The Mirrors.

I hadn't felt the impact of the boat stopping, even when it reached the far shore. It had been like being on a ghost ride.

The boatman didn't acknowledge that it was our destination. He didn't move or speak, just waited.

I stepped out first, my boots striking the green earth, and Alice followed. When I turned back to look at him, I realized he had already moved to the river again.

And the waves continued.

"Did it hurt?" Alice asked, her voice returning now that the boatman was gone.

I looked down and noticed she now wore both shoes; I wasn't sure when she had recovered the one she'd lost.

"It's not bad. How did you find your shoe?" I replied.

"The Mad Hatter went back to the forest where we sat once and gave it to me," she responded simply.

"..."

She looked at me for a moment, then moved forward.

On the green land, there existed a road, just like any other. And so we started moving.

The hills were green, a natural color overall. The grass that covered them was short and soft; it moved slowly with the wind.

We walked without conversation for a stretch of time. I had stopped trying to think much of how long.

We continued walking until finally I saw something. A singular building.

At a glance, I thought that we had returned to the town again, but this was different. It was not preceded by any other, which made it feel abrupt. It was a single structure standing in a flat area between two hills. I looked at it.

It was a mirror.

The wall itself was a mirror, constructed from enormous panels of glass fitted together. It reflected the hills, the red sky, the road, and the two of us walking toward it without any distortion whatsoever.

Then, around the curve of the hill, a village came into view.

Every surface reflected what stood before it. The buildings weren't exactly glass; the material was denser, making the reflections appear sharper than those of a standard mirror.

Every storefront, every rooftop, and every stone in the streets also reflects everything. The effect was absolute. To walk in the village was to walk in a place that kept watching itself.

Alice remained quiet as we entered the village. I noted that the creatures here were unlike anything I had seen in Wonderland.

They all appeared to be shadows, their outlines completely unreadable. And their form never reflected.

In the previous town, the animals wore human clothing and moved like them, greeting, working, and continuing their days.

Here, the creatures were still, not really frozen or hostile, but felt like moving statues that didn't really have any soul in them.

They stood at distances, in doorways, and beside stalls and looked at us.

There was what looked like a woman at the nearest stall. Her form was difficult to describe with certainty. What I could say was that her eyes were a shade of very pale crimson; the one beside her was shorter and held its hands folded in front of it.

As I passed, the old creature said something to the one beside her. She spoke softly, trying to make her sound not be heard.

"That's the one, then," the elderly creature whispered to the other.

The second creature did not respond.

The village arranged itself around a central plaza; it was modest in size, where a large communal mirror stood upright at its center. Around it, the villagers moved slowly in their patterns, and that mirror, unlike the others, reflected their shadowy shape.

I was surprised that no one had greeted us yet. I had grown so used to that reaction from everyone I met in this world that the silence felt strange.

As I walked closer to the communal mirror, I saw something.

My reflection arrived in the glass before I had taken the last few steps. I stood where it should stand, in the position corresponding to my own. I looked at it.

Alice also stood behind me, looking at me.

I waved my hand and noticed that my reflection lagged half a second behind.

It was subtle, like you could explain it easily as a trick of perception. I stood still, waved again, and the reflection waved after me.

I lowered my hand. The reflection lowered it.

I had wanted to do this just to see if it's still the same. Just like in the corridor of mirrors in the castle, one of my first memories in Wonderland was made. I had dismissed it, thinking it was a trick.

I looked at it.

The reflection looked at me, with my own face.

"What's wrong?" Alice asked, looking between me and the mirror.

"Nothing," I said. "The glass seems to have a delay."

She looked at the mirror, at herself, and then at her own reflection. "Mine seems fine."

I nodded.

She watched me for a moment without saying anything, and then I turned away toward the rest of the plaza.

The villagers were occupied in their own world and did not even bother to talk to us. And in a way, it looked ritualistic.

We walked to the front of one of the buildings and stayed, resting from all the walking we had been doing.

Driven by curiosity, I stopped a youthful shadow creature. He seemed reluctant to talk, but eventually spoke.

What the villagers were doing was a confession. You went before a mirror, one of the dedicated panels in the room inside, and you said what was true. Not something you had done or a recounting of events. What you simply thought was true.

Then he left, seemingly wanting to take a turn.

Alice looked at me after the creature finished speaking. "Do you want to?" she asked.

"You go first," I said.

She nodded with a smile and went inside the building.

I stood in my place and waited. I watched the central mirror for a while. My reflection watched back. The villagers moved around; none of them even bothered to look directly at me.

The old woman from the stall had followed at some distance. She was on the far side of the plaza now, facing a different direction. I observed the angle of her head.

She was listening to me.

Alice returned after some time. She stepped through the doorway and paused in the open air before walking toward me. Her face seemed to hold a trace of relief.

She didn't tell me what she'd said.

"Your turn," she said with a simple smile.

I didn't bother to reject it, so I walked forward toward the doorway until I reached a room.

The room was narrow and very dark, the only light being a soft sourceless glow coming from the top. The panels along the walls were floor-to-ceiling mirrors, each framed in plain wood.

Unlike the others in the village, these did not reflect the room precisely. And I wasn't on them.

I stood before the biggest, one directly ahead.

This one, like the one in the plaza, held my reflection.

Then, a creature appeared behind me.

It was taller than any other shadow and larger than any human; its face was covered in eyes, every inch of flesh occupied by a different, staring pupil, each one a different color, every single one not looking at me but at my reflection in the mirror.

The pupils of the creature dilated and contracted independently of one another. I looked at my reflection.

It looked exactly like me, yet its muscles were entirely relaxed, whereas mine were tense.

I thought I had to say what was true now, since there were no instructions.

I considered what to say for a moment.

"I am very good at something," I said. "I don't know what it is yet. But I have always known I was good at it."

The room was quiet for a bit.

The creature spoke; it had no mouth to speak with. And its eyes didn't blink even once. "That is not a confession," the creature said, its eyes remaining fixed on the mirror. "That is a boast."

I looked at it through the mirror. "Yes," I replied. "I suppose it is."

After a bit, it left the room. And I looked back where the creature had stood a while ago.

Eventually, I left.

After I walked, I realized that Alice needed some rest. I wasn't that tired, but I respected her decision anyway.

The village had one place to rest, a structure on the north edge of the plaza that functioned as something like an inn. The creatures who ran it were quiet and gave us two rooms on the upper floor without a word.

The rooms had glass windows that looked out over the hills.

Of course, even this place was still made out of glass, which made it irritating to the eye. But it was the best thing one could get.

I sat on the first floor, drinking a liquid one of the shadow creatures had poured for me. Its color was light blue, and it tasted like nothing I've ever known, but it was good regardless.

I saw Alice nearby; she sat a few chairs away, looking at a finished sketch in her notebook. It looked like something from an earlier part of the road—one I hadn't seen.

"What are you good at?" she asked, without looking up.

I already told her what happened in the room, since I wanted a topic of conversation to avoid getting too bored.

I had been drinking and watching the windows that led to the outside; the sky was still red, so you wouldn't really know if it was night. I thought of her question.

What was I good at?

"Patience," I said. "Waiting for the right moment."

She looked up. "The right moment for what?"

"For whatever it is I am waiting for," I paused, thinking of how I should describe it. "I have always had a sense of it. The exact right point in an event when something can be done that couldn't be done a moment before. I think that I've never been wrong about it.

"That's a strange thing to be sure of, when you can't remember anything else," she said.

"I suppose it is," I agreed.

She looked back at the notebook. "That's a boast."

"The creature said the same thing," I noted, taking another sip of the drink.

"Was it one?"

I thought about it.

"Possibly both," I said.

She let out a quiet laugh.

After a while, she went into her room.

I stayed on the first floor and had already finished the drink.

My temples still ached faintly. I pressed my fingers against them for a moment before lowering my hand to the table.

I let out a sigh, pressed my head against the table, and watched the window to the outside.

The green hills stretched and, above them, the red sky.