But a stranger lived in the reflection of the mirror.
A ghost. A shadow. A face that didn’t belong to me.
I touched my fingers to my cold cheek and ran them down the length of my jaw.
My expression was like one of my drawings, and I tried to feel what it was like to smile, to frown, to make the same faces I’d seen in my twenty-four years, but I was nothing more than a fraud whose life force was slowly slipping away.
Was it because of the infection or something else?
In Circe’s eyes, smile, and emotions, she was entirely connected with herself. She was so easy, honest, and certain of who she was. She was able to express herself in all the ways she desired. She could embrace herself rather than hide, and she could hide, too, if that was what she wanted. She had her whole life to draw whatever picture she wanted others to see and had done these things as if it had become second nature.
Without the grain sack covering my face, I was afraid to admit that I did not recognize the man staring back at me. I did not know who this stranger was.
My breath achingly held as I stumbled into the bedroom for a bedsheet to cover the mirror. But I didn’t make it far.
A pale dash of movement appeared in the dark corner of the room.
I didn’t turn my head to see what it could be. Not right away. I kept my head forward, believing it was an apparition created by my mind from restlessness, hunger, or infection. But then soft, desolate whispers slipped from the corner, filling my ears.
A white figure stepped out of the shadow-clad corner near the bedroom door.
It took the shape of a woman.
In a billowing white dress that hid her feet, and long blonde hair floating above her waist, she kept her head down so I couldn’t see her face.
As I leaned my shoulder into the bathroom doorway, my heart pounded and my hand curled around the door frame. My lungs ached as though there was no air left in them, but cold air blew between my lips with every shudder, reminding me I was breathing.
Upon turning my head completely, I caught the tail end of her as she slipped past me, causing fear and grief to climb my spine. With it, a shiver swept up the nape of my neck. As though she had brushed her fingers across it.
The sad, eerie whisper slithered in her wake as she stopped at the spiral staircase.
She turned her head just enough for me to catch her profile.
Its transparent shape possessed intense and determined eyes as it stared at me. Ones that held me tightly, watching me, waiting for me to act. However, as the temperature in the room began to drop, I was frozen to the ground, encased in its grasp.
“Mother?”
She wasn’t a memory but in this very room with me.
She wanted me to follow her.
I complied, and the floor was soft and unsteady beneath me as I climbed the lighthouse stairs. My movements were not my own, robotically following the cusps of white around every turn, every dash. My footfalls were hollow, an echo in the night, dancing with Mother’s gentle whispers.
The last few minutes were stolen from me once I found myself standing at the top of the lighthouse, the pain from my wound seizing my breath, shooting to my limbs, crawling and squeezing around my bones like ivy would do. I stood in the watch room surrounded by glass windows that overlooked the Atlantic, my gaze spinning about for her.
The door slammed shut behind me.
There was a book on the windowsill, surrounded by candles melted down to the wick. The book was caked with dust, the pages swollen, preventing it from closing entirely. This was when the air hissed. A raspy, unsettling sound.
It wanted me to take it.
Mother brought me here to show me something.
But I couldn’t move. The uncontrollable tremble in my muscles kept me stuck here. Every movement felt like it cost the little air left in my lungs, the pain taking half my breath away. My joints were stiff from the cold, and when I reached out to grab it, my fingertips shook when they grazed the leather corners.
When my hand curled around the book, I brought it to my chest and slid down the window until my bottom met the floor.
I swiped dust from the cover, revealing a delicate design imprinted into the leather—a tree emblem of sorts. The slight touch sent flashes of Mother spinning in my mind:with the full moon shining behind her, Celia screamed out to Mother, her name echoing throughout the hollow staircase as she scribbled angrily into the journal beside the windowsill.These flashes stuck in my mind, coming through like lightning would cut through the sky.
