The City of Mirrors

She tamped the surface and knelt by the grave. She would erect no marker; the proper memorial would be made in due course. Perhaps an hour passed; she possessed no sense of time, nor had the need to. Her heart felt heavy and full. As the sun touched the line of the hills, she pressed one palm to the freshly turned earth.

“Goodbye, my love,” she said.

—

Peter had died, as he had long believed he would, on a summer afternoon. Four nights ago, he had failed to return to the house. This had happened before, when his wanderings took him too far to make it back before first light. But when he didn’t appear the next night, Amy went to look for him. She found him curled beneath an overhang on the east side of the mesa, his body wedged tightly against the rocks. He was only partially conscious. His breathing was quick and thin, his skin pallid, his hands dry and cold. She wrapped him in a blanket and lifted him into her arms; the lightness of his body shocked her. She carried him back to the house and upstairs to the bedroom. She had already closed the shutters. She laid him in the bed and got in next to him, holding him as he slept, and the next morning she sensed something, a presence. Death had entered the house. He seemed to experience no pain, just a kind of fading. He did not regain awareness of his surroundings, or did not seem to. The hours passed. She would not leave him, not for a moment. At midday, his breathing slowed until it was barely perceptible. Amy waited. A moment came when she realized he had slipped away.

Now, her task complete, she returned to the house and made a simple dinner for herself. She tidied the kitchen and put her dishes away. The quiet of eternity had settled over the rooms. Darkness came on. The stars wheeled above the silent land. She had preparations to make, but these could wait until morning. She did not want to go upstairs—those days were over. She bedded down on the sofa, curled beneath a blanket, and soon was fast asleep.

Dawn’s soft glow in the windows awakened her. Standing on the porch, she took measure of the day, then returned to the house to prepare her supplies. She had fashioned a simple pack with a wooden frame she could carry on her back. Into this went the things for her journey: a blanket, some simple tools, extra clothing, food for a couple of days, a plate and cup, a tarp, a coil of rope, a sharp knife, bottles of water. That which she lacked or had failed to anticipate, she could find along the way. Upstairs, she washed and dressed. In the mirror above the stand, she saw her face. She, too, had aged. She might have been a woman of forty, perhaps forty-five. Ribbons of gray, almost white, threaded through her long hair. Crinkles fanned from the corners of her eyes; her lips had thinned and paled, becoming almost colorless. How much time would go by before this face, her face, was observed by another living soul? Would this even happen, or would she pass from the world unseen?

In the living room, Amy sat at the piano. Its existence was nothing she’d ever been able to account for; when she and Peter had arrived at the farmstead, all those years ago, the piano was waiting, a gift from beyond. Every night, Amy played it; the music was the force that summoned Peter home. Now, placing her hands above the keys, she waited for something to come to her; with a quiet chord she began, letting her hands tell her where to go. Bright notes filled the house. Within the song’s phrases lay all that she felt. It passed through her in waves, rising and falling, circling and returning, a language of pure emotion. I never grow tired of it, Peter always told her. He would stand behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders with the gentlest touch to feel the music as she did, as a force that flowed from within. I could listen to you play forever, Amy.

Every song is a love song, she thought. Every song is for you.

She came to the end. Her hands stilled above the keys; the last notes hovered, faded, and were gone. So, the moment of parting. A lump had lodged in her throat. She cast her eyes a final time about the room. It was just a room, like any other—simple furnishings, a hearth blackened with long use, candles on the tables, books—but it meant vastly more. It meant everything. Here they had lived.

She rose, put on her pack, and strode out the door, not looking back.

—

She reached California in the fall. First the deserts, scorched by the sun, then mountains emerged from the haze, their great blue backs surging above the arid valley. Two more days in sight of them and she began to climb. The temperature declined; cool green woodlands waited at the top. Beneath her, the valleys and mountains of the high Mojave undulated in the haze. The wind was fierce and dry on her face.

At length, the Colony Wall appeared. It was still towering in places, in others crumbled to ruin, barriers of vegetation poking through the rubble. Amy scrambled over the detritus and made her way to the center of town. Great trees stood where none had grown before; most of the buildings were gone, collapsed into their foundations. Yet a handful of the larger ones remained. She came to the structure that had been known as the Sanctuary. The roof had caved in; the building was a shell. She mounted the steps to look through a window that had, miraculously, remained unbroken. It was caked with grime; she used a dampened cloth to make a small porthole and cupped her eyes to the glass. Open to the sky, the interior had become a forest.