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In a dream long forgotten, someone wise once told him that just as they took light from outside sources, mirrors could steal people away.
The gathering place of Earth wizards, for millennias on end, has been the grandest mirror of them all.
Even non-wizards know, though they have forgotten who or what it was that told them, back in the age when men might have been only myths in fairy tales written by mice. The Greeks, the Celtics, the Native Americans, and so many more that worshipped the moon as a powerful goddess. This celestial orb that dogged the footsteps of the golden chariot like a grim; they feared her. They were right to.
When he first heard the silence of his very first wizardry at work, all those lifetimes ago, he thought that the moon was a good place to be. A silver wanderer, low and sad and always so very far away, but a good being none the same. The player of the lute, the singer of moonbeams, the lady that scatters shadow demons away like so many piles of leaves. The Book of Night with Moon, was it not the one who spoke the ancient words behind the mask that was Nita, the words that wove the Universe together once more? Was it not moonlight that changed the final symbol, that gave hope once more to the hopeless?
Just because something knows how to spread the One's blessings doesn't mean it will.
He knows better now. And remembers.
He remembers the blood. How it billowed as a dreamy crimson haze in the waters of the oldest sea, the place where twelve wizards made the ultimate decision of 'for better or for worse'. How the scarlet flecked against green grass stalks was more real than the plants themselves, more real than anything about that world of whims and wisp-o-mists. How the drops drifted through anti-gravity to become ebony comets, as they streaked from the wounds of two nameless shapes that bit and lunged with growls that set the Earth afraid with tremors. And the silver mirror, the sun whose light she stole was always, always reflected off the gleaming blood like an image within an eye. The blood never forgot.
He remembers Nita. And never more than that is his hatred for the moon so fiery, so personal. The memory is sharp and elegant as a crystal dagger; the moon always does her work so cleanly. How he despises her for that. For it was the moon that watched from her perch among the timestop of constellations as he found Nita there in the graveyard, head bent low to the earth, auburn hair brushing the dirt. That cursed silver light dripped from her face in rivulets like scalding mercury, and he could do nothing at all to ease her grief, though the One knows he'd have given anything. Anything, and he says it in the Speech. Still now Nita's low, moaning sobs drift over his memory like a rain of dark stars falling.
Most, and last, he remembers Dairine, for her story is the most pained of them all. How the girl had knelt in the moondust, the ashen particles drifting up to coat her bloodless face in a fine layer of grey, how she hadn't brushed them away when she should have. The fingers that ran desperately again and again over the sunstone, its surface gone dull with something she would rather die before acknowledging. Dairine's face, how eerily calm it had been, how flat her brow. Though the rest of her body trembled with despair, her face had shown nothing at all. There was no longer even enough light left in her eyes for the moon's cruel gaze to flicker in. The light had vanished with Roshaun.
And all who watched could not help but cry, to howl grief for this girl whose loss was far beyond the realms of sorrow. The scores of wizards behind him wailed in despair, Ponch's howl rising high above them as Icarus, the one doomed to fall. Even the stars cried out in pain, pain for this human girl whom they suddenly loved, though they knew not her name a moment ago. But the moon did not cry, that horrible night. The moon was laughing. Her mincing words permeated the air like a promise as she taunted, What is plucked will grow again, what is slain lives on-
From that moment on, he was never able to perform even the smallest wizardry without seeing Dairine before him, her eyes gone lifeless and opaque as star sapphires robbed of their shining, pallid lips whispering the moon's cold lyrics as it cackled in the background, laughing. Laughing.
He has once heard it thought, or said, or sung, that mirrors can steal people away.
They were wrong. Calling something stolen means that you can get it back.
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Author's Note: The "lyrics" are two lines from Peter S Beagle's poem What Is Gone Is Gone, from the book The Last Unicorn. Uh…don't sue me? I'm new to the Young Wizards fanfiction-dom, and don't know your ways. Can't wait for Wizards on Mars to come out, so we can see what became of Roshaun. Reviews very much appreciated. (wanders off)