by ottersong
© 1999 ottersong, all rights reserved
She glanced at her watch, annoyed by her lifelong habit of arriving everywhere early. Now she had to find a way to fill the hour before lunch.
Gazing past the milling herd of people, she saw the twin lions guarding the Art Institute entrance promising a haven in the gray-peopled street on this bitter Chicago winter morning.
She peeled off gloves and coat as she read the list of special exhibits and settled on "Paul Revere silver - downstairs - left"
The room was tiny, a colonial sitting room with authentic furnishings, that distacted her from the main exhibit of wrought silver pieces. lt was tucked under a curve in the stairway - separated from the traffic pattern by a rope slung slackly between two theater-style posts.
She admired the warm wood of roughly hewn furniture, went on to a rag rug, a homespun curtain on the window, and the plain-framed mirror on the wall.
The mirror held her attention, although she could not see into it from her oblique angle.
She hadn't looked: really looked, into a mirror for many years. Oh yes, a check on hair or clothing - but only a fleeting glance.
She had seen things in mirrors as a child that reflected more than was in her reality. When she told adults they scoffed and told her it was her imagination.
She stopped looking in mirrors.
As an adult she was told about mercury being her medium and that old mirrors were backed with mercury.
She stopped looking in old mirrors altogether.
Now, here, in this nook of a strange wintry city - a mirror was invitng, enticing her
She carefully stacked her coat and regalia on the floor and stepped over the rope into the colonial room.
Slipping her thumbs under her sweater, she hooked them into the loops of her jeans in a gesture of innocence lest anyone think she was going to harm the treasures.
Thus she strode to the mirror excited by it's age. Why, Ben Franklin himself may have peered myopically into this glass.
She saw her cropped curly brown hair, oval face and brown eyes shimmer and change. The background altered, darkened - no longer a busy museum, now a murky ill-lit room.
A Face looked back at her with quiet dignity. A woman Face that smoothed back a stray hair into the bun at her nape with an exquisite move of her long fingers.
The Face glanced at hands that brought to her head - a hat - black wth a flat crown and a broad straight brim.
The Face, dim-lit by an unknown source, had smooth golden brown skin stretched gently over sharply sculpted cheek bones, The Face came alive in black velvet eyes that absorbed light.
For the observer, all of today, here, and now simply did not exist as she osmosed into those velvet eyes and melded with the Face.
She/they were thinking about going to school at Salamanca and preparing for the new life as the rare woman student in old Spain.
Thus trapped as observed and observer, the woman in Chicago watched as another face came out of the darkness - watched in abject horror as the pure evil in his eyes traced the path of the heavy object he used to bludgeon the Face to death.
To the observed/observer it was an abomination of the senses. Transfixed, she saw and felt everything as pain as she witnessed her death so long ago.
The guard was saying, "Miss, are you alright? Come out of there, Miss. Are you sure you are ok? You aren't supposed to be in there, Miss."
She saw the museum guard as a gray oval and realized she was seeing through tears as they streamed down her face. She had no sense of time or space, caught as she was in both.
The guard gently led her around the rope, sat her down and materialized a packet of tissues and some water.
The ruthless collision in time righted itself as the patient guard helped her into her coat, determined that she was neither disoriented nor dangerous, and helped her up the stairs.
ln a few moments she looked at her watch and experienced a jarring final time adjustment.
Feeling a profound sense of loss and mourning, she exited the museum. She made her way to the bistro where she was to have lunch, barely aware of cold, crowds or traffic.
She stepped in and was immediately greeted by her friend who said, "What happened to you? You look as though you'd seen a ghost..."