A Spot of Fiction

The Magic Mirror

Once upon a time, in a not so far away land, there lived a little girl who constantly complained about everything. The world was so unfair. The trees just would not be the proper shade of purple, the porridge refused to taste like anything but porridge, and every time she threw a rock into the air, it insisted on falling back down again with a thud . . . Every single time. She would stomp her feet, shake her fists in the air, and scowl at every passing dog. "Barking, are you?" She would ask with utter contempt. "Would it be so hard for you to say, 'Meow?' Don't look at me that way. It's not my fault that nobody does anything right."
And, so it went with every passing day that lasted for precisely twenty-four hours no matter what the sad little girl did or said. Finally, the child got so frustrated that she ran into the woods, and kept running, as far as her legs would carry her, until she was absolutely exhausted. She fell down next to an old oak tree, and with her head in her hands and with what little breath she had left, she sobbed her heart out over having to live in such a nasty world that was full of such unrelenting cruelty. "How could they?! How can they?! Why would they?!" She wailed to no one in particular, or so she thought. For, although she did not know it, the little girl was being watched by the cleverest and quickest of eyes. The owner of these eyes did not intend to spy on the girl. On the contrary, he called to her several times to make his presence known, but the child was making such a ruckus, that she did not hear his voice for well over an hour, so the stranger had to simply wait and watch until the little girl had calmed herself enough to be spoken to.
Finally, the girl stopped crying and heard the voice calling to her. She looked up and saw a man dressed entirely in black. "Hey," he said, "Stop crying." Startled, the child got to her feet and composed herself as much as possible. She smoothed out her pinafore and fussed with the ribbons in her hair. "Who are y- . . .?" She had not managed to get the words out before the man in black walked over to her and handed her a small object. And, before the girl could clearly discern what she had been given, he walked away without another word. Not knowing what else to do, the little girl examined her gift. It was a rather unremarkable looking mirror, but when she looked into it, she was flooded with amazement. This was surely a magic mirror, for in its reflection, she saw herself as she might look in perhaps over twenty years! Surely enough, the face looking back at her was indeed her own, but it was an older face. It was the face of the little girl as she would be someday when she was all grown up.
The girl carefully tucked the magic mirror into the deepest pocket of her red cloak, and she walked home slowly and thoughtfully, with quiet steps, and, for once, she was not complaining. She let the trees be as they were, she let the dogs bark, and she had no thoughts of porridge one way or the other.
Over the next few days, days that passed as they will, in twenty-four hour increments, the little girl looked often into the magic mirror, and every time she did, every time she gazed upon that aged face that was still her face, a new partial thought occurred to her. Finally, all of these bits of thoughts came together, and she realized that the world simply was the way it was, and that was the way it was, and it all actually had very little to do with her. And, while this thought did not exactly make her happy, it did force her to see that it was rather silly for her to complain all of the time and to do little else, so she was able to be significantly more productive. She cleaned her room, she did some gardening, and she even baked a blueberry pie. And, in an uncharacteristic moment of altruism, she decided to take the pie to her grandmother's house. The old woman had been ill, and the little girl thought that desert might cheer her up, or at least it would secure her a place in Granny's Will. So, into a basket went the pie, and off she went, down the road to Grandmother's house. And, after an otherwise unremarkable visit that was made somewhat memorable by a rather surreal altercation with a wolf, she made her way home again through the same woods that she had visited on that fateful day when she had received her magic mirror from that mysterious stranger dressed in black. On a whim, the little girl decided to look for the stranger. She did not know who he was or where he had come from, or if there was even the most remote possibility that she would meet him again, but she wanted to thank him. But, to her surprise and delight, the little girl had not been in the woods long when that very stranger came walking along. He was mono chromatically dressed as he had been, and she knew him immediately. She stared at him as he walked by, and as it was obvious that he had not seen her, she called out to him, "Sir! Excuse me, kind sir!" He stopped and turned to her. "Huh?," he said, then, "Oh, it's you, the crying person." "Yes," the girl answered, somewhat ashamed, "It is I. I beg your pardon, and I do not mean to be presumptuous, but are you the wizard of these woods?" "What?!," the stranger asked in a voice that the girl thought was just a bit too forceful. He looked at her strangely for a moment, then continued. "I work here. I'm the Park Ranger. What planet are you from?" The little girl was taken slightly aback by such an odd question, but she quickly recovered, found her voice, and began her statement of gratitude, "I . . . I just want to thank you for the magic mirror. While I am unworthy of such a gift, I am truly grateful, so again, whomever you are, thank you." She curtsied as her mother had taught her to do and smiled her most sincere smile, but the stranger only gave her the same, strange look . . . For a moment, then another moment, and another. Then, he said, "You dumb ass. That's just a regular mirror. I gave it to you because I just assumed that you didn't have one. Why else would a grown woman go around dressed like a ten-year-old?" With that, the Park Ranger shook his head, turned, and left. And, wearing a puzzled expression and an outfit that most people wouldn't be caught dead in, the woman quickly went home and changed her clothes.

A. S. K.
2008