Almare - The White Mirror

It was completely silent in the chamber. Virginia’s heart was beating loudly, though, and she was sure that she was not the only one who could hear it.

“I have a story to tell you,” the Guardian said quietly. He kept his terrible eyes cast down, as if he knew how upsetting they were to the others. “It is a story that does not yet have an ending, one that will explain many mysteries but create others.” He paused. “I’m going to tell why I took your son.”

It’s about time, was all Virginia could think of. She walked over to Tony and gently took Patrick from him. She held the little baby, now sleeping soundly, and stroked his head. How did she survive without him for so long?

Wolf sat down on the floor, and motioned to Virginia to sit too. Shakily, she lowered herself to the cold floor and propped Patrick up in her lap. Tony joined them, not about to be left out. Virginia allowed herself to calm down for an instant. If nothing else was going right at the moment, at least they were a family again.

With Lorelei still standing with arms crossed in the corner, the Guardian began to speak. Even though he had looked pitifully weak, and no doubt he was, the old man sat straight and tall as he began his tale, and his voice grew stronger with each word. Virginia couldn’t help but be captivated by what he was saying.

“It may seem like longer, but in reality it was only a couple of days ago that the three of you were in King Wendell’s palace. You heard the mirrors then, screaming as they were shut down. When you recovered, Wendell and Wolf showed you a book. It was the easiest way to explain to you what was going on; why your son may have disappeared, why the Dwarf shut down the mirrors. But a book can only tell you so much. There is more.

“In 1750, even before the Golden Age of the Nine Kingdoms began, the mold was cast to create a Traveling Mirror. Two others, which you are all quite familiar with, were made before this time. This third one, however, was different. The Dwarves, expert mirror makers that they were, figured that if they altered the ingredients and added more quicksilver, something in the way the mirror worked was bound to change. The White Mirror was simply an experiment.

“Most of the changes they made caused no real difference in the mirror’s operation. The Dwarves made the frame of unicorn horn instead of wood, and left the mirror in the mold a year longer than necessary, among other things. But what really mattered was one element they left out- any and all types of metal. And also one thing they changed- instead of spring water, they used rain water.

“The metal was the talisman needed to transport anyone using the mirror to Manhattan, New York. Since there is so much metal there, more than in the Nine Kingdoms, all metal here is attracted to where there is more of it. It is magnetized, you might say, although it is not just magnetic metal that has this property. Almost every material in the Nine Kingdoms has it - including rain water. Since our city is in the clouds, and there is so much rain water here, the water in the mirror was attracted to us. And so the White Mirror takes anyone traveling through it here, to our city. The mirror shows only white because of our clouds.

“After the Dwarves pulled the White Mirror out of its mold, eleven long years later in 1761, they were terribly curious about what they had created. Many brave Dwarves, elves, and other creatures went into it, to us. We gave them breathing rings, welcomed them to our city, which is called Welkin, and did our best to make them feel at home. But as soon as these strange people started periodically appearing in front of us, from the alien lands that lie so far below, we realized that we couldn’t let them go back. They would tell others, and then more and more would start coming, not able to resist the lure of our magic and power. Because we are very powerful.

“So we kept them. Some were happy to stay. They had volunteered to go through the mirror in the first place because they were ready to die. Once they found themselves in this heaven, most didn’t complain. Others we had to keep locked up so that they couldn’t escape. Not that was anywhere to go.

“Eventually the Dwarves realized that they had made a mistake. They figured that somehow they had made the mirror lead to nowhere, and once people went through, there was no way to get back. In 1770, they disabled the mirror so that no one else could go in, and hid it away.

“This whole ordeal happened right before I was appointed Guardian. Yes, I was very much alive in the 1770’s. The people here in our city live so much longer than people in the Nine Kingdoms and your world. We are not truly immortal, but we are not human, and there is so little to hinder us here that we can live for many hundreds of years. Once we reach a certain young age, we don’t age further. If there is no sickness or famine or other types of threats to our health, we will live for eons. I am aged because hearing the future is tiring. It uses up all my energy, and my body deteriorates - extremely slowly.

“It was at this time, after all the visitors from the Nine Kingdoms had stopped coming, that Acrotis was a young girl. Young meaning about five hundred years old. Her older sister Lorelei was one of out best citizens and a talented artist. Here in Welkin, in the clouds, when we say artist we mean it quite differently than you do. Our form of art is working with the weather. Lorelei could call up a storm at will, and direct it to wherever it was most needed. Bringing wind, rain, ice, snow, and ordering the clouds to part to allow sunshine are talents that are much valued here. Although all this would go on without our help, we enjoy working with it. It’s a form of entertainment for us.

“Acrotis was not as talented as her sister. She tried very hard, I will give her that, but patience was not a virtue that came easily to Acrotis. She was jealous; of her sister, her parents, her friends, of anyone with more power than her. It became an obsession, and Acrotis grew more and more angry with anyone who tried to help her; indeed, with anyone who attempted to communicate with her at all.

“It was a sad time for many members in our community who had known Acrotis before she was like this. We felt that somehow we had failed her, let her down, and that that had caused her to become so sick. We tried to help her, but nothing would make her listen. When she wasn’t sleeping or eating or in a class, Acrotis spent all her time alone at the far reaches of the city, practicing with the weather. Because she spent so much time on it, she became reasonably good at this, especially with thunder and lightning. Even so, she never could satisfy her own standards. The best way to describe her was power-hungry. She couldn’t stop until she had everything perfect, until she knew she was better than the best.

“Eventually Acrotis realized that this simply wasn’t possible. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t beat her friends or her sister at anything to do with weather, and what she wanted to do was beat the Guardian. The Guardian is chosen not only because of his ‘hearing’ skills, but also because he is talented at controlling the weather. Acrotis thought that if she could prove she was better than the Guardian, she could make her family and friends respect her. Why she didn’t think we already did that is a mystery. I guess that’s what we blame ourselves for.

“Acrotis was insane. She thought that since she couldn’t beat the Guardian at his own game, she would make up a new one. In her mind, the only way to conquer the power was to kill it. And, ultimately, that is what she did.

“In 1773, Acrotis devised her plan. She was going to assassinate the Guardian. The first question was, when? She wanted as many people as possible to see her final victory. The most obvious time to it do was at one of two annual gatherings in which the Guardian addresses the entire city of Welkin. He or she is raised above the others on a small cloud and speaks to the citizens with a device similar to your microphone. One of these gatherings is in spring, the other in autumn. Since autumn was closer and Acrotis was so eager to show everyone how powerful she really was, she decided that she would do it then.

“The second, and more difficult, question was, how? She wasn’t powerful enough to bring a great lightning bolt down from the sky to burn him up. She didn’t even have the strength to call up a little cloud of her own to fly up there and slide a knife into his heart. She did want to be where everyone could see her, though. In the end she decided to climb to the top of the highest tower close enough to where the Guardian would be, in plain sight of the crowd. She would then take her bow and arrows, some of her most prized possessions, and shoot the Guardian. To Acrotis, the simplicity of it, no weather or poisons or such involved, made it even more delicious.

“All that was left to do was to actually carry out the plan. On the day of the gathering that autumn, Acrotis slipped away from the group and climbed the tower closest to the Guardians cloud. She climbed up on the roof and sat down with her bow and arrows next to her. She leaned her head on her hands and looked up at the old man. Acrotis had decided to let the doomed Guardian finish his speech before he died. The arrow whistling through the air and into his chest would be the grand finale to a wonderful ten thousand year reign, she thought. Yet there was no mercy in her while she sat there. She had given up those emotions long ago. The only feeling left was the need for revenge, but I don’t think even she knew what that revenge was for by then.

“For the first and last time in her life, things went just as Acrotis planned that day. As the Guardian finished his speech and the crowd started to applaud, she stood up slowly. Since she was so close to where the Guardian was standing, people began to notice her quickly. But not quickly enough. She raised her bow, fitted an arrow carefully to the taut string, took aim, and realized it. I don’t know if she knew that she realized her life in Welkin with it.

“After the arrow struck the Guardian, everything happened so fast. He collapsed onto the cloud, and the entire city gasped as one. Those who came to their senses first rushed up to the top of the building Acrotis was on and captured her. She came willingly - she had done what she wanted to do. She stood there, waving to the crowd and smiling.

“They took her down from the tower, and then they sent her down from Welkin. She was exiled. As before, this happened very fast; one day Acrotis was here, the next she was in the Nine Kingdoms, a lost ‘teenage’ girl wandering around outside Dragon Mountain. She was there only because that’s where we decided to leave her. I don’t even remember how we got her down there. But luckily for her, the Dwarves decided to take her in. Despite what she had done and was capable of, Acrotis wasn’t stupid. She realized that she needed to lie low for awhile and learn everything she could from the strange, ornery little men she suddenly found herself surrounded by. They taught her about mirrors, and she was happy enough to learn. She was especially interested in the White Mirror. No doubt she was always on the lookout for some way to get to it and back to the only home she had ever known."