travel between worlds like you’re commuting on the subway. You’re supposed to know these things.”
He shook his head.
I made an exasperated noise. “This isn’t where we came from. Something’s wrong. And where’s Daniel?”
“We’ll find him—”
“Don’t comfort me.” I pushed past him. “We’re going back through.”
“No, we’re not.” Maddeningly calm.
Something about the way he said it made me pause. My hands balled into fists, tightened until I could feel the crescent of each nail in my palms. “Why?”
“Because there’s something wrong with the Mirror,” he said.
Of course there was.
Poppy was already peering at it up close. “Look,” she said.
I looked.
Where I had been able to see my reflection before, now I couldn’t. What had happened to the glass? I moved closer. Why did it look like the frozen surface of an ocean? I held out my hand, almost close enough to touch the glass, but not quite.
Cold.
The surface of the Mirror was covered with a thick layer of ice. Like it had been laid down with a very specialized Zamboni machine.
“Poppy, can you melt it?”
Poppy shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “My magic won’t work. I can’t see your thoughts anymore, either.” She lifted her hand in a movement I’d seen many times, the one where she conjured a flame on her palm.
Nothing happened.
I shot Berron a look. “We better not be trapped here. I owe Jester his special nighttime snuggle and snack.” I tried to say it lightly. I don’t think it worked.
I looked around for a chair or a stanchion. “I’m going to smash it.”
“No!” Berron said. “If you break it, we could really be stuck.”
Stuck. He wasn’t kidding. Poppy looked grave, too, and somehow that was worse.
I faced the iced Mirror again. Wrapped my arms around myself and shivered. It’s all fun and games until you’re trapped in another world with no food and you can’t get home to your miniature poodle. What I wouldn’t have done to be in a warm kitchen, standing over a stove, turning hamburgers.
With that thought, the small, slumbering fire mouse rolled over in my mind, sharing a dream of hot griddles and flames. “Patty Melt,” I whispered.
“Pardon?” said Berron.
I waved him to silence with the feeling that I held an ember, oh-so-delicate, that might be blown out by the wrong word, the wrong thought. Wherever my mysterious little mouse hid, she hadn’t been snuffed out by the dampening effect this place had on magic. I laid my hands carefully on the Mirror frame before sliding them onto the ice.
“Help me,” I said to Poppy and Berron. “I think I can melt it.”
“How?” Berron said. He moved closer, and the warmth helped relieve the chill from the ice.
“Fire magic doesn’t work here…” Poppy began. Then her face lit up. “Except yours works differently, doesn’t it? You just need more power,” she finished, laying her hand on my left shoulder as if she had read my mind, which she couldn’t. She just knew.
Berron’s face looked skeptical, but his hand curled over my right shoulder. I felt every fingertip.
Maybe their magic couldn’t emerge here. There was no trace of it, visually. But it still existed—they carried it within. I knew that as instinctively as I felt the fire mouse’s presence. So I opened myself to the magic again, let it work its way from their grip into my muscles like a deep-tissue massage. Poppy’s magic, all silver fire; Berron’s, green and gold vines.
Together their magics twisted into a green and gold vine with leaves of silver flame. It grew through me and began to spiral up my neck.
It tickled.
A tiny laugh escaped before I could stop it.
“Are you giggling?” Berron asked.
“Shut up. I don’t giggle.”
Poppy snorted. “She does, though.”
“Thanks a lot, Poppy,” I said.
“Friends to the end!” she chirped.
I held my hands over the iced Mirror. The numbing cold sharpened. I brought my palms together, cupped them, prayer-like, the outer edges of my hands pressed directly against the ice while my palms created a little igloo.
I let the vine reach into my mind. Poke the sleeping fire mouse.
Patty’s whiskers twitched. She opened glowing ball bearing eyes. Her tail flicked back and forth. Then she delicately seized one of the fire leaves—
And stuffed it in her mouth.
She ate it.
Her cheeks bulged. She ate another. And another.
Following the vine.
All of this was going on in my head, as real as Jester’s floppy ears, as real as Berron and Poppy’s hands on my shoulders. Now all I had to do was guide the greedy little gal to the ice.
So I guided the magic vine into my fingers.
Patty Melt followed, curious and still hungry, nibbling more leaves on the way, tracing a path of intense heat down my left arm and wrist. Slowly, a glow rose from my cupped hands like a flashlight was pressed against my palms, shining through skin with an orange-pink radiance.
I pictured the vine growing in circles in my cupped hand, an all-you-can-eat magic buffet for a fire mouse with the munchies.
Some of us are conduits. We don’t always choose it. My grandmother had been one. I’d fought or ignored it all my life until coming to Manhattan. Now I opened myself up to channel it all. To find Daniel. To get us out of here, wherever here was. To use a skill for the sake of others is the highest calling, whether that skill is building the West Side’s greatest sandwiches or bringing the magic of fire and fae into your soul and making something new out of it.
This one’s for you, Grandma.
A single drop of water gathered and rolled from beneath my hands.
Drip.
Then another. Drip.
And finally it began to stream down in little rivulets, pattering against the toes of my Doc Martens.
“The Mirror weeps,” Berron said, with relief. He rested his head on top of the hand on my shoulder. Locks of his hair tumbled against my own.
Poppy added her free hand bracingly to my bicep.
It was hard to tell who was holding up whom. Poppy’s solid grip didn’t bother me. Berron’s could have been distracting, to the point where I might have shaken him off in other circumstances.
I didn’t.
Water dripped faster. I felt it on the toes of my boots, a steady spring melt. I heard a faint plink under my hands.
“It’s cracking,” Poppy whispered. “Keep going.”
Berron took a deep breath, in and out, his head heavy.
A fresh surge of magic took me then. Heat rose through me along with something I could think of only as greenness—rising sap, flowing life itself. Spring thaw.
I channeled all of it to my tiny, radiant friend.
The musical plinks, drip drip drip, became an off-rhythm xylophone. The drips became a stream. A flood. I had to shift my hands almost to the edge of the Mirror to keep from falling through.
And then, the true surface of the Mirror was revealed again.
I released a breath with an almost disbelieving laugh. Berron and Poppy did the same.
“You did it!” Poppy said. “Well done, you.”
“Well done, us,” I said, clapping them both on the back. “Now let’s get out of here before anything else happens.”
“Agreed,” Berron said, landing a brief kiss on my cheek. “Lead on, my Zelda.”
And for once, I didn’t correct him.
I just grabbed his hand and Poppy’s, and took us through.