Mirror Mirror

•4•

Boscherville, France, 1845

She was beautiful, the woman I met that year in a little French village just outside of Rouen. She was tired and aged, but she was still beautiful, far more so than my own mother.

Mother . . .

That night Erik had left I was run out of the gypsy fair by my own mother. She had greedily snatched up the gold he had given her and threw me out, stating I had been purchased for far more than a usual bride's price and to go find my husband.

And then they laughed. All of them laughed at the bizarre couple, the Living Corpse and the Demon Girl.

For two years I wandered through Spain and France, hoping that I would find Erik in his home country.

Ha! Even now I laugh at my own childishness! I, a lone girl not yet even thirteen, searching all of France and Spain for a singular boy!

But this boy- I learned- had quite the reputation.

Every time I asked in my choppy French for a skeletal boy who wore a mask and preformed magic, I was pointed in the direction of some traveling fair or what have you. But being without a horse, I never made it in time to see the shows.

Eventually the responses of praise and wonder I received turned into those of disgust and contempt as I neared a quaint little village in France. Boscherville, they called it.

The first thing I saw of the place was the cathedral, it's spires and windows gleaming beautifully in the rays of the setting sun. The music emanating from within its bowls was absolutely gorgeous, and almost familiar in a way. I simply had to go in for the evening mass.

I sat in a lone pew in the very back of the church and closed my eyes, just listening to that gorgeous music. It only struck me as all the churchgoers stood that this was one of the very songs that Erik sang to me in the tent those two long years ago in Verdu.

The thoughts put me at ease, and even though the pew was cold, the church was wonderfully warm with the heat of hundreds of bodies gathered together. I found myself dozing off before I could stop myself.

~

A hand gently shook at my shoulder, dragging me into consciousness.

"Are you alright, my child?" A deep voice called out to me in French. I looked up to see the priest that had led the ceremony standing over me with concern written across his leathery face.

I gasped and sat up, hardly noticing that the church was now empty. "¡Padre! Por favor, Padre. Tell me please, what was that song? The one that went; Angus Dei . . . misere nobis . . . Oh, I can't remember the rest."

The priest looked surprised at my use of languages, but answered anyway. "It was Angus Dei."

I gasped again and stood upon my knees on the pew to clasp his hands in mine. "¡Si! Yes, that is it! Oh Erik used to sing that so beautifully even without the music . . . Say, do you know of a boy as thin as death? He wears a mask- a white mask- everywhere he goes. Oh please Padre, I've been searching for him for so long."

The priest's suntanned face suddenly drained of all color and his hands grew cold as ice. "You are searching for Erik?" He breathed, old eyes wide. I nodded with a grin and his bewilderment seemed to grow. "Erik Destler? Why . . . Why are you searching for him?"