Mirror Mirror!: Part Two

      There was one easy way to find the book I was looking for, if it even existed.

      “Excuse me?” I whispered.

      “Eh?” The old Lenny turned around and looked at me from over his spectacles.

      “Mr. Bernie,” I whispered, standing on tiptoe to look over the edge of the counter, “I’m looking for a certain book.”

      “What book are ye lookin’ for little lassie?” Mr. Bernie asked leaning casually against the bookshelf behind him.

      “Well,” I told him, “I don’t know the name, it’s about a mirror.”

     He raised his eyebrows and then gestured for me to continue.

      “Some princess named Lemile, her mother wrote it. Or so somebody told me, it was about her daughter and a mirror she found.”

      “Interesting,” he said as he stroked his chin in thought. “Very interesting. Ye know lassie, that out of all the books I’ve got, I only have one copy of that particular one.”

      “You do?” I asked, my excitement rising.

      “Yes.” He scanned the shelves for a moment and then pulled a leather book off of the shelf. “The original. It’s about two hundred years old and still in excellent condition. I hope you find what you’re looking for in here.”

      “I’m sure I will, thank you.”

      *****

      I sat at one of the small round tables, I set the book down and took a deep breath. I would find out about the mirror, hopefully.

      I opened the thick cover. The dust and smell of old paper tickled my nose. There on the very first page was a drawing of my mirror. This was definitely the right book.

      I turned the page and began to read the small cramped handwriting.

      'I knew that the mirror was going to be trouble the first day I saw Lemile with it. I had never told my husband the King this before, but when I was younger I had been apprenticed to Thetun, the local wizard. He had taught me how to sense dark and light magic. But what I sensed on the mirror was dark magic. I tried to speak to my daughter throughout the day, but she gave no sign of having heard me. I persisted, but she never noticed. I would watch her, cracking the door open slightly so I could see her. She didn’t seem to notice me; she was too absorbed in talking to herself. But the eyes of her reflection darted over to me, and then her reflection grinned evilly at me. I then backed away, hoping that it wouldn’t tell my daughter that I had been watching her.'

      I stopped reading for a moment. So the mirror did have dark magic on it, splendid. Plus, the queen obviously knew that the mirror wasn’t really a reflection of you, well, in a way it was; it sort of showed the dark side of you. But it makes it ten times worse, I skipped the next portion. It just said what they had for dinner and how little the princess ate. I already knew about that.

     'A few months have passed, and my daughter is nowhere to be seen. I came into her room this morning and she wasn’t there. I had my guards search all over Meridell; they couldn’t find her.

      'A few days later;

     We have decided to move toward Brightvale to search for her. We were going over a steep rocky ledge when our royal litter came to an abrupt halt. My husband stuck his head out from behind the gauzy curtains. He asked why we were stopping since we were only at the halfway point, and the litter bearers told him that there was a sobbing neopet in the middle of the lane. My husband and I got out and approached the hunched form of a sobbing neopets dressed in rags.

     She was crying when she suddenly screamed something about losing a friend, I realized that it was Lemile, without her mirror. She was pointing down at a branch sticking out of the steep hillside. The branch was above a roaring river, and the branch wasn’t going to hold the heavy mirror caught in it. When it fell there was a horrible wailing, but it wasn’t coming from Lemile. It was from the mirror.

     So we brought Lemile back to Meridell and we got her back to her old self.'

     I sighed; I had to skip a lot of the journal to get to the point. But obviously the mirror did have a curse on it. I’m glad that I had that figured out; now all I had left was to get rid of or destroy the mirror, but if I couldn’t destroy it I would have to find a place to put the mirror where I would be sure that nobody would find it, but before I did, I thought it only natural that after it’s torturing me I’d do the same for it.

      *****

      I smiled to myself; the mirror was in my one hand which was held directly out to my side, so I could just see the form of my reflection out of the corner of my eye.

      “Where are we going?” it asked me.

      “Someplace,” was all I said, smiling inwardly.

      “Should I know where we’re going?” it asked me, an edge to its voice.

      “Oh, you’ve been there before,” I told it.

      I watched as the Xweetok in the mirror slumped against the frame in frustration, I snickered and she looked up, a pouting look on her face. Gee, I really didn’t know I looked that bad when I pouted; I added that to my list of things to stop doing.

      “Seriously, you had better tell me where we’re going!” she hissed.

      “Had I better? What will you do to me if I don’t?”

      The reflection stammered, looking for the right words to use but then fell silent, point number two for me. I was sort of enjoying myself; I began walking up the slope that led to the one lane ledge that hardly anyone used anymore, for safety reasons entirely. If more than one cab, marathon runner, et cetera et cetera went down it at the same time, coming from opposite directions, that meant several months in the nearest hospital for those unfortunate souls.

      I watched out of the corner of my eye the very distraught Xweetok bite her lip as she began to realize where I was headed, where we were headed. I knew we were almost to the spot mentioned in the diary because there was a sign marking the halfway point to Meridell. I casually turned towards the edge and held the mirror over the edge. Whenever I chose to let go the mirror would fall into the river below and relive its past.

      But the questions came before anything else.

      “So why, exactly, did you lie to me when I first found you?” I asked, drawing out each word in a careless manner.

     My reflection stared at me in horror. “I knew I should never have told you about that diary!”

      I loosened my grip on the mirror’s handle; it lurched violently, causing the me in the mirror to scream.

      “Please! Please I’ll tell you,” it sobbed. “I’ll tell you everything! I wanted somebody to talk to!”

      “I mean about the princess, why did you tell me that she became too absorbed with herself? You were the one causing it.”

      “Because I didn’t want to be thrown away again; it was way too hard to bear the first time.”

      I stopped to think about this for a moment. “Maybe it was. But I didn’t ask for you to come into my life and ruin my relationship with my parents! I didn’t want this!”

      “I was made to do this to people! I didn’t have much of a voice in the matter, now did I?” she screamed at me.

      “I don’t know, did you?” I screamed right back.

      “NO! I was just a simple little mirror that some spiteful wizard stumbled across and turned into the abomination that is me!”

      I stopped. “Really?”

      The reflection was sobbing so hard her entire face was wet and dripping. She didn’t say anything.

      “Really?” I asked once again.

      She snuffled and nodded before breaking into tears afresh. I was keeping myself hard; I couldn’t let my sympathy get the best of me this time. It was hard to be so cold to something that looked as pathetic as this, but I remembered about her sob story that had brought me this disaster in the first place. That didn’t make me feel as bad.

      The biggest questions were coming, and I couldn’t wait to ask them.

To be continued...