Читать книгу Mirror, Mirror - Paula Byrne - Страница 23

They escape the House of Mirrors, but will not escape me. The most dangerous place to be in an earthquake is next to a mirror. Broken glass lines the streets of Long Beach; scenes of destruction and debris that look like a war zone in a movie, except for once, in Hollywood, it’s real life. All those broken mirrors create a tsunami of bad luck. In the end, 117 people die in the earthquake, and many more are injured.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t shattered because that would have been the end for Madou. A broken mirror is seven years’ bad luck. Seven because life renews every seven years. Every cell in the body renews so that the person is a different person. Shedding skin, like a snake. Every seven years, skin flakes off, hair falls out; nails break off and regrow. Regenerated cells in the hair, the skin, the liver, the stomach and intestines, the bones. Every seven years, they all become new people with new consciousness. How can anyone know themselves when every seven years the person is changing, the human body in constant flux? Seven years are enough to change every pore and every emotion.

Some people believe the seven years’ bad luck could be washed away by immersing the pieces of broken shards of mirror in south-flowing water for seven hours. What an absurd superstition. No, you must apologise for your clumsiness and then bury the fragments of the glass in the cold earth, carefully and respectfully.

If the person happens to be looking into the mirror when they break it, then they fracture their soul. Breaking a magic mirror is even more dangerous. Magic mirrors reflect the shadow soul, and show the true nature of the person being reflected. Certain death will come to those who shatter a magic mirror. The Child wants to protect her shadow soul, so she covers me, especially at night, before she retires to bed. For extra good luck, she recites her favourite poem:

And moving through a mirror clear

That hangs before her all the year,

Shadows of the world appear.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

But in her web she still delights

To weave the mirror’s magic sights,

For often through the silent nights

A funeral, with plumes and lights

And music, went to Camelot:

Or when the moon was overhead,

Came two young lovers lately wed;

‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said

The Lady of Shalott.

Are the gods of Hollywood speaking through the earthquake? I have a feeling that for the next seven years things may not go quite so well for Madou.