10. THE VISION
Minerva shrugged and fell to examining her surroundings. Busy work helped in times of confused emotions, Goodie always said. She gathered up the elf’s belongings and thought a moment about sending them down the hole to join the beast’s remains. Her ancestors had buried their dead with their possessions. But this”this creature was not human.
Then her logic asserted itself. What was an Erkling--native to Germany--doing in Scotland in the first place? Perhaps there was a clue in his belongings. It was a bit of a struggle getting them up to Gig, but the prospect of soon escaping this oppressive space strengthened them both.
They made it without incident to the Mirror-room. Gig found the entry hole and wriggled on through. Minerva laid down her burdens and started poking ‘the loot’, as Gig had christened it, through the hole. As the lantern disappeared, she became aware of another light source somewhere in the room. Gig called out that it looked like the sun was setting and that Minerva should get a move on.
Minerva stuck her head into the opening. “Go on and find Petey. He’s probably out there hiding somewhere, the big feardie. I’ll be along straightaway.” She saw Gig shrug in the day’s enduring glow and then make her way eagerly towards it.
Minerva turned to face the mirror. Something inside it shone with a fierce white light. She could just make out the walls of the room in its glow. Alone with this undoubtedly magical phenomenon, she wondered if she was safe to listen to the urgings of curiosity. She took a step closer to the mirror and could see that the light came from a silvery column within it, whirling and writhing like a tornado.
A wind from the depths of the cave freshened and seemed to penetrate the glass, for immediately the column rippled and distorted. It took on the form and coloring of a man in Muggle Scots clothing: heavy leather shoes with knee-high stockings and a long dust-colored coat covering a kilt of a pattern she couldn't make out. He was carrying a long crooked stick with a kind of a knife fastened to one end and he wore a metal cap with a brim all the way around. It covered the crown of his head but stopped well short of his ears and was fastened with a chin-strap. And as he turned this way and that, apparently looking for something or someone, she could see on his back a knapsack much like the one they’d found, but with many smaller pouches and kit bags attached it, seemingly balanced one upon another.
Now he spoke to someone only he could see. “Who goes there?” He had a Highlands accent, sharp and firm, and he pointed into the fog menacingly with his stick. Yes, it was fog, not just magical residue, and it dragged wetly at the man’s garments. Now Minerva could make out a shape, another man in the mist, but he was dressed incongruously in wizarding robes. He was holding his side and coughing as if he had a very bad cold. “Oh, it’s you lot,” said the Muggle, raising his stick, his voice not so hostile now. “What’s the matter? Lost your magical compass?” The other made no sound, but pulled out a wand from inside his sleeve. He drew himself up to his full height and aimed it at the Muggle. There was a flash of light and the mirror went dark.
Minerva blinked and rubbed her eyes. The flash left her sunblind, and a reddish afterimage was all she could see for a few scary moments. Gradually she perceived behind her the light from the hole to the outside. She put her hand to her face and felt her eyes streaming with moisture.
There was a sound like a keening wind, but no accompanying gust of cool cave air. Minerva remained rigid staring at the glass, willing it to lighten again, and the story to continue. Who were those men? There was something about one of them”the Muggle”that seemed familiar, the twist at the corner of the lips, the dimpling of the cheek when he thought he recognized a friend in the wizard. It seemed he was mistaken, for the spell had been of the attacking variety, of that she was sure. Well, almost sure. Perhaps it was her love of Jacko Gwynn's stories that primed her to believe the worst had happened. But was there not, just before the spell hit, a look of surprise and dismay on the Muggle’s face? Who was the wizard fellow? And where did the confrontation take place? Was this a premonition of a future event, or something that had already happened? If so, when? And why, oh why had the glass revealed this to her?
A sound at the cave mouth roused her.
“’Nerva, you okay?” It was Gig.
Minerva sloughed off the nagging questions, picked up the knapsack, and headed out. She had spent too long in that dark place. Perhaps her eyes were playing tricks on her. Perhaps the whole thing, the rooms, the ghosts, the Erkling, had all been illusion. But no, she still had 'the loot' and too much residual fear cramping her muscles for that last to have been a dream.
She didn’t remember afterward how she got back into the open air. The sun was bright and cool behind the mountain, but not too bright for her eyes, which had endured a flash far brighter, and at the same time, darker...
Something about her face made Gig ask, in an excited whisper, “What did you see?”
“Kind of hard to explain.” Minerva wanted to think about her vision”if that was what it had been”before sharing it with anyone else. “Where’s Fat-Hair?”
Gig grinned, “Think he went on home. Probably ashamed”knew yo? But…” She patted the bindle. “We lot the goot.”
~*~
“Hist! ‘Nerva!”
At home after the day’s adventure, Minerva had collapsed onto her bed and fallen into a deep dreamless sleep. Of course she didn’t tell Da about discovering the Crypt, much less about Petey’s cowardice. Duncan Macnair and Jupiter McGonagall maintained a relationship built on schoolboy friendship, blood ties, Scottish pride and the wizarding brotherhood. It did not seem to Minerva a warm relationship, like, for example her friendship with Gig, but she would not be the one to spoil it by embarrassing Lord Macnair's youngest son.
“Hi! Wa-ke u-PP!"
It was Giggie. No one else exploded their consonants like that in an effort to be understood. Minerva wrestled with the bedclothes and leaned out the casement window. It must be almost midnight, she thought.
“Gig, whatever do you want?” she hissed.
“Come down. I got thumsing to yell tou.”
“Can’t it wait?”
Gig shook her head vehemently.
Minerva swung out onto a sturdy limb of the beech tree that curved sinuously under her window, and dropped to the ground. It was too cold really for a mere shift and the bed scarf she’d pulled over her shoulders, but she hid her discomfort. Gig looked almost as scared as she had earlier in the cave. They huddled together on the steps outside the kitchen door.
“Petey”he never hum comb.”
“What?”
“Laird Macnair came to our house about ten. Da got me up and they asked me stuff. When I last saw Petey and such.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Said I went on home after we grot the gass. Didn’t see him after that. I didn’t say aught about the cave.”
“Why not?”
“I thought it would tree bubble for you and your dad.”
“But Petey might still be in there, Gig. We never did see him after he ran. What if he”what if he’s down the Hole...”
“Serve him right if he is!”
“You don’t mean that, Gig. I know he’s a bit of a braggart, but he’s”he’s kin to us”to me anyway. And we’ve been through lots of stuff together. Remember, he brought you an infusion when you had the haingles and there was that time he let us watch when he pulled that big scab off his knee…and he snuck you into his father’s library and showed you all his hunting trophies.”
“It wasna the haingles, ‘twas the buffits, so the potion didna help…and that scab”och, it wasn’t the least bit icky…
“We gotta help him, Gig, for auld lang syne.”
“Aye, well, the Nundu heads and the ‘Rumpent horns…they were really tecspacular...pecstacular…stecpac--really great...and he always helps me fix the noal get when it breaks…All right… but I’m not going back in that cave.”
“I’m not saying we have to. But Laird Macnair has a right to know where Petey was today.”
“But we’ll gret in tubble.”
“Leave that to me.”
Childhood's End by spiderwort
Chapter Notes: The strange , mirror-like wall shows Minerva an uncanny, violent scene.