Mirror Shards by Olga Werby

SPFBO7

Trapped Between Infinite Possible Realities Hig is a disabled kid with a loving mom, a baby sister, a distant father, and a doting uncle, Charlie. On a trip to a county fair, the family encounters a mysterious “Mirror of Wishes” booth that leads to radical, unexplained life changes, including Hig’s uncle’s abrupt disappearance and his mother’s untimely death. One of the changes is Hig’s miraculous cure—his congenital spina bifida is gone and he no longer needs a wheelchair. As Hig grows up, he continuously frets about what really happened but is too scared to actually look for answers to the mystery. Years later, Hig takes his girlfriend Klaire to another county fair. They encounter the same booth and its proprietor, Mistress Kismet. A bizarre chain of events ensues, including Uncle Charlie’s return as a very different person. They discover that Mistress Kismet’s booth is a portal that has been altering people’s realities and fates for many decades. When Hig’s younger sister disappears, Hig, Klaire, the woman who raised him after his mother died, and a friend chase the girl to a music festival where the visitors are being promised a transformational experience with visions of possible alternate realities. During a performance, Hig and his companions are all physically thrown into one of the possible parallel universes. It’s a very different place where Kismet is a religion, The Beatles released a Black Album, and Hig is again bound to a wheelchair. Yet in this version of reality, Hig’s mother lives. As their time in a new reality lingers on, they risk becoming stuck there, unable to turn back, overwhelmed by cascading consequences of changing reality. Hig is desperate to return his own timestream or find a new one where they can all be together—before it’s too late. But can any place Hig ends up ever feel like home? Does love span multiple timestreams? Does the portal offer a permanent answer to the question “What if I could have the life of my choosing?” Or is it a nightmare of neverending change?

Adult • Fantasy/Contemporary