In the Mirror: A Short Story

In the Mirror

They said it was magical.

They said it was dangerous.

An ordinary-looking mirror, it was tall and fitted at its middle to an upright frame so that it could be tilted. A cheval it was called. The glass was old, clouded in some places, streaked in others. The most marvelous carvings of plants and animals adorned the dark mahogany cradling the glass. Peeking out from behind bits of foliage were glimpses of what were surely people. They had very human-looking eyes.

It had stood for years in his father's office. Even after all this time Ethan remembered his juvenile fascination with the figures. He would trace them with one stubby forefinger, only half aware of the the pungent scent of his father's pipe smoke and the clackety-clack of the old Underwood typewriter. Sometimes he imagined he saw things in the mirror: landscapes, usually, but once in a while he caught sight of a something or a someone.

"Come away from there, son," his father would say around the pipe clamped between his teeth, and more often than not he would devise a reason for Ethan to be otherwise engaged. "Would you mind asking your mother to bring me another cup of coffee?" he would ask, or "Has the mail arrived yet?"

When he was very small, distracting him was not particularly difficult, but then he learned to ask why.

"It's not safe for you to play around," came the reply.

"But why, Daddy?"

"Because you are a little boy, and the mirror is very special."

"Why?"

A tender, tolerant smile touched the older man's mouth. "Because it is magic," he said gently and seriously. "Magical things are rare and often tricky. They must be treated very carefully."

When Ethan got a little older and a little more devious, his father began locking the door to his office on those occasions he went out, which wasn't often. A writer, he worked at home and could be found bent over the old typewriter at any and all hours of the day. When Ethan was about twelve or thirteen years old, he snuck inside the office a few times, but the mirror was just a mirror and didn't produce any of the wonderful images he'd thought he'd once seen. It certainly didn't do anything that might be interpreted as dangerous.

So the years passed... Ethan's father continued to write; he won a few discreet awards for his talent but never became rich or famous, and Ethan's mother got a job in a beauty parlor to help pay the bills. Ethan grew up and, more by accident than by plan, he too took up a profession in the writing industry. Sometimes when he was plodding through the details of copy-editing he would find himself thinking about his father and wondering what it would be like to find one of his manuscripts in the stack on his desk.

Father had disappeared one day–just up and vanished. The police investigated, of course, and more news coverage than he'd ever received when he'd been–well, one didn't want to say 'alive,' because that presumed he was now dead. Which he might be, but who knew? His office had been tidied before his exit from their lives, his business affairs set in order, and a very strange letter addressed to Ethan had been taped to the frame of the old mirror.

"It is old. It could be dangerous if you are not careful. I would tell you to proceed with caution, but caution got you where you are today. Proceed with life, my son, and perhaps we will meet again on the other side. I finished my latest project. It is for you. Read it.

Love, your father..."

The project was another story, a book, and the subject was the mirror. It was without a doubt the best thing Ethan's father had ever written, full of magic and secrets, battles among the faeries and a fanciful twist about how these wars affected the daily lives of innocent and ignorant humans. Ethan loved it. He cried when he'd finished it, not because the end was particularly emotional or moving, but because it had ended. There should be more to it. Surely there was more.