Sabine Bauer - Mirror, mirror

Head cocked, the witch sniffed at the pot propped over a hissing, smoky fire. It smelled almost ready, so much so that she felt her stomach rumble. She reached out and groped around the hearth, warily keeping track of what she touched. Yesterday she'd badly burned her hand, which meant that she was getting careless. Carelessness didn't he in her nature, never had, and she'd do well not to let it encroach now, not if she wanted to retain her independence-or at least that pale mockery she chose to call independence. Truth was, she'd starve if it weren't for the alms the villagers brought her; some out of gratitude or in exchange for a potion or ointment, most because they feared her and gladly parted with whatever food they could spare as long as it helped keep her at a comforting distance from the village.

An unthinkable number of years back, she would have sustained herself by hunting, fishing, gathering roots and berries, none of which was possible when you'd lost your sight. She'd schooled herself not to regret it. When all was said and done, it was a fitting punishment for her blindness so long ago. If she had allowed herself to see the danger, then perhaps-

If.

Her old friend, Halling, once had told her that If was the sound of bitterness settling in the soul. He'd been right, about this and a great many other things. What had happened, happened, and it had caused great grief. But she still had much to be grateful for. She had survived after all, and out there, in the village and elsewhere, a new generation of children was growing up. A generation who knew the hardships of living the life of the hunted only from their parents' and grandparents' tales. Besides, she still clung to that fading hope-perhaps it was merely a guilt-ridden dream-that she might yet redeem herself by helping to adjust the outcome. It would have to be soon, though. Very soon, for she was growing tired and careless with age, and the day was approaching when she would be beyond helping anyone.

Having continued their slow search, her fingers brushed against something wooden. "There you are." She picked up the spoon. "Always trying to hide from me, aren't you?"

About to stir the pot, she suddenly stiffened, remaining perfectly still. A warrior's instincts never withered, even when her body did. But by some grace her hearing had remained as acute as that of a much younger woman, though it could have been destroyed as easily as her sight.

There it was again, almost hidden under the burble of the small stream that ran through the cave and provided her with fresh water. The soft clatter of a pebble kicked loose and hitting rock. She was about to have a visitor. It meant she would have to be polite and share the soup. Too bad, but custom demanded it. Sitting back on her haunches and ignoring the pain of ragged joints, she continued to listen.

A few moments later, a soft voice called from the entrance of the cave. "Good day, Mother! Is it permitted?"

Even if she hadn't recognized the step, made heavy by pregnancy, the address would have given away her visitor's identity. Nobody else called her Mother. It was either Wise Woman or Witch, depending on whether the speaker felt the desire to be courteous or to whisper his fear behind a raised hand. Prompted by an innate sense of irony, she had long fallen into the habit of referring to herself as the latter. Nobody, herself included, ever used her name anymore. In fact, it had been so long and in such different circumstances, she had almost forgotten the sound of it.

"Come," she replied. "I didn't expect you, Pirna, and"-there was somebody else there, soft steps, buoyant and barely audi- ble-"Halling the Younger."

The boy drew in a sharp hiss of breath.

"Don't be a fool, Halling," admonished his mother. "She can tell who you are by the sound of your footsteps."

"You shouldn't give away my secrets." The old woman chuckled. "I thought I'd frightened him away for good two days ago."

"You were here?" Pima asked the boy, surprise and anger mixing in her voice.

"Yes." He sounded miserable, a puppy cowering in the knowledge that he'd done wrong. Well, he might have intended to do wrong, but in the end he'd shown the kind of spirit that would have made his grandfather proud.

"Leave him be, Pima. He took my side against his no-good friends who would have pelted me with stones for a dare." Suddenly wishing she could see the boy, she turned her head in the direction where she knew him to be standing. "Jinto, your father, was just as much trouble at your age. I could tell you stories that-"

"Don't tell him, Mother!" Pirna threw in quickly. "Please. He doesn't need to be encouraged."

"As you wish. I barely remember anyhow," she said. Careless again! Telling the story of how Jinto had run away one night and inadvertently set free an ancient evil would have meant dredging up memories she'd be foolish to revisit. She reached out. "Come, help me up, have some soup with me, and tell me what brings you here. Do you want some herbs to speed the babe on its way?"

"It's a thought, Mother, but it isn't why I came." Pima's rough, warm hand closed around hers and pulled her to her feet. "And we won't take what little food you have, though I give you thanks. Let's just sit at the table and talk."

Now that she'd been told that this wasn't a social visit or a request for herbs, she could almost smell the acrid anxiety that edged Pirna's voice and tautened her body. This wouldn't be welcome news. Pima didn't belong to the kind of people who grew nervous over every little thing. Silently cursing the pain in her joints, the witch groped her way onto a stool.

"You should have some soup," she remarked in an attempt to ease Pima into the conversation. "It's tuttleroot, Charin's recipe. Do you remember Charin, or had she passed on before you came here?"

Uncharacteristically, Pima ignored her prattle. "It's starting again, Mother," she said tersely. "Halling and I saw it on the beach. It's starting again!"

"What is starting again?"

"The Cataclysm! We saw fire falling from the sky!" — - — - - —

Pima sounded shrill, and the old woman couldn't blame her. For a few moments she battled a surge of dread fierce enough to make her want to moan. At last, common sense prevailed over instinct. The Cataclysm could not repeat itself. She alone among the villagers knew its cause, and the thing that had ripped planets from their course and fomented untold death no longer existed. Its own power had devoured it. The plasmatic burst of light released by its destruction had been the last sight she'd ever seen.

Brightness vaporizes her retinas, and a tiny rational part of her mind snarls that there is no pain now because every last nerve in her body is too stunned to feel it. But the agony will come. It will come, she knows it and is incapable offearing it. All capacity for fear is funneled into the fracturing of awareness, again and again and again, her very being pulled from itself, bone and muscle split within seconds, each of which lasts eons or more, the fabric of time itself both stretched and scrunched like a fistful of dead leaves in the hand of a giant. At the moment of utmost entropy, when all her presents are irrevocably torn, she has a nightmarish vision of all her futures, and out of all of them only one, only a single one, offers a faint, mocking hope of undoing what has been done.

"Mother?"

The stool jolted forward, creaking over rock, as she started from the memory. She sucked in a deep breath. The air smelled of stale moisture, fungi growing on the walls of the cave, spices and herbs, and the fresh salt Pima and the boy had brought in with them on their clothing. She clung to that mixture of scents, examined each aroma, and let it anchor her in the here and now again.