The Mirror (17 page)

"Yes," Shay lied and looked Elton straight in the eye. Except for his sexual insensibilities she really did care for Corbin.

"Think of a mountain winter in that shack, Bran."

I am. Ugh. But if
I
can take the mirror with me I might get out before winter. The only Brandy they know in Nederland is me.

"You've changed so since your marriage, I hardly know you. I'd have said you and Strock were the worst mismatch ever, but if you're happy with him . . ." He rolled his eyes and sighed. "You don't know how relieved I am."

"Well, I am. So don't worry about it."

"Here I've been imagining you miserable, maybe even being beaten, and you're happy. Wait till I tell Ma." Elton touched her cheek and left.

Shay stared hatred at the wedding mirror crouching on its hands in the corner of the room.

Thora K. had finished the beds assigned her and was carrying soiled linen down the back stairs when the proprietress asked her to help out in the dining room. This often happened on Sundays when the Antlers served the best chicken dinner in Colorado.

Enjoying the change from doing rooms, Thora K. greeted friends as she bustled about with platters of chicken and bowls of steaming mashed potatoes.

Mr. Hollingsworth McLeod, one of the special guests at the Antlers, signaled her with his water glass. She nodded and went off to get the jug. Now, there was a name for you, Thora K. thought. Mr. McLeod was always off in a corner talking business with someone.

"Power is the thing now, Harry," he was saying to the man across from him as she returned with the water. "And with the natural fall of the canyon, Nederland's the place to build a reservoir--madam, you are pouring water all over the table."

"Oh, I do be sorry, sir." Thora K. righted the jug and dabbed at the mess she'd made. "Did ... did 'ee say reservoir, Mr. McLeod? 'Ere in Nederland?"

"Well, yes. It's still in the planning stage. I'm trying to raise the capital right-"

"Reservoir, 'ere . . . her ain't barmy then."

"I
beg your pardon?"

"Her do 'ave the sight. Oh, thank 'ee, Mr. McLeod. Thank 'ee!"

Shay turned to look at the wedding mirror, lying facedown in the back of the buckboard and wrapped securely in a quilt. She'd insisted it be covered before its removal from Brandy's room in the Gingerbread House. The mirror might be capable of harming others and she was determined to be careful with it. The trunk beside it was filled with clothes for winter, all black because Brandy was in mourning for John McCabe.

Sophie hadn't been eager to let her have the mirror but finally had to admit it did indeed belong to Brandy. Like Elton, Sophie seemed relieved that her daughter wished to return to her husband.

Shay'd asked Sophie for money and there was a good deal of it in her purse. She would fix up the cabin a bit for Thora K. and for the real Brandy before trying to switch bodies again.

A stronger, more confident Shay rode up the canyon to Nederland this time. She'd survived the disappointment of returning to Brandy's world after her short tantalizing sojourn in modern times. She'd survived the ordeal of illness without modern medicine. She was even relaxed with the slow pace of the trip.

It was Corbin Strock sitting beside her who seemed ill-at-ease now. She asked him about the mine, about Thora K. and Samuel and Tim Pemberthy, anything to make conversation, but got only curt replies.

Finally, by midaftenoon she could stand it no longer. "Corbin, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Now stop this and tell me." She pushed his hat back and peered around into his face. "Please?"

"I admit it was my fault but . . . but good women don't act that way." His ears reddened. Confusion mixed with anguish in his eyes.

Shay knew he referred to their one night in bed together. Corbin was falling hard for Brandy and Shay'd shocked the pants off him.

"Are you sure you know all that much about good women?"
You old Victorian, you.
"I mean, have you ever discussed . . . intimate things with one?"

"Of course not!"

"Then how can you know? I was a virgin, wasn't I?"

"Strong passions must be curbed." He clamped his teeth together so tightly his ears wiggled.

"By women. But not by men. Good women just lie around and be done unto?"

"Brandy-"

"If they move a muscle or enjoy anything, they're bad women? But the man can enjoy himself with uncurbed passion?"

"He must or there'd be no children conceived."

"This has got to be the most ridiculous conversation I've ever had. Who's talking about children?"

"Brandy, you cannot separate the two. One naturally follows the other."

"Then why don't prostitutes get pregnant?"

"I refuse to discuss this any further." He slapped the reins against the horses' rumps with a fury. "Do you understand me?"

"Yes, dear." Shay sighed but said not a word until they'd reached Nederland.

On Main Street their way was blocked by a strangely quiet crowd. Sitting high on the buckboard, Shay could see a mule at its center. And with a little shock she recognized the blanket-draped thing slung over the mule's back. It was a human body. Only the boots showed beneath . . . heel up.

"What's happening?" Corbin asked a man at the edge of the crowd.

"Old Willis found a dead man in the creek, downstream from here.

"Only to speak to. Met him in the saloon one night. He was from Denver. Last name was Murphy." The man shuffled uneasily and looked away. "Someone said Horn was asking after him."

"Probably an outlaw then, and good riddance." Corbin backed the team to take a side street to the bridge.

"Who's Horn?" Shay asked.

"Tom Horn. You've heard of him. A one-man vigilante committee who's not content to leave criminals to the ways of the courts."

"That isn't legal. He'll be tried for murder, won't he?"

"He never leaves witnesses and he's long gone by now."

The smell of frying chicken met them at the door of the cabin and Thora K. greeted her with teary eyes. "So 'ee do be 'ome. I've been some lonesome for 'ee, child."

Corbin carried her new trunk to the loft because her room couldn't hold another item.

Tim Pemberthy arrived to help unload the mirror. Shay held the door as the men lifted it down and then held onto the door for support as the quilt slipped off in their hands. . . .

This vision was short-lived and Shay didn't pass out as she had on Brandy's wedding night while eating a pasty at the table.

She saw her own body dressed in a long skirt and some kind of kerchief that covered her hair. Her arm reached over a fence toward a goat. Behind the goat a tall white tree stood bleached of bark and leaves.

"Brandy, are you sick?" Corbin replaced the quilt and rushed toward her.

"No. I'm . . . fine. Just felt a little weak for a moment." Why had Brandy stayed at that farmhouse?

"Us'll 'ave to be careful she don't tire for a bit." Thora K. led her to a bench. "Her been terrible sick."

The only space for the mirror was a corner of the main room.

Corbin left to return the team and buckboard. Thora K. turned spattering chicken in the frypan. And Tim pulled the quilt off the wedding mirror . . .

"Tim, don't!"

"Wot a hugly thing it do be." Thora K. stared in amazement.

"That's . . . why I think we should leave it covered."

"Why 'ave it at all if 'ee can't see yourself in it?"

Tim Pemberthy's skin had gone white to the roots of his hair. "I do believe it's the same as stood in me brother's 'ouse in Central City."

Shay covered the wedding mirror quickly.

"It did upset the family so, they left it in the 'ouse and moved out. They was that afraid to touch it."

"Why did it upset the family?" Shay tried to sound casual, her fingers nervously smoothing the quilt.

"Their youngest did see strange things in it. Edden been right since."

"What things?"

"No one'd tell me. But I don't like you 'aving it in the house."

"'Twas a gift from Brandy's father, Tim. 'Er knows what's best to do with it, I'm sure," Thora K. said mysteriously. "Tim, 'ave 'ee heard of the new reservoir Mr. Hollingsworth McLeod plans to build 'ere in Nederland?" She forked chicken onto a platter and winked at Shay.

17

Shay'd forgotten the Antlers Hotel was open only in the summer, and she'd been in Nederland less than a week when Thora K.'s job ended for the season. It would be difficult to work on the mirror with the Cornish woman home all day.

Without asking permission to leave the cabin, Shay walked to the general store and bought red-and-white calico. She persuaded Thora K. to help her make curtains. Shay was no seamstress and her stitches looked juvenile.

They rolled the scraps and combined them with others to braid a big rug for the main room. Shay hemmed up some material Sophie'd sent for a tablecloth. The cabin took on a new look.

She helped to "put up" the garden produce and to make sausages to hang in the cave. Thora K. patiently instructed Shay at every step.

The mirror sat uncommunicative in the corner. Even covered, its presence lent a subtle change to the very air of the room. Whenever left alone, Shay removed the quilt and stood before it.

Corbin was home only for meals and to sleep. He did his best to ignore her.

Cold winds blew in from the west. The aspen high on the hillsides turned a lovely gold and Corbin brought up coal from town. But an Indian summer intervened and one day Shay and Thora K. sat on the porch sewing blocks for a quilt. The Cornish woman told stories of phantoms of the dead appearing to loved ones at the moment of their deaths.

" 'Appened to me granny, it did." It seemed everything that'd ever happened had happened to Thora K.'s grandmother.

"Her were laying in bed worrying about me fayther's brother being so late home. 'Twere bright with the moonlight and 'er did get up and look out the window. And there 'ee were, walking toward the 'ouse. Her went to the door but when her opened it, no 'un be there. Soon they did bring 'im home, and dead 'ee was. Struck down by a runaway 'orse and wagon."

"Thora K., do you really believe your uncle appeared to your grandmother like that? When he was dead?"

"Aye." She put down her sewing and stared at Shay. "Tez easier to understand that than why a 'unman of twenty years don't know how ter cook, sew, preserve or anything else, Brandy," she said quietly.

Indian summer passed and so did Shay's confidence in the mirror. She put on Brandy's scratchy woolen underwear to fight the drafts that crept up her skirts.

Dr. Seaton persuaded Samuel Williams to make the trip down the canyon to the Sanitarium. His cabin was boarded up.

One Saturday night she awoke to hear Corbin and Thora K. talking. He must have just returned from the "kiddleywinks," which was Thora K.'s word for saloon. "Look around 'ee, son. Do 'ee see wot her's done to the 'ouse?"

"I think you and Brandy have fixed it up pretty." There was a slight slur to his consonants.

"Her's nesting, Corbin Strock. Her needs a babe."

"Brandy's not a bird and you know she shouldn't--"

"I did tell 'ee about the reservoir. 'Er edden daft. She 'ave the sight and can't be helping that."

"And where did Brandy tell you the reservoir would be, Thora K.?"

"On the meadow. Same as her told 'ee."

"Mr. McLeod is contracting to buy land for it up on Sulfide Flats, not on Barker Meadows. I just heard tonight." Corbin's footsteps on the stairs were none too steady.

"Well, it edden built yet," his mother called after him.

Shay'd never heard of Sulfide Flats. She rolled over in the cold bed. When she slept, she dreamed of Rachael and woke longing for her mother. Lying still in the lonely dark, her eyes dry but burning, Shay wondered why she was such a child. She and Rachael'd never gotten on all that well when they were together. Her father, Marek, her friends were becoming like fond memories. Why then this morbid fixation with her mother?

The snow came first as powder that melted with the next day's touch of sun. Golden leaves fell from the aspen. Tim Pemberthy came to supper at least once a week and spent half the meal looking over his shoulder at the wedding mirror. He told them that it'd been in the house when his brother's family moved to Central City. But he'd heard its previous owner'd found it on a garbage dump outside a "fancy" house in Cripple Creek.

Thora K. had run out of scraps for sewing and Shay was running out of patience and busywork. She read all the books Sophie'd sent up. None would have made the best-seller list.

Shay scandalized Thora K. by buying new yard goods and tearing them up for quilting blocks and rag rugs. One morning she watched from a window a real wild bear rummage through the refuse heap beside the cabin. And she wasn't even moved by the sight.