Primrose Brookstone's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Primrose Brookstone turned over the last mirror in her dead grandmother's house and still saw nothing but the wall. Her grandmother had hung every mirror backward, face to the plaster, before she died. Primrose had three weeks until she turned eighteen. A curse ran through the women of her blood, and her grandmother had run from it her whole life. Primrose knew that much. She did not know its name, or how it killed, or how to break it. You cannot fight a thing you cannot name. She dragged her pink tail across the floorboards and checked every drawer. Old receipts. A dried seahorse. No letters, no journal, no answer. Her grandmother had hidden the truth as carefully as she had hidden the mirrors. The front door opened without a knock. Raaya Quezada stepped inside, pink boots clicking, a casserole in her arms like an offering. The whole town treated Raaya like a visiting queen, and she carried herself that way. She set the dish down and looked at the backward mirrors. "She did that the week the Gym burned," Raaya said. "Nobody knew why. Nobody asked your grandmother anything, after." Primrose sat up. "After what?" Raaya's smile thinned. "The night the Pokémon Gym went wrong. People went in. One girl walked out." She smoothed her sleeve. "Your grandmother went pale when she heard the name. Then she turned her mirrors and stopped leaving the house." "What girl?" "Akari Sakazuki." Raaya said it low, like the name cost something. "She still keeps that knife on her belt. She won't talk about that night. Not to me. Not to anyone." Primrose gripped the drawer's edge. Her grandmother had hidden from a curse. Then one name made her hide from the world. That was not a coincidence. That was a thread. "Where do I find her?" Raaya's painted mouth tightened. "You don't want to pull on this. I came to bring food, not point you at trouble." But she wrote an address on the back of a receipt and slid it across the table. Her hand shook once. "If you go, don't mention your grandmother's name first. She'll shut the door." Primrose read the address. The curse had a shape now, even if she could not see its face. Someone alive had stood inside the thing her grandmother feared and had lived. "Thank you," Primrose said. Raaya paused at the door. "She watched the mirrors too, you know. Akari. I saw her once, staring at a shop window, waiting for something to look back." She left. Primrose looked at the backward mirrors. For the first time, they meant something. Her grandmother had not hidden from nothing. She had hidden from a reflection. Primrose folded the receipt into her palm. She still could not name the curse. But she finally knew who could. She slid toward the door to find the only person who had walked out of that Gym alive.