I Must Be Crazy

“You can tell this place is out of the ordinary,” remarked Hadrian, balancing a smaller table on top of a bigger one. “In a normal place they’d just turn you away, or repossess your house or something. Here they send you to look for famous jewels.”
“It can’t be that famous,” said Zariya, handing him up a chair to put on top of the smaller table. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“As if that means anything,” the vampire retorted at once. “It just betrays your shameful lack of knowledge.”
“Do you two ever stop sniping at each other?” Tracy asked, watching them.
“Nope, not even when we’re building towers out of furniture.” Hadrian wobbled the chair to see if it was stable, then jumped down. “Right, all done.”
“Why are you stacking furniture again?” Tracy asked, peering up at the chair.
“‘Cos Mr Pith is going to make a portal and it’s going to appear up high, right there, and we don’t have a ladder, “said Zariya. “He likes to make things as difficult as possible.”
“News flash!” Crispin called, pirouetting in through the door. They were in a small room next to the main reception, where Mr Pith had banished them so that they wouldn’t ’scare the customers’. “Mr Pith says that only three of you can go through the portal.”
“What? Why?” Darcie said, blinking. She was sitting on the only chair in the room, also watching Hadrian and Zariya build their furniture tower. Crispin shrugged.
“He probably just wants to make very sure that we’ve all been tortured and terrified,” remarked the werewolf with a sigh.
“That’s not all, either,” Crispin said. “He also said, indirectly and in a very roundabout way, that both Tracy and Markus have to go, and that the only reason Lissy is exempt is because she’s so small. Its something to do with something called the Client Involvement Agreement, or something like that.”
“So we have to go to… wherever it is?” Tracy glanced anxiously at Markus. “We don’t have to go alone, right?”
“No, one of us can come with you, “said Darcie. “I’ll come, unless you’d prefer one of these three.”
Lissy skipped away from Markus and slipped her hand into Hadrian’s; the vampire blinked down at her, perplexed. “Have fun! I’ll stay here with Mr Hadrian,” she told her older siblings brightly. Although she’d bee invited to call the vampire by his first name, she had instead gone though a whole variations upon the theme of ‘Mr de Mellios’, including versions such as ‘Mr Dee-Em’, ‘Mr Melly’ and ‘Mr DeMe’, before finally ending up at ‘Mr Hadrian’.
“You don’t mind us leaving, do you?” Tracy asked her, and she shook her head, beaming.
“I’m a big girl, I can be left on my own. And anyway, I’m not on my own, and we’re in here, so nothing can happen.”
“Well, if you’re sure.”
Mr Pith waddled in now, glaring around at them. “Well, are you ready? Come on, it’s not like you’ll be long or anything.”
“Why don’t you go and get it, then?”
“Because I’m old and short,” he snapped. “Do you want that hunter or not?”
“Come on,” said Darcie gently, climbing up onto the table. “Go ahead and open it, Mr Pith.”
Still grumbling, the man took something small and shiny from his pocket and threw it into the air above the furniture tower. It seemed to stick in the air for a moment, glinting and spinning, before it disappeared with a ‘pop’ and in its place there appeared a circular wooden door, glowing at the edges. Darcie climbed up onto the second table and then onto the chair and opened the door. Stepping through, she beckoned to Tracy and Markus.
“Come,” she said. “It’ll be better to get it over and done with quickly.”

Tracy and Markus, on stepping through the mysterious round door, found themselves in a hall of mirrors. On either side they saw themselves and Darcie reflected into infinity, millions of Markuses and Tracies and Darcies, all getting smaller and further away. Ignoring this, Darcie strode along the corridor, but paused and looked back when she noticed they weren’t following her.
“What’s up? Aren’t you coming?”
Tracy blinked, still staring around. “I - I - yes, it’s just…”
The nanny grinned. “Yeah, I see what you mean. It’s best to just ignore it. Places like this shouldn’t be trusted.”
“What do you mean?” Markus tapped one of the mirrors; it made the comfortingly familiar sound of glass. “It’s just… mirrors.”
“Well, that in itself is a reason enough to not trust it. Mirrors… there’s something strange about them, don’t you think? It’s like staring into space. You’re looking into infinity. Especially with two mirrors facing each other, like here. There’s hundreds of different versions of us shown in the glass. Who can say which one is the real one?”
“That’s stupid, we’re the real ones,” said Markus, but with a trace of uncertainty. “Of course we’re the real ones.”
Darcie smiled. “Keep thinking that. Come on, the faster we do this the sooner we can leave!”
As they went further into the strange place, the number of mirrors increased. The corridor opened out into a room, with more passages leading off to the sides. Darcie seemed to know where she was going, following one of the corridors on the left without hesitation.
The room this passage led to was smaller, but still had more routes leading off it. It was also slightly different, because instead of the walls being made up of many smaller mirrors tiled together, each wall was simply a single smooth reflective surface, which the ceiling and floor were also mirrors. Markus and Tracy found themselves walking gingerly, fearful of cracking the glass beneath their feet.
Their confusion was compounded when they realised that the mirrors didn’t actually reflect them. Although the people in the mirrors moved with them and looked like them, the clothing they wore was different, and, in Tracy’s case, her hairstyle was different - longer, and in two plaits, rather then her loose shoulder-length style.
“What - why are we different?” Markus blurted. Darcie turned to face them again, walking backwards. Her reflection wore a floppy black witch’s hat; whatever was changing the reflection clearly had something approaching a sense of humour.
“Don’t worry about it. These mirrors probably reflect an alternate reality.”
“And you’re telling me not to worry?”
The witch shrugged. “If you’re confident enough in yourself it shouldn’t matter. Just forget about it. You’ll see other stuff like that in here, too. Just ignore it. Focus on who you are, here and now.”
“That may not be as easy as it sounds,” protested Tracy weakly, but Markus grabbed her wrist and dragged her after Darcie, through more passages.

In the passages, in various mirrors, they saw all kinds of different things. Some of the mirrors didn’t show Markus, while others didn’t show Tracy or Darcie; in others, other, unfamiliar people appeared, walking alongside them as if they’d known them all their lives. In one Tracy and Markus were grown-ups, and Darcie was probably approaching middle-age. Some mirrors made them younger, taller, fatter, and at some point Tracy realised that she was looking ahead to see how she had changed in the next mirror.
The first shock came in a mirror close to the end of the tunnel. Tracy peeped at it, and found, looking back at her, a grotesque, grey-skinned, wrinkled homunculus of a woman. Taken by surprise, she shrieked and jumped back.
“What is it?” Markus looked in the mirror too. His reflection was slightly younger, but nevertheless looked like a reincarnated corpse. Coming back to see what all the fuss was about, Darcie smiled faintly to see how own reflection.
“Darcie… you haven’t changed.” Tracy stared at her, then at the mirror-image.
“No, I don’t suppose I have.” The witch ran a finger down her cheek thoughtfully. “If that’s a future mirror, then I suppose it’s one I have no part in.”
“But you’re still reflected!”
“I know. I think the only mirrors I’m not reflected in are ones where I’ve already died.” She grinned. “Nice thought, isn’t it? Oh well. We all die at some point or other. Come on.”

They followed the mirrored passages for what felt like years, until at last they ended up in a large room, with no passages leading out of it. In the middle of the room was a large square cube; it was made of mirrors as well, so at first they didn’t realise it was there.
“Here we are. I’m guessing the jewel we need is in there.” Darcie walked up to the cube, and tapped sharply on the glass. For a second the glass misted over, and then it went transparent. Tracy and Markus gasped at the sight of what it contained.
The jewel was bigger than any other they had ever seen; the Crown Jewels were nothing in comparison. It was probably about the size of Tracy’s head, but nevertheless delicately cut, with many glittering facets which made it sparkle like a star. The front of the jewel was the only different part; it was cut as one smooth surface, and reflected like a mirror.
“I suppose it’s part of its magic that it’s still all pretty and sparkly like that,” said Darcie thoughtfully. “Physics and the nature of light and all that sort of thing dictates that it shouldn’t sparkle… it’s all to do with prisms and stuff.”
“Are you going to look into it?” Markus asked Tracy in hushed tones. She shook her head uncertainly.
“I… I want to, but I don’t think I should.”
“In case you don’t like what it shows?”
“I suppose so. What will I do if I don’t like what it shows? How do I change? Is it even possible?”
“Put your hand against the glass,” ordered Darcie. The two looked at her. She sighed, and explained, “It’s a special type of glass. One of us can go through it, but only one of us, and it’s not me.”
“Oh.” Markus hesitantly touched the glass, but his finger met resistance as usual. Tracy groaned.
“It’s me, then.”