The Mirror (6 page)

"I will listen." The wagon moved forward.

"Until last night, I was Shay Garrett . . ." She tried hard to be convincing, but the further into her story, the more she realized that if anyone'd tried to tell her such things, she'd have inched away from that person until she could run. Corbin Strock merely nodded, looked into her face often and kept his own expressionless.

"I don't know how it could've been, but I think it was the mirror."

"The mirror.

"Yes, the one on the porch. That's the one that'd been in my room, it ... oh, look. A deer. I saw a deer. And there's another, by the creek."

"You saw a deer." He didn't bother to look at the deer. His expression didn't change.

Frustrated tears all over her face. "It's no use, is it? You don't believe me and I don't know how to prove it." She fished the hanky out of the beaded bag. "Wait, I know. I can tell you of things that will happen in the future."

"You foretell the future."

"Listen, wise guy. Last Sunday when I came up with Marek, he's the fiance I told you about, this road . . ." When she'd finished with the improvements to the canyon she went on to dredge up what little she could remember of her history studies. History had bored her all through school and she'd memorized enough to pass tests, then cleaned out her mind for more interesting details. She skimmed over the depression Oh, how Rachael'd carried on about that and the two world wars . . .

"All over the world?"

"No, just Europe and Asia mostly and there'll be wars in Korea and Vietnam."

Corbin had never heard of either.

"They used to be called something else, I can't remember now." Shay went on to cars and television sets . . . the wildness of the canyon really did have a beauty of its own. How did they ever clear away so much of the tumbled rock and fallen trees to make the canyon that she knew?

Corbin kept his deadpan in place through airplanes but when Shay reached the point of women wearing pants and skirts above the knee he broke into sudden laughter.

Shay drooped.
Well, what'd you expect, dumb-dumb?
At least he'd heard her out. But how did one explain the impossible? How explain the future to someone who hadn't lived it or with its consequences?

Corbin's laughter died as suddenly as it'd come, replaced by thoughtfulness and then suspicion. "You aren't one of those lady authors, are you? In secret?" Disapproval in his tone.

"No." She shrugged Brandy's shoulders. "I'm just old crazy Brandy. And this is hopeless." She reached again for the handkerchief.

The road rose precipitously away from the creek on a narrow bank supported by a rock wall and tree-trunk braces. From around the curve ahead came the sound of bells.

"Damn!" Corbin glanced at her. "Sorry."

"What is it?"

"Freight wagon." He put his hand to the side of his mouth. "Whoa up, ahead!"

"But nobody can pass here."

"I'll have to back to a turnoff. You get up the hill and out of the way."

Shay ripped the hem of her grandmother's skirt as she left the wagon, fought the troublesome garment as she scampered up away from the road. She collapsed into the shade of a boulder in time to see six horses, two abreast, pull a wagonload of massive machinery around the bend. The horses stopped and the driver put his foot out on the brake to wait as Corbin backed his team down the incline.

When the wagon hit the canyon wall and a front wheel almost went over the ledge opposite, Shay was thankful he'd let her out first. She drew in a noisy breath and the driver of the freight, who was calmly dumping tobacco from a pouch onto a thin paper, looked up with a lazy smile.

He lifted his hat and nodded. "Ma'am."

Shay nodded back and let out her breath slowly, catching a glimpse of platinum blond hair before he replaced the hat.

He licked the paper, smoothed it and lit it with a wooden match he'd scraped under his boot. Taking a long puff, he looked up again.

The tanned face and sandy mustache didn't match the hair, neither did the insolent gold-brown eyes. Instant dislike mingled with the shock of recognition as Shay straightened her back at the hard stare below her.

Here, at last, was the man in Grandma Bran's wedding picture in the hall.

7

At a shout from Corbin, somewhere down the canyon, the freighter released the brake enough to let his horses move away.

Shay sat listening to the boiling creek over Brandy's heartbeat, telling herself she'd imagined the similarities between the man in the old wedding picture and the one in the -wagon. The picture hadn't shown such light hair, but the picture had darkened. Corbin finally pulled up below her.

"Who was that driver on the freight wagon?" she asked when she sat beside him.

"Lon Maddon. You stay out of his sights. He's a bad one."

"Maddon." Her mother's maiden name. Her twin uncles' last names-- Remy and Dan had this Lon's eyes too, as she'd had herself. Until last night.

And Shay Garrett's hair (she seemed almost a different person now) was a similar color. It'd often been referred to as "the Maddon hair" in an otherwise dark-haired family. She'd just looked into the face of her grandfather.

Brandy must unload Corbin and marry this Lon. She certainly has odd taste.

Shay couldn't get all caught up in a life not her own, knowing too much and too little at the same time.
What if Corbin Strock dies?
That would leave Brandy free to marry again.
Only, I don't want to be around when it happens.

John McCabe said he'd send the mirror. When he did, Shay determined to have a long hard talk with it. The thought should have seemed silly, but nothing could be more incredible than the turn her life had taken since the night before.

Corbin noticed the change in Brandy after he'd picked her up. She was silent, subdued. "Did Maddon say anything unkind to you back there?"

"No." She eyed him with a sadness that made him uneasy.

She was a strange one, there was no doubting it. Unlike John McCabe, Corbin couldn't believe she was feigning madness. The best of actresses couldn't make such swift changes in personality and expression, nor so convincingly. Real tears, then startling laughter, looks of an intelligence so intense they chilled him--not the sly look of insanity he'd have expected. But Corbin'd never approved of high intelligence in women. It made them troublesome. Brandy would interrupt herself in the middle of one of her wild fantasies to exclaim over a deer drinking at the creek, or a series of small rainbows in the sunflash of spray, common enough sights in a canyon she must have traveled often.

In fact, the first time he'd seen this fey creature was at the end of this canyon, on the occasion McCabe opened the Brandy Wine. She'd been dressed in white and carried a tiny parasol, pretty and spoiled, the daughter of a wealthy man, but quite normal, playing with other children whose parents attended the ceremony. Her father had lifted her to his shoulder, announcing he was naming the silver mine for "this precious piece of baggage here."

Even before the price of it'd dropped, the silver in the Brandy Wine played out, as had, apparently, the mind of the child for whom it was named. McCabe'd abandoned the mine and was now abandoning the child. Corbin felt shame at being a party to it, but he and Thora K. would look after her. It would have been easier on them all if Brandy were not such a beauty.

Hard to believe she was the animated creature of a few hours ago. Or the girl with the brazen laughter and mischief in her eyes when they'd made that stop on Water Street, which he admitted now he'd had no business making. She'd stared about there as if she'd never seen it before. Boulder wasn't so large a place that even a well-bred girl could have missed at least a peek at the houses of that forbidden way. And it was common knowledge that the madams paid cumshaw to McCabe and others like him to stay in business at all.

No, Brandy must suffer from memory losses as part of her affliction. That would explain why she'd looked at him as if he were a stranger this morning at their wedding, when he'd talked with her in that very parlor on the two previous Sundays. And why she did not appear the same person today. He'd believed McCabe's story of her pretense then. She'd been cold, resentful, blushed often--but today . . .

To get the Brandy Wine, he'd indeed saddled himself with a demented wife. And the fault was all his own. He'd investigated the float around the mine, talked to a man who'd once worked her, and rushed off to see if he could lease her from McCabe.

After some thought and much questioning, McCabe'd stunned Corbin by offering the Brandy Wine to him as a gift, free title, and cash to boot, with only one condition. That condition now drooped next to him.

Ever since Corbin started in the silver mines of Caribou as a mucker at fourteen, he'd dreamed of owning his own mine. Work as a miner had been hard to find in the last years as the mines closed one by one. He'd swept out stores and fed horses at the livery, any sort of odd job. Now the black iron that Samuel Conger'd discovered in the area would revive mining and Corbin Strock at the age of thirty had achieved his dream at last. He owned the Brandy Wine--but the cost had been dear.

They munched on drying bread and cookies that Mrs. McCabe had sent along. Finally Corbin could stand his thoughts no longer, nor the dejection of the poor girl beside him. "What's wrong with you now, Brandy?"

She studied his face. He must not have set it right because the brief hope vanished from her eyes. "You'll just think I'm crazy." She looked away with the most heart-wrenching sigh he'd ever heard.

"I listened before. I'll listen again."

He thought she wouldn't answer but finally she said, "What if I can't go back? What if I have to live out Brandy's life? She lives an awfully long time, Corbin."

"I won't hurt you, Brandy."

"What if the mirror won't work the reverse? I'd be stuck in this body and-"

"Would you feel better if you had that mirror with you?"

"Oh, yes."

"We'll have it sent up as soon as possible then."

Her mood seemed to lighten after that. She sat straighter, seemed to take an interest in old diggings and miners' shacks along the way, but soon she drooped again. "I think this is the longest trip of my life," she said finally. "I'm used to a faster pace, I'm afraid."

"The horses are tired. I don't think they can do more."

"I didn't mean the horses, poor things. Look at the sweat on them."

"Tell me some more stories then. That will pass the time for us both."

"Stories?"

"About the future, people flying or anything." She did have a fine way with her stories, this little wife he'd acquired.

"Oh . . . well ... let me think. I don't think you're ready for Watergate-"

"But we already have gates for water."

"Yeah. How about men going to the moon?"

"That sounds interesting."

Brandy began the most fantastic tale he'd heard yet and, as before, the words tumbled from her lips so fast he missed many, and many were either from another language or made up by her poor fevered brain. But the sound of her voice was pleasant and soothing despite her excessive energy and the tale she told outdid most anything he'd ever read. Even the novels of Mr. Wells.

"And the first astronaut gets out and says something about a big step for mankind . . . where's Tungsten? We must not be there yet."

'The ore?"

"No, the town."

"There's no town of Tungsten in this canyon. People are still laughing at those of us who are about to make our fortunes on the black iron, as they call it."

"Well, I don't know if you're going to make a fortune, but a town'll spring up along here somewhere and it'll be named Tungsten. And it'll die. There were only a few foundations left when I came up last Sunday." Brandy turned haunted eyes to him. "Isn't it scary how a whole town can be born and die in less than a lifetime? Of course, Brandy lives forever."

An eerie feeling along his spine. "What do you know of mining tungsten? I thought your father was among the scoffers."

"Nothing. I didn't know it was something you mined. It's just the name of a ghost town to me. The Brandy Wine is a mine, I take it," she added without much interest.

"Yes, and named after you. And you were not up here last Sunday. You and I were talking in your parlor. Don't you remember?" His uneasiness grew.

"No, that was Brandy. I was with Marek. We picnicked over there by the . . . where's the reservoir? And the dam?" She stared around him at Barker Meadows, the rosy flush gone from her cheeks.

"There is no such thing here, Brandy."

At times she seemed too smart by half, but she believed her silly tales and it frightened him more than a little. Corbin wondered if she would become a danger. Should Brandy be locked up somewhere?

8

The sun had gone down behind mountains and Nederland sat in dusky half-light and shadow. A different scrubby-looking Nederland, most of the houses mere rough cabins, the slopes around denuded of trees--for firewood and building materials, Shay supposed. Stumps were left standing to scar the hillsides. Desolate tendrils of smoke filed from ugly pipe chimneys, mingled with the raw smells of pine and rotting garbage. No power lines here, the only poles those propped against a few lopsided buildings to keep the structures upright in the wind.