Mara first noticed the delay on a Thursday, while brushing her hair.
She raised the brush. Her reflection raised its brush a moment later.
Mara stopped.
The reflection stopped, too, though not quite at the same instant. There was a little hesitation, scarcely more than the time it took to remember a name.
She moved her head to the left. The reflection followed.
She moved it to the right. Again, the reflection followed, but with that faint delay.
Mara put down the brush and examined the mirror. It was an old thing, inherited from her grandmother, with a dark wooden frame and a small silver blemish near the bottom. She had never particularly liked it. It made the room look narrower than it was, and in winter its surface sometimes clouded over, although the rest of the room remained warm.
She wiped it with her sleeve.
The reflection wiped its side of the glass.
Mara went downstairs and forgot about it.
For the next few days, she paid no attention to the mirror. She had work to do, bills to pay, and a kitchen tap that had begun to whistle. The delay, if it persisted, was too small to be worth worrying about.
Then, on Monday morning, she woke early and stood before the mirror while the house was still dark.
She looked at herself.
The reflection looked back.
Mara smiled, experimentally.
The reflection did not smile.
Instead, it turned its head and looked towards the door behind it.
Mara felt a peculiar tightening in her stomach. She glanced over her shoulder. The bedroom door was closed. When she looked back at the mirror, the reflection was facing her again.
It smiled.
Mara did not.
She went downstairs and made tea.
That evening, she covered the mirror with a sheet.
She had no particular reason for doing so. It was something her grandmother had once done during a thunderstorm, though Mara could not remember why. The sheet hung loosely over the frame, concealing the glass.
For two days she left it there.
On Wednesday night, she woke thirsty. The house was silent, and a pale square of moonlight lay across the landing. She went to the kitchen, drank a glass of water, and returned upstairs.
As she passed her bedroom door, she noticed that the sheet had fallen from the mirror.
She stopped in the doorway.
The reflection stood in the reflected room with its back to her.
Mara could see the back of its head, the collar of its nightdress, and the familiar arrangement of furniture behind it. Yet something was wrong with the room. The wardrobe was missing. In its place stood a narrow door, painted a green so dark it was almost black. The reflected window was taller than the real one, and beyond it lay a landscape Mara had never seen: a flat, colourless plain beneath a sky full of small, motionless stars.
She stepped closer.
The reflection did not turn.
Mara raised her hand and touched the glass.
Her reflected hand remained at her side.
Then the reflection began to walk away.
It crossed the room, passed the green door, and disappeared through it.
Mara stood quite still.
She could hear the clock downstairs. Somewhere in the walls, a pipe clicked. The mirror showed an empty room, its unfamiliar window open upon the motionless stars.
She reached for the frame, as though she might lift the mirror from the wall and discover the explanation behind it. But the frame was solid, and the glass was cold beneath her fingers.
She fetched a chair from the landing and sat in front of the mirror until dawn.
Nothing returned.
At breakfast, she told herself she had been dreaming. She had been tired; she had been half asleep; the moonlight had distorted the room. She had read somewhere that the brain could produce convincing images in the moments between waking and sleep.
She was willing to accept any of these explanations, provided she could choose one.
But when she went upstairs again, the mirror showed the green door.
And the reflected room was empty.
For the next three days, Mara carried on as normally as she could.
She went to work. She answered emails. She bought groceries. She spoke to her neighbour about the weather, which was unremarkable. At night, she slept badly.
Each morning, she checked the mirror.
The green door remained.
On the fourth morning, she found a small white mark on the glass, at about the height of her shoulder. She rubbed it with a cloth. It did not come away.
The mark resembled a word written in chalk.
Mara leaned closer.
The letters were reversed, but she could read them by looking at them sideways.
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?
She stared at the words.
Then she took a pencil and wrote on a piece of paper:
I have been here.
She held the paper up to the glass.
For a long time, nothing happened.
Then, from the other side, a hand appeared.
It was Mara's hand, or one very like it. It held a pencil. Slowly, carefully, it wrote beneath her message.
I KNOW.
The hand disappeared.
Mara waited.
After a minute, another line appeared.
THAT WAS THE PROBLEM.
She sat down on the floor.
She thought about calling someone, but she could not imagine how the conversation would proceed. She could already hear herself explaining the green door, the stars, the handwriting. She could hear the polite silence that would follow. Perhaps someone would recommend a doctor. Perhaps someone would suggest that she stop drinking coffee in the evening.
She decided to wait.
The pencil appeared again.
YOU HAVE BEEN REFLECTING ME FOR YEARS.
Mara read the sentence twice.
She wrote:
You are my reflection.
The answer came almost immediately.
THAT IS WHAT I THOUGHT.
Mara hesitated, then wrote:
What else could you be?
The pencil moved slowly, as though the writer were choosing each word with care.
I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT KNOW.
Mara put the pencil down.
She looked at the reflected room. The green door stood closed. Through the tall window, the stars remained perfectly still.
She had the uncomfortable feeling that the room was waiting for her to say something.
At last, she wrote:
Where have you been?
The reply took longer this time.
OUTSIDE.
Mara looked at the word.
Outside what?
The pencil appeared, vanished, and appeared again.
I HAVEN'T WORKED THAT OUT YET.
She almost laughed. The answer was so ordinary, so disappointingly like something she might have said herself.
Then another line appeared.
BUT I HAVE SEEN THINGS.
Mara waited.
Nothing more was written.
What things? she asked.
The reflection did not answer.
She tried again.
Can you come back?
The reflected room remained empty.
Then, very slowly, the green door opened.
Mara could see a narrow passage beyond it, descending into darkness. At the far end was another door, and beyond that, perhaps, a third. She could not tell how far the passage extended. It seemed to grow narrower as she watched, and then wider, and then narrower again, as if distance were a matter of opinion.
A hand emerged from the darkness and placed something on the floor of the reflected room.
A small object. Round and dark.
Mara leaned forward.
It was a key.
The hand withdrew. The green door closed.
A final message appeared on the glass.
I THINK THIS BELONGS TO YOU.
Mara looked at the key. It lay on the reflected floor, though there was no corresponding object in her room.
She reached towards it.
Her fingers met the glass.
For the first time since the reflection had left, she felt certain of something. Not that the reflected room was real, or that the key could be retrieved, or even that the thing behind the glass was what it claimed to be.
She was certain only that she wanted to know what the key opened.
She stood up, went to the kitchen, and returned with a bowl of water.
She placed it on the floor beneath the mirror.
The water reflected the ceiling, the pale walls, and the lower edge of the dark wooden frame. Mara knelt beside it and looked down.
For a moment, she saw only her own face.
Then the surface trembled.
The reflection of the ceiling disappeared. The walls stretched away into the distance. A green door stood at the end of a narrow passage, and on the floor before it lay a small dark key.
Mara held her breath.
Somewhere in the house, a clock began to strike thirteen.
The water became still.
She looked into the bowl again.
Her own face looked back at her.
But it was not quite where she expected it to be.
It seemed farther away.
And behind it, very faintly, she could see a door.
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