Jan 8, 2019 6 min read

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¦ CHAPTER SEVEN

The mirror

The story so far: Sally has just read in the other Sally’s diary about Elizabeth disappearing from the top of the Christmas tree.

Sally thought that perhaps a teardrop had fallen on this page of the diary, for ink was smudged toward the end. She sighed deeply, thinking of what a sad Christmas Eve that must have been for the other Sally, but she turned the page, confident that Elizabeth would be found the next day. To her surprise, there were no more entries in the little diary.

But what could have happened? she wondered, looking up at the tiny bits of dust dancing in a shaft of sunlight.

“Did she find Elizabeth?” she asked, looking at Shadow. But Shadow only blinked his eyes and yawned. They must have found her! she told herself. She couldn’t just disappear forever, could she? She must have fallen down among the branches of the tree, and the next day they found her. . . . But did they?

“I wish I knew for sure,” Sally said. She turned and looked at her reflection in the mirror.

“Where is Elizabeth?” she whispered to the girl in the mirror.

But the girl in the mirror did not answer, of course.

Sally stood there in the strange clothes, gazing at her reflected self in the dusty mirror.

She lifted her hand. The girl in the mirror lifted hers. She waggled her fingers at the mirror. The other girl did the same. She smiled. So did the girl in the mirror. She took off her bonnet. The mirror girl took hers off. They each placed the bonnet upon the floor, still smiling at each other.

“I wonder if you really did look so much like me,” Sally whispered at last. “Did you feel like me? Were you ever sad or scared like me? I guess you were, when Elizabeth was lost, weren’t you?” And it seemed to her that it might be the girl in the mirror who was asking those very questions.

Sally sat down.

The girl in the mirror sat down.

Wouldn’t it be funny, Sally thought, if that really was the other Sally in the mirror. “Do you think there’s such as thing as magic?” she whispered to the other girl. The girl in the mirror seemed to be asking the same thing. Sally reached up and rubbed a clear space upon the dusty surface of the mirror, and of course, the other girl from her side of the mirror did the same thing.

Sally leaned closer to the mirror. “There,” she whispered, “can you see me better? I can see you.” Her breath had made a little circle of mist on the mirror. Or was it the other girl’s breath, clouding it from the other side? You can’t really tell for sure, Sally thought, feeling as if she’d made an enormous discovery. Maybe she was a reflection to her. Maybe the other Sally could see her, too.

“Sally,” called a voice, very close by.

Sally jumped and looked toward the attic stairs. Her heart turned over. It’s Aunt Sarah! she thought. But there was no one in the attic but herself and Shadow, sleepily watching her from his patch of sunlight. Shadow yawned. Sally yawned, too, and rubbed her eyes. I must be imagining things, she told herself.

When she turned back to the mirror, she saw that the reflected girl was looking over her shoulder, too, just as if she had heard the voice.

It was a moment before Sally realized how strange this was. A cold, prickly feeling crept along the back of her neck. “But I’m not looking over my shoulder now,” she said aloud.

It was just then that the girl in the mirror spoke. “What is it, Mama?” she asked quite clearly, and with her profile still turned to the astonished Sally, she looked up and smiled.

Sally stretched a trembling hand out to the mirror. She placed her palm against it. She could feel only its cold, smooth surface.

But just as if she were not aware that she was only a reflection in a mirror, the other girl reached a hand up, while a larger, more grown-up hand reached down, clasped hers, and helped her to her feet.

Sally stood watching on the other side of the mirror. This is the strangest thing that ever happened to me, she told herself. But even as she thought it, something else happened. Quite suddenly, she was the girl in the mirror. It was her hand in the hand of the lady who stood smiling down at her, a lady who looked somehow like a much younger and far more pleasant Aunt Sarah!

“Come,” said the other Sally’s mother, and Sally could see quite clearly-for of course she was now seeing everything from inside the mirror-how the lady’s eyes seemed to be smiling, too, in the sparkly way that eyes sometimes do. “Come along down to the kitchen,” she said. “I have a surprise for you!”

“A surprise!” cried Sally-for now there was truly only one Sally. “What is it?”

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?” answered her mother in a teasing voice. “Come along. Don’t forget Elizabeth.”

Sally bent down to pick up her doll from the floor.

Sally could see now that they were not in the attic at all, but in her bedroom. But how could I have thought I was in the attic? she wondered as she followed her mother to the door. “How funny,” she said, pausing at the door and looking back around the room.

“What’s funny?” asked her mother.

“Oh, I don’t know, I guess I fell asleep by the fire,” said Sally. “I think I was dreaming that I was living in another time-but in this house.”

“Well,” said her mother, “it’s no wonder you were sleeping. It’s very late. You really ought to be in bed. Now come, please, if you want to see the surprise.”

NEXT WEEK: The doll