0:00 The official story is that the figures atop the Palace of Fine Arts are maidens, contemplating the impermanence of beauty.0:10 Last week on Waverly Place, Admin, we found a different kind of magic in the scent of drying herbs.0:19 Tonight, it’s in the tears of statues.0:23 I’ve always felt they weren’t just contemplating.0:27 I felt they were watching.0:29 And so I am here, long after the last tourist has gone, sitting on the cold stone edge of the lagoon.0:39 The air is thick with the smell of salt and eucalyptus, and the only sounds are the distant hum of traffic on Doyle Drive and the occasional, lonely cry of a night heron.0:54 The great rotunda glows across the water, a perfect, impossible gold.1:00 Its reflection is laid out on the black water like a second, sunken palace.1:07 But tonight, something is… wrong.1:10 A breeze ghosts across my face, sending a shiver through my jacket, but the reflection on the water remains absolutely, preternaturally still.1:22 Not a single ripple.1:24 The ecosystem is quiet.1:26 Too quiet.1:27 A swan, a real one, glides from the reeds, a slash of white against the dark.1:34 It paddles across the reflected dome, but its own image is… missing.1:40 The water beneath it is just a black mirror.1:44 My heart begins to beat a little faster.1:48 This is the behavior I’ve been waiting for, the shift in the pattern.1:54 And then I see it.1:55 On the reflected path that circles the reflected dome, a figure is walking.2:02 It’s just a silhouette, but it moves with a strange, fluid grace.2:08 I look up, across the lagoon to the real path.2:12 It’s empty.2:13 There is NO ONE there.2:15 Yet in the water, the figure keeps walking, closer and closer to the edge of the reflected shore.2:24 I feel a pull, a strange magnetism drawing me toward the water’s surface.2:30 The weeping ladies on the colonnade… they don’t look sad anymore.2:36 They look tense.2:38 They look like they are holding something back with all their might.2:44 I have to know.2:45 I have to understand the mechanism.2:48 I kneel down, my knees cracking on the stone, and reach out a trembling hand.2:55 The air grows cold around my fingers as they approach the lagoon.3:01 I expect the icy shock of water, the breaking of the surface tension.3:07 Instead… my fingertip meets something smooth, and cool, and utterly solid.3:14 Like polished obsidian.3:16 The surface gives no resistance, but it does not break.3:21 It’s a barrier.3:22 A membrane between worlds.3:24 And in the reflection, the walking figure has stopped.3:29 It turns its head slowly, impossibly, and looks directly up at me.3:35 It isn’t a reflection of a person.3:38 It is a thing of the reflection.3:41 And it is smiling.3:43 I snatch my hand back as if burned.3:46 The spell is broken.3:48 The water shatters into a thousand ripples, the wind breathes again, and the reflection of the golden dome wobbles back into a familiar, watery shape.4:01 The figure is gone.4:03 I am just a person, alone, at a pond in the middle of the night.4:09 But I know what I felt.4:11 The weeping ladies weren’t weeping from sorrow.4:15 They were weeping from the strain of holding the two worlds apart, of keeping the reflection from spilling out into the real.4:26 The Palace isn’t a ruin from a forgotten past.4:30 It’s a lock.4:31 And tonight, I found the keyhole, waiting patiently in the dark water.
