The Mirror: Part II

Chapter Five
“Finding Id”
King Amadeus was very agitated. The Earther… Jake, what an imbecilic name… had escaped. He could be back on Earth now, warning everyone, or worse—destroying the portal.
That portal was the difference between his race’s survival and his race’s very undignified end. He needed to find Linkunz Id. And once he found Linkunz Id, he would take his enchantment off, give him back his tongue, and find out how to make the portal.
The important thing is getting humans, he thought. And the second most important thing is getting rid of the Seripmav. He couldn’t let them drink their races into oblivion again.
King Amadeus was king because he was the oldest elf alive. Elves lived for thousands of years, and King Amadeus still had a good thousand years left. Being the oldest meant you had more memories than anyone else alive.
One of those memories was about to solve the elves’ problem.
There were two worlds that most educated people, in general, believed in: round Earth and its universe, and the flat one-galaxy world the King, his people, the Seripmav, and the survivor humans lived in.
But there was another one. Amadeus had seen it before. The dwellers in the Third Place were mysteries; he didn’t know anything about them more than that they existed.
The Third Place was where King Amadeus intended to send the Seripmav.
All that was left was to find Lincoln Id, that soul of glee and darkness, and get him to think tricking the Seripmav into going there was an excellent idea.
“Urion.” Again the crowd of elves shuffled as Urion came and was surged forward. “Go and find Linkunz Id. Bring him back before nightfall, and your reward is your life.”
The elves fell silent and their moonlight eyes cast worried, scared rays at the King. Urion kept himself from shaking, and left the court.
All that was left was to find Id.
~
“We have to find Lincoln Id,” said Jake.
“What can we do when we find him?” Lorryn’s forehead was still wrinkled, and her dark eyes never left Jake’s.
Jake couldn’t help but fall a little more in love. But he shoved that out of his head, telling himself, ‘Idiot—she has a boyfriend—think.’
“Wait… Jake, how many worlds do you think there are?” Lorryn pressed her lips together, the forehead wrinkles flattening out as an idea presented itself.
Jake cast his eyes around, thinking. How many worlds…?
How many more worlds could there be? He had never thought about there being any other world than his, and now that he had visited another, he thought he must be the stupidest being ever to walk two worlds for not wondering if there weren’t more.
“There must be more,” he stated. The more he thought about it, the more sure he became.
Lorryn turned to face the mirror, and again stretched out a finger toward it, as if caressing something bittersweet to her heart. “If we can get… Lincoln’s Id?” She turned to Jake, querying whether that was the creature’s accurate name.
Jake nodded.
“If we get Lincoln’s Id into a different world, an empty world, where there is no glass, and then break the portal that got him there, he’d be trapped.”
“But is there such a world? And how would we find one? And have Id make a portal there?”
Lorryn paused, realizing just how ridiculous the plan was.
“Who would know if there was another world?” she asked, turning away from the mirror to look him in the eyes once more.
Jake paused, instantly knowing but hesitating. “…The elf king.”
“Then we need to talk to the elf king and tell him our plan. He’ll understand.”
Jake couldn’t help thinking, And if he doesn’t?… Because he won’t. Lorryn knew what he was thinking. She was thinking the same thing.
“But all we can do is try.”
“He’s not going to let us out—he’ll put us in his captive city. We can’t go to the elf king.”
“But we have to.”
She turned and smiled at him, and Jake knew he would probably do just about anything for her right then and there. And if that meant asking an elf king, who was trying to kidnap humans, (and more likely than not would like to do something unpleasant to Jake for giving him the slip) if he would help manipulate and then get rid of a centuries-old Id so that Jake could destroy for good the very portal the Elf king wanted, well, he was going to do it.
~
Dusk was setting. The vampires would be leaving this world soon, and gorging on the humans. Amadeus didn’t know how many humans were on Earth, and he didn’t want to risk the Seripmav drinking them into extinction. There may only be just enough humans to save the elves, he thought.
Distant pounding feet echoed through the gradually emptying court. A trumpet sounded. The king sat up even straighter in his throne. The court door swung open on silent hinges, and in came Urion.
A displeased Linkunz Id followed behind him.
~
Lorryn was in silent ecstasy. This was the most beautiful place she could ever have imagined. Dusk was playing on the northern horizon, and unknown stars tittered behind their vast curtain of sky like anxious actors before a play.
They walked on, ever toward the ominous line of trees.
The forest was even darker than when last Jake had been plunging through it, desperate to get to the mirror on the hill. Few rays of purply-yellow light played through gaps in the canopy now.
After what seemed the journey of a lifetime to Lorryn and a never-ending sojourn to doom to Jake, they reached the base of the gigantic tree that housed the Elf King’s hidden palace of wonders and horrors.
~
The alpine court was empty now. Only King Amadeus and Linkunz Id remained.
Linkunz Id was in a high mood. He clapped his hands incessantly, clicked his new tongue irritatingly, overjoyed at hearing his own existence again. And to top it off, his favorite old top hat had been returned to him. Tongue and hat at last in tote, his head finally felt complete once more.
“Mr. Linkun. I brought you here for a reason,” said the King. His regal voice was now glacial.
“And what is that?” replied Lincoln Id nonchalantly, continuing to click his tongue and clap his hands.
“I need you to do something for me.”
“What a pity,” was the snappy reply. How strange it was to articulate again!
“If you do not, I will be forced to replace the Effermar’s Enchantment.”
Linkunz Id instantly shut up, albeit grudgingly. He fingered his overgrown goatee absent-mindedly.
Amadeus’ voice dripped with disdain and feigned laziness. “Have you ever heard of the Third Place?”
Lincoln Id looked sharply at the king, pursing his lips, narrowing his eyes. A moment passed as the id remembered his time in the Third Place. “Why?” he asked suspiciously.
King Amadeus smiled deviously and grimly. “I want you to make a portal there.”
Linkunz Id considered the possibilities of making a portal to the Third Place. His mind instantly wrapped around all the glorious potential of it.
“Why?” Id repeated, though not without a hint of his liking the idea.
Chapter Six
“Second Portal”
Jake and Lorryn stood at the foot of the tree, no longer sure what to do next. Suddenly, a trumpet sounded. Movement could be heard deep under the tree. Lorryn grabbed Jake’s forearm, making him jump and tinging his ears red. “We need to hide.”
They climbed up a fringing tree, huge by Earth standards but minuscule next to the palatial, elven one.
A few moments later, elves pored out of the Palace Tree’s roots. Some elves headed off into the shadows, always in groups of at least three, but most still lingered about the base of the Palace Tree.
The forest remained hushed, the elves agitated, Jake and Lorryn anxious. What was going on?
Lorryn snapped out of her reverie as Jake tapped her arm. He looked significantly up into the upper limbs of their tree.
Lorryn nodded, and they climbed higher. She refused to think about her fear of heights.
Now they were only a few feet from the top. Lorryn looked up and saw a deep ebony sky, set with sparkling stars of silver and orange and blue.
This could be home, she thought.
“The vampires will be out now,” whispered Jake.
She came back down to earth, and looked at Jake. “When are they going to be leaving?”
“Some time tonight. This is probably something like morning to them.”
Lorryn chuckled softly. She murmured sardonically, “So the question remains: do vampires like to sleep in?”
Jake smirked.
“Do we just wait now?” murmured Lorryn, returning her gaze to the partly obscured sky.
Jake looked up as well. “I think we can’t do much else.” They looked down at the hundreds of elves, and knew that they would have to wait until they were gone until they could attempt to enter the court.
Several minutes later, the trumpet sounded again. The elves suddenly stood up, waiting for something. Forty seconds later, the king emerged, followed by an elf carrying a tall, narrow mirror, framed in dark cherry wood.
And behind him, there was Linkunz Id, wearing Abraham Lincoln’s trademark top hat.
The king’s majestic voice pierced even up to Lorryn and Jake’s treetop. “Tonight, the Seripmav will at last be gone.”
A pause, then awkward clapping covered up by cheering.
“I speak to you as your King. Tonight, our people will be saved. I command you to return to the courts, and in the morning, all will be well.”
The king hit his scepter on the forest floor. The same eerie, bell-like tone filled the world once more, despite all logic that forest ground was soft and couldn’t produce any such melody.
The elves instantly bowed and hurried themselves into the palace. In twenty seconds, all of their hundreds were gone without a trace.
King Amadeus turned to face his servant elf and the id, speaking in a quieter tone that nonetheless carried up to Jake and Lorryn’s perch.
“Mr. Lincoln, please take us to the Seripmav meeting place.” Despite the please, it was an obvious, threatening order. The two elves and the id stepped through the deadleaf carpet and were swallowed by the forest.
Lorryn breathed to Jake, “We need to get down.”
Slowly, they began the precarious descent, while far below Lincoln Id began to lead the party toward the mirror portal to Earth in the distant hills.
~
The Seripmav Nation, every vampire and vampiress, was flying slowly across the Otherworld sky. Their mass was a like a blotch of ink, blacking out the sparkle of colorful stars. The Emperor was scanning the hills, searching for the telltale glint of Lincoln Id’s Mirror Portal.
~
“Set it down here.”
The elf set the mirror portal to the Third Place down at the top of the hill adjacent to the Earth Mirror Portal.
“Good.”
The Id was getting restless, bored. Maybe he could just slip into Earth…
“Mr. Linkun, I do not recommend entering that mirror.”
Lincoln Id turned and saw King Amadeus. His hand was outstretched, and his fingertips glowing, just the way they had so many years before, when the sanguine stump of the Id’s tongue poured blood into his mouth and the silencing Effermar Enchantment had first been placed on him.
Lincoln Id shrank away from both mirror and king. The glowing fingertips faded and dropped.
Amadeus flashed his eyes onto his servant. “Lay the other one down in the grass.”
The elf soundlessly moved toward the Earth Mirror Portal, thinking about the regrets of his life, and wishing he had never come to the King. There were worse ways to go insane than lack of air, he knew now. But too late.
“Face-side down,” said the King, voice drenched in disdain.
The elf silently flipped it over.
King Amadeus stepped over to it. His fingertips began to glow, and the glow began to spread up his arm. The king raised his luminescent limb, as if getting ready to pitch a rock into the ground with all his might; and then he brought his arm hurtling down.
The glow leapt off of his arm and onto the mirror’s back. The glow spread around the mirror, glowed violently, then faded.
Amadeus had just made the mirror disappear.
Lincoln Id narrowed his eyes, not realizing the mirror had merely been made invisible. Now he would have to make another portal to Earth for the King, which meant he would not be able to slip off unnoticed anytime soon. How the id longed just to kill this elf king and be done with it…
The threesome walked back to the hill where the Third Place mirror portal stood.
Amadeus’ moonlight eyes actually seemed to glow in the Otherworld’s nighttime shadows. He turned his luminous gaze to the skies, searching for the telltale shadow of the approaching Seripmav, just as the Seripmav emperor searched for the telltale glint of a mirror.
The Seripmav emperor would discover not a pathway to humans, but a pathway to an empty abyss. The King smiled at this idea.
~
Lorryn and Jake huddled close to each other, looking at the king, the elf, and the id; watching as King Amadeus made the mirror’s top invisible.
“My King?” It was the servant elf, timidly addressing Amadeus.
Amadeus’ moonbeam gaze shifted from the sky onto the plebian elf. “Yes?”
“What does this mirror do?” he questioned softly.
The Id replied for him. “Goes to the Third Place.”
“…Third Place?”
Linkun Id smiled ghoulishly. Is it the stars or Amadeus’ eyes that glint off his teeth? thought Lorryn. “A world where there are no stars, no sun, no moon,” he said. “No pretty things at all, nothing to bring a simple little elf like you happiness.
“Creatures even worse than I haunt the Third Place.”
The elf trembled and stepped back from Linkunz Id. The Id chuckled darkly, and Amadeus joined in with a soft, deep rumble, but continued surveying the sky.
No pretty things… does glass count as a pretty thing? Jake couldn’t believe the unlikely luck. The Id had made his own portal to a place where he could never harm another soul—this “Third Place.”
Lorryn looked up to the sky, willing herself to be enchanted by its beauty once more, so she wouldn’t have to think about the two monsters a few hills away, and how either she or Jake would have to shove Linkunz Id into a void where no stars, no sun, no moon shone, where you were left with memories swimming past like horrid, bloated fish.
Lorryn looked to the sky, and saw something else. She stifled a gasp.
Jake started and looked at Lorryn, her mysterious eyes glinting in the unusual starlight. Idiot, she doesn’t like you, she likes some dumb***, some “Victor”—
He looked up at the sky. A small blotch of beating black was slowly, steadily approaching. Until now, the Seripmav had seemed a formless foe that was somewhere far away; a problem, but a distant one. The vampires were coming.
Jake and Lorryn were suddenly, throbbingly aware that their heart was pumping something that those creatures thirsted for.
Chapter Seven
“The End”
“Lorryn.” Jake’s voice was barely louder than a thought.
Lorryn switched her focus from the sky and its terrors to the welcome face of a good friend, the best friend she could ever have.
“We have to act now. We need to get Id into the new mirror, smash it, then get ourselves into my mirror.”
Lorryn nodded grimly.
“I’ll shove Linkunz Id into the mirror and smash it. You stay hidden as long as you can and find my mirror. Get into it, and then wait for me.” The fact that either of them could be murdered tonight, no matter whether by an id’s shove or an elf’s blade or a vampire’s fangs, was not mentioned.
Lorryn smiled softly, then nodded. Jake looked away from her face, radiant even in the midnight, and looked purposefully, intently at the people two hills away. All right. Amadeus is focusing on the vampires. The elf is a good man, I think. Don’t have to worry about him. The Id is right in line with the Third Place mirror. All I’ll need to do is—
Jake felt something warm grab his hand. He turned, and saw Lorryn smiling at him.
“You’re a hero, you know,” she whispered.
Butterflies fluttered awfully in his stomach, awfully in a good way.
She let go of his hand, and slipped away toward the invisible Earth mirror portal. Now that the warmth of Lorryn’s hand had left it, Jake’s hand felt suddenly cold. He clenched his hand as his mind clenched the memory close to his heart.
Jake moved slowly closer to Lincoln Id’s hill, willing himself to be silent.
There they were, right on the small hill in front of him, oblivious to Jake’s presence. Where is Lorryn?
Jake counted to three in his mind, and charged, yelling and the top of his lungs.
He didn’t realize it, but he was warbling a warrior’s cry, and his eyes shone like moonbeams in the night.
~
Linkunz Id’s dark thoughts were interrupted by a cry from the Abyss. He whirled around, and so he was hit square in the chest by a hurtling figure. The id’s breath was knocked out. He fell backward with such great velocity that he flew through the mirror and several feet into the Third Place.
One would think there is little room for fear in a creature who is entirely composed of the evilness of one man. But Linkunz Id had just been returned to his private hell, and he was very afraid.
~
Jake’s heart was racing with the momentary thrill of rage acted upon. The Id is in the Third Place.
Now, just break the mirror, and the Id is taken care of forever.
Jake brought up his fist. He crashed it into the mirror, prepared for the shatter and the pain that would occur when glass shards embedded themselves into his fist.
It never came.
The glass didn’t break.
~
Lorryn did a general infantry crawl, feeling about for the cool touch of an invisible mirror in the nighttime grass.
There!
Lorryn cautiously turned the mirror over.
She looked into Jake’s living room. It was nighttime there, too, she could see. The only existing light in the mundane world of home was that of the overturned lamp that still hadn’t been turned off. It cast warm light and warm shadows. It was mundane, but there were no mysteries in a home with a tipped lamp and an empty Cheeto bag.
Lorryn looked into the world of home and fought a silent war with herself. Should she return? Or was this place of magic and enigma and danger the only place Lorryn would ever, just maybe, find happiness?
Hot tears lurked in the corners of her eyes as she looked into a picture of what was and what she wished it had been. How she wished life had turned out different, so that she would never have had to war with herself over whether or not to return home or to take risks in an uncharted world.
~
King Amadeus whirled around. Was one of the insane clans attacking?
Linkunz Id was gone, and a new figure had appeared. The figure was too short, to stocky, to be an elf. He was right up against the Third Place’s portal mirror, trying vainly to smash it.
Amadeus was frozen in shock. It’s that runaway. Jake.
Amadeus’ wits returned with a rush, and he started forward for Jake’s throat.
~
The Seripmav Emperor saw it, saw the telltale glint. Soon this burning thirst would be satiated again, he knew. As he began to swoop down toward the portal, he realized there were struggling figures down there, and another lying still in the grass. Elves? What would elves be doing here?
The Emperor was no fool, and he knew what had happened. Linkunz Id had betrayed him.
He sighed grimly. He will suffer for this.
~
Jake couldn’t believe it. The mirror won’t break! He screamed in agonizing frustration. Why hadn’t he realized that if it didn’t break when he stepped through it, when Lorryn reached her hand out to touch it, when Linkunz Id had crashed through it moments ago, that the mirror would not break?
And then, Jake saw it.
It was a wild chance. But maybe there was something in the elven element, in the insignia etched into the blade, that would do what a human fist couldn’t against a magical mirror.
He reached down for the glinting hilt of the dagger peeking out of his hiking boot. He wrapped his fingers around it, pulled, and—
Long, cool fingers wrapped around his throat, and squeezed.
~
Lorryn stood. She looked up and saw the vampires, now so close that she could see pearly, curving fangs. She had made her decision, and she tensed as she prepared to act on it.
Would she regret this?
~
Jake’s head pounded, his pulse throbbing, echoing, throbbing, echoing, everywhere in the entire world. He saw moonlight eyes, and the insanity in them, and remembered another attacker from what seemed ages ago.
He looked down at his fist, where the dagger was gripped.
~
Linkunz Id willed his breath to return. I have to get out of here!
He crawled forward, groping for the mirror—window to a world where an id might find entertainment, a little enjoyment.
A fist plunged through the mirror. Linkunz Id looked up and saw the face of the boy he had led here, in the hopes he could see a nice, bloody little battle when he led him into a crazed elf’s path.
The boy’s face was shocked. Lincoln Id realized that he was trying to break the mirror, and would have laughed had he still owned his breath. But nonetheless, the id crawled weakly for the mirror, desperate to leave his nightmare.
Only a few feet away…
~
Jake’s pale hand became white with the strength of his grip on the knife. And then, it happened. The blade pierced the mirror, veins and fractures racing up and down and around the glass. Several ugly shards burst from place. One sliced into Jake’s arm, but the pain was lost into the throbbing, pulsating, brightly blackened world of Jake’s head.
The grip on Jake’s throat suddenly loosened. Jake seized his opportunity and ripped free, diving toward the hole in the ground that framed his faintly illuminated living room.
He jumped in, and suddenly, Jake was back home.
He turned to look back through the mirror. The elf king’s hands and maddened moonbeam eyes were almost through, almost in Jake’s world, almost squeezing out the rest of Jake’s life,
--Jake plunged the still-clutched blade into his living room mirror.
It shattered into a million pieces, forever locking Jake in his world and the elf king in his, just as moments ago the same blade had imprisoned Lincoln Id in a place where he was alone with his nightmares and imagination.
The mirror was now nothing more than what it should have been all along. Jake saw his face a million times over, warped and viewed from a different angle in each shard. He saw his pale face, his brown hair, his blue eyes.
He was home. Lorryn was safe. Lorryn. Wait—
~
Lorryn darted low over the hills, past the shimmering lake, and into the forest, where she would be hidden from the vampires. She looked out of the line of safe trees just in time to see Jake leap safely into his mirror. She sighed with relief.
She found a reassuringly solid tree and climbed up it. She didn’t stop climbing until she reached the tree’s top. She was strangely free from her fear of heights.
Lorryn looked up at the foreign heavens and their twinkling stars. She could be happy here, she knew.
She fell asleep, looking at the skies, a smile on her face. And when a vampire glided onto the branch above her, she didn’t wake.
~
“Lorryn?” he called.
No answer.
His heart skipped a bit, and he repeated the call frantically. Jake raced through his home, yelling for Lorryn.
But he knew that Lorryn was not there.
The ancient wood clock chimed ten times. His parents would be home any minute.
He returned to his living room and stood staring at the shattered mirror, at his hundred horrified faces. He cried out in rage and sorrow, and picked up the overturned lamp. He began beating the shattered mirror with it, willing it to turn into a portal once more, to let him back into his nightmare.
“Let me back in!” he screamed.
But he knew, even as he screamed it, that it never would.
It never would.
~
Looking back, it was definitely not the sort of day Jake would have expected anything significant at all to happen; the sort of day when the weather was unmentionable, there was a whole lot of time-sucking nothing to do, and one was home alone.
But Jake knew he would never forget it.


Epilogue
Jake sat slumped on his living room couch. The old mirror had been replaced by a frameless, round one. “More modern,” his mom commented.
Jake was grounded for breaking the mirror. Jake didn’t care. There was no where to go, now that Lorryn had been ‘kidnapped,’ as the news was telling him.
A male newscaster’s voice was reading a note that had been found on Lorryn’s desk, penned in purple ink. Her favorite color, remembered Jake.
“Jake, please don’t worry about me,” read the newscaster. “I did this because I think I will be happier away for a while.” The police suspected the note had been forced, because Ms. Parker, Lorryn’s mom, knew of no ‘Jake.’
Jake felt sad that Lorryn had been planning to run away. He had known about her abusive mom, and pretty much everything else, too. They’d been each other’s confidantes.
But she hadn’t told him she was going to run away.
Jake wondered what had happened. Had Lorryn been hurt, and she hadn’t been able to come back home? Was it Jake’s fault she was trapped there? Had she been killed, either by the Seripmav or by the king?
Or had she purposefully not come home? Was this note scrolling on the TV still a sincere message, whether she was in Denver or in an Otherworld?
Jake feared the worst. How he wished he could go back and make sure she was all right, convince her she should come back home, where she was at least a little more safe.
A video of an interview with Victor Johnson came on the screen. Victor’s lean arms were heavily tattooed, and most of his facial features were pierced. His subtitle read “VICTOR JOHNSON—MISSING GIRL’S BOYFRIEND’’. Victor was looking straight into the camera, not at the interviewer. It made Jake feel uneasy.
Lorryn’s goodbye note was read on the screen again, then the news shifted to a weather update. Jake slid off the couch, deep in thought as he headed for the bathroom.
If he could just get back, he thought. Maybe its not too late to save her.
He swung the bathroom door on its creaky hinges and stepped into the bathroom. He closed the door, got on with his business, and stepped over to the sink.
He glanced up at the medicine cabinet’s mirror, to see again his haggard reflection.
He wasn’t there.