But finally the darkness parted and a bolt of light speared its center, turning the colors first murky and then to a foggy blue.
She gazed at her reflection. At the alien face staring back at her. But this time Chrysalis wasn’t looking at reflection, she was looking at herself and she was covered in blood. Had she fed?
Spreading her fingers on her stomach, she frowned, feeling neither full nor empty. The waters of the pool shifted and now it wasn’t she looking at her, but reflection.
“You should never yell at me, Chrysalis, I am your only friend,” the face that was hers but not really hers said.
She shook her head. “Why must I kill the man? You do not make sense.” He’d asked her to stop. Told her there could be another way. Those were not the actions of a killer, surely.
The pretty face scowled, electric blue eyes glowed like unholy flame in the twilight. “He is out there now, ready to devour you. Asleep, easy to take. You needn’t look, close your eyes, sweet, and I shall do it all for us. I can end our madness.”
“I do not want you to kill him.” Chrysalis traced reflection’s face. The reflection never traced back. “He let us walk away. I do not think he seeks to harm me.”
Fangs sprouted from reflection’s mouth as she snarled. “Show me the item.”
Reaching into the bodice of her tattered birthday dress, Chrysalis withdrew a pouch. His pouch. The one he’d dropped by the river’s bank.
“Open it.”
Untying it, she stuck her hand inside and pulled out one article. A swatch of netting, tracing its roughness with a finger she marveled at its coolness, something about the netting felt very different from any she’d ever beheld before. And then she noticed something she hadn’t noticed before, at the very heart of the net was a glow. A nebulous glimmer that drew her eye like a moth to flame, making her feel as though she were sliding, slipping into the beauty of that flickering sparkle.
“Drop it at once!” Reflection barked, frightening Chrysalis so that it slipped from suddenly nerveless fingers.
“What?” she snapped.
“You must burn it, that is the source of our destruction. Without it, he is helpless.”
But the light was so pretty. Reflection wouldn’t stop demanding, yammering on and on and on. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
“Enough! I understand. Enough.” Getting up, Chrysalis dusted off her knees.
“The Moon’s Net must first be boiled in a bronze kettle, and then tossed into a volcanic hot spring, the heat must be high enough to strip the magic out, only then can it burn in flame. Every scrap of it must be consumed by flame. Do you understand?”
Was there fear in reflection’s eyes? Chrysalis squinted, noting what looked like a faint sheen of sweat glistening on reflection’s brows.
She squeezed the net in her fist.
“Understood, girl?” Reflection’s voice boomed, causing droplets of water to splash upward from the spring and smack Chrysalis in the face.
“I understand,” she whispered, wiping the wet off her cheek. “But it is just a small bit of rope, what could it possibly do to us?”
Reflection’s laugh was sinister and low and made all the hairs on Chrysalis’ arms stand on edge. “You are a fool to believe an object is only what it appears. What you hold, in the wrong hands, would utterly destroy and devour us. Beside the bandicoot’s burrow is a volcanic spring. You must take it there. Tonight. While the cover of darkness is strongest.”
Slipping the object back into the pouch, Chrysalis tucked it into her bodice once more. She didn’t say goodbye to reflection, she merely turned on her heel and marched toward the bandicoot’s home.
Reflection was very smart. She always helped Chrysalis, she was right. Right? She shoved a thick branch out of her way, stepping on every mushroom that came across her path, why she did it, she wasn’t sure, but it was a compulsion she’d never been able to resist.
The night was long, the clouds thick and heavy. The wind smelled of dew and earth, shadows crawled like malevolent entities along the trampled path of dirt and grass.
A hunter was following her. A big, strange man. A man her parents had sent to find her.
Why?
Why would they send such a strange, tall man?
A man with hair like rich soil and eyes like hottest flame?
A man who dressed in skins and dissolved into a thousand grains of sand?
A man who tried to talk to her first? Who tried to make her stop?
“Stop what?” She smashed a red mushroom, its meat squished between her toes. “What is going on? Who are you?”
“Stop talking nonsense,” the voice inside snarled, “your job is not to question, your job is to do. Only I will keep you safe. Only I ever could.”
Chrysalis stopped talking after that, because the voice heard and she wasn’t happy. Why was it wrong to question though?
Didn’t her parents love her once?