Carrie Bebris - Suspense & Sensibility

The guards acted immediately and severed the hands that Aphrodite had blessed.

"As they led the maimed craftsman away, the king pointed to the mirror and started to order it destroyed. But then he saw his reflection. In the glass, he was a young man once more. He instructed his servants to move the mirror to his private quarters and retired to gaze upon his image uninterrupted, as Narcissus had gazed into the water. In the morning, they found

him dead, still staring into the glass."

Darcy listened with the interest he accorded any engaging story. "That is a good cautionary tale against the evils of vanity," he pronounced when the archaeologist had finished, "but like any myth, hardly something to be accepted as fact."

"Subsequent tales support it," Randolph replied. "According to this book, many of the mirror's more vain owners through the centuries have undergone radical disfigurement in their final days. Young or old, they died ravaged by extreme effects of age."

What little color had been in Elizabeth's face drained from it. "Are all its gazers cursed?"

It bothered Darcy to witness distress in her. "Nobody is cursed," he asserted. "The glass is an artifact whose history inspires embellishment — nothing more."

Randolph closed the book. "I don't believe you are in any danger yourself, Mrs. Darcy, for having looked into the glass today. But I disagree with your husband. The Mirror of Narcissus indeed cursed, and how the curse functions has been a subject of mystery and speculation for centuries."

Darcy found himself unable to sit still. Harry Dashwood's transformation had been caused by his own excesses — not a looking glass, and certainly not a curse. He rose and went to the window, needing to distance himself from the discussion or risk responding uncivilly to the archaeologist. He looked out on to the street, with its buildings, carriages, people — tangible things, things that were real.

"Until now, no one has been able to satisfactorily explain the nature of the curse." Randolph continued. "However, based on your account of Harry's memories. Mrs. Darcy, I have a new theory."

"Do let us hear it," Darcy said.

"I submit that the mirror's original owner, the king, died because his spirit was absorbed by the glass. He wanted to become the image that he saw, and the mirror granted his request. His body, an empty shell, remained behind. As the mirror passed from owner to owner, those equally possessed by the same desire were also entrapped."

"It must be growing rather crowded in there." Darcy scoffed.

"Not at all," Randolph replied. "Mrs. Darcy, kindly repeat what Sir Francis said when his followers released him from the glass."

"I believe it was 'reddet animam pro anima ."

"From the Book of Exodus: 'Thou shall give life for life.' In his case, it could also be interpreted as 'soul for soul,'" Randolph said. "The glass can hold only one life, or soul, at a time, the king's essence remained incarcerated only until the next victim took his place. When his spirit left the mirror, it entered the new prisoners discarded body. But the unnatural reincar-

nation could not last long — the king's soul was by then so old that the new body could not sustain it. The host suffered rapidly accelerated aging as the body's clock strove to catch up with the spirit's, until it ultimately burned out."

"And this cycle repeats itself with each new victim?" Elizabeth asked.

"Yes. and is at work upon Harry Dashwood now."

Darcy stared out the window, unable to reconcile the image of the modern, mundane London before him with the mystical, events Randolph imagined had taken place within it. Something strange was happening in Mr. Dashwood's townhouse — having witnessed some of the goings-on himself, he could not refute that much. But he firmly believed Dashwood the perpertrator, not the victim, of deception. Even if he willingly suspended his disbelief, accepted for the sake of argument some of the professor's premises, he still could not agree with Randolph's conclusions.

He turned from the window but remained beside it. "There is a flaw in your theory. Assuming my wife, through Mr Dashwood's memories, indeed witnessed this theoretical trading off of souls between Sir Francis and Harry Dashwood" — an assumption Darcy could hardly voice, much less believe—"it required twelve others and a secret ceremony to effect the transfer. I find it hard to believe that each previous victim was involved in such a ritual.'

"The other victims were willing participants in their own entrapment," Elizabeth said. "Harry Dashwood was not."

"Precisely," Randolph said. "The king and his successors were drawn in because they could not resist the sight of their former selves. Harry Dashwood, however, was in the full bloom of youth. He was not yet vulnerable to the mirror's temptation and would not be for some time. I suspect that Sir Francis, already incarcerated for more than thirty years, grew impatient and forced the exchange"

Darcy remained unconvinced. "If he was trapped in the glass, how did he gather his former Hell-Fire Club together to perform the rite?"

"That I don't know."

"And if Sir Francis was a victim of the mirror," Darcy pressed, "why do no accounts of his death mention the accelerated aging suffered by the others?"

"If he was already elderly and very close to the end of his natural life, the effects may have gone unnoticed. His body might have died within hours or even minutes of the mirror's previous occupant taking possession of it."

"So short a time?" Elizabeth's brow creased with worry. "Sir Francis has occupied Mr Dashwood's form for a month now. How much time do you think he has left?"

"How old is Harry's body supposed to be. and how old did he look when you saw him today?"

"He is one-and-twenty, but he appears fifty at least."

"Do we know how old Sir Francis was when he died?"

"In his seventies."

Professor Randolph withdrew a handkerchief from one of his many pockets and wiped his spectacles. "It sounds as if Harry Dashwood's body is aging rapidly, indeed, and to compound matters, I understand Sir Francis has not been the most gentle tenant. I would guess your friend has perhaps a fortnight, if that, to reclaim himself."

"He is not our friend," Darcy said. "And he has made it very clear to me that he does not want our assistance or interference in his affairs."

Elizabeth stared at him a long moment. His wife's gaze made him uncomfortable, and he shifted under the weight of her disapprobation. When she rose and came to the window, came to him, he looked away. On the sofa, Randolph replaced his spectacles and consulted his book once more.

"Darcy," she said, speaking in tones so soft that they reached his ears alone. "It is Sir Francis, not Harry, who has behaved so uncivilly toward us."

He sighed heavily. "Elizabeth, this is all too far-fetched to be believed. At least by me. I can barely listen to it, let alone acknowledge it as possible."

"If you had seen what 1 saw, you would think otherwise."

"But I did not."

He at last faced her. Sadness spread across her face, and he disliked himself for having caused it. Worse, her eyes, normally bright with exuberance, dimmed with disappointment.

In him.

"Darcy, when we were last at Netherfield, we both stumbled into danger because you believed in reason more than you believed in me I know what I experienced today. Will you not this time trust my perceptions?" She laid a hand on his arm "I am certain that the Harry Dashwood we first met, the Harry Dashwood who won Kitty's heart, whom you considered as a

brother, still exists. He desperately needs our aid, and how I shall live with myself if we fail him, I do not know. If you will not act for Mr Dashwood's sake, will you do so for mine?"