THANKFULLY, THE PASSAGE MIRIAM NEEDED was short and easily copied. The book was back on the shelf not a day after she’d removed it, and as far as she could tell, Jane had never missed it.
A few days later Miriam looked for it again, just to see. The book was gone, so clearly Jane had ended up wanting it—but Jane seemed intent on doing whatever she would do without ever whispering a word about it to Miriam.
She wasn’t whispering any words about it at all, come to think of it. Jane had a habit of always muttering to herself about her work, and sometimes going so far as to ask Miriam’s opinion or her mother’s advice to work through difficult concepts. But not anymore.
It made Miriam wonder just what Jane was up to these days—beyond speaking with her father. Was her friend truly preoccupied with work in the wake of her Test? Perhaps something the Société would frown upon?
Miriam wished they could talk about it, but that was impossible. Intimacy required balance, and she couldn’t tell Jane about any of her own plans.
That’s why Miriam was alone when she took it upon herself to trek to Hawkshead on the next fine day—specifically to the forge at the Red Lion. She was glad when no one batted an eye when she mentioned it; her out-of-doors experiments with a duck, worms, and most recently a fish had made it less remarkable when she made the announcement that she needed some air.
“I think I might go all the way to Tarn Hows,” she said, a lie that was an excellent excuse for being gone as long as she would be. The lake was quite a ways off, so Miriam tucked an apple in her pocket for verisimilitude. “There’s not a cloud in the sky, but the good weather won’t hold for more than a day or two this time of year.” Her voice felt strained and uneasy to her ears, but Nancy didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s quite cold,” said Nancy. “Are you sure?”
“I can always turn around.”
“Just make sure to bundle up.”
Jane’s only reaction was to look away when Miriam caught her staring with that curious but also suspicious expression in her eyes.
Miriam had many reasons to wish the silence between her and Jane wasn’t so oppressive, but that day her concern came admittedly from a vain and selfish source: she would have liked to ask Jane to do her hair the same way as she had the day of Edith’s arrival. She settled for tying back her waves with the bright blue ribbon Jane had used, consoling herself that any further change would likely make it too obvious that she had an interest beyond the professional in talking to Sam.
The kiss of sunlight upon Miriam’s face was warm and welcome, but the wind was still wintery, and the damp was not the sort that encouraged things to grow. She set out across the field toward Tarn Hows, but once she was out of sight of the farmhouse, she doubled back to intersect with the road to Hawkshead, also avoiding their gossipy neighbor, Mrs. Fielding. Whenever a car or cart passed her by, Miriam pulled up her hood, worried a neighbor would remark to Nancy if she was seen walking alone into the village that day, but it was a risk she had to take.
From Modern Mirror Methods, Miriam had learned that a “magic mirror” like the Basque Lens in the Library was not silvered glass set in a frame—it was a series of layered armamentaria that mimicked a mirror’s reflective surface. Miriam had been disappointed but unsurprised to find that she could not simply go into town to buy herself a mirror. She’d have to get one specially made and ensure various dried and powdered diabolic substances were forged into the metal.
Good thing she knew a blacksmith . . .
Miriam cut around the edge of town to come at the forge on the bias. Lost in her thoughts, she shrieked when she almost ran into Sam as he pushed a wheelbarrow around the side of the building.
“Why, Miriam!” he exclaimed. “What did you want to do that for?”
“Do wh-what for?” she stammered.
“Scare me like that!”
Miriam blushed, to her horror. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Hmm,” said Sam. He seemed skeptical—but he was just teasing. “What are you doing, then, if you’re not trying to scare me?”
“I—I need something made, at the forge I mean, but it was such a fine day I walked around and—”
It occurred to Miriam that she’d never spoken this much with Sam ever, and definitely never alone, as they were now. It was thrilling—not just because she was talking with the handsomest boy she’d ever seen in her life, with his fawn-colored hair and his soft beard that had just started to really come in; it was also a welcome respite from thinking only about her project or the simmering tensions of the old farmhouse.
Sam smiled at her kindly, and though beforehand she’d been shivering from her walk, now she felt warm.
“Is that so? Let me load up this wood, and you can come inside and tell me all about it.”
“Want help?”
“With the wood?” Sam grinned. “Surely these logs are too heavy for you.”
“No, they’re not!”
“Pssht. How could you pick up anything with those scrawny arms!”
Outraged, Miriam set to helping him load up his wheelbarrow with split logs, their breath puffing in the thin sunlight.
When they’d finished, Sam surveyed their effort with a critical eye. “Not bad,” he said. “I’m impressed.”
Miriam realized he’d been teasing her again, and she stuck out her tongue.
Sam stuck his own tongue out at her, and she giggled. “Come on, let’s warm up with a cup of tea. Tell me what you need so badly that you came into town on a cold day like today to get it.”
“I need a mirror,” said Miriam, as they entered the forge. It was blessedly warmer in there. She liked the smell, too, of hot things—metal and wood, warm sawdust and water.
“A mirror?” Sam shook his head as he began to unload the wood. “That I can’t make for you. You have to have a special kind of glass.”
“Oh, I have the glass,” lied Miriam, wishing she’d come up with some other way to describe what she needed. She didn’t need a mirror per se, just something slightly concave, with a handle. “It’s the frame that broke.”
“Odd,” said Sam. “Usually it’s the opposite.”
“It was a very old frame,” said Miriam hastily. “Anyway, the glass is a circle, six inches around, and it’s about a quarter of an inch thick, so I’d need a rim around the edge that deep.”
“Did you bring the glass with you?”
“No, I didn’t want to take it out of the house.”
Sam nodded. “I wish I could see it myself though. It was six inches exactly?”
“Exactly,” said Miriam. This was a lot harder than she’d anticipated. “I measured it across in several places.”
“You always struck me as a careful sort,” said Sam. He wiped his brow now that they’d finished up. “You know I can’t really do anything too fancy, right?”
“It doesn’t need to be fancy, just functional.”
“Ah, so it’s for you!” he crowed, as if in triumph. “I’ve been puzzling over whether you wanted it for yourself or as a gift for Jane. At first I thought it must be for Jane, as of the two of you, I’d say she’s the one to spend her time staring into a looking glass, but she’d also want something finer than I could make her.”
It felt bad, being compared to Jane and judged the sloppier, even if it was true.
“I mostly make horseshoes, you know,” said Sam after a moment. “But if you really don’t care how the piece would look—”
“I don’t!”
“Then I’ll do it.”
“Good.” Now came the hard part. Miriam took the bag of powder out of her pocket and set it on the table. “I need you to put this into the, ah, hot—molten—metal you’ll use.”
“What is it?”
Miriam had forgotten to come up with an excuse, but Sam took her pause as embarrassment.
“It’s not my business,” he said. “It might weaken or discolor the metal is all.”
“That’s okay,” said Miriam. She was certain it would not, but of course she didn’t tell him that.
“I’ll make sure it gets in there,” Sam said. He picked up the bag and hefted it in his palm. “All of it?”
Miriam nodded.
Task completed, body warmed, Miriam had no need to tarry longer—but she also had no idea how to take her leave of Sam. She was saved by the return of his father.
Mr. Nibley was not much like his son—their hair was of a color, but he was a stern man with big muscles and a big beard and a big frown. He came in through the door clearly expecting to find his son at work, not sitting and talking with a girl.
“Where are we at with those nails, son?” he asked.
“Very nearly finished,” said Sam, after tucking the bag into his apron pocket. He was flushed, but whether it was from embarrassment over not being done with his work, or his father’s failure to greet their guest, Miriam could not say.
“We’ll settle up later,” said Sam, as he showed her out. “I’ll get it done as quick as I can, I promise.”
“I’m sorry if I got you in trouble,” she whispered, as she stepped outside.
He winked at her. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be all right.” And after rolling his eyes back toward where his father waited, he shut the door.
Miriam turned away, but she paused when she heard a raised voice from within—Sam’s father. The window of the forge was cracked to let in a little fresh air, and from that sliver of space she heard exactly what Mr. Nibley said so loudly:
“If you’re going to trifle with the local girls in my place of business, I’d prefer if it wasn’t with the village Jew.”
The village Jew.
How stupid of her, to think that she could ever truly escape the prejudice that had brought her here to begin with. She’d mistaken her neighbors’ silence on the obviousness of her identity as a lack of interest in it; now she knew that it was quite the reverse. They had just been too polite to mention their true sentiments toward Nancy Blackwood’s ward.
She stumbled as she took a step back. When her foot came down not on the stoop but empty air, she yelped. When she recovered, through the window she saw Sam’s face. He was mortified to see her still there.
Upset for a number of reasons, Miriam took off at a brisk pace toward her home, heedless of who might see her, her shoes squelching in the muddy ruts she was in too much of a hurry to avoid. She did not slow her pace until she was well beyond Hawkshead; her lungs, too full of cold air, screamed silently at her to consider them.
She knew there was no reason to be terrified, but still she was. If they came—they would not come—but if they did, if they asked questions . . . If the Nazis won, she would be taken away, or killed right there in her own home—and Nancy and Jane too, for harboring her. Collapsing against a fence post, Miriam wheezed and choked as she recovered her breath.
“Miriam!”
Sam was flushed from rapid walking—and from anger, too, given his expression.
“He’s an old fool,” said Sam. “I’m sorry you heard that. Most people don’t care.”
Then he did something incredible, he took one of her hands in his and raised it to his lips.
“I certainly don’t care,” he said.
“Oh,” she gasped, confused to feel so good after feeling so afraid. She gasped again when he took her in his arms and kissed her—not on the hand this time.
“Miriam,” he said softly, fondly. “I always thought I saw you looking at me, but until today I didn’t know for sure if you really fancied me.”
“I didn’t say I did . . .”
“You didn’t have to. I know what I saw.”
“I have to go,” said Miriam, her heart a wild and feral creature desperate to escape the cage of her ribs. “My aunt is expecting me.”
“Go,” said Sam, and kissed her a final time. Miriam tore herself away from him, cutting overland so that she would come back to the farmhouse from the right direction, but before she’d gotten far, she turned back and waved at him.
“Hey!” she called. “I still want the mirror! It wasn’t a ruse!”
“Of course!” he cried back to her, and she took off running again, but this time because she was happier than she could ever remember being in all of her life.