The rest of the small company Mehitabel had led melted back into the shadows, ready to find more interesting tasks in this world or the Gloaming than stay camped outside a peaceful town they couldn't enter. But, Mehitabel stayed. The Captain had asked her to see this through to the end, if only to bring the full tale back to him when all was said and done.
So, she had a perfect view of it when the cat-girl found she couldn't enter the town either.
The two witches, being witches, couldn't just leave it at that. They discussed, they debated, they speculated. They seemed to conclude it had something to do with magic being brought back to the town on the other side of the line someone had obligingly painted right at the border and something to do with the odd rules the catling was obliged to follow about when she could enter a place she hadn't been invited to. Perhaps, they speculated, it also had something to do with the cat-girl's liege acknowledging this territory as belonging to that wizard they'd mentioned.
The talked and talked and talked about it. And they finally came to the point Mehitabel could have told them at the beginning: the cat-girl wasn't getting in.
So, Sirena got out her cell phone toy and called up her brother. Or tried to. As Mehitabel understood it, the little toys could be turned off, left behind or (rather likely, she thought) left in the car the witchling said had been blown up the night before.
She tried calling the wizard, this Mr. Gold, but the thing she called "the directory" had only listed his business number, not his home. And (surprise!) like most humans, Gold went home in the evening.
"Isn't there a sheriff or something?" Mehitabel said. "Someone who pays attention when cars blow up near the town?"
"There is," Sirena said. "Unless things have changed, he's the mayor's lackey. I'm not even going to try asking him." The girl looked deeply thoughtful for a moment, then, made up her mind. "Right. I'm going in. Bae, stay here with Silver and Mehitabel. Please."
The human child looked belligerent in the way only a fourteen year old boy – child who'd just been told to stay out of a fight by a girl – a girl who was making a beeline for that fight herself – could look. Although, the "please" mollified him. A little.
"I can take care of myself," the boy child wrongly asserted.
But, Sirena only said, "I know." The girl gave him an almost Goblin-like grin. "You did really well last night. I'd have been done for if you hadn't found Mehitabel and come back for me. But, this is a town in my world. I know the rules in places like this, how to hide, how to talk my way out of trouble. I'll go in, scout around, see if I can't find out what happened to Tom, then let you know what's happening." She handed her phone toy to the cat-girl. "I'll give you a call." Mehitabel wondered if she meant to borrow or steal a phone when she did it. Steal, hopefully. That would probably be more entertaining in the long run. "If you haven't heard from me by morning, call my dad. Tell him everything. He can decide whether to get Uncle Lucian or Auntie A or whoever or whether to keep it simple and send in a SWAT team."
"What if someone else calls?"
"Take a message."
Mehitabel watched Sirena go. "She's right," she told the human boy. "She knows how to hide. And she knows a trick or two about fighting. She'll take care of herself."
The boy twisted a silver ring on his finger. "How – how did she beat three Goblins last night? On horseback?"
Silver broke in. "I wouldn't call it horseback. Not exactly. Though I've never learnt what Goblins call those monsters –"
"They're our mounts," Mehitabel said. "What else should we call them? And the witchling knows a trick or two. I fight with a sword. The cat-girl fights with claws and spells."
"And knives," Silver said. "And clever wits. Don't forget those."
"Well, Sirena fights with spells and knives as well. And her wits are sharp enough to cut her enemies' throats on. But, her deadliest weapon is roses. Get ready to run if she brings those out."
She could tell Bae was trying to figure out if that was a riddle or a very bad joke. "Do Goblins ever speak plainly?"
"All the time. Why? Has someone else been telling you riddles?"
"Your captain. He said Tom and Sirena had the same mother, shared the same birth. But they're not twins. What does that mean?"
"Told you that, did he? Why didn't you ask him?"
"He said to ask Siri."
"Well, then. Ask her."
Silver interrupted. She'd been studying the boy, though whether like a mouse or a stray kitten, Mehitabel wasn't sure. "In case you didn't notice, Mehitabel, Siri has left us." The girl gave Bae a weighing look. Like a kitten, Mehitabel decided. Good. Maybe she meant to teach him how to hunt mice. "Never mind, I know the answer to that riddle – and don't tell me your captain said it was Siri's tale. I'm not part of your company."
"Indeed not. We don't keep cats."
Silver grinned, not quite showing her own fangs (nothing like a Goblin's, those sugar white confections). "True enough. No one does."
Mehitabel grinned, showing her own, larger teeth. "Go ahead then. Tell him the tale. I suppose one of your people has as much right to it as the witchling."
Silver rolled her eyes, then turned her attention to Bae. "Have you ever seen the moon shining over a lake?"
Bae blinked, obviously not sure what this had to do with Tom and Siri. "Yes, of course."
"Good enough. Now, imagine that the moon was a magic lamp. It made a mistake and let out all its moonbeams at once. But, this was all right, because those moonbeams fell in the lake, which created a mirror image of the moon. All those moonbeams were reflected back so they bounced off the moon and back to the lake again. Back and forth, back and forth. The moon will stay lighting up the sky. But, only so long as it can see the lake. Cast a cloud between them, and both go dark forever. Understand?"
"That's not – the moon isn't like that. Light's not like that –"
"Have a little imagination. And light can be like that – though I'll save tricks with mirrors and bouncing lasers for some other day. The moon, you see, is caught in a trap. The moment it breaks the reflection, all the light is gone.
"Now, that's something like a trap my Lord Lucian fell into ages and ages back. He was tricked into powering the trap himself – it sounds foolish, I know, though my lord is far from foolish. Still, even the wisest may fall, eh? There was a town – rather like this one, really. Part of this very world. But not part of it, too. And the town was split in two. Two reflections, two perfect mirrors. Or not so perfect, for one was the dark shadow of the other.
"But, you see, if my lord broke the spell, if he took his power back, both would be shattered. Perhaps even my lord would not have survived. And, while the spell lasted, this world bounced about in its own little bubble, shielded from the outside by the contradiction within."
Bae frowned. "What does that mean?"
"It's a simple rule. If I take a fish out of water and put it on land, it gasps for air and dies. If I throw you under water, you drown. Worlds are like that, too. Change them too much, make one water to the other's air, and they become separate things, shielded from each other, fish to the other's fowl." She sighed. "I'm sorry. I explain it like a witch, and the way we see the world . . . isn't quite how everyone else sees the world.
"Just believe me. It formed the heart of a spell that kept others from finding this world who might have helped him.
"My lord figured out the riddle in the end, more or less – though that's another tale – and the real world and the shadow were merged back into each other again.
"But, here's the thing. Everyone in the shadow town had a counterpart in the other. And all those shadows merged back into their daylight selves. With one exception.
"In one world, a boy was born and named Thomas. In the other, a girl was born and named Sirena. There was a catch, too, because there couldn't be more lives in the joined worlds than there had been to start with. But, Tom and Siri's mother was uniquely placed to see the truth, to realize she had two children, not one – and to realize her life could save her daughter's. Parents are like that, you know.
"Tom and Siri had an awful time getting along when that curse was broken," Silver added. "They were both of them only children. Giving them memories that said the other one had always been there didn't teach them how to be something different. Still, they got it in the end.
"But, Siri's always been the cynical one where Tom's the optimist. And her magic – Goblin magic – is rooted in shadows. She never does quite trust herself. Still, she's a good one to have beside you in a fight, if you don't mind that she fights dirty."
"That's a virtue where I come from," Mehitabel said.
"Remind me to tell you how your people lost to the English."
"No need, girl. I saw the dead myself. And the not quite dead, too. Pity, that. They were my kin. I should have left them to their rest. Well, I didn't even remember myself, not then."
"I'm sure you –" She was interrupted from whatever witticism she'd meant to attempt by the phone playing its little song.
Do you ever feel,
like you were meant to fly
Somewhere far away
From ordinary life?
Do you ever feel
like no one seems to know
Your love for dragons or
Dressing up in cloaks
How oddly appropriate. Or not so oddly. Mehitabel wondered if it was a witchling's gift that made Sirena pick that one or did she actually like it?
Or it was just her idea of a joke?
Silver answered it. "Yes?" A pause. "Tom, how are you? What's happened?
"What? No, Siri asked me to hold it. I met her in the Gloaming, and –" She rolled her eyes at whatever Tom said. "Because my lady sent me. Why else? Listen, we've got Bae, here, and –
"Wait, what? Gold is Rumplestiltskin? Well, no wonder he goes by Mr. Gold. What does that have to do with – Hey, Bae, wait!"
But, the boy was already running across the border.