CHANGING FACES_TO REMEMBER BEING HUMAN_WEP

http://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/

Denise Covey has a new writing prompt:

You look into the mirror and see a different face.

TO REMEMBER BEING HUMAN

(609 Words)

 http://www.amazon.com/RITES-PASSAGE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B004XQVPYM/

{Buy the Kindle book for $1.99 & buy the audiobook for just $1.99!

A $15 savings!!}

{The year is 1853.  Samuel McCord is on the trail of the murderer of a young girl.  He delivered Rachel as a baby.  

And to find her murdered, her face removed to be used as a mask by the murderer is driving him nearly crazy.

He is now on the transatlantic steamer, DEMETER, following a clue given him by Marie Leveau.  

Having just read a letter written him by a young Mark Twain, Samuel feels "human" enough to look into the mirror.}

I tucked the letter back in my stash.  It had done its job.  I felt human again, or at least human enough to be able to look in that mirror.  There were some things a man couldn't walk around.  And looking in mirrors was the worst and the most important one not to duck.  Hell, how did my life get to this point, where looking in mirrors was a nightmare? 

I slowly got up and approached the dressing table with its golden, ornate mirror.  I had walked to certain ambushes feeling better.  If I turned around, I knew I would see the ghost of my father watching me.  I just didn't know what look would be on his face, compassion or satisfaction.  I didn't know which would hurt more.  I sat down with my eyes closed.

I opened them.  The mirror showed a room fit for an emperor, nothing more.  Nothing.  No reflection of me at all.  What had I become?

I sat for long heartbeats staring at the nothing I had become.  Words that I remembered Father quoting came to mind.  To him they had meant something else entirely than what they now meant to me.  My words sounded hollow in the empty air.

“When the stars threw down their spears,

 And watered heaven with their tears,

 Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

Then, a swirling of black clouds in the shape of a tall man appeared in the mirror.  It slowly focused into the buckskin covered Apache who had saved my life in the Parajito Mountains of Sonora so long ago.  Saved it, then twisted it, and finally ended it.  His sad bear face grunted at me.

"Ever the poet.  You are undoubtedly the strangest white man I have ever known, Dyami.  Why do you forever quote the words of those long dead?"

Dyami.  Eagle in his tongue.  I felt like a vulture.

I shrugged.  “Maybe cause it makes me feel closer to Father who always quoted them.  Or maybe when I no longer feel human, it helps me to quote someone struggling with the pain of their own humanity.”

It looked like my words had hurt him somehow, and I tried for a smile and failed.  "Hello, Elu.  Long time, no see."

"And whose fault is that?  You shy from mirrors like some ugly sqaw."

"I feel ugly.  I murdered my father, cursed you, done --"

"Your blood cursed me.  As mine cursed you.  Oh, by the way, Mother sends her usual regards."

"In other words, she wants to eat my eyes and tear out my liver."

"Of course.  In her view, it is your fault that I am trapped here between worlds."

"It is."

"No, it is ours.  I asked you to become blood-brother with me.  You accepted.  I thought my heart big to accept a white man's blood.  You gave the lie to my thoughts by not even pausing to let a half-breed's blood mingle with your own."

"It never occurred to me to ask what race your mother was."

"Our mother, now."

"My mother was killed by Father to spare her the torture and rape by Comanches.  Yours is the living spirit of this world who --"

Elu quickly held up his right hand, all fingers up but the forefinger, which he held down with his thumb.  "Hush! Estanatlehi may be listening."

"So?  What is she going to do?  Make my life hell?"

"You say the words, but you do not understand them.  The colors of her thoughts are the Northern Lights.  Think long before you anger her."

"I already have, remember?"