Gray Hearts Episode Three: Shatter

Gray Hearts by Raspberry | Content warnings

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Antique Alley isn’t really an alley at all. It’s a small town (maybe with so few residents that it could actually be called a village) about an hour’s ride from my apartment. The main street is just off the highway, and there are exactly three blocks of the downtown area. The rest of the roads branch off into the countryside and towards residents’ houses or circle back around to the highway. 

It’d only take an hour to walk around Antique Alley’s streets, but it’s crowded with dozens of shops and a handful of hipster-looking cafes and restaurants. The shops sell furniture, clothes, knickknacks, and even pickles (not antiques, but homemade spicy pickles sold in the section next to the shop’s antique button collections and super addictive). It’s always busy on the weekends, with a steady but small trickle of tourists on weekdays. 

I work at A-Glazing Cafe and Bakery (best donuts in the state), which is unfortunately capped at its maximum five employees, but I know a lot of antique stores look for extra workers around the holidays. I pull into the employees parking space at A-Glazing and hop out of the car. 

“Do you want to grab some food and coffee first?” I ask as Quinn slips out of the car. 

“I’m okay,” she mutters, checking her hair in the car window’s reflection. 

“Are you sure? You didn’t really eat anything for breakfast, and I can get a discount.”

“No, don’t worry,” she says, hugging her arms into her chest with a sigh. “Let’s just get this over with.”

That seems to be her outlook on this trip, even though she’s literally the reason we’re here. We walk into the first antique shop, and I take the lead, prompting Quinn to hand over her resume and ask for an application. She seems to lack the energy to even smile back at any of the managers or look away from the window. It’s pretty safe to assume the applications probably aren’t going anywhere. 

“Quinn,” I say in exasperation as we round the corner. “We’ve gone to, like, a dozen places.”

“Can we stop now, then?” she asks with a sigh. 

“Seriously?”

I don’t mean to sound so frustrated, but it definitely comes out like that. Quinn stops in her tracks, and I turn to face her. 

“I drove up here for you,” I remind her. “You need a job to save up money, right? Do you really think someone’s going to hand it over to you when you’re like this? Are you just going to stay with me forever? Because that’s the only other option right now?”

I’m not sure how I want her to answer. Maybe to have her insist that she’s not just here with me because she has no other choice. Maybe that she actually cares about me and doesn’t want me out of her life. Or maybe for her to finally admit that it’s what she’s wanted all along: to leave me behind.

“What do you want me to say?” she explodes, tugging at her hair. “That I’ll try to pretend I want any of these jobs? That I’m happy that I’ll be here for god-knows how much longer? That I get to worry that I could run into my family at any corner and have to hear all their homophobic shit all over again? That I get to be rejected over and over for jobs I don’t even want and might not even keep if people find out about my ‘lifestyle choices’?” She makes giant air quotes. “Do you know how hard it’s been for me?”

“Of course I do,” I reply quickly. “I’ve been the only one here for you these past couple weeks, remember?”

Not any of your new friends. Me. 

I feel my cheeks warm, and I’m pretty sure I’m flushing. Quinn’s face is also pink, like it always is when she’s feeling too much of one emotion. The problem is I don’t know if it’s anger, frustration, or something else. 

“I know,” she finally mumbles, her gaze drifting down to the sidewalk. “I don’t have anyone else.”

I can’t think of a response, so I finger-comb my hair and take a few steps down the street, like a couple extra feet will magically clear the air. 

I think I hear her mutter, “I barely even have you,” but that might just be in my head. I turn to the window of the shop nearby. 

“Look!” My voice comes out louder than usual because I really want to change the conversation. “There’s a Help Wanted sign. It’s perfect.”

I dash into the shop, feeling my heart thud as I sense Quinn shuffle in behind me. I hope we’ve left the conversation outside, because I don’t want to know what ‘barely having me’ means. Maybe this is her trying to have a friend-breakup. Maybe it’s her saying having me means nothing at all. 

I shake my head and glance around. No wonder there’s a Help Wanted sign. At least an inch of dust has settled on almost every surface of the shop, from the large oak cashier’s station to the sofas and dressers scattered around, filled with equally dusty glass dolls, vintage hats, and porcelain knick-knacks.

“I don’t see anyone,” Quinn says slowly. “Maybe they’re on a lunch break.”

“Are you giving up that easily?” This time, my voice sounds snippier than usual, and I try to shake that off. 

Not that it’s my fault I’m on edge. It’s not even my job I’m hoping for, I think, wandering further into the shop. And as much as I’m helping her, Quinn could at least pretend finding a job and being near me wasn’t the worst thing in the world. 

There’s a dark blue velvet curtain at the end of the shop. My guess is that it leads to an office. I try to open it and send a cloud of dust into the air. Quinn uses her arm to dissipate the dust as I cough and cover my mouth. 

The curtain was hiding the one non-dusty thing in the entire place: a white wardrobe with two long mirrors on the door. The edges of the mirrors are frosted with snowflakes, and the paint looks fresh. I glance at Quinn. 

“Why do you think it’s covered?” I ask as she gasps. 

I look back in the mirror. There’s a woman looking at us. I turn around quickly, but it’s just me and Quinn in the store. 

“What’s going on?” Quinn asks, scooting closer to me. “Is it some sort of trick mirror?”

“I don’t know,” I reply. 

The woman in the mirror is beautiful. She has straight black hair running to her waist that frames a pale and curious face. She’s wearing long furs and her dark, hooded eyes are staring between me and Quinn thoughtfully. I’m not sure why I’m reminded of a documentary I saw before, where a cheetah watched a herd of gazelles with a similar expression, searching for the weakest prey.

She reaches her hand towards the mirror slowly, and I hear a whisper of incomprehensible sounds. The air around us feels like it just dropped fifty degrees, and I can see the breath as it leaves my body. I pull away. A hand stretches towards the glass, and I realize too late that it’s Quinn’s.

“Quinn, no!” I don’t even finish this sentence when her fingertips brush against the surface. 

With a whoosh, she vanishes. The warm air returns, and I’m alone in the shop. The woman in the mirror is gone. 

“Quinn?” I call out into the silence. “Quinn!”

I reach for the glass. A hand slaps mine away, and the mirror is covered by the velvet curtain. 

“Don’t touch it,” a woman snaps, adjusting the curtain so the wardrobe is invisible again. 

“What happened? Where’s Quinn?”

“Who’s Quinn?” she asks, placing herself between me and the wardrobe. 

I look her over. The woman is older, probably in her fifties or sixties, with a long braid that extends to the middle of her red overalls. She has large cat-eye glasses and wrinkles that suggest the frown on her face is habitual. 

“What are you doing in my store?” she asks. 

“My friend Quinn and I saw the Help Wanted sign in the window,” I say, looking around like I’m going to see Quinn’s red hair pop up from behind a sofa. “We came in and looked around and… where’d she go?”

“Did she touch it?” the woman asks intently, and I don’t even have to ask what she’s talking about. 

I nod, and the woman tsk-s. Her hand traces over the curtain, a forlorn look on her face. 

“She’s gone,” the woman says. “You should probably leave too.”

“I-I can’t go without Quinn,” I stammer. “I need to find her.”

“You can’t,” the woman says firmly, taking me by the elbow and trying to lead me towards the door. “She’s gone.”

“You keep saying that! What does it even mean?”

“I’d tell you, but you won’t understand,” the woman replies with a shake of her head. 

I pull away from her with such force I stumble back and fall onto a nearby sofa. Another cloud of dust flies into the air, sending me into a coughing fit. The woman gingerly sits down next to me with a deep sigh. 

“The mirror… isn’t normal,” the woman says slowly. 

I let out a laugh that sounds hysterical even to me. 

“It just ate my friend, so, yeah, I figured that much,” I retort. 

“It’s a portal,” the woman continues. “To the Realm of the Seasons. And it’s cursed… but I guess you figured that out too, huh?” 

Her tone is sardonic and grates me. It also sounds not at all panicked, which gives me the strangest feeling Quinn isn’t the first one she’s seen vanish. 

“What did the woman look like?” she asks suddenly. 

I know I didn’t tell her about the woman in the mirror. I can feel a chill run down my spine. 

“Short,” I say with a sigh. “Beautiful. Long, black hair and a huge fur coat. She looked Asian, I think.” 

Her features looked similar to my aunt, but since she was adopted “East Asian” is the closest guess I have.

“They don’t have the same races as us,” the woman says with a shake of her head. “But I know who you’re talking about.”

“Who?”

“Winter.”

“Winter?” I repeat. “Like… the season?”

“Yes,” the woman says, and it’s oddly not the weirdest thing she’s said so far. “She is the season.” She sighs. “I’m sorry, but your friend is definitely lost then.”

“Why would a season want my best friend?” I ask, rubbing my temple. “Where did Quinn go? This makes no sense.” 

“I know,” the woman says, her voice turning soft. “But you should know… if Winter spoke to your friend, then she was chosen.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Winter tends to take the… hopeless ones,” the woman explains. “The ones who are already giving up on this world. Even if you were able to find your friend again, she won’t be attached enough to this world to want to return.”

I know she’s talking about Quinn, but it’s not Quinn. Quinn hasn’t given up on anything. She’s understandably upset after everything that’s going on, but she couldn’t—she wouldn’t give up on it all. 

“You said,” I begin slowly, my brain spinning so hard as I try to think, “if I were able to find my friend again. That means there’s a way to follow her, isn’t there?”

The woman sighs again. 

“It’s dangerous,” she says. “Winter may be the most dangerous, but the other Seasons will be formidable too. They’ll want to keep any mortals they come across.”

“But there’s a way to get Quinn back?”

The woman stands up and brushes off her overalls. I can see her frown deepen as she casts a long look at the wardrobe. 

“Would you die for her?” she asks, not even looking at me for my answer. 

“Yes.”

I want to say how Quinn has been in my life for as long as I can remember. How I need to tell her when I said I was all she had left, it was because she’s all I have. We can’t part like this. I know she’s leaving me soon, but I can’t let it be like this. But my mouth can only utter that single word with as much emotion as I can. 

It seems enough for the woman. She leads me back towards the curtain, hesitating as she touches the velvet.

“The longer you’re in there,” she says, finally facing me. “The harder it will be for you to remember why you’re there. The easier it will be for you to forget this world and everyone in it, including your friend.”

“I can never forget Quinn.”

“I hope you’re right,” the woman says, pulling the curtain aside. 

She murmurs, and I can see the mirror ripple, like a ribbon in the wind. I only see my pale face staring back at me, and part of me wonders if I’ll be able to find where Quinn went. I hesitate as I reach for the mirror. 

“If it’s cursed,” I say, “why didn’t you just throw it away?”

“She always finds me again,” the woman says, staring intently at the mirror like she’s waiting for the woman too. “I’m the one who caused her to give up on this world, and she’ll never let me forget her—I mean it.”

She flushes, but I don’t have time to delve into her history. Every moment I spend with her is a moment Quinn is alone. I take a deep breath and press my hand into the mirror. 

I feel a rush of cool air as my world slips into darkness.