XXXIV
The ship hums around them like a living throat, low and resonant, as if it too feels the tension of slipping between worlds.
On the viewing screen, the shattered mirror‑sky rushes past. Patinas shiver as the jagged panes of reality drift like broken ice, each reflecting a different sliver of the fog‑choked village below. The cemetery flashes by fragments, a crooked angel here, a leaning stone there, all swallowed by the rolling gray. On the hill above, the church's tall steeple and its often-repaired door appears.
I press my hand to the console before me, bracing myself as the screen flashes with images, steadying myself. Even from inside the ship, the mirror‑world feels wrong. The mirror world seemed too easy to shatter, too thin, too fragile, like a dream that could collapse if breathed on.
Beside me, the alien I saved from the Red Carousel's auction stands perfectly still. His silhouette is tall and angular; his shadowy form is softened now. It bears no restraints, no red glow of the Carousel's machinery, no cold detachment. He stares in quiet observation. His eyes, once a clinical silver, flicker with something more complicated as the screen shows the village shrinking beneath them.
"This world is an unstable cage," he murmurs, voice like a whisper through metal in my mind.
He tilts his head, studying the fractured sky as if reading a language only he can see.
"The mirrors are thin. The boundaries are collapsing faster than predicted, there are fewer portals we can pass through." He states.
Another shard of sky flashes by and in it, for a heartbeat, another world appears.
Fog curls around its edges just like the clouds I had first fallen through.
"That is not yet your world. We must find a mirror that matches your spirit vibration. There are billions of similar parallel worlds. Your body waits in yours; others have the unknown." He explains in my mind. "With the wrong vibration, you will encounter the unexpected."
The beeping starts softly, a polite chirp, then escalates into a layered harmonic pulse that vibrates through the ship's metallic ribs as alien language scrolls in view. A second alien scientist, smaller and more angular than the one you rescued, circles you with a scanning instrument shaped like a tuning fork fused with a prism.
Each pulse makes the air shimmer. A 3D diagram of your soul blossoms into existence above the console: a rotating lattice of light, threads of energy spiraling outward like a blooming flower made of starlight.
Numbers and glyphs flicker around it. It displays vibration signatures, frequency drift, the fractal lines where the shattered mirror world left scars. The alien hums and clicks thoughtfully as it gestures toward the screen. "Your resonance is destabilizing," it says, voice like glass tapping glass. "If we do not redirect your path, you will collapse inside the mirror‑fold." I pictured my soul collapsing, compressing like a soup can in a crusher.
My companion, the alien I saved, steps closer, protective, his posture sharpening.
"Quickly show us the route," he says in a liquid language.
The scientist extends a long, jointed limb toward the forward viewport.
"Turn sharply. Now. Toward the second star."
You look south and there it is, rising on the horizon of the mirror‑sky:
a bright point of light, pulsing like a heartbeat.
The pilot console hums as your companion adjusts the ship's trajectory. The vessel banks hard, slicing through drifting shards of broken reality. The star grows larger, brighter, impossibly fast.
And I you realize that this object isn't a star at all.
It's a mirror.
A colossal crystalline structure suspended in the void, its surface rippling like liquid silver. Around its edges, delicate filigree curls into shape. Glinting in borrowed light from another world is antique Victorian gilding, ornate and impossible, as if someone framed a piece of the universe in gold leaf.
The mirror tilts, catching the ship's light. The port on the silvery side of the ship slips open. For a moment I see my reflection. I finally see my body, my soul form, a shimmering, floating glowing form. No wonder everyone could tell I was still tethered, a long silvery thread extended like a translucent whip from between my shoulder blades. It was not my flesh body, but my soul‑form, glowing and trembling.
The alien scientist's voice drops to a reverent whisper.
"This is the Gate. Entry to this world. Each mirror remembers every soul that has ever come across."
Your companion looks at you, something unreadable in his silver eyes.
"This is where we find out what the universe intends to do with you now."
The ship shimmers closer toward the towering mirror, its gilded frame shimmering like a doorway to a forgotten era.
"How do I get back to my world."
"Jump," the alien states.
"Jump?" I questioned the not very high-tech method of soul travel.
The alien shivers in his species version of laughter. His tentacle waves as he sends pictures into my mind.
"This is what your people call a leap of faith. Your tethered soul should reel back into y our body like a band released from tension, or maybe more like a fish, as your mouth is opened quite wide."
I close my eyes and leap as fog laden wind slaps me in the face. The world seems to sink around me, sucking me into a vortex of sight and sound. My eyes crack open in the morning light. I felt so heavy, shivering in the room's chill.