Journey Through the Mirrors (19 page)

An old woman wearing a green sari entered one of the ashram’s eighteen huts. She was carrying a tray of food and had a brown cloth bag slung over her shoulder. “Glorious morning to you, sir,” she said cheerfully as she set the tray down on a small table. “You are looking better and stronger each day.”

The man, in his bamboo and wicker chair, said nothing as the old woman opened the curtain, letting some light into the room.

“Perhaps this is the day you will begin to remember who you are. The doctor communicated that he will come by this afternoon to remove the last of the bandages from your face.”

The man squinted as the sunlight hit his face. He remained silent as he began to eat his meal and drink his tea.

“The doctor is very optimistic that the facial repair will turn out well for you. You go through more candles than anyone else at the ashram,” the old woman said, reaching into her bag and taking out new candles to replace the ones that had burned down. She tossed the remaining stumps into her bag.

The man struggled as he ate to get the food and drink around the bandage that ran across the right side of his face and the edge of his mouth.

“Any dreams or memories that might help us in locating your family?”

“No,” the man replied softly. “I remember today as much as I remembered when I first arrived, whenever that was.”

“You were brought to us on July 22 of last year,” the old woman said, continuing to straighten up the room. “I remember, because it was the day after the wonderful blue light appeared on Freedom Day. Maybe you remember seeing that light? Everybody remembers the light.”

The man paused for a moment. “No,” he said, with a hint of annoyance, as he sipped his tea. “I don’t remember such a light.”

“That is all right. Life is a series of fantastical events,” the old woman said, as she made the bed. “After the Great Disruption, all hope was lost. In many ways, the world was like you—it seemed to have forgotten its identity. Then the
Chronicles
miraculously arrived, and people began to remember their purpose and place. Have you ever read the books?”

The man did not answer and continued to eat.

“Don’t remember that, either, do you? Well, Deya Sarin found her
books just north of here. That is one of those fantastical events that will never be forgotten. I wish I could have met her before she died.” As the old woman picked up the pillow to fluff it, a piece of paper tucked under it flew out.

The man caught a glimpse of the paper as it fell to the ground. The old woman picked it up and noticed what had been drawn on it. “Hand that here,” the man said, agitated. “Quickly.”

The old woman did as requested. “I see you’re a bit of an artist.” She handed the pencil sketch to the man, who only took the paper and set it facedown next to his food. The old woman resumed her activities. “Your memories will return, I am certain of it. We once took care of a woman who spent three years here before she remembered who she was. Keep the faith.”

“What is the limit to your faith?” the man asked suddenly. “Isn’t that the question that we are all supposed to ask ourselves?”

“So you have read the books,” the old woman said.

“It’s been a while.”

“I can get you a copy if you want. We have many of them at the ashram. Maybe they will help you remember something.”

“No,” the man said. “I don’t feel much like reading them.”

The old woman stuffed the used bed sheets and towels into her cloth bag and headed out the door. She stopped for a moment. “You should take a walk today along the river.” She took a deep breath of fresh air. “It’s a good day to be alive!”

The man pushed his tray aside and walked over to the HoloPad set up at the corner of his room. He wore a loose-fitting light tan kurta over a pair of thin cotton pants. He brought up videos of various news feeds, learning what was happening around the world. One segment in particular captured his attention. He watched the political ramblings of Enrique Salize and his counterparts around the world. They were locked in a debate on energy and the crisis created by the explosion of a natural gas well in the North African Commonwealth. The man smiled. “What are you up to, my old friends?” he whispered.

With a motion of his hand, he cleared away the news feeds and placed a call. The image of a dark-skinned bald man wearing a black, red, and gold dashiki appeared before him. “Kashta, my friend,” the man said, “it is time.”

The brief HoloPad call ended. The man brought up a news report that he had read every day since he had found it, five months ago. It reported the opening of the Camden and Cassandra Ford Studio of Art in New Chicago. A blue dot flashed in the corner, indicating that there was a new article related to the one he was reading. The man waved his hand over it and brought up the linked article. It announced that a commemoration was going to be held at the Council of Satraya offices in Washington, D.C. The event was in honor of the members of the original Council of Satraya. It stated that Logan Ford, the son of Camden and Cassandra Ford, would attend and that Mr. Alain Perrot would be appointed to one of the vacant council seats. The man looked at the photograph of Logan Ford and Mr. Perrot, which ran alongside the article. With a hand gesture, the man brought up a recent photo of Logan and Valerie and Logan’s children enjoying a day at the beach. He zoomed in on Logan’s face and stared at it coldly.

The man, who had spent the last nine months recovering at the ashram, did indeed know his own identity. His denial to the old woman and the rest of the people who tended to him was part of a game he was playing. He walked over to the small mirror that hung over the sink. He had suffered devastating burns to his face, neck, and shoulders. While his memory loss was a ruse, the pain he was experiencing was very real. He looked at his reflection, wondering what he would find under the bandages. He winced as he ripped off the pieces of tape holding the bindings in place. He then removed the layers of gauze that had kept his identity a secret.

The man was not pleased with what he saw in the mirror. He did not recognize his own face. The doctors and the old woman were wrong. The facial repairs did not turn out splendidly. The skin grafts on his neck and shoulders were hideous. The right side of his face was red and
riddled with scars. The skin sagged over a protruding cheekbone. He stared intently at the face in front of him. His left eye blinked, while his right could not. In the mirror, he saw the smiling faces of Logan Ford and Alain Perrot. The man punched it, shattering the glass to pieces.

He tossed the gauze into a small trash can and looked around the room. He grabbed a sack and threw into it the remnants of the clothes he had been wearing when he was found. He lifted the mattress off his bed and pulled out a few papers with scribbled notes. He grabbed the paper with the sketch he had drawn and put it into his pocket. He could hear the sound of a boat’s motor outside. When he went to the door, he saw Kashta approaching along the river.

Simon Hitchlords took one more look around the hut. His prolonged stay at the ashram was over. It was now time to deal with those who had put him there.

19

Everyone has something to say. Don’t cut short their articulation, lest your own words be dismissed one day.

—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA

NEW CHICAGO, 11:20 P.M. LOCAL TIME, MARCH 21, 2070

Logan sat on the floor at the center of his meditation room in his house. A single candle burned, illuminating the blank pages of an open book lying in front of him. He needed to settle down and focus, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the news that Valerie had relayed when she’d called earlier that evening: two WCF agents had been killed at Château Dugan. The disaster in Mexico, Jamie’s headaches, the discovery of his mother’s recordings, and the mystery of Flight 1849 only added to his anxiety.

He looked at the plastic container of his mother’s chips resting on top of his backpack. Next to it was Deya’s Destiny Box. Logan and Mr. Perrot had found it during their cat-and-mouse game with Simon along the Ganges last July. The box had contained her copy of the
Chronicles
, known as the River Set, along with a small mirror and the mysterious blue Manas Mantr candle, which they knew was somehow linked to Sebastian Quinn.

Logan took a deep breath and focused his gaze on the candle flame. Soft music was playing in the background. Like his father, Logan
had progressed in honing the Satraya Flame technique described in the
Chronicles.
His father had indirectly introduced him to the Satraya Flame via the pages of his journal, which Logan had found along with the Manas Mantr candle buried in the basement of the Council of Satraya building last July. While Logan hadn’t yet fully mastered the technique, he could not deny that the experiences he’d had over the last nine months focusing on flame had led to some of the most intriguing and meaningful revelations of his life.

Logan had also learned from his father’s writings that the blank pages in the third book of the
Chronicles
held veiled images and that if one entered a deeper state of mind while looking at the pages, the images would reveal themselves. The third blank page, he also knew, held only a partial symbol. Logan’s father had suspected that it was the symbol of immortality, but Sebastian Quinn had hinted that it might be something even greater. The only way to see the complete final mark was to possess all four original sets of the
Chronicles
.

After many months of diligent work, Logan was finally able to see two of the veiled symbols. Under each one was a word, which Logan surmised was the symbol’s ancient name. The first symbol Logan saw was the A-Tee-Na, and the second was the Sin-Ka-Ta. Sebastian had told Logan that seeing the symbols was only the first step in a progression. He needed to experience them to truly gain their wisdom. What exactly he meant by that, however, Logan didn’t know.

Logan gently shifted his gaze from the candle to the blank page. Gray-blue distortions appeared, floating like ghosts above the blank page. The cloudy hue was a signpost that indicated that he was entering a deeper state of mind focus. It was usually at this moment that the broken fragments of the symbols appeared. And eventually, after more diligent concentration, the full symbol emerged. But tonight all he could see were the cloudy gray-blue distortions. Frustrated, he broke what focus he had and stretched his legs. His mind was too scattered. Impulsively, he leaned over and grabbed the memory chips and his mother’s recorder. Maybe he could answer at least one of his questions:
what did she see in the mirror concerning Flight 1849? Logan inserted the chips into the recorder until he found the one he was interested in. It was time-stamped 6:01
P.M.
, July 24, 2033, the closest date to the last recording he and Mr. Perrot had listened to at the studio. Logan pressed the Play button.

These last twenty-four hours after my experience in Deya’s mirror have been the saddest of my life.

I don’t know how I ended up on that flight. All I remember was that after I closed my eyes, as Deya told me to do, I was suddenly sitting on a plane. The flight attendants were walking up and down the aisle, serving drinks. I looked out the window. We were flying above a thick layer of clouds, and the light from an oddly bright sun was streaming through the windows on the right side of the plane. No one was sitting next to me. The top portion of a boarding pass was sticking out of the seatback in front of me. I removed it and read that I was on Flight 1849. I stood and made my way into the center aisle. The light from the sun coming through the windows seemed to be getting brighter. I was at the back of the plane and began to walk toward the front. People were talking with one another, some were reading, children were watching movies. A few of the passengers were complaining to the flight attendants that the inside of the plane was getting too warm and asked if the air-conditioning could be turned up. I continued to make my way up the aisle, and two hands reached out and grabbed mine. One grabbed my left and the other my right. I looked down to my left and saw my father. Seated next to him was my brother. I turned to my right and saw my mother. They were sitting across the aisle from each other. Before I could say anything to them, the plane jolted, and then it jolted again more wildly. The intensity of the sun through the windows caused me to squint, and I was sweating from the heat. It was easily more than one hundred degrees in the cabin. I heard the voice of a distraught captain come over the intercom, but I couldn’t make out his words. The lights in the plane flickered and went out, and suddenly, the sound of the engines stopped. The plane banked sharply to the right and then nosedived. Passengers were screaming. I looked at each of my parents and then my brother. I yelled out, “I love you!”

The next thing I knew, I was crying, and Deya was hugging me.

I didn’t get any sleep last night. This morning, I finally told Camden what I had experienced in the mirror at Deya’s house. I told him about Flight 1849. He didn’t doubt me for one second. He grabbed my hand, and we drove to the central rebuilding offices, which are housed at the old Pentagon. We found Camden’s mother, who was helping to salvage data from various computer systems all around the country. She took us to the archive and helped us comb through various air traffic logs from the day the solar storm hit, August 18, 2027. It took a while, but we found the log entry. It was for Centennial Flight 1849 from New York’s JFK to Little Rock.

Logan could hear his mother crying. He heard what sounded like tissues being pulled from a box.

The log confirmed that Flight 1849 had gone down in the solar storm during the Great Disruption. The plane had crashed near Louisville. My mother, father, and brother were all on the manifest. Their seats were listed as 14C and 14D, two seats across the aisle from each other, and my brother sat in 14B.