The Darkness - Part II

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own. As I passed through the veil between Hatherden and The Otherside, the home I knew was gone. Replaced with a replica that was all wrong. As I walked forward the cool forest behind me faded into a burning place. The path ahead was hot and dry and it bit at me with a violent gust. The shapes of the trees and land were the same but the colors were all perverse. Green bouncing leaves melded away into shades of brown. Dead and dry. Everything in me screamed I was going the wrong way but this was the only passage to the dragons. The one last chance I had for revenge on those creatures and the witches that wielded their fire breathing powers. I inhaled the new realm and stagnant air singed my nostrils. I turned to look one last time at my home and there turning back at me was the stark reflection of my body. It moved like me and I recognized it like seeing a ghost of myself. Never having encountered this obscure opening before, I wasn't alarmed at first. Rather, I compared things carefully. The likeness of the forest I knew so well was still there. The same huge trees. The same stones and shapes. Even the bushes in the small gap where the doe had leapt away were still vibrating from her hasty departure. But where there should have been lush leaves dipped in orange sunset hues, these trees in The Otherside were bare and dead. I looked back at the forest from where I had come. Where the sweet air sparked with evening dew. When I turned to look into the path ahead, in the space that filled in around the veil, the air was just black and empty. Only dust swirled with the hot, dry dimension. There wasn’t a bird song to be heard and there were no little animals watching from the safety of the thick forest. I immediately felt its emptiness. A halo was cast around the veil where I had just stepped through and in it I could see my reflection leaving Hatherden. I could see myself coming and going at the same time. I lifted my arms to my face in curious confirmation. The dark shadow that was me lifted her arms too. I dropped my hands to my sides and the figure dropped hers too. Then just as swiftly her arms seemed to grow into the ground. They doubled in length until her hands touched the dirt and then disappeared into the soil. I watched in horror as my limbs in my reflection descended like this. Both arms and then my shoulders seemed to melt into black streaks. Then my torso lengthened and my silhouette grew as tall as a tree. Around the reflection I could still see the green and gold of Hatherden but now my body was unrecognizable. My face melted into my neck. Where my eyes should have been were empty, black sockets. Where my mouth should have been there was only a gaping hole. My teeth grew from it like long fangs that then reached past my chin and as they did so did my fingers curve and grow into long claws that stretched across the ground like roots. I looked to my own hands in panic but here on The Otherside I could no longer see them. I looked at my torso but it had also vanished. As had my legs and my feet. I tried to feel for my face again and as I did, so did my grotesque reflection. But I couldn’t feel anything. There was nothing tangible to touch. Had I evaporated into the hot air in The Darkness? Panic filled me as I searched the space for any trace of my body. As I did I could see the demon looking at me searching her body in unison. Her gaping mouth opened in despair. Her claws scraped at the lines of what should have been my frame. Then, faintly all around me, I heard them. The cries of the dead. Respit had warned me when I touched the green flame and now I remembered her fairy cautionings. The price was my soul and the green flame would seal that agreement with the dead that haunted The Darkness in The Otherside. I had thought the price was the dragon's head or my soul and I had never doubted myself that I would find the dragon or die trying. I just hadn’t expected I would lose my soul upon entry. Never had it occurred to me! That was not what I had asked of the fairies! If only Piz was here with Zen and Bali in tow, they could pull me loose from this nightmare. We would gallop away from this evil place. But now I had nothing. No horse! I was nothing! No body to fight with! Was this my soul looking at me? I stared back at her and she stayed still. So still she just looked like a shadow in the forest that framed her.

What was once a face agape, attached to a body with long arms and claws, she had grown even taller than all the trees around her. She stood like the shadow of the tallest tree in the oldest growth in Hatherden. Her head was now a knot in the wood on a thick trunk. Her long arms were now branches and her claws were twigs, twisted and curled at the ends. I turned back around to peer into The Otherside and where I had first seen swaths of fire lighting up the path ahead there was now only darkness. Less than darkness. There was nothing! I tried to feel for my fingertips, where the green flame had imprinted a blister, but I couldn’t find myself. My fingers were gone. The Fey had tricked me and my panic grew as I recalled Respit’s words. “Your soul, Mina, is the price for all passage.”

I had asked to know where to enter The Otherside but I had not understood the cost of knowing. Now The Darkness enveloped me and the cries of the dead grew nearer. They curled around me, their screams engulfing me. In this place filled with dragons I was now more scared of myself than anything else. Vagger had told me the darkness would undoubtedly see me. But he hadn’t known of the deal I made with Respit and the fairies. Even in death he had said, The Darkness would stake its claim. Had I died? The Darkness would follow me, he had said. Now I was desperate trying to comprehend just what he was telling me. If only I had told him of the deal I made to get to the dragons! Could he have helped me? There was no way of knowing, now. The mirror here did indeed show my reflection but I realized it was my own. It was the mirror of my life in The Light and now it showed that here I had sadly become a part of The Darkness forever.