Quibble, 29. Mirror

Bringing gifts, Vega gets a chilly reception as Quibble drives a hard bargain.

29. Mirror @Quibble

Two days and nights flew by in a flurry of labors Without, nightmares of control Within. The cooks expelled Nish from the kitchen, making it clear she was high-handed, impossible to work with. She sulked for a bit. Then Graph gave her a new job, directing the four Adroit – and more on the way, as soon as he could talk the hardheaded around to it – in planning and laying the foundation for the new factory. If Nish was imperious with people, he figured, best to put that to use where needed. All her bossiness faded in the face of my nightmares, though. When they visited, she became helpless. She would shake and shout me awake, then back off as soon as I spoke to her and break down in a tangle of tears, pleas, remonstrance. Love and hatred mingled in what she said. Always I emerged to the world Without to see the moon, nearing its last quarter, just inside the skylight’s frame. The moon had been a friend to our adroitness; now it was our foe.

“Now she is an Ayzhed-nah!” Imay exclaimed when I relayed the news of Nish’s new job. “Good. Perhaps she will talk them into better sense.”

He told me that he thought the Ayzhed – Adroit – were meddling in matters they didn’t really grasp. Far myth spoke of a long-ago civilization – Ahnk-far, bone people – who created machines of ungodly power. They wielded this power greedily, refusing to share it for others’ benefit, to their own demise. I told Imay about the Infinite, piecing together the bits of story Utopia told me about them. He granted Infinite might be akin to Ahnk-far; whether or not they were, it amounted to the same mistake. Hubris. People arrogantly created whatever served for the moment, giving little thought to the future.

His word for the Adroit, sounding like the trochaic aged in poetry but containing the diphthong ay and the more difficult zh, puzzled me at first because it seemed to bear no relation to other Far words he sprinkled into his speech. He explained that the word Ayzhed was in fact a corruption of Dazed. Far considered Dazed and Adroit one people. Intuiting there must be no simple a or z in their tongue, I asked, “Why don’t you just called us Dayzhed?”

“Ah. We seldom say d—” He made the consonant’s sound rather than naming the letter, which in Far was duhn. “—at our beginnings. We think it a bad sound.”

“There’s Djer,” I noted, hitting the d hard to pronounce it as he did.

“Just so. Dj! This means a person is bad. Dy! This means a thing or place is bad.”

Reminded of the hostility between Far and Zeros and of Alnasl’s reluctance to clarify it, I asked, “Why do the Far hate Djer?”

Imay grew silent, grim. “It is best I do not tell you such a thing,” he said at last.

“I was chased by Far sah little more than a cycle ago. They were trying to kill me and the Djer I was with. No one will tell me why. If I’m going to pop around Without in a Zero’s company, I think I’d better know why the Far want him dead on sight.”

Still Imay said nothing.

“Uhn-say-ayzhed-nahli-imay,” I said. When he faced me, I gave him the im-gesture: We share because we are the same.

He let out a heavy sigh and dropped his eyes. “They steal our children.”

“What?”

“I do not want to tell you, Qeht-uhn-far-jah-im-li-djer, because you speak so well of this man, this vision. It is plain you regard his hel. The truth of this matter is that Djer appear like lightning among the Far and steal children from us. Always they take those about to enter the fullness of im, thirteen or fourteen years old. The Zeros vanish with them, again like lightning but with thunder, and we never see these children again.”

I was speechless. Not looking at me, Imay picked up his saw and went back to work, sectioning wood for bird feeders.

I burst through the cottage door, eager to tell Nish. A half-eaten meal lay on the table across from mine – she had started lunch by herself. “Nish!” I called out.

From behind the bedroom door came her call: “In here!”

I opened it and walked in. “Nish, you’ll never believe what—”

Nish nodded towards the chair in the corner. There sat Vega with the hood of her cloak fallen to her shoulders. In the Zero’s open hand rested a glowing amber. She gave me no greeting, no assent. She studied the glass.

I skanced Nish for an explanation. There was none. She walked past me and left. The bedroom door shut softly behind her, the cottage door a lot less softly.

“Lady,” I said, not knowing how else to begin our interview, now that Vega had come.

“Excelsior,” she said, and then she lifted her face and gave me the Zero’s assent.

I didn’t return it. She closed her hand on the amber and stood, pivoting her head slightly to skance all the recesses of the room. Good, I thought. Now keep her off balance.

“The time’s come for you to start learning the use of glasses,” she told me. “I’ve brought you two gifts to help. One is this amber. The other should help you to allay the nightmares you’ve been having. Perhaps you wonder why they come?”

A sudden turmoil beset me. Clever. She dangles a mystery in front of me, counting on my curiosity. Steady, Quibble!

“Why they come is plain enough,” I replied. “How they come is less clear, but it’s getting clearer to me all the time. As are you, Vega.”

She blinked. Not assent. Surprise. I recalled her control on the eve of my departure from the Small Spiral, how she expected my total capitulation. Then, she had resorted to intimacies, to stoking my fondness for her, in order to win my confidence and school me in the heresy of keeping secrets from Unity.

She began, “Child—”

“That won’t work.” Seeing Vega’s surprise redouble and sensing I couldn’t get a better advantage than this moment afforded, I stared at her and went on in a flat, direct tone: “You want an excelsior of kindness. Fine, lady. I’ll learn what Alnasl can teach me about glasses.” Vega opened her mouth to speak. I cut her short: “Not you! Nor will it be Rasalased or Aladfar. It will be Alnasl – or nobody. Kindness must be content with that. I want to know what’s become of Quiddity. That is your job: you’ll find out.”

“Quibble! Are you bargaining with me?”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t. You manipulated me. You nearly got me rectified.”

Vega was shocked. “I’ve only ever treated you kindly. Even with love!”

“Kindness that controls.”

This pronouncement, paired with my unremitting gaze, struck Vega so harshly that she rocked back on her heels. For a moment, I sensed a struggle inside her – an effort to control herself, to act by persuasion rather than force, to stay her hand from her glass, from revealing its dream to me, trying to make me relent. I gave her no word, no sign, nothing to tilt the scales. Now we’ll see, I told myself.

The cord drawn taut between us snapped. The lady of kindness gave me assent, drooping her eyelids, shutting the orbs of her eyes in shadow. I see you, and I know you, it said – but also, when her eyes opened, Do you know yourself?

She sighed. “Before I give you the amber, I think you’d better have the other gift. I suppose you won’t be surprised to hear it’s a heresy, forbidden by edict to Dazed and Adroit. It’s a risk for you to keep, but I think you need it now. Will you accept it?”

“Little as I like it, lady, I’m a heretic. I’ll accept anything.”

Vega nodded and pointed at me. When I blinked in puzzlement, she approached. I flinched, but she said in a gentle voice, “Behind you.”

I turned. In the corner stood a tall shape with a linen cloth draped over it. With a brief skance at Vega, I pulled the cloth away, exposing a wooden frame and in its midst a flat pool of clear, bright glass. At once I shut my eyes. With an effort, I wrested them open and stared into the pool of light, unable to comprehend the dream there.

A portal, the glass imaged two people who stood in a room exactly the reverse of the cottage’s bedroom. One was Vega. The other was a sliver of a girl, my own age, with pale skin and hair like moonlight. She looked odd in her environs, out of place, yet also headstrong – she insisted on being there despite what anyone, even I, might tell her. If I thought my adroitness hard to handle, what must this spitfire of a girl be like?

She stared at me, never once skancing, as if she too was an excelsior. I noticed her eyes were mismatched, one blue, the other green. A bit amazed, I blinked.

Just as my eyelids fluttered open again, I saw hers opening too. She had blinked. I blinked again; the girl echoed me. No, not echo. Her blink didn’t follow mine by even a split second; it happened at the same time. How are you doing that? I wanted to ask her, but I didn’t dare speak. I felt overawed, as if I was standing at the verge of a fathomless depth, a mystery.

Then the image of Vega reached out a hand to the girl’s arm. As soon as she laid the hand there, I felt it on my own arm. I gasped, looked down. Vega was touching me. I looked back at the girl just as she looked back at me. Then the image and the real Vega withdrew their hands in tandem. I found myself hauling in shallow breaths. I struggled to keep my senses. In, out. The girl in the dream wheezed and wheezed. I began to faint, overcome, and as I sank, I saw her fall into the dream lady’s clutches.

Vega and I sat on the bedroom floor before the mirror. I rested my hand in hers. Between our palms lay the amber. We didn’t intone a word. Instead, we shared second sight. I had done this with Alnasl at the Arc of Summary, but when he showed me how beforehand, only I had glowed, light-shrouded, in the glass-dream of his sight, and that glow was weak. This was utterly different.

Before the mirror, Vega and I glowed together with a bright dual halo. And then, defying my disbelief, we were together inside the mirror. We were creatures of glass.

Vega closed her eyes, and I was in my body again, sitting before the mirror. The glow outlining me had evaporated. I lingered a second, looking at the lady radiating a halo of amber light, and then closed my eyes too. We let each other go and opened our eyes. They met each other in the mirror.

“That should be sufficient,” the lady said. She took my hand, turned it palm up, and dropped the tiny oval amber into it. “It’s yours now, Quibble. Keep it to yourself – show it to no one but the vision, not even Definition. And keep it nearby, handy! Don’t leave it, even in the next room. A Zero’s amber is the mirror image of the Zero herself. Vested in this glass is knowledge, memory, and personality. What you know, the amber knows. What you experience while touching it, it experiences. What you think and feel, it thinks and feels. The more you vest in the glass, the greater its power. As great as the power is the risk. If another Zero holds it, you are at his mercy. Never let that happen.”

So I’m a Zero now? I thought. Never mind that! Forget the power! Question time. First things first: think of safety. If I can’t let another Zero get hold of it, how do I prevent that?

As if reading my thoughts, Vega went on, “I’ve been discreet in this visit – that’s why I popped in at midday – so no one else knows you yet have an amber, or any glass. If you and Alnasl are secretive, I don’t expect trouble soon. But the first thing the vision will teach you is espying, so you can spot trouble. Then he’ll teach you to pop. That’s a hard thing to do safely until you get practiced at it. Pay close attention to everything he tells you, Quibble. Mark I mean it well: heed him!”

“I will.”

“Good. Meet the vision atop the hill northeast of here tomorrow at daybreak.”

“All right. Now, another thing: the nightmares. How do I make them stop?”

The lady of kindness held her breath a moment, and in her pause I sensed a pity. She was remorseful for the pain my excellence was causing me. There’s that, at least.

“If Citation’s battle with them was indicative,” she said, “you can’t stop dreams of control Within altogether. They’re the lot of One’s excellence. But you can try to give yourself control, make yourself the dreams’ Unity. Hence the mirror. Look in it. Look at yourself, always with the amber. You don’t have to make the glass remember – it wants to. When you go to sleep, put the amber in your palm and tie a cloth around your hand to keep it there. In the dream, give no heed to Unity or anybody else. Look for yourself, for your own face. It won’t be easy. Unity will control you and hurt you. It will threaten to rectify you, send you Without, kill people you love. Don’t fear It. It can’t do anything. The Unity of your nightmare is part of your own mind, a reliquary of what Unity said and did to you Within. You’re still One, you see. Really, you’re fighting yourself. If Unity offers you anything, if One speaks to you, if somebody you know appears – don’t agree, don’t listen, turn away. Find yourself, look at yourself, and take control.”

Vega’s advice sounded straightforward, sensible, and impossible to follow.

“You called me Zero. Now you say I’m One. Which am I?”

“You’re a bit of both,” Vega told me. “An excelsior straddles the boundary.”

She pushed herself up from the floor with a groan and a curse – “Damn these old joints!” – which I found odd, since she wasn’t old. She put her right hand in her cloak pocket, and I knew she was touching her own amber, about to pop out. Then she looked down at me, reconsidering. I scrutinized her. Something vital was coming.

“Quibble, this mirror is dreamless of itself. But it’s another sort of glass, and with it, you can lose yourself in dreams you make. Don’t. While you look in a glass, the world and everyone in it wend their way along without you. And you without them.”

“While, wend,” I said. “That’s what I tell the Ones in my nightmares.”

Vega smiled sadly. “While you look at dreams, the world Without wends along,” she quoted. “It’s a hymn of kindness. I sang it to you in the Small Spiral while you were looking at orbs, dreaming.”

She turned away suddenly and popped out. The pop’s crack, reverberating in the room, made the mirror rattle in its frame. I looked at it, at myself, and the feelings I had sensed in Vega as we shared second sight came suddenly into focus. Despite what she knowingly did to me, despite all the suffering and peril she brought upon me, Vega had loved me all along. This was not only my intuition. Her love was a certainty.

I had misjudged her. She wasn’t callous or calculating, not really. She believed in me fervently, but she believed in something else a little more, and for its sake I was now a sacrifice, however this grieved her. My bargain didn’t let her help me more than she just had, and that added to her grief.

I regretted my accusations, my vindictiveness. Gazing in the mirror, my eyes meeting my eyes, my soul seeing itself, I sought for what within me had been so wrong yet so sure it was right.

Who are you? I asked myself.

I’m you, intoned an eerily familiar voice.

I stared at my reflection. My lips hadn’t moved. Say again?

I’m you now. Hello, Quibble. It’s good to see you again.

Hello, Meissa.

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