Eight Princesses and a Magic Mirror

by Natasha Farrant

  It was the perfect place for Princess to run to when everything went wrong.

  Princess.

  Some said the name started with her dad, René, shouting, “Where’s my baby princess?” when he came in from work off the trains. Others said it was because of Zahra, who was a tailor and dressed her from the start in bright homemade dresses, which caused Grandma Lisbeth to coo, whenever she saw her, “My, oh, my, isn’t she just like a little princess?” However it started, the name spread. By her first birthday, everyone in the tower called her Princess, and because she was best friends with Stan’s daughter, Katy, and the Batas’ daughter, Safiye, and Khadija’s son, Karim, when they all went to nursery together, everyone there called her Princess too, even the teachers. The same happened at primary school.

  As the name stuck, so did the clothes.

  Zahra taught her daughter to sew, and as she grew up Princess’s favorite thing in the whole world was to make new clothes out of hand-me-downs.

  “It feels friendlier like this,” she explained, when Zahra offered to buy her new fabric. “Like being wrapped in stories.”

  She made a flowery orange-and-green top out of a shawl of Senhora Bel’s that made her feel like a bird of paradise, and she unraveled and reknitted a purple sweater of Ian’s into a trailing scarf that made her feel like a film star. Best of all, she cut a pink summer dress from an old dressing gown of Grandma Lisbeth’s, with a boat neckline and skirts filled out with layers of tulle from Katy’s old ballet tutus. That one made her feel as if she was Queen of the World.

  The clothes were colorful and strange, but no one laughed at her or said how odd she looked because, well, she didn’t. She looked like Princess, and that was a wonderful thing.

  But then, in the summer between primary and secondary school, everything changed.

  It was supposed to be like every summer, the four of them together—Princess, Katy, Safiye, and Karim. They were going to build a treehouse. Stan was going to take them camping, Zahra and René to the sea. But then the Batas sent Safiye to her grandparents, far away in a different country, and Karim went skateboard mad, and Katy made a new friend at her ballet class called Melody.

  Melody didn’t live in a tower block but in a big house near the new shopping mall. She didn’t like treehouses, or camping, and she only liked the beach if she had to travel on a plane to get there, but Katy thought she was the best thing ever. All she could talk about was Melody’s clothes and Melody’s phone and Melody’s new haircut, until one day, with an embarrassed laugh, she told Princess, “Melody says you can’t dress like that now that we’re going to secondary school.” Princess asked what Katy meant, and Katy in tears said Melody thought Princess was a show-off, and please couldn’t she dress normally so they could all be friends? And Princess shouted, “Oh, why don’t you just marry Melody if you think she’s so amazing?”

  Grandma Lisbeth was picking slugs one by one out of a strawberry bed when Princess stormed into the Horace B, kicked the chestnut tree, and burst into tears.

  “Someone’s in a mood,” said Grandma Lisbeth.

  “I hate stupid ballet!” Princess sobbed. “Also, should I change my clothes?”

  “Help me with these slugs,” said Grandma Lisbeth. “Then we can eat some strawberries.”

  And so the garden kept on giving.

  People come and people go, but plants and trees stay true. All through the first three weeks of the summer holiday, Princess worked in the garden—planting and pruning, digging and weeding, doing whatever she was ordered to, until Grandma Lisbeth said she had never known the garden so beautiful, and her chest swelled with pride. She was helping to make something even more lovely than the tutu dress, the bird top, the movie-star scarf—something breathing and alive that would last forever. She had always loved the Horace B, but she had never before realized how special it was to how many people—like the new couple on the sixteenth floor, who did tae kwon do there before work, and Susi from the eleventh, who lay in the shade with her baby after breakfast to watch the swooping, swirling swifts, and Mr. Williams from the ninth, who sat in the bower in his wheelchair after lunch to do the crossword.

  A month to the day after her argument with Katy, in the summer when everything changed, Princess was drinking tea with Grandma Lisbeth on their favorite bench and thinking about how, although she still missed her friends, it didn’t hurt as much.

  “You’re right,” she said. “The garden does look after people. It’s like a perfect world, where everyone gets what they need.”

  “I am always right.” Grandma Lisbeth was rummaging in her gardening bag. “Oh, where did I put—aha!”

  She pressed something small and round into Princess’s hand. “A present for you—a mirror! So next time someone tells you to change, you can look at yourself and remember that you are wonderful!”

  “I . . . ” Princess didn’t know what to say. The mirror was gold and not very shiny, a bit bashed and obviously very old. She traced her finger along the flower engravings on its casing and felt a sudden rush of love—for it, for Grandma Lisbeth, for the garden. “Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

  “Ah, it’s only an old thing from a yard sale!” said Grandma Lisbeth, but she looked pleased. “Now, who is this fellow, do you think, sauntering up so important in a suit and tie on this lovely hot day? Look, Princess, he’s nailing a notice to the gate—go and see what it says.”

  Princess got up to look, and her blood froze as she read.

  The council had noticed the garden at last and were planning to turn it into a parking garage for the new shopping mall.

  All the neighbors crammed into Princess’s flat, everyone talking at once.

  “They can’t steal my Horace’s garden!” cried Grandma Lisbeth. “I won’t let them!”

  “They’re not stealing,” sighed René. “That’s the problem. It’s their land. They can do whatever they want with it.”

  “We must be able to stop them!” cried Princess.

  “You can never stop cities when money is involved,” hissed Senhora Bel.

  “Then we’ll make money too!” insisted Princess. “We can fundraise, like we did at school when we needed new books for the library. We can bake cakes. I can make things.”

  “Oh, Princess!” sighed Zahra. “This is bigger than books and baking or making baby dresses. We need millions. . . . ”

  “We have to try, at least!”

  “Princess, please.”

  “I can’t believe you’re giving up!”

  Princess ran out of the room before they could see her cry, then tumbled all the way down the stairs, through the back door, and past the bins to where the Horace B lay, casting long shadows in the evening light. Suddenly, she wished the others were with her. But Safiye was still away, and Karim was off skateboarding, and Katy was somewhere with Melody. . . . Her chest tightened. She longed to go into the garden but it hurt too much to imagine it not being there. Instead, she turned her back on it and started walking. She didn’t stop until she reached the station where the music pulled her in.

  At first Princess couldn’t believe her eyes.

  An old homeless woman with matted white hair, dressed in rags shiny with age, and with newspapers tied around her feet, sat at an abandoned piano by the ticket barrier, swaying as she played.

  A train came in. Passengers appeared on the steps from the platform and walked past without even looking. Was Princess dreaming? She stepped closer and gagged. Not dreaming, no. The old woman stank.

  But the music . . .

  The music was slow and soft and made her feel sad, but in a good way. Not the awful, angry sadness she had felt after fighting with Katy—more like the sadness at the end of a good story.

  The tempo changed. Now the music was light and bubbling, and Princess closed her eyes as her heart rose with the notes, out of the station to dance with the swifts. . . .

  She smiled.

  “That’s better,” croaked a voice. The old woman had stoppe
d playing and was watching her. “Nice threads.”

  Princess looked down at her gardening outfit, a bright yellow, flower-patterned jumpsuit, cut down from a sari once owned by Mrs. Reddy from the second floor.

  “You don’t think it’s a bit show-offy?”

  “And what is wrong with show-offy, may I ask? A lot of good it would do the world if no one ever showed off! Imagine if I played like this”—the old woman tapped out a few timid notes—“instead of the way I do! I should never get paid!”

  She stared pointedly at a basket on top of the piano, filled to the brim with coins.

  Princess frowned. How, when not a single passenger had stopped to listen, was the basket full?

  She rummaged in a pocket and emptied all the money she had into the basket.

  The old woman sniffed. Without much hope, Princess delved into another pocket.

  Oh.

  Very quickly, before she could change her mind, she added her new mirror to the coins.

  “Well!” For a moment, as the old woman stared, it seemed to Princess that she didn’t look quite so old, or dirty, or that she even smelled so bad. “Well, well, well.”

  “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you’re thinking!”

  “Oh, I know you didn’t!” the old woman said. “Things like this can’t be stolen. The universe will bless you for this, my dear. Goodness, is that the time?”

  “Excuse me?” Princess glanced at the station clock.

  When she looked back again, the old woman was gone.

  From then on, things got strange.

  Katy and Karim were waiting for Princess by the entrance to the garden, both looking glum.

  “I told Melody about the Horace B!” Katy wailed, her face blotchy from crying. “And she laughed! She’s horrible, Princess! Not like a real friend at all!”

  “My board smashed,” Karim grumbled. “And I can’t afford another one.”

  Katy’s phone pinged. “Safiye’s coming home! Tomorrow! Oh, there’s another message, I missed it, at seven-thirty—she says she’s homesick . . . ” Katy frowned. “Seven-thirty. That’s when I left Melody’s . . . ”

  “It’s the time I fell off my board,” said Karim.

  Princess’s heart missed a beat.

  Seven-thirty—the time on the station clock when the old woman disappeared.

  “How strange,” Katy said. “But, oh, how good that we’ll be together again! Everything back to normal.”

  She hugged Princess. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was horrible. I love you.”

  “I’m sorry too,” said Karim. “I mean, I don’t think I was horrible. But I’m sorry I haven’t been around.”

  Together, they went into the garden and lay on the grass in the darkening twilight.

  Everything back to normal, thought Princess. Except it wasn’t, was it? Because the notice was still there, nailed to the gate.

  And she had thought a garden could last forever!

  The liquid-gold notes of a bird spilled into the air, and that was strange too because she had never heard it before.

  “It’s like music,” sighed Karim, and when had Karim ever noticed a bird?

  “Like magic,” breathed Katy. “Like magic music.”

  Princess’s idea shot through her like a lightning bolt.

  She knew exactly what to do to save the garden.

  “You want to find an old homeless woman and ask her to play in a concert?” Katy’s eyes couldn’t have been any wider.

  I think it’s a lovely idea, wrote Safiye when they messaged her. But how?

  “We need millions,” said Karim. “And also a piano. And a concert hall.”

  “There’s a piano at the station,” said Princess.

  “But, Princess, you can’t,” said Katy. “We’re children. Grown-ups never pay attention to us.”

  Princess jumped to her feet and smoothed down her jumpsuit.

  “I love you too, Katy,” she said. “But you really, really have to stop telling me what I can’t do. Will you help, or will I do this alone? Because I am not giving up without a fight!”

  “I’ll help!” Karim punched the air. “Seeing as I can’t skateboard.”

  “Katy?”

  A tiny nod. Princess hugged her.

  “We’ll start first thing tomorrow.”

  But the old woman had disappeared.

  The four friends looked for her everywhere. In shop doorways and alleyways, on park benches and under bridges, in churches and hostels and hospitals. They took turns to keep watch at the station.

  She was nowhere to be found, and meanwhile the builders had arrived. Men in hard hats marched around the Horace B, measuring out the ground in strips of orange plastic. They circled the old chestnut tree, pointing at which branches to bring down first.

  The children resisted the urge to throw things at them from the tower block.

  On the day before the diggers were due to start, when all hope seemed lost, the old woman turned up exactly where they needed her, at the piano in the station, dirtier and smellier than ever.

  “There you are!” she said to Princess. “I did wonder when you would turn up.”

  “When I would turn up?”

  The old woman’s fingers drifted lazily over the keys.

  “I believe you need my help?”

  “How do you—”

  “Six o’clock, I think. That’s when it’s busiest around here, and I’ve already cleared it with the station manager. You’ll need chairs, to make it feel like a real concert. And bunting—I adore bunting! Mainly, though, you will need an audience, so I suggest you run along and spread the word as quickly as possible.”

  “If you knew we needed you, why didn’t you turn up sooner?” Katy had been staring at the old woman as if she wasn’t sure whether to pinch her nose or stamp her foot. “The builders are starting tomorrow!”

  “Oh, the universe save us from disbelievers!” For a brief moment, the old woman looked immensely tall and rather scary.

  “So you’ll play?” Princess asked.

  “Naturally.” The old woman inclined her head, like a queen. “I owe you a great debt. As show-offy as you can today, Princess, while you spread the word! The pink tulle, I think—you have to show you mean business!”

  “What do you mean, a great debt? And how do you know my name? And that I have a pink—”

  But the old woman was playing again and ignored her.

  All day, the four friends ran backward and forward from home to the station, bringing chairs and benches, spreading news of the concert. Senhora Bel provided multicolored bunting. Grandma Lisbeth cut a bunch of flowers from the garden, saying, “I prefer flowers in the ground where they belong, but this will be like having my Horace with me.”

  And the afternoon passed, and little by little the station was transformed.

  As the time of the concert drew near, Princess began to feel sick.

  “What if nobody comes?”

  “Of course people will come,” said Safiye.

  “We need millions.”

  Katy squeezed her hand but said nothing.

  Millions felt like an awful lot.

  Five o’clock came and Princess’s heart thumped as she changed into her pink dress . . . five-fifteen and they headed for the station . . . five-thirty, and people started to arrive.

  Five-forty-five and Princess’s heart thumped even louder as the crowd swelled.

  Five-fifty-five, and she couldn’t keep still.

  “Where is she?”

  “She’ll come!” said Safiye uncertainly.

  “She owes you a debt,” said Karim, but none of them had a clue what that meant.

  Six o’clock came.

  Princess’s stomach twisted into knots.

  Then there was a smell . . . the crowd muttered in surprise as the old lady shuffled in . . . and the music started.

  None of the hundreds of people who were there that evening could quite remember next day what had happened.
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br />   There had been a concert of sorts at the station, and a pianist—an old woman, some said, though others claimed that she was young. And the music! On that they all agreed. The most joyful music you ever heard—like birdsong, or the rustling of leaves, like wind chimes and the hum of bees. Every person who heard it imagined themselves in a garden, with the cares of the city lifted from their shoulders.

  Afterward, someone had cried—a girl in a pink dress, some said, though others claimed she was a princess. Something to do with ticket sales, and millions, and there not being enough, even though the station was packed, with passengers crowding the platforms and people listening all the way down the street. But the truly astonishing thing was what happened when people from the tower blocks along the railway line said they wanted gardens like the Horace B.

  “Imagine!” they said. “Gardens, gardens, gardens, right to the heart of the city!”

  And the council official responsible for parking garages sighed, “Imagine!”

  And then a builder called Stan said he would dig them, and a kind bossy elderly lady said she would oversee the planting, and the council official shouted, “I say NO to parking garages!” then produced a contract from her briefcase, ripped it in half, and threw it on the floor and danced on it. And when everyone else understood that the Horace B was saved, and that many more gardens were to be planted, they danced too, including the girl in pink who was perhaps also a princess.

  No one quite knew what happened to the pianist. Some said she went up to the platform to catch a train. Others that she walked into the street. One boy swore that he saw the air around her shimmer and that a tall woman with a small gold object in her hand took her place before disappearing into thin air.

  But none of the grown-ups listened to him, because what do children know?