I complained about all the work it was to puzzle out the old handwriting, but Luka said I should go on. “At least you’re finding some stuff out. It’s driving me crazy that we can’t get back to those times. I can’t wait for summer.”
I stood up and flapped my arms against the chill. “Yeah, but everything I find out just brings up more questions. What are these health problems? What’s she so worried about?” Luka didn’t reply at first. I looked around at her. “What?”
“Are you that dense? Seriously?”
“I’m with Kenny,” said Jimmy. “What?”
Luka shared an eye roll with Melissa. “You dummies, don’t you get it? Look, January she talks about how she’s missing Clive. End of February she’s got this ‘terrible suspicion.’ March she’s really sick. By June her mother says she’s getting fat and is ignoring something, and in July she wants to hide Rose away in the carriage house. She’s pregnant, dummy.”
I turned to face the hedgerow and thought about the dark space in the wall where I had ripped away the lath six months ago, before being driven away by the prickling in my skin.
“That is some sad stuff,” said Jimmy. “Can’t she just, you know, take care of it?”
Melissa gave him a scornful look. “In 1917? An abortion?” Jimmy winced when she said the word.
“That’s just not possible back then,” said Luka.
We went down to the creek and searched out the place Curtis called the cave. You could see there had once been something there, a space underneath three large rocks nestled into an overhang. Mud and erosion had covered the hiding place years ago. Jimmy and I got a couple of sticks and dug. We found some large pieces of broken furniture buried in the dirt that looked like they might have once been used as makeshift tunnel supports. Luka and Melissa took the top of a small table to the creek to wash the decades of muck away until we found where CB+RH were scratched deeply into the wood.
The bigger surprise came when Luka dashed another bucket of water on the tabletop and revealed further initials below CH. LH as well as AC+MG. Further below that, KM and LB.
“Great,” said Melissa after our shared moment of stunned silence. “Lillian Huff from the thirties, Margaret Garroway from the forties and Anthony Currah from the fifties. Then Kenny and Luka? Nothing for Jimmy and me?”
“That’s fine by me,” said Jimmy. “I don’t want to get stuck in no long-ago past.”
I ran my fingers over the initials. Not as deep as Clive had carved, but deeper than Curtis. I looked at Luka. “I never did this.”
“Don’t look at me. I’m five right now. In my time there’s a bridge here. These rocks are gone.”
We dug for a while more, but didn’t find anything. It was getting close to the time I should be expecting my mother home from work, so Luka took us back to her time for some Nintendo, but before we could even get the TV turned on, Melissa surprised us into seriousness.
“Is it a curse?” she said, as Luka served us all sodas in her basement.
“Is what a curse?” said Jimmy.
“You know, how everybody says this neighborhood is haunted. I know that girl you met called us the blessed, but seriously? Margaret Garroway going missing in September? And a really long time ago some little boy went crazy and cracked a girl’s head open. Maybe it’s the mirror. Maybe Prince Harming lives in the mirror. Keisha left me a note a couple of nights ago saying she found something out about him, but she hasn’t been back.”
“Aw, that’s just a story anyway,” said Jimmy. “Like the boogie man. Or Santa’s evil brother.”
We all turned to look at him.
“What, your mom never told you about Opposite Christmas, when Nefidious Claus comes to take the presents away if you were bad?” We continued to stare. Jimmy’s head sank. “Man, I had the worst childhood.”
“Why cursed?” said Luka. “Look at the fun we get to have. Anything can be bad or good. And like Jimmy says—Prince Harming is just a story to frighten kids.”
“Here,” I said. They all turned to me and frowned. “It’s a story here. I’ve lived in a bunch of neighborhoods, and I never heard about this Prince Harming before. And what that girl said? She said we all have our own stories in the mirror. She was running away from her own uncle, and he didn’t sound too nice. Just because they’re stories doesn’t mean they’re not real, and you know it. The mirrors are around here, and so is Prince Harming. Everybody talks about him, all the way back to Rose. There’s even that skipping rhyme.”
“Lover sweet, bloody feet,” Melissa chanted.
Jimmy continued it from where he lay on a couch by himself. “Loudly yelling down the street.”
Then it was Luka’s turn. “Holler loud, curtsey proud, you shall wear a coffin shroud.”
Jimmy finished it. “Go to mass, go to class, you’ll go down the backward glass.”
Melissa turned to him, mouth open. “What did you say?”
“What, go to mass? Are you Catholic? I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“Not that,” said Melissa. “The whole last bit together.”
Jimmy frowned. “Go to class, go to mass, you’ll go down the backward glass. Oh, wow. Backward glass. Like the mirror?”
We all stayed silent for a long moment to let this sink in. Our mirror? Our private story? Our secret tunnel? Connected to something in the real world, something other kids knew about? It was like reading the name of your imaginary friend in the newspaper.
I broke the long silence. “Mine’s different.” I opened the double diary Rick had given me. Inside, at the page with the skipping rhyme, I had tucked the piece of an old newspaper with the first variation I had found a few weeks after moving in. “‘Lover sweet, bloody feet, running down the silver street. Leave tomorrow when you’re called, truth and wisdom in the walls. Crack your head, knock you dead, then Prince Harming’s hunger’s fed.’ Then there’s this one from the book: ‘Lover sweet, bloody feet, running down the lonely street. Leave tomorrow when you’re called, truth and wisdom deeply walled. Crack your head, knock you dead, then Prince Harming’s hunger’s fed. Head will hurt, death’s a cert. A dead man’s sentence should be curt.’ There’s a bunch of these in here.”
“Silver street?” said Luka. “As in the Silverlands?” Her name for that growing space between the mirrors had caught on. Jimmy reported that even Margaret and Anthony were using it. “We should be figuring this stuff out,” said Luka. “We just have to—” Her head snapped up. “Oh crap.”
“What?” said Jimmy. “Is someone breaking in?”
“Worse,” said Luka. “That was my mom’s car door. All of you—upstairs, now!”
She snatched chip bags and glasses out of our hands and began pushing us in the direction of the stairs.
“Go,” she shouted several times.
Jimmy and Melissa crashed through Luka’s bedroom door together, but it was Melissa’s hand that touched the mirror first.
Melissa had just a moment to shrug apologetically at us before she pushed out of sight.
“Lucy Branson, what is all that noise?”
Jimmy hesitated before the mirror. I knew what he was thinking. If he pushed it in now, the mirror would be hot. Until Melissa pushed through the ever-expanding Silverlands and cleared the mirror, it was open uptime to 1997.
“Go,” Luka mouthed.
“Do you have people in here?” Her mother’s voice was quieter now, but full of menace.
Jimmy looked like a thousand volts of pure terror was sizzling through his fearful body. “Oh, man,” he whispered, barely audible. “Oh, man, Kenny, we gotta go.”
Further into the future? With my mother coming home soon? And Cindy Branson possibly guarding her daughter’s mirror. “Just wait,” I mouthed. “She’ll clear the mirror in a second.” It couldn’t take much longer.
