Labyrinth Through The Mirror of Time Chapter 21

 Chapter 21: The Mirror Speaks

The ticking of the tortoise-shaped clock broke the silence of the room with a sharp, metallic ring, rousing the quiet house. This time, Remi did not jump onto the floor straight away. She was completely exhausted. Her cat bones still felt heavy from the burning heat of ancient Egypt, so she waited quietly with her eyes half-closed. She needed Shehrazad to untie the tight knots of the cedar-scented rope.

When Shehrazad freed her, Remi dragged her tired paws across the blanket. She pressed her warm face against Samir’s palm, licking his skin with her rough tongue. 

"The fever is gone!" she thought to herself, feeling the cool air of the present finally replace the burning fire in her veins.

Samir awoke instantly from the cat’s touch. He opened his heavy eyes, sat up in bed, and rubbed his left eye. Then, filled with desperate hope, he shook his brother, who was lying completely still next to him.

"Hey, Demir, wake up! Come on, open your eyes!"

But his twin brother was still trapped deep inside the Wall of Ether. He was not ready to return to the real world yet. His spirit was drifting away, like a lonely boat forgotten on a river of shadows.

"Let’s go and check the mirror, Jaddati!" Samir cried, jumping out of bed. It was as if the magic of the water was calling him through the walls.

Before he could take a single step, a firm hand with long fingers that smelled of medicine was placed on his shoulder. Dr Hazem El-Amin stopped him, speaking in a strict but calm voice:

"Not so fast, young man! In the future, you will probably need to travel with Miss Remi on her spiritual journeys. But the Ether is not a game. It is dangerous to do this so often. Your body needs time to forget the fever."

Shehrazad was packing away the ritual rope—the link that had bound the humans and the eight cats together for thirty minutes. She startled, placing a pale hand over her heart as if checking if it was still beating.

"You are right, Hazem, but... time moves differently for them. The mirror is fixing itself, and their mother..."

"No 'buts', Shehrazad!" the doctor interrupted, taking off his glasses to rub his tired eyes. "From now on, I will be here for every single journey. And I hope your feline friends will watch over the gateway too. Rushing things will only make the gap between the two worlds wider."

The man pulled a mobile phone from his pocket. Its bright screen felt like a strange piece of modern technology in a room so full of ancient magic. He checked his calendar with a serious face, calculating exactly how much the human body could endure.

"The eleventh of October," he said, looking firmly at Shehrazad and then at the white cat. "That is the date of the next session. Absolutely no earlier. Their bodies must get used to the present world again. Do we understand each other?"

After Dr Hazem left, leaving behind the stern echo of October eleventh, a heavy silence settled over the house. Everyone felt deeply restless. Samir could not wait any longer. He was the first to run out into the inner courtyard, followed closely by Shehrazad and Anemo. Anemo was carrying Remi in his arms; she felt like a warm bundle of live wires.

Shehrazad’s courtyard was a magical place, completely paved with a geometric mosaic of black and white stones. The patterns met at strange angles, creating a vertiginous optical illusion, as if the ground were twisting downward into an endless spiral. Right there, in the very center of this stone whirlpool, was the well. For a very long time, it had been just an empty hole, an old decoration. But ever since they started the sessions with the cedar rope, a miracle had happened: water had appeared at the bottom of the well. Not much, just a thin, dark layer of liquid that acted like an inky lens, reflecting the Cairo sky.

Shehrazad walked forward with small steps, holding a small clay jar. Her wrinkled face looked as solemn as an ancient priestess.

"The doctor is right about your bodies," she whispered, looking at Remi, "but the water is impatient. Look at it gathering. The mirror wants to speak to us."

The woman knelt on the black-and-white mosaic. Moving as if she had practiced this in another lifetime, she opened the jar and let a heavy, fragrant oil drip onto the water. It instantly smelled of bitter almonds and sweet incense. The oil spread slowly across the surface, creating a perfect, glossy layer that stopped the water from rippling. The darkness inside the well became a flawless mirror, untouched by the warm afternoon breeze.

"Look into Nun," Shehrazad said, naming the ancient, primordial ocean of the world.

Anemo leaned forward, holding Remi over the edge of the mosaic, while Samir pressed his forehead close to the shiny black surface. Under the layer of oil, the reflection of the Cairo sky began to melt away, turning dark and shifting into a completely different reality.

From the black liquid, the shapes of a royal bedroom from the past began to rise. In the dim light of a few oil lamps, a proud-looking woman with heavy black makeup around her eyes was leaning over a large piece of fine linen cloth. The cloth was spread across a cedarwood table. It was Queen Tiye. With steady fingers covered in heavy rings, she was using a reed pen dipped in red ink to draw a complex star map. The lines crossed each other in strange patterns, marking constellations and planets that seemed to show the exact movement of time—a cosmic gateway she was trying to calculate and map out on the cloth. One could see a desperate rush in her face, like a race against time.

Suddenly, a long, massive shadow fell across the queen’s table in the reflection. The heavy curtain at the entrance of the room had been pulled aside without a sound.

The High Priest walked into the room. His tall, stern figure was wrapped in white robes, and he wore a large amulet around his neck. He looked terrifying and powerful. Queen Tiye gasped, but her royal instincts saved her. With an incredibly fast, smooth movement, she pulled the folds of her dress over the cedar table, completely hiding the star map under the plain cloth, just as the priest took another step toward her. The look they exchanged through the water was full of deadly tension—a war of secrets that held the timeline of the world in the balance.

The vision began to shake. The layer of oil in Shehrazad’s well started to break into ripples, and the image of Queen Tiye melted away, vanishing back into the dark water.