The gas left in the tank only just got Fog and Frost's used car to the inexpensive gas station on Van Ness Avenue, but wasn't enough to take them all the way to Oz. "We'll be late again. Pump faster." Frost leaned unhelpfully against the chipped paint of the blue Honda.

"Pump faster?" Holding the nozzle steady and firing, Fog straightened as if to check if her sister was smoking something. The breath exhaled from Frost's mouth was only smoky white from the cold. "I don't think you know how cars work."

Parking was another obstacle in the gauntlet to get to school. "I told you we should have parked way back and walked the rest of the way." Frost tapped a pencil on the dashboard, her feet up, passenger-seat driving. "Ten minutes walking beats thirty minutes searching for a spot in North Beach."

"As if there was parking ten minutes back," said Fog.

Weaving down side streets, Fog in the driver's seat, hand over hand on the wheel — in San Francisco, you never knew what you were going to get around the corner: towering uphill, roller coaster ride downhill, a sudden pinnacle sky high, and every parking spot even on the steepest heights of Russian Hill taken, cars parked almost sideways on the incline.

"I saw a spot," Frost drawled, moodily.

Fog's neck whipped back. "Where?"

"No, not — I saw a spot on the way, I told you. If you had taken it when I said, we would be there by now."

A hand went to the stinging pain from the crick Fog got in her neck from turning. "We'll go back. Maybe it's still there."

Having dumped the car and flat out run, varying fast and slow paces, to the speakeasy bar, Frost beat a charge inside, exchanged a polite nod with the hipster aproned barkeeps, and sped past cafe tables and the stairs to the upper level.

Now that she had caught her breath, Fog demanded of her sister on the last leg before the mirror entry, "Why are you rushing so hard?"

Over her shoulder, Frost tossed, "I'm always late. And I missed two days this week!"

"And so?"

She stopped at the mirror entrance and answered. "And so, I don't want to miss any more. I'm here to learn, aren't I?" Her heaving breath made that reasoning sound unlikely to be her primary source of motivation. "And Kudzu's waiting for us, he said we need to learn to protect our minds, barricade our thoughts against spies," she heaved, "and insurgents. Mind-reading, he said. I want to learn to read minds. See what they all think of me. The girl who's always late or missing or stuck in detention."

Entry required a pass through the mirror world and a pass from their mirror selves. Like going through a metal detector. Only one that analyzed your psyche more thoroughly than a shrink.

A good intention to enter was the entry ticket. Past winning tickets included such motivations as burnt tongues all week due to scalding coffee on the ride to school trying to chug before class  (Fog wanted instructor Qui Gon to show her how to cool the beverage); slipping grades at mundane school (Frost wanted to find a spell to help her cheat on exams, not that she would use magic to cheat, but her mirror self knew she wanted to); officers searching a kid in the schoolyard and turning up a ring sewn into his shirt collar (each girl wanted to cloak, camouflage, make disappear, teleport away the incriminating contraband).

The kid being arrested had probably been told the same thing by his parents as Fog and Frost (For emergencies only, never let it be seen) but on the playset, his smallest sister had fallen off the top of the climber (or been pushed through the opening to the fire pole) and she hadn't broken anything but Ernest had heard Isabel's crying and to soothe the pain and the fright, he had healed the cuts and bruises and calmed the terror in her mind — in full view of a dozen potential tattletales (one or two of whom may or may not have been bullying the damsel).

Entering the mirror was like diving into a pool. Like passing underwater but for so infinitesimally short a time it was hard to even note the sensation, to notice holding the breath, the momentary submersion and associated panic, full-body immersion into an incompatible, unlivable, dark blue airless realm. In a flash of images fast as a card shuffle, their mirror selves searched their memories for evidence.

Frost saw a scene from yesterday, shattered window glass from a carjacking on her street, like every morning but new this morning was the accompanying sound of shatter, and then the thump and shout of altercation, "Hey! My car!" The pound of footsteps on asphalt, pound of fists on flesh and a yowl as a sharp weapon produced red that leaked down onto the glass.

The young girl's psyche flashed a dozen other images of more import too: the glances she got at school, the snapshots of eyes wandering to her, and she could only imagine what went on beyond the barrier; judgment, why did she even bother, why show up, she skipped so much everyone knew she was on the brink of failing, why, why even show up? Like cards in a deck fluttering by, every stare, every flick of eyes and not just Captain Popular with a smirk when he looked but the tepid glances of the smart kids with perfect scores, and the stooped graying teacher's permanent scowl, a raven-haired loner in the back who, creative and whip-smart, must think she was dumb for conforming, and the goody-two-shoes class president over-achiever, and the gym teacher whose rate of getting her to participate stuck at thirty percent.

To know what they thought of her.

Fog, holding her breath without knowing she was doing it, saw a slide show of new desires and fears since her last passage (violent headlines in the newspaper; red blood on shards of glass; the blank expression of the patrol cop on their block). The glimpse of red on the smashed windshield had scared her, the not-knowing as frightening as having seen the scene but she had been delayed repacking her book bag while Frost saw the whole thing. A shooting in nearby Inner Mission, an armed robbery at the Checks Cashed near school. In the end, the shuffle landed on the officer's grizzled, bearded face, was it blank after all or suspicious?

To blend in better, to excel in class, to be invisible, to take care of themselves so Aunt Sophia wouldn't have to. To help other young magicians avoid detection. To stop crime.

To protect herself.

Each girl passed safely through the mirror, allowed entry by her mirror self.

⭐️

Underground, the maze of corridors down which Kudzu guided had to be called catacombs. He led with an orb of conjured torch and a carefully memorized set of instructions, the lefts and rights to take them where they were going.

Frost let her fingers graze the century-old bricks, some pale gray in the light that was about to pass from them, others fire red and still others faded pale pink clay. Occasionally, the ancient black paint of a graffitied message passed beneath her fingertips, a glossy sheen she had no time to read as she trotted to keep inside the onward-moving circle of light. The smell was the addictive constant petrichor of a cave. The further in they got, the smellier and moldier it became, as if the outer tunnels had been mopped and Cloroxed from time to time.

"Willow keeps the class secret," Kudzu's voice came back a little breathless.

Projecting her voice forward, Fog called, "Who does what now?" The volume and echoes surprised her, so amplified by the tunnel, and her shoulders rose to a cower but she kept striding fast.

"Willow," said Kudzu, voice soft but projected loudly enough for them to hear, "teaches how to read minds." He looked back to launch his concise sentences. The rapid pace had to be motivated by the girls' late arrival, though he hadn't said a word about their tardiness.

The cartoonish dark illuminated by magical light in its ideal form held up by Kudzu's palm went farther than any classroom Fog and Frost had been to before. So far their studies had been limited to the cask room just off the bar and entry hall, a number of re-appropriated storage rooms, cells converted into lush lounges, and high-ceilinged study halls that defied the physics of where in the available space of North Beach real estate the second story could be.

Now they crept even deeper beyond, to see how deep the labyrinth goes.

Kudzu went on, "Not every magician knows how to read minds, but you'll want to learn how to conceal your thoughts from those who can." The words echoed back down the catacomb corridor. "And given the ethical quandaries involved in mind-reading, those who have discovered the technique guard it carefully. That's why Willow keeps the mind-reading class secret. It's kind of invite-only. There's an entry test, too, like with the mirrors.

"The problem I see with Prospero's libertarian maxim," his voice got deeper in an imitation: "Your freedom ends at the tip of the next person's nose," and then returned to that of a normal sixteen-year-old boy, "is that if everyone follows it, there's no consequences for the one person who doesn't. That libertarianism only works if every magician participates. Otherwise, it's not libertarianism, it's pacifism. Some magician can violate your person — for example, by reading your thoughts — and if you adhere to Prospero's guiding star principle, you wouldn't be able to retaliate, or do a thing about it. There would be no consequences for bad behavior, since you can't arrest, shame, threaten, punish or persecute the violator.

"Which we could debate about all day and all night, say over a cask of 1939 merlot, but first things first: learn to protect yourselves."

He slammed to a stop in front of an innocuous, closed cellar door. Hands gestured wide as if presenting a gift to them.

"Step into the mirror?" said Fog.

"So to speak," said Kudzu.

A little hesitancy expressed itself in the slump of both girls' shoulders and their lack of mobilization to walk through the door. Frost said, "Any chance we can get a little hint first this time?"

"Oh, come on," said Kudzu. "The mirror passage wasn't so bad. Why should this be?"

"With the mirror," said Frost, knocking a hip to the side, "we didn't have much choice, and there was no one to ask, no one to tell us what to expect. It felt like a leap of faith thing — with a dash of 'take it or leave it.' If we wanted to get into magic school, we had no choice."

"If you want to prevent eavesdroppers from hearing your thoughts, you have no choice," said Kudzu.

"Not entirely so." Frost leveled her ice eyes on him. "We could discover the spell ourselves, maybe." But she turned back to the cellar door as if staring down a challenge. "I'll go first," she said, and without looking at her sister for acquiescence, she put her hand on the heavy metal door knocker. And knocked three times.

The knocker cracked and multitudes of echoes followed. A voice answered, but it came only in Frost's mind, for her alone to hear:

"The choice is yours, and no one can coerce a yes or no. To enter, make a magic-binding oath. A contract. Promise to never read a mind for self-gain. To read a mind only when permission is given or to prevent harm. Swear it now, and you will be bound. You will never be able to use mind-reading for selfish purpose."

Blinking as if blinded, Frost stepped back, afraid to speak anything out loud that could be taken for an answer, and looked from Kudzu's face (knowing and patiently waiting for the response) to Fog's (bewildered in the dark). Seconds passed as she came to her choice without help.

Thinking a moment restored placidity to her face, and then it didn't take long for her to follow her logic, then her gut.

"Yes," she said out loud. The cellar door opened itself, revealing an impossibly sunlit cubby hole of a classroom, and then Frost passed inside and it closed behind her.

"Woah, Kudzu!" said Fog. "What did my sister just agree to?"

Extending a hand toward the door again, Kudzu said, "Knock and find out."

She did, and heard the exact same words pass into her mind. For a moment, Fog wasn't sure whether she could speak aloud to say anything but a yes or no. Would reasoning or questioning be taken as a refusal?

Then she couldn't control the words coming out of her mouth. "Wouldn't this agreement be in violation of Prospero's 'maxim'? No one is supposed to be able to limit my freedom, or prevent me from making my own decisions. This contract would prevent me from making choices for myself. It would limit my will. I don't have a problem with respecting people's privacy, and I'm happy to agree not to pry, but this makes it sound as if once I agree, I won't be able to mind read except under very specific circumstances — which I won't get to determine for myself. I'm not even sure I understand the stipulations of the contract. What am I agreeing to?"

She took a breath. "Listen, door. I agree not to abuse the power of mind-reading. I agree not to pry into people's thoughts out of curiosity or for selfish reasons. I will only use mind-reading to help people or to prevent someone from doing harm to themselves or others — but I won't make my promise magically binding. I reserve the right to discern for myself.

"Now, that's my decision, take it or leave it."

The door opened. Inside, Frost sat in a meditative position on a cushion, her eyes closed, sunlight settling on her lids. Beyond her, large windows let in a blaze of sunlight even though they were underground. A handful of other students sat on pillows in quiet discussions or silent contemplation. It took Fog's eyes a moment to adjust, but even when they did, the windows revealed only light rather than a view of an outside scene.

A teacher greeted Fog, a young woman with red nut hair, straight and shiny, carved off inches above her shoulders. "Welcome. Call me Willow. I liked your answer."

Frost stood up from her pillow, and a few other students opened their eyes to watch as she came over, saying, "I didn't. What theatrics. There is no magic contract, dumby. That would be in violation of Prospero's guiding principle. It was only a test."

Fog's jaw dropped and Kudzu patted her on the shoulder sympathetically as he came inside.

"A test," said Willow, "that you passed with style."

"Style, and wild theatrics, and a totally unnecessary speech. I get points for time, right?"

Willow turned to Frost and smiled. "Not just for time, but for figuring out that no teacher at this school will place a magic contract spell on you in violation of your freedom.

"Then again, there are no points.

"I will require you to commit to our oath, which I have for you in writing—" two long scrolls appeared in her hands "—to read over. Sign it if you agree, and follow it according to your own discernment. I don't teach anyone who doesn't agree to our principle, which is why the test makes the student believe that their agreement will be complete and total, bound with the laws of magic. Anyone who would refuse can't be trusted not to use mind-reading for their own gain."

Thank you for reading Frost and Fog. ⭐️  Please drop a star if you can spare one, and have a lovely week!