by John Shirley
“Come on, little witch-child, don’t be a fool,” Alice mumbled, tracing the mirror’s edge a third time. “It’s not that difficult, child.”
The girl shook her head, as if to directly counter Alice’s comments, and Alice felt her mouth tense and her anger find a home in her brow. She forced a smile and reminded herself to be patient, that she’d waited for more than a thousand years and a few more minutes or hours or even days more couldn’t hurt her further.
Alice stepped back and settled into her chair. How, she wondered, just how could she get through to this stupid girl and her hideous helpers?
“Ulysses!” she yelled.
In the chamber she waited for the thumping of padded paws. She was not disappointed—nor was she often—and within moments the armored white rabbit appeared in the doorway.
“Yes, my queen?”
“I need parchment.”
“Yes, my queen.” The rabbit stood up straight, as straight as a creature of his sort could, and puffed out his chest, pushing the armor out full and gleaming. “May I ask why?”
Alice crossed her legs and puffed out a loud, heavy breath. “This fool of a girl is as dumb as an ox, and can’t understand that I need her to read the runes around the mirror’s frame.”
“Have you asked her nicely?”
Alice cut her eyes at the rabbit, one of the few of her subjects who could get away with such sarcasm. “That’s why I need the tablet.” She motioned the creature forward and when he was close enough she rubbed his head. “She can’t hear me through the portal. I’m going to write her a message, you brainless ball of fur.”
Ulysses pulled away and straightened his fur. “You know I despise that,” he said. “I am the Captain of the Queen’s Guard, not a pet for you to coddle and coo.”
Alice laughed. “And I’m the queen you guard, Captain Ulysses, and the one who named you and set you apart from the rest of the forest creatures who grew dumb when the former Queen’s magic died with her. If I wish to cuddle and coo you, believe me, I shall.”
Undaunted, the rabbit said, “I will return with a tablet, Alice.”
Alice smiled, sincerely for her friend, unlike the forced and irritated smile at the dunce of a princess she was dependent upon. “Thank you.” She petted his head again, just once, and tussled the fur there. “And I promise to reward you greatly when I escape from this world and reclaim my own homeland.”
“And in the meantime, my queen?”
She leaned back in her chair again, uncrossed her legs, then pushed up against the oak arms until she was standing. “In the meantime, my friend, I will return to the mirror and try to educate this illiterate princess.”
“By your leave, Alice.”
“Do they not educate young women any longer in my homeland?” she mumbled as she took her place in front of the mirror and watched as the girl and her darshve companions did the same to her.
Third Movement—In a Land of War
Leader gazed at the fair-haired girl, learning her face, remembering it and comparing it to all the faces he had made himself remember during his life. There was no match, but there were faces like it, faces that were etched in lines of sadness and colored with despair. Faces that time had painted with pain and outlined in anger.
But there was also something of the childish nature in her stare. Something like a human infant’s smoothness. Something that reminded him of a young hart taking its first steps.
There was a deepness to the face. But a youngness as well. An infant face with a world of age behind it. The pieces did not fit. Young faces were filled with young life. Old faces were the only ones full of oldness.
The fair-haired girl was not normal. She was….
He struggled for the word. He hadn’t needed to speak it or even remember it for a long, long time. A word from the old language, one he wasn’t able to translate into any human tongue.
“Atyanshvar,” he said, surprising even himself when he spoke the word aloud.
“At yon what?” asked Snow.
“Atyanshvar,” he whispered this time.
His brothers stepped back from the mirror. They squatted on their knees around Snow and nodded. “Atyanshvar,” they said together, like a prayer.
“I don’t understand,” Snow said.
The girl in the mirror, the one who was atyanshvar, the only he’d ever seen, the only seen in the last seven generations of his people, the girl stared at them as though she were trying to understand them.
“What did you say, Squash?” she asked.
“It’s a word from the old tongue. It means….” He pulled on his beard. “There is no human word for it. I’m sorry.”
“This thing, is it the mirror?”
He paused for a moment. If he let Snow know the truth, she would be unduly worried. But if he kept it from her, she could be in peril unaware. In the end, he simply shook his head and said, “The girl inside the mirror.”
Let her at least know what was transpiring. If he truly loved her, he should; he would not let her face fate unprepared.
“She is old, but she is young,” he said.
“Atyanshvar,” his brothers nodded and said again.
“Nonsense,” said Snow. “You dwarves have gone soft from all the dust in the mine,” she said with a laugh, then crouched in front of the mirror and touched its face again. “She’s barely beyond a child. Can’t you see well? I am her elder by four or five years.”
Leader came forward to stand beside her, his gray-mossed head level with her shoulder. He said nothing.
“I wonder if it’s a door, or if it’s just a window.”
The girl inside the mirror heaved her small chest and crossed her arms. She smiled, but the corners of her mouth crawled down.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“Pish,” Snow said. “I bet she’s sad.”
“What makes you think that?”
“All girls who are alone are sad, Squash. I’ve seen only that rabbit with her, and I believe she is trapped somewhere. Maybe not inside the mirror exactly, but somewhere, and if we can see her, we need to help her.”
Leader let his frown curl upward to a flat line but said nothing.
“Don’t want to be a hero?” Snow asked.
Immediately Redbeard, Newbeard, and Tallest surrounded her, pushing him aside. “We want to be a hero, Snow,” they clamored. “We'll be your hero.”
She stroked their beards, each in turn, and kissed each on the forehead. He noticed the askew glance Redbeard and Newbeard shared, and he knew then that Newbeard was maturing into an adult of the species.
“The rabbit returns,” he said, stepping between the young one and Snow.
“What’s he doing?”
“Watch.”
And they did. The white rabbit hopped to the girl and handed her several pieces of parchment, then stepped away and waited at her side. The girl all but ripped a quill from a desk beside her and shoved it into a small vial of black liquid. She opened the book beside her and fanned through page after page until she stopped. Then she smiled, nodded, and finally began to write, stopping only to check the book or look up at them through the glass.
Her eyes, he thought. They didn’t echo the smile that settled in her lips.
After a few moments, the girl tossed the quill onto the desk and looked over the parchment. She nodded twice. Shook her head twice. Then nodded thrice more.
She rose from her chair so quickly that even he leaped back a few steps from the mirror along with Snow and his brothers. Shoving the parchment against the glass, she blocked her own image from their sight.
“It’s some kind of writing,” said Snow. “But I don’t recognize it.”
Leader stepped forward. “It’s one of the old human tongues. From the time before my father’s father’s father.”
“Can you read it?”
“I can,” he said.
“And?” she asked, the lovely skin on her nose and lips scant inches from his own stubbed fig of a face.
Before he could answer, the parchment was jerked away and the girl fell to her knees. She lurched forward, facing the glass, her hands hitting the stone floor of her chamber hard. She screamed silently but kept her gaze locked onto Snow’s face.
Snow, of course, seemed unable to turn away, her own stare captured by that of the screaming fair-haired girl.
Without warning, the girl vomited up flame and bile, her hair falling forward to soak in the mess.
Snow screamed and as Leader and his brothers watched, her legs gave way and she hit the ground in an awkward knot of legs and arms.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” The words broke the air between Alice and the glass, swirling in the space above her in colors she hadn’t known in her birth world on the other side of the mirror.
She looked up, feeling more animal than human on her hands and knees, hoping for another glimpse of the dark-haired princess.
“No!” she screamed. “No! No! No!”
Her stomach lurched and the pain and fire climbed up her throat and found its way to the floor a second time.
“I was so close! So damned close!”
As she cried, the mirror’s image faded and the view of the princess and the darshve was replaced by that of a beautiful woman with golden curls and a bosom that heaved with every breath. She sat in a large antechamber, surrounded by male slaves of several races, wearing only loin cloths, collars, and bracelets of iron. More cattle than men. Fit only for their queen’s whims, whether to love or destroy.
Alice fought the image and tried to focus her thoughts on the princess, but the more she fought it the more her stomach emptied the impossible concoction of fire and bile onto the floor.
After thrice more ejaculating the painful mixture, she finally submitted to the witch’s will—"For the last time, bitch!” she said through gritted teeth—and the anguish at last stopped.
As it did, the witch’s room grew clear and focused in the glass.
“—est of them all?” she asked again.
Alice steeled her will to stand and face the woman.
“Well?” the woman said.
“You are very beautiful, Queen of the Kingdom That Once Was Mine. But there lives one whose beauty surpasses even yours, one whose natural comeliness outshines all that the dark arts have done to augment your loveliness.”
“You lie!” the woman yelled and jumped up from her stool. She lifted it and threw it at Alice, but it merely bounced harmlessly away from the glass.
“One day you’ll lose your temper and break the curse that traps me here, witch.”
The Queen turned toward her slaves, sweeping her hand, nails extending like claws, in one wide motion. “Get out!” she spit. “Get out now!”
The men exited as one, none apparently willing to remain in the woman’s company.
“I cannot lie, Queen of All My Family Used to Rule.” Alice pushed her lips into a grin. “You know as well as I do, witch, that the curse with which you bespelled me will not permit me to lie to you.”
“Cease your prattle, girl.”
“I’m almost your equal in years, Stepmother.” The word tasted like poison as she spoke it. But it went out like poison too, as was her intention.
“Enough,” the golden beauty said. “Who is this wench who rivals me?”
Alice leaned in so close to the glass that she could almost kiss it. The Queen did the same, and the two held the silence for a moment.
“Well?”
And now it begins again, Alice thought. She laughed before answering.
“I command you to tell me, Stepdaughter.”
Alice smiled again. “You know it is the daughter of my stepmother’s fifteenth husband. You know in your heart that the beauty of your stepdaughter Snow will never fall second to your own.”
The witch shrieked. Alice nodded and watched the golden curls fade away.
Snow pulled the cabinet from the wall, careful not to dump the clay dishes and bowls crashing onto the floor, and looked behind it. The mirror was nowhere to be found. The darling little troubles had hidden it away from her after she fainted.
She had awakened from the heat of the sun on her face. Her skin itched and had been pulled tight across her forehead and eyes, burning slightly to the touch.
The sun.
It had been too high for morning.
No, morning had come and gone, and the little men with it. She was alone in the cave and had little time to discover the secret of the girl in the mirror.
So she ignored the cleaning and instead searched throughout the cave for the mirror. She had to see the girl again. To help her. To learn what the words on the parchment had meant. With any luck, to set her free.
She could not let the girl go through torment like that she had seen, not again.
She was in exile, yes. Presumed dead, yes. Living in a cave, yes. Penniless, yes. But she was still a princess, damn it. And she would act like it.
The furnishings lay across the stone floor overturned and in piles as she examined every nook and hidey-hole large enough to fit the mirror. She even checked the floor for loose stones that could hide crannies and caverns below.
Nothing. Not inside anyway.
It had to be in the shed, then.
So out she went.
She took out the hammers and axes, then the picks and shovels, buckets both with holes and without, animal skins too numerous to remember how many and lay them on the ground outside between the shed and the garden. Then came bags of seed and watering baskets, followed by wineskins and mostly empty barrels of homemade ale.
At last the small structure was empty.
But there was still no sign of the mirror.
Had Squash taken it back to the mine?
“Damn him! He had no right.” She kicked the wall. “Ouch!” she cried when her toe stubbed the stone wall, and she lost her balance and fell on her behind.
However, instead of hitting hard ground, she landed in soft, freshly shoveled dirt.
“Those sneaky little devils,” she said aloud, and pushed herself off the ground.
She walked outside, crouching to avoid hitting her head on the way out, then returned with one of the shovels, really more a spade for her, but it accomplished the task. On hands and knees, never minding the filth staining her dress, she dug until she reached a layer of straw and twigs. Tearing away the nest-like cover, she soon caught a tiny reflection of her dirty dress.
“Those darling, sneaky rascals,” she said.
Inspired by her success, she tore into the rest of the straw and made a hole large enough to pull out the mirror. Heavier than she expected, she struggled to lift it, but got it high enough finally to prop it on her knees and waddle out into the yard like a duck.
The sun looked down squarely from the western sky and she knew that her time was short.
Quickening her pace, she lifted the mirror higher, aiming for her thigh and hip, but it slipped and tumbled from her hands, landing glass side down on the rocky ground.
Snow fell to her knees and cried. She had destroyed the mirror, and her only chance to help the girl trapped inside. She dropped her hands, clasping them in her lap, in the fold of her dress, and let her tears drain down the dirt and dust on her face.
She looked less a princess than a scullery maid, a cinder girl, a common household servant now.
After several minutes, however, she stopped and crawled toward the looking glass. If it wasn’t broken too completely, she might be able to fashion the pieces together again somewhat and perhaps even enough to do some remaining good for the girl inside.
When she reached it, she took a deep breath and flipped it over.
The damn thing was still intact. Not even scratched.
“It’s a magic mirror,” she chided herself.
She looked for her reflection but the dirt was so thick on the glass that she couldn’t make out more than a dull shadow of something through it. Desperate to see the gi
rl again, she gathered the hem of her dress, spit on it like she’d seen her friends do, and began to wipe it as clean as she could.
She was greeted not by her own reflection, but by the image of the blonde girl. No longer in pain, no longer coughing up fire and blood and bile. The girl simply sat in a wooden chair, gazing ahead, smiling at her.
Snow waved.
The girl returned the gesture.
“What do you want me to do?” Snow asked.
The girl shook her head.
“I don’t understand.” Snow lowered her eyes, focusing on the ground. “I want to help you, but I can’t understand you.”
The girl began to speak, but Snow couldn’t make out the words. After a few minutes, the girl wrote the symbols again on the parchment tablet as before. Snow again shook her head.
“I can’t read that. It’s too old.”
The girl yelled at her silently and threw the parchment on the floor.
Snow looked away and began to cry again.
“Don’t cry, Snow.” A hand on her shoulder, stubby and squat. Squash. “If this is the role we play in events, then we must play them as fate prescribes us.” He took Snow’s hand and helped her stand.
“You’re home early,” she said.
“We never reached the mine today. No sooner did we cross the mountain path than we saw the Queen’s army on the march. At least three hundred fighting men behind her and she rides a dragon at the helm of the battalion. We hid in the woods for hours until we were certain she had passed rather than lead her here. There’s precious little time, though, until she finds this place.”
“My stepmother’s army?”
“She is coming for you, Snow.”
Snow dropped to one knee. Squash rested his hand on her shoulder.
“The girl. She is telling you to recite the runes along the frame.”
“But I don’t know—”
“She translates them into an old human tongue from hundreds of years ago. I know it because my father’s father taught me the old tongues. But most of my kind has forgotten them.”
“So you can recite it?”
He took Snow’s hand. “No. I’m sorry. It must be read by one of royal blood.” He squeezed gently. “But I can help you recite it.”