“What if it’s utter bollocks?” Father yelled.
Kendra looked at each of us, and Ethel and Esther repeated Mum’s protestations. Only when she got to me did I seize the mirror. “It probably doesn’t work anyway. There’s no such thing as witches. So I’ll look, and we’ll get on with it.”
“What if it’s true?” Esther said.
“It’s not true!” Ethel said. “There’s no such thing, and she’s tormenting Mum.”
“If it’s true, then we’ll know,” I said, and I felt hope for the first time in weeks. I wanted it to be true. I wanted Jack!
I held the mirror. My hands were like ice, and it was almost as if I could feel Jack staring into it from the other side. I so wanted to see his gray eyes, still with the light of life in them, once more. I peered into the glass. I saw a girl, pale and drawn, a girl Jack wouldn’t recognize even if he did see me. “What do I say?” I asked Kendra. I knew it was stupid, but I wanted it to work.
She said, “Just tell it to show you your brother.”
I looked at the girl in the mirror. Her eyes were full of tears. I took a deep breath and whispered, “Show me Jack. Oh, please, show me Jack!”
And the mirror did. It was like a movie. Jack was somewhere cold, crouched on a cot, and he was skinny, so skinny that his ears and his feet seemed out of proportion to his body.
But it was Jack. And he was alive. Clearly alive. He was shivering.
My hand was shaking too, so that it was hard to hold on to the mirror. I thrust it back at Kendra. “Is this real?”
“It’s real,” she said, taking the mirror from my hand.
“What is it?” My mother rushed over to Kendra, and when she saw the mirror, she gasped. “Look! Look!” My father and sisters were soon at her side. Esther and Ethel stepped back, but Mum was staring at the mirror, shaking.
“How can we get him back?” I felt as though I had seen something wrong, something frightening, like a ghost. Like Jack was back from the dead.
“That’s why I’ve come,” Kendra said.
She gestured to Mr. Harding and explained that he had a son who was injured in the war. He escaped death only by accepting a terrible curse. To break it, he had to marry. “If one of your daughters will promise to marry him, and to stay with him for one year as man and wife, his curse will be broken. And if you do this, I will bring your son back.” She said it to my parents, but she looked at us girls, first Ethel and Esther, then me. Her eyes seemed to linger longest on me.
“What?” Ethel said. “But that’s insane. It can’t be true. There’s no such thing as magic.”
Esther chimed in. “You’re just trying to trick us into marrying someone who may be awful. A masher or . . . worse.”
Ethel appealed to our mother. “It’s not like she can really bring Jack back. Even him in that mirror, it’s some sort of illusion, a trick.”
“If he’s alive,” Esther said, “he’ll come back. If not . . .” She let her words trail off, but I knew what she’d been about to say. If Jack was dead, he was dead.
“Please.” Mr. Harding spoke. “I know it sounds insane, but Kendra, she found my son in the hospital. She heard of the curse, and she helped him. She helped my son, and she will help yours. But we need your help.”
I took the mirror from Kendra’s hand again and stared into it a long time. Then, again, I whispered, “Show me Jack.”
And Jack was there. It was him. I had no question. There was no way to make that up, his face, his eyes. Kendra didn’t even know Jack.
I looked around at my parents, my sisters. My father’s face was dour, but Mum’s betrayed some hope. I knew why Ethel and Esther didn’t want to marry this stranger. They thought they would meet someone else, someone who would love them. I had only briefly experienced that, with the man at the party, with Phillip. But perhaps I could love someone else.
I wanted Jack. I wanted to bring my brother back.
I said, “I’ll do it. I’ll marry him.”
“But you can’t,” Ethel said, “You’re only seventeen.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. I knew what she was about. She didn’t want me to volunteer because it would make her look bad. That was how she thought. I said, “I can, and I will. I want Jack to come home, no matter what it takes. If there’s even a chance.”
I looked at my mother. She nodded. Father too.
Kendra reached for my hand and squeezed it. “There is a chance. Jack will be back.”
3
And it was done. Mum and Father tried to argue, half-heartedly, but once Kendra showed Father the mirror, the mirror with my brother in it, there was nothing to say. We had to try everything.