The MirrorMasters

Chapter 15

"Kids, what's going on? You've been quiet all dinner and hardly touched your food," Mom said, glancing between her two children.

David gave me an encouraging nod, and I inclined my head slightly. "Mom, Dad, I have a lot to tell you..."

"Let's talk in the living room once we clean up dinner. Trust me, you want to be sitting down for this," David added.

The front doorbell rang on our way into the living room a few minutes later. When Dad, who stood closest to the foyer, answered it, Madame Helena's voice and her familiar exotic accent carried into the room. Stifling my curiosity, I settled onto the sofa next to David.

"I'm afraid this isn't a good time, Helena," Dad said. I knew he wouldn't be keen on anyone intruding during a family discussion.

Madame Helena stepped inside, anyway, her heels clicking against the hardwood floor. "For the conversation you are about to have, you need me here, John. Remember what I told you when you first considered adopting Leah? The time has come."

Dad let the bookshop keeper pass and ushered her into the living room. She chose the seat next to me, giving my shoulder a light squeeze. With an elegant gesture toward Mom and Dad, she urged me to begin.

"What I'm about to say will sound crazy, but..." Halting at first, then with growing confidence, I told them everything — the pendant and the prophecy, the disasters, my newly discovered abilities as a MirrorMaster, and my origins on Jantyr as the daughter of a prime minister.

"What?" Dad stared at me in stunned disbelief when I'd completed my story. "You've created what sounds like an amazing fairytale, honey, and you should write it down, but you're acting so strange, as though you think it's real. You and David both are."

"It is real, Dad," David replied. Nudging me, he added, "Go on. Show them."

I ambled to the large rectangular mirror hanging over the fireplace mantle. Summoning the image of the castle that had been my first home, I stepped slowly back when the stunning image came into view. "This is where I come from. Billions of lives are in danger there — I have to go help them."

Behind me, I heard my parents gasp. They stood and surrounded me, watching the mirror with wide eyes.

"This is the sacrifice I said you would have to be prepared to make," Madame Helena said, holding the disbelieving gaze of both parents. "That world is real, and as Leah said, it is in peril. The disasters that have begun on Jantyr will destroy this entire galaxy if Leah does not fulfill her duty to stop them. The two of you have prepared her well, as I knew you would. Now she must carry on the lessons you've taught her. They will see her through the task she faces."

"I remember Mom and Dad talking about Leah being unique and about a possible sacrifice, years ago, but I didn't want to believe that it was connected to this...," David said, massaging his forehead with one hand. Beneath his tan, he'd gone pale as snow. "So Jantyr is in our galaxy."

I dimly registered Madame Helena nod in confirmation and say something about the summer triangle and a star map she had with Jantyr's location on it. Madame Helena's words about a sacrifice echoed and reverberated in my head, over and over until I wanted to scream. When I could finally speak, I turned to my parents, and in a strangled voice choked out, "You all knew? What about your promise to never keep anything important from me again — like, oh, I don't know — the fact that I'm from another planet? That I'd have to follow this prophecy, this destiny?"

Dad shook his head and sighed, suddenly looking older than I had ever seen him. "We had no idea the scope of the sacrifice Madame Helena claimed we'd need to prepare ourselves to make one day. She never told us about any prophecy or nonsense about another world."

"Somehow I always knew this day would come, the day when you had to find out about your past. I just never expected it would be like this," Mom said, still in shock as she gazed at the image of another world displayed in her living room mirror. She reached out, as though to pull me into a hug, but she must have realized I didn't want such an intrusion, because she let her hand drop back to her side. "You are coming back to us, aren't you?"

"Coming back?" Dad said. "Carol, you can't even consider letting Leah do this. It's too dangerous! No, Leah, this is out of the question."

I caught my breath, some of my fury and betrayal easing at the realization my parents and David hadn't known everything. They should have told me about this mysterious sacrifice long ago, but I could forgive them for that. I wouldn't leave them holding a grudge.

"I'll prove it," I said. I showed him the disasters plaguing Jantyr, reaching through the mirror to pluck a desert flower, its red, yellow, and orange blossoms lit with phosphorescent stripes. One petal, scorched as the desert sands by vicious lightning strikes, had withered and crumbled into dust at my touch. Although it would make my parents even more fearful for my safety and for David's, I realized this was the only way to make my case for why I had to go. "Do you see now? I don't have a choice, Dad," I said quietly but firmly.

"The information contained in this prophecy points to how to stop what's happening there. And something about me makes me the only one who can activate a device that will end the disasters. I can't live with myself if I do nothing while everyone dies, and that whole world — along with our galaxy — is destroyed! I have to at least try to stop it. But afterward, it may not be safe for me to come back here."

Saying this out loud brought the reality home in a way that nothing else could have, and I found that tears blurred my vision. A painful lump formed in my throat, and I couldn't speak.

"The police chief found a key, a metal key that's like nothing on Earth," David explained for me and went on to tell them about how I'd had to go get the key from my sister.

"Leah, you could have been killed! You could be arrested if they get something from the video surveillance or fingerprints! What were you thinking, going there?" Dad was absolutely furious. I cringed away from him, as I'd never seen him so angry before, not even the other day when he'd argued with David about college. His jaw and fists were clenched, and his face had turned red. I was sure I saw a vein in his neck throbbing.

"Without that key, I couldn't have gotten into the locked part of the box that had the rest of the prophecy. For all I knew, it could even have unlocked the way there to that other world. I needed that key, Dad," I said miserably when I finally found my voice again. Neither Dad nor Mom would be all that understanding about this, I was sure, but they at least deserved an honest answer.

Dad sighed and sat back down in his armchair, shaking his head. His neat, orderly world had been completely turned upside down.

"If Leah goes, she may not be safe, but if she stays here, none of us will be. This galaxy will end," Madame Helena said.

These words, if nothing else, seemed to convince my parents. Mom went over to Dad and put her hand on his shoulder. She, too, apparently felt like her head was spinning and nothing would be all right again. They were about to lose their daughter soon. "Honey, you do what you need to do. Just stay safe. And use that mirror to contact us every chance you get," she said with a sniffle.

A sob caught in my throat. I nodded. "I will, Mom." With that promise, I went over to Mom and hugged her. Mom's embrace comforted me, and I needed that right now. "Thanks," I whispered.

"I don't like this idea," Dad said. "Honey, I don't want you getting hurt, or worse. But I know you. And I know that you're going to do what you feel you need to when it comes to something as important as this. Lord knows I can't stop you..." At this, the hardest admission he'd made in his life, his voice broke. "Just stay safe."

I could only nod as I reached over to hug him, too. Then Mom opened her arms to draw David into the family hug.