by Daniel Fox
The wizard's hand crackled and trembled, and then turned to stone. Willuna could trace the transformation up his arm, across his chest, the noise much like the crackling of a fire but somehow much drier.
The wizard's eyes were wild. He remembered the antidote in his other hand. He brought it towards himself, trying to upend it on himself, fighting the stone that laced through his body.
Willuna lunged forward, drove her shoulder into his arm. The bottle flew out. Before the wizard could shout, his mouth was stone.
The antidote spun out, away, the liquid spinning around in the belled bottom of the bottle. "Catch it!" she screamed.
There was a scramble on the floor below, dwarves jostling a king as they all reached up. The king's fingertips touched the bottle, sent it tumbling. It bobbled and tumbled down and across sixty-nine stumpy fingers and thumbs (Egon had lost his right pinky in a slightly terrible pick-axe incident many years ago). And then there were no more hands, only stone floor.
Snow-Drop dove to the ground and the bottle finally came to a spectacularly well-cushioned stop on her chest. She grasped the bottle with both hands and smiled up. "Did I win?" she said.
Above them on the landing Willuna sighed in relief. Her eyes then turned to the window at the end of the room, and she began to cry.
***
There was a breeze nagging at him, persistent and cold. His arms squirmed around, looking for a blanket that wasn't there. That would teach him to leave the windows open overnight. Someone grabbed him by the collar and gave him a good shaking. He supposed it was his father trying to get him up, fields don't plow themselves, don't you know? He wanted to be a good boy, but couldn't quite shake himself awake.
His eyes flickered open, and he had the rather unpleasant impression that he was dangling from an incredible height over some very pointy dark rocks that thrust up from the ground far below. He let his eyes drift closed again, he must still be dreaming, he couldn't recall ever having some kind of dark and ominous mountain range in his bedroom.
The breeze cut off. His bed seemed to grow hard and uncomfortable beneath him. Voices bobbed and dipped around him like flowers sailing downstream.
"…breathing at least…"
"…bump on his head…"
"…had an army come crashing down on his noodle, bound to shake loose some brains…"
He left his parents behind and swam up back into his body, surfacing behind his eyes. They were arranged around him - the king, the girl from the crystal casket, the seven smiling dwarves, and the princess. He sat up and his brain did somersaults inside his skull.
"I'm alive?" he said.
"And a hero," said the king.
"You were hanging on a pointy bit out on the wall," said one of the dwarves.
"I think I lost my fiddle."
"Don't worry about it," said Anisim, extending a hand. "We'll get you a new one."
Anisim hoisted him to his feet. "Come," said the king, "let's make sure the magician can never find his way back to us again."
"The magician!" Idwal looked around as the others moved off to smash the mirrors, leaving him alone with Willuna.
"Don't worry," said the princess, pointing up to the newly-made statue on the ledge.
They stood there, not looking at each other. The royal and the peasant.
"So," he said.
"So," she said back.
"I guess we should…" Idwal waved at the others.
"Help with the mirrors, yes."
And so, after another moment of them both wanting to say everything but managing to say absolutely nothing, they separated and joined the others.
***
The antidote worked. They tested it on the magician, bringing him back to life. Willuna had been tempted to leave him as a statue, gazing out that one window forever, but she couldn't find that kind of cruelty in herself. Leaving the newly restored wizard under the guard of the dwarves, she joined Anisim who was finishing up with one of the last few mirrors.
He gave her a proper, handsome bow and handed over a pick-axe. "My lady," he said, "if you would be so good."
She curtsied in a most proper and pretty manner back, then took the tool and, with a mighty bellow, smashed down the mirror before them. They watched as it wobbled, the glass raining down, and then fell over on its back.
"Fun!"
Anisim smiled. "You're a vision when you're breaking things."
"I think I've found my calling. And you, good sir, maybe you'll get to hang up your sword for just a little while. I heard you cut off you father's head by the way, how did that go?"
"Go? It went off and to the left."
"Very funny. I seem to recall you saying you'd like to make something rather than merely destroying. Do you have any ideas?"
"Painting is out, that's for sure." He turned and looked back over his shoulder. Snow-Drop was at one of the other mirrors, waving a sledgehammer. She was of course holding the wrong end, knocking the handle against the glass. "I thought I might make some babies." He turned to her. "I can't explain it, but-"
"She's lovely. Ankles are a bit thick if you ask me, but… A peasant? What will people think?"
Anisim thought for a moment, his ruggedly handsome brow frowning down. "You know," he said, "I think they'll think it's love."
"And what about me?" said Willuna. "You and I, we were always supposed to be together."
"Is that what you really want?" asked Anisim. He grinned at her and nodded over at the farmer.
"Him? He's not… I mean, he can't really… He's just… Stop grinning at me!" Willuna stomped her little foot. "Go away and make your babies!"
"I think I just might. But first, there's apparently a very evil witch running loose in the world that I would like to have some words with." Smiling at her, Anisim bowed his way away. He turned and walked over to Snow-Drop.
Willuna watched Snow-Drop point up at the mirror she was trying to destroy. She pointed a beautiful finger up at the glass. "That's a really big mirror," she said in that breathless way of talking she had.
"Stupid, stupid babies," Willuna muttered to herself.
Only one mirror remained. The others gathered around it, passed through. Willuna stood before it, waiting for the farmer to approach. "Oh farmer," she said.
"Yeah?"
"'Yeah?' That's an awfully informal way to address your queen."
"You're not queen yet." Idwal waggled the bottle of antidote.
The magician was coming down the stairs from the landing, dragging his right foot behind him. He'd stayed up out of sight for the most part, worried that a peep out of him might cancel out the princess' mercy. But now he was hellowing, waving an arm as he made his slow way down all those stone steps. "Well!" he called out. "It has been a day, hasn't it? Lessons learned, faux pas forgiven, errors erased? It's just, my foot you see." He raised the hem of his robe to show that he hadn't received quite enough of the antidote, that one foot still remained as stone.
Willuna ignored him. She saw only the farmer with his simple clothes and his ever-sheepish expression. She tilted her head one way, the other, appraising him, watched him blush under the scrutiny.
She pointed at the magician. "You," she commanded, "close your eyes."
"Right you are," replied the wizard, "only too glad to help."
She pointed at the farmer. "You," she requested, "close your eyes too."
He did, without question, trusting her completely. Before she could convince herself otherwise she rushed forward and kissed him, quick, a hummingbird's peck.
His eyes snapped open. "But… but… but I'm just a-"
"Yes."
"And you're a-"
"That's right. And a princess expects that when she kisses someone, he kiss her right back."
And so he did.
Then, hand in hand, they passed through the last mirror, back to the land of the Wolves. And as they went through, their free hands brushed the wood frame of the mirror. It teetered, it tottered, and before the
wizard even knew they were gone, it keeled over and fell against the floor.
After
So that was that. The last mirror was gone. There was water around the great dark castle, but it was full of goo and slime and not nearly clean enough to ever cast a proper reflection.
Bodolomous sat for some time on the stone steps, chin on his fist, contemplating all that he had done. He'd been powerful. He'd been rotten. He'd kidnapped royalty. He'd been the Most Evil Man Alive. And despite all that effort and all that deviousness, here he was, all alone again.
He wondered if there were enough bits lying around to construct a new minion. Seemed like a lot of effort though, especially when minions couldn't talk. They couldn't ever say nice things to him, compliment him when he was having a good hair day.
"Huh," he said. Because he now realized that that was what he had been after all along. A friend. A companion. Someone who would shut their eyes because you requested it, not because you commanded it.
He supposed the princess had found this truth too. Hadn't she also done the wrong thing, trying to transform herself outwardly in order to ensnare a man? She had done the right thing eventually, giving of herself, becoming the person who would one day be a very good queen, no matter what man she married.
The farmer seemed to have learned the same lesson. It seemed that the farmer had worked so hard at pretending to be what he was not, going so far as to set up a marriage with a woman he wasn't truly in love with because she would help complete his disguise. The farmer had managed to change too; he'd stopped avoiding the world because he thought he was supposed to; he'd fought when he'd had something worth fighting for, and had gained a princess for his troubles. Not a bad day's work, that.
"Huh," he said again. It wasn't profound by any means, but it summed things up nicely. Like the others, Bodolomous the wizard had taken a long, circuitous route to find this one thing out:
That maybe, in the end, there was no such thing as a shortcut to love.
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