The Mirror of Talmud

Rivka descended the stone stairs, ledgers clutched against her chest.

Damp air rose from the cellar, thick with the smell of rendered fat from the butcher shop above.

She counted each step on her fingers—twenty-three stones down to Jakub's workshop.

The cellar stretched before her, walled in rough stone that sweated moisture.

Candles flickered along the walls, their flames dwarfed by an impossible light from the center of the room.

Jakub stood before a mirror framed in dark wood, his silhouette bent over the glass.

A silver cloth moved in his hand, polishing circles across the surface with rhythmic precision.

Rivka adjusted her headscarf, her fingers tightening on the leather-bound ledgers.

"The payment is late, Jakub," she said, voice low.

She stepped into the room, the straw-covered floor muffling her footsteps.

A young Christian man stood near the workbench, eyes fixed on the mirror as though drunk.

Jakub did not turn from his work.

"My work is nearly complete, creditor," he said.

"Have patience with genius."

Rivka opened her ledger, pages rustling in the damp silence.

"You borrowed three months ago," she said.

"The money came from my father's accounts."

Jakub chuckled, the sound dry as parchment.

"What are three months," he asked, "compared to eternity?"

He stepped back from the mirror, revealing the surface.

Glow pulsed from within the glass, an inner light that made the candles seem like dying embers.

Inscriptions wound around the frame—Hebrew letters interwoven with Latin script.

The young assistant drifted closer, feet moving without thought.

"Does your assistant have coin to pay your debt?" Rivka asked.

Jakub smiled without turning.

"He has given me something far greater."

The young man reached out, fingers hovering inches from the glass.

His reflection moved independently.

The image in the mirror raised a hand—pale, translucent—while the real man's arm remained at his side.

Rivka's breath caught in her throat.

She backed away, one step, two.

"What is this?" she whispered.

The reflection lunged.

Its hand shot through the surface, grasping the young man's throat with fingers of light.

He screamed once—a sharp sound cut short as the mirror pulled him forward.

His body crossed the threshold.

The surface rippled like disturbed water, then smoothed.

He was gone.

The candle flames guttered as if wind had passed through the room.

Rivka's legs threatened to give way.

She braced herself against the workbench, knuckles white.

Jakub ran the silver cloth over the frame, smoothing a smudge no one else could see.

"Another ascended," he said.

He turned at last, eyes bright with feverish purpose.

"Do you understand now, Rivka?" he asked.

"This is not alchemy."

He gestured to the mirror.

"This is transcendence."

Rivka's fingers found the door latch behind her back.

Cold metal pressed into her palm.

She counted on her fingers—one, two, three—calculating distances to the stairs.

"You have killed thirteen people," she said.

Jakub's brow furrowed.

"Killed?" He shook his head. "I have freed them."

He stepped toward her, the pendant at his throat catching the mirror's light.

Glass fragments dangled from the silver chain—shards that matched the mirror's composition.

"Think what you have seen," he said.

"Not death, but liberation."

Rivka's heart hammered against her ribs.

She remembered her father's face in the pogrom, remembered the blood on the cobbles.

This was different—worse.

An evil that consumed without bloodshed, that erased as if the victim had never existed.

She swallowed, mouth dry.

"The Inquisition will come for you," she said.

Jakub laughed.

"Let them come."

He spread his arms, encompassing the workshop, the vessels, the mirror.

"What can they do to me," he asked, "that compares to what I have achieved?"

Rivka's grip on the latch tightened until her palm ached.

She looked at the mirror one last time.

Behind the glass, something moved—a face pressed against the inside, screaming in silence.

The young man's mouth opened wide, hands slapping uselessly against the surface.

Rivka wrenched the door open.

She fled up the stairs, ledgers abandoned on the workbench.

Jakub's voice followed her up from the cellar.

"Run to your ledgers, creditor," he called.

"Count your coins."

She heard the silver cloth moving across the glass again.

"Some debts," he said, "cannot be paid in gold."