much like reflections on still water.
Gray on gray, shape in shadow.
Cautiously, Karen raised her hand into the field of her vision. If she moved slowly enough the images held together, the smeary beasts remaining at bay. She found the edge of the mirror and tilted it. Something flashed, but not painfully. An ache began at her temples. Now she followed the splotchy column of her arm to the quivering arc of the mirror's wooden frame, then traced the frame through its entire oval. Satisfied she had its limits, she shifted her gaze to the middle area, where the reflective surface should be.
"Oh, my," she said aloud, unaware of the sweat sheening her skin.
There was something out there, a shape she might have likened to a man motionless in a blizzard had she ever seen such a thing.
But no. . . not a man.
She lifted a hand to her long hair. Before her eyes, the snowbound image followed suit.
Monkey see, monkey do.
She giggled through the pain in her temples.
Me, she thought in quiet awe. That's me!
Until the pain made her stop, Karen frolicked, like a child with a newfound companion. She tilted her head from side to side and chuckled when the oval-framed phantom did the same. She raised her arms and waved them, gently at first, then wildly when she realized the image was holding together.
Her laughter tinkled on the encroaching night.
Across the field, Danny replaced the binoculars in their leather case. He felt cheated by the dark, which had so selfishly stolen her from sight.
Had she really seen herself in the mirror?
He prayed not.
He sat awhile, gazing at the fading silhouette of Karen's house, stroking the puppy. Then he went out to the woods.
Chapter 10
May 10
A week following her arrival home, a week filled with pain and increasing anticipation, Karen saw the geranium.
In an effort to minimize the maddening headaches, which had become a constant trial in Karen's life, Burkowitz adjusted her schedule to longer periods with the dark glasses in place—a schedule which. Karen patently ignored. Not out of any disregard for the doctor or his good sense, but out of a child's boundless zeal for discovery; because where sight was concerned she really was a child, a newborn registering those first blinking glimpses of a larger, infinitely brighter world.
Following that first night home, when she'd frightened herself in front of the mirror, Karen had daily pushed herself to the limit, wandering the house and the yard, sometimes wearing the nearly opaque glasses but most times not, trying to harden those fickle, colorless, swirling images into reality. And as a result, she suffered. More than once a sunflare glanced off a window or a steely bit of gravel and slashed into her eyes, twin lasers of white heat searing to a flashpoint and igniting at the center of her brain. More than once as she sought to negotiate the eddying fog she tripped or barked a shin or bumped her head. And more than once her hapless gaze fell upon the sun itself, the shock of its brilliance carrying her to the ground in a dead faint.
But she kept on. And on Sunday morning, a drab rainy dawn grumbling with thunder, she opened her eyes and saw the geranium.
It had been her mother's favorite house plant, and Karen had grown up surrounded by its scent, subtle to the sighted, yet rich to her heightened sense of smell. Now she kept dozens of them around the house—in the windows, suspended from macrame hangers, even outside, in an assortment of porch-rail planters. It was a means of keeping her mother alive, as vividly for Karen as a well-stocked picture album might accomplish for others.
Thunder jerked her awake that morning with an unpleasant start. The odor of the coming storm, damp and electric, lay thick on the air. She sat up sleepily and opened her eyes, expecting the same shapeless gloom as the morning before. . .
But there on the sill not two feet away, its leaves and blossoms crisply in focus, stood the geranium. Green and red—her
Gray on gray, shape in shadow.
Cautiously, Karen raised her hand into the field of her vision. If she moved slowly enough the images held together, the smeary beasts remaining at bay. She found the edge of the mirror and tilted it. Something flashed, but not painfully. An ache began at her temples. Now she followed the splotchy column of her arm to the quivering arc of the mirror's wooden frame, then traced the frame through its entire oval. Satisfied she had its limits, she shifted her gaze to the middle area, where the reflective surface should be.
"Oh, my," she said aloud, unaware of the sweat sheening her skin.
There was something out there, a shape she might have likened to a man motionless in a blizzard had she ever seen such a thing.
But no. . . not a man.
She lifted a hand to her long hair. Before her eyes, the snowbound image followed suit.
Monkey see, monkey do.
She giggled through the pain in her temples.
Me, she thought in quiet awe. That's me!
Until the pain made her stop, Karen frolicked, like a child with a newfound companion. She tilted her head from side to side and chuckled when the oval-framed phantom did the same. She raised her arms and waved them, gently at first, then wildly when she realized the image was holding together.
Her laughter tinkled on the encroaching night.
Across the field, Danny replaced the binoculars in their leather case. He felt cheated by the dark, which had so selfishly stolen her from sight.
Had she really seen herself in the mirror?
He prayed not.
He sat awhile, gazing at the fading silhouette of Karen's house, stroking the puppy. Then he went out to the woods.
Chapter 10
May 10
A week following her arrival home, a week filled with pain and increasing anticipation, Karen saw the geranium.
In an effort to minimize the maddening headaches, which had become a constant trial in Karen's life, Burkowitz adjusted her schedule to longer periods with the dark glasses in place—a schedule which. Karen patently ignored. Not out of any disregard for the doctor or his good sense, but out of a child's boundless zeal for discovery; because where sight was concerned she really was a child, a newborn registering those first blinking glimpses of a larger, infinitely brighter world.
Following that first night home, when she'd frightened herself in front of the mirror, Karen had daily pushed herself to the limit, wandering the house and the yard, sometimes wearing the nearly opaque glasses but most times not, trying to harden those fickle, colorless, swirling images into reality. And as a result, she suffered. More than once a sunflare glanced off a window or a steely bit of gravel and slashed into her eyes, twin lasers of white heat searing to a flashpoint and igniting at the center of her brain. More than once as she sought to negotiate the eddying fog she tripped or barked a shin or bumped her head. And more than once her hapless gaze fell upon the sun itself, the shock of its brilliance carrying her to the ground in a dead faint.
But she kept on. And on Sunday morning, a drab rainy dawn grumbling with thunder, she opened her eyes and saw the geranium.
It had been her mother's favorite house plant, and Karen had grown up surrounded by its scent, subtle to the sighted, yet rich to her heightened sense of smell. Now she kept dozens of them around the house—in the windows, suspended from macrame hangers, even outside, in an assortment of porch-rail planters. It was a means of keeping her mother alive, as vividly for Karen as a well-stocked picture album might accomplish for others.
Thunder jerked her awake that morning with an unpleasant start. The odor of the coming storm, damp and electric, lay thick on the air. She sat up sleepily and opened her eyes, expecting the same shapeless gloom as the morning before. . .
But there on the sill not two feet away, its leaves and blossoms crisply in focus, stood the geranium. Green and red—her
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