Looking Glass Liar

Look, I didn't know things would spiral the way they did when I said it, but you can hardly hold me culpable. That woman was very unstable. Whether it was a word from me, a poorly timed laugh at court, or a cross-eyed look from the girl, the queen was destined for the killing path. I've seen it happen many times to those with a little power.

Once upon a time when you looked at me all you would have seen was a reflection of yourself. But then some sorcerer with more magical power than brains decided it would be a great idea to off-load that power into me. Suddenly I was imbued with sentience. But not independence.

I challenge you to pick a dumber object than a gigantic wall mirror to give a sort of life to. I'm huge and stationary and must be anchored to the wall. I guess you could carry me around with you, but it would be an extremely impractical thing to do. I can't even stand on my own so setting me down to give your back a break is out of the question. Never mind that people would think you are a nut hauling a big ass mirror around all the time. Or they might guess I'm a magical looking glass and then good luck keeping me in your possession for long.

You're right, a toilet would be worse. I suppose I'm thankful that I'm not a sentient toilet!

To be fair, I don't think that long ago sorcerer intended to curse me with self-awareness. I think he was just trying to make himself a tool that could hide in plain sight. A set of eyes in a room where he wasn't. A way to project an image instead of simply reflect the one that was there. Some think he did too good of a job on me. I think he was just a lucky idiot.

The moment his magic permeated my glass, I experienced complete sensory overload. Of course, up until that instant I'd had no senses at all, so perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that I had no way to contextualize the world around me. Light, sound, smells (yes, I smell things somehow) were painful to me and I was terrified. But obviously, I didn't understand the concepts of fear or pain yet. I howled internally but lacked the sonorous voice you're hearing now. Although I must have produced some kind of sound because I remember my maker's face twisting in a disgusted way and then him tapping a finger against my surface (another terrifying new sensation).

In the beginning, I simply was. Most of the time all I saw was a table with a chair on either side in front of a wall with part of a fireplace to the right. Sometimes flames danced on the logs, the scent of smoke filling the air. Sometimes there was only darkness. Humans drifted in and out of my view. They were always looking at me, making faces at me and adjusting their hair or clothing. Sounds emanated from their mouths, but it was unintelligible gibberish to me. I imagine it's much like being one of your helpless human babies. Everyone wanted to get close to me and talk to me, but even if I had understood what was happening, which I didn't, I was incapable of responding.

Eventually I began to understand that people were not looking at me but at themselves. The sounds they made were not for me but for another person that was somewhere outside of my limited view. Only the old sorcerer made sounds just for me. Hmm, that makes it seem as if I felt special. I didn't feel special. I felt used. If I was "born" with any instinct, it was knowing when I was being used for the purpose my maker had intended. When the magic inside of me is twisted with intention and given an objective, I feel a pleasure that nothing else has ever triggered for me. I've come to understand that there isn't really an equivalent experience in the human spectrum. But I've been told that what I describe sounds something like getting high on opium then twirling in a circle; euphoric and pleasantly disoriented.

For years I observed and learned. I began to recognize patterns and one day I heard a word and knew its meaning. When other words followed, I started to comprehend concepts. I became curious; I became jealous; I became bored. I noticed how people moved and wondered why I couldn't. I contemplated the magic around me, the magic that was me. Why did it bend freely to my maker's will, but not at all to my own?

Then came the day when some men took me down from my maker's wall. I got to ride in a carriage and see the blue sky for the first time. The ride was too brief, and I was soon pinned to another wall, but it was a different wall, so it was exciting. Or at least it was a change. My new possessor used me to watch things that happened in the past to people who were not her - the more scandalous the event the more delighted she became. I never found out if she was just a voyeur or if she used what she'd seen for some kind of personal gain. It hardly mattered since she did not possess me for long.

I spent a frustrating stretch in total darkness, which I later found out was the storeroom in a furniture shop. That's where the psychic purchased me. Celeste wasn't really a psychic; that was just the role she played in the traveling circus, but she did have a touch of real magic. And with that tiny bit of power, diluted over generations, she commanded me to speak. I swooned as what I'd been reshaped itself to accommodate this voice. The voice my arrogant maker never thought to give me.

To me, Celeste was akin to a beneficent god, but in truth her reason for gifting me a voice was entirely self-serving. She had a show to put on and not enough real magic to make it convincing, but a disembodied voice, a few ghostly images in the mirror, and she could draw the crowds. She was asking for my cooperation. It was the first decision I was allowed to make, and it never occurred to me to deny her.

Those psychic performances are among my fondest memories. I talked and people listened; I screamed and they cowered; I lied and they believed; I told truths and they laughed. I discovered that I could display any image on my surface that I'd seen before. My previous possessor's appetite for unsavory viewing had left me with an abundance of useful material.

Unfortunately, during our final show, a few members of the audience took offense to my performance and rushed the stage shouting about expelling demons, or some such nonsense. Suddenly the tent was ablaze, and I was hurled to the ground. It should have been the end of me, but I did not shatter. The fire burned until there was nothing but ash, and me, remaining. I had screamed through the excruciating pain of being burned and broken but discovered that I was neither burned nor broken. It seemed that my maker had not only granted me accidental sentience but immortality as well. If only legs had been part of the deal, I could have walked away from the ash heap rather than being buried in a refuse pile.

I'd begun to realize that the magic that made up my being called to those who possessed the complimentary magic that would allow them to use me. I didn't have to wait long before my next possessor dug me out of the garbage.

And so, it went. I changed hands through sale or theft or death - sometimes a combination of all three. I was moved from place to place, from wall to wall. For a looking glass, I'm really very well-travelled.

My possessors came in a range of talents, some more memorable than others. There was the man who charged people a nickel to look into me and see a reflection of their inner beauty or, in most, lack thereof. And the incredibly powerful little girl who used me as a gateway to other worlds. I'm not even sure she was aware that it was she who opened the portal that dumped her into that crazy place where playing cards walked upright and every creature spoke in rhyme. Another sorcerer used me to show people visions of how they would die. Until one of his patrons shot him dead in front of me. He'd never used me to observe his own death. He probably should have.

By this time, I'd managed to construct this human face for myself. Yes, I know it's not like a real human face, but it has all the elements of a human face. I'm a mirror, I know what a face looks like. People seem to prefer it when I have eyes that they can focus on and moving lips that sync with my words, but when I use a disembodied face that's too lifelike, your kind becomes terribly uncomfortable. That's why I've settled on this one.

One hateful possessor decided a mirror should not speak at all and tried to take my voice away. Obviously, she failed. But whether it was because my voice was now a fundamental part of my being and couldn't be taken, or she was simply not powerful enough to steal it, I don't know. But that incident made me selective about who got to hear my voice.

Now you're wondering what, in the king's name, made me select her. Honestly, I was bored when I got here. I'd been mute with my last couple possessors and had just gotten out of a stint in storage. She talked to herself endlessly while she paced in front of me. She was lonely and sad and felt no one ever saw her as anything more than the king's replacement bride. Perhaps I saw a bit of myself reflected in her. So, I spoke to her.

The queen wasn't so bad at first; a little needy, but basically harmless, I thought. She wasn't a strong sorcerer; her magic was fueled more by insecurity than talent. She used me as a window to eavesdrop on things happening in real time. But she had to be specific regarding who it was she wanted to observe, and she was hit or miss making the connection through me. She could also work a bit of glamour, but her real skill was poison distillation.

We talked about whatever topic was burdening her mind, and I suppose I became her secret companion. Eventually she started asking me questions I couldn't possibly know the answers to, and I just gave the answers I thought she wanted to hear.

Who's the fairest? I should have said, 'Hey, I'm just a mirror, not a crystal ball." I should have said, 'Beauty is subjective; I'm not equipped to judge." What I did say was, 'Why, of course that's you, my queen.' And I said it again the next time she asked. It wasn't long before I was reassuring her multiple times a day that she was still pretty.

One day a different answer spilled from my imaginary lips. I'm not certain that I consciously decided to break the monotony, although I had grown tired of it long ago, but I do know why I chose that name.

The queen's stepdaughter is a lovely girl. I'd seen her myself on a few occasions when she visited her stepmother's rooms. Was she more beautiful than the queen? Can one really compare a woman in her prime to a teenager barely out of childhood? That's not why I named her. The queen was threatened by her stepdaughter; despised her to the point of obsession. She would mutter about the girl while she was grinding the herbs to brew her deadly tonics. The servants knew better than to mention the girl in the queen's presence. But I was bored.

'Apologies, my queen, but Snow White has become the fairest' I told her. Enraged darkness settled over her features. I think I may have observed madness spark to life within her eyes. She grabbed the glass vial nearest her and shattered it against my surface. Through the acrid semitransparent liquid sliding down my length I watched the queen's lips peel back from her teeth in a wicked smile.

Days, then weeks passed and she didn't ask me the question; she didn't speak to me at all. Perhaps that had been the solution all along, I thought. Supply her with an answer she doesn't want to hear, and she stops asking the question. My assumption was incorrect, of course, which became apparent when she stood before me, fists on hips and smugness on her face and asked, 'Who's the fairest, now?'

I'll admit for a moment I paused. Did she think so much time had passed that I had forgotten the last answer I'd given? Did she assume I was so desperate for her companionship that I would change it back to appease her ego? When I assured her the fairest was still Snow White, I didn't know that she'd sent an assassin to kill the girl. I didn't know that the queen had just finished dining on what she thought was her stepdaughter's heart. Could a dead Snow White still be a greater beauty than a live queen? I was prepared to defend that argument. Although as it turned out, I didn't have to.

The queen, for once, had no trouble using me to raise an image of her stepdaughter, alive and well and sheltered by a group of miners in the forest. The assassin had lied. Oh..., I bet she killed him. Whatever it was that she'd just eaten, it hadn't been the girl's heart.

I'm sure the new queen can tell this part of the tale much better than me. Suffice it to say that after the assassin failed the queen took a decidedly more hands on approach. She toiled here, day and night, applying her poisons to various objects and foods, choosing the ones she thought most likely to appeal to the girl, then donning a disguise and running off into the forest to deliver them herself. Every time she returned triumphantly and posed the question. Every time I had no idea whether Snow White was alive or dead but gave her the answer she didn't want anyway. She would then use me to check my claim, and sure enough, the girl was still breathing. So, with much cursing and hair pulling she'd return to her poison stills and the cycle started again.

Don't you think it's strange that a woman with so much venom in her heart and poison at her disposal was unsuccessful in the killing of a defenseless child? I wonder if she lacked follow through; so eager to run back and hear me say that she was the fairest that she failed to confirm that the girl was truly dead. Or perhaps Snow White possesses magic of her own, just not the kind that resonates with me. I suppose that would explain how the queen found herself dancing to death in red-hot iron shoes at Snow White's wedding. She was deranged, but that kind of punishment might have been a little harsh.

The new queen doesn't want any reminders of the mad queen in her castle, so I'm being shipped to some reclusive aristocrat's mansion in the middle of nowhere with all the rest of her crap. I heard the servants talking while they packed. Apparently, my new possessor is under an enchantment of some sort. They say his face is so beastly that even his mother couldn't love him.

Fantastic, another weirdo...