They kept to themselves their disappointment that the portrait of the world’s most beautiful woman had, after all, been nothing more than some magical form of clever fake.
Secretly, too, they didn’t really want to believe that they had been fooled.
Secretly, in fact, each believed that the portrait she had been shown genuinely portrayed the world’s most beautiful woman.
How could it be otherwise?
How could it not be a portrait of the world’s reigning beauty?
As soon as she believed everyone had retired to bed, one of the princesses quietly slipped down the stairs leading towards the room where the mirror stood.
She halted nervously on the stairs as the door to the room opened from inside.
Her sister stormed out of the room, angry and in tears, and tearing at her hair.
The princess breathed in deeply, but otherwise remained deathly quiet as her sister furiously strode off down the hallway.
Why was her sister in tears?
What could this mean?
Like her, she had obviously come to view the mirror, expecting to see herself reflected there once more.
Yet, equally obviously, she hadn’t seen herself there after all!
Which meant another woman, more beautiful than her sister, had now appeared there!
The princess excitedly yet apprehensively slipped down the rest of the stairs.
She opened the door, pulled back the curtains: and grinned in happy surprise.
It was still her portrait!
And no: it wasn’t a reflection, as their stupid father had insisted.
Because now she looked more carefully at the portrait, it was obvious that the background wasn’t the room she stood in. It was another room in the palace.
In fact, it was her sister’s bedchamber.
Her sister’s bedchamber?’
Frowning in puzzlement – a frown that, naturally, didn’t appear anywhere on the woman portrayed within the frame – the princess took a closer look at the woman’s face.
Yes, there were many similarities between this beautiful woman and herself.
Why, the woman had her mouth.
And she almost had her nose.
And their chins were so closely alike that–
The princess gasped in horror.
It wasn’t her.
It was her sister!
*
Both princesses, distraught at what they had seen, retired miserably to their rooms.
They refused to eat. They refused to wash, to bathe. They tore at their hair.
They lashed out irately at the increasingly ugly faces staring back at them from their bathroom mirrors.
In fact, if they’d bothered to take another look at the magical mirror, they would no longer have seen their own sister reflected back at them.
They would only have seen what a mess they looked.
*
Chapter 42
‘So are you saying my problem is my own vanity?’
Luna was annoyed that the old woman’s telling of the story seemed to imply she was vain.
‘Not at all: remember, the whole point of the mirror is that it shows you where to find those responsible for your problems. So each person does see something different in there.’
‘Like the princesses, all I can see is my own reflection!’
‘Yet they each saw a different person the second time they looked.’
‘The first time, they were simply being show that it was their own vanity that had caused all their problems. Once they’d accepted that, they still suffered problems caused by their fear that their own sister was more beautiful than them!’
‘So, if you could accept that maybe – just maybe – you are responsible for your own problems; what might happen then if you take a second look in the mirror?’
‘The only way I could be responsible for my own problems is if I did something earlier that somehow set everything else in motion. I admit, I might well have done something foolish earlier on.’
‘Good; so now, take another look in the mirror.’
Luna was almost tempted to refuse; the whole thing seemed crazy.
How could she be responsible for Rouger’s abduction?
Still, she turned. She looked once more into the mirror.
And this time she didn’t see herself there.
She saw Rouger. Rouger, standing outside the door.
*
Chapter 43
‘Rouger? That makes even less sense!’
Luna was more mystified, more frustrated, than ever.
The old woman smiled as she slipped from between the bedsheets.
Not that she was an old woman anymore.
She was younger now than she had been only moments before.
Luna breathed in worriedly.
She’d forgotten the magical powers of the room!
How much younger was she now?
For once, she wished that the mirror was just a normal mirror. One she could see herself in, to check on what was happening to her.
Why hadn’t Rouger shouted into the room, warning her that she was staying in there too long?
Is that what the mirror had meant when it had shown his reflection, not hers?
‘Come, it’s time we left this bedchamber,’ the woman said brightly, offering Luna her hand.
They walked unhurriedly from the room.
Rouger was still outside. He gawped in surprise when he saw Luna come out of the bedchamber holding the old woman’s hand: or rather, even more amazingly, she wasn’t old at all now.
‘Rouger!’ Luna snapped angrily. ‘How old am I? Why didn’t you warn me?’
‘Warn you? You’ve only just gone in there, Luna! You’re exactly the same age as you were a second ago!’
‘Really? You’re not just saying that?’
Worriedly, she glanced about the hallway, looking for anything it might be possible to see her reflection in.
At the end of the hall, there was a normal if badly silvered mirror. From within its frame, Luna stared back at herself.
She was unchanged. She was still the same age she had been before entering the magical room.
‘Is there anything you need to tell me?’ Rouger asked a little irately as he continued to stare in wonder at the old woman who was no longer old.
The woman answered for Luna.
‘There’s nothing she can tell you yet, Rouger. Because, for the moment, she doesn’t understand everything herself.’
‘Don’t understand everything?’ Luna grumbled. ‘I don’t understand anything!’
‘That’s because we need to go higher up into the palace,’ the woman said.
Keeping a firm hold of Luna’s hand, she led her towards a tightly winding staircase.
‘In fact, it’s a room in what is now the palace’s highest tower. A room where the dead king lies.’
*
Chapter 44
The dead king was now little more than a skeleton.
The bones were held together by dried and withered skin that stretched tautly across them like vellum. He was laid upon a thin, hard bed, where he had obviously died and been left undisturbed all this time.
On the floor, lying just beneath a dangling, chain-mail clad hand, there was a small yet elaborate box.
The lid was open. Yet due to the angle at which it had fallen, the box’s contents would be visible only to someone lying on the bed.
‘It’s like in the story: The Box of All Our Fears,’ Luna observed.
‘A story, you say?’ the woman said dubiously.
As they had all climbed the long, winding and increasingly narrow stairway, the woman had grown steadily younger.
‘Perhaps not a story at all, then: but history.’
With a wave of a hand, the woman indicated that she wanted Luna to retrieve the box from beneath the bed.
‘Perhaps you would like to see what lies within the box?’
&
nbsp; ‘I know what it contains: nothing. That’s the whole point of the tale. What we fear most is wasting our lives.’
‘But, maybe, like the mirror, the box contains something different for you?’
There was both insistence and amusement in the woman’s tone. In her eyes, Luna noticed, there was also kindness, even perhaps curiosity and, strangely, pride.
Luna approached the bed, bent down, retrieved the box.
She glanced inside as she brought it back towards the woman and Rouger.
‘See?’ she declared as she showed the woman the empty box. ‘Nothing in it.’
‘You haven’t closed it yet,’ the woman pointed out with a smile.
‘Closing an empty box still leaves you with an empty box,’ Rouger pointed out.
Even so, Luna closed the lid.
She instantly felt the lid trying to spring open, as if something inside was violently attempting to break out.
‘It’s spring loaded, of course,’ the woman explained nonchalantly. ‘Not with a spring, naturally; but with a simple fairy enchantment that produces a more reliable effect.’
Luna let the lid spring open.
‘So, now what’s inside?’ the woman asked.
‘It will still be – oh!’
As Luna looked inside the box, she saw not an empty interior, but one containing a large, wonderfully elaborate key.
*
Chapter 45
Taking out the ancient yet incredibly beautiful key, Luna instantly recognised its similarities to the delicately wrought keys she had seen on the smithy’s wall.
She glanced up at the woman, hoping for an explanation.
Yet the woman only smiled. It was a smile that somehow seemed familiar to Luna, though she couldn’t quite work out why.
‘Close the lid again,’ the woman said. ‘Then look inside again.’
Holding the key in one hand, Luna shut the box lid once more.
Once more, too, she opened it and reached inside the shallow box.
She produced another key, again one that was fabulously, incredibly gorgeously wrought. Although at first glance it appeared similar to the first key, the detailing, even the shape, were completely different.
This time without being told to, she shut the lid and let it spring open for a third time.
Another key had appeared in the box, its intricate complexity as unique as the other two.
‘They’re like the keys I saw on a smithy wall,’ Luna said distractedly as she studied the three keys more closely, attempting to work out what they could mean.
Why were they appearing in a box that supposedly contained that which we fear most?
She didn’t fear these keys in any way.
‘No matter how many times you reach inside the box, you will produce yet another old key,’ the woman said, pleasantly smiling once more.
And at last, Luna recognised the smile.
It was her mother’s smile
And now her mother was standing before her.
*
Chapter 46
‘Mother!’
Luna rushed to her mother, throwing her arms about her. Her mother curled her own arms warmly, tenderly, about her.
‘What’s going on, mother? I don’t understand all this at all!’
Glancing over at Rouger, she saw that he was every bit as confused and amazed as she was. Then he frowned suspiciously.
Luna instantly stepped back away from her mother.
‘Wait? Is this a trick? A fairy enchantment?’
‘A fairy enchantment? Why yes, I suppose it is,’ her mother replied calmly. ‘A trick? Yes, possibly even that too. But it is me Luna; I am your mother.’
Within her mother’s eyes, Luna could only see the sparkle of honesty, of love.
Then again, wouldn’t any fairy enchantment fool you into thinking this?
Just as the old woman had previously stood here, but had grown younger before her, her mother was similarly getting younger by the minute.
‘How can I know that you’re really my mother?’
‘You were supposed to be twins, Luna. But I believed it would be for the best if there were only you. Your father thought he was the one enchanting me; yet I was the one tricking him! For I knew what he’d been told to create. I held back the birth of your twin; only for his soul to become a part of you!’
‘How is all this…this nonsense supposed to prove that you’re my mother? A mother can’t just decide a twin won’t be born!’
‘Can’t she? And what about a twin, Luna, who decides that her twin will be given life after all?’
Luna’s mother looked over towards Rouger. Rouger frowned all the more, now in confusion and anger.
‘This…this is all nonsense!’ he stormed.
‘Rouger’s my twin?’
Luna was completely perplexed.
‘Not the real Rouger, of course,’ her mother explained. ‘But the one you brought to life with your twin’s soul: yes, I think that makes him your twin. One of berries and earth. While you are of mistletoe and moonlight.’
‘Do you know where the real Rouger is?’ Luna stared accusingly at her mother. ‘Have I been searching for him all this time for nothing?’
‘Yes, she knows where I am,’ a man’s voice replied from by the door.
Both Luna and Rouger spun around to see who was talking.
It was the real Rouger; but one older by far than either of them had expected.
*
Chapter 47
Rouger was so old that Luna might not have recognised him if he hadn’t more or less introduced himself with what was effectively a ‘here I am’.
His features were harder, more set and finely wrought. Yet his eyes were kinder, and more intelligent. His smile, too, displayed the concern that had always been lacking in the younger Rouger.
‘You’ve both been helped and delayed in finding me on your way here,’ he said. ‘I needed time to develop a kinder, more considered nature.’
‘But it’s been no time at all!’ Luna insisted vehemently. ‘The Fay Queen’s fooled you, as she does every child she abducts!’
‘Oh Luna! It really is about time you stopped believing everything some silly little girl tells you!’
Her mother’s admonishing voice seemed younger, far more girlish, than it had only moments before.
Luna turned back to face her mother once more; only to be confronted by the young girl rider who had warned her of the dangers of approaching the smithy.
‘Yet you ignored everything I told you about time!’
‘That’s why you first saw yourself in the mirror,’ the old Rouger explained, ‘and the earthly Rouger the second time you looked. Because as soon as you decided to use me as the model for your earthly twin, the Fay Queen knew she had to take me.’
‘But you were taken before–’
‘Why didn’t the magical room affect you, Luna?’ the girl interrupted. ‘Have you forgotten already that I said there’s no cause and effect as we know it in eternity?’
‘But we’re not in eternity!’ Luna protested in frustration. ‘None of this makes any sense!’
‘It does if you think about it later,’ the girl said with a mischievous smirk. ‘Or, better still, before I even said it.’
And as she said this, the girl transformed into the Fay Queen.
*
Chapter 48
The earthly Rouger didn’t wait for any explanations.
He impetuously, violently, threw himself at the Fay Queen.
He would have reached her, too, if the old Rouger hadn’t reacted almost as swiftly.
He grabbed hold of his copy, struggling to control him at first yet gradually managing it.
Although the earthly Rouger furiously writhed to break free of the other’s grip, they were both becoming so entangled that no one could tell anymore who was whom.
Twisted limbs were mingling, merging. So, too, were their bodies, even their heads.
&nb
sp; ‘Rouger!’ Luna screamed out in concern: although not entirely sure which of the two her concern was for.
They rose from their quick squabble not as two, but as one. Where there had been a boy and an old man, there now stood a young, vigorously lithe man, each having absorbed the attributes of the other.
He grinned happily as if, far from being surprised, this had been someone’s intention all along.
‘Don’t worry: they’re both still there,’ the Fay Queen declared, noting Luna’s confusion and anxiety. ‘That’s the whole point; your raw, naive creation wouldn’t have served your purpose without the calming influence of the more reasonable, experienced Rouger – for the Devil, of course, had already set out to corrupt your intentions.’
‘The smithy? The keys?’
Luna glanced at the three old keys she still held in her hand.
‘Thankfully, those keys aren’t affected by the Devil’s work. That, of course, is what you feared; that all the lives of the souls you’ve created–’
‘I’ve created no souls,’ Luna guffawed, astonished by such a ridiculous suggestion.
‘All those children you gave life to? Or did you really believe the souls still existed within the violins, the blooms? They were just the unique memories of the children. The souls were the keys you produced.’
‘But the Devil said…’
Luna’s protest faded away into nothing. The Fay Queen was observing her with eyebrows raised in amused scepticism.
‘You fear all the potential of these souls will be wasted,’ the Fay Queen said with a nod towards the old keys Luna held. ‘Rather than each becoming uniquely beautiful, as their individual qualities are drawn out by your more material twin; this new, more rounded Earth.’
Now she looked over towards Rouger.
Luna shook her head, as if trying to clear it of confusion.
‘Rouger is a new Earth? But we already have an Earth!’ She indicated everything about them with a wild wave of her arms. ‘And how could I create it anyway?’
‘You still don’t understand eternity, Luna.’
The Fay Queen grinned, but it was a smile full of concern.
‘Yet then,’ she continued, ‘is that really so surprising? For aren’t we always the very last to honestly face up to who we really are? To understand ourselves?’