Beyond The Mirror

Chapter 2

By the time they arrived at the house, darkness had completely settled in. And the rain had stopped and a wind was rattling the branches of the trees. "Here we are," Ben said, and a moment later, as the motor came to a halt, the front door opened and a beautiful young woman with a slender figure appeared. She was wearing a long, white gown and her red hair which hung in a sheet down her back stirred in the breeze as she moved. "Aaaargh!" the woman exclaimed excitedly as she saw them descended the vehicle. She bounced down the front steps with her arms extended in greeting." Mare is that you? Why, you've grown so big." "Aunt Flora." Mareth said as the woman wrapped her arm around her torso. "Are you hungry?" she asked, releasing the the child from her embrace."I've made the best soup ever. I'm certain you'd like it," and she hurried her towards the house leaving Ben to bring the cases. "I'll help you, uncle Ben," Mareth said, turning at the doorway and going back to where he was struggling with all the three cases at the same time. "Thanks." Taking one of the cases Mareth went into the house and Ben followed her in and closed the front door. The sitting room was stuffed with well-crafted antique furnitures. There was an inside stairs which rose from the end of the room to a landing with five different rooms. One was Ben and Flora's bedroom, a second was the nursery. While one of the three had been prepared for Mareth. The room was painted yellow ,with yellow curtain at the small window, and matching bedspread on the single bed. The floors had new rugs on them and there was a reading lamp on the bedside table. All the designs and colors matched perfectly and Mareth smiled at this fantastic combination. Mareth sat on the edge of her bed, she felt her palm on the soft mattress. She loved the texture. She put more pressure and watched as her hand sank into the mattress. She could not help but smile. Her mattress back in Bristol was not as soft as this, she thought, and her room was not as beautiful or as colorful as this. Mareth stood up and dragged one of her cases from the corner of the room to the bedside table. She crouched down before the case and opened it. Inside was filled with clothes. She meant to change before supper. "Hey, kiddie!" she heard Ben calling up the staircase from the sitting room below."Supper." Mareth closed the case, she got to her feet and headed for the door. The table was laid in the kitchen, a large room situated across the sitting room. It had a long table with three wooden-backed chairs on each side. Six feet across the table was the counter with electric stove and a sink. Under it was a dresser, its shelves crowded with crockery and cupboards for the pots and pans. The original wood-burning contraption was dominated one corner of the room. Flora still used it, when the spirit moved her to bake. In the wall behind the counter, a long, low window looked out into the dark night. "So Mare, do you like your room?" Flora asked taking a mug from the shelf and crossing to the sink. She rinsed the mug thoroughly and poured herself some tea. "It's so my taste," Mareth replied, blowing on a spoonful of hot soup. "Here I was thinking it wasn't good enough." Flora said as she came to the table. She sat with her eyes on Mareth, watching the child fortifying herself with a couple of sips of the hot tomato soup. Flora smiled at the sight of it. "I'm glad you're here with us Mare." she smiled. "And I'm certain Lilian would be too." Then there was a swift silence as Flora drank from her mug. "If I may ask aunt Flora, how did your grandmother die?" This question knocked Flora off guard and she almost choked. She glanced at Ben sitting across the table and chewing on a piece of croissant. "It's...uh...an illness." she answered. "What kind of illness?" Flora glanced at Ben again, as if willing him to say something. "Was it a tumor?" "No," Ben answered before Flora could. "Nephropathy." "What's that?" Mareth frowned, a sign that she was confused. "It's a kidney disease," Ben explained. Ben knew Flora does not really like to talk much about her grandmother ever since she died, so when he looked at her, he was expecting to see her sad or cross, but instead she was beaming at Mareth across the table with her hands wrapped around her tea mug. As soon as supper was finished, Mareth took a quick shower and donned her white gown. She switched off the light and as she parted the curtain at the window, thin moonlight filled the room with an eerie white haze. She knelt down by the window and looked out into the night. Clouds moved fast across an almost full moon which shone down from somewhere so near above her. As she gazed up at the moon, a movement on the other end of the street, part which was just visible to her, attracted her attention. Craning forward Mareth could see a dark figure more like a vague shadow. Although she could not see the figure's face but she could tell that it wore a cloak, a black cloak perhaps, as it stirred in the night air. Then, just before her eyes, the figure sprang up and, now in a form of what seemed like a bird, it stretched its wings and floated away swiftly on the moonlit air out of her sight.