Free The Dickens Mirror by Ilsa J. Bick Page A

and black cliffs edging the sea. (She would dearly love to see an eagle. She would love to
be
an eagle and fly away from this awful place. Skim an indigo sea and then climb and climb and test the limits of the sky.)
    In this dream, the snow was relentless, coming down in buckets. She’d been freezing, too, dressed in very odd clothes. “Parka.” The word is so strange on her tongue. “Duct … 
tape
?” Or was that
duck
? And … “Jeans.” She runs a hand over a thigh and feels coarse wool, the slide of thin linen drawers beneath boys’ trousers. She thinks
jeans
are trousers.
How odd
. In her dream, that other Tony had also worn similar clothes:
Parka. Jeans. Although the muffler
—she caresses the loose coil of wool around her neck with a thumb—
was exactly the same. Green, wasn’t it?
That otherTony had given her, the other Rima, the muffler—
scarf
, he called it—twining it around her neck. This was exactly what
her
Tony had done, snatching up a green woolen snake from a pile of castoffs. (Weeks ago? Months? She can’t recall.)
This will keep you warm
, her Tony had said.
All you need now is a pair of proper mittens
.
    One hand caressing her muffler, she concentrates on teasing images from the general swirl in her mind.
Snow. A valley. Other people …
“Bode,” she whispers, and feels the shock thrill through her.
He’d
been in that nightmare valley, too, though so different: hair shorter, different and very odd clothes … dark green. A lot of pockets.
    All right, that’s not so surprising. You’ve known Bode all your life, ever since Coram’s
. No mystery there. She and Tony and Bode had been foundlings together: orphans growing up in the same sprawling hospital. Did that explain the others in the dream? All roughly her age … although wasn’t one a
little
girl? A flash of blonde pigtails and very blue eyes.
Dark blue, like mine, though with a fleck of bright color
. Copper? Gold?
    There was a boy who stood out, too, though his face was indistinct.
His eyes were queer. Stormy
. Did that mean gray? She’s not sure. It’s a word that occurred to the
other
Rima, and now it’s stuck in her brain like gristle caught between her teeth. Something else about that boy.
When I think about him, I feel a tug. In the dream, he’s important to that other Rima. She cares for him
. Something happened to him, too, as well as to the other Rima. She just doesn’t know what, but she thinks …
    Oh
. She claps a hand to her mouth to catch a moan. “That Rima
dies
. She dies in the dark.” Or is close to dying.
Is
dying right this very second?
No, no
. Gulping back a sob, she smears a fine line of sudden sweat from her upper lip.
Don’t be absurd. Thatwould mean the dream’s still going on; it’s happening right now in some other reality
. “But I’m awake.” Her hands clench, the ragged nails biting into her palms, but this is good, because
that
pain is real; it’s no dream. “I’m awake and this is not happening; I am
not
that Rima, and this
never
happ—”
    Tony suddenly moans, a long and frightened lowing, and she hears him begin to thrash.
God
. She lurches around the slats to kneel by his side. His breathing’s ragged.
Fever?
She lays a hand on his forehead, meaning to check …
    A white blaze breaks over her mind, the full force of his dream smashing like the blow of a hammer. Her head snaps back, and she actually gasps. For the briefest moment—in the background of what she sees—she is
positive
there is that
same
bright burst of fire that sheeted through her own dream, except it is very close, right in front of her eyes: a searing gush that incinerates flesh from bones in seconds.
    There are other images, too many to grab hold of, and Tony, still asleep and in the grip of this nightmare, is trying to scream now because something monstrous
is
coming for him, scuttling not out of the ice but from a … a
mirror
, and then there’s a face—lean and wolfish, with purple