[stylist] The Elves of the Magic Mirrors

[Donna Hill]

Hi Kristen,
I enjoyed this very much. Your descriptions are so vivid. I think you have a reason for making them sister and brother, and I've thought of a compromise whereby they could still be lovers. How about having them raised as sister and brother. His family takes in a little girl who is no relative of theirs, maybe not even nobility, just out of the goodness of their hearts. It could help explain the magic healing powers they have. Obviously, they would fall in love. Part of their relationship would always be that innocent connection of siblings.

Donna Hill
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Kristen Diaz wrote:
> 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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> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writers Division web site:
> http://www.nfb-writers-division.org <http://www.nfb-writers-division.org/>
>
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>
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E-mail message checked by Spyware Doctor (7.0.0.514)
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