City of Night

Across the city another girl, in another world, walked down her upstairs hallway, wishing she were blind. Sandy Banks didn’t usually have this reaction to hallways, but what lay at the end of this particular hallway caused a vague, sick feeling to grow in the pit of her stomach as her shoes sunk soundlessly into the soft beige carpet at the top of the stairs. It wasn’t anything too horrible. It was a normal thing for a house to have, really. She certainly knew that her mother hadn’t thought anything of it when she hung it there a few years ago to brighten up the space. It was really nothing too terrible at all; it was only a mirror.

Each night, as she ascended the stairs and began the long walk to her bedroom door at the end of the hall, it was Sandy’s greatest fear.

Sometimes she took the long walk with her eyes closed, but once she had tripped and twisted her ankle, and it had been difficult to explain to her mother. Sometimes she looked to the side, counting the doors down until three, her door and the her escape from the mirror’s unforgiving silver shine, but tonight she was exhausted, and had no energy for such games. She had been up late studying, and later still watching the news. She was alone; her mother had been called to the hospital for an emergency and wouldn’t be back for hours. Ten people were badly burned; one news show was already calling it a witch attack, while another cited it as a warning against the dangers of unrestricted magic use.

Usually even if she looked into the mirror all the way to her room she could make it to bed without crying for too long, but that night she felt brave. Brave and angry. She stared boldly at the thing at the end of the hall, as if the reflection in the mirror was just some ghost that followed her, something that could be braved, fought, chased away. She started at her shoes. They were the easiest. Black patent leather Mary Jane shoes, they were just like everybody else’s shoes. Then there were the legs that rose out of them, covered by opaque white tights, leading up to a grey pleated skirt, conservatively cut below the knee. Once she got passed that, though, the problems started. There were no problems with the white blouse and grey cardigan sweater than completed her school uniform. Everyone else had one just the same. It was the glimpses of her arms that caused trouble. Even at a glance, something was not quite right. Blue spider-web veins spread out, just a little too visible, across skin that was curiously similar in color to her white tights.

At that point she was at the end of the hallway and she couldn’t stop, even though she wanted to. She looked up, looked the alien thing in the mirror straight in the eyes, and took it all in. The thing had skin like a ghost’s. Barely a hint of color in its cheeks, its lips. Its eyes were wide, too big for the narrow face they dominated, and an orange color that nearly glowed against the white skin, even hidden behind black-framed glasses. Its face was framed by limp, grandmother-white hair that hung straight to its shoulders. Its face. Her face. Its face. It had been a long time since Sandy had looked in the mirror and seen anything but an it.

She stood that way for a long time, standing very still until her hands curled to fists and her whole body started to shake just a little. She blinked, and watched the thing in the mirror blink back at her. She watched it again, and again, and again, not moving except for the slowly building shaking in her limbs, and her blue-veined eyelids moving up and down. Her hands clenched tighter and tighter, but she didn’t feel it when her fingernails broke the skin of her palms. All her energy, everything she had, was focused on the thing in the mirror and how, no matter what she did, not matter how she tried, she could never make it go away.

She brought a fist up into the mirror. The shattered glass hit the floor in a cascade of broken music. Silently, she turned and walked into her bedroom, closing the door behind. She pulled off her uniform and replaced it with a nightgown. A little bit of the blood from her hands stained the one of the sleeves of her sweater as she pulled it off. Pulling back her comforter, she crawled into bed, and as she drifted off to sleep, she did not cry. She did not cry.

The next morning Sandy woke suddenly, as if she had never slept. The last pink remnants of the sunrise glowed around the edges of her window. She padded downstairs in her bare feet to retrieve a broom and dustpan from the kitchen, and then back up to clean the broken glass off the floor. Her alarm rang just as she was finishing, and she ran into her room to turn it off before it woke her mother. She hoped her mother had been too tired to notice the glass whenever she had finally come home.

She showered and dressed for school, just like she did every morning. Just like everyone did. Back downstairs to the kitchen, and this time the heels of her shoes clicked rhythmically against the linoleum floor. She pulled the lunch she’d packed the previous night out of the refrigerator and slipped it into her backpack. When she closed the front door behind her, she made sure to do it quietly as her mother slept upstairs.

Walking down the sidewalk to the corner where the bus would be picking her up any moment, she thought briefly of the fire the previous night. The house she and her mother shared was in a nice neighborhood, but close to the border that separated the Sorcerers’ city from the parts that had been left over to the Witches. She wondered if it was safe, really, being out alone this early.

A sudden glare of the bright morning sun chased the thoughts away, as she squinted her eyes uncomfortably. Most of her classmates would probably be happy for such a nice day. Sandy had never been much for sunny days. They burned.

Chapter One, Part Three