Nora pushed aside the bedclothes and tried to swing her legs onto the floor. At least she could clean up part of the mess she had made. She was surprised by how weak she felt, how hard the floor was.
“Stop that this instant.” It was the magician, or whatever he was. For an instant she wondered seriously whether he might have materialized out of thin air. But no, the door was closing behind him.
“I was going to clean it up.”
He came closer to the bed on uneven steps. “Very considerate. After throwing a bowl of soup at my housekeeper, you decide to tidy up.”
“I didn’t throw it on purpose. It was a mistake.”
“I see. Was throwing the spoon a mistake, too?”
From her perch on the edge of the mattress, Nora had to tilt her head back to look Aruendiel in the face, but she refused to be intimidated. “I meant to do that.”
“That’s how you like to amuse yourself, is it? Breaking things? Abusing my housekeeper?”
“Is she all right?”
“She is not injured, no thanks to you. She is not accustomed to having her veracity or her sanity questioned, however. Personally, I would never dream of doing so. I have known few people in my life to be as completely reasonable and truthful as Mrs. Toristel.”
“Well, what she was saying didn’t make sense. I want to know what’s going on. I want to see a real doctor, and I want to call my friends and my parents. Or am I a prisoner here?”
“You’re no prisoner,” he said irritably. “The sooner your family and friends can take you off my hands, the better. Where are they?”
“My mother lives near Richmond. My father is in New Jersey.”
The magician looked even more annoyed. “Are those cities south of the Middle Lakes?”
“They’re in the United States of America,” Nora snapped. “You’ve never heard of that, either, I suppose. Well, either you and Mrs. Toristel are lying to me—or you’re crazy—or I am.”
“Given your behavior—”
“—and I’m not crazy,” Nora said. “I know I’m not.
“Ah, so that was your logic.” Aruendiel raised an eyebrow.
“You see how it broke?” She pointed at the damaged picture. “It’s made of glass.”
“How do you know it was not painted on glass?”
“Oh,” said Nora, discomfited. “But I saw the picture reflect light, like a mirror. Painted glass wouldn’t do that.”
“Is that what you saw?” Aruendiel asked absently. He walked over to where the picture hung and picked up the broken piece from the floor, then fitted it into the empty space in the portrait. As he worked it back into position, the dark crackling disappeared from the girl’s face, until the portrait was whole and unblemished again. The black-haired girl’s red lips curled with more amusement than ever.
“You fixed it!” Nora said. “What did you do?” She knew already, though; there was a sick sensation in the pit of her stomach.
“I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me,” Aruendiel said. “It’s what you would call a trick.” He lifted the picture from its hook on the wall and regarded it with care. It was hard to read the expression in his battered face.
“If you mean magic,” Nora said awkwardly, “there’s no such thing. How can there be? It’s not logical
Aruendiel made an impatient noise deep in his throat. “You’re a fool,” he said after a moment. “But you’re right in one respect. This is not a portrait, exactly—it only looks like one.”
He turned the frame in his hands and showed it to her. The black-haired girl was gone. The silver skin of a mirror caught the light and gave Nora a glimpse of her own bedraggled figure sitting upright on the edge of the bed. “Until a few days ago, this was a mirror. Then I thought it might be better not to have a mirror in this room, so I made it look like a portrait—doing a rather clumsy job of it. It was clever of you to notice that reflection and realize what it meant. It’s too bad you’re not clever enough to see and understand some of the other things in front of your eyes.” His voice was quiet, flat with contempt.
Nora swallowed and said the first thing that came into her head. “Who was the girl?”
“What?” Aruendiel looked puzzled.
“The girl in the portrait.”
“Oh,” he said, with a shake of his head. “My sister. I suppose I remembered an old portrait of her. This was her room.” His face settled into harsher lines. One side had been scarred somehow, seamed and roughened. It was hard to see the resemblance between him and his pretty sister, except for the dark hair and something about the tilt of the head. He spoke without emotion, but from the way he said this was her room, Nora understood that his sister was dead.
“Why did you get rid of the mirror?” Nora said. “No, I know why. Because of my face.” Odd that he would be so considerate, but then obviously he had no reason to like mirrors himself. “Could you give it to me, please?” She reached for it. Aruendiel hesitated, then walked over to hold the mirror in front of her.
At first, it wasn’t as bad as she had feared. No sign of the shimmering blond goddess that she’d been, but that was all right. Under the bandage, she could see the contours of her old face again: hazel eyes and straight brown brows, a wide mouth, a squarish chin. The skin of her face had a mottled, yellowish look, a tracery of fading bruises. And the great white slash of the bandages hiding her cheeks and nose.
“I’m taking this off,” Nora said, scrabbling at the bindings behind her head.
Aruendiel hesitated, then said: “As you will.”
Nora looked into the mirror again. Mrs. Toristel was right, the wounds were healing, but the two long cuts across her cheek still had a raw look. Garish and pitiful, they made the rest of her face invisible. “Huh,” she said finally. “Will they scar?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But the flesh is healthy. You can leave the bandage off now.”
Looking up at the broken places in his face, she wondered whether her question about scarring had been rude, but he gave no sign of offense. He returned the mirror to the wall.
“What happened to the portrait of your sister, the real one?”
“I haven’t seen it for years,” he said. “Now, what was the name of the last place you mentioned?” He garbled the name. “Is that near a place called Galifornia?”
“California!” Nora said with a delighted gasp. “Yes, California is one of the states, the United States. You know California? Are we in California?”
“I have been there, many years ago,” he said. “From there—let me think—I went to a city called Chigago.”
“Chicago, yes,” she said. “I have a friend there.”
“And eventually I went farther east and sailed across the ocean to another country whose name I can’t recall now.”
“France, England? That’s wonderful. I knew I didn’t just fall off the end of the earth.”
Aruendiel gave her a tight half smile. “But I’m afraid that’s exactly what you’ve done. Galifornia and Chigago are not in this world at all. I traveled there and came back by very strong magic. As you must have come here by magic, Ilissa’s magic or some other kind.”
Nora stared at him. She shook her head. “What?”
“Now I see why you are so skeptical of magic. Before I visited your world, I had never been to a place whose inhabitants were so abysmally ignorant of magic.”
Was he trying to be insulting? “Well. It’s not something I’ve ever had any use for.”
Downstairs, Aruendiel pushed open the door of the kitchen, where Mrs. Toristel was kneading dough. On the table in front of her, he set the glazed bowl that Nora had broken. It was whole again, filled with the soup that she had spilled on the floor.
“You may disregard what I said earlier, Mrs. Toristel,” he said. “My guest will remain with us for now, although I must apologize again for the way she mistreated you.” He brooded for a moment. “The girl is from a
