Dancing On The Mirror

She welcomed the sting of winter’s zephyr upon her cheek as if it were a kiss from a long awaited lover. As she ventured further into the woods the crunch of the snow beneath her wellington boots filled her with the wanderlust of a scent hound. Rabbits were not her concern she was looking for something from a memory so long ago it could’ve been a dream.

She was in deep. A fresh white blanket had already disguised her footprints in the once virgin snow, as though she had never even been there at all. She looked around the thickening brush and there was only white. The wood she had hiked into was as picturesque as a painting but it was undoing itself, removing each stroke of paint to reveal the white canvas beneath. The world around her was being erased one snowflake at a time and it caused her pulse to quicken. She was lost. A tiny dot in a world of white, like the full stop on a blank page.

She paused, the disorientation became a hindrance, ‘how far is that tree? Have I been here already?’ her survival instincts had dampened her enjoyment for adventure but she had to find what she came for.

Gloves removed she put her naked pink hands in the freezing snow, it was about ten centimetres deep. She clenched it tight and it squelched between her digits and it fell down through the gaps. She stared at her now red hands.

“Its just snow. Frozen water. I am in control.” She said.

She looked back at the blank world and her eyes were on fire, it was hers again. She pushed through the thickening bushes, her coat was as thick as armour and moved them aside with ease. She was fighting against twelve years of overgrowth and winning, she had to get there. After an hour of grappling with the white woods it finally gave into her and she made it through to the open space she was hoping to find. There it was shining at her, a vast frozen pond.

A rest well deserved ensued.

“It wasn’t a dream.” A tear trickled down her rosy cheek and she laughed. She took off the cumbersome rucksack that was the weight and size of a toddler then removed a pair of ice-skates, pale pink the same colour she had worn as a child. Her hands were frozen but no rookie could’ve laced those skates up with as much ease as she did. She was a pro, southwest regional champion two thousand and one and two. The loss of dexterity did not disrupt the muscle memory trained into those pale blue fingers.

This location only existed in a memory made by her six-year-old self, dancing on a frozen moon lit pond with her father, like skating on the surface of a mirror, it was a fairy-tale. The naturally frozen water was not at all as carefully crafted as the ice rinks she had become accustom to over the years but each bump and unlevelled area was a thrill to be had. To skate on here was to relive that moment with her father, wherever he had gone she was here with him now.

Pushing off onto the ice she limbered up quickly with a lap of the pond, gliding gracefully to the tune of Tchaikovsky in her head. Her movements as fluid as her father taught her, it was as though his spirit was in the ice below guiding her every move.

‘Here it goes, double axel.’ The cold air stung in her lungs and nostrils as she braced for the manoeuvre; it made her spine tingle. She kicked her leg back then released it like a cocked handgun; she flew through the air spinning faster than a wind turbine but landed silent like a fallen rose petal.

She exhaled powerfully, not an easy move to pull off, even in the rink. She zipped around conducting the ice with her blades, pulling off double axels as though she did them for breakfast, toe jumps and spins, all moves in her arsenal laid bare to the ice.

‘Triple axel.’ A move even pros struggle to stick the landing, but there was something special here, she could feel it coursing through her veins, the ice was in her blood. She picked up speed like a hyper dog and moved back onto her right foot slicing through the ice, she prepared to kick back and spin into the triple axel. Whiplashing through the air, her perfect form maintained her centre of gravity as the G-force pressed against her chest. Her foot stuck the landing; she had finally done her first triple axel. The hairs all over her body pricked with glee so did her smile.

“Thank you dad.”

Blowing kisses into the woods around her as though she had just won gold at the winter Olympics after landing the nearly impossible move. The pond growled and ached and within seconds of elation her feet crumbled through its surface shattering completely around her, she plummeted like a stone.

She fought to keep her head above the blisteringly cold water but her limbs slipped off the ice like butter, she gasped, splashed and throttled for her life but only the cooing wood pigeons responded to her cries. Her muscles tired and started to spasm, the shock of the cold water rendered her useless against it, she was truly about to become one with the ice. The exhaustion won. She sunk back and saw a watery moon glistening down on her. The mirror had broken and she fell through it. As the water filled her lungs she felt an odd sense of calm, as though she wasn’t alone, as though down in the freezing depths she had a set of arms wrapped around her cradling her to the bottom of the blackness, welcoming her into its belly; she nestled into it peacefully.

Intense bright light made her eyelids flutter and she awoke confused and disorientated. She squinted looking at the whiteness around her.

“Is this heaven?” she was met with no response, the floor she sat on was cold, she touched it with her bare hand.

“Ice?” she brushed at it and it was indeed ice, glowing in the sunlight behind it, this wasn’t heaven, this was the other side of the mirror, only the crack had been fixed. She stood to her feet and balanced in her skates, weak and unstable like a baby deer.

“Hello?” her voice bellowed into the white void reverberating into a din of shattered glass, ‘what is this place?’ if not heaven this surly was hell? She kicked at the translucent ground with the tip of her skate and it broke away a small amount of ice, the world she could see was a million miles away, the only thing she could do was skate.

“It’s all a dream, all of it, the pond, the triple axel, this place, its not real, I’ve passed out in the snow and I’m dreaming.” Her strong sense of rational thinking only made her stomach ache more, this place was not rational, it was a world reflected in the face of rationality, the laws of reason and physics did not apply here, wherever here was.

She glided across the glowing ice looking for something… anything, but the cold icy wind was all that greeted her. Awe was the only thing that kept her from crying.

An ominous voice broke through the haze above and vibrated throughout her entire body and shook the whole mirror world, it decayed into the sound of a creaking braking glacier.

“Penny.”

Had she awoken a titan trapped in the permafrost? How did it know her name? She hugged herself tight in terror but she dared to answer the call of the titan.

“What do you want from me? Who are you?” nothing. Only the sound of her echoing voice responded. Her blood was hot and pumping and her instincts told her to skate. She was no longer graceful, she was aggressive and sloppy stomping on the ice as a rabid beast. There was no end, no boundary. The only boundary in this world was glowing at her feet. Tired and scared she screamed a guttural noise.

A breeze brushed against her ear and took her by the hand, enticing her to keep going, running its fingers through her hair she could hear a silent whisper of nothingness but she followed it. She raced after it like a note caught in the wind and her graceful footing came back. She became the wind and ran with it, the first pleasure she had felt since being here, there was nothing to stop her, nothing in her way, so she thought.

Travelling at what seemed a hundred miles per hour her eyes adjusted to the haze in front of her and there was something floating above the ice, she dug her blades in and skidded towards the object, it was a miracle she didn’t smash into it. The size of it must’ve been about seventeen feet tall and ten feet wide; it was a solid crystal of ice.

“What the fuck?” Its marvellous geometry refracted the warm glow below it into a rainbow mist, the only real colours she had seen in what felt like months. The sight was breath taking. A dream wrapped in a nightmare wrapped in a dream. She slid forward to inspect its surface more closely. Her hands were practically icicles themselves but she laid them on its frosted surface and wiped away the excess.

“GASP!” She put her frozen hand to her mouth holding in a scream. She brushed away more frost swiping with the sleeve of her jumper and her eyes did not deceive her. People. Packed together frozen like fish in a market. She backed away but something stopped her, another giant icicle, she squealed but curiosity got the best of her, she wiped the frost away and it was the same, people frozen in terror, one on top of the other. The mist cleared and there were hundreds levitating, frozen terrariums of death. She looked around for a clear exit, where was the empty world she had fallen into? All too sudden it had become claustrophobic. She could barely catch her breath this place was a living nightmare not a place of dreams.

A dying voice moaned.

“Penny” it said.

She turned erratically; her face was as red as her hands, the tears that fell from her cheeks froze instantly. “What the fuck do you want with me?” “Penny” it rasped again. She skated around the floating crystals peering around each corner as though death was waiting for her. A shiver went through her body it was not the cold but the voice that was the cause. Finally, she was close. The voice sounded again and she rushed to it, all logic told her to skate away but this place was the reverse of human logic. The voice was strangely familiar, a voice from a lifetime ago.

She had found the Icicle; he slowly skated around its perimeter through the growing fog at her feet and there he was.

“Dad? Oh my goodness, you’re alive?” her heart was crushing like an ice-cube under a mallet. He didn’t seem conscious, and the ice around his head and upper body looked as though it had been melted away though his arms were still encased with the rest of the bodies.

“Daddy, its me, its penny!” his slouched head rose from its slumber, he shook himself to his senses; it looked as though he had been frozen for a thousand years. His beard was white with frost and his skin was blue.

“Penny? No, no, NO! What are you doing here? Get out of here!” he tried leaping from the ice but he wouldn’t budge.

“You called me hear? What happened to you? Where the hell are we?” this was not the reuniting moment she had dreamt of since she was a little girl. It was incredibly bittersweet.

“Me? Penny I would NEVER have called you here! This is hell, look around you; this is no place for you my angel, go! RUN!”

“But if you didn’t call me then who did?” she asked.

“You don’t have much time, try and find the way you came, I never called you my darling, they did!”

Every emotion in her was as frozen as the ice around her, she didn’t know what to think or feel. Her fathers warns had stopped and he stared out into the distance.

“What dad? Who is it?” she whispered, there was no response.

She span on the spot and saw it in the distance, a tall thin hooded creature stood on a scythe like the grim reaper in reverse, though its face was a mirror of decay and ice, below it hid a row of skeletal teeth chattering, it leaned into the scythe and it rode the blade on the ice like her skates, losing itself into the heavy fog.

“Go! Penny! Go! It hasn’t seen you, skate for your.” But before he could finish his sentence a spear of ice penetrated his face and his blood splattered over her, she screamed so loud the ice could’ve shattered, the race for her life was on.

It came fast on her heels but she did her best to avoid the giant ice obstacles, it did so too. She took a glance back and saw its ghastly form, her face reflected perfectly in its mirrored face, she fell into a trance, her body and soul were being drawn into it, until she smashed into an icicle sending her flying. She looked around but the mirrored face reaper could not be seen. She heard the sound of metal on ice, a sound all too familiar to her. The creature had raised its scythe high above its cloaked head and brought it down as to maim her, but she was too fast. The scythe was powerful enough to break the ice below and with it Penny leapt with all the strength she had through the ice and to the other side. The sun beat down on her face and warmed her soul. Breathing deep breaths, she had made it out alive. Something tugged at her leg and it brought her back under the ice and into the in-between of worlds, the reaper had hold of her and as she stared down into its mirrored face she saw her and her father skating in the moonlight. She gazed and saw her face in place of the absent one and felt herself give into its dreamy hypnosis. Penny grew weaker staring blankly at it, until another face emerged.

“Penny! NO!” it was her father, he was screaming from the mirror warning her, she snapped out of her trance and forced her foot into the face of the mirrored beast shattering it. It fell back into what circle of hell it came from and she rose to the surface.

That was the last time she ever saw her father.