Read The Mirror of Her Dreams for Free Online

often.'
     
    Her protest was automatic, however, not urgent. She was hardly listening to herself. Because her dreams were so rare, they made powerful impressions on her.
     
    And in her dream she had remained passive and unimportant while three riders had charged forward to kill her and a man she didn't know had risked his life to save her. A man like Geraden. Everything she disliked about herself held her back-her unreality, her fear of her father and punishment, her inability to have any meaningful effect on her own life. But Geraden still held out his hand to her.
     
    She couldn't help noticing that it was nicked and bruised in several places, and one of his fingernails was torn. Still she thought it was a good hand-sturdy and faithful.
     
    It made her trrink of horns.
     
    Their call carried her fear away.
     
    'But,' she went on, and each word was a surprise to her, conjured by unexpected music out of the ache in her heart, 'I think I would like to find out what's been hiding on the other side of my mirrors all this time.'
     
    In response, his face lit up like a sunrise.
     
     
     
    3 Translation
     
     
     
    'I DON'T BELIEVE IT,' Geraden murmured to himself. 'I don't believe it.' Then, an instant later, he said excitedly, 'Quick, before you change your mind. Take my hand.'
     
    She didn't believe it either. What was she doing? But his excitement made her want to laugh again. And in her memory the horns called clearly, ringing out over the cold snow despite distance and the intervening hills-called to her.
     
    Quickly, so that she wouldn't have time to change her mind, she moved closer to him and put her hand in his.
     
    At once, she became self-conscious. 'Is that all there is to it?' she asked. 'Don't you have to wave your arms, or say magic words, or something?'
     
    His grin grew wider and happier as he clasped her hand. That's all. The invocations and gestures have already been made. And the ability is born, not made. All you have to do is move with me.' Balancing himself on the knee of his truncated leg, he got his left foot under him. 'And'-his expression sobered slightly -'watch your step.'
     
    He began to push himself backward, drawing her with him.
     
    As he did so, his right calf disappeared by inches: the flat plane remained stationary, so that as he slid his knee backward more and more of his leg was cut off. He seemed to be using his foot and leg to probe a place behind him-a place which didn't exist.
     
    When his right leg reached far enough, he was able to straighten his knee. Smiling and nodding to Terisa, slowly pulling her after him, he raised himself until he was almost upright. 'You might find it easier,' he said, 'if you close your eyes.' Then he shifted his weight to the other leg.
     
    At that moment, his face went wide with dismay as he lost his balance and started to fall.
     
    His plunge wrenched her forward, towards the wall-towards the plane where first his leg and now his entire body seemed to vanish. Instinctively, she tried to jerk free. But though he flailed for support, his hand held hers in a grip she couldn't break. She tried to cry out, flung up her arm to ward off the impact.
     
    The last thing she saw of her apartment was the splotched plaster where her broken mirror had once been glued. While she was still trying to release the cry of panic trapped in her throat, her marginal grasp on actuality failed, and she faded out of existence.
     
    At once, she passed into a zone of transition where time and distance contradicted themselves. She felt eternity in an instant -or maybe she felt an instant that took forever. Her fall became a vast and elongated plummet down from or up to the heights of a world, even though the plunge carried her no more than half a step forward. She studied the sudden darkness intimately, despite the fact that it was so brief she could hardly have noticed it.
     
    And then, with the same sensation of instantaneous eternity, of huge brevity, she saw