Weak, her father had called Dorothea. Mina didn’t think her mother weak; she thought her selfish.
And what about me? What am I? She looked into the mirror for an answer. Her face was ashen, her eyes dull. Even so, she was beautiful. And what was more, the mirror gave no indication of what lay beneath. With her beauty as a distraction, no one would ever know that she was, deep down, hollow. She touched her cheek, the bridge of her nose, the indentation above her upper lip, and she was alarmed by how soft her skin was, how impermanent, like the heart in its jar. Her beauty was merely a shell, and a shell was always in danger of cracking.
The surface of her mother’s mirror seemed to mock her, its image too flawless, too smooth for how she felt inside. It should be cracked, she thought. Maybe then her reflection could absorb what was broken in her, and Mina could be whole. Her fingers curled into a fist—
But before she even touched the glass, the mirror cracked by itself.
She gaped at the mirror in awe, trying to understand. Her chest was aching, and she felt so tired suddenly, but she ignored the feeling. Show me. Show me what you did.
The glass seemed to dissolve into liquid before knitting back together. Mina stroked the mirror’s undamaged surface with her fingers as the pain in her chest faded away.
It’s listening to me.
The glass was responding to her, to the glass in her heart. Her father hadn’t told her about this side effect; was he even aware of it? Was there still something about her that he didn’t understand? Gregory had given her a piece of his own magic when he’d shaped her heart, and she was almost certain that he didn’t know it.
And what was that ache in her chest? Had the magic done it to her? She started to panic as she thought of her father’s aged appearance, but she recalled that the ache and the fatigue had faded. Perhaps commanding the glass had drained something from her, but at least the effect wasn’t permanent. With growing excitement, Mina whispered, “Be a mouse,” to the mirror.
This last command drained her even more as the glass shifted again, spilling out of the frame onto the ground. And then the glass became a small brown mouse with twitching whiskers, and Mina heard a series of gasps.
Mina hissed a silent order for the mouse to become glass again, and the mouse crystallized as she looked up and saw a group of four girls her age gathered by the trees. She recognized their faces, but she didn’t know their names or who they were. They were all staring at her in horror, some of them moving their lips in silent prayer.
Mina staggered to her feet, hoping to distract their gazes away from the mouse that had just been glass, but several of them were pointing. “You’re just like him!” a tall girl cried. “My mother always said that you were.”
“No, you don’t understand—” Mina took a faltering step toward them, but they all took a step back together.
“Don’t come any nearer!” said the girl in front. She bent down and picked up a long, twisted stick from the ground, holding it in front of her like a sword. “We don’t want anything to do with either of you!”
“I’m not like him!” Mina yelled at them. But hadn’t they just seen proof that she was?
She took another step forward, and the girl threw the stick in panic. It scraped Mina’s arm, leaving a shallow scratch before it fell at her feet.
No one will ever love me anyway, so what’s the point in playing nice?
Mina could hurt them if she wanted to, just as they had hurt her. She could use the glass to scare them. All those sideways glances, all those sneering whispers—why fight their contempt when it would be so much easier to earn it? At least now it would be for her, not just her father.
“You should be careful how you speak to me,” Mina called to them, “especially when you don’t know what I can do.”
The girls watched with widening eyes as the mouse shifted into liquid glass and swirled up toward Mina’s hand, circling up her arm like a snake. Mina wondered if she should turn it into a real snake and hurl it at them the way they had thrown the stick at her—
But then Hana came bursting through the trees like an angry bull, and the girls scattered and ran.
Mina quickly gave up her hold on the glass, letting it fall back to the ground as shards and praying that Hana had been too distracted by the frightened girls to notice.
“What are you doing meddling with the villagers?” Hana said, taking Mina by the wrist. “You know it’s better just to ignore them. And stop wandering off without telling me where you’re going. You’re my responsibility, you know.”
“I’m going home now anyway, so you didn’t have to bother coming after me,” Mina said. She pulled away from Hana, still shaken. She was glad Hana had interrupted before Mina had done anything to hurt or scare them, and yet—and yet, she felt cheated, like she was still holding a breath that she had almost been allowed to release.
“Just a minute,” Mina said, kneeling down so that her back hid the glass and the mirror frame from Hana’s view. In a hushed whisper, she ordered the mirror to fix itself, and the glass slithered back to its home in the mirror frame, where it solidified. She picked it up and went to join Hana at the edge of the trees.
Hana kept fussing on their way home, and now Mina worried that she had made a terrible mistake. What if those girls told everyone what they had seen, and word eventually reached her father? For the first time, she was grateful that they’d be leaving so soon—perhaps rumors of Mina’s powers wouldn’t have time to reach him. She was almost certain Hana hadn’t seen anything, or else she would have mentioned it by now, but even so, Mina would have to be more careful. If Gregory found out about her power, he was sure to use it to his advantage in some way, and Mina didn’t think she could bear it. She needed to have something to herself, something that he couldn’t take from her.
Gregory was standing outside the house as they approached, looking even more haggard in the daylight. “There you are!” he called. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Mina went toward him, bracing herself, but Gregory passed by her and went to Hana, walking around her with a thoughtful frown. “You’re … what? Sixteen, seventeen now?”
It took Mina a moment to grasp that he was talking to her this time. “Sixteen.”
“That’s old to still have a nurse, wouldn’t you say?”
She glanced at Hana, who seemed to have no reaction to the question. “Yes,” Mina said. “I’ve thought so for a while.”
Gregory nodded. “I agree. And we want to travel as lightly as possible.”
Hana still didn’t react, even though Mina was sure she was about to be dismissed. Maybe Hana didn’t care. Maybe she’d be thankful to get away from them both.