The Mirror

I was four when I first met him – the boy in the mirror. Nobody believed me. Nobody ever did, for he was gone long before anyone arrived.

“It’s one of those overactive imaginations of a child,” Aunt Sera said over tea one day when Momma confided in her. I crouched low by the stairs and eavesdropped, clutching on to every word that fell out of their mouths.

“Sometimes truths are more bizarre than fiction,” Momma insisted. I reckoned she had seen it shining through my eyes. “Kids don’t lie. Mine never did.”

Aunt Sera nodded thoughtfully. “But if the kid imagines it and believes it as the truth, she technically isn’t lying.” Aunt Sera leaned forward and whispered something to Momma’s ears behind a cupped hand. Her eyes flickered once up the stairs in my direction.

I made a quick escape without bothering to speculate what she was telling Momma, though I recalled seeing Momma’s eyes growing so wide, I half expected them to pop out of her eye sockets and bounce on the floor like marbles.

At four, I wasn’t as smart as the children I saw today. At four, words like imagination were big words. At four, I only knew Momma was afraid. She didn’t know who to believe – me, or Aunt Sera.

And I knew I didn’t like Aunt Sera. She wasn’t simple. I had an inkling she insinuated that I was a liar. Momma would hear no more of the boy in the mirror.

The boy in the mirror came and went. Sometimes when I whispered through the mirror, he’d come. Most of the time, he wasn’t there.

Once, I fell down and slammed down hard on my knees. There was no blood. The earth wasn’t rough like the gravelly roads. Still, the impact on my knees hurt. Terribly. Momma patted my knees and gave no further heed. “Big girls don’t cry,” she said. ”

I ran up the parquet steps, hid under the blanket and buried my face in my pillow to muffle the sobs.

“Mia,” a voice called. I quieted a little, not wanting Momma to catch me crying.

“Mia,” the voice called again.

I peeked out from under the blanket and stared at the mirror. The child stared right back at me with eyes the striking colour of turquoise so cold, it reminded me of ice chips under the blue light illumination; his hair a mix of frost and midnight blue.

“Keenz?” I couldn’t bring out the proper sound. But I did my best. He didn’t pronounce mine right either.

He gestured for me to go over.

“Momma says you aren’t real.”

He shook his head, unable to understand my words. I scooted over and settled in front of the mirror, pointed to my knees and pressed a palm flat against the mirror.

He flattened his hand against his side of the mirror, over the spot where mine rested. The chill seeped over, across the entirety of my palm. “Momma said you aren’t real,” I repeated with a sniff and a hiccup. It came out sounding whiny. “But my legs hurt.”

I wasn’t looking for the emotional comfort that Momma didn’t offer to my satisfaction. I was hoping for pain relief.

“Give me your knees,” he said. His language was different. The roll of words were foreign to my ears. Yet my body understood it as if he were communicating with me in a language I’d known since birth.

We were chicken and duck talking when I first spoke to the mirror, brushing my hair, trying to braid them with my fingers that wouldn’t coordinate, with motions that seemed logical despite making my attempt look clumpy and tangled.

The murmurs that spilled from my mouth as I talked myself through the steps summoned him to me for the first time. It was fascinating, seeing another child my age through the mirror.

He spoke in his language, and I, mine. He showed me magic tricks that I’d never seen before, forming ice structures out of bare hands. I taught him how to high-five. That was when we first discovered the wondrous ability to understand each other – via contact, across the mirror.

I blinked back at him and alternated my questioning look between him and my reddened knee, knowing that there’d be an ugly purple bruise blooming kneessext day.

“Give me your knee,” he said again.

“Magic?”

“Yes.” Yes in his language had a zee-sound. I was starting to pick up some common words. The intuitive understanding from our joined palms helped decode the encrypted words.

I propped myself forward with my left leg and pressed my right knee against the mirror. One knee at a time, I thought.

The sooth over my screaming knee was instant. The cold from his hands over the spot of my knee made it better. We remained on each side of our world, unable to cross the threshold separating us.

My sniffles stopped. In a minute, I was smiling and mesmerized by the cold cloud looming over his side of the mirror, radiating from his hands, all the pain gone and forgotten.

He abruptly looked over his shoulder and broke contact before I could offer my other knee. Muttered something incomprehensible and scrambled off with a fist over his heart and a quick nod – his version of goodbye.

I thought he had a small limp on his right leg that wasn’t there from before, but it was difficult to ascertain. He was off in a heartbeat.

My door cracked open. “Maya?”

Momma.

“Who are you talking to?”

“Him,” I replied, pointing to the mirror. “Keenz.” Quinz. My mouth couldn’t carve out the Qu- and conjugate it with the -ui in a foreign language.

The frost over the spot where my knee was pressed against was left with nothing more than a cloud of blurred condensation, nothing too different from blowing hot air at a mirror.

Momma paled. “What were you two doing?”

Oh no... Momma wasn’t happy about it. I shrunk my head between my shoulders and squeaked, “He healed my booboo.”

“How?” Momma was trying to dig the details out of me. I had a sense that she knew Quinz was real.

I told Momma about the magic hands that took away my pain. Showed her the bump on my right knee that was now gone, and the bump on the left that was starting to purple.

Her fingers were curled into a tight fist, pushing hard into the tiled flooring of my room by the time I was done recounting. Momma didn’t touch me at all. It was fear that I saw in her flickering eyes, as if she didn’t know who to be afraid of – me, or Quinz. Or was she afraid for me?

A week later, strange adults started coming to our house to look around.

Something felt off. It brought on an insurmountable level of worry that ate into me. The shadow followed me when I woke, when I spoke to Quinz, when I bathed, when I played.

A month later, Momma packed everything. “We are moving to a new neighbourhood, darling.”

That evening was the last I saw Quinz.

Until years later.