The Mermaid's Mirror - L. K. Madigan [59]
"For what?"
"For singing to Cole."
"I don't do it to please you," snapped Lena. "I do it because I love him." She headed for her room, ignoring the shocked look on Allie's face.
"Lena," said her father.
"What," muttered Lena. She knew why she was angry with her dad—he had lied to her all her life. She wasn't sure why her anger was spilling over onto Allie. Maybe because Allie had known the truth all along, too. Anyway, she was sick of her parents right now. All she wanted to do was go back to her room and see if her mother was visible in the mirror.
"Where are you going?"
"My room. Where do you think? God! Just leave me alone!"
"Lena," he said again. "It will break your heart to keep looking into that mirror." He paused, trying to master the anguish that came into his face. "Believe me."
She went into her room and closed the door gently. Then she slid down the door and sank onto the carpet, weeping.
After a while, she made her way to her bedside table and grabbed some tissues, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose. Enough crying. Her mother was alive. Mermaid or not, she was alive, and Lena could see her.
She reached under her pillow for the mirror. She held it up and looked at her reflection for a long moment. As before, the image began to shimmer and dissolve. She waited impatiently to see her mother's face. First the scene was murky and dark, full of flitting shapes, then it lightened.
Lena studied the glass hungrily. She did not see her mother. The "memory circle," as her father had called it, had disbanded, although she thought she recognized some of the same mermaids and mermen from the circle, drifting in the currents. What was a memory circle? There were still so many questions!
Lena turned the mirror this way and that, eager to see her mother.
She watched the distant, blurry shapes of the mer-folk as they went about their activities. Some of them were playing what looked like musical instruments: carved ivory flutes and some kind of small harp, which Lena thought were called lyres. The base of the lyre was a large shallow shell, with fibrous strings stretched across it. Other mer-folk were gathered around a huge stone table. They seemed to be eating. Mer-folk children flitted here and there, some laughing and playing, others sitting with their heads together, as if telling stories. The tails of the mer-folk shimmered blue, green, gold, and silver. Their hair was every imaginable color, and their skin tone ranged from translucent parchment to polished ebony. They were arrayed in strands of pearls and shells and jewels. Lena felt as though she could gaze at them for hours.
But where was her mother?
She turned the mirror in her hands again. Was that her, drifting away from the group? Lena looked harder, and as before, the perspective of the mirror began to zoom in on the figure she watched. It was her mother.
Melusina swam into an underwater cave and lay on a bed of seaweed, uncoiling her tail to its full length. At first she lay silent, then Lena heard a low, sad song drifting out of the depths of the sea to the magic mirror, filling her ears again with that language she did not speak, yet could understand. Again, she heard words like "daughter," "heart," and "sleep."
As the scene in the mirror began to fade, Lena lay down with the mirror in her hands, and her mother's song lulled her to sleep.
***
Lena awoke in the middle of the night, the memory of her mother's song fading from her dreams.
Someone had come in to turn out her light and cover her with the sun-moon quilt. She sat up, looking for the mirror.
It wasn't on the bed.
Fear flooded Lena's senses. What if her dad had taken it away? What if he wouldn't give it back? Even though she didn't remember putting the mirror under her pillow before she fell asleep, she checked to make sure. Her fingers touched the coral comb, but no mirror.
She fumbled for the light on her bedside table, trying to calm down. Maybe it just fell on the floor, she thought.
The harsh glare lit up her room, and after her eyes adjusted, she saw the mirror on her desk.