The golden hand mirror laid broken at the top of the steps, its shattered pieces glistening under hills of sand—forgotten. When she and her travel companions first explored these ruins, they were amazed by the grand statutes and the intricate details of the artifacts lying around. But the mirror called to her. So she went back, this time alone, to rid herself of the nagging feeling that she had left something behind.
Gianna sat at the third step of the ruins, brushing away at the sand piling over the glass pieces. Though her common sense ridiculed her for such aberrant behavior, her inner spirit felt satififaction each time she freed a glass piece from the sand and returned it to the mirror. When she returned its last piece, she waited for something to change, but nothing happened, and Gianna turned back to leave for camp.
“…princess” what sounded like an odd mixture between a sob and a whisper travelled through the wind, echoing. Had her friends returned to play some sick prank on her? No. They were already down the trail, at least an hour away by now if they had not stopped.
“…princess Diona, wake up.” She heard again. Then the voice—a women’s voice— broke out into a faint cry. Gianna walked the steps, eying the golden mirror from which the voice came. Peering into the mirror, she no longer could see her reflection. Through the broken cracks emitted a blue-white glow, which formed a woman lying on the ground.
“Diona, please, if you can hear me…” she whispered. “Don’t go, it’s not time yet.”
Immediately Gianna was drawn in, taking in her desperate pleas as if the woman were speaking to her. She wanted to help but didn’t know how.
The woman turned to the other sitting beside her. “Your spells, they’re not working. She doesn’t hear my calls.” She said, her soft cries now turning into a hiss.
The other woman remained calm. “Or maybe she does hear your call, she just doesn’t want to answer them…Let her go.”
Before Gianna’s eyes, the glowing woman scattered away into nothingness. When she turns, the same woman reappears, this time sitting on the edge of a bed.
“Daughter…” She whispers. “10,000 people stand outside our walls, waiting for your words of wisdom. You promised to protect them. Have you forgotten?” The woman tucks Diona’s hair behind her ears, then lifts her voice in a gentle song.
Just as the last image flew away, the scene vanishes into thin air. Gianna looks to her side to see a chorus of people gathered at a tombstone, laying down gifts of pearls, jewels, and flowers. Tears rolled down some of their faces. This was it. Princess Diona was gone with no way of returning. Yet her memory remained trapped between the cracks of the mirror. And now they lived on Gianna’s memory.
“So this is it.”
Anja stopped in the midst of the forest and studied the entryway of an ancient castle. After hours of hiking a land hidden in the unknown, she and her brother finally stumbled across what she was looking for.
The groundbreaking discovery was left in a place of ruins. Cracked fragments of bricks and clay laid across the barely visible floor. Green ferns and stems broke through the ground, fighting their way to the single stream of light which fell through the low ceiling.
Anja was perplexed. This was not what she was expecting.
“What’s wrong?” Her younger brother Johan asked.
“It’s…empty.” Anja unclipped her flashlight from her belt and pointed it on her textbook. The image in her history book looked completely different from what she saw now. It had colorful lights, with musical instruments, and joyous people circling in dance. She wasn’t expecting any people to be in the castle, but she was expecting some sort of evidence that her ancestors lived here.
“I must say, I’m quite disappointed.” Anja said, giving her flashlight one last whip around the dark room. Someone must have been here, and they’ve stolen everything their ancestors left behind.
“What about this?” Johan kicked a pile of decaying leaves that floated above him, unveiling a human skeleton.
She’d almost missed it.
Anja crept behind Johan to look at his discovery. She shuddered as she kicked the bony remains to the side.
Above the skeleton was something much more intriguing. She ran her hand along the painted wall, feeling for every crack and bump. She remembered their ancestors communicated this way, with sketches and painted symbols. The first phrase was rather common, and easily recognizable.
“This one means ‘open the way.’ What do you think they mean by that?”
Johan was already on the other side of the room, exploring his own discoveries.
“Maybe it has something to do with this latch?”
“Don’t touch anything yet!”
It was too late. The ground violently shook and a stone wall rose up from the ground, blocking the entrance of the castle. A steady patter of sand hitting the ground filled her ears, first slowly, then pouring out all at once like heavy rain.
She felt like she was running out of time—like an hourglass.
“What’d you do?” Anja panicked. She didn’t want to die there.
She sat on the ground and flipped to the page in the textbook that could help her decide the rest of the message.
The wall read ‘Tree, moth, butterfly.’ It became apparent that this was a code for the order in which the latches should be pulled.
Anja and Johan trudged along the sand now reaching their ankles and matched the symbols to the correct latches, opening a door in the ground with stairs. Anja clutched her flashlight in one hand, and tugged her impetuous brother alongside her, down into the new passageway.
Walking through the hall lit with a mystical blue glow, they were extra vigilant of their surroundings in fear of falling into another trap. The hallway was mostly empty except for the overwhelming symbols overlapping one another that made them impossible to decipher.
Finally the hall came to the an end, opening into a room that emitted a strong scent of rocks and dirt.
When Anja flickered her flashlight on, she easily recognized the withering remains of what once was. She was amazed by the amount of artifacts that were left untouched.
Anja lightly tapped the ancient drums covered in jewels, and Johan looked into the old clay pots filled with murky water. Golden coins were sprinkled throughout the dirt on the ground.
“This is what we’re looking for. Our ancestors hid their belongings here.” Anja said with a smile. She ran her fingers over a decaying wooden banjo, collecting a massive amount of dust on her fingertips.
“What do we do?” Johan asked.
“We leave them. Let them rest.”
But a glinting silver nugget laced with leather caught her eye. Anja picked the necklace up. “Except for this. We’ll show grandma and momma this to remember our people.”
When I opened the door to our cottage, I was relieved to see my little sister has yet to turn into a lifeless corpse. She laid there just as steadily as I left her, under a thin white sheet on her fragile bed, silently fighting for each breath she took.
“I’m back, just like I promised I’d be.” I sat atop the stool beside her bed, and placed her aching hand into my own.
If she had the strength to smile, I know she would have. It’s been weeks since I returned, far too long a time to go without seeing a familiar face.
Just like her body, her darkening eyes seemed to carry more weight with each passing minute. No one this young should ever feel this sick.
“Look at what I bought from the village. It’s something to make you feel better.” I whisper.
From behind my back, I reveal something once forbidden to us, purchased from a town we were warned away from by our mother.
A blue aurora shone from the mystical flower I held in my hand before her.
And when she saw it, a ping of sorrowfulness overtook her expression, because she knew the price to pay for using such a gift—the taking of one life to save another.
A random life unimportant to me. Her sickness and my worries would be cast onto another.
No life was worth more than hers. I knew it. Her heart was too young, too innocent, and too beautiful.
But I saw it in her eyes. She would never take the blue flower I held in my hands. She already decided that no life was worth less than hers, and that’s what made her all the more beautiful.
I remember her for her golden straight hair that swung loosely over her waist, and her large blue eyes that lit up every time she entered a room. Since the day she transferred to our school in the 6th grade, she captured everyone’s attention.
I never understood why everyone was in love with her instantly. During study halls, the boys gathered around to listen about her weekends, and the girls lined up to braid her hair with soft giggles. They admired her all the same.
Not me. I wasn’t so easily swayed by her pretty face and fake bubbly spirit. Or at least, I didn’t want to be.
I didn’t fall in love with her until that ONE day.
That one day when I snuck out of the classroom early, she found me on the stairs alone. The project I held in front of me was torn to a disaster, and the snarling faces the boys wore while they ripped it apart was still fresh on my mind. I couldn’t go up there with what little I had. There was no way someone with a life as perfect as hers could understand.
But she didn’t need to understand. She just made me laugh and laugh until I couldn’t move my abdomen anymore. Then she said something that stayed with me forever. “You should let yourself be seen more often.”
I’ve forgotten about her since then. I’ve moved on to other crushes who were perhaps more attainable. I let myself live my life being seen, even with the little bit I felt I had.
10 years later, I’m at a childhood friend’s wedding. The venue is quite wonderful, with blue orchids spread across the floor and pink crystal lights hanging from the ceiling.
And there she is. Anyone would recognize their first love. She stands close to a middle-aged man, their fingers intertwined. Her blonde hair is now cut short to her chin and her plump lips are stained a bold red. The middle-aged man caresses the back of her hand in his grip. They look in love.
Seeing her now, I understand why we all fell in love with her so easily. It’s more than her beauty. I can tell she still holds that kind heart and bubbly spirit that made her stand out in the first place. She just has a way of making everyone feel special
He felt like nothingness.
The glass mug tossed outside a window. Laid broken on the sidewalk.
Needing to be pieced together and filled for the first time.
He watched carefully for what the others like. Imitating their every needs and desires.
Not expressing any of his own.
And when it was time to strike.
He was hollow of emotion. With a heavy fist that crumpled anything in his path Grinning while his cunning plans came into fruition.
I regret the day I fell for him and dread the day I left him.
“I saw what you did last night. And I’ve told everyone.”
“And?” His tone was cool and confident. “You really think they didn’t know already?”
He plays with a deck of cards in his hands, his back facing me. The only light in the room came from the moon which shone from the window he looked out of.
I hated everything about him. I hated the way he proudly puffed smoke in the air after winning a game or the way he ordered around his employees. I hated the way he always straightened his posture, adjusting his shades, as if he was in control of everything. Even now, I hated his arrogance and how it made me regret ever confronting him. But I couldn’t back down. Not now.
“You’re such a dishonest man.” I scoff in disgust. I close the apartment door behind me and walk closer to him, my foot stamping a cigar lazily tossed on the floor. My nose wrinkles at the thick scent of dust and smoke.
“Dishonest how?”
He knows exactly what I meant, but it put a smile on my face to expose exactly how much I knew of his cunning ways.
“The tax evasions. The bribes and illegal contracts you’ve been constructing for months. Ha! Even your poker career is dishonest.”
I’ve investigated his every move since he got his big breakout in the poker scene. This man moved quickly up the ladders in ways unlike the others. He established a successful business in the shadows of our city, and gained power with the careful crafting of a perfect persona.
I stayed on his tails—to think his shady behavior went beyond cheating in a game of poker. I had him cornered tonight, and the thought of him going behind bars by my hands felt more poetic than ever.
“But last night, I saw your men assault that man. After everything you got away with, this is the one thing that will finally bring you down.”
“Are you really that naïve?” He says, his confidence still ever so high. He finally turns around to face me. A dark shadow cast on the halve of his face, covering the thin scar I knew travelled down his cheek. “Do you really think Officer Lee is going to find interest in your claims? Or what about Chief Stanley? Do you think he cares about what I do on a nightly basis?”
“Of course they do.” I knew Officer Lee and I knew Chief Stanley. They were both honorable men, and my leaders. No leader would ever associate with someone as low as he was.
Yet that dirty smirk sprawled on that stupid face of his gave me reason to doubt. It’s so unnerving that a chill runs up my spine.
“You see, Officer Lee and Chief Stanley know there are huge prices to pay for inserting themselves into my personal affairs. Just as others know there are certain benefits.” He says.
He’s moved on from playing with his deck of cards, and was now fiddling with a cigar. “That man you saw yesterday. He was a good man. Always timely and respectful to me. A rare businessman who had a strong sense of responsibility. So tell me then. Why do you think I had him dealt with?” He questions.
I wasn’t in the mood for his silly games. The man he killed was innocent, and that was all I needed to know.
“Even if what you say is true, that anyone I told won’t do a thing, I am a lot more resilient than you think. I will get justice for him and his family, even if I have to do it myself.”
“I wouldn’t worry so much about him, darling.” He inhales his lit cigar and exhales a bubble of smoke into the air. “It’s a fine and quiet night today. What do you think is going to happen to you?”
Jennifer Byrnes knew that look all too well. The slumped posture and the fidgety hands that laid on her desktop. The helpless and beady eyes full of desperation.
Byrnes sat face to face with one of the patients, only separated by a thin glass meant for her safety. His eyes were red of sleepless nights, and his grey hair was clumped and stringy.
“Nurse.” His voice shakes, barely audible. To the inexperienced, perhaps his sullen look and meek demeanor would be enough to strike pity, but she learned how to handle these type of people long ago.
The patient’s slow eyes make their way to Byrnes name tag on her desk.
“Miss Jennifer Byrnes.” He speaks up, his confidence not any more convincing this time around.
Byrnes scrolls her eyes to the tag wrapped around his wrist. “Ian Reynolds. I’m not sure I’ve seen you here before.”
She fiddles with the glasses on the bridge of her nose, then studies him once more. Yes, he was most certainly a new patient that recently settled in. What landed him in here? Was it drugs? Was it his anger issues that arise when no one expects it?
“What are we s’pose to be doing at 8am Miss?”
A simple question. It’s not surprising that her patient is unfamiliar with how things work around here. Byrnes searches for the schedule on the computer screen before her.
“Breakfast.”
“And 12pm, what are we s’pose to do then?”
“Our therapy session.”
“3pm?”
“Medication time.”
He looks at the clock mounted on the wall behind her.
“It’s a little past 3pm now. Haven’t I followed all the rules?”
He smiles his crooked teeth and blinks his crooked eyes. Byrnes scrolls through the data on her computer.
“I’m impressed. You have been well behaved Ian.”
Byrnes returns the smile. They always started that way. Polite and pleasant; following all the rules we presented to them. They socialized with us to get on our good sides, only to secretly be plotting on how to turn things their way.
When she was young, Byrnes made the mistake of giving them just too much understanding and too much compassion. Her tendency of giving the benefit of the doubt was a weakness punished by their cunning minds.
“Then about my medication. Why haven’t I got enough?” Ian asks.
And so his truest intentions have finally been made clear. Byrnes made no effort to hide the scowl on her face.
“I think y’all’s made a mistake.” He goes on. “I can feel it in my brains.”
Byrnes looks for the dosage he needs under his information.
“I don’t think we made a mistake. Your dosage is — grams.”
“I haven’t got enough Miss. Can you check the amount they gave?”
This was a trick Byrnes has seen before. The patients use up their medication, hide some, or whatever just to ask for more medication later down the line.
“I’m afraid I can’t.”
“I’m not trying to do you over Miss.” He pleads. “Your workers done made a mistake.”
“Please return to the recreational center Ian.”
Byrnes was stern with her words. This is what they responded to. She was careful not to show any vulnerabilities with her stiff posture and cold stare. He had no choice but to accept this was a battle he had lost.
8 o’clock and the patients were off to bed. Jennifer Byrnes thought of her interaction today, and how Ian is managing his loss in the game he tried to play.
‘Hmm, he would have had me there if I were still young.’ She thinks to herself.
She types away on her computer. There were a lot of write ups that needed to be tended to before she locked up for the night. Her reports were of utmost importance, the wording careful and precise.
Just when she’s finishing her closing statement, a horn-like blare repeatedly sounds and the red light in the corner of the hall rapidly blinks. A rare occasion, but not something she’s never seen before. A patient must have hurt themselves, or someone else.
The next day, Byrnes notices a certain patient of her’s is missing today. She sits next to her co-worker during a break period.
“Do you know what that alarm was about yesterday?”
“They had to rush one of the patients to the hospital. Ian Reynolds I think.” He says, uninterested.
A cold chill runs over her.
Jennifer Byrnes learned that day, that proper investigation is necessary for everything.
A bright smile beams on my face when I see him. “Hello mister Faron. I’m a big fan of yours. I can’t believe I’m actually seeing you here.”
My friend and I always imagined meeting him someday, but not like this of course. We imagined meeting him the day one of us became a famous journalist. Whoever became so lucky to interview a famous author such as him, was required to introduce him to the other. We played around with hypotheticals in our head of how to greet him. I never imagined running into him at a coffee shop, especially one as run down as Mr. Grant’s.
His coffee bean eyes glance from his journal to my apron. I can tell he was quite perplexed. Another waitress had already taken his order minutes ago, yet here I was interrupting his quiet work for my own selfish desire. Flustered, I turn around to get back to bussing tables.
“Wait, do you have a second?” His voice was mellow and sound, just as I would imagine an author with language as sophisticated as his. I’m surprised he was interested in talking to someone as plain as me, but I accept his invitation anyways. I sit in the seat across from him.
Mister Faron strokes his mustache, then removes his golf cap and sets it on the table. He was getting quite old now, the evidence in how his weary eyes slowly moved from sign to sign, and his receding hairline. Regardless, his fiction novels are timeless to me. I still have Midnight Forest and The Maroon Hanker-chief ready to be reread on my book shelf.
“What is it?” I say getting excited. He opens his journal on the table and fidgets with his pen in his left hand.
“I’m stuck. I have an important character I want to write for my next novel, but I’m not sure how to execute them. What do you think?”
Mister Faron is responsible for creating so many fine works, that I had trouble comprehending such a question coming from his lips.
“I’m flattered Mister Faron. But shouldn’t your next big idea come from you?”
“Well you just strike me as someone who has something new to share.” He simply says.
It’s true that growing up, my imagination ran wild. I was always creating storylines or poems on my own. There was no way I could do that now. It was better to write as a journalist, and focus on the facts.
I wanted to help him, I really did. It was my idol who I was looking at after all, so I lean into the table and ask him a question to get things going.
“How do you start your creative process?”
“I live by the quote ‘write what you know.’ You can shape entertaining storylines by taking your creative ideas, and splashing it with a dose of reality.”
This was too good to pass up. I set my server notepad on my lap, and record the words he’s saying. I just had to interview him.
“So is that why you’re here tonight?” I ask next.
“Quite perceptive of you. Yes, I like to immerse myself in the environment I am writing about, and meet the people there. This place is perfect for relaxing without any type of media.”
My pen slows down on my paper. I was the media. I continue to write. He didn’t seem to notice or care.
“Tell me, what is your name miss?” He asks.
“Caroline.”
“Thank you Caroline.”
“I didn’t do anything spectacular.”
“Oh, but you did. You inspired the very character I was struggling with.”
I wasn’t sure where he was getting at.
“I will make this newest character have a rich inner world that she tries to suppress. She will be curious and ask a lot of clever questions. Her most defining character trait however is her mischievousness. What do you think?” He asks.
No one has ever read me this well. I smile.
“I think she’s perfect.”
