There’s a depth to your reflection missing in polished metal . . . the impossibility of an echo. You can speak your thoughts in silvered glass and know that you’re heard. The last dressing room I shared with Justine had steel mirrors, made of bulkheads from a dead country’s navy. It was part of the glut of such steel that flooded markets while warships loaded with corpses were scuttled as tomb-reefs that pressed pearls of eyes, coral of bones. Steel desks, benches and chairs crowded out wood furnishings . . . the grain of which was scarred by winters made harsh by ash-clouds of the dead and by the rings of trees that marked not just years, but tons of human soot held in the sky. Justine and I had sat beside each other, applying our make-up in the steel’s gaze, dumb as we harlequinned ourselves with the simple lines we’d devised for our Cymbeline. We were startled by our not speaking to each other’s reflection as we usually did, when streaming chatter replaced the dream cycles lost over days of rough travel.
What do You think about Stories From The Plague Years?
