Sister Cinco (Scenes 5-7)
5
No sooner had Auna seen off the Red and White Queens when she felt a headache cleaving through her head like hatchet-strikes from an evil lumberjack. She squatted to the floor, clamping her hands against her temples to ease the pain but to no avail. The hatchet-strikes continued, and her face contorted into a portrait of agony as she tried everything not to scream. And the headache continued, like hammer-blows against an anvil inside her skull, beating to the rhythm of her heartbeats pulsing through the blood vessels in her brain, till she couldn’t take anymore and put her hand in her panties and pleasured herself, but the endorphins only made it worse.
Any more, and she’d go crazy even if ‘crazy’ was a concept completely alien to her psyche. Crazy was not the word she’d use to describe herself, not the quintessence of her personality, but deep in her soul, she feared the girl she had seen in the mirror last night in the old square. And now, squinting through an agony of pulsing hatchet-strikes in her head, she saw her image flash through her mind’s eye again.
The girl bore her likeness but was not Auna herself. Whoever or whatever she was that wore her face, she was not the persona she had in mind to emulate, nor was she someone she was meant to be if Auna could help it, yet the worst thing was this: Auna feared that she couldn’t help it.
She shook off these thoughts and stood up and went towards the cafe table and looked at the Lewis Carroll volume, for she needed answers to her questions, even if they were on the sly. She bit the scabbing away from her thumb and drew blood, dripping another drop of it onto the cover, then placed her palm flat over it and imagined the eponymous object from Through the Looking-Glass, letting her life-blood flow through the ink in the pages, and once again the air inside the library grew dense and thick, tinged with another metallic waft of blood and ink from her spell.
She said, “From page 9, enter the Looking-Glass House!”
Once again, strings of sentences swept out from the pages and across the tabletop and down the stem and feet of the table to the floor, then swirled into a spiral before her, on which the entrance into Looking-Glass House materialized against the reflection of a giant mirror. The mirror itself had the same decorative trim on the edges of its frame, but it sat on the floor and not on the mantle like in the book. And instead of reflecting the inside of a mid-nineteenth century living room, it reflected rows of library bookshelves stuffed from floor to ceiling with books and books and books.
And framed inside that mirror in front of those books was Auna herself, or at least, the reflection seemed like herself, so she leaned towards the reflection and saw her face getting bigger and bigger, as though this second self were copying her movements to the last degree of pantomime. Auna then passed her hand across the reflected face, crossing her own line of sight, and saw a slight change in the expression of those reflected eyes.
And in that split second, she recognized the roving predatory eyes of that she-wolf wearing her own face and her own clothes but was not herself. And those eyes lit up with mischief, hinting at forbidden desires coming to the surface like hellfire from unfathomable depths. And in those eyes, her doppelgänger carried a cesspool of bodily sensations that only wanted more, more of Auna’s body, more of her heart, more of her soul. Then a slasher's smile stretched across her doppelgänger’s face, and she said, “It only happens when you’re not looking!”
And the words of her imposter filtered through her mind and took her down the rabbit hole of unconscious sleep and back to the conscious sleep of dreams. She found herself again on the sofa, but now she was sitting upright without her legs sprawled open and without her hand in her panties.
She looked and saw Rancaster looking down on her again, as though he had waited for her to wake up instead of touching her directly. She stole a quick glance to where the mirror entrance into Looking-Glass House had stood and saw in its place the Red and White Queens standing rigidly at attention.
“You’re awake?” he said. “Good! Change of plans, bambina.”
“Wait, what do you mean?” she said, looking at the Red and White Queens. “And why are they back here?”
“Just what I said: a change of plans,” he said. “I can’t detect either of the Cairns twin’s presence in this house. I can only think that Katherine Hearn had something to do with their disappearance. Plan A is done for, so it’s Plan B from here on out, till we achieve our ends or Katherine and her sisters wake up at dawn, which is,” and he pulled out a pocket watch from his vest pocket, flipped the cover and read the time (4:08 a.m.), “about three hours from now. By the way, bambina,” he added, “do you know the significance of four o’clock a.m.?”
And indeed, Auna remembered that time as clear as a moonlit night, even at the tender age of nine, because that was the hour when she woke up to her father (her real father) moaning in his bedroom, and when she crept to his room to find out what was the matter and peeked beneath his shut bedroom double doors at what he was doing, she found him masturbating. She felt queasy at the memory, felt bile bubbling up and backing up into her throat, so she took a deep breath and stood up, saying, “Wolves are most active at this time.”
“Ah, that’s my bambina!” Rancaster said, petting her head.
Auna blushed in her deadpan way, but she garnered hard looks from the Red and White Queens in sidelong glances. Even though they were formed from Auna’s life-giving blood, she felt that they had a will of their own beyond the confines of her wishes and beyond the parameters set in Through the Looking-Glass, for she had imbued them with such agency in her childhood folly of needing friends she could talk to.
“So I assume,” the man then continued, ”that you know what happens next?”
Indeed, she did, both now and back then when the atrocity occurred. After months of subsequent spy missions on her father, she remembered the night when she was called to see him in his bedroom. With her heart pounding in her chest, she had obeyed his summons that night, a night that involved her father teaching her how to touch herself and later teaching her how to touch him, which escalated to her father pinching her in intimate places to make her touch him whenever she refused, which culminated in her frustrated father coming into her bedroom one night and dragging her into his and doing it to her for the first and only time when she was ten. Thus, with her first taste of carnal knowledge came the truth about wolves and feral men and how to slay them.
She knew it then as she knew it now, saying, “I do.”
“Good,” Rancaster said and smiled. “The stage is set, the time is now, and you are the star of the show,” and he bowed to her and took her hand and kissed it, sending color to Auna’s deadpan face. Then he turned on his heel and walked into a darkening haze enveloping the library and disappeared before her, leaving Auna alone with the Queens.
Taking a moment to breathe, Auna approached the Red and White Queens, both still standing at attention with ashen faces, and said, “What did Rancaster tell you?”
Both Queens traded glances between themselves, till Akami the Red Queen took Auna’s right hand in her own and said, “He told us what you’re going to do.”
“How do you feel about it?” she said.
“Don’t do it, Auna,” Shiromi the Red Queen said, taking Auna’s left hand in her own. “None of this is worth it.”
“Please, reconsider this, your Grace,” Akami added.
“I’m sorry,” Auna said, “but this is something I have to do.”
“But what about Wonderland?” Shiromi said.
“Don’t you want to become Queen of that place?” Akami added.
“I will become Queen of Wonderland, yes,” Auna said, “but as a different person, not as you see me now,” and when Shiromi and Akami began to cry, she kissed each of their eyes. “Please, don’t either of you cry for me. This is not goodbye: this is only ‘see you later,’ okay?”
Akami and Shiromi nodded that they understood, but their tears wouldn’t stop.
So Auna said, “I want you two to do something for me.”
“What is it?” they both said.
“After all this is over, find Mara and Nico,” she said, “and tell them that it’s my fault. Tell them I couldn’t get Rancaster to stop the show last night. Tell them that I’m sorry for what happened to their parents. And tell Mara I’m sorry for what happened to her sister. Can you do this for me?”
Akami and Shiromi cried, but nodded that they would, so as their last act of kindness to the girl who had given them their names, they both hugged Auna in a tight embrace and left long and lingering kisses on her lips, telling her that they loved her and will always love her, no matter what becomes of Auna or who she’ll become in the end.
Satisfied with their answer, Auna gave them her orders with tears in her eyes.
6
On entering the mirror into Katherine’s soul, Nico found herself at the edge of a wooded park or an English garden beneath a canopy of large trees overhanging her head in soft shades and waited for Mara’s arrival. When Mara came in through Katherine’s mirror, Nico took Mara by her hand and said, "Stay close to me, okay?" To this, Mara nodded her head, so Nico led the way through the thick foliage, till she spotted a boarded walkway in the woods, and they followed it out of the woods and into daylight.
They then stopped at the entrance of a boardwalk raised above the water margin of a large lake and marveled at the mirrored surface reflecting the heavy clouds above their heads that scattered all shadows into translucent shades around them. The boardwalk hugged the margins of the lake like the edges of a hand mirror against a forest backdrop of big trees and faraway mountains further back in the distance, while water lilies and lily pads hugged the edges of the lake near pillars supporting the boardwalk below their feet.
They then looked across the mirror sheen of the lake and found big and small clusters of lilies and lily pads further out like floating dinner plates of greenery. And in the largest cluster of lilies and lily pads floated the biggest swan either of them had ever seen, about the size of a mid-size SUV. Its long white plumage curved down the folded wings over its back and sides, and it ruffled its feathers when it spotted Nico and Mara looking at it.
“Look at that,” Nico said. “It’s so beautiful!”
“What’s it doing over there?” Mara asked. "And why's it so big?"
“I don’t know.”
The swan gazed back at them, then spread and beat its wings against the air while running atop the surface of the lake, its long neck stretched forward and its eyes locked onto Nico and Mara on the edge of the water margin. Running and running across the water, it beat its wings on larger tufts of air till it raised its legs behind itself and flew towards them like a fighter jet.
So Nico and Mara both cursed and ducked, cowering and shielding their heads with their hands as they hid behind one of the bigger trees leaning over the boardwalk that skirted the lake, when the giant swan swooped up above their heads, rustling the leaves and branches of overhanging trees, and scattered itself into feathery shards of shimmering light.
With both of their hearts thumping in their chests, they emerged from their hiding spot and looked up beyond the leaves and saw no swan above them. So they looked towards the lake but found no sign of the swan anywhere near it.
“Where is it?” Nico said.
“How should I know?” Mara said.
“Looking for someone?” said an unknown voice.
Both Cairns twins squealed and jumped, then lost their footing on the boardwalk and fell into the lake with a splash, brimming the waters into spreading ripples, while the stranger laughed into gut-busting hysterics and held onto her sides.
When both sisters emerged through the water, they had scowls on their faces and contempt in their eyes.
Nico said, “Hey, what gives? Why did you—?”
Then she stopped.
So Mara looked over and said, “Kathy, is that you?”
Their gazes fell on a Katherine look-alike, but unlike the one with brown front and side bangs and braided twin-tails behind her head, this one simply wore her hair down in long silky strands that would have shimmered under a sunny sky. And on top of that, she had cut-off slacks that revealed a generous amount of leg and a loose blouse tucked into the slacks.
“Well,” this Katherine said, eying Mara with a smile, “I am in a general sense, but . . . I’m not exactly like her. I’m a little different, as you can see.” Then turning to Nico, she said, ”But to answer your first question, I give my apologies. And to your second question, it was a joke: no harm intended, I assure you. Now reach out your hands,” and when they did, she grasped their hands and pulled them up from the water that soaked through their clothes. “You’ll catch a cold in those wet clothes. Follow me to the house, and I'll get you dry ones,” and she led them back over the boarded walkway through the thick foliage of the forest towards a clearing.
Nico and Mara traded questioning looks, noting the different mannerisms between the Katherine they knew and this other Katherine, but they still followed.
“Um,” Mara started, ”should we call you Katherine or Kathy or—?”
“Cooley,” she said. "Call me Cooley."
Nico stayed silent, though, wondering how she could transform into a swan. Or maybe she was a spirit animal or guide of some kind, but she had no way of knowing for certain, till Cooley answered her curiosity.
“Oh, and if you’re wondering about the swan thing,” Cooley said, “just know that swans are my spirit animals, and so they are Katherine’s spirit animals, too.”
“Wait, you can read minds?” Nico said in awe.
“Not really,” she said, turning and giving her a wink, “but I can read emotions fairly well and, sometimes, peer into other people’s hearts.” Then she stopped along the path to the clearing and faced her new-found friends and said, “I know of the plight you’ve both suffered, and your actions and words have moved me as much as they have moved my counterpart in your world. However long you need to stay here, I’ll give you all the time you need.”
Her words were like a tonic, soothing frayed nerves and offering respite, so for the first time in a while, both sisters smiled and said, “Thank you.”
“It’s the least I can do,” Cooley said.
7
“All right, back to business,” Katherine said, looking at Celia and Madison for a moment, then put her hand to the mirror and concentrated on the locations of Auna’s two doppelgängers, and the mirror showed them in a lonely corner of the maze of hallways. They had joined hands and were now turning counter-clockwise and saying an incantation that Katherine couldn’t hear, but she guessed what it was when she spotted the summoning circle glowing under their feet, saying, “They’re using an invocation spell, but I’ve never seen it done like that, or at least, I don’t think so.” So she searched through the hidden library of her mind for any ideas, then said, “How are they doing it?”
Celia and Madison got a closer look at the spell casting in progress playing on the reflection.
“I don’t see any candles anywhere,” Madison said, “so they’re not doing it through flames, and that rules out a fire elemental, thank God.”
“I know that already,” Katherine said.
“But they look alike, those two,” Celia said.
“Well, duh,” Madison said. “They’re twins, Captain Obvious!”
“Hey, I was just making an observation!” Celia said. “If you—”
“You may be onto something,” Katherine said, beginning to see a pattern in their deliberate use of symmetry in their invocation, as if they were replicating something into existence, but they weren’t using any mirrors. Katherine had made sure that all of the mirrors in her mansion were broken, except for the one she was using, yet she knew there had to be a means to their method of invocation.
“See?” Celia said, looking at Madison and smiling an all-knowing smile. “What did I tell you?”
“Lucky guess for a lucky brat,” Madison said.
Before Celia was about to talk back, Katherine caught on to the deliberate symmetry of their method and said, “I think they’re using doubles.”
“Are you serious?” Celia said.
“But doesn’t that involve a body double as a vessel?” Madison said, looking at the Red and White Queens continuing their counter-clockwise spell while chanting. “Where’s the vessel?”
“Wait a minute,” Celia said, “where’s that ‘bambina’ chick?”
“Do you think she’s the vessel?” Katherine said.
“I think so, yeah,” she said. “Can you find out where she is?”
“I’ll try,” Katherine said and concentrated on the smaller imprint of the gun-toting ‘bambina’ girl’s location, but . . . “I can’t find her. She must be using charms to hide her location from me. Fuck!” And she winced, almost taking her hand off the reflection and cutting off the image, and gritted her teeth against the jolt of pain running through her arm.
“What’s wrong?” her sisters said.
“Fuck, someone’s putting a curse on me!” Katherine said, gritting her teeth and wincing against the pain running through her arm in stabbing pinpricks.
“WHAT?” her sisters said, looking on in horror, as they began to see the effects of the curse in the blurring and warping of the walls surrounding them in Katherine’s boudoir. Something was getting in, digging through the cracks in Katherine’s psychic barrier, little by little, warping its way through an already weakened Katherine.
“You have to go!” she said, grimacing against the million evil pinpricks shooting through her arm as tears squeezed out of her eyes. “I can’t hold out much longer!”
“What’s gonna happen to you?” Celia said.
“We’re not leaving you like this!” Madison added.
“I’ll deal with it. Just do what you have to do. I’m putting all of my trust in you two, so go now,” she said, looking into her sisters’ eyes, but neither of them went. “For God’s sake, don’t worry about me! I’ll be fine. NOW GO!”
So Celia and Madison looked at the Red and White Queens in the mirror, and Celia threw her seal below both of their feet and blinked out of sight.
Katherine then pulled away her hand and collapsed to her knees, doubling over on the floor and nursing her arm tight against her stomach, till the pain subsided enough for her to raise her head and look at the mirror. The mirror’s reflection was now a spider’s web of cracks showing a swirling black mass of energy, reminding her of the death of her grandmother Amelia Hearn and the unwitting role her own mother Lima Hearn had played in it, as well as the man who had orchestrated it like an evil conductor.
Then a voice said in her mind, Checkmate, braid girl.
“Rancaster, you fucker!” she said.
