The Mirror Games

CHAPTER SIX

There were just too many things to learn about that place, and too little time.

Ari tried many times to teach me the geography of the Mirror Realm, but it was no use; I couldn't even remember the names written the right way, let alone backwards. Aunt Genevieve was always there, trying to give me new pieces of advice every time, to ease the task, but I couldn't write them down in my head. I was nervous; time was running thin, and I wasn't ready, I couldn't remember any names, nor I could read an entire passage on mirrored writing without making any mistakes.

«What am I supposed to do?» I yelled over and over again during those last three days. My hands shook so hard, even raking my fingers through my hair was almost impossible.

«Relax, Alexis. You need to remain calm, it isn't useful if you start losing your nerve.»

«How am I supposed to remain calm, Aunt? I can't remember anything, I can't read without making mistakes, I can't point at places in the map without making a huge mess of it! I can't do anything right! How am I supposed to win this thing? Even yesterday's lesson with Tom was a huge failure!»

The constantly-returning memories from the day before were the worst torture and nightmare ever.

Uncle Thomas was in his mid thirties, and he'd been a young man at the service of science when he'd found himself in the Mirror Realm and lost his Games. Like Uncle Lewis, he'd found himself inside the mirror by trying to save his eldest sister, Catherine. He'd won his Games, but he'd tried to save her until the end, when an unfortunate bargain had kept him inside. His promising career had been destroyed by lazy Mot; his documents thrown in the fire along with any hope for him to be recognized by the scientific society of his time. Their youngest brother and sister, Henry and Joan, had joined the Church. If it hadn't been for their brother Matthew the family would have ended right there.

In his days outside the mirror, Thomas Benjamin Ashmore had been an amateur physicist, studying all the theories and laws Newton, Copernicus and Galileo had found. In the Mirror Realm, Uncle Thomas had become a physicist himself, and had made small discoveries regarding the laws of physics inside the mirror. The possibility of telling his discoveries to new members of our family was his favorite part of the Games. The rest of the family was tired of hearing him speak, so they often shushed him.

«There are so many things you need to learn, Alex. May I call you Alex?»

«You can't call her Alex, Tom. It's a boy's name», chastised him his sister, Catherine. They shared the same caramel-colored hair, but while he was slender and nondescript, she was curvy and had the beauty of an angel. I remembered my own reflection in the mirror before I got there, and thought that I hadn't been that lucky.

He looked from his sister to me, the excitement dissipating in his eyes. «Oh, I guess you're right...»

«Alex is fine», I chuckled. «Granny calls me that.»

He smiled broadly again, and he resumed his monologue.

The reading and writing weren't the only particular things about this world. Some laws of physics weren't the same, either.

«You have, for example, the laws of gravitation. Newton said that all elements were attracted to each other with a force... the details are not really necessary. They are attracted to each other, that's what matters. In the Original world, objects are attracted to the core of the Earth, which is under our feet, so everything goes down. In a mirror image, down can be up, and up can be down, so you can walk upside down, or even on the walls, and be attached to almost any surface as if it were the floor you walk on. Same thing with objects. You can throw objects to vertical surfaces, or just up towards a horizontal surface above you, and they will remain attached to it, as if they'd fallen.»