[stylist] The Elves of the Magic Mirrors

[Kristen Diaz]

Hello everyone,

Below is a story I am working on and would love to hear your comments.
 I have also attached it to this email.  This story is based on ( and
written as the prequal to) the Feature Films for Families movie
Rigoletto, an excellent film that I would highly recommend, and the
score is stunning!

Questions to consider:
--Do you think it would improve the story for Rigoletto and Glorfindel
to be brother and sister, as I have them now, or the prince and his
bride-to-be, whom he has taught to sing, as the movie has them?
--One of my biggest questions is a seeming inconsistency: the openning
line says that Rigoletto and Glorfindel have living reflections
because they are so alive, but throughout most of the story, the
reflections seem to be effected by the magic in their mirrors.  Would
it be clearer to have only one source of magic, either the prince and
princess or the mirrors?  If I should pick one of those sources, which
do you suggest?

If you have comments on anything else in the story, please let me
know.  Thank you!

Sincerely,
Kristen Diaz

The Elves of the Magic Mirrors

Not so very long ago, in the fairy kingdom of the elves, there lived a
prince and princess so alive that their reflections were alive too.  I
don’t mean that their reflections looked very lifelike.  I mean they
were actually alive.  They thought what the prince and princess
thought and spoke an echo of their masters’ words.  When the prince or
princess was angry or sad, the reflections felt the same emotions.
They even felt the texture beneath their fingers whenever the prince
or princess handled something, and they watched their royal masters
interact in the world outside their mirrors.  None of the reflections
thought or spoke on their own, but they all had unique personalities
and individual names.  Every evening, as Prince Rigoletto and Princess
Glorfindel strode into their concert hall of magic mirrors, they would
greet each reflection by name: “Good evening, Sir Garindel.  Good
evening, Lady Emerel.  Good evening, Giles.”  And the reflections
would all echo, “Good evening.”
The elf prince was called Rigoletto; his sister was called Glorfindel.
 They were twins and the best singers and musicians the elf kingdom
had ever known.  Every evening they strode into their concert hall
just after dinner, as the blush of the setting sun fell on them from
the west windows.  Rigoletto, dressed in a black suit and white
collared shirt that matched his dark hair and light skin sat at the
piano bench.  Glorfindel, with sunset and candle light glowing on her
red hair and elegant white dress played a golden harp.  Although they
looked nothing like each other, they completed and complemented each
other.  Glorfindel’s laugh was like the sure small chuckle of a
stream.  Rigoletto’s was the overflowing mirth of a waterfall.  When
he walked into a room he charged the air with energy, though he spoke
little and kept very still, but you could never quite remember when
Glorfindel came in.  Once you noticed she was there, though, you
always wondered how you could have missed it, because her presence
filled the room with living grace.  When they sang together, the	
prince laid a strong foundation melody.  His sister softened the sharp
corners with harmony.
Their music was so alive and strong and beautiful that it could cure
any disease or pain.    That was why the concert hall filled with
guests every night.  The elven people carried in their sick to listen
and be healed.  Elders and warriors traveled for days to have their
wounds and their memories soothed.  And it was said that any child who
listened to even one song from that royal pair would grow wise and
strong beyond his years.
But that was not the only reason.  The audience wanted to see the
magnificent concert hall.  This hall was one of the glories of the elf
king’s palace, second only to the Great Hall, where all the feasts
took place.  At the back of the concert hall, great wooden doors led
through a corridor to the rest of the palace.  Slightly to the right
of the front, smaller wooden doors led to the prince and princess’s
private chambers, for the concert hall was their personal domain.  The
hall itself had so many short sides that it looked nearly round.  A
dome lined with mirrors topped the hall and met the sides at a small
wooden ledge carved with the names of legendary elf musicians.  Red
velvet carpet a quarter inch thick covered the floor, and on this
carpet dozens of rows of carved and gilded chairs sat in half-moons
facing a sliver of stage at the front.  Rich with red velvet, gilding,
and polished wood, the concert hall would have been a dark place if it
weren’t for the alternating panels of window glass and mirror glass
that ran all the way to the dome above.  Each mirror reflected at
least two windows, so that if you had seen it with the sunshine
pouring in, you might have thought there were no walls at all.  If you
had seen it at night, with the chandelier that hung from the dome all
ablaze and its myriad reflections twinkling in the windows and
mirrors, you might have thought the stars had turned to gold and come
to listen.  (Indeed, I’m not quite sure they did not.)
But the glory of the concert hall was the live reflections.  When the
prince and princess swept by, their reflections appeared.  When the
pair began to play, so did their reflections, on the dozens of pianos
and harps reflected in the mirrors.  And when they sang, an entire
choir of living echoes joined them, each reflection ringing back the
notes in a different tone and pitch.  Together they formed the most
unified, harmonious orchestra and choir heard anywhere but Heaven.
And no one in the audience asked why Rigoletto and Glorfindel were the
only elves with such reflections; no one else was like them.
Giles was one of these reflections.  His mirror arched along the
inside of the dome that topped the concert hall.  Because the mirror
was curved, Giles was shorter and wider than the tall reflections
along the walls below, but he didn’t mind.  From that height he could
look down through the lights of the chandelier and see the sunset turn
the prince’s black suit and wavy hair the fiery red of his sister’s
curls.  Giles could not play the piano like most of the ground-floor
reflections could because the real lights and reflected lights of the
chandelier confused the picture, but he could sing.  The strong notes
of the prince’s melody and the light notes of his sister’s harmony
bounded and skipped from living echo to living echo around the
many-sided concert hall, but the reflections in the echoing dome had
the best time of it.  They kept singing long after the others had
fallen silent.  And from his dome mirror Giles could see the people in
the front few rows.  They always came in coughing or limping or with
hunched shoulders, as if someone had bruised them in the heart and
they were nursing the sore place.  But when they turned around to
leave and he could see their faces, he knew they had been made whole
in body and soul.  Then Rigoletto and Glorfindel swept off the stage
into the crowd and, with them, out the doors.  Once they had gone the
reflections became invisible and fell asleep.  (Being invisible makes
one very tired.)
Giles and the other reflections slept a large portion of the time, for
Rigoletto and Glorfindel left the palace to tour the kingdom at least
once a year.  Nearly every day they received letters begging them to
visit a particular town and heal all the sick there who could not
journey to the palace.  To visit all those towns took very long
indeed.  And sometimes the prince and princess even traveled, singing
and healing in the world of men, for months at a time.  It was during
one of these absences that Astorel began putting on airs.
Astorel was Prince Rigoletto’s personal valet.  He blacked the
prince’s boots and laid out the prince’s clothes and generally kept
things clean and tidy.  Now, you may be used to thinking of valets in
our world as lower class, but the elves always took personal
attendants for their royalty from the nobility.  Astorel was young,
handsome, and talented and could never quite shake off the feeling
that someone should recognize his gifts instead of paying the prince
all the attention.  So he was very put out when Rigoletto told him he
could not join him and his sister on their journey to the world of
men.  “But why not, your glory?” Astorel cried,  “I can play almost as
well as you—thanks to your lessons of course.”
“You play very well, Astorel,” Rigoletto corrected him.  The prince’s
dark eyes danced almost as if it were a joke.  “but these people need
healing as well as music.  It is long, painful work, for which you are
not yet ready.”
“Can I at least watch you at it?” Astorel asked.
“No, on so long a journey we must travel with as few people and
possessions as we may,” his master replied.  “Moreover, you are needed
more here.  Travelers will come to see the palace.  You must keep the
hall and chambers clean for them and the harp and piano tuned.”
“But won’t you need me to sing and play the harp and help you relax
before you go to sleep?”
“My sister will do that,” came the reply. “You can do much more good
here than on the road with us.”
Astorel did not reply.  His master’s words always felt as if they were
doing something to him, waking him up from a happy dream in which he
was the hero, and he did not like it.  So, he tried his luck with the
princess: “But you are taking your serving maid with you,” he pleaded.
“I’m so sorry you can’t come this time, Astorel,” she said, but Nalia
will give all the help we need.  And you are needed more here.”
Astorel didn’t even whine like he wanted to, “But I want to see places
and people and new things and have them see me!”  Looking into her
eyes, he knew she knew all about what he wanted and that she had
answered him.  Her eyes were so expressive that when anyone looked
into them, really looked, he could remember for the rest of his life
what they had told him.  After looking into her face, Astorel knew the
interview had ended.  So he got as far away from them as he could, to
the stables to tend to the prince’s horse, and sulked.
He sulked all the first week they were gone as he cleaned and polished
and fed the prince’s many animals.  The elf king and queen and most of
their court moved to the summer palace in the mountains where it was
cool.  And still he cleaned and swept and dusted, muttering to himself
all the time.  Soon, as he tuned the prince’s piano and the princess’s
golden harp in that great and lonely hall his eyes took on an
expression that the reflections would have disliked and feared if they
had been awake to see it.  But they were asleep.
Soon Astorel began sitting at Rigoletto’s piano bench.  He ran his
hands over the keys, some dark as his master’s eyes, some light as his
smile.  “I can’t do it,” he thought.  Then he looked out into the
imaginary audience.  He bowed and grinned and swaggered.  It gave him
courage to play.  “Serves them right for leaving me behind,” he
thought.  “I’ll practice every night, and when they come back, I’ll
play just as well as either of them.  Then they’ll be sorry they left
me behind.”
But as soon as he struck the first few chords he noticed the
difference.  Alone there in that great, empty room the music sounded
hollow and dead.  Astorel realized, then, that the reflections had
echoed not only the voices of the prince and princess but also the
notes of their instruments.  Now that Rigoletto and Glorfindel were
gone, the reflections had disappeared as well.  With his trim figure,
fine features, black suit, and even the melody that poured from the
piano, Astorel could have passed himself off as Rigoletto to anyone
who had never seen the elf prince—except for this lack of reflections.
 He swung himself off the bench and stared intently into the nearest
mirror.  The piano, the golden harp, the rows of chairs, even the
grass and blue sky out the opposite window showed perfectly clear, but
there was not so much as a shadow to show Astorel’s presence.  “It’s
as if I don’t even exist,” he said in bitter surprise.
Astorel had never stopped to ask why the mirrors only showed the
prince and princess’s reflections.  No one had.  That was part of the
marvel and the magic.  But now he began to imagine that it wasn’t
quite fair.  “Hello, wake up,” he shouted at the mirror.  “Wake up!
Can’t you hear I’m playing?”  He beat on the glass with his fist then
drew it back and put it to his mouth.  He had struck the glass hard.
Now he began shouting up at the dome, loud enough it seemed to shake
the mirrors from their places.  “Wake up!  Come out!  It’s not fair.
Come out!  I command it!”  When that failed, he ran to the prince’s
chambers and returned bearing a great sword.  He was strong and swung
it with such force that on impact he thought the weapon might shiver
to pieces.  “I don’t care if it does,” he thought.  The next moment he
had to close his eyes, and the sword dropped from his hand.  There had
been a bright light, and burning heat had shot up the sword into his
arm.  (That is what happens when one magical object meets another in
battle.)  He opened his eyes again just in time to see a very flat,
very life-like man falling from the mirror, scattering shards of glass
and grabbing at the piano bench to break his fall.  (It did not work.
He landed flat on the glass and the hard wood floor.)
“Lord Elendor!” cried Astorel, for he knew all the reflections’ names.
 He had only meant to smash the mirror out of spite, but now that he
found he had released Lord Elendor from his mirror all sorts of new
possibilities came into his head (he was a quick thinker).
“I’ve seen you before.  Who are you, you villain?  Why have you done
this?” demanded Lord Elendor, picking himself up and shaking off the
last shards.  At first this made Astorel afraid.  He had not expected
to find the reflections unhappy to be freed.  But when Lord Elendor
gingerly put one hand to his head and held the other ready to defend
himself, Astorel understood.  Lord Elendor was not angry at being
freed from his mirror; he was angry at being slashed in the back of
the head, getting cut with glass shards, and landing on the floor,
which hurt his dignity more than it hurt anything else.
“Oh, I’m not a villain,”said Astorel hastily.  “I meant you no harm.
I only wanted to free you from your prison.”
“Prison?”
“Yes, your mirror.  I am Prince Rigoletto’s valet, you see, and I’ve
been thinking how unfair he’s been.”
“Unfair?”
“Yes, to you.  He never lets you do anything except what he wants to
do, or say anything either.  He always picks what song to play, and
you have to sing it, like it or not.  He even decides when you wake up
and go to sleep and leaves you locked up in your mirror when you’d
rather be out playing the piano yourself, for real.
“I believe you are correct,” gasped Lord Elendor, an expression
beginning to form in his face that had never been in the prince’s.
“But what of this wound you have given me?”
“Oh that, I never meant to give you that.  I was just trying to smash
the mirror.  You were invisible.  How could I know your head was
there?  You didn’t think freedom would come without a price, did you?
And, anyway, I think it hurt me more than you.  This sword nearly
burnt my hand through when I cut the glass.”
“It is true,” murmured Lord Elendor, looking at Astorel’s extended
hand.  The hand was still red and hot as the reflection took it in his
own and pressed it to his lips.  “My liberator, I thank you.  And you
chose to free me first?  We must release the others.  But why do you
delay?  Do you fear the prince?”
“Me?  No, of course not.  He’s away on a journey anyway.  Of course I
don’t fear him; I hate him.  And I don’t fear pain either.”  With that
Astorel fell to with the sword.  Elven men and women of all shapes and
sizes fell out of the mirrors, and Lord Elendor explained to each the
situation.  Though they were all reflections of either Prince
Rigoletto or Princess Glorfindel, the mirrors hung at different angles
and distances from the stage at the front of the hall, and the
reflections were thin or wide, large or small depending on where their
mirror stood in relation to the stage.
All this time Giles had been dreaming.  He dreamt of the places his
master and mistress were visiting far across the ocean in the world of
men.  Suddenly, his dream turned to a living nightmare.  He had always
been waked before by the warm, strong voice of the prince saying,
“Good evening, Giles.”  But this time he was waked by a slashing,
burning pain in his shoulder and a momentary light that made him shut
his eyes.  He could feel he was falling and quickly opened his eyes
again.  For one moment he caught a glimpse of a wild-eyed face
distorted with anger and the fiery gleam of a sword.  The next moment
someone had caught him and he was laid aside to nurse his wounded
shoulder amid a general confusion of running, groaning, shouting, and
showers of glass, all in the red glow of sunset.  There was no prince,
no princess, but the reflections were awake, and out of their mirrors!
 Flat men and women, all images of Rigoletto and Glorfindel, rushed
about the room wearing expressions he had never seen on his lord and
lady’s faces.  Some were shouting one thing, some another.
“The prince is a tyrant!”
“No!  It’s not true!”
“Oh, my head, my poor head!”
“Hurray for our liberator!”
In a flash Giles was on his feet too, shouting with every ounce of
lung power in him (which was considerable).  “Stop!  Are you mad?
What is he doing?”  All the commotion seemed to center around a young
man standing on the topmost rung of a ladder that reached to the dome.
 He was slashing—with the prince’s own magic sword--at the mirrors.
At each tremendous stroke, a bright light blinded Giles’s eyes; a flat
figure and a shower of glass fell from the wall; and roars of
affirmation and dismay went up from the crowd of reflections below.
Giles’s world was falling to pieces around him like the raining glass.
Finally, the confusion died down and the young man with the sword
stood up.  Giles remembered seeing him before but his face was so
changed that Giles couldn’t place him until he started to speak.
“I am Astorel,” the young man said.  “Yes, I realize you knew me as
the prince’s valet, but I am done with that now.”
“Astorel!” Giles thought to himself.  “This confident chap, leaning on
his master’s sword no less, is singing a very different tune than the
peacock of a boy I remember.  Come to think of it, whenever he could
get himself on stage, to bring the prince his water goblet or turn his
music pages, he never took notice of the hurting people, except to bow
and swagger and grin at them.  Hmm, what will he think of us?  But,
bless me, I’m getting off on my own thoughts and missing the speech!”
“You all know that Prince Rigoletto and Princess Glorfindel are now
traveling in the world of men,” Astorel was saying.  “They declined to
take me with them, though I play the harp just as well as the princess
herself.  When Prince Rigoletto was tired in the evening from a long
day’s work I often soothed him with my playing.  But they refused to
let me go with them, though all I wanted was to help.  Don’t you see
they are jealous of us?  They don’t want anyone to know what good
musicians we are because they want all the applause and the
invitations to sing.  It’s not fair.  Why should they be the only ones
with singing reflections?”
“Yes, it’s unjust!” cried Lord Elendor.  His mirror had stood directly
behind the prince’s bench so that Lord Elendor looked most like the
prince in size and shape.  The others were small or wide or
disproportional, depending on whether their mirrors were far from the
stage, up in the dome, or placed at angles to the stage.  “Astorel
liberated me first and explained it all,” Lord Elendor continued.
“Why should the prince and princess lock us in mirrors while they are
absent, so that we must always sleep and never play the songs we wish
to play?  Why should they decide which songs to sing and force us to
sing them?  Why should we always and ever do and say what Prince
Rigoletto and Princess Glorfindel decide to do or say first?”  The
crowd began to murmur, but he continued.  “I, too, was shocked at
first.  Any word against the prince sounds like it must be untrue, but
I ask you, was anything in our former imprisonment true?  No, it was
all a shadow of existence.  This new life, this freedom, this is
reality.”
“But what of our wounds?” shouted someone in the group, and Giles
growled his agreement.
Astorel laughed bitterly.  “Are you afraid of the price of freedom?”
he mocked.  “Look what freeing you did to me!” and he stretched out
his hands for all to see.  Giles shut his eyes.  The hands were red as
blood, and the skin was beginning to bubble.  He remembered the flash
of light each time the prince’s sword had struck a mirror, the fire of
magic meeting magic, and shuddered.
Astorel continued.  “You have me to thank for your freedom.  If you
want to stand against your wall and go to sleep you may.  You may do
with it what you want.”  Then he turned and strode towards the
prince’s sleeping chamber.
Giles always remembered that night as the worst and longest of his
life.  The shapes of prince and princess milled about in the half-dark
like living shadows against columns of moonlight, for no one had
bothered about lighting the chandelier.  Some argued in little groups
that gathered by the windows.  Some ran about introducing themselves
to any other reflection they happened to bump into, saying, “Hello,
I’m Lady Arabel.  Who are you?  This is all so new—and exciting.
Shall we walk about together?” or ”Lord Eledon.  Yes, pleased to make
your acquaintance.  What do you think of this affair?”  Some
reflections jogged around the room or disappeared down the long
corridor to the rest of the palace, content to enjoy exploring new
places they had never had to use in the concert hall.  (Prince
Rigoletto was the most energetic of elves, but he did not waste it on
needless running.)  Finally, other reflections backed into chairs or
corners and said nothing.
Giles was one of these last ones.  “Steady, old boy,” he said to
himself, “best see how the song plays out before you sing it.”  He
tried to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes he saw, instead of
blackness, a flash of light, a glowing blade, and behind it, not
Astorel’s face but the prince’s.  “It can’t be true!  It can’t be
true!” he thought.  It was the first time he had ever been cold,
confused, or afraid, and the first time he’d ever felt pain.  Giles
had seen the signs of these sensations in the faces of the people in
the front rows of the concert hall, but this time he understood why
their faces looked so tight and pinched.  Somewhere to his left one of
the princess’s reflections was sobbing.
Eventually, the columns of light that were the windows grew brighter
and more distinct.  Now Giles could see the faces of the reflections
around him.  They wore expressions he had never seen in the prince or
princess—fear, jealousy, self-pity, blankness.  “We all need something
to put us to rights, some music.  That should do it.”  He stood up and
headed for the piano, but several others must have had the same idea,
for before he reached it five of his fellows were crowding onto the
bench.
“Off the bench, fool,” ordered Lord Elendor.  “It’s madness to think
you can play with hands of different sizes.  You are no longer in your
mirror, man.”
“I would like to try anyway,” said the reflection just addressed.  He
was tall and thin, almost too tall and thin, and one side of his body
was indeed larger than the other.  His mirror must have stood in an
angle where the perspective made everything look slanted, and now he
was living that illusion in reality.
“No, I shall play,” Lord Elendor declared, elbowing him aside.  “I
have been real the longest; I understand these real things.”
“But look here, we must all try it some time.  It is what we were made
for,” said a third reflection.  His hands were also different sizes
but his left hand was the larger, the opposite of the previous
speaker.  Giles guessed from these features that they were the
reflections Aldernas and Aldernon whose mirrors had stood to either
side of the stage.
“It’s the only thing we’ve done before,” corrected Aldernas, “but I
would like to try it on a real piano.  Shall we try a duet?”  They
began to play, with Aldernas to the left and Aldernon to his right,
but their fingers kept bumbling; they were each playing their part of
the duet with the wrong hand for it and kept getting in each other’s
way.  The argument hadn’t attracted any attention; so many had broken
out all night, and several more were still underway, but the heavy
notes all tripping and falling over each other made everyone look
round, and some people began to jeer.  Aldernon suggested another
attempt, this time switching sides, but it faired no better.  Aldernon
played by memory, while Aldernas added his own decorative notes that
then confused his partner.  The rest of the reflections did not let
this go on for long.  Within minutes several were at the bench telling
them no one wanted to hear their music, if it could be called music,
or that they themselves could play what everyone needed to calm down.
And all the while Lord Elendor was thrusting himself among them
shouting that he could do a better job and he was the reflection most
like the prince so they should all listen to him.  A similar scene was
beginning to play out as Princess Glorfindel’s reflections grouped
around the harp, all shouting and shoving and whining and lecturing
and grabbing at harp strings.

Giles rushed in crying, “Come now, this won’t do.  The prince wouldn’t
have us fighting like this,” but no one seemed to listen.  Soon he,
too, was beating on backs and shoulders and bellowing, “Stop it!  Stop
it!  This won’t do!  Stop it!!”  Then he knocked heads with someone
else and got a glimpse of wild eyes and a wide open mouth yelling,
“Stop it!  This won’t do!”  For a moment both reflections fell silent
and still.  They stood staring at each other, twin images of their own
angry selves.  Then they both mumbled, “My apologies,” and trudged,
with bowed heads, to the far corners of the concert hall.  Back on the
stage, they heard the pop of a harp string.
Eventually, life settled down into a new rhythm.  During the day the
reflections did what they liked in the hall and the prince and
princess’s royal suites, though Astorel kept the prince’s bed chamber
for himself.  At night Astorel or Lord Elendor gave a speech, and then
someone   would try to give a piano performance.  As long as the
pianist had not been injured too badly by Astorel’s sword and didn’t
have one hand larger than the other, these usually came off fairly
smoothly, though nothing like the full, vibrating choir of the old
days and without the healing effects.  You might be wondering why no
one ventured outside or into the rest of the palace.  A few of them
did explore the long corridor behind the great wooden doors, but most
of them never thought of leaving that wing of the palace.  That was
where they had lived all their lives.  Music was the only thing they
really loved and the only thing they really knew how to do.  That was
why it was such torture to no longer be able to make music well or to
make it at all.
So things continued for days and days, until Giles began to wonder if
the happy times before the sword and the shattered glass had in any
sense been real.  They might have been a dream or a story he made up
to comfort himself in that world of constant fights, constant aching,
and constant thumping, plunking, screeching of the piano.  But three
things kept him sure it had all really happened.  For one thing, the
ache in his shoulder; it had to have come from something.  Second,
there were the prince and princess themselves.  No reflection could
have dreamed them up; they were too alive for that.  Third, the valet
Astorel had been acting as if Rigoletto and Glorfindel were coming
back.
Since the night he became “Lord Liberator,” as he liked to be called,
Astorel had spent his time doing all the things he had wanted to
experience as a valet but had never gotten the chance to do.
Unfortunately, this meant flirting with Princess Glorfindel’s
reflections, giving harp performances for those reflections who cared
to listen, snubbing those who did not care to listen, and bossing
about the weak-willed of the lot.  They blacked his boots for him and
brushed his suit for him and lit the chandelier.  It was clear to
Giles that Astorel wanted to impress—not only the well-dressed images
of his handsome master and mistress but also anyone outside the
concert hall.  Whenever Astorel saw through its windows someone
walking in the fields outside the hall, he would lick his lips and
straighten the velvet curtains, as if he was about the prince’s
business, and once, when Astorel was hurrying to dinner with the few
other servants left in the palace, Giles heard him mutter something
about “keeping up appearances.”  In some of his regular speeches
Astorel proclaimed eternal holiday and the triumph of free will, and
if you had heard him you would have been sure of it too.  Other
nights, he hinted that freedom must always be guarded and kept up at a
price.  “Look at the wounds we all carry,” he was fond of saying (and
here he would stretch out to them his   hands, on which the burn marks
were spreading).  “These were the wounds we bore for our independence.
 Do you think it will be kept without pain and struggle?”  Giles began
to suspect that these talks were largely for Astorel to hear his own
voice talking and see other beings listening, but Astorel really meant
some of what he said, for he began to train a band of the most
indignant reflections how to fight with swords.  Giles had no idea
what Astorel planned to do if the prince and princess should really
come back.  He felt sure no one could kill the prince, and, therefore,
the princess was safe.
Giles was, however, sure that Astorel’s band of rebels could inflict
pain.  They behaved very much as if they were part of a gang.
Everyone inside was trying to get closer to the top man, who was, of
course, Astorel, and then Lord Elendor.  Those on the fringes wanted
to get inside but were afraid of the mean acts they might have to do.
Everyone outside was fair game for them to pick on.  Several other
groups had formed themselves among the reflections.  Some played
chess, others read together, others debated Astorel’s governing
policy, but most groups sang.  Giles had attached himself to one
called the Disbelievers.  They disbelieved in the tyranny of the
prince and princess and sang the songs they could remember from those
days of harmony and pitch.  Then they had been able to sing perfectly;
it came naturally to them as they unconsciously imitated their master
or mistress.  Now they had to try to teach each other.
One day the Disbelievers had gathered under the dome of the concert
hall where the echoes off of broken glass would disturb them the
least, when a knot of armed reflections shouldered into them in the
wide aisle.
“Sorry, songbirds, you’ll have to take your Christmas picnic somewhere
else,” one of them said. “We need this space to practice.”
“What do you mean ‘Christmas picnic’?” snapped one of the soprano
singers.  “No one has picnics in the winter.  That’s nonsense.”  She
waved her music sheet in disgust.
“Well, so is your singing and your ‘Disbelieving.’”
“You barbarian!” cried the soprano.
“Hold!  Don’t you dare touch her,” cried one of the basses, for the
swordsman had raised his sword arm.
>From that moment on, Giles lost the details of the fight.  He ran
forward with the others.  There were kicks and punches given on both
sides, and women screamed, but the group with music sheets proved no
match for the group with swords.  Out of the corner of his eye Giles
saw a horizontal silver line streaking towards his neck.  “What a sad
way to go,” thought Giles, “brawling with your brothers—and I haven’t
even seen the prince yet.  Will he ever come?  What would he do if he
came and saw us now?”
But Giles didn’t have to wait long.  Before the blade had reached his
neck, it had been stopped in mid-air by the crash of the smaller doors
being flung wide, and the prince and princess stood in the doorway.
At that moment several things happened all at once.  The entire room
fell silent so that everyone heard Rigoletto’s footfalls as he half
strode, half bounded  across the velvet carpet.  The lead swordsman
found his right arm in a grip so firm and energetic that he felt as
though he were being shaken.  Giles backed onto a bench, and The rest
of the combatants scattered like cockroaches in the light.  Indeed,
everyone began to wonder whether the prince were not actually glowing.
 Next to him, all the reds and golds and browns and blacks looked a
dingy gray, as if a bright light was washing out the colors.  But then
the reflections looked faded even compared to the grass and sky
outside the windows.  Giles—and several others too—realized with a
shock that the reflections were not faded; no, you could see the
outdoor landscape through them.  At their feet lay little pools of
shadow too light and shapeless for the sunny day it was turning out to
be.  They had all become less solid, less real, and no one had noticed
until now.
If you or I had suddenly found that we were turning into ghosts we
might sit down and cry or demand an explanation, and many reflections
did just that, but Giles and many others sat still as solid statues.
They felt ashamed  of appearing in this state before their prince so
solid and alive.  They wanted to run to him and dance around him
because he was so radiant and strong, and they waited to see what
their radiant, powerful prince would do.  He released the arm of the
swordsman, who stumbled back to his fellows, leaving Rigoletto
standing alone in the center of the hall.  He turned once around,
surveying the jagged mirrors still hanging on the walls, the crumpled
music sheets littering the floor, the scuffed and broken benches, the
wounded shoulders and pinched faces of the reflections.  Anger, pain,
pity, and love chased each other across his strong face.  And then he
did the last thing they expected him to do.  He sat down and began to
weep.
The reflections remembered Rigoletto’s compassion when he talked with
the hurting people who came to hear his singing, but seeing their pain
had always made him more determined to sing for them the best he
could.  This time all his energy went into sounds that no one who was
there that day will ever forget.  Giles once said it was like music in
its own way, like hearing the ocean or a mountain break its heart.
Long low moans; he pressed his hands to his face and rocked back and
forth.  Then bursts of lamentation that shook the chandelier and every
being in that hall.  Soft sobbing for a love now lost—but not lost
forever.   Giles thought his nerves would break with the strain if
anything more happened, but it did.  Rigoletto’s song began to swell
again.  If they hadn’t been too captivated to speak, his followers
might have said to each other, “It’s alright; it will all work out in
the end.”  The faces of his rebels began to look afraid.  Even
Glorfindel, who had been silently crying on a bench by the small doors
stopped her tears.  Her frown turned itself upside down and then
flattened to a grim rod.
Then, for a moment, Giles’s heart stopped beating.  Prince Rigoletto
rose to his feet, stretched out his hands, and cried, “Why?  Why have
you shattered the harmony and beauty of this company?  Why have you
spurned your duty to this hall, your fellow servants, and your lord
and lady?  Why have you so disfigured my people?”  Here he lowered his
voice and strode to confront the Lord Astorel at the back of the hall.
 The valet stood hunched like a cornered animal unsure whether to
cower or spring.  “I know why you did this,” Rigoletto said in a low,
clear voice that everyone in the room could hear, “Because you
hungered for followers.  Because you hungered for servants.  Because
you hungered for admirers.”  And here again the prince’s tone changed
in a direction no one expected, least of all Astorel.  “Lay down your
hunger and pride,” he offered.  “Be satisfied with fellowship and
song.  For I will heal these people.  You may join me as my helper—I
have taught you well—or be consumed by your own hunger.”
For one moment Astorel’s eyes went blank.  There was still much of the
boy in him, and that boy wanted very much to accept the offer, to be
forgiven, to have again the beauty and the peace.  But lately he had
become a leader, the leader he had always wanted to be, the most
important leader in the land as far as he was concerned, and he wasn’t
about to back down in front of his men.  He looked the prince in the
eyes and laughed.  “I refuse your offer, tyrant.”  And Giles thought
he could see the beginning of the consuming the prince had talked
about.  Astorel’s face grew a little paler, a little harder, a little
more haggard, almost a little more like death.
“Then go,” thundered the prince.  “Go with your followers, your
servants, your admirers, but know my business with you is not yet
ended.”  And with that Rigoletto strode back the length of the hall,
lent his sister his arm, and they retired to their rooms together.
Only then, in the stunned silence of the hall, did Giles remember the
princess.  Everyone had been so busy watching the prince that only the
few reflections closest to her had really paid attention to her gasp
as she first walked through the doors.  But now all the remaining
reflections remembered it.  They remembered, too, how they had seen
her out of the corners of their eyes sink onto the nearest bench and
cry silent diamond tears.  The women reflections had cried with her as
she touched the dying babies and bloodied bandages in the crowds of
concert-goers.  They had all seen her cry for others.  Now they had
seen her cry for them and the mistrust they had shown in her and her
brother.  When the prince had wept none of the reflections had been
bold enough to move a finger.  They had not even thought of doing
anything but watching.  Now the memory of both that royal pair, the
deep, wrenching groans of the one, the silent sorrow in the face of
the other, the reflections couldn’t help feeling that such beautiful
faces should not be stained with tears, such great and giving hearts
should never bleed for them.
Giles knew Lord Elendor had been wrong.  He had always said so, but
now he knew it.  Slowly, humbly, with tears running in his very veins,
Giles pushed the ladder used to light the chandelier into place and
climbed its first few rungs.
“What are you doing?” asked a wide-eyed reflection at its base.
“I’m going back,” he answered and climbed on.
“That’s right,” said several others.  “What have we been doing all these weeks?”
Soon Giles felt the shake of the ladder as another reflection began to
climb, and below him he could see one by one leave their seats to find
their mirrors.
When Giles reached the ledge of the dome he let out a low whistle.
“You chaps had better fetch a broom,” he said, turning to the
reflections behind him on the ladder.  “This place is pretty prickly.
It’s going to take a deal of sweeping up before it’s fit to walk on.”
On the ground level of the hall the reflections were having the same
problem.  Ouuuu!” yowled one younger-looking reflection after stepping
backward into the open space where his mirror had been.  He lurched
forward, hopping on one foot, and sat down on the floor to pull a
shard of glass out of his shoe.  All over the hall Giles began to hear
the tinkling of glass, small cries of pain, and the sucking of sore
fingers.  The mirrors were now nothing but frames of lead with jagged
shards of glass all around the edges.  If there had been no glass, the
flat reflections would have had no trouble in standing on the leaden
frames--one reflection whose mirror had almost no shards on the bottom
edge proved this point—but many of them had to stand on crystal spikes
or hold themselves in uncomfortable positions to avoid getting
pierced.  “How ever will we play the harp like this?” moaned one of
the princess’s reflections.  “I can hardly move my hands at all.”
The next moment her grumbling turned to a shriek.  “Oh no, oh no!” she
cried.  “I’m not moving!  I’m not moving!  The prince and princess are
here.  Why am I not moving?”
The other reflections all turned their heads as the prince walked over
to her and laid his hand on her shoulder.  “Dear lady, you no longer
follow us because the mirror has been shattered.  Inside your mirrors
you followed our words and deeds by nature of the magic.  You could do
no other.”
“And we never wanted to,” thought Giles.
“Now,“ the prince continued, “you must follow us by choice.”  And when
he saw the question on the lady’s lips he added, “take heart.  We will
help you.  Shall we help you now?”
Lady Emerel nodded.  With that, Princess Glorfindel disappeared
through the little doors by the stage and returned a few minutes later
accompanied by her serving woman Nalia.  Giles almost laughed to see
the fine figure of the princess pulling behind her a cart of cleaning
rags.  “But bless me,” he thought.  “Why won’t she give any to the
ladies down there?  She doesn’t mean to do it all herself and Nalia?”
But she did.  The two real elf women righted chairs, straightened
curtains, and wiped bits of glass off of everything.  Prince Rigoletto
swept the glass from the ledge of the dome and all the carpeted floor.
 The reflections, meanwhile, were bidden to stand in their places and
copy, as best they could, the motions of their master and mistress.
“Madness,” grumbled Giles.  “Here I am a strapping young fellow, and
the royalty have to climb ladders and break their backs with sweeping
while I stand in a wall of glass!  Do they mean to kill me?”  After
all he had seen that day Giles knew this view of things wasn’t quite
true, but he did have one of the worst places in the hall.  Along with
hitting broken glass every time he tried to imitate one of the
prince’s movements he had to keep his back arched and pressed against
the sloping wall.  It took him half an hour, balancing his flat self
on the thin ledge where the walls met the dome, to simply stand fully
within his mirror.  He moved his foot slightly to get it away from a
nasty little spur.  The next moment his pain was gone and he saw the
rungs of the ladder rushing past him.  He screamed as he remembered
the last time he had fallen and watched the wooden bench beneath him
get closer and closer.  But before he could feel its hardness the
prince had caught him in strong arms.  “Do not be afraid, Giles,”
Rigoletto told him.  “You will fall many times, but I will always
catch you.  And soon they will be fewer.”
Because of catching all the falling reflections and restoring them to
their mirrors, the sun had long set before the cleaning was done.  And
then came some relief.  Rigoletto and Glorfindel sat down at their
instruments and played.
“Ah,” said Giles to himself, “now that’s music, that is.  You’d hardly
know those pieces were out of tune if you hadn’t heard them last
night.”
That night, and for the next few weeks, Rigoletto instructed the
reflections to rest and watch and listen.  They did not have to
practice playing themselves—at least not yet.  The next night he
called them all close and said, “Tonight we teach you to tune a piano
and a harp,” and for the next hour he was saying things like, “this
string must sound an octave higher than Middle C,” or “place the left
thumb here and take the tuning fork in your right hand.”
After two weeks Giles could imitate the motion of passing a tuning
fork from hand to hand without having to steady himself by stepping
out of his mirror onto the dome ledge.  “I still don’t see the point
in all of this,” he said to no one in particular.  “I’m sure Prince
Rigoletto could have put the mirrors to rights and us in them if he
had the mind to.”  But concentrating on the motions helped take his
mind off the pain of the glass, and he truly did want back that old
harmony and joy.  Nearly a month later he exclaimed to his neighbor,
“Well bless me, I think I did that whole tune up without a fall!”
“You think it’s getting’ easier?” puffed the reflection to his right.
The speaker’s face was red with effort, and his eyes were moist with
undropped tears.
“Well bless me, I think so,” replied Giles.  “The glass hasn’t
bothered my shoulder much lately.  It used to hurt like you wouldn’t
believe.”
“Oh, yes I would,” said his neighbor, whose name was Gumble.
“Well, you catch my meaning.”  Giles turned to look at his shoulder,
but the quick movement was too much for him, and he tipped out
dangerously over the red and wooden hall below him.  But something
stopped him from falling all the way.  “It held!” he cried.  “My
shoulder held fast in the glass.”
“It’s true!” another reflection exclaimed, looking at her own feet.
“The glass must be growing together.”
“That must be why there are so fewer comfortable positions,” murmured
Gumble, and hopeful endurance came into his tired eyes.
There was much rejoicing in the hall that night and no wonder that the
prince and princess picked that night to begin their reflections’
training in choral parts.  They had sung in parts naturally before
because of the way the sound hit their mirrors, and they still
remembered something of it, but now the prince and princess made sure
they knew how and why choral music works as it does.  Like their
bodies, the reflections’ knowledge and skills were marred and
incomplete.  It was hard for Giles to sing with all his lungs and
still keep his balance, but as the weeks went by the time between his
slips grew longer and longer, and eventually the glass began to
support instead of to stab his other side.
No one (except, perhaps, Rigoletto and Astorel themselves) knew where
the valet and his gang had gone or what they did in those long weeks.
I can, however, tell you that the palace servants still tell stories
about that autumn.  Many a maid and a stable hand were waked in the
night by the prince’s voice only to find no one else in the room.  One
cook even reported that several women wearing royal gowns blew past
her window on a breeze.  But that was the morning after she had stayed
up late reading a fairy tale novel, and sources warn me she might not
have been fully awake.
Whatever they were doing in the rest of the palace and grounds,
Astorel’s followers came back much changed.  One night a scouting
party crept in through the crack between the heavy wooden doors to see
what Prince Rigoletto and Princess Glorfindel were doing to their
captives.  They found all the reflections asleep, some on the wooden
benches, those whom the glass had begun to restore in their mirrors.
No one noticed the rebels until Lady Emerel, who had been dreaming of
falling golden stars, began to hear strange whisperings in her ear.
“What are you doing here, standing around on bits of glass.  Do you
think you are learning to play the harp?  No, you play nothing but the
fool.  It’s empty air you pass your hands across.  Come, come away
from this place of pain.  Don’t you see?  The princess and her brother
are only killing you slowly.  Come away, away with us.”
Lady Emerel opened her eyes.  “Oh, oh!,” she shrieked.  “It’s Lord
Astorel.  Lord Astorel is here!  Save m--”  She broke off her scream
in the middle of a word because suddenly she was not sure she was
seeing Lord Astorel.  The face was his, but the body was too flat.
By that time, though, she had waked most of the room, and the
reflections closest to the door could feel the floor shake under their
master’s running feet.  By the time the prince had flung open the
small wooden doors, a dozen voices had all cried out, “No, he’s here.
Lord Astorel is here.”  A score of figures whisked out of the shadows
and into the bars of light let in by the windows.  In the dark they
seemed a score of Astorels.  In the light you could hardly see them at
all, they had become so faded.  Then with a scuffling like that of
mice they slipped out the slightly open windows and were gone.
“They will be back,” warned Rigoletto.  “And they will try to take you
with them, with your leave or without it.”
>From then on, the prince’s reflections took turns watching for rebels.
 They became harder and harder to see except for the gleam of the
swords they brought with them in later attacks.  Many reflections
received wounds in mind and body, and many found the glass cut around
them where it had been growing together, but no reflection was ever
dragged from the hall.  Even the reflections in the dome did not
escape unharmed, for the ladder to the dome ledge was left standing so
that Rigoletto could carry up any fallen reflections.  But the rebels
sustained their losses too.  Giles got in many sound kicks and punches
that sent rebel shadows hurtling through the void.  “I can see one
good thing about them sword belts,” he remarked to Gumble after a
particularly hard fight.  “If they weren’t wearing them, those rebels
might be too light to fall at all!”
But Giles was most excited when he got the chance to learn sword
fighting.  Rigoletto fought the intruders with his sword, and all his
reflections, if not engaged with their own enemies, eagerly followed
his every move.
Their fighting proved invaluable one frosty winter night.  All the
reflections now slept in their mirrors.  They were all nearly healed.
The glass was nearly smooth around them, and they could sometimes feel
again the harp strings and piano keys under their fingers.  They all
slept soundly, for they needed their rest.  Tomorrow was to be Prince
Rigoletto’s wedding day and the first night the concert hall would be
open again to the people.  They all rehearsed their parts for the
wedding hymn in their dreams, all except the prince.
Prince Rigoletto spent that night in a prayer vigil, kneeling at the
front of the hall.  When the great doors silently opened at the back
of the hall and the light of the full moon glinted off the point of an
advancing blade, the prince calmly confronted the intruder.  “I have
been expecting you,” he said.  “Name your business, faithless one.”
This time Astorel did not blink at his master’s words.  “I have come
that you might never marry, that you might never beget heirs, that you
might never rule another, and that I might take your place.”  And with
that he struck a mighty blow at the prince’s neck.  But to fight the
prince was to fight a Bengal Tiger.  He leapt aside and knocked the
sword from Astorel’s hand.   Instead of grabbing it himself, Rigoletto
sheathed his own sword.  He sprang to the nearest mirror and tore at
the glass with his bare hands.
“Aha,” cried Astorel.  “Are you no better than I?  Are you destroying
your own work or admitting you were wrong to lock them up?”
The prince did not answer.  The figure that fell out of the glass was
answer enough.  This time he did not fall flat on the carpeted floor.
By now Aldernon was used to falling; he simply steadied himself by
stepping to the ground and looked to his master.  “This is no good,”
he thought in embarrassed shock.  “The prince must have no falling
during the wedding hymn!”  But as soon as Aldernon placed his foot on
the ground he felt a difference.  It felt at home on the ground,
strong and secure, not wobbly and thin the way his flat feet used to
be.  His arm too, when he stretched it out to catch his balance, felt
stronger and more easy to move than ever before.
At first Astorel thought he was seeing a second Rigoletto, but this
elf was taller and thinner than the prince.  This elf was taller than
them both.  And the prince’s eyes never bore the surprised and guilty
expression in the eyes of this former reflection.  “The brute’s
alive!” Astorel hissed as he ducked and snatched up his sword still
lying on the ground.
That was the worst moment of Astorel’s life—and the happiest of
Aldernon’s.  Before him crouched the white-faced figure of Astorel.
To his right, the prince had already begun tearing at the next mirror.
“To arms! To arms, my brothers!”” called Rigoletto.  His voice filled
the hall as loud and clear as a trumpet, as though he did not feel the
pain of broken glass with every movement of his healing hands.
In one fluid motion Aldernon drew his sword and lunged for Astorel.
As he fully left the mirror, silver and white flecks scattered from
his shoulders like glory from a lion’s mane.  “purgerer!” he cried.
“False and faithless servant!  You boasted you had made us real.  This
is what it is to be real.”  The shock of impact ran down both swords.
“It is to know the prince for who he is, to be like him and more
yourself than ever.”  He laughed.  “You and your wraiths are mere
fading shadows.”
Earlier that summer Astorel might have fled or surrendered at either
force or truth, but now it was too late.  He lowered his head like a
bull and began to slash with fury and abandon.  Cataracts of glass
sprayed the two combatants as they splashed through light and shadow,
whirling around the hall.
Someone knocked over the prince’s vigil candle.  Soon a dozen duels
broke out as reinforcements joined each side, the elves against the
wraiths.  And all was clamor and shade and flying glass and fire.  At
first the elves were outnumbered, but they had on their side strength,
size, and surprise.  The wraiths had not expected to find the prince’s
purpose so different than they had dreamed.  They held to their
delusions as tightly as to their swords.  The flames kindled by the
vigil candle licked along the stage.  Its red light made the solid
elven warriors more visible and the wraiths harder to see.  Several of
Princess Glorfindel’s former reflections risked their own deaths to
beat back the flames with the curtains, but they could do little
without water.
And then the singing began.  It was Giles who started it.  As he came
roaring down the ladder he understood why the prince had required them
to follow him in their mirrors instead of doing actual work.  It was
because Rigoletto did not intend for them to go back to being
automatic moving images.  Instead, he wanted living brothers who knew
how to work and play and sing and fight rightly of their own wills.
With this knowledge he began to sing, and all his brothers did the
same.  None of them had heard the song before, but, somehow, they all
knew what words and notes to sing and did so in unison.
For the wraiths, frightened as they already were and weary of their
heavy swords, this was too much.  Their strokes became blind and
clumsy.  Several turned on each other in confusion.  Not one of them
survived until morning.
Yet dawn looked down upon an elvish joy already stained with sorrow.
During the battle Rigoletto had drawn Astorel away from the melee and
the two had dueled on the stage among the dancing flames.  Astorel had
been consumed but not before giving the prince a scathing wound across
the face.  The weapon had been Rigoletto’s own magic sword.  It left
on the prince the same burning mark it had made on the hands of the
one who held it and the bodies of those he had marred.  Now that the
reflections had become real elves, they no longer bore the sword’s
scars, but it would be a long time before Prince Rigoletto’s wound was
healed.  The bitter poison in Astorel’s soul had overflowed through
his hands into the sword, and it was now laying siege to Rigoletto’s
mind and heart as well as to his body.
Weeping filled the air that day instead of wedding hymns.  The elves
mourned long and deep for their injured prince but also for the hall
that was no more.  The king’s court and servants had saved the rest of
the palace from the fire, but a few charred beams and stained  and
trampled carpet were all that now told of the magnificent concert
hall.
You may have heard elsewhere the story of how Rigoletto found healing
in the world of men.  I have heard more than one version.  Perhaps
because some of the tellers confuse Rigoletto with the elves that
followed him there.  Ever since their master took the white ship
across the worlds the elves of the magic mirrors have kept their
master’s cause and healed the sick and cheered the downcast.  At least
that’s the story Giles told me while I was sick in bed, and afterwards
I have never been ill and never forgotten his story.
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