The Crumpled Mirror by Elizabeth Loea (free novel reading sites TXT) 📕

It would have taken a quarter of the time to fly to Indigo’s library, as opposed to walking, but the upcoming conversation with Indigo’s terrifying mother would be a difficult one, and I couldn’t muster the confidence to confess the accidental theft to a woman who wore a breastplate with her every day outfit.

The forest, burned and still filled with ash, slept quietly around me. The trunks were blackened, the ground muddy and grey. I felt the mud seep through the tops of my sneakers and into my socks, but I still didn’t climb back onto my board.

The feeling of solid ground was the one reassuringly human thing that I’d felt in days.

The library wasn’t that far in, fortunately, and the whole thing was so discordantly modern against the stark, ancient background of the burned forest that even if I hadn’t taken the path there before, it wouldn’t have been difficult to find it. The building loomed even far away, and as I approached, I began to hear its insides churning—a noise I hadn’t heard or hadn’t been able to process during my first visit.

It sounded like the high-pitched whine of gears slowly grinding into place, but it didn’t let up.

I couldn’t imagine growing up in a place like that. It would have driven me insane.

I found Indigo’s mother outside, sitting on a reclining chair and sipping what was probably his realm’s equivalent of a margarita. She watched me approach with cautious but not unfriendly eyes, as though I were a stray cat she hadn’t decided to take in yet.

Her beverage was pale purple and served in a wooden mug, but I could smell the sweet-sour-bitter scent of something that was bad for the liver from a couple feet away.

I stopped in front of her, far enough away for her to have difficulty lunging for me but not so far away to be suspicious.

“Ma’am,” I said.

She laughed, a warm, loud sound that reminded me of her son. It was a laugh that fit her perfectly. She had kicked her feet up on a stool, heavy boots caked with what looked like liquid glass, and she had propped her head on a pillow that was probably modeled after one of the animals of that realm, although it was no animal I would have recognized.

“What can I do for you?” she said. “And nobody calls me ma’am, my dear. Just Cassie will do.”

“Cassie,” I repeated, my heart beating in my mouth. This woman—the mom of the guy I kind of liked, a woman who looked as though she might be armed to the teeth—had told me her true name. What was she playing at? The rest of us had chosen colors. And Indigo had mentioned the power of names when we’d last come, so…

“You just told me your name,” I said. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call you something dif—”

“No,” she told me. “I don’t lie. Even when it comes to my name, and even if it’s for my safety. Honestly, I was surprised when my son did. I’ve raised him better than that.”

I let that sink in for a moment before I pulled the book from my jacket pocket and offered it to her. There was nothing I could say as she took it from my fingers and looked from me to the cover.

“You took this on purpose?” she demanded.

“No, ma’am—uh, Cassie,” I replied, my eyes on my shoes. I heard her take a sip from her drink. She flipped one of the pages and sighed.

“My airhead son handed it to you,” she said. “And you forgot to give it back.”

“How did you…”

“Happened all the time when he was little. He’d take books outside the library without checking them out and then he’d hand them to strangers on loan. That boy is our biggest liability.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, and she couldn’t help but laugh along with me. Indigo’s mom is beautiful, and her laugh just adds to that. It makes her look older, deepens her smile lines, reminds people watching her that she will always have reason to laugh, even if things are terrible.

She handed the book back to me.

“If you can make heads or tails of it, keep it,” she said. “I’ve got no use for magic and that boy is too afraid of it to do anything. I suspect you’ll use it better than either of us ever could.”

Considering that I’d come expecting an earful, that was the best I could hope for.

“Let me know if you find something useful,” she said. “I spent…” she paused, and tapped the chair next to hers. “Sit. I don’t need you hovering around like some anxious moth.”

I took a seat and tucked the book back into my coat.

“I spent years telling him that the telekinesis thing was something to hide. First I didn’t believe him. Then, when I finally did, I made his life harder because I didn’t support him for who he was,” she told me. “You won’t make the same mistake. I know you won’t. And I hope you do right by him—I hope you help him realize that there’s nothing wrong with him.”

“What about…” I paused, but reticence and shyness have never been tolerable to Cassie. “What about you?” I continued. “Have you told him those things? That there’s nothing wrong with him? That you support him?”

“I have, but after you tell a child something enough, they won’t believe you’ve ever changed your mind. That’s the thing about being a parent. You get many shots for some things and you only get one or two for others. You never know how many chances you’ll get, and it’s impossible to be perfect all the time. It’s much easier to be an asshole than to be supportive, and children have an elephant’s memory for when you’ve been an asshole.”

I stared at her. She glanced up at the sky, which had begun its progress from a bright mid-afternoon blue to the deep blue