Mirror Souls
2022 Words
POV: Mina
The scrub brush fell from my hands and clattered against the wet floor.
I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything except stare at the boy outside the window who was staring back at me with my own eyes.
Silver-grey. Exactly like mine. Set in a face that looked like someone had taken my reflection and changed it just slightly. Made it male. Made it cleaner, better fed, dressed in expensive clothes instead of rags.
But the same. Fundamentally, impossibly the same.
My hand flew to my chest where that terrible pulling sensation had been living for the past week. The one that had been driving me crazy, making it impossible to sleep or eat or think about anything except this desperate need to find something I'd lost.
And now here he was. The thing I'd been searching for without knowing what I was searching for.
The pain in my chest suddenly exploded into something else. Recognition. Understanding. A feeling so overwhelming I thought I might pass out from the intensity of it.
I knew him.
I'd never seen him before in my life, but I knew him the way I knew my own heartbeat. The way I knew the rhythm of my own breathing.
This boy was part of me.
The memories hit me without warning.
Not memories from my eight years of life scrubbing floors and hiding from bullies. Older memories. Deeper memories that shouldn't exist but did anyway.
Being wrapped in something soft and silver. Feeling warm and safe and complete. Another heartbeat beside mine, perfectly synchronized. Two halves of one whole, never meant to be separated.
The woman who'd found me by the river. She'd told me stories sometimes, before she got too sick to talk much. Stories about the night she found me. A baby in a torn basket, wrapped in silver cloth covered in strange symbols. Not breathing. Nearly dead.
She'd never mentioned another baby. Another basket.
But looking at this boy through the window, I suddenly understood with absolute certainty that there had been two of us. That we'd been together once. That we'd been torn apart.
And that pulling sensation in my chest, the one that had been torturing me for days, was him. Calling to me. His soul recognizing mine across the distance that separated us.
I remembered being happy before. Before the woman got sick. Before I started working for the headmaster who treated me like property instead of a person. Before I learned what it meant to be hungry and scared and alone.
The woman had loved me. Fed me when she barely had food for herself. Protected me from her violent mate who would have killed me if he'd found us. Taught me to read by tracing letters in the dirt since I couldn't speak to learn out loud.
She'd died three months ago, and I'd been alone ever since. Working myself to exhaustion for a man who saw me as free labor. Sleeping in a storage closet. Eating scraps. Being invisible.
But I'd felt alone for longer than three months, I realized now. I'd felt alone my entire life, even when the woman was alive and loving me.
Because half of me had been missing.
And that half was staring at me through the window right now.
I blinked, and suddenly I was back in the present moment. The boy was moving, climbing down from the tree branch with surprising grace. He landed lightly on the ground and started walking toward the school building.
Toward me.
My heart started racing so fast I thought it might explode. Part of me wanted to run to him. Part of me wanted to run away and hide. Part of me wanted to scream even though I hadn't made a sound since the day I was born.
I watched him disappear from view as he reached the ground level of the building. Then I heard it. Footsteps in the hallway outside this classroom. Coming closer.
He'd gotten inside somehow. And he was coming to find me.
I stood up on shaking legs, my hands twisting in my ragged dress. The door to the classroom opened slowly, and there he was. Standing in the doorway, backlit by the dim hallway lights, staring at me like I was the answer to every question he'd ever had.
We stood there frozen, just looking at each other. Same height, I noticed. Exactly the same height even though he looked well-fed and I was too thin. Same silver-grey eyes. Same dark hair, though his was neatly cut and mine was a tangled mess. Same face structure. Same everything.
Like looking in a mirror that showed me what I could have been if my life had been different.
He took a step toward me. Then another. Moving slowly, carefully, like he was approaching a wild animal that might bolt.
I didn't move. Couldn't move. My feet felt rooted to the floor.
When he was close enough to touch, he stopped. We were maybe two feet apart, close enough that I could see my own shock reflected in his eyes. Close enough that I could see his chest rising and falling rapidly with breath that matched mine.
Without speaking, because neither of us could speak, we both slowly raised our hands.
His right hand. My left hand.
Moving toward each other like magnets being pulled together by a force neither of us controlled.
The moment our palms touched, the world exploded.
A flash of memory hit me so hard I would have fallen if the boy hadn't grabbed my other hand to steady me.
Water. Cold and violent, trying to drown me. Being wrapped in silver cloth that glowed with dying magic. Another baby beside me, our hands clasped together as we tumbled through rapids.
A woman's face. Beautiful and desperate and filled with love. Pressing kisses to two tiny foreheads. Whispering words I couldn't hear but felt in my bones.
"Find each other. When the moon calls, you will rise together."
The basket splitting apart with a sound like breaking bone. Two halves spinning away from each other. My hand losing grip of small fingers that matched my own. The desperate, silent scream of being torn away from the only thing that made me complete.
Then nothing. Darkness. Cold. Being alone for the first time in my entire existence.
The memory faded, and I was back in the classroom, staring at the boy who was staring back at me with the same shock in his eyes.
He'd seen it too. I knew he had. The same memory had hit both of us the second our skin touched.
We were twins. Brother and sister. Two halves of one soul that had been violently separated as babies.
And now, after eight years apart, we'd finally found each other again.
Tears started streaming down my face before I could stop them. I hadn't cried in years. Not when the woman died. Not when the headmaster beat me for working too slowly. Not when the other children in the slums threw rocks at me and called me cursed.
But I was crying now. Silent tears that fell hot and fast down my cheeks.
The boy's face crumpled with emotion. He looked like he wanted to cry too, but no tears came. Just that same expression of overwhelming feeling that I was sure was mirrored on my own face.
He squeezed my hands tighter, and I squeezed back.
We stood there in the dim classroom, holding hands and crying silently, while something that had been broken inside both of us started slowly knitting back together.
"Girl! Where are you?"
The headmaster's voice echoed from upstairs, harsh and angry. My blood turned to ice.
He wasn't supposed to be here tonight. He'd said he was going out, that I'd have the whole building to myself to clean. But I could hear his heavy footsteps on the floor above us, could hear him opening doors and slamming them shut.
Looking for me.
If he found me with this boy, there would be questions I couldn't answer. Punishment I couldn't avoid. He might throw me out entirely, leave me with nowhere to sleep and no way to survive.
Or worse, he might hurt the boy. Accuse him of trespassing. Call the pack guards to take him away.
I couldn't let that happen. Not when I'd just found him. Not when touching him made me feel whole for the first time in my life.
The boy's eyes had gone wide with alarm. He'd heard the voice too, understood the danger even without me explaining. His hand tightened around mine, and I saw a question in his silver-grey eyes.
Run or hide?
I made the decision in a split second. I grabbed his hand properly and pulled him toward the corner of the classroom where I'd hidden so many times before when the headmaster was in one of his rages.
There was a crawlspace behind the supply cabinet. Small. Dark. Barely big enough for one person, let alone two.
But it would have to work.
I squeezed behind the cabinet and into the narrow opening, pulling the boy behind me. He followed without hesitation, trusting me completely even though we'd only just met.
The space was so tight we had to press against each other to fit. I could feel his heart racing against my shoulder, could feel his breath on my hair. Our hands were still clasped together between us, neither of us willing to let go.
Above us, I heard the headmaster's footsteps getting closer.
"I know you're here somewhere, you useless brat," he shouted. "You left the bucket and brush in the middle of the floor. Do you think I'm paying you to make messes instead of clean them?"
He wasn't paying me at all, but I didn't correct him. Couldn't correct him even if I wanted to.
The boy's other hand came up and covered my mouth gently, his eyes telling me to stay quiet. As if I could do anything else.
We waited in the darkness, pressed together in our hiding spot, while the headmaster's footsteps moved through the classroom. I heard him kick something, probably my abandoned scrub brush. Heard him curse viciously.
"Come out right now, or I'll make you regret being born," he snarled.
The boy's hand tightened over my mouth, and I felt anger radiating off him in waves. His whole body had gone tense, like he wanted to jump out and confront the man who was threatening me.
I shook my head slightly, warning him to stay still. This wasn't his fight. He didn't understand what the headmaster was capable of.
Long minutes passed while the headmaster searched the room. At one point he stood right in front of the supply cabinet, so close I could hear his ragged breathing. I held my breath and pressed back harder against the wall, praying he wouldn't think to look behind the cabinet.
Finally, mercifully, his footsteps retreated. "You can't hide forever," he called out. "I'll find you eventually, and when I do, you'll pay for wasting my time."
His footsteps faded as he left the classroom. I heard him climbing the stairs back to his office on the fourth floor.
We stayed frozen in our hiding spot for several more minutes, making sure he was really gone. Only when I was certain did I finally allow myself to relax slightly.
The boy's hand slowly moved away from my mouth. In the darkness of our cramped hiding space, I couldn't see his face clearly. But I could feel him. Feel the warmth of his body pressed against mine. Feel our hearts beating in perfect synchronization.
Feel, for the first time in my eight years of life, like I wasn't alone anymore.
His hand found mine again in the darkness, and he squeezed gently.
We'd found each other. Against all odds, despite being separated for eight years, despite living in completely different worlds, we'd found each other.
And I knew, with absolute certainty, that I was never letting him go again.
- Writer
