Thirteen-year-old Lena finds a hidden mirror in Mr Czeslaw's antique shop and glimpses a strange city that seems to be waiting for her.
The sky over the town was the colour of bruised ink, and the air outside Mr Czeslaw's antique shop felt charged, as if something impossible was about to happen. Lena noticed it the moment she stepped through the bell-chimed door and crossed to the back corner, where she spent every Thursday sorting piles of old books and smoothing dust from cracked covers.
That afternoon, something in the shelves looked wrong. Between two leaning bookcases stood a mirror she had never seen before, its frame hidden under a skin of dust. Lena frowned, brushed her fingers over the glass, and caught the faintest flicker beneath the grime, as if someone on the other side had just moved.
Her pulse kicked hard. She glanced toward Mr Czeslaw's office, where his low humming drifted through the wall, then wiped the mirror with her sleeve. The glass cleared all at once, revealing a city that should not have existed: streets curling like ribbons, rooftops made of leaves, and lampposts shaped like dragons and dinosaurs. It looked familiar in the way dreams do, as if she had almost remembered it once.
Then she saw the girl standing inside it.
She was Lena's reflection and not her reflection at all, with silver hair and deep blue eyes that held on to Lena's gaze. The girl lifted one hand, as if she had been waiting, and the mirror shivered under Lena's touch. Mist spilled from the frame, cold against her skin, and the glass began to part down the middle like a door opening into breathless dark.
Lena drew in a sharp breath and lifted one foot toward the threshold, staring at the impossible city and the girl who was still watching her from the other side.