Mirror (Esther and Sally Book 1) Read online

  The day the star fell down, Esther was out in the field, trying to coax Old Bess to come back to the barn before the storm came. Sweaty and tired, Esther called to her, tugged at her neck, and finally swore at her, but nine stone of woman wasn't going to move half a ton of obstinate cow, not on this Earth. Weren't it Henry's day off, and him off drinking his money away, he'd have been here swearing at the beast instead and no better off than she.

  "That's fine then, you old monster," Esther said. "You stay out here and when you get struck by lightning, I'm going to have some deep-charred steak for dinner."

  And that'd do her proper, eating her best cow as the farm finally dropped dead like everyone told her it would. No man but a drunkard hired hand, rail-thin cows but for that glutton Bess, and fields filled with dead and dying grass. What she needed was a stronger back and a good rain. She'd gotten on her knees to pray for the rainclouds overhead, but the Good Lord hadn't seen fit to grant her Samson's arms, so she thanked Him anyway and kept pushing His Enemy's favorite cow back towards home, say amen.

  Esther heard the crackling noise from far away, and at first she thought it was the sound of burning leaves. Wildfire!

  The cow forgotten, Esther spun around, looking for fire, but there was no smell of smoke and the noise was above her. Esther looked up and saw the burning mass streak across the sky towards the next field. Something grabbed her and pushed her onto her back. Old Bess took to her heels, running off to the north field instead of the barn. Esther

  swore again --- her daddy had worked at the docks when she'd been a girl --- and almost chased after her, but there was the fire to check and mayhap put out if the rain didn't get it first.

  Just as she reached the top of the brief rise separating the fields, the rain poured from the sky like a thick curtain of lukewarm water, turning fast to brisk cold. Esther's dress went soaked all the way through in less than a minute, as the rain beat down on her bonnet, plastering it to her head. No way no how the fire was going to survive that, no matter how dry it'd been until the grey clouds had moved in this morning.

  Wiping water from her eyes, she was making to turn around when she saw something move.

  "You're a curious woman," her husband Otis had told her time and time again. She heard him tell her again, even though he'd been dead these two years and buried in the churchyard in town, and like always she told him, she said out loud: "You hush, Otis Davis, before I clop you one."

  The thing was smoking in the rain, red hot headed to black and hissing as the drops sizzled on the crumpled side and top, which was cracking open like a wrinkled egg.

  "Hallo?" she said, and she knew she was daft because she ought to be running as fast as her feet could take her the other way and hoping like mad she could get some of the menfolk up here. Nothing coming out of that ship could be good for her.

  Nothing …

  Something crawled out and oozed over into the wet grass.

  "Nothing good, nothing good," she said to herself, and crept over anyway to have a look. Otis'd be yelling at her good for this, even dead as he was.

  The thing was grayish, darker than the storm clouds, and slick with rain as it lay on the prickly grass. Large eyes, blinking away the wet, too long arms and legs. Esther's daddy had shown her a squid once that'd come up in a net, all slime and suckers and big eyes, and this wasn't half different.

  Then it sneezed, or did something like a sneeze anyway, and then (maybe because it was a sneeze) turned into snot, and then into a woman.

  Esther stumbled backwards and fell hard onto her butt. The thing on the ground had Esther's face and hands just as Esther herself did in the mirror, but the pattern on its body was all fuzzy, like looking through smoked glass. It reached for her and she pulled back again but couldn't stand up for her wobbly legs and the wet grass, and then it touched her boot, reached up to touch her leg. Cold, it was, but dry too even in this rain.

  Instead of screaming, Esther took her other boot and kicked the squid-Esther as hard as she could, right when it sneezed again.

  And then its body was all Esther, and it was Esther in the altogether, and it lay there rubbing its hand just like Esther would have if she'd kicked her own fool self.

  She could scream, but no one would hear her. She could run, but then she'd either have to run home and hide and wonder what this thing was forever, or find enough of the other townsfolk to come back here and shoot the thing that looked like her.

  She hated screaming and she hated running and, Lord forgive her, she'd been a lot more curious ever since Jesus called Otis home and hated that anyone might think she was too ascairt to run her own farm no matter who or what came calling.

  "Who are you," she said in her angriest voice, "and what're you doin' on my land?"

  "Who are you?" the thing said in a chirp. "Who are you?" it said like a roar. "Who are you?" it said, whirring. "Who are you?" it asked, clear as day in Esther's own voice, "and what're you doin' on my land?"

  Esther had never heard of such a thing. "You're on my land!"

  "You're on my land!" it replied.

  Esther let out a disgusted noise, which the thing mimicked perfectly. Now that was a sight: her own naked self, all huffy in her back field during a rainstorm.

  Esther got to her feet. The other her followed suit. "I'm going home," she announced and turned around and walked away, as the thing echoed: "I'm going home."

  The squid-Esther was going to follow her home, naked as the day Esther was born. Her rifle was back at the house, just inside the door, though as she walked through the squelching mud, she wasn't rightly sure she could shoot herself in cold blood. All it'd done was touch her, and then copy her face. Her gut told her that wasn't a good thing to do, no way, but there weren't any law against it.

  At least Henry wouldn't see them. She knew she'd be too red to speak if he saw her naked, even if strictly speaking the naked squid wasn't her. That was a thing, having to explain why she was naked and wet and dead. Stealing her face wasn't right, but neither was shooting a naked woman drenched in the rain, no matter if she was a squid too.

  The thing kept pace with her, stomping in mud and dripping with rain, and Esther found herself thinking about setting a bath for the thing and throwing some clothes on her. Basic charity ought to extend to squid-women, she reckoned, and anyway, she could shoot it later.

  "I'm gonna draw you a bath," she told the thing when they reached the house. "Just you sit down and don't muddy up my floor." As the thing went to repeat, she shoved her hand over its mouth and said, "And mind you stop saying what I do. I don't need an echo." She pointed to a chair. The thing stared, and finally, Esther demonstrated.

  It took a long time for the water to warm over the stove, time enough for Esther to dig out her old comb and try untangling the knots already formed in the thing's curly hair. "I get these all the time if'n I'm not careful. You mind how you keep this hair."

  As she picked and primped, Esther very quietly thought in the back of her mind that she was going plumb crazy. Here she was, fussing over this girl (as she was starting to think of her, though if she was just like Esther, she'd be almost thirty) like a mama chicken over a hatchling, and this after Esther herself declared to her poor dead Otis that she wanted no squalling babies, thank you.

  Anyway, the girl was more like a sister, lost in the storm. Yes. As the water bubbled in the pot, Esther knew what she'd tell the others in town: her sister, come from Boston, her carriage set on by outlaws and suffered a tremendous shock, poor thing.

  The girl allowed Esther to help her in the bath to wipe off all that mud, and let Esther dress her in her second-best frock. Esther chatted to her as she combed and dressed her, and the girl had s
topped repeating everything Esther said.

  "So what's your name?" Esther asked her at last, as she stood back to look at her work. Sure enough, the girl looked just like Esther dressed up for the day, close enough to make her sad. Esther hadn't thought she looked so old or so tired.

  The girl said nothing, and Esther said, "Your name is Sally. I had a sister named Sally but she died the day she was born so she's not usin' the name. We'll tell them all in town you're my sister. Sally Smith. Say that."

  The girl didn't respond, and Esther touched her own chest. "Esther." She touched the girl. "Sally."

  "Sally."

  "Good."

  Otis was still yelling at her in her head, had been for a while now. He said Esther wasn't half in her own mind anymore, and Sally the squid was telling her what to think

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  and how to react, but Esther wasn't listening to ol' Otis anymore.

  "Otis?" asked Sally, and Esther knew he was right.

  "Otis was my man. Jesus called him home a while back. Don't pay him no mind. I don't." Esther sat down. "So where're you from, Sally? You fell down from the sky pretty hard."

  "I fell from the sky pretty hard," Sally agreed.

  And that was the end of that. Esther never did get Sally to say where she was from, or how she managed to be in a burning star falling to the ground in Esther's field, and Esther figured she didn't need to know.

  What she did need to know was that when she went to fetch Ol' Bess from the north field for the evening milking Sally went with her, and when the stupid old cow wouldn't listen, Sally picked her right up and carried her back to the barn without so much as a grunt. After Esther showed her how to milk the kine and feed the chickens, Sally did the chores fast and well, copying everything Esther did. She didn't want

  paying, just feeding, and all she wanted was bread and milk, which she mixed and slurped like the happiest grey squid that ever wore a frock.

  Esther fired Henry the next day, say amen.

 

 

  M.R.W. Rhymer, Mirror (Esther and Sally Book 1)

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