Magic
Mirrors
The day was sunny, the brilliant blue sky
interrupted only by the golden ball that was the sun and by a few wispy clouds
that metamorphosed themselves into faces and animals.
Rafe McCawley
stared sightlessly out the airplane window, dark eyes troubled. The plane was lowering down towards the
airstrip. Rafe would have given
anything to be the pilot, just so he could forget the past for a few moments.
But now he was
sitting by the window, one hand on a makeshift wooden coffin. A pilot's jacket was spread over the top.
He didn't want
to tell Evelyn. Didn't want to see her
mirror-like eyes fill with tears.
Didn't want to know that compared to Danny, he wold always be second
best, but she didn't have him anymore, so she would turn to him.
The plane
touched down, rattling slightly as it coasted to a stop. Rafe could see the crowd gathered to meet
friends and family that had flown off into the horizon on a kamikaze suicide
mission.
Suicide
mission. Huh. Sounded good right now…
* *
*
Evelyn craned her neck, standing on tiptoe to see
the airplane that was coasting towards them.
Her heart was in her throat with expectation.
"Please, just
be okay," she whispered to herself. She
didn't know if Rafe or Danny were all right, and she was dying to find out.
They're not dead. They're too good to be dead.
The airplane
stopped. The engines shut off. An airport attendant wheeled a set of stairs
to the door in the airplane's hull just before the door swung open with a muted
crash.
All this moved
in slow motion in Evelyn's eyes. Her
heart was pounding painfully. "Please
be in there…"
A tousled head
poked out, followed by a tall man in a pilot's uniform. He squinted up at the sky, then searched the
crowds with his eyes.
Evelyn pushed
forward, a smile moving up her face.
Rafe was all right. He wouldn't
have come back without Danny, not a chance.
Rafe saw
Evelyn. Their eyes met.
His eyes… once
so familiar, dark eyes that reflected every emotion within, like magic
mirrors. But they were dark and
turbulent, churning with repressed feelings and filled with despair.
Evelyn's breath
caught in her throat. No…
Rafe stepped
forward. He was holding the front end
of something long and wooden. A torn,
faded jacket was spread atop it.
Danny was dead.
Evelyn's world
shattered, as if her heart was a window and someone had smashed it with a
twenty-pound sledgehammer.
Rafe reached
the end of the staircase, then stepped off and walked out far enough that he
could put down the wooden box. He still
refused to think of it as a coffin.
Red gave Rafe a
sympathetic look before stepping away.
Evelyn pelted
towards Rafe and gripped him in a bone-crunching hug. Tears streamed down her face, catching the bright light as they
fell.
Rafe gripped
Evelyn just as fiercely. No matter what
had happened in China, he still had her.
She was all right.
But now he had
lost his best friend, his brother. If
not by blood, then by heart. His former
zest for life had leeched away, like a mirror without its magic.
Evelyn's soft
cries were like a slap in the face. He
realized that Danny was gone, and he was never coming back, not in a million
years.
Shards of
mirror glass scattered on the ground.
