Beyond the Reflection’s Edge (17 page)

“Birdsong piece?” Nathan squinted at the music, but it was too far away to read. “Can you hear it?”

She nodded. “Can’t you?”

“I can watch her fingers and imagine it, but I can’t hear anything.”

Tony rose slowly to his feet. “So that crazy museum guy was right after all! This mirror shows your thoughts.”

“Who was thinking about Francesca’s room?” Nathan asked.

“I was.” Francesca picked up her own violin. “I was thinking about going home.”

Nathan glanced between the two Francescas. Was the mirror now reflecting her thoughts? Maybe there was a way to make her wish come true, take her home and check on her mother’s safety. “Can you play the same piece?”

“I don’t have it memorized,” she said, raising her bow, “so I’ll be a step behind.” While watching her twin in the mirror, she played a series of short high notes, making her violin chirp like a songbird. The lovely melody filled the room with the bright sounds of an early spring morning.

Nathan marched to the lamp on his desk, ready to make the bulb flash on and off, but the music suddenly stopped. He swung back to Francesca. “What happened?”

She touched the mirror with a finger. “I heard a door slam and a loud popping sound. Then I hid under my bed, like I was scared of something.”

Nathan eyed his bed’s dust ruffle. What would happen if … No. It couldn’t happen … Could it? … He reached for the lamp’s switch. It was worth a try. With a few twists of his wrist, he turned the lamp on and off three times.

“What are you doing?” Kelly asked.

“An experiment.” He rushed to the bed, dropped to his knees, and looked underneath. Nothing. Nothing but his mother’s violin in its case and a few dust bunnies.

Rising to his feet, he looked back at the mirror. Once again it had reverted to a reflection of his room and everyone in it. Francesca stood next to Kelly who was still seated in the desk chair. Tony sat beside Clara on the bed, both staring at Nathan.

In the mirror, Tony propped his foot against the side of the trunk … the open trunk. “Well, if you ask me —”

“Everyone freeze!” Nathan raised his hand. “Don’t move a muscle!”

“Why?” Kelly asked. “What’s going on?”

Nathan stepped slowly backwards, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “Just look at the mirror. Watch me in the reflection.”

When he backed all the way to the trunk, his heels tapped the wood. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tony swing his head back toward the trunk. “Don’t look!” Nathan ordered. “It won’t stay open if you do!”

“But it’s not open,” he said. “How can it stay open?”

Kelly growled but kept her gaze locked on the mirror. “Just do what he says, Daddy!”

“Okay! Okay!” Tony crossed his arms and stared at the reflection. “Satisfied?”

“Perfect.” Nathan reached behind him and bent his knees, lowering his hands until they descended into the trunk. This
time, he had to stretch farther. If the sheets of music were still there, they would be flat at the bottom.

“Hey!” Tony bellowed, pointing at the mirror. “It’s open!”

Clara laid a palm on Tony’s cheek. “Don’t turn yet! Stay focused!”

Now almost completely squatting, Nathan sensed paper at his fingertips. He searched for the edges and gathered up the sheets before straightening his body. “Okay. It’s safe to look.”

As everyone turned toward him, Tony touched the top of the trunk. He quickly swiveled back to the mirror. The trunk in the reflection was now also closed. “How’d you do that?”

“I wish I knew.” Nathan leafed through the handwritten music compositions, pausing at a fairly complex piece several pages down. He played the notes in his mind through the first few measures. Humming them quietly, he aimed his gaze at Francesca. “This is really pretty. Did you write this, too?”

She pushed aside her dark locks, revealing flushed cheeks. “I wrote all of them, but I never showed them to anyone who knew how to read music.”

Nathan scanned the sheet again, now more analytically. Could the combinations of notes mean something? The letters, the key signature, the arrangement on the staff? What could it be? Could it all relate to Rosetta or Quattro somehow?

Nathan reached under the bed and pulled out his mother’s violin.

“An impromptu concert?” Clara asked.

“Sort of.” Standing again with bow to string, he smiled at Francesca. “Mind if I play one of your pieces?”

Holding up the thin stack of music, Francesca grinned. “Which one?”

“Choose your favorite.”

She paged through her collection and pulled out a sheet. “Can you read it?” she asked, holding it high enough for him to see. “It’s pretty messy.”

“I think so.” He leaned closer to the page. “I just want to test a theory.”

As he played, he glanced between the music and the mirror, watching for a change, but nothing obvious showed up. The melody, though simple and sweet at the beginning, grew in complexity calling for difficult fingering.

Clara strolled slowly toward the mirror, crossing her arms as she gazed into the room’s reflection. “Everything’s normal so far. The trunk’s still closed.”

Nathan kept his focus on the music. When he neared the end of the page, Francesca held up another, waiting for him to begin playing it before lowering the first sheet. “This is the end,” she said. “I’m still working on it.”

Following the girl’s scribbled notes, Nathan increased his volume from
piano
to
forte
and shifted through a series of arpeggios. As he stroked the strings, he tried to concentrate on the notes and, at the same time, on thoughts of his parents. Were they still alive? If so, where were they?

The lamp in the mirror dimmed, and the walls darkened. As he watched the new drama in the mirror, his legs shook. The music was doing its part. Now it was time for a flash of light, but maybe this time it should be something different. He used his foot to point at the desk drawer. Sight reading new, handwritten music was hard enough. Trying to talk at the same time was almost impossible. “Get the camera,” he grunted.

Clara rushed to the desk, pulled out the camera, and draped the strap around her neck. “What should I take a picture of?”

“Wait.” As the music reached a crescendo near the end of the page, the reflection undulated, like ripples on a pond. The bedroom faded to black. New dark images formed deep within — ghostly shadows in a haze.

In the mirror, a ray of light from somewhere to the side cast a glow over the scene, bringing clarity to the dim room. This time a spacious chamber materialized. The outer walls seemed
curved, as if cordoning off a circular floor. Two people skulked across polished tiles toward the source of light, a lamp on a desk in the far background. They passed a shadowed object at the center of the circle, something that looked like a bulky cylinder on a pedestal aimed toward the ceiling at an angle.

Returning to the beginning of the page and playing with all the passion he could muster, Nathan gawked at the image. It was exactly the same as one of the photos from Dad’s camera!

Wearing long trench coats with pulled-up collars and walking away from the front of the mirror, the two forms gave away few details, though the more curvaceous shape of the smaller person revealed her gender as she carried a violin case in her feminine hand. Near the top edge of the scene, copies of their hunched forms echoed their moves, but the copies walked upside-down, as if projected on the ceiling like an inverted movie.

When they reached the desk, they each took a seat in rolling swivel chairs. As they turned toward one another, their profiles came into view.

Clara raised a hand to her mouth. “Your parents!”

Nathan pulled the bow across the D string to play the final note and nodded at her, his voice rattling. “Take a shot of the mirror. Let’s see if we can go there.”

“Or bring them here,” she added as she sidestepped to the center of the room and focused the camera. When the ready light came on, she pressed the shutter button. The camera flashed. The mirror reflected the light and shot back a radiant bolt that sizzled into the flash attachment, ripping the entire unit from Clara’s hands. It fell to her chest and bounced back and forth at the end of the strap.

Nathan grabbed the camera, leaving it on Clara’s neck as he examined the casing. Everything looked okay. When he turned to the mirror, the image seemed to zoom in on his parents, sharply clarifying as it filled the glass with the upper half of
their bodies. At the desk, his father pecked at a laptop keyboard while his mother looked on.

Tucking the violin under his arm, Nathan laid his hand on the mirror. It remained hard, impenetrable. As he caressed the surface near his mother’s cheek, she turned toward him and sighed, her voice tired and plaintive. “I’ll try again, but it seems hopeless. I just don’t have enough power.”

Solomon made a final tap on the keyboard and swiveled her way. “We have to keep trying. We have to stop interfinity.”

“But if Nathan figures out how to use the Quattro camera and my violin, together we might —”

“It’s too late for that. We have to push forward.” He stood and reached for her hand. “The scope is in position. Give it all you’ve got. This might be our last chance.”

As a frenzied mix of sounds began to play from somewhere in the background, she took his hand and rose from her chair, still clutching the violin case. Hand in hand they walked to the middle of the chamber, and the mirror’s eye followed them, panning back as if held by a cameraman. When they stopped near the center of the circle, she withdrew the violin from its case and set it under her chin. As she hovered the bow over the strings, she looked up, but the mirror focused on her entranced eyes, not revealing what had engaged her attention above. Her pupils danced with chaotic colors that intermeshed with her brown irises, and a gentle smile graced her lips as if a long-loved memory had found its way home.

Then, with a sudden burst of strokes, she played a series of high eighth notes that seemed void of melody, but, with her gaze still trained on something high above, she soon transformed the musical chaos into consonance, creating a glorious rendition of her birdsong piece, much fuller and more vibrant than her younger self had so recently played.

After several seconds, the colors in her eyes dispersed, and the black pigment in her pupils transformed into brilliant white.
The whiteness expanded and emerged from her eyes, like twin lasers shooting into the twilight. As she played on, the lasers strengthened, becoming so bright, they washed her skin into a ghostly pallor.

Solomon circled behind her. “Do you see, Francesca? Have you found it?”

Nodding and breathing heavily, she increased to fortissimo, sending the loudest, most lovely notes yet into the upper reaches of the chamber. A bow hair broke away and flew wildly. Her fingers blurred. Her eyes blazed so bright, Solomon backed away and gasped, “Shekhinah!”

As a loud cracking sound blended into the musical flow, Nathan’s fingers began to sink into the image. The glass felt like cool jelly, becoming thinner every second.

Solomon’s voice again rose above the din. “Hang in there, Francesca! My darling, you can do it!”

Nathan pushed through up to his shoulder. “I’m going in,” he said, extending the violin toward Kelly. But just as she took it, his mother heaved a groan and crumpled to the floor. With a loud pop, her eyes flashed a ring of sizzling fire in all directions. The ring crashed against the mirror, sending Nathan flying backwards into a pair of strong arms.

Tony lifted him upright. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Nathan shook the mental cobwebs away and leaped back toward the mirror. He laid his hand on the surface, now rigid once again. Leaning his forehead against the glass, he bit his lip, trying not to lose control, but a tear forced its way out of each eye.

In the reflection, his father sat on the floor cradling his mother. “What did you see?”

With her eyes still emanating a faint glow, she replied in a dreamlike whisper. “I stood at the edge of the chasm and gazed down into an endless void. A shimmering golden rope was fastened around a rocky projection at my feet. As taut as
the strings on my violin, it seemed to span the celestial wound, but I couldn’t be sure since it disappeared in the darkness. I plucked it. It produced a perfect tone, an E, loud and lovely and shook the ground upon which I stood, so much so, that I could no longer bear to stand. As I lowered my body to sit, I noticed three other golden ropes, so when the shaking ceased, I plucked the others and found that they played the A, D, and G notes. I tried to play the song, running as quickly as I could between the strings, but after only two measures, I became too weary to keep the timing.” She blew out a long breath and shook her head. “I don’t think I can try again, not without Nathan to help me.”

He joined her sigh. “Then I guess there’s no hope.”

Shifting upward in his arms, she gazed at him hopefully. “He’ll find the email —”

“It won’t be enough. I thought he’d come with us, so I didn’t put much information in it. He won’t figure out the best way to find us.”

“There’s still the girl, the interpreter.” She turned her gaze back to the ceiling. “And there’s always his supplicant.”

He tilted his head upward. “And Patar, but will he help or hinder? We’d be better off shoving that vision stalker and his brother back through the hole they came from and plugging it with a cosmic cork. Patar would tell Nathan the right thing to do, but he’s likely to scare him away.”

She took his chin in her hand and turned his head, setting his eyes directly in front of hers. “Our son will not be frightened. He will choose wisely. He has the same warrior spirit I saw in you when you were his age.”

His countenance turned grim. “If Mictar gets wind that Nathan is punching through dimensional walls, he’ll follow the trail and find us. Even a portal view might expose our whereabouts.”

Nathan pulled back from the mirror. “A portal view!” As
soon as his skin left the surface, his mother swiveled her head to the side.

“I hear footsteps!” she said.

His father lifted her to her feet. “Let’s go!” The scene darkened, then slowly illuminated again, growing brighter and brighter as the objects in the bedroom reappeared.