I don’t know how long I spent in the mirrored garden, but I had to run through the summer shadows to make it back in time.
‘Had a nice day, dear?’ Gran helped me to more chips.
‘Yes.’
‘Your father phoned.’
‘What did he say?’ I could barely get my breath.
‘Not much. The weather was hot.’
‘You’d expect that,’ Grandpa speared a pea, ‘in Spain.’
That night I left the flowered curtains open and imagined things in the moonlight as I lay on the narrow bed.
‘See that?’ The next afternoon the man pointed to a circle of mirrored petals around half a plastic throne. ‘That’s where I started, twenty-eight years ago.’
‘Oh.’ I hadn’t asked but it was nice to know. I scratched the skin on the back of my knee. Earlier, I’d ridden a donkey up and down the beach and now I itched. ‘It’s very…’ I stared at the little drops of reflected light which danced on a doll’s hand, and a piece of smoothed, bleached bone.
‘Isn’t it just.’ He sighed and set something straight. ‘But now I don’t really care.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No. Or not much. Or I say something back. But mainly I just keep quiet and do a bit more. Like over there. See? That’s where I’m working now.’
‘What’ll you do when it’s finished?’
‘Finished?’ He rubbed his hands together and his rough skin rustled like leaves. ‘It’ll never be that.’
Back at the house after supper, I dried while Grandpa washed up. ‘A mirrored garden?’ He paused as he steered the head of the mop round the rim of a glass. ‘On the promenade, did you say, Chris? I don’t think I’ve heard about that.’ He looked down at Jasper. ‘But we don’t go far now, do we, old boy?’
The dog didn’t move.
‘But it’s been there twenty-eight years! That’s what the man said.’
‘Has it really? Just think of that.’ Grandpa rinsed out the bowl and squeezed the mop.
That night I heard a summer storm in my dreams and when I woke in the morning, everything smelled wet. Before I left, I held up the basin of wrung-out clothes while Gran pegged out the wash. Later, I walked bare-footed on the cold, ridged sand. I ate my sandwiches and spent time with a little kid who was trying to fish off the rocks.
I heard the noise as I was walking back. It was like thunder with a car crash thrown in. When I’d belted up the littered, sandy steps I saw a cloud of dust that was as dark as smoke. A small, sunburnt workman had stopped the traffic and held back the curious crowd as the bulldozers moved in.
‘What are they doing?’ I cried out to no one in particular, so no one answered back.
In ten minutes the mirrored garden had gone and the place where it had been was flat. The workman stepped back, and the seaside traffic moved once more. The holiday crowd licked ice cream and rolled on. The workman connected up the water and began to hose down the billowing dust. As I watched, he bent down and picked up something that flashed. He rubbed it clean with his hand, then put it carefully in the pocket of his jeans.
‘Your father phoned,’ Gran was pouring custard into Jasper’s bowl. ‘They’ll be back tomorrow, like they said.’ She smiled as she tipped the rest into a jug.
I smiled as I watched Jasper lap.
And I was glad, really. I was glad.
Lesley Howarth MIRRORS DOT COM
It started four days before Samantha Lamb’s birthday.
You know there’s a Year of the Rat, a Year of the Pig, the Dog, the Horse, in the Chinese calendar? They knew more than we did, the people who started that stuff.
I know about that stuff now. Did you know there’s an animal – a secret self – hidden in your reflection? Oh, yes. And the way to see it is—
But I’d better start at the beginning.
My friend Sam’s birthday was coming up, so I searched the Internet for these mirrors. Sam likes stuff for her room, and I knew she’d just broken one. Finally I found a site selling mirrors. It took an age to download the graphics. But when they popped up, I was gobsmacked.
They were pretty amazing mirrors. Twisted spirals of silver around shapes that looked like wolves’ heads. Mirrors like the shields of knights in battle. Gilt ‘chimney glasses’ crested with eagles. Copies of Roman hand-mirrors shaped like the sun. Unbreakable mirrors of polished metal. Used by explorers, the site said. And all at pub/mirror.com. I didn’t know mirrors like that existed. I’d never seen anything like them.
I actually never meant to order it.
Those mirrors – especially the glaring wolf’s head with the burning ruby eyes – seemed to jump out at me, to make me click on them and order them. I’ll never know why I put the wolf-mirror into my ‘shopping trolley’. Next thing, I’d OKd Mum’s credit card number and the wolf man was on his way.
He actually turned up in the cat flap next day. The postman pops parcels through the cat flap whenever there’s no one at home. When I saw the package labelled PUB/MIRROR WORLDWIDE in the darkness of the garage, I felt very slightly sick. As though his burning ruby eyes could read my mind through the bubble-wrap already, and he knew that he wasn’t wanted.
‘And where are you going to put that?’ Mum’s reflection looked back at her disgustedly from the silvery depths of the wolf-mirror.
‘I’m not. It’s for Sam’s birthday.’
‘Good job. He gives me the creeps.’
He gave me the creeps, too, actually.
The wolf man curling around the mirror glared down at me before I went to school. His grinning face, resting on the top of the mirror and hanging down over the edge of it, glared down at me when I came home. His silver paws hugged the sides of it and glinted in the moonlight that leaked in at night around the sides of my blind, and felt like they’d like to hug me too, and not in a friendly way. I got up and put him outside.
I forgot about him until I fell over him on my way to the bathroom next morning. He toppled over on to my feet and lay looking up at me, still creeping around his mirror like some twisted mythical beast.
I don’t even like you. Get off me!
Three days until Sam’s birthday.
Why didn’t I send him back?
You know in fairy stories, there’s always a forbidden thing, something the person in the story mustn’t do, and then they always go and do it? DON’T forget to go home at midnight. DON’T go into the woods alone. DON’T forget to drop the enchanted nut into the sea for your magic griffin to rest on, all that stuff? I began to wonder about the mirror man, the more his ruby eyes got to me. What did he do, to be stuck there like that, hugging his mirror and hoping someone might want him over the Net?
‘Did you get me something?’ Sam asked.
‘Something?’
‘A birthday present?’
‘Oh,