Warped (Maurissa Guibord)

the outline of the mirror. There was nothing there.
    "This is insane," she murmured, and reached toward the light switch.
    Just then, Tessa saw a faint flash in one corner of the mirror. She turned to look behind her at the high window to make sure there was nothing reflecting in from outside. A headlight from a passing car, maybe. When she looked back at the mirror, she jumped.
    The mirror glowed with a luminous, neon blue light. Three hooded figures stood before her. They were huddled together, and though Tessa couldn't see their faces, she had the distinct impression that they were staring at her.
    "Definitely a mortal," said one of them from the shadowy depths beneath its black hood. Long white fingers stuck out from the ends of its sleeves and made strange little twitching movements.
    "Just a girl," said the second, whose dark-skinned hands were calmly folded together.
    "Who are you?" Tessa whispered to the faceless shapes. "Did Gray Lily send you? Is one of you Gray Lily?"
    "You see?" hissed the first to the other two. "Nothing but senseless questions. We are the three sisters of Fate."
    There were several moments of eerie silence during which the three figures regarded her, tilting their hooded heads slightly. Tessa tensed. She had the creepiest sensation they were ... measuring her.
    "Return the threads," said one of them in a horrible deep voice. It sounded like something heavy rolling in the bottom of an oil drum. Tessa thought it was the ghostly shroud on the end who spoke, who stood taller than the other two.
    "What?" she said faintly.
    "Did you not receive our first message?" the resonant voice demanded. "Return the threads."
    "Message?" Tessa repeated. "That was you?"
    The voice boomed again, "Return the threads!" and the mirror rattled against the bathroom door with the reverberations.
    "I--I don't have any thread," Tessa managed to stammer. "Not anymore, I mean."
    "Treachery!" screeched the first cloaked figure. She raised a long, trembling finger and pointed it at Tessa. "Who has taught you the weaving of Wyrd?"
    Tessa cringed as the skinny digit appeared to come out of the mirror to jab at her. "I don't know anything about weaving," Tessa squeaked. She clutched her robe tighter. "Or weird," she added, repeating the word the creature had used. "I mean, this is weird. Of course. But I don't weave. I can barely make a braid. Ask anybody. I pulled on one of the threads from the tapestry and Will came out and--"
    "Silence!"
    Okay, stop babbling to the angry ladies . Though it was hard to imagine the spectral forms as female, they'd called themselves sisters.
    "Alive?" said the deep-voiced one. She raised an enormous pair of scissors in her large, corpse-white hand.
    An unpleasant tickle went down Tessa's spine as she stared at the blades. "Huh?" She just couldn't seem to keep up with the conversation.
    "The boy. The thread," the dark form in the mirror said tersely. "You said he came out of a tapestry. He came out alive? "
    "Yes."
    "Liar!" The huge cloaked figure somehow made the word sound like a curse. "That's impossible."
    "Well, you might want to check on that," said Tessa. Her throat felt dry as chalk, but a little nip of anger strengthened her voice. She wasn't a liar. "I was there. It happened."
    Gravel Voice, who, Tessa thought, seemed to be the leader, turned to the others. "I told you. The loss of the threads has created a hole in the Wyrd. She's fashioned a portal, or perhaps another dimension, with this tapestry , as she calls it. Who is to say he couldn't pass through?" The others nodded.
    "Who are you?" Tessa asked again. She pushed back her damp hair. The air in the bathroom had cooled and the strands felt like cold, wet fingers against her neck.
    "We are the Norn, as you know very well, mortal," said Gravel Voice, "since you have been meddling in our realm." She pointed to the smallest of the three, the one with the twitchy fingers. "This is Spyn," she said. "And this is Weavyr." She indicated the hooded figure with the dark hands that stood quietly in the middle. "And I am called Scytha." With this she raised the long-bladed scissors. A sharp white light shot from the blades and lanced out of the mirror like a laser beam. Tessa jerked her eyes away and raised an arm to shield herself. For a moment the bathroom was lit up like a stage with the white-hot glow. "You know the power we hold," thundered Scytha. "Give back the life threads you have stolen or we will wield that power. Your world