Through the Mirror

I was approaching the Gates when I heard the clatter of hooves behind me. I turned my head to see the Horned Patrol, and then I ran as fast as I could, cursing and praying at the same time. 

All in vain. After a few minutes they caught up to me and surrounded me in a tight circle. Some of them were holding bows with arrows pointed at me. I raised my hands to show that I had no weapon. Actually, even if I did, how long could you stand with a sword against archers?

The Horned Ones were silent, as if waiting for something. Soon another rider, hornless and wrapped in a traveling cloak that hid his face, approached the group. The Horned Ones stepped aside to let him pass. I looked at the new figure and realized it was a human. 

"Wow! Corney! What a meeting!" I heard.

The rider removed his hood and I recognized the black hair and violet eyes of Mara. Morgana, really! Evil fate in the form of a woman!

"It’s been a long time," I said, trying to look indifferent. It was bad luck to run into this witch!

"What has brought you to our land, Arthur?" she wondered as she dismounted and approached me.

"I didn't know it was your land," I replied.

"Oh, I am a native here. Didn't I tell you?"

"We somehow didn't get around to those revelations," I shrugged.

She chuckled. "So what are you doing here, Corney?”

"Trying to get out," I spread my arms, "is that a problem?"

"Unfortunately for you, it is," she smiled. "You're an agent of the Coordinating Council, hanging around the Dark Edge. Perhaps you're spying against the Irrats?"

"Oh, Master! What do you care about the Irrats!" I exclaimed in irritation. "Such a defender of the crown!"

"As a matter of fact, I am the bride of Prince Alexander," she declared arrogantly. "Who else but me would care about the interests of the state?"

"Holly shit!" I was really surprised. Alex never told me they had such a close relationship. "The bride! Does your groom know that his future father-in-law is the Faceless Destroyer?"

Mara turned pale, and her arrogance and indifference vanished in an instant. 

"You," she hissed, "how do you know that?"

"So he knows nothing," I noted with satisfaction, though I knew I was getting into trouble.

"And he never will," the witch said, turning to her companions and giving them a brief command.

They threw a rope over me, binding my arms to my torso so that I couldn't move. Mara picked up the end of the rope and pulled it toward her, and I fell, hitting my head and scraping my arms.

 The light faded and I fell into oblivion.

The light faded and came on again. But now it was a different place.

I wasn't bound, but I couldn't move. I looked around and saw a large hall with five corners, its walls and vaulted ceiling covered with geometric ornaments. The light fell through the round hole in the center of the ceiling. There was a pentagram of blue glowing lines carved into the black marble floor. I stood in its center, inside the magic circle, and the light from the hole fell directly on me.

Right in front of me was a mirror in a silver frame. It was the size of a football goal, and one of the glowing lines rested directly on it.

Mara had changed her traveling cloak into an electric purple dress. She walked around the perimeter of the pentagram, chanting a spell and placing candles in its corners, and when she finished her rounds, she made intricate hand passes around the mirror and turned to me.

"This is all, Arthur," she announced solemnly. "Your path ends here. Frankly, I didn't want to do this, but you were becoming too dangerous."

"That's so kind of you, baby," I replied, surprised that I was able to speak.

"The crown is more important than the life of a plebeian," she said.

"You will never get the crown," I informed her. "And the Prince will never marry you. I know that for sure."

Her eyes flashed with anger, but the next moment she burst into laughter. 

"Are you an oracle? Just relax. Nothing depends on you anymore. This," she waved her head back, "is the Mirror of Oblivion. Some say it is the way to another universe, others say it leads to Chaos. You'll soon know what's there, behind the mirror. Unfortunately, you’ll never tell anyone," Mara sighed. "No one has ever come back from there."

At that moment, I got really scared. I remembered our last meeting in the Jolly Roger, and remembered everything.

Mara walked around the pentagram and stopped being my back. I saw her reflection.

"Go!" the witch commanded.

I didn't want to obey her, but my feet moved forward by themselves. Then I tried to move my arms and succeeded. I pushed the mirror with all my might, hoping to push it aside, but things did not happen as I had thought. My palms touched the glass, and then went through it. I couldn't keep my balance and fell.

When I realized that the spell was no longer holding me, I jumped to my feet and ran back to the mirror, where Mara remained surrounded by burning candles.

The way was blocked. I ran headlong into the damned hard and solid glass wall.

Mara drew a fiery figure in the air and everything went dark. There was only my pale and frightened face in the reflection.

Furious, I began to pound on the mirror with my hands, then with my feet.

"Don't do that," someone said behind my back. 

I turned to see the young man standing in front of me. He had blond hair and noble facial features with signs of sadness.

"Who are you?" I cried out in panic.

"My name is Angrew," he introduced himself. "Angrew of Sa-Maste, eldest son of King Garbor. And what is your name?"

At that moment I found out that I was in a pentagonal hall, similar to the one behind the mirror. But the pentagram in the floor was faded, half destroyed, dead.

"Arthur Corney, of Earth," I replied. 

"Are you not from Irrat?" asked Angrew in surprise.

"Alas," I spread my hands.

"This is unbelievable!" Angrew exclaimed. "You're the first foreigner to get into the Looking-Glass World."

"Is that supposed to make me happy?" I asked this "hero" of Irratian history who had risen from the dead.

"Who knows?" he chuckled. "They might have taken your head off. In any case, welcome to Looking Glass."

"What is the Looking-Glass World?" I asked.

"It's a kind of prison for special prisoners, those who can’t be killed or left to rot in an ordinary casemate," Angrew put his hand on my shoulder and led me to the exit. "Let's go, my friend. I'll introduce you to our company."

"Is it a big company?"

"Big enough," he nodded. "You're the forty-seventh in the last nine hundred years."

I turned back to the Mirror. 

"I have to get back."

Angrew smiled sadly. "Everyone says the same. Unfortunately, it's impossible. There is no way out of the Mirror. Believe me."

"You don't understand! I must go back! The fate of the Lace depends on it!"

Angrew shook his head.

"You will tell us everything that has happened to you. We'll try to think of something. Now let's go. You can come back to this room at any time."

I looked at the Mirror again, but it was still a mirror, cold and indifferent.

"Let's go, Arthur," Angrew said, taking me out. "You can't keep a company as splendid as ours waiting."

"Your Highness, Your Highness! Wake up!" someone called in a hoarse voice, shaking my shoulder. 

I opened my eyes to see a rather absurd creature leaning over me: the height of a ten-year-old child, with protruding, pointed ears, a cunning, gnome-like face adorned with dark, beady eyes and an exorbitantly large nose, under which was a wispy mustache the color of fresh straw. His shaggy hair was covered by a striped red-and-green cap, and his clothes were the same colors.

"Who are you?" I asked. "What do you need?" 

"I am a jack o'mirror," the creature explained. "A household spirit, that's what I am. They call me Jock. Jock O’Mirror, that is. I’m your personal servant."

"Okay," I nodded. So he was some kind of brownie. Well, let it be a servant. "So why did you wake me?"

"There's the jack o'mirror of Prince Angrew," Jock waved at the door, "he's come to say that His Highness is inviting Your Highness to breakfast with him in the greenhouse. What am I to say?"

"Say that I will come," I replied, while trying to understand why this creature addressed me as “Highness”. Then I remembered that yesterday I had introduced myself as the heir to one of the royal dynasties of Earth. Everyone here was a baron or a count, so I had decided that I was no worse than any of them, and had allowed myself to embellish reality a bit; this made me second in status to Angrew.

Jock came back. 

"The Prince is expecting you in an hour," he announced, adding, "I've prepared a bath for you, my lord."

"Oh, that's really great," I rejoiced, looking around my new home. As a big boss, I had been given a luxurious apartment, although the furnishings were a bit too pretentious for my taste.

"What clothes would you like me to prepare for you, my lord?" asked Jock.

"Clothes?" I asked back. "I'm afraid I don't have any spare clothes with me."

Jock smiled cunningly, "That's no problem, my lord!" He opened the wardrobe. "You'll find all the clothes you need in here."

I got up, walked over to the wardrobe, and started looking through the clothes. The wardrobe was stuffed with them, five times more than I'd had in my entire life. Surprisingly, the outfits were just the right size.

"Had they made this just for me?" I asked in astonishment.

Jocko giggled, "You're in the Looking-Glass World now!"

"So what?"

"It is a mirror image of the Irrat Palace. Everything is the same here as it is there, except for the living creatures."

"Everything, really?"

"Maybe something is a little different," my new servant shrugged. "But mostly it is."

"What about books, weapons, magical things, or anything like that?" I went on.

"Magical things won't be of any help," Jock informed me, "magic doesn't work here and wizards lose their power. Books are almost useless here too, they're all reflected, so it's very hard to read them. But everything else is the same."

I showed him the clothes I had chosen and went into the bathroom.

There, lying in the hot water with aromatic bubbles, I thought about what had happened the night before.

Back then, we walked down the spiral staircase for a long time, through some corridors and passages.

In a huge, festively decorated hall, I was introduced to the company and the company was introduced to me. I shook many hands and heard too many names and titles. I wasn't sure I could remember even five of them. The ladies - there were about a dozen of them - were charming, but the gentlemen were all crazy.

Then we had dinner, and everyone wanted to ask me about my adventures. I even tried to tell something, but the fatigue from fighting the Eater took its toll, and I started dozing right at the table. I couldn't remember how I got back to my room and went to bed.

After bathing, I felt the need to shave my weekly stubble. Unfortunately, there were no decent razors in the bathroom. I mean, there was a straight razor and something resembling a potato peeler, but I was too young to cut my own throat. So I put on a bathrobe I found in the bathroom, and went to find my own razor.

I found my old and dusty backpack on the luxury table, and it looked really strange there. I started to unzip it when my fingers felt something solid and invisible.

I broke into a sweat.

The magic blades! The Keys of the Master!

I glanced behind me – the jack o'mirror wasn’t nearby, so I hurriedly unfolded the Veil of the Wind. The rainbow Helyswort and the blued Heart of Night appeared before my eyes, firm proof that life went on. The Veil that Sahara had given me kept them from Mara's envious eyes, and it remained beyond the power of the magic-denying Looking-Glass World. Then all was not yet lost!

The door opened. I quickly wrapped the Veil around the blades and placed them in the wardrobe, hiding them behind the clothes. When Jock entered, I returned to the table and too

k the razor from my backpack.

"Let me help you with your clothes, my lord!" Jock said solemnly.