The Wicked Stepbrother and Other Stories

Mirrors-1

MirrorsSometimes I forget how to say my name.

I haven’t said it out loud in such a long time I don’t know if I could make the sounds. That was part of the witch’s curse. I am able to speak as a human but that word I cannot say. The witch who cursed me was very specific.

Douglas’ family had come to him for help. They wanted a ritual of revenge performed to extract punishment for what I had done to Douglas. They paid well for it.

I can’t forget Douglas and nor can I forget how much I hurt him.

I had no choice. Douglas wanted me to love him, for us to be a couple, to stop the lies, the sneaking around. We could go north, he said, leave Joria, go to Lothia. The new Lothi king had changed the laws. I couldn’t; I was to be married to the banker’s daughter.

I had no choice. I said that so many times. But the repetition didn’t make it true.

* * * *

I couldn’t sleep the night before the wedding breakfast, the first event of a traditional three-day Jorian wedding: meals, receptions, and teas for different sets of relations and guests (all important people, my parents assured me), dances, the evening lawn party of the first night, the lanterns in the trees, glowing candles on the fences—all ending with the ball before the wedding, and the wedding the next morning. Nothing was spared for the heir of House Goriel and to put to rest the talk of just what he really was. Twenty-four and not even engaged, my mother had said. People were talking, asking questions.

I rang the after-hours bell at the door of the infirmary and apothecary for the Goriel family compound. I waited in the tiny garden in the warm of the summer night, the air heavy with the fragrance of the blooming purple vines that grew up and over and around the stone walls of the house infirmary. The house greenwitch’s apartment was in the back. I rang the bell again, feeling guilty I was waking up Donnan just for a sleep potion. But I had to be up and alert before sunrise.

A woman, her hair an orange flame, opened the door.

“Donnan had a family matter. He asked me to cover for him. We trained together, I live nearby. Come in.”

Yawning, I quickly explained why I’d come. She nodded, went back into the apothecary, and a few minutes later, she handed me a warm mug. She watched as I drank. I felt sleepy and weak even before I could give the mug back. I stared at her, shaking my head, this was happening way too fast.

“Something’s wrong,” I gasped and fell into her arms, the mug hitting the floor, breaking. It was a sound muffled, dim, far away. She helped me to a nearby patient bed and I fell again.

She looked down on me and I could see her face shift, body parts change shape, realign, her orange hair darker and shorter. He laughed at the look on my face. “Douglas Allum killed himself for the love of you, a love you denied. His parents wanted revenge and they came to me.” He touched me and my body grew heavier and I could barely move. I could only watch as he tied me to the bedposts with the thinnest of ropes, gossamer threads.

Oh, Douglas, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t worth it.

“Douglas sent you a letter, which you didn’t read. He waited for you at his father’s shop. You didn’t come and his heart, already broken, shattered. He loved you. He went home and hung himself in the family stable. His parents read his journal and they hired me. I would have come to you, if you hadn’t come here.”

She was no greenwitch. He was a shadow witch, or worse, and I had burned the letter unread. I knew there was no point. I couldn’t change what was going to happen. My parents had demanded I marry. I tried desperately to explain but what words I had blurred, stumbled, fell, and were lost.

“But you could have changed things. You could have chosen love. You could’ve chosen to be brave instead of being the good son. But House Goriel needs a male heir, never mind your little sisters. Sorry won’t bring Douglas back or ease his parents’ grief. You want to say something?” He touched my lips and I felt my words untangle. I stared, watching the witch flicker, he to she, she to he, again and again.

“I never meant to hurt him. I knew I couldn’t be with him—I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry…”

She dismissed my protests with a disdainful wave of her hand. “You don’t know how to love anyone, not even yourself. You’re a coward.”

“I am to be married,” I whispered as I struggled against the ropes. I gave up; struggling only bound me tighter. “I love Mary Catherine McCulbreth; I really do.”

“I’ve watched you. You’re not in love with the banker’s daughter. Your father needs her money.” He shook his head and sighed. “There, I have fulfilled that part of the contract: the listing of faults, the assigning of blame. But now, I am free to speak, even if there is more required of me, more the parents paid for.” She sat down on the bed next to me and very gently stroked my hair. “You did not kill Douglas. He was troubled before you were lovers, he was fragile, he was not well. And for his parents to take revenge on you is wrong. Douglas’ death is not your fault and what his parents chose to do, in their grief, in their desire to transfer blame and guilt—none of this is fair. But I was paid, I signed a contract in silver.”

“I couldn’t be with him, I couldn’t love him,” I said, my voice barely audible.

“Your parents.” The witch shook his head in disgust. “They seek power and you and your sisters are but obedient little beasts. I see these wounds in you.”

She stood. “Now, by the contract, you must be cursed. A beast, yes. Douglas accused you of being a beast, so did his parents. As for your parents, you are their beast. But I will be as fair as I can. After all, I know how your parents raised you, how they treated you. Perhaps you can be redeemed.”

Then he cursed me.

* * * *

Now I am in this house, with mirrors in every room.

The witch explained it all to me as I stood there in a drawing room, filled with armchairs and love seats, a long couch, old oil lamps, polished tables, thick carpets, in deep reds and browns. Outside one window, a green sky. The opposite window, a blue sky, a flower garden, a thick forest.

I felt heavy as I listened. My feet sank into the carpet. The shadow witch showed me why. She took me to the nearest mirror and ordered me to look. I would be compelled to look every day and, if I tried to hide, the mirrors would find me.

I saw my face and screamed.

If I denied love, then I would live without it, and without people. If a boy killed himself because I denied love, then it would be as if I had died. If I behaved like a beast, if my lover accused me of it, if his parents did the same, then I would be one. After all, in my heart, I believed all that to be true. But the shadow witch had said she would be as fair as a contract bound in silver would let him. There would be a way out.

I could not tell anyone of the curse or how to break it.

“Until you love as you are, and are loved as you are, you will be the monster you see in the mirror. You will be alone in this house, a house meant for those who happen to cross over when the walls between worlds are thin. The wayfarers and the lost will come to the door. If the curse stands strong, they will go on their way, and the ones who care for this house in-between will help them go back or go on. But you will not see the caretakers, nor will you be able to touch them.”

“In-between?” I finally said, my voice different, deeper, and clumsier. “I’m not in Joria?”

“You forget your history. The makeshift fleet of your ancestors came out of a mist like that.” He pointed to the green. She pointed toward the blue. “That way is the world you know, the world to which the fleet came. This house is in-between, which, young lordling, is where you have lived your life.”

Many times over the years I thought of what the witch had told me when she left me in the house in-between. Much later, I remembered the stories my grandmother had told me, stories I had dismissed, stories of the rare green wind and the strange things it carried. Sometimes, she had told me, it whispered the sounds of foreign tongues.

* * * *

That was long ago. I tried to keep track. I marked off the days that became weeks that became months and then, years. After a year or two or five, I gave up.

I read. I wrote in the leather-bound journals I found in the library. I read and reread the history I had forgotten. I learned how to care for the gardens, flower and vegetable, and for the orchard as well. I grew to love gardening, but at first, I worked only in the dirt because of the respite from the mirrors. When I was in the house, I closed my eyes and tried to find my way as if I were a blind man. I stumbled, fell, and got up to touch glass again and again.

There was no way I could keep my eyes closed forever.

So, I looked into a mirror and saw myself again as what I was now: a monster, a beast.

I tried to touch the helpers, the invisible ones. I burned my hand. I tried to touch the cows and the chickens, the barn cats, the goats. I couldn’t. Only the horse, once a week. The invisible ones milked the cows and goats. These were their jobs and they would remind me of this in the faintest of whispers, the touch of cold air on my face. And sometimes, in ghostly letters on the nearest mirror.

It took me a long time to fully understand this house and its hill and its gardens and orchard, the greenhouse, and what I could and could not do in this prison, to which the shadow witch sentenced me, all part of the revenge contract paid for by Douglas’ parents.

I’m sorry, Douglas. I’m sorry that I wasn’t brave.

At times—many times—I was sure I was insane.

* * * *

After I don’t know how long, I had visitors. Not many and not often, and they all seemed lost and far from their intended path. The first, an old man and his grandson. Their wagon broke. I watched from the window in my bedroom as the invisible ones tried to help them. They ran, screaming.

Some of them wore extremely peculiar clothing.

They were all men. That was part of the curse.

This was how it went, most of the time.

If they came up through the garden, on the bluestone path to the house, I went down to the door. The first time a man came to the door, I didn’t want anyone to see me as I was. I wouldn’t move. The invisible ones came and dragged me to face the door. They opened it and I was revealed.

The man standing there stared at me, then screamed and ran. I will never forget the look on his face, a look I saw again and again.

But one morning, things were different.

I woke up to fluttering, the flickering of the candles, and rain against the window. The invisible ones were most upset. I grabbed my kilt and cape and stomped down the stairs to the dining room. Everything was as it had been for every morning since the shadow witch had cursed me and I had found myself in this house. Breakfast was on the table. Steam wafted up from the mug of tea. I saw myself in the mirror that had just appeared on the wall facing where I was to sit. But the invisible ones couldn’t be still. They chittered and chirped and I could feel the rush of air as they flew up and down and around the dining room over and over.

I finally yelled at them. “You do this every time someone comes. Please! Enough!”

They didn’t answer, of course. The outer bell rang, a loud clanging. Another lost man. I spread butter on toast, grabbed the tea and went into the entry way to wait. I sat in an old armchair and ate and drank as the invisible ones zoomed back and forth and up and down all the faster, as they always did. It was like having a flock of crazed birds in the house.

The middle bell clanged. The visitor was in the garden. I imagined the man up to his ankles in shaggy grass. Time to let the cows and goats out to graze.