The Thief

evaporated most of the rain and spit it back up already, making it almost foggy.

I leaned back against the trunk and stared up into the boughs of the tree. Was this it? I didn’t think apple trees grew this rotund - the others around certainly were more spindly. This one was almost like an oak tree that happened to have fruit attached to it - it had to be at least five feet in diameter.

I brought the journal out from the dry interior of my jacket and checked the tree against the sketch. Yes, the one my mother had drawn was just like this. My heart beat faster, even as rain poured around me. Was she trying to tell me something? A tiny heart had been drawn onto the sketch. I closed it and stowed it back in my jacket. It had to be here on the real tree as well.

I circled the tree, carefully inspecting the bark as I stepped over its knobbly roots.

There. I spotted it. I laughed out loud. It was real. There, carved into the bark, as with a pen knife, was a heart. Inside were initials - SG and KH. I wanted to cry. This was proof, real, tangible proof, that my parents had been in love. It was like proof that I existed. I hadn’t known I’d wanted proof of that, but at this moment, it was indescribably comforting.

Did I dare to hope that my mother had left the journal just for me, to lead me to her after all this time? I didn’t know why she’d left. I didn’t know if she’d wanted to take me with her or not. Maybe she had, maybe Dad hadn’t let her. What if my real home was with her, wherever she was?

Deep down, I always thought I would see her one day. That somehow, I’d get a phone call, or a letter, or just an address. And I would stand in front of some foreign door, both terrified of and desperate for what awaited on the other side.

I placed my hand over the heart, imagining the tree as a door, and the carved initials as the bell. Rain pattered softly. Who’s there? I imagined her saying.

“It’s me,” I murmured, with my forehead on the bark. “Can I come in?”

I fell forward. A section of the bark had swung inward, throwing me off balance. On my hands and knees, I looked up in shock. There, inside the hollow of the trunk, stood a mirror.

The mirror stood a little taller than me, so it had to be close to six feet. The frame was a delicate design of twining thorny vines and roses in silver. And there was not a spec of dirt anywhere on it – no dust or corrosion of any kind. The glass of the mirror was absolutely pristine. It seemed to glow.

I climbed back to my feet, gaping at it in wonder. I saw my reflection – my hair sticking to the sides of my face, rain dripping from my chin and my fingers – as I reached to touch the delicate silver branches and flowers that arched from the mirror’s frame. Who in their right mind would hide something this beautiful? I thought. Is this what my mother wanted me to find?

Then my finger pricked on something and I pulled back, shaking my hand reflexively. It must have been one of the thorns. A drop of my blood hit the mirror.

Against all laws of logic and nature, the surface of the mirror rippled on the droplet’s impact, waves undulating out to the mirror’s rim. The surface began to darken and dim. It seemed to dissolve, until I was no longer looking at a mirror, but a silver-rimmed hole in the back of the trunk. But it did not show the orchard on the opposite side. I beheld through the rose frame a darkened stairwell, leading upward.

It did not even occur to me to step away. I reached out my arm, testing to see if the glass was really gone or if it was an illusion. My hand passed right through, and I swear it even felt cooler on the other side. I pulled my hand back and stared at it, marveling. I had to. I had to go. Zipping the journal safely into my jacket once again, I stepped over the mirror’s rim into the stairwell. I shivered as I passed through, a tingle running through my nervous system that faded as my feet found purchase on the stone floor.

It was noticeably cooler, like I was somehow underground. Or maybe it was the stone walls - though one section at the base of the landing was a solid sheet of iron. I could be in a castle for all I knew. My heart quivered, both terrified and ecstatic. I began to climb, my steps echoing up the spiral. Iron-and-glass oil lamps were nestled in recesses in the stone, casting strange shadows around the tight corners. Strangely, some of the sections of stone were glued together with what seemed to be glass instead of regular mortar – like the walls had veins of glass. And I climbed.

I must have ascended at least four or five stories, maybe more, before I reached a landing with a curtain. I pushed it aside and blinked at the sudden brightness. I shielded my eyes with one hand and stepped forward in wonder.

Sunlight streamed through an open arch directly ahead of me, where a lush garden awaited. To my left and right were two other curtained arches. I stood in a foyer made of white bricks, maybe marble or alabaster.

“Hello?” I called instinctively. “Hello, is anyone here? I don’t mean to intrude, I just sort of...walked in...” I sort of hoped no one answered. I mean, there was no social protocol for this kind of situation. What would I say? Oh, I do apologize, I simply had to step into this mirror I found that turned into a portal to your home. I shook my head. Then again... I thought of my mother, and tried not to get my hopes up.

But the place was silent, not even a breeze touching the garden up ahead.

I should leave, I thought. I don’t belong here. But despite the words in my head, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I did somehow belong here – that I had every right to be here. That I was home. I swept aside the lefthand curtain.

I beheld an empty gothic cathedral sanctuary, every inch made of dark stone, with high vaulted ceilings and support pillars, but no furnishings of any kind. No chair, pews, benches, tables – just cold stone floor, pillars, and a series of unlit colored glass lamps hanging by long chains from the ceiling. The only other adornment was the surplus of stained glass windows that populated every wall.

And what magnificent windows they were. I stepped forward, dazzled. Wherever I was, it must be bright and sunny outside, because the light was streaming through the carefully assembled shards of colored glass. It made the darker glass smolder in rich royal blues, blood crimson, and amethyst purple, and it made the pale colors almost blinding. And then, as I studied each pane individually, I began to realize that they were all connected, almost as if they told two sides of the same story, with the giant pane at the front of the sanctuary showing the point where the stories intersected.

The furthest left pane showed a man at a brookside. The next pane showed him meeting a fox – the fox seemed to be talking to him, and stood on its hind legs. It reminded me of an illustration I’d seen in a children’s book once.

The far right hand pane showed a woman – or was it a girl? The figure was too small to be sure – kneeling in a vast field of flowers. The next pane showed a wolf in the bushes watching her.

They were beautiful, and excited to see what the rest of this place held, I went back through the partition into the foyer, and crossed to the other curtained room.

When I pushed the fabric aside, my breath caught in my throat.

Books. Ladders of books. Towers of books. Sliding ladders leading to more tiers of books. Tables with piles of books heaped on them. There were couches upholstered in heavy fabric nestled in the crooks of shelves for browsing. Lamps of all shapes and sizes hung from the ceiling, stood in random corners, and topped tables and shelves. It was magnificent, and couldn’t be the slightest bit organized, and made me happier than anything in years. It even smelled right – like paper and ink and worn wood and dust and light and shadow. But most of all, possibility.

Oh, I would be coming back here, all right.

Heart lightening, I skipped out to the garden. There were fruit trees here, though I couldn’t name what they bore. They were strange, jewel-colored, and similar to plums, if plums were scarlet or blue or orange. The flowers that grew at their bases were more recognizable - daffodils, irises, and violets, among others. Various colors of rose bushes made hedges and ivy climbed over the garden wall, too high for me to see beyond. What could be on the other side?

My happy revelry was disrupted by a noise.

I heard steps on the stone floor in the entranceway and ducked to the side of the garden wall, out of sight of the atrium. Could it be the owner? Would they be angry that I’d found this place? Oh god...anyone who owned something like this – who knew what they could do to me?

Please don’t come outside, just grab a book and go, please, I silently begged, even as I thought, Mother?

But the steps on the stone didn’t turn to the library. Instead they turned the opposite direction, and went into