The Mirrorverse
Chapter 29

Maya

Ellie possessed the same look about her of someone expecting to wake up at any time, a demeanour the group were all well acquainted with. Maya understood her disbelief so well, they all did. They were each still struggling to get their heads around what was going on, and none of them, except perhaps barring Maya, would have been surprised to have woken up in bed knowing it had all been a dream.

Ka and Ka seemed to be holding it together on the outside, but the formal, careful way they were addressing everyone was more akin to talking to a journalist than friends.

Maya wanted to comfort Ellie, to tell her that everything was going to be okay, but knew her words would have been empty, useless, deeply flawed by the mere suggestion that it was all real, and nothing was okay.

“So you think it was your soul that went into the other body, sorry, the other you,” the other Ka said, quickly changing his terminology so as not to upset Ellie, who in Maya’s opinion looked like she might melt into a puddle or spontaneously combust at any moment. It was unclear in which of those directions she was liable to go in, either was looking plausible.

“Yeah, I just kinda know, you know?” articulated Maya eloquently, distracted by her musings on Ellie, who shot her an even stranger look than the ones prior to that. Maya cleared her throat and tried again.

“If my body had been left behind, then the only thing to go between them was my soul. And we now know it was definitely that body on this world, since Ellie confirmed my waking up, so I know my soul left my body.”

“How can both your soul and body leave separately?” Rob mused rhetorically.

“More to the point, where is the soul from the other Maya?” Ellie asked from the armchair that Maya had courted Ka in. That seemed like a lifetime ago to both of them.

“I mean, can two souls exist in the same body?” continued Ellie as she turned to face Maya directly. “Did you feel anyone else in there with you?”

“No. Just me,” Maya’s tone was as light and measured as she could make it, unwilling to hurt Ellie more than she already had been. She was most unlike the Ellie Maya knew. She was really highly strung, ready to snap at any time, and a smile couldn’t have been further from her lips. Not like Maya’s easy going carefree bubbly bundle of Ellie-ness.

“Well, if we can replace her soul, then we can wake her up.” A determination was entering Ellie’s voice, like she was accepting the situation for the first time, or at least riding with it.

“She has a point,” Rob concurred, nodding.

Ellie jumped out of her chair suddenly, making everyone jump.

“I want to see through a portal. I need to see.” The two women locked eyes as Maya stood up and walked towards her. Ellie reached for her, grabbing her into a tight hug. Ellie was crying again, causing Maya to join in, their moment of privacy in a crowded room.

Maya led Ellie by the hand to the clear space between the kitchen and the lounge area. Without really thinking of anywhere, she opened a portal and stuck her head through.

“There you go, pretty countryside,” she said, signalling Ellie to put her head into another dimension.

“Wow,” murmured Ellie, her face flushed as she withdrew it, and returned it to the portal. “Where else can we go?”

“I can try for home,” Maya had looked away, it was something that had been playing heavily on both her and Ka’s minds.

“You didn’t try before?” asked Ellie.

“When we arrived, yes, but I didn’t manage.” What she didn’t tell her was that she hadn’t tried again because she was afraid that if she tried and couldn’t replace it, all hope would be lost and they would be stuck in the wrong world forever.

“Sometimes it’s better not to try so you don’t fail,” explained Maya. She didn’t know how much sense that made, but a glance over at Ka indicated he had felt the same way, and hence hadn’t pestered her about it.

Maya took a deep breath, and inserted her head through the worm hole floating in Les and Rob’s living room. She was still going over in her mind the steps it had taken them to get there, yet somehow she got lost between being in the pool with their Les and Rob, to standing there with an alien Ellie and a tear in space shimmering at her.

Perhaps I’m in a coma. Perhaps only one of these worlds is real. These thoughts were running through Maya’s head as she opened the portal, so it was no real surprise that home was not at the other end of it.

She withdrew her head quickly as a woman screamed, and quite rightly so, at the disembodied head floating in her kitchen. Maya shook her head at Ellie, closing the portal rapidly.

“Concentrate,” urged Ka from the sofa. He had as much to lose as she did from her racing mind failing to get them home. “We need to feed Paws!”

Maya thought of Paws as hard as she could, but failed to replace home.

“What a nice mountainside you live on,” Ellie commented lightly as she reappeared with a daisy.

“I know, country folk and all that.”

After many failed attempts at replaceing home, Maya turned to Ka wearily. “Paws will be fine, he’ll let himself out the cat flap and get overfed by Frank as usual.” she reassured him, thinking of their elderly neighbour who thought visiting cats should live on tin after tin of tuna and salmon.

“What are you afraid of?” Rob’s brow was creased as he surveyed her from behind a large glass of red wine.

“Ugh?” was the best response she could muster.

“Perhaps you only get the outdoors because you are afraid of something?” he qualified in his usual highly intelligent manner.

Maya thought about it for a moment, and had to admit he was right.

“I’m afraid of ending up in the middle of a wall,” she realised, sighing, feeling hopelessness washing over her; she felt was never going to get them home.

“Well, then aim for our garden,” Ka suggested, his hands wrapped around a cold bottle of beer that Maya had been banned from drinking. No opening portals drunk in my living room, Les had scolded, removing the beer from her clutches.

“I know, aim for a wall,” Rob interjected bizarrely. “You see, all I think will happen, is that you will replace a brick wall. Just put a hand through before your head, and there won’t be any head injuries.”

“Man’s got a point,” nodded Ellie approvingly, appearing more like Ellie and less like an anxious mess.

Confused, Maya looked at the other side of the sofas, wondering if that was a good place to pop out.

She concentrated hard on the area she could see, trusting Rob’s wall hypothesis as best she could. Maya put her head through, and laughed harder than she had laughed since the food fight. Everyone joined in at the interesting sight of her head at one side of the room while her body and legs remained the other. She watched Ellie lean in towards the area where she vanished in a swirl of silver, feeling her body against her, before looking up to see Ellie’s blond head bobbing above her.

Maya walked through, towing Ellie with her, as the new Ka jumped up. Maya held it open for him as he came through after them, laughing and scratching his head. Still amused, Maya opened another one, not concentrating that time.

Her head hit a wall of water, and as she withdrew it, having forgotten to investigate with her hand, several tonnes of water flooded into Les and Rob’s flat, soaking Maya to the bone. Ellie screamed and tried to dodge the torrent, while Ka the second got blasted as well.

Maya surveyed the scene from her rigid state, as the water soaked into the carpet. Les, Rob and Ka were all standing on sofas, staring horrified at the sudden aquatic inundation. Ellie had escaped with wet legs, Ka the second was partially soaked, having only got half his body in the torrent, but Maya looked like she’d just been for an unorthodox swim in the middle of a Victorian apartment building.

Slowly Maya’s Ka raised his hand, and pointing a finger at them, he started laughing. His mirth increased as he had to hold his sides at the condition of the three of them. Having realised the water damage wasn’t too great, Les joined in, still standing on the sofa. Rob took a large swig of wine, and shook his head, saying,

“I know you like floating around in the pool with us Maya, but for Christ sake, does it have to be in our living room?”

It was some time before the laughter died down enough for Maya and the wet Ka to acquire bathrobes and beer, and re-join the others.

“Chickens,” said the Ka’s together, enjoying their new game. Maya thought how good it was to see them getting along, the awkwardness fading away with every passing random word they were pulling out the air to see if they agreed.

“Dilapidated post-boxes,” they chorused, waving their beer bottles at each other in delight.

“Oh, do you remember the...” Ka asked.

“Man that hurt” Ka 2 rubbed his left arm and Ka rubbed his right. Maya knew that he had broken it badly snowboarding when he was younger, so figured that’s what they were talking about.

“So Drama club, mum sent us there to stop being shy,” Ka said. “How much do you remember of it?”

“Not a lot, we were smoking way too much.”

“Maybe it was just that we were too stoned to be nervous.”

“I’ve always suspected that to be the case,” the other Ka was bobbing his head and shoulders lightly with agreement. “The Emerald Theatre,” he stated suddenly.

“Hey, do you remember when Tim fell off the stage?”

“How could I forget it? It was the highlight of the entire theatre episode!”

It was odd for the others to watch them take it in turns to speak, even though they knew what the other was thinking. The others just stared, entranced at the new circus act, which for Maya was nice for it not to be her for a change. She suspected it might be sometime before she’d be entirely forgiven for the soggy carpet.

“Hey, do you have a Michael and a Kyra?” enquired Ka expectantly.

“Indeed, it would hardly have been an entrance into acting without the hangover-del-monde-ala-Michael, for hang on, how many years?”

“He was a terrible influence on us,” they said together, nodding and laughing at their blatant disregard to their own part in their ten year hangover.

“Oh god, when that magazine said we always looked so tired, that they must be overworking us!”

“And the whole time, it was all Michaels fault, and those wonderful parties!”

“Good job he settled down, not sure my head could take any more.”

“Agreed.”

“Of course!” and they both guffawed at their own joke.

“You know what,” asserted Maya, pointing to each of the two men in turn. “You... are a bad influence on yourself.”

The laughter continued, Ellie included, as they drank, enjoying the slightly unprecedented company and trying to forget about wrong universes and missing souls.