I know an achingly beautiful man who runs from mirrors like they were a plague.
I know a girl who has an entire set of mirrors around her neck. She looks into them more often than she looks around, so the world for her exists in little upside-down fragments.
I know a blind person who sometimes freezes watchfully in front of his reflection.
And I remember a hamster attacking its own reflection with the fury of a berserker.
So don’t tell me there isn’t magic hidden in mirrors. It is there, even when you’re dead tired and not good for anything.
I stop detaching and catch the eyes of my reflection.
“Jeez,” I say. “What a monstrosity . . . At least put some clothes on, my friend.”
The monstrosity, naked, covered in scratches, eyes crazed with insomnia, looks back reproachfully. He’s got a Band-Aid over his right eyebrow, his left ear sticks out, flashing red, and dried-up blood covers his busted lip.
Chastised by the mute reproach, I turn away.
“All right. Sorry. You’re perfect. Just a bit out of sorts is all.”
I wiggle the bath towel from the hook onto my back and smooth it out over my shoulders with my teeth. Now draped in the fluffy white toga, I can emerge from the bathroom.
“There are people who live their lives as if running some kind of experiment,” Sightless One said about the recent events. Beats me why this desire to experiment takes over so many at once. With no breaks in between. Noble, then Black, and finally me. There’s a certain logic to it. Is this the way flu epidemics start? This virus of aggression and apprehension flies from one person to another, multiplying unstoppably. A dark period in the life of the pack, and one hard to snap out of.
I freeze, close my eyes, and try to identify it, this abomination that managed to sneak in from who knows where. To know its smell, corner it, return it back to where it belongs. But I feel nothing, apart from the two sleepless nights pressing down on my eyelids. Well, that and the smell of someone’s socks, apparently buried in the pile of boots and sneakers. The shoe cemetery needs to be dealt with at some point, before we start getting mice addicted to the toxic vapors.
I open the door. The room is empty and quiet, which makes it seem smaller than it is, even though it should be the other way around. But this is not how it works here. Considering that Humpback always brings trees with him wherever he goes; that Alexander is shadowed by an invisible choir belting out the “Lacrimosa”; that Noble is always in his ivy-walled castle and only puts down the drawbridge when he feels like it, while Jackal is capable of spawning another half-dozen of himself at any moment; and that it’s a blessing that at least Lary is not dragging the corridors inside when he walks in the door, and Tubby only does his magic when cooped up in his pen . . . Considering all that, it’s not surprising that our room, overflowing with all those different worlds, would seem smaller now than when we’re all in it.
I sit on the bed. I’m hungry, but I need sleep even more. I rest my forehead against the bars and switch off for a while. Until there’s a quiet rapping on the door and the swish of rubber tires.
It’s Smoker.
He’s glowing, renewed after visiting the Cage. He’s a nice guy, he doesn’t bring anything here except himself. And his nightmarish questions.
I give him a one-eyed birdlike look. The other eye can’t see from behind the hanging strip of Band-Aid.
“Hi!” he exclaims, but darkens immediately. “What happened here?”
I feel pangs of guilt. Those who are returned from the Cages should be met jubilantly. This is how it goes, ever since the times when nobody went there of their own accord. And I’m a tired scarecrow right now, incapable of performing the requisite rituals.
“Had a disagreement with Black. How are you doing? Everything all right?”
Plump, rose-cheeked Smoker, with those shiny bangs all the way down to his eyebrows. He passed the test of the Cage. Of course he’s all right, I can see it clearly, but I have to ask to make sure. Cages are not good places. Not the worst in the House, but still pretty bad. I’m glad Smoker didn’t have a reason to find that out. Even though being glad about it is not a good idea.
“Everything’s great,” he confirms. “It’s like I’ve been reborn! All thanks to Jackal.”
“I’m happy you feel that way.”
He wheels next to the bed and looks at me probingly.
“Why did you fight with Black?”
Meaning: how on Earth have you and Black managed to have a fight. Even though my expertise in that area is an undiscovered country for him, he finds it easier to imagine me fighting as compared to stolid, emotionless Black, which is the way he sees him. Also, he’s deathly afraid of hearing something along the lines of “You know, kid, we just had a certain difference of opinion” as the beginning and end of conversation. He’s afraid because that’s exactly the kind of explanation he usually gets, and it makes him depressed. It interferes with his need to feel grown up. He has all the reasons to be afraid right now. The temptation to get rid of him with a pair of meaningless sentences is overwhelming. The explanations will only invite more questions, and then eventually I will run out of answers. But Smoker is impossible to get rid of. He opens his palm and all of himself is right there on it, and he just hands that to you. You can’t throw away this naked soul, pretending like you don’t understand what it is you’ve been offered and why. That’s where his power comes from, out of this devastating openness. I’ve never met anyone like that before. I sigh and silently bid good-bye to the idea of getting some rest before the pack is back.
“You see . . . Noble decided to try Moon River. The effect of this stuff on the human consciousness is unpredictable to the extreme. Some just feel sick. Others start behaving strangely. There are those who experience absolute bliss. Which doesn’t look nice on the outside. I knew a guy who after a dose of River started talking in iambic pentameter. And then there was one who completely forgot how to talk . . .”
Smoker’s attention is so rapt that I’m barely in time to stop myself from expounding on all side effects of River I’ve had the opportunity to learn about.
“You get the idea. Drinking it makes you a human guinea pig.”
He nods. “I understand. It’s a drug. So what happened to Noble?”
I shoot a quick look to the wrinkled covers in the corner of the bed. The place where the dragon was sitting. Frozen. Lifeless.
“He went stiff. Turned to stone. Wouldn’t respond to anything. That’s not a particularly bad reaction, by the way. The important thing in those circumstances is to stand back and not interfere. Except someone needs to be nearby. Just in case.”
Smoker sighs with relief. He wasn’t here to look into the wide-open eyes of the live statue for five hours straight. Or to hear Lary’s whining and Jackal’s prophesies. There is nothing scary for him in what I’m saying.
I am trying to stick the damned Band-Aid back in its place by rubbing it against the bars of the headboard, but no such luck. Breakfast will be over soon. Time to wrap up the story.
“Black volunteered to stay with Noble over lunch. When we returned, Noble wasn’t here. This moron hauled him over to the Sepulcher. I’ve no idea if he lugged him all the way there himself or asked Spiders for help. But it doesn’t matter, really. That’s about it.”
Just as I expected, this is clearly far from “it” for Smoker. He looks so shocked that I begin to suspect that something must have filtered through from my side, something bad. I felt like I was talking without bringing any emotions into this, and anyway I am already far removed from the way I was yesterday, but some feelings are very hard to hold inside, they find a way out. My dislike of Black is one of those. As is his dislike of me, naturally. Smoker doesn’t need to be burdened with this, but I might be too late, at least on my own account. He’s already caught some of it.