<html><head></head><body name="Mail Message Editor"><div><span class="Apple-style-span">Kristen: This story begins on Page 3 with the give and take between characters. Many writers make the mistake of giving a lot of background information up front, but if you don't know the characters (and I don't), slogging through this is difficult. Begin with the action, and insert the background material here and there so we understand what we are reading, but don't make it such a solid chunk in front.<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">I would also make them lovers rather than brother and sister.<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="">Lori<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><br></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div><div id="replyPrefaceElement">On Apr 2, 2010, at 9:03:19 PM, "Kristen Diaz" <daughteroftheday@gmail.com> wrote:</div><br><blockquote style="padding-left: 5px; margin-left: 5px; border-left-width: 2px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: blue; color: blue; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="width: 749px; "><div id="felix-mail-header-block" style="color: black; background-color: white; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: silver; padding-bottom: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; width: 749px; "><table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td width="70px" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 8pt; color: gray; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; font-weight: bold; "><span>From:</span></td><td style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 8pt; color: black; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; padding-left: 5px; "><span title=""Kristen Diaz" <daughteroftheday@gmail.com>">"Kristen Diaz" <daughteroftheday@gmail.com></span></td></tr><tr><td width="70px" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 8pt; color: gray; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; font-weight: bold; "><span>Subject:</span></td><td style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 8pt; color: black; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; padding-left: 5px; "><span style="font-weight: bold; ">[stylist] The Elves of the Magic Mirrors</span></td></tr><tr><td width="70px" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 8pt; color: gray; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; font-weight: bold; "><span>Date:</span></td><td style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 8pt; color: black; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; padding-left: 5px; "><span>April 2, 2010 9:03:19 PM EDT</span></td></tr><tr><td width="70px" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 8pt; color: gray; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; font-weight: bold; "><span>To:</span></td><td style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 8pt; color: black; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; padding-left: 5px; "><span title="stylist <stylist@nfbnet.org>">stylist <stylist@nfbnet.org></span></td></tr><tr id="felix-attachment-header-block"><td width="70px" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 8pt; color: gray; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; font-weight: bold; "><span>Attachments:</span></td><td style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 8pt; color: black; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; padding-left: 5px; "><span>1 Attachment, 93.0 KB</span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div id="felix-mail-content-block" style="color: black; background-color: white; width: 749px; "><div style="font-family: monospace; color: black; background-color: white; font-size: 8pt; ">Hello everyone,<br><br>Below is a story I am working on and would love to hear your comments.<br>I have also attached it to this email. This story is based on ( and<br>written as the prequal to) the Feature Films for Families movie<br>Rigoletto, an excellent film that I would highly recommend, and the<br>score is stunning!<br><br>Questions to consider:<br>--Do you think it would improve the story for Rigoletto and Glorfindel<br>to be brother and sister, as I have them now, or the prince and his<br>bride-to-be, whom he has taught to sing, as the movie has them?<br>--One of my biggest questions is a seeming inconsistency: the openning<br>line says that Rigoletto and Glorfindel have living reflections<br>because they are so alive, but throughout most of the story, the<br>reflections seem to be effected by the magic in their mirrors. Would<br>it be clearer to have only one source of magic, either the prince and<br>princess or the mirrors? If I should pick one of those sources, which<br>do you suggest?<br><br>If you have comments on anything else in the story, please let me<br>know. Thank you!<br><br>Sincerely,<br>Kristen Diaz<br><br>The Elves of the Magic Mirrors<br><br>Not so very long ago, in the fairy kingdom of the elves, there lived a<br>prince and princess so alive that their reflections were alive too. I<br>don’t mean that their reflections looked very lifelike. I mean they<br>were actually alive. They thought what the prince and princess<br>thought and spoke an echo of their masters’ words. When the prince or<br>princess was angry or sad, the reflections felt the same emotions.<br>They even felt the texture beneath their fingers whenever the prince<br>or princess handled something, and they watched their royal masters<br>interact in the world outside their mirrors. None of the reflections<br>thought or spoke on their own, but they all had unique personalities<br>and individual names. Every evening, as Prince Rigoletto and Princess<br>Glorfindel strode into their concert hall of magic mirrors, they would<br>greet each reflection by name: “Good evening, Sir Garindel. Good<br>evening, Lady Emerel. Good evening, Giles.” And the reflections<br>would all echo, “Good evening.”<br>The elf prince was called Rigoletto; his sister was called Glorfindel.<br>They were twins and the best singers and musicians the elf kingdom<br>had ever known. Every evening they strode into their concert hall<br>just after dinner, as the blush of the setting sun fell on them from<br>the west windows. Rigoletto, dressed in a black suit and white<br>collared shirt that matched his dark hair and light skin sat at the<br>piano bench. Glorfindel, with sunset and candle light glowing on her<br>red hair and elegant white dress played a golden harp. Although they<br>looked nothing like each other, they completed and complemented each<br>other. Glorfindel’s laugh was like the sure small chuckle of a<br>stream. Rigoletto’s was the overflowing mirth of a waterfall. When<br>he walked into a room he charged the air with energy, though he spoke<br>little and kept very still, but you could never quite remember when<br>Glorfindel came in. Once you noticed she was there, though, you<br>always wondered how you could have missed it, because her presence<br>filled the room with living grace. When they sang together, the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>prince laid a strong foundation melody. His sister softened the sharp<br>corners with harmony.<br>Their music was so alive and strong and beautiful that it could cure<br>any disease or pain. That was why the concert hall filled with<br>guests every night. The elven people carried in their sick to listen<br>and be healed. Elders and warriors traveled for days to have their<br>wounds and their memories soothed. And it was said that any child who<br>listened to even one song from that royal pair would grow wise and<br>strong beyond his years.<br>But that was not the only reason. The audience wanted to see the<br>magnificent concert hall. This hall was one of the glories of the elf<br>king’s palace, second only to the Great Hall, where all the feasts<br>took place. At the back of the concert hall, great wooden doors led<br>through a corridor to the rest of the palace. Slightly to the right<br>of the front, smaller wooden doors led to the prince and princess’s<br>private chambers, for the concert hall was their personal domain. The<br>hall itself had so many short sides that it looked nearly round. A<br>dome lined with mirrors topped the hall and met the sides at a small<br>wooden ledge carved with the names of legendary elf musicians. Red<br>velvet carpet a quarter inch thick covered the floor, and on this<br>carpet dozens of rows of carved and gilded chairs sat in half-moons<br>facing a sliver of stage at the front. Rich with red velvet, gilding,<br>and polished wood, the concert hall would have been a dark place if it<br>weren’t for the alternating panels of window glass and mirror glass<br>that ran all the way to the dome above. Each mirror reflected at<br>least two windows, so that if you had seen it with the sunshine<br>pouring in, you might have thought there were no walls at all. If you<br>had seen it at night, with the chandelier that hung from the dome all<br>ablaze and its myriad reflections twinkling in the windows and<br>mirrors, you might have thought the stars had turned to gold and come<br>to listen. (Indeed, I’m not quite sure they did not.)<br>But the glory of the concert hall was the live reflections. When the<br>prince and princess swept by, their reflections appeared. When the<br>pair began to play, so did their reflections, on the dozens of pianos<br>and harps reflected in the mirrors. And when they sang, an entire<br>choir of living echoes joined them, each reflection ringing back the<br>notes in a different tone and pitch. Together they formed the most<br>unified, harmonious orchestra and choir heard anywhere but Heaven.<br>And no one in the audience asked why Rigoletto and Glorfindel were the<br>only elves with such reflections; no one else was like them.<br>Giles was one of these reflections. His mirror arched along the<br>inside of the dome that topped the concert hall. Because the mirror<br>was curved, Giles was shorter and wider than the tall reflections<br>along the walls below, but he didn’t mind. From that height he could<br>look down through the lights of the chandelier and see the sunset turn<br>the prince’s black suit and wavy hair the fiery red of his sister’s<br>curls. Giles could not play the piano like most of the ground-floor<br>reflections could because the real lights and reflected lights of the<br>chandelier confused the picture, but he could sing. The strong notes<br>of the prince’s melody and the light notes of his sister’s harmony<br>bounded and skipped from living echo to living echo around the<br>many-sided concert hall, but the reflections in the echoing dome had<br>the best time of it. They kept singing long after the others had<br>fallen silent. And from his dome mirror Giles could see the people in<br>the front few rows. They always came in coughing or limping or with<br>hunched shoulders, as if someone had bruised them in the heart and<br>they were nursing the sore place. But when they turned around to<br>leave and he could see their faces, he knew they had been made whole<br>in body and soul. Then Rigoletto and Glorfindel swept off the stage<br>into the crowd and, with them, out the doors. Once they had gone the<br>reflections became invisible and fell asleep. (Being invisible makes<br>one very tired.)<br>Giles and the other reflections slept a large portion of the time, for<br>Rigoletto and Glorfindel left the palace to tour the kingdom at least<br>once a year. Nearly every day they received letters begging them to<br>visit a particular town and heal all the sick there who could not<br>journey to the palace. To visit all those towns took very long<br>indeed. And sometimes the prince and princess even traveled, singing<br>and healing in the world of men, for months at a time. It was during<br>one of these absences that Astorel began putting on airs.<br>Astorel was Prince Rigoletto’s personal valet. He blacked the<br>prince’s boots and laid out the prince’s clothes and generally kept<br>things clean and tidy. Now, you may be used to thinking of valets in<br>our world as lower class, but the elves always took personal<br>attendants for their royalty from the nobility. Astorel was young,<br>handsome, and talented and could never quite shake off the feeling<br>that someone should recognize his gifts instead of paying the prince<br>all the attention. So he was very put out when Rigoletto told him he<br>could not join him and his sister on their journey to the world of<br>men. “But why not, your glory?” Astorel cried, “I can play almost as<br>well as you—thanks to your lessons of course.”<br>“You play very well, Astorel,” Rigoletto corrected him. The prince’s<br>dark eyes danced almost as if it were a joke. “but these people need<br>healing as well as music. It is long, painful work, for which you are<br>not yet ready.”<br>“Can I at least watch you at it?” Astorel asked.<br>“No, on so long a journey we must travel with as few people and<br>possessions as we may,” his master replied. “Moreover, you are needed<br>more here. Travelers will come to see the palace. You must keep the<br>hall and chambers clean for them and the harp and piano tuned.”<br>“But won’t you need me to sing and play the harp and help you relax<br>before you go to sleep?”<br>“My sister will do that,” came the reply. “You can do much more good<br>here than on the road with us.”<br>Astorel did not reply. His master’s words always felt as if they were<br>doing something to him, waking him up from a happy dream in which he<br>was the hero, and he did not like it. So, he tried his luck with the<br>princess: “But you are taking your serving maid with you,” he pleaded.<br>“I’m so sorry you can’t come this time, Astorel,” she said, but Nalia<br>will give all the help we need. And you are needed more here.”<br>Astorel didn’t even whine like he wanted to, “But I want to see places<br>and people and new things and have them see me!” Looking into her<br>eyes, he knew she knew all about what he wanted and that she had<br>answered him. Her eyes were so expressive that when anyone looked<br>into them, really looked, he could remember for the rest of his life<br>what they had told him. After looking into her face, Astorel knew the<br>interview had ended. So he got as far away from them as he could, to<br>the stables to tend to the prince’s horse, and sulked.<br>He sulked all the first week they were gone as he cleaned and polished<br>and fed the prince’s many animals. The elf king and queen and most of<br>their court moved to the summer palace in the mountains where it was<br>cool. And still he cleaned and swept and dusted, muttering to himself<br>all the time. Soon, as he tuned the prince’s piano and the princess’s<br>golden harp in that great and lonely hall his eyes took on an<br>expression that the reflections would have disliked and feared if they<br>had been awake to see it. But they were asleep.<br>Soon Astorel began sitting at Rigoletto’s piano bench. He ran his<br>hands over the keys, some dark as his master’s eyes, some light as his<br>smile. “I can’t do it,” he thought. Then he looked out into the<br>imaginary audience. He bowed and grinned and swaggered. It gave him<br>courage to play. “Serves them right for leaving me behind,” he<br>thought. “I’ll practice every night, and when they come back, I’ll<br>play just as well as either of them. Then they’ll be sorry they left<br>me behind.”<br>But as soon as he struck the first few chords he noticed the<br>difference. Alone there in that great, empty room the music sounded<br>hollow and dead. Astorel realized, then, that the reflections had<br>echoed not only the voices of the prince and princess but also the<br>notes of their instruments. Now that Rigoletto and Glorfindel were<br>gone, the reflections had disappeared as well. With his trim figure,<br>fine features, black suit, and even the melody that poured from the<br>piano, Astorel could have passed himself off as Rigoletto to anyone<br>who had never seen the elf prince—except for this lack of reflections.<br>He swung himself off the bench and stared intently into the nearest<br>mirror. The piano, the golden harp, the rows of chairs, even the<br>grass and blue sky out the opposite window showed perfectly clear, but<br>there was not so much as a shadow to show Astorel’s presence. “It’s<br>as if I don’t even exist,” he said in bitter surprise.<br>Astorel had never stopped to ask why the mirrors only showed the<br>prince and princess’s reflections. No one had. That was part of the<br>marvel and the magic. But now he began to imagine that it wasn’t<br>quite fair. “Hello, wake up,” he shouted at the mirror. “Wake up!<br>Can’t you hear I’m playing?” He beat on the glass with his fist then<br>drew it back and put it to his mouth. He had struck the glass hard.<br>Now he began shouting up at the dome, loud enough it seemed to shake<br>the mirrors from their places. “Wake up! Come out! It’s not fair.<br>Come out! I command it!” When that failed, he ran to the prince’s<br>chambers and returned bearing a great sword. He was strong and swung<br>it with such force that on impact he thought the weapon might shiver<br>to pieces. “I don’t care if it does,” he thought. The next moment he<br>had to close his eyes, and the sword dropped from his hand. There had<br>been a bright light, and burning heat had shot up the sword into his<br>arm. (That is what happens when one magical object meets another in<br>battle.) He opened his eyes again just in time to see a very flat,<br>very life-like man falling from the mirror, scattering shards of glass<br>and grabbing at the piano bench to break his fall. (It did not work.<br>He landed flat on the glass and the hard wood floor.)<br>“Lord Elendor!” cried Astorel, for he knew all the reflections’ names.<br>He had only meant to smash the mirror out of spite, but now that he<br>found he had released Lord Elendor from his mirror all sorts of new<br>possibilities came into his head (he was a quick thinker).<br>“I’ve seen you before. Who are you, you villain? Why have you done<br>this?” demanded Lord Elendor, picking himself up and shaking off the<br>last shards. At first this made Astorel afraid. He had not expected<br>to find the reflections unhappy to be freed. But when Lord Elendor<br>gingerly put one hand to his head and held the other ready to defend<br>himself, Astorel understood. Lord Elendor was not angry at being<br>freed from his mirror; he was angry at being slashed in the back of<br>the head, getting cut with glass shards, and landing on the floor,<br>which hurt his dignity more than it hurt anything else.<br>“Oh, I’m not a villain,”said Astorel hastily. “I meant you no harm.<br>I only wanted to free you from your prison.”<br>“Prison?”<br>“Yes, your mirror. I am Prince Rigoletto’s valet, you see, and I’ve<br>been thinking how unfair he’s been.”<br>“Unfair?”<br>“Yes, to you. He never lets you do anything except what he wants to<br>do, or say anything either. He always picks what song to play, and<br>you have to sing it, like it or not. He even decides when you wake up<br>and go to sleep and leaves you locked up in your mirror when you’d<br>rather be out playing the piano yourself, for real.<br>“I believe you are correct,” gasped Lord Elendor, an expression<br>beginning to form in his face that had never been in the prince’s.<br>“But what of this wound you have given me?”<br>“Oh that, I never meant to give you that. I was just trying to smash<br>the mirror. You were invisible. How could I know your head was<br>there? You didn’t think freedom would come without a price, did you?<br>And, anyway, I think it hurt me more than you. This sword nearly<br>burnt my hand through when I cut the glass.”<br>“It is true,” murmured Lord Elendor, looking at Astorel’s extended<br>hand. The hand was still red and hot as the reflection took it in his<br>own and pressed it to his lips. “My liberator, I thank you. And you<br>chose to free me first? We must release the others. But why do you<br>delay? Do you fear the prince?”<br>“Me? No, of course not. He’s away on a journey anyway. Of course I<br>don’t fear him; I hate him. And I don’t fear pain either.” With that<br>Astorel fell to with the sword. Elven men and women of all shapes and<br>sizes fell out of the mirrors, and Lord Elendor explained to each the<br>situation. Though they were all reflections of either Prince<br>Rigoletto or Princess Glorfindel, the mirrors hung at different angles<br>and distances from the stage at the front of the hall, and the<br>reflections were thin or wide, large or small depending on where their<br>mirror stood in relation to the stage.<br>All this time Giles had been dreaming. He dreamt of the places his<br>master and mistress were visiting far across the ocean in the world of<br>men. Suddenly, his dream turned to a living nightmare. He had always<br>been waked before by the warm, strong voice of the prince saying,<br>“Good evening, Giles.” But this time he was waked by a slashing,<br>burning pain in his shoulder and a momentary light that made him shut<br>his eyes. He could feel he was falling and quickly opened his eyes<br>again. For one moment he caught a glimpse of a wild-eyed face<br>distorted with anger and the fiery gleam of a sword. The next moment<br>someone had caught him and he was laid aside to nurse his wounded<br>shoulder amid a general confusion of running, groaning, shouting, and<br>showers of glass, all in the red glow of sunset. There was no prince,<br>no princess, but the reflections were awake, and out of their mirrors!<br>Flat men and women, all images of Rigoletto and Glorfindel, rushed<br>about the room wearing expressions he had never seen on his lord and<br>lady’s faces. Some were shouting one thing, some another.<br>“The prince is a tyrant!”<br>“No! It’s not true!”<br>“Oh, my head, my poor head!”<br>“Hurray for our liberator!”<br>In a flash Giles was on his feet too, shouting with every ounce of<br>lung power in him (which was considerable). “Stop! Are you mad?<br>What is he doing?” All the commotion seemed to center around a young<br>man standing on the topmost rung of a ladder that reached to the dome.<br>He was slashing—with the prince’s own magic sword--at the mirrors.<br>At each tremendous stroke, a bright light blinded Giles’s eyes; a flat<br>figure and a shower of glass fell from the wall; and roars of<br>affirmation and dismay went up from the crowd of reflections below.<br>Giles’s world was falling to pieces around him like the raining glass.<br>Finally, the confusion died down and the young man with the sword<br>stood up. Giles remembered seeing him before but his face was so<br>changed that Giles couldn’t place him until he started to speak.<br>“I am Astorel,” the young man said. “Yes, I realize you knew me as<br>the prince’s valet, but I am done with that now.”<br>“Astorel!” Giles thought to himself. “This confident chap, leaning on<br>his master’s sword no less, is singing a very different tune than the<br>peacock of a boy I remember. Come to think of it, whenever he could<br>get himself on stage, to bring the prince his water goblet or turn his<br>music pages, he never took notice of the hurting people, except to bow<br>and swagger and grin at them. Hmm, what will he think of us? But,<br>bless me, I’m getting off on my own thoughts and missing the speech!”<br>“You all know that Prince Rigoletto and Princess Glorfindel are now<br>traveling in the world of men,” Astorel was saying. “They declined to<br>take me with them, though I play the harp just as well as the princess<br>herself. When Prince Rigoletto was tired in the evening from a long<br>day’s work I often soothed him with my playing. But they refused to<br>let me go with them, though all I wanted was to help. Don’t you see<br>they are jealous of us? They don’t want anyone to know what good<br>musicians we are because they want all the applause and the<br>invitations to sing. It’s not fair. Why should they be the only ones<br>with singing reflections?”<br>“Yes, it’s unjust!” cried Lord Elendor. His mirror had stood directly<br>behind the prince’s bench so that Lord Elendor looked most like the<br>prince in size and shape. The others were small or wide or<br>disproportional, depending on whether their mirrors were far from the<br>stage, up in the dome, or placed at angles to the stage. “Astorel<br>liberated me first and explained it all,” Lord Elendor continued.<br>“Why should the prince and princess lock us in mirrors while they are<br>absent, so that we must always sleep and never play the songs we wish<br>to play? Why should they decide which songs to sing and force us to<br>sing them? Why should we always and ever do and say what Prince<br>Rigoletto and Princess Glorfindel decide to do or say first?” The<br>crowd began to murmur, but he continued. “I, too, was shocked at<br>first. Any word against the prince sounds like it must be untrue, but<br>I ask you, was anything in our former imprisonment true? No, it was<br>all a shadow of existence. This new life, this freedom, this is<br>reality.”<br>“But what of our wounds?” shouted someone in the group, and Giles<br>growled his agreement.<br>Astorel laughed bitterly. “Are you afraid of the price of freedom?”<br>he mocked. “Look what freeing you did to me!” and he stretched out<br>his hands for all to see. Giles shut his eyes. The hands were red as<br>blood, and the skin was beginning to bubble. He remembered the flash<br>of light each time the prince’s sword had struck a mirror, the fire of<br>magic meeting magic, and shuddered.<br>Astorel continued. “You have me to thank for your freedom. If you<br>want to stand against your wall and go to sleep you may. You may do<br>with it what you want.” Then he turned and strode towards the<br>prince’s sleeping chamber.<br>Giles always remembered that night as the worst and longest of his<br>life. The shapes of prince and princess milled about in the half-dark<br>like living shadows against columns of moonlight, for no one had<br>bothered about lighting the chandelier. Some argued in little groups<br>that gathered by the windows. Some ran about introducing themselves<br>to any other reflection they happened to bump into, saying, “Hello,<br>I’m Lady Arabel. Who are you? This is all so new—and exciting.<br>Shall we walk about together?” or ”Lord Eledon. Yes, pleased to make<br>your acquaintance. What do you think of this affair?” Some<br>reflections jogged around the room or disappeared down the long<br>corridor to the rest of the palace, content to enjoy exploring new<br>places they had never had to use in the concert hall. (Prince<br>Rigoletto was the most energetic of elves, but he did not waste it on<br>needless running.) Finally, other reflections backed into chairs or<br>corners and said nothing.<br>Giles was one of these last ones. “Steady, old boy,” he said to<br>himself, “best see how the song plays out before you sing it.” He<br>tried to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes he saw, instead of<br>blackness, a flash of light, a glowing blade, and behind it, not<br>Astorel’s face but the prince’s. “It can’t be true! It can’t be<br>true!” he thought. It was the first time he had ever been cold,<br>confused, or afraid, and the first time he’d ever felt pain. Giles<br>had seen the signs of these sensations in the faces of the people in<br>the front rows of the concert hall, but this time he understood why<br>their faces looked so tight and pinched. Somewhere to his left one of<br>the princess’s reflections was sobbing.<br>Eventually, the columns of light that were the windows grew brighter<br>and more distinct. Now Giles could see the faces of the reflections<br>around him. They wore expressions he had never seen in the prince or<br>princess—fear, jealousy, self-pity, blankness. “We all need something<br>to put us to rights, some music. That should do it.” He stood up and<br>headed for the piano, but several others must have had the same idea,<br>for before he reached it five of his fellows were crowding onto the<br>bench.<br>“Off the bench, fool,” ordered Lord Elendor. “It’s madness to think<br>you can play with hands of different sizes. You are no longer in your<br>mirror, man.”<br>“I would like to try anyway,” said the reflection just addressed. He<br>was tall and thin, almost too tall and thin, and one side of his body<br>was indeed larger than the other. His mirror must have stood in an<br>angle where the perspective made everything look slanted, and now he<br>was living that illusion in reality.<br>“No, I shall play,” Lord Elendor declared, elbowing him aside. “I<br>have been real the longest; I understand these real things.”<br>“But look here, we must all try it some time. It is what we were made<br>for,” said a third reflection. His hands were also different sizes<br>but his left hand was the larger, the opposite of the previous<br>speaker. Giles guessed from these features that they were the<br>reflections Aldernas and Aldernon whose mirrors had stood to either<br>side of the stage.<br>“It’s the only thing we’ve done before,” corrected Aldernas, “but I<br>would like to try it on a real piano. Shall we try a duet?” They<br>began to play, with Aldernas to the left and Aldernon to his right,<br>but their fingers kept bumbling; they were each playing their part of<br>the duet with the wrong hand for it and kept getting in each other’s<br>way. The argument hadn’t attracted any attention; so many had broken<br>out all night, and several more were still underway, but the heavy<br>notes all tripping and falling over each other made everyone look<br>round, and some people began to jeer. Aldernon suggested another<br>attempt, this time switching sides, but it faired no better. Aldernon<br>played by memory, while Aldernas added his own decorative notes that<br>then confused his partner. The rest of the reflections did not let<br>this go on for long. Within minutes several were at the bench telling<br>them no one wanted to hear their music, if it could be called music,<br>or that they themselves could play what everyone needed to calm down.<br>And all the while Lord Elendor was thrusting himself among them<br>shouting that he could do a better job and he was the reflection most<br>like the prince so they should all listen to him. A similar scene was<br>beginning to play out as Princess Glorfindel’s reflections grouped<br>around the harp, all shouting and shoving and whining and lecturing<br>and grabbing at harp strings.<br><br>Giles rushed in crying, “Come now, this won’t do. The prince wouldn’t<br>have us fighting like this,” but no one seemed to listen. Soon he,<br>too, was beating on backs and shoulders and bellowing, “Stop it! Stop<br>it! This won’t do! Stop it!!” Then he knocked heads with someone<br>else and got a glimpse of wild eyes and a wide open mouth yelling,<br>“Stop it! This won’t do!” For a moment both reflections fell silent<br>and still. They stood staring at each other, twin images of their own<br>angry selves. Then they both mumbled, “My apologies,” and trudged,<br>with bowed heads, to the far corners of the concert hall. Back on the<br>stage, they heard the pop of a harp string.<br>Eventually, life settled down into a new rhythm. During the day the<br>reflections did what they liked in the hall and the prince and<br>princess’s royal suites, though Astorel kept the prince’s bed chamber<br>for himself. At night Astorel or Lord Elendor gave a speech, and then<br>someone would try to give a piano performance. As long as the<br>pianist had not been injured too badly by Astorel’s sword and didn’t<br>have one hand larger than the other, these usually came off fairly<br>smoothly, though nothing like the full, vibrating choir of the old<br>days and without the healing effects. You might be wondering why no<br>one ventured outside or into the rest of the palace. A few of them<br>did explore the long corridor behind the great wooden doors, but most<br>of them never thought of leaving that wing of the palace. That was<br>where they had lived all their lives. Music was the only thing they<br>really loved and the only thing they really knew how to do. That was<br>why it was such torture to no longer be able to make music well or to<br>make it at all.<br>So things continued for days and days, until Giles began to wonder if<br>the happy times before the sword and the shattered glass had in any<br>sense been real. They might have been a dream or a story he made up<br>to comfort himself in that world of constant fights, constant aching,<br>and constant thumping, plunking, screeching of the piano. But three<br>things kept him sure it had all really happened. For one thing, the<br>ache in his shoulder; it had to have come from something. Second,<br>there were the prince and princess themselves. No reflection could<br>have dreamed them up; they were too alive for that. Third, the valet<br>Astorel had been acting as if Rigoletto and Glorfindel were coming<br>back.<br>Since the night he became “Lord Liberator,” as he liked to be called,<br>Astorel had spent his time doing all the things he had wanted to<br>experience as a valet but had never gotten the chance to do.<br>Unfortunately, this meant flirting with Princess Glorfindel’s<br>reflections, giving harp performances for those reflections who cared<br>to listen, snubbing those who did not care to listen, and bossing<br>about the weak-willed of the lot. They blacked his boots for him and<br>brushed his suit for him and lit the chandelier. It was clear to<br>Giles that Astorel wanted to impress—not only the well-dressed images<br>of his handsome master and mistress but also anyone outside the<br>concert hall. Whenever Astorel saw through its windows someone<br>walking in the fields outside the hall, he would lick his lips and<br>straighten the velvet curtains, as if he was about the prince’s<br>business, and once, when Astorel was hurrying to dinner with the few<br>other servants left in the palace, Giles heard him mutter something<br>about “keeping up appearances.” In some of his regular speeches<br>Astorel proclaimed eternal holiday and the triumph of free will, and<br>if you had heard him you would have been sure of it too. Other<br>nights, he hinted that freedom must always be guarded and kept up at a<br>price. “Look at the wounds we all carry,” he was fond of saying (and<br>here he would stretch out to them his hands, on which the burn marks<br>were spreading). “These were the wounds we bore for our independence.<br>Do you think it will be kept without pain and struggle?” Giles began<br>to suspect that these talks were largely for Astorel to hear his own<br>voice talking and see other beings listening, but Astorel really meant<br>some of what he said, for he began to train a band of the most<br>indignant reflections how to fight with swords. Giles had no idea<br>what Astorel planned to do if the prince and princess should really<br>come back. He felt sure no one could kill the prince, and, therefore,<br>the princess was safe.<br>Giles was, however, sure that Astorel’s band of rebels could inflict<br>pain. They behaved very much as if they were part of a gang.<br>Everyone inside was trying to get closer to the top man, who was, of<br>course, Astorel, and then Lord Elendor. Those on the fringes wanted<br>to get inside but were afraid of the mean acts they might have to do.<br>Everyone outside was fair game for them to pick on. Several other<br>groups had formed themselves among the reflections. Some played<br>chess, others read together, others debated Astorel’s governing<br>policy, but most groups sang. Giles had attached himself to one<br>called the Disbelievers. They disbelieved in the tyranny of the<br>prince and princess and sang the songs they could remember from those<br>days of harmony and pitch. Then they had been able to sing perfectly;<br>it came naturally to them as they unconsciously imitated their master<br>or mistress. Now they had to try to teach each other.<br>One day the Disbelievers had gathered under the dome of the concert<br>hall where the echoes off of broken glass would disturb them the<br>least, when a knot of armed reflections shouldered into them in the<br>wide aisle.<br>“Sorry, songbirds, you’ll have to take your Christmas picnic somewhere<br>else,” one of them said. “We need this space to practice.”<br>“What do you mean ‘Christmas picnic’?” snapped one of the soprano<br>singers. “No one has picnics in the winter. That’s nonsense.” She<br>waved her music sheet in disgust.<br>“Well, so is your singing and your ‘Disbelieving.’”<br>“You barbarian!” cried the soprano.<br>“Hold! Don’t you dare touch her,” cried one of the basses, for the<br>swordsman had raised his sword arm.<br>>From that moment on, Giles lost the details of the fight. He ran<br>forward with the others. There were kicks and punches given on both<br>sides, and women screamed, but the group with music sheets proved no<br>match for the group with swords. Out of the corner of his eye Giles<br>saw a horizontal silver line streaking towards his neck. “What a sad<br>way to go,” thought Giles, “brawling with your brothers—and I haven’t<br>even seen the prince yet. Will he ever come? What would he do if he<br>came and saw us now?”<br>But Giles didn’t have to wait long. Before the blade had reached his<br>neck, it had been stopped in mid-air by the crash of the smaller doors<br>being flung wide, and the prince and princess stood in the doorway.<br>At that moment several things happened all at once. The entire room<br>fell silent so that everyone heard Rigoletto’s footfalls as he half<br>strode, half bounded across the velvet carpet. The lead swordsman<br>found his right arm in a grip so firm and energetic that he felt as<br>though he were being shaken. Giles backed onto a bench, and The rest<br>of the combatants scattered like cockroaches in the light. Indeed,<br>everyone began to wonder whether the prince were not actually glowing.<br>Next to him, all the reds and golds and browns and blacks looked a<br>dingy gray, as if a bright light was washing out the colors. But then<br>the reflections looked faded even compared to the grass and sky<br>outside the windows. Giles—and several others too—realized with a<br>shock that the reflections were not faded; no, you could see the<br>outdoor landscape through them. At their feet lay little pools of<br>shadow too light and shapeless for the sunny day it was turning out to<br>be. They had all become less solid, less real, and no one had noticed<br>until now.<br>If you or I had suddenly found that we were turning into ghosts we<br>might sit down and cry or demand an explanation, and many reflections<br>did just that, but Giles and many others sat still as solid statues.<br>They felt ashamed of appearing in this state before their prince so<br>solid and alive. They wanted to run to him and dance around him<br>because he was so radiant and strong, and they waited to see what<br>their radiant, powerful prince would do. He released the arm of the<br>swordsman, who stumbled back to his fellows, leaving Rigoletto<br>standing alone in the center of the hall. He turned once around,<br>surveying the jagged mirrors still hanging on the walls, the crumpled<br>music sheets littering the floor, the scuffed and broken benches, the<br>wounded shoulders and pinched faces of the reflections. Anger, pain,<br>pity, and love chased each other across his strong face. And then he<br>did the last thing they expected him to do. He sat down and began to<br>weep.<br>The reflections remembered Rigoletto’s compassion when he talked with<br>the hurting people who came to hear his singing, but seeing their pain<br>had always made him more determined to sing for them the best he<br>could. This time all his energy went into sounds that no one who was<br>there that day will ever forget. Giles once said it was like music in<br>its own way, like hearing the ocean or a mountain break its heart.<br>Long low moans; he pressed his hands to his face and rocked back and<br>forth. Then bursts of lamentation that shook the chandelier and every<br>being in that hall. Soft sobbing for a love now lost—but not lost<br>forever. Giles thought his nerves would break with the strain if<br>anything more happened, but it did. Rigoletto’s song began to swell<br>again. If they hadn’t been too captivated to speak, his followers<br>might have said to each other, “It’s alright; it will all work out in<br>the end.” The faces of his rebels began to look afraid. Even<br>Glorfindel, who had been silently crying on a bench by the small doors<br>stopped her tears. Her frown turned itself upside down and then<br>flattened to a grim rod.<br>Then, for a moment, Giles’s heart stopped beating. Prince Rigoletto<br>rose to his feet, stretched out his hands, and cried, “Why? Why have<br>you shattered the harmony and beauty of this company? Why have you<br>spurned your duty to this hall, your fellow servants, and your lord<br>and lady? Why have you so disfigured my people?” Here he lowered his<br>voice and strode to confront the Lord Astorel at the back of the hall.<br>The valet stood hunched like a cornered animal unsure whether to<br>cower or spring. “I know why you did this,” Rigoletto said in a low,<br>clear voice that everyone in the room could hear, “Because you<br>hungered for followers. Because you hungered for servants. Because<br>you hungered for admirers.” And here again the prince’s tone changed<br>in a direction no one expected, least of all Astorel. “Lay down your<br>hunger and pride,” he offered. “Be satisfied with fellowship and<br>song. For I will heal these people. You may join me as my helper—I<br>have taught you well—or be consumed by your own hunger.”<br>For one moment Astorel’s eyes went blank. There was still much of the<br>boy in him, and that boy wanted very much to accept the offer, to be<br>forgiven, to have again the beauty and the peace. But lately he had<br>become a leader, the leader he had always wanted to be, the most<br>important leader in the land as far as he was concerned, and he wasn’t<br>about to back down in front of his men. He looked the prince in the<br>eyes and laughed. “I refuse your offer, tyrant.” And Giles thought<br>he could see the beginning of the consuming the prince had talked<br>about. Astorel’s face grew a little paler, a little harder, a little<br>more haggard, almost a little more like death.<br>“Then go,” thundered the prince. “Go with your followers, your<br>servants, your admirers, but know my business with you is not yet<br>ended.” And with that Rigoletto strode back the length of the hall,<br>lent his sister his arm, and they retired to their rooms together.<br>Only then, in the stunned silence of the hall, did Giles remember the<br>princess. Everyone had been so busy watching the prince that only the<br>few reflections closest to her had really paid attention to her gasp<br>as she first walked through the doors. But now all the remaining<br>reflections remembered it. They remembered, too, how they had seen<br>her out of the corners of their eyes sink onto the nearest bench and<br>cry silent diamond tears. The women reflections had cried with her as<br>she touched the dying babies and bloodied bandages in the crowds of<br>concert-goers. They had all seen her cry for others. Now they had<br>seen her cry for them and the mistrust they had shown in her and her<br>brother. When the prince had wept none of the reflections had been<br>bold enough to move a finger. They had not even thought of doing<br>anything but watching. Now the memory of both that royal pair, the<br>deep, wrenching groans of the one, the silent sorrow in the face of<br>the other, the reflections couldn’t help feeling that such beautiful<br>faces should not be stained with tears, such great and giving hearts<br>should never bleed for them.<br>Giles knew Lord Elendor had been wrong. He had always said so, but<br>now he knew it. Slowly, humbly, with tears running in his very veins,<br>Giles pushed the ladder used to light the chandelier into place and<br>climbed its first few rungs.<br>“What are you doing?” asked a wide-eyed reflection at its base.<br>“I’m going back,” he answered and climbed on.<br>“That’s right,” said several others. “What have we been doing all these weeks?”<br>Soon Giles felt the shake of the ladder as another reflection began to<br>climb, and below him he could see one by one leave their seats to find<br>their mirrors.<br>When Giles reached the ledge of the dome he let out a low whistle.<br>“You chaps had better fetch a broom,” he said, turning to the<br>reflections behind him on the ladder. “This place is pretty prickly.<br>It’s going to take a deal of sweeping up before it’s fit to walk on.”<br>On the ground level of the hall the reflections were having the same<br>problem. Ouuuu!” yowled one younger-looking reflection after stepping<br>backward into the open space where his mirror had been. He lurched<br>forward, hopping on one foot, and sat down on the floor to pull a<br>shard of glass out of his shoe. All over the hall Giles began to hear<br>the tinkling of glass, small cries of pain, and the sucking of sore<br>fingers. The mirrors were now nothing but frames of lead with jagged<br>shards of glass all around the edges. If there had been no glass, the<br>flat reflections would have had no trouble in standing on the leaden<br>frames--one reflection whose mirror had almost no shards on the bottom<br>edge proved this point—but many of them had to stand on crystal spikes<br>or hold themselves in uncomfortable positions to avoid getting<br>pierced. “How ever will we play the harp like this?” moaned one of<br>the princess’s reflections. “I can hardly move my hands at all.”<br>The next moment her grumbling turned to a shriek. “Oh no, oh no!” she<br>cried. “I’m not moving! I’m not moving! The prince and princess are<br>here. Why am I not moving?”<br>The other reflections all turned their heads as the prince walked over<br>to her and laid his hand on her shoulder. “Dear lady, you no longer<br>follow us because the mirror has been shattered. Inside your mirrors<br>you followed our words and deeds by nature of the magic. You could do<br>no other.”<br>“And we never wanted to,” thought Giles.<br>“Now,“ the prince continued, “you must follow us by choice.” And when<br>he saw the question on the lady’s lips he added, “take heart. We will<br>help you. Shall we help you now?”<br>Lady Emerel nodded. With that, Princess Glorfindel disappeared<br>through the little doors by the stage and returned a few minutes later<br>accompanied by her serving woman Nalia. Giles almost laughed to see<br>the fine figure of the princess pulling behind her a cart of cleaning<br>rags. “But bless me,” he thought. “Why won’t she give any to the<br>ladies down there? She doesn’t mean to do it all herself and Nalia?”<br>But she did. The two real elf women righted chairs, straightened<br>curtains, and wiped bits of glass off of everything. Prince Rigoletto<br>swept the glass from the ledge of the dome and all the carpeted floor.<br>The reflections, meanwhile, were bidden to stand in their places and<br>copy, as best they could, the motions of their master and mistress.<br>“Madness,” grumbled Giles. “Here I am a strapping young fellow, and<br>the royalty have to climb ladders and break their backs with sweeping<br>while I stand in a wall of glass! Do they mean to kill me?” After<br>all he had seen that day Giles knew this view of things wasn’t quite<br>true, but he did have one of the worst places in the hall. Along with<br>hitting broken glass every time he tried to imitate one of the<br>prince’s movements he had to keep his back arched and pressed against<br>the sloping wall. It took him half an hour, balancing his flat self<br>on the thin ledge where the walls met the dome, to simply stand fully<br>within his mirror. He moved his foot slightly to get it away from a<br>nasty little spur. The next moment his pain was gone and he saw the<br>rungs of the ladder rushing past him. He screamed as he remembered<br>the last time he had fallen and watched the wooden bench beneath him<br>get closer and closer. But before he could feel its hardness the<br>prince had caught him in strong arms. “Do not be afraid, Giles,”<br>Rigoletto told him. “You will fall many times, but I will always<br>catch you. And soon they will be fewer.”<br>Because of catching all the falling reflections and restoring them to<br>their mirrors, the sun had long set before the cleaning was done. And<br>then came some relief. Rigoletto and Glorfindel sat down at their<br>instruments and played.<br>“Ah,” said Giles to himself, “now that’s music, that is. You’d hardly<br>know those pieces were out of tune if you hadn’t heard them last<br>night.”<br>That night, and for the next few weeks, Rigoletto instructed the<br>reflections to rest and watch and listen. They did not have to<br>practice playing themselves—at least not yet. The next night he<br>called them all close and said, “Tonight we teach you to tune a piano<br>and a harp,” and for the next hour he was saying things like, “this<br>string must sound an octave higher than Middle C,” or “place the left<br>thumb here and take the tuning fork in your right hand.”<br>After two weeks Giles could imitate the motion of passing a tuning<br>fork from hand to hand without having to steady himself by stepping<br>out of his mirror onto the dome ledge. “I still don’t see the point<br>in all of this,” he said to no one in particular. “I’m sure Prince<br>Rigoletto could have put the mirrors to rights and us in them if he<br>had the mind to.” But concentrating on the motions helped take his<br>mind off the pain of the glass, and he truly did want back that old<br>harmony and joy. Nearly a month later he exclaimed to his neighbor,<br>“Well bless me, I think I did that whole tune up without a fall!”<br>“You think it’s getting’ easier?” puffed the reflection to his right.<br>The speaker’s face was red with effort, and his eyes were moist with<br>undropped tears.<br>“Well bless me, I think so,” replied Giles. “The glass hasn’t<br>bothered my shoulder much lately. It used to hurt like you wouldn’t<br>believe.”<br>“Oh, yes I would,” said his neighbor, whose name was Gumble.<br>“Well, you catch my meaning.” Giles turned to look at his shoulder,<br>but the quick movement was too much for him, and he tipped out<br>dangerously over the red and wooden hall below him. But something<br>stopped him from falling all the way. “It held!” he cried. “My<br>shoulder held fast in the glass.”<br>“It’s true!” another reflection exclaimed, looking at her own feet.<br>“The glass must be growing together.”<br>“That must be why there are so fewer comfortable positions,” murmured<br>Gumble, and hopeful endurance came into his tired eyes.<br>There was much rejoicing in the hall that night and no wonder that the<br>prince and princess picked that night to begin their reflections’<br>training in choral parts. They had sung in parts naturally before<br>because of the way the sound hit their mirrors, and they still<br>remembered something of it, but now the prince and princess made sure<br>they knew how and why choral music works as it does. Like their<br>bodies, the reflections’ knowledge and skills were marred and<br>incomplete. It was hard for Giles to sing with all his lungs and<br>still keep his balance, but as the weeks went by the time between his<br>slips grew longer and longer, and eventually the glass began to<br>support instead of to stab his other side.<br>No one (except, perhaps, Rigoletto and Astorel themselves) knew where<br>the valet and his gang had gone or what they did in those long weeks.<br>I can, however, tell you that the palace servants still tell stories<br>about that autumn. Many a maid and a stable hand were waked in the<br>night by the prince’s voice only to find no one else in the room. One<br>cook even reported that several women wearing royal gowns blew past<br>her window on a breeze. But that was the morning after she had stayed<br>up late reading a fairy tale novel, and sources warn me she might not<br>have been fully awake.<br>Whatever they were doing in the rest of the palace and grounds,<br>Astorel’s followers came back much changed. One night a scouting<br>party crept in through the crack between the heavy wooden doors to see<br>what Prince Rigoletto and Princess Glorfindel were doing to their<br>captives. They found all the reflections asleep, some on the wooden<br>benches, those whom the glass had begun to restore in their mirrors.<br>No one noticed the rebels until Lady Emerel, who had been dreaming of<br>falling golden stars, began to hear strange whisperings in her ear.<br>“What are you doing here, standing around on bits of glass. Do you<br>think you are learning to play the harp? No, you play nothing but the<br>fool. It’s empty air you pass your hands across. Come, come away<br>from this place of pain. Don’t you see? The princess and her brother<br>are only killing you slowly. Come away, away with us.”<br>Lady Emerel opened her eyes. “Oh, oh!,” she shrieked. “It’s Lord<br>Astorel. Lord Astorel is here! Save m--” She broke off her scream<br>in the middle of a word because suddenly she was not sure she was<br>seeing Lord Astorel. The face was his, but the body was too flat.<br>By that time, though, she had waked most of the room, and the<br>reflections closest to the door could feel the floor shake under their<br>master’s running feet. By the time the prince had flung open the<br>small wooden doors, a dozen voices had all cried out, “No, he’s here.<br>Lord Astorel is here.” A score of figures whisked out of the shadows<br>and into the bars of light let in by the windows. In the dark they<br>seemed a score of Astorels. In the light you could hardly see them at<br>all, they had become so faded. Then with a scuffling like that of<br>mice they slipped out the slightly open windows and were gone.<br>“They will be back,” warned Rigoletto. “And they will try to take you<br>with them, with your leave or without it.”<br>>From then on, the prince’s reflections took turns watching for rebels.<br>They became harder and harder to see except for the gleam of the<br>swords they brought with them in later attacks. Many reflections<br>received wounds in mind and body, and many found the glass cut around<br>them where it had been growing together, but no reflection was ever<br>dragged from the hall. Even the reflections in the dome did not<br>escape unharmed, for the ladder to the dome ledge was left standing so<br>that Rigoletto could carry up any fallen reflections. But the rebels<br>sustained their losses too. Giles got in many sound kicks and punches<br>that sent rebel shadows hurtling through the void. “I can see one<br>good thing about them sword belts,” he remarked to Gumble after a<br>particularly hard fight. “If they weren’t wearing them, those rebels<br>might be too light to fall at all!”<br>But Giles was most excited when he got the chance to learn sword<br>fighting. Rigoletto fought the intruders with his sword, and all his<br>reflections, if not engaged with their own enemies, eagerly followed<br>his every move.<br>Their fighting proved invaluable one frosty winter night. All the<br>reflections now slept in their mirrors. They were all nearly healed.<br>The glass was nearly smooth around them, and they could sometimes feel<br>again the harp strings and piano keys under their fingers. They all<br>slept soundly, for they needed their rest. Tomorrow was to be Prince<br>Rigoletto’s wedding day and the first night the concert hall would be<br>open again to the people. They all rehearsed their parts for the<br>wedding hymn in their dreams, all except the prince.<br>Prince Rigoletto spent that night in a prayer vigil, kneeling at the<br>front of the hall. When the great doors silently opened at the back<br>of the hall and the light of the full moon glinted off the point of an<br>advancing blade, the prince calmly confronted the intruder. “I have<br>been expecting you,” he said. “Name your business, faithless one.”<br>This time Astorel did not blink at his master’s words. “I have come<br>that you might never marry, that you might never beget heirs, that you<br>might never rule another, and that I might take your place.” And with<br>that he struck a mighty blow at the prince’s neck. But to fight the<br>prince was to fight a Bengal Tiger. He leapt aside and knocked the<br>sword from Astorel’s hand. Instead of grabbing it himself, Rigoletto<br>sheathed his own sword. He sprang to the nearest mirror and tore at<br>the glass with his bare hands.<br>“Aha,” cried Astorel. “Are you no better than I? Are you destroying<br>your own work or admitting you were wrong to lock them up?”<br>The prince did not answer. The figure that fell out of the glass was<br>answer enough. This time he did not fall flat on the carpeted floor.<br>By now Aldernon was used to falling; he simply steadied himself by<br>stepping to the ground and looked to his master. “This is no good,”<br>he thought in embarrassed shock. “The prince must have no falling<br>during the wedding hymn!” But as soon as Aldernon placed his foot on<br>the ground he felt a difference. It felt at home on the ground,<br>strong and secure, not wobbly and thin the way his flat feet used to<br>be. His arm too, when he stretched it out to catch his balance, felt<br>stronger and more easy to move than ever before.<br>At first Astorel thought he was seeing a second Rigoletto, but this<br>elf was taller and thinner than the prince. This elf was taller than<br>them both. And the prince’s eyes never bore the surprised and guilty<br>expression in the eyes of this former reflection. “The brute’s<br>alive!” Astorel hissed as he ducked and snatched up his sword still<br>lying on the ground.<br>That was the worst moment of Astorel’s life—and the happiest of<br>Aldernon’s. Before him crouched the white-faced figure of Astorel.<br>To his right, the prince had already begun tearing at the next mirror.<br>“To arms! To arms, my brothers!”” called Rigoletto. His voice filled<br>the hall as loud and clear as a trumpet, as though he did not feel the<br>pain of broken glass with every movement of his healing hands.<br>In one fluid motion Aldernon drew his sword and lunged for Astorel.<br>As he fully left the mirror, silver and white flecks scattered from<br>his shoulders like glory from a lion’s mane. “purgerer!” he cried.<br>“False and faithless servant! You boasted you had made us real. This<br>is what it is to be real.” The shock of impact ran down both swords.<br>“It is to know the prince for who he is, to be like him and more<br>yourself than ever.” He laughed. “You and your wraiths are mere<br>fading shadows.”<br>Earlier that summer Astorel might have fled or surrendered at either<br>force or truth, but now it was too late. He lowered his head like a<br>bull and began to slash with fury and abandon. Cataracts of glass<br>sprayed the two combatants as they splashed through light and shadow,<br>whirling around the hall.<br>Someone knocked over the prince’s vigil candle. Soon a dozen duels<br>broke out as reinforcements joined each side, the elves against the<br>wraiths. And all was clamor and shade and flying glass and fire. At<br>first the elves were outnumbered, but they had on their side strength,<br>size, and surprise. The wraiths had not expected to find the prince’s<br>purpose so different than they had dreamed. They held to their<br>delusions as tightly as to their swords. The flames kindled by the<br>vigil candle licked along the stage. Its red light made the solid<br>elven warriors more visible and the wraiths harder to see. Several of<br>Princess Glorfindel’s former reflections risked their own deaths to<br>beat back the flames with the curtains, but they could do little<br>without water.<br>And then the singing began. It was Giles who started it. As he came<br>roaring down the ladder he understood why the prince had required them<br>to follow him in their mirrors instead of doing actual work. It was<br>because Rigoletto did not intend for them to go back to being<br>automatic moving images. Instead, he wanted living brothers who knew<br>how to work and play and sing and fight rightly of their own wills.<br>With this knowledge he began to sing, and all his brothers did the<br>same. None of them had heard the song before, but, somehow, they all<br>knew what words and notes to sing and did so in unison.<br>For the wraiths, frightened as they already were and weary of their<br>heavy swords, this was too much. Their strokes became blind and<br>clumsy. Several turned on each other in confusion. Not one of them<br>survived until morning.<br>Yet dawn looked down upon an elvish joy already stained with sorrow.<br>During the battle Rigoletto had drawn Astorel away from the melee and<br>the two had dueled on the stage among the dancing flames. Astorel had<br>been consumed but not before giving the prince a scathing wound across<br>the face. The weapon had been Rigoletto’s own magic sword. It left<br>on the prince the same burning mark it had made on the hands of the<br>one who held it and the bodies of those he had marred. Now that the<br>reflections had become real elves, they no longer bore the sword’s<br>scars, but it would be a long time before Prince Rigoletto’s wound was<br>healed. The bitter poison in Astorel’s soul had overflowed through<br>his hands into the sword, and it was now laying siege to Rigoletto’s<br>mind and heart as well as to his body.<br>Weeping filled the air that day instead of wedding hymns. The elves<br>mourned long and deep for their injured prince but also for the hall<br>that was no more. The king’s court and servants had saved the rest of<br>the palace from the fire, but a few charred beams and stained and<br>trampled carpet were all that now told of the magnificent concert<br>hall.<br>You may have heard elsewhere the story of how Rigoletto found healing<br>in the world of men. I have heard more than one version. Perhaps<br>because some of the tellers confuse Rigoletto with the elves that<br>followed him there. Ever since their master took the white ship<br>across the worlds the elves of the magic mirrors have kept their<br>master’s cause and healed the sick and cheered the downcast. At least<br>that’s the story Giles told me while I was sick in bed, and afterwards<br>I have never been ill and never forgotten his story.<br><br></div><div style="font-family: monospace; color: black; background-color: white; font-size: 8pt; ">_______________________________________________<br>Writers Division web site:<br>http://www.nfb-writers-division.org <http://www.nfb-writers-division.org/><br><br>stylist mailing list<br>stylist@nfbnet.org<br>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/stylist_nfbnet.org<br>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for stylist:<br>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/stylist_nfbnet.org/loristay%40aol.com<br><br></div></div></div></span></blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br></span></div><div class="aol_ad_footer" id="u00E3CF49BB2046DB86261561269A7453"></div></body></html>