Page 61 of Sky and the Grumpy Troll

“Tell me more about the mirror, then. Where was it located?”

I told her the story — the men’s room at Club Vortex, packed wall to wall on opening night, and Pip disappearing, and the way I couldn’t figure out where he’d gone until much, much later, when I gave up and leaned against the mirror.

“I’d been trying to get a view from where he was standing when he vanished. Because I was turned around for the twerking, and I didn’t see it happen.”

“So this mirror looked normal until you turned away from it?”

“Yes. Felt normal, too. I poked and prodded at it, thinking there might be a secret door behind it. But when I was looking the other direction, it got… squishy.”

“So you didn’t see Pip fall, either?”

“No. It was so weird, one minute we were dancing together, and we did a spin. The next, he was gone! I convinced myself that I was too focused on my dance and hadn’t seen him slip out of the bathroom. It was the only explanation that I could think of.”

She chuckled. “I’d be confused too. No one leaps straight to magic mirror.”

“Right? Anyway.” I shrugged. “Why do you think it only works when you’re facing away?”

“During my research, I’ve found references to the Liminal Order, a secretive sect of Liminian wizards who travel in unnatural ways. They guard their methods like dragons, but one detail surfaces again and again: the doors are spelled to be invisible to the common observer. Perhaps the trick is that they only open when no one is looking? It seems like a simple solution to hide their existence; they only become what they really are when no one can see them.”

“Shut up.” I sat forward so fast the chair squeaked. “That’s why all my poking and prodding did nothing. It waited until I leaned.”

“Which would be very clever, if it’s by design. What exactly is a men’s room, though? Is it a public place?”

“A public water closet, in a nightclub, which, I suppose, is a bit like a tavern. A very busy one, with hundreds of people in it.”

“That seems quite risky,” she said, frowning.

“Well, before it was a nightclub, I suppose the space was just basement storage for the shops above it. The strip mall it’s in has been around for probably fifty years, but the basement was only just renovated. I think someone said they couldn’t figure out how to remove the mirror?”

“Ah, fascinating. So circumstances beyond the creator’s control put this portal more in the public eye. What did it feel like, passing through?”

I thought for a moment. “It was like I was being pulled through wet mud, except not wet feeling. A little like that kinetic sand stuff, I guess? You probably don’t know what that is, but it’s like clay but very soft and pliable.”

“No, but the rest of your description sounds quite similar to other accounts I’ve read.”

She set down her quill and stood, walking over to a shelf in the back, pulling volumes off the shelves.

“My whole family thought my research was nonsense, you know. Runhilda is a dear, but she thinks I’ve wasted my life. Who’s going to believe a village librarian and her shelf of smuggled papers?” She set a stack of slim, bound volumes in front of me, careful as eggs. “But if you read enough of what slips out of Liminia, you stop seeing nonsense and start seeing a pattern.”

I took the top volume off the stack, as careful as she’d been, and let the pendant work on the handwriting. It was somebody’s journal, a customs clerk by the look of it, and I flipped until a phrase stopped me cold. “Hey. This clerk says the man they pulled out of the harbor kept raving that the water had gone soft.” I looked up. “Soft. That’s my word. The mirror went squishy.”

“That’s the only account from Qoksmere. The harbor man.” She didn’t even need to check. “He appeared in the middle of a bay outside Reach, with no boat and no memory of one. He spoke a strange language, and once they got him a spelled object to help with understanding, he kept asking to make a call, whatever that means.”

“What happened to him?”

“They put him in an asylum, but as far as I can tell from the records, eventually he settled down, realized he’d gone mad, and lived a normal life. But what if he didn’t realize he’d gone mad? What if he just resigned himself to his fate?”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“No, he passed away a long time ago, before I even found his account. But the details are so similar. I see you’re using aetherweaving to communicate as well.”

I touched the pendant and nodded.

“Could you speak your language without it?”

I laughed and lifted the pendant away from my skin, holding it by the silver chain. “Now that you put me on the spot, I don’t know what to say!”

She was delighted even by that. “That’s incredible. And the same details, repeating across accounts that could never have touched each other. That is how you know a thing is real.”