He looked at Virginia and sighed.
Virginia glared at him. “Dream on.”
Tony grinned. That was his girl.
“You’ll see,” Wolf said.
A married couple dashed past, followed by another. Confetti was falling everywhere and people were laughing.
“Anthony,” Prince Wendell said, “my castle is over the other side of those mountains.”
Tony looked again at the mountains. They made the Alps seem small—and Tony had never really been a mountain person anyway.
“Well, we’re not going there,” Tony said. “We’re here for the mirror.”
“It’s a hundred-and-fifty miles, at most,” Prince said. “Look at the map.”
He pointed. Tony turned. He hadn’t realized that they were standing near a huge framed map of the Nine Kingdoms. It showed the green of Wendell’s Fourth Kingdom and had an arrow pointing to a spot two-thirds of the way to the northernmost section of the kingdom. With traditional Fourth Kingdom helpfulness, the arrow had the words You Are Romantically Here written in its center.
“Have we walked all that way?” Virginia asked.
“What’s this kingdom underneath all the others?” Tony asked.
“Don’t bother with that,” Prince said. “It’s the Dwarves’ Ninth Kingdom. Entirely underground. Very unsavory.”
A man dressed all in pink hurried past them, hawking perfume. As he walked along, he sprayed the scent of lilacs from a bottle. People turned toward it or toward each other, sighing heavily, as if their hearts were full of love.
At the intersection, three couples kissed. Full body kisses— lots of tongue and pawing. Tony glanced at the elderly couple and quickly turned away.
“Can’t they do that in private?” Tony asked.
“They can’t help it, Tony,” Wolf said. “Love is in the air.”
A chubby little girl dressed as Cupid skipped up to them. She had an arrow and homemade wings strapped to her back.
“Hello,” she said, “I have been looking for you all day. 1 can see love and fortune coming your way.”
“It’s slice-the-fruitcake time again.” Tony shook his head. They really did attract the crazies like bees to honey. “How much do you want?”
The girl smiled at Virginia. “Great romance and wealth before this very night is out. I can sense it in your auras.” “Yeah?” Tony asked. “Who’s going to make the money?” The girl turned to him as if she hadn’t really seen him before. “Your aura is cloudy. Just give me a couple of coins.” “It’s the old cloudy-aura routine,” Tony said.
Virginia gave her a few coins. He’d have to pull his daughter aside at some point and talk to her about giving money to panhandlers. She seemed to have a penchant for it.
“She is such a soft touch,” Tony said, putting a little
sarcasm into it. But no one else seemed to notice.
“Oh, yes, a very soft touch,’ ’ Wolf said. “Sensuous, creamy touch.”
“Thank you very much,” the girl said to Virginia. “Now,
if you look over there, you might find what you’re looking for. Good-bye.”
The girl had pointed away from the sign. Tony looked in that direction, and his jaw dropped. “That’s the pig wagon with the mirror in it, I’m sure.”
“But how did she know?” Virginia asked.
They walked over to the wagon and peered into its back. It was empty. No pigs—although the smell remained, faintly sour—no straw, and no mirror.
The farmer who had driven the wagon here—what had his mother said his name was? John?—came out of a butcher shop, counting his coins. He was so obviously from Little Lamb Village that Tony shouted at him.
“You! Where’s our mirror?”
“Yours, is it?” Farmer John had his mother’s charming smile. “I wondered what it was doing with all my pigs.”
“Where is it?” Tony asked.
John’s smile left. He looked from Tony to Virginia to Wolf. “I didn’t know it was yours, did I?”
“Where is it?” Tony could hear the edge in his voice. He tried to keep control of himself.
“You wouldn’t want it now, anyway.” John was backing toward the front of his wagon. “It’s covered in pig shit.”
“Where is it?” Virginia yelled. Tony looked at her in surprise. He thought he was overreacting.
“I don’t rightly know,” John said, staring at her. “Fellow gave me five coppers for it this morning.”
“What fellow?” Tony asked.
“Dunno,” Johnsaid. “He was just passing with a wheelbarrow full of bricky-brac. Probably came for the antiques market.”
All of them looked around, as if they could conjure the fellow up with a single glance. Instead, they saw how daunting their task was going to be. This part of town was absolutely full of antique shops and market stalls.
Tony couldn’t believe their bad luck.
“You’ll never find it now, Anthony,” the Prince said. “Let’s head for my castle instead.”
John climbed into his wagon. Tony ignored Prince Wendell and stared at the shops. What an impossible task.
“Anthony,” Wendell said.
“No,” Tony snapped. He crossed the road. He would find that mirror if it meant he had to look at every trinket in every antique shop in Kissing Town.
Wendell followed him. For a while, so did Virginia and Wolf. But they soon realized it would take them forever to find the mirror if they stayed together.
So they split up. Tony would have gone with Virginia, but Wolf couldn’t understand Wendell. So reluctantly, Tony stayed with the Prince while his daughter disappeared with the wolf.
He was liking this pairing less and less. And somehow, he felt he had nothing to say about it.
Wolf had flagged them down a buggy. It was lovely, and Virginia could tell it was usually used for courting couples. Wolf didn’t seem to mind. In fact, that could have been part of his plan.
“Wouldn’t it be quicker to walk?” Virginia asked.
Wolf didn’t answer her. Instead, he looked at the town around them. “You remember the story of Snow White, when she swallowed the poisoned apple and everybody thought she was dead? The seven dwarves brought her here and put her in a glass coffin in the hope that someone might be able to bring her back to life.”
“Here?” Virginia asked. “To this town?”
“To the top of this very hill,” Wolf said. “Prince’s grandmother.”
The horses took the buggy to the top of the hill. Wolf casually put his arm on the seat behind Virginia. She didn’t mind, even though she knew what he was doing.
“Most rulers are respected,” he said. “Some are feared or held in contempt. But Snow White—she was loved like no one you have ever known. She had magic that was just to do with being around her. If she went to a town or a house or just plain was with anyone for a while, then good things happened to that person. She was super-duper in every way.”
As the buggy crested the hill, Virginia realized they were in some sort of romantic tourist trap. Souvenir sellers hawked their wares all over, and dozens of couples were walking toward a spot not too far away.
“Glass coffins!” a souvenir man was shouting. “Get your miniature glass coffins.”
Wolf rapped on the roof of the buggy and it stopped. He got out and helped Virginia down.
A long line of couples stood in front of a stand. Virginia watched as one of the couples paid and went beyond the stand. The woman lay on a rock and closed her eyes. The young man leaned over and kissed her. There was a glass coffin and a completely cheesy theatrical background with painted birds. The couple, Virginia realized, had dressed up in costume.
While the couple posed, a sketch artist drew their faces into pre-painted scenes. It was as corny as hell, but Virginia loved it. She had never imagined a place like this.
She turned to Wolf. “Does Happy Ever After really mean ever after?”
“No, it’s just a figure of speech,” Wol
f said. “But all the Happy Ever After people get to be at least a hundred and fifty before they pop off gently in their sleep.”
“A hundred and fifty years old?” Virginia asked.
“Happy Ever After is like another life, given free, for being good.”
“Where’s Snow White now?” Virginia asked. “Is she dead?”
“Nobody knows,” Wolf said. “On her one-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday, she left her castle in just the clothes she stood up in, and took no food, and walked through the snow. She is surely dead, but where she lies now no one knows.”
Virginia stopped and sighed. Then she looked at Wolf. He seemed to have lost that edge she saw in Little Lamb Village. He had a handsomeness she hadn’t appreciated before.
Maybe it was the sight of all those couples. Maybe watching other people who were enjoying themselves made her feel better.
“I don’t know why,” Virginia said, “but I just feel so good.”
Wolf smiled. “Everyone does in the Kissing Town,” he said.
Tony felt filthy after going through seventeen different antique stores. Why didn’t those dealers clean the stuff they bought? There was enough dust in those places to build entire rooms. Prince Wendell was just as disgusted and had suggested that they try something different.
He led Tony to an auction hall. It was jammed with all sorts of things, but unlike the stuff in the antique stores, this merchandise seemed to be magic. Tony saw jars of authenticated dragon beans, golden eggs, and a gingerbread door claiming to be from the original gingerbread cottage.
But it was Lot 8 that caught Prince Wendell’s attention. Tony couldn’t see it clearly until he came up beside Wendell. Then Tony gasped.
The three Trolls who had been chasing Wendell were here. They were still gold, still stuck in their tableau. The only difference was that an identification tag hung from one finger. There were a lot of stamps on them and writing as well, making it seem as if they had been shipped through the mail.
“Not veiy attractive work, I’ll grant you.”
Tony jumped at the sound of the voice. He turned. The auctioneer was standing behind him, hands behind his back, contemplating the Trolls.
“But still full of vitality and life.” The auctioneer smiled at Tony. “Frozen Rage would grace the gardens of any fine house. Does it tickle your fancy?”
“Far from it,” Tony said. “I never want to see it again.
But have you had a mirror come in recently, about my height, black?”
The auctioneer’s eyes glazed over. Apparently Tony had just shown himself to be a cretin. The auctioneer waved a hand toward the far comer. “I seem to remember a job lot of junk over there.”
Tony and Wendell walked in that direction. The auctioneer wasn’t kidding. Piles of junk, most of it in boxes, were scattered all over the floor. More dust. Tony rolled up his sleeves and dug in.
He didn’t know how long he searched. Wendell pushed things aside with his nose. Tony was just beginning to think of giving up when he saw:
Job Lot ioi
Mirror. Unknown Origin. Needs Restoration.
Estimate 10-15 Gold Coins
“This is it,” Tony said. “This is it.”
“Don’t attract attention,” Prince Wendell said.
“Ten to fifteen crowns,” Tony said. “It’s priced really low. No one knows what it is.”
Tony glanced around. Maybe, if no one was watching, he could just carry it out of there. Then he noticed the guards near the door. They were watching him.
He pulled the mirror out of its crate and stared at it. His own image stared back at him. He reached for the secret catch.
“Don’t turn it on in here, you moron,” Prince Wendell warned. “Everyone will see.”
Wendell was right, of course. Tony turned around to look for the auctioneer. Instead, he bumped into an elderly Elf. The Elf was well dressed. He was peering down at the mirror with a monocle. Tony found himself staring at the Elf’s pointed ears.
The Elf used a silver-headed cane to tap the side of the mirror. “Mmm ... what do you think?” the Elf asked.
“Of what?” Tony asked. “Of this? Piece of garbage. Don’t waste your time.”
Tony put the mirror back.
The Elf continued to peer through his monocle. “At first, I thought it was a reproduction, Late Naked Emperor at best, but I think it’s older than that. Quite a lot older. Maybe even early Cinderellan. And quite a lot more special.”
He scraped away the black paint with his long fingernails. Gold writing gleamed beneath the ancient paint job.
“Dwarf runes,” the Elf said. “It’s almost like someone’s concealed its true origins.”
“I think it’s definitely a reproduction,” Tony said.
The Elf gave him a thin smile. “No, you don’t.”
Wendell tugged at Tony’s leg. They had to find Virginia. She was the one carrying the coins. Tony wasn’t pleased at the idea of leaving. The Elf was a little too interested in the mirror. But Tony let Wendell lead him out of the auction hall anyway.
As they walked toward the door, Tony thought he saw a familiar figure. The Huntsman? Tony shuddered. It wasn’t possible. The man had been too badly injured to make it this far.
Tony nodded once, and then headed out onto the street.
It took nearly an hour to find Virginia and Wolf. They weren’t looking for the mirror at all. They had paid some ungodly amount of money to dress in costume and have their portraits painted. Virginia was lying on a rock, and Wolf was too close to kissing her for Tony’s comfort.
So Tony said in his loudest voice, “Hey, you two! Stop clowning around. We’ve found the mirror.”
Virginia looked over at him, a bit bleary, then moved away from Wolf. She took off the costume-—it only covered her clothes—and came toward them. Wolf looked horribly disappointed, but he followed as well.
As Tony hustled them down the hill, he told them all about finding the mirror. Wendell kept them moving quickly. They got back to the auction hall in less than twenty minutes.
Tony hurried back to the far comer. The box of bric-a-brac remained, but he couldn’t find the mirror anywhere.
“It’s gone!” Tony shouted.
The auctioneer came over to see what the commotion was.
“Where’s the mirror?” Tony asked.
The auctioneer smiled his supercilious little smile. “Oh, the magic mirror, you mean? What a find. We’re all tremendously excited about it.”
He led them toward the center of the hall. There, on a pedestal, sat the mirror. Restoration experts were cleaning it, carefully scraping away the black paint and pig poop to reveal the gold leaf and delicate writing beneath. A crowd of people were watching and talking excitedly.
Tony’s heart was pounding hard as he and Virginia approached the mirror. It had a new description. Tony read it silently.
Lot 7
Very Fine Magic Mirror, Early Cinderellan Dwarf Wrought and Runed Estimate 5,000 Gold Wendells
“Five thousand?” Tony said.
“We’ll never raise that,” Virginia said.
And Tony knew that she was right.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Queen stood before her magic mirrors. She had cleaned herself off. The vision she had been granted had given her a new determination. She was ready to take what was rightfully hers.
She waved an arm and said to the mirror, “Get me the Troll King.”
“He will not speak to us,” the mirror replied.
The Queen smiled a small, private smile. “Tell him his children are dead.”
The mirror rippled and suddenly an image appeared. A burning field, smoke-inky and roiling, dominated the image. Toward the edge of the field, the Queen believed she saw heads on pikes. War drums beat in the distance, and Troll armies marched along the road, almost hidden in the smoke.
Suddenly Relish the Troll King leapt in front of the mirror. His face was streaked with soot and blood, his eyes
narrow.
“Dead!” the Troll King shouted into the mirror. “Dead?”
The Queen suppressed her smile. “They are dead unless you agree to meet me for talks.”
The Troll King head-butted his mirror, splintering it. The Queen had to take a step back from hers before she realized the splintering would not happen on her end.
“You evil pig!” he shouted.
The Queen folded her hands beneath the long sleeves of her purple gown. “Meet me at the Apple Orchard outside Little
Lamb Village at dawn tomorrow. Come alone and unarmed, or I will slit their throats.”
“If you hurt a—”
She waved a hand and cut him off. It felt good to control their conversations again. “Well, that’s that.”
She turned to the servant who cowered near the door. Someday she would get servants who didn’t cower and were still efficient. “Pack everything so no one knows we’ve been here.”
The servant nodded.
She allowed her smile to come back, contemplating her future. “We’ll leave,” she said, “when darkness falls.”
The group sat in the town square, beneath a large ancient statue of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The statue was gray and covered with pigeon poop. No one had cleaned the thing for fifty years. Tony worried about sitting so close to it.
Virginia and Wolf were too close together, and Prince Wendell lay at their feet, his head on his paws. They all looked dejected, but not as dejected as Tony felt.
He sat at the very edge of the bench, staring at the nearby newsstand. He knew Wendell had already seen the headlines: Wendell’s Disgrace: Coronation Cancelled. Looking at the words just made the dog even more depressed.
“All is lost,” Prince Wendell said for probably the fifteenth time.
“How much do we have between us?” Tony asked.
He kept hoping that they would somehow come up with the cash they needed for the mirror. If only he had found a way to buy it before searching for Virginia. It was amazing how much difference an hour made.
Virginia counted their combined wealth. She put the coins in different stacks to show the different denominations. Tony still wasn’t sure how she kept track of all this play money, but he was glad she could.
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