What the Night Knows

15

THE WIDE NIGHTSTAND BETWEEN THEIR BEDS ACCOMMODATED two reading lamps. Minnie left hers on the lower of two settings, the goose neck straight, so that the cone shade directed soft light at the ceiling. One of the little fraidy-cat’s dreads that sometimes tested Naomi’s saintlike patience was bats, specifically the possibility that a bat might get tangled in her hair, not only clawing and chewing open her scalp but also driving her insane so that she would have to pass the rest of her life in an asylum where they never served dessert. In this case, Minnie probably wasn’t worrying about bats, even though she had adjusted the lamp to the bat-banishing angle.

They were both reclining against piles of pillows, a position from which they could see the closet door and the barricading chair.

Although their parents expected a great many things of the Calvino brood, going to bed at an established hour was not one of them. They were permitted to stay up as late as they wished, for any purpose except to watch TV or play video games; however, they must be showered, dressed, and ready for breakfast with their mother and father promptly at 7:00 A.M. and alert during their home-schooling, which began at seven forty-five.

This coming Saturday, like every glorious Saturday, they would be allowed to sleep in as late as they wished, and breakfast would be an individual responsibility. Of course, if the shadowy thing swooping through the mirror was as hostile as Minnie seemed to think it must be, they might not survive until Saturday, in which case Saturday breakfast would be moot.

“Maybe we should tell Mom and Daddy,” Naomi said.

“Tell them what?”

“Something’s living in our mirror.”

“You tell them. Hope you like the nuthouse.”

“They’ll believe us when they see it.”

“They won’t see it,” Minnie predicted.

“Why won’t they see it?”

“Because it won’t want them to see it.”

“That’s the way it would be in a story, not in real life.”

“Real life’s a story, too,” Minnie said.

“What does that mean?”

“It doesn’t mean nothing. It just is.”

“But what are we going to do?”

“I’m thinking,” Minnie said.

“You’ve been thinking.”

“I’m still thinking.”

“Chestnuts! Why am I waiting for a pathetic eight-year-old to figure out what we should do?”

“We both know why,” Minnie said.

The chair under the knob of the closet door looked less sturdy than Naomi would have liked. “Did you hear something?”

“No.”

“You didn’t hear the doorknob turning?”

“Neither did you,” Minnie said. “Not this time, not the nine times you thought you heard it before.”

“I’m not the one who thinks a flock of bats will carry me off to Transylvania.”

“I never said flock or carry off, or Transylvania.”

A disturbing idea rattled Naomi. She eased up from her pillows and whispered, “There’s a gap under the door.”

Minnie whispered, “What door?”

Whisper discarded, Naomi said, “What door? The closet door, of course. What if it comes out of the mirror and slips under the door?”

“It can’t come out of the mirror unless you ask it.”

“How do you know? You’re in third grade. I’ve been through third grade—the spectacular tedium of it—I finished it in three months, and there was no lesson about shadowy things in mirrors.”

Minnie was silent. Then: “I don’t know how, but I know. One of us needs to invite it.”

Sinking back against her pillows, Naomi said, “Well, that’s never going to happen.”

“You can invite it all kinds of ways.”

“What ways?”

“For one thing, by staring at it too much.”

“Mouse, you’re just making this up.”

“Don’t call me Mouse.”

“Well, you are making it up. You don’t know.”

“Or if you talk to it, ask it a question, that’s another way.”

“I’m not going to ask it beans.”

“You better not.”

The room seemed colder than usual. Naomi pulled the blanket under her chin. “What kind of thing lives in a mirror?”

“It’s a people, not a thing.”

“How do you know?”

“I know in my heart,” Minnie said so solemnly that Naomi shivered. “He’s people.”

“He? How do you know it’s not a she?”

“Do you think it’s a she?”

Naomi resisted the urge to pull the covers over her head. “No. It feels like a he.”

“It’s definitely a he,” Minnie declared.

“But he who?”

“I don’t know he who. And don’t you ask him who, Naomi. That’s an invitation.”

They were silent for a while.

Naomi dared to look away from the closet door. Backlit by a streetlamp, silvery worms of rain squiggled down the windowpanes. The scarlet oak on the south lawn loomed huge, its glossy green leaves here and there reflecting the lamplight as if crusted in ice.

Eventually, Naomi said, “You know what I’ve been wondering?”

“Something weird, I bet.”

“Could he be a prince?”

“You mean Mr. Mirror?”

“Yeah. If he’s a prince, the mirror might be a door to a magical realm, a land of tremendous adventures.”

“No,” Minnie said.

“That’s it? No. Just like that?”

“No.”

“But if he lives beyond the mirror, then there’s got to be another world on that side. The fabulous world beyond the mirror. That sounds like a magical but true thing, doesn’t it? It could be like in all those stories—an heroic quest, high adventure, romance. My destiny might be to live over there.”

“Shut up when you say that,” Minnie said.

“Shut up when you say shut up,” Naomi bristled. “You can’t know my destiny. I might live over there and be queen one day.”

“No one lives over there,” Minnie said solemnly. “Everyone over there is dead.”