Mirror Mirror

Chapter 15

“So, you never did say what happened to your eyes.”  Jarrod had let his thoughts slip out of his mouth again, and his face grew red with embarrassment.  Stephen wondered if he was looking for trouble, or just plain down stupid.  It didn’t even have anything to do with this! 

The old woman cackled.  “No, I did not.  I could not take it after she had her soul put into the frame, so I dug them out.  I had to, to find you.  It was something I needed to do for the last spell I cast, to make sure her efforts were not in vain.  She needs two pairs of eyes from where she is.  Of course I can still see, though.  Who needs eyes anyway in my line of work?”

“What about the key?  She mentioned something about the one that holds the key.”  Stephen had to know who held the key.

“Ah ... yes ... the key.  The key to Sarah’s heart - the one with the pure heart will come.  He’ll come to turn the key.”

“Turn the key?  How?  I don’t have the key!”  Stephen was confused.  He didn’t love Sarah that way-He couldn’t be the key.

Her cane lifted, pointing toward Jarrod. 

Jarrod!  Jarrod was the key!  How could he have missed it!  How could it even be possible? 

“No way man!”  Jarrod said shakily, looking over his shoulder stupidly, knowing, that no one was standing there, but hoping with all his heart that some one was.   “I’m no key!  I’m just a bloody hacker!  First you tell me to break in-now you’re asking me to open doors?  C’Mon ... Can’t you get someone else?”

Jarrod was scared, and although he was trying really hard to mask it, he couldn’t.  His grey eyes were pleading.

It was Stephen who finally decided to put some sense into him.  “Jarrod, think about it.  You and I, we’re here, together ... It was probably why you agreed so easily-fate; I think it had something to do with it.  I think that maybe I had to turn you-you were very skeptical, remember?”

“Yeah, maybe ... but I am not in love with Sarah.  I can’t be, right?-It doesn’t make sense-She doesn’t even know I exist.”

“Emily can see the things we cannot.  She would have never brought you here if she had the slightest of doubts.”  Esmerelda broke in.

‘Doubt yourself and all will be lost.’  Stephen remembered the writing in the box.  He placed a comforting hand on Jarrod’s back. 

Jarrod shrugged him off.  He was too tired, too confused, and he had seen too much tonight.  Stephen tried again, “Hey, Jarrod?”  He spoke gently, trying to make him understand- “You remember what Emily wrote, don’t you?” 

Jarrod nodded quietly.

“She said that if we had doubts, we could lose everyone that’s inside, maybe even Sarah.”

He waited for his words to settle.

“What do you propose we do?”  He asked after a few moments.  He sounded serious.  Stephen and Esmerelda waited for his next move. 

He looked at them suddenly, his mind made up.  Stephen held out his hand gratefully, Jarrod grasped it in his-and Esmerelda covered their hands with hers. 

“Let’s go back.  The tale is told.  The rest is now up to you two.”  With that, she raised her cane and mumbled something ... and then they spiraling and twisting out of control, until they were back at The Water’s Edge once more, with an old woman who had no eyes.  And when the cool wind blew refreshingly at them, they knew it was not a dream, that everything she had shown them was real, very, very, real, and only they could set it right.