The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen (16 page)

Suddenly, the music rippled, and a large white swan flew onstage and circled the prince, who dropped the bow. The swan touched down lightly and swept off her swan-skin in a dramatic, feathery swirl to reveal her maiden-self in a floaty white dress. She stood perfectly still while, one by one, the rest of the flock followed her, until maybe two dozen swan maidens were posing gracefully around the startled prince.

There was a little pause, the music changed, and another swan flew onstage. She was too far away to see clearly, but I knew right away she was a princess because of her little gold crown. She had a short, stiff skirt sticking out around her waist like a sparkly wheel. When she lifted her arms, the music soared and twirled and leapt, pulling the swan princess and her court of maidens along with it.

I forgot my feet. I even forgot my quest. I was enchanted.

In the next scene, the handsome prince was throwing a party. An evil wizard in a shiny black cape showed up uninvited with a princess in tow, this one a black swan. She didn’t look a thing like the swan princess the prince had danced with in the forest, but the prince couldn’t tell the difference. I thought he was pretty stupid, never to have heard of glamours. After a lot of fuss and dancing, it all ended sadly, with the white swan dying and the prince jumping into a lake. I knew it was silly, but I still cried.

After the curtain closed for the last time, the two swan princesses, the handsome prince, and the evil wizard came out in front of the curtain and bowed. I wiped my eyes and clapped until my palms stung.

“Come,” someone said in my ear. I jumped. I’d forgotten Fred. “We go backstage now.”

 

There was no marble or red carpet backstage, just twisty passages full of gnomes, brownies, and household spirits of many lands running around holding clothes and ballet shoes and little toy bows and wooden cups and pretend food from the party scene. Fred herded me to a corridor that looked identical to all the others, only some of the doors had stars on them.

“Chorus,” he said, pointing. “Principals there: Odette, Odile, Prince, Evil Wizard.” He gave me a doubtful look. “You know swans?”

There were swans in the Park—non-magical ones. Pretty from a distance. I’d tried to make friends once, when I was little. It hadn’t gone well. “Kind of.”

He looked doubtful. “After performance, they are difficult. Artistic temperament.” He hesitated. “You are true hero, young mortal, even if you are not blonde.”

I told him he was very kind. I didn’t even need to count to ten. Maybe my temper was getting less volatile.

At the dressing room door, I listened. Women’s voices, laughter, a couple of honks. It didn’t sound dangerous. I wasn’t sure what Fred meant by artistic temperament, but how bad could it be? It’s not like the swan maidens could eat me or anything: swans don’t have teeth. I knocked. Nobody said to go away, so I opened the door.

Two dozen swan maidens in various stages of transformation turned their beady black eyes on me and hissed.

“Stranger!”

“Danger!”

“Go away, go away, go away!”

I took a deep breath and started babbling. I don’t even remember exactly what I said. The dancing was magical, the maidens were beautiful, graceful, terrifying. I’d never imagined anything could be that wonderdul, and I just wanted to thank them. Nice things. It helped that I meant every word.

Admiration usually softens Folk up, but the swan maidens must have been too artistically temperamental to even hear me. The more maidenlike ones darted their heads at me on necks longer and more supple than was comfortable to look at. Fully feathered swans beat their powerful wings, whipping the heavy silver skirts of my dress against my legs.

“Shaddup!” a voice screeched behind me. “What’s with you ladies? Her Grand High Swanness must have quiet after a performance. You want her in here?”

A silence fell over the dressing room, in which I could hear the soft rustle of settling feathers. The swans dipped their heads sheepishly.

I turned around.

My rescuer was a mortal girl, her hands on her hips, her hair twisted up and skewered with a long white feather. I thought she was definitely older than Tiffany.

“What’re you staring at?” she demanded. “And why are you here?”

I curtsied hastily. “I’m on a quest.”

“Oh,
you’re
Danskin’s questing girl. Don’t tell me he stood you up.”

“As a matter of fact—”

The girl glanced over my shoulder. “Oh, boy,” she said. “Don’t you know not to turn your back on an angry swan?”

At that point, I found out that a Dress Silver as the Moon is good for more than impressing Folk at Full Moon Gatherings. The swan’s bite hurt me, but not nearly as much as getting a beakful of silver cloth hurt the swan. I heard a squawk, then the sound of webbed feet shuffling away.

The girl laughed. “I guess you’re not as soft as you look. So you’re on a quest, huh? What’re you looking for? A swan cloak? A used ballet slipper?”

I pulled myself together. “A mirror.” I made a circle with my hands. “About yea big. Silver rim, no stand. I heard that a dwarf gave it to a swan maiden. Have you seen it?”

If it had been quiet when the girl had yelled at the swan maidens, it was even quieter now. The girl smiled. “Snowbell. You’re talking about Snowbell.”

“Who’s Snowbell?”

The girl got a sly look on her face. She looked like a pixie, sharp-faced and skinny, with big eyes and a pointy chin and soft brown hair. “Come and see.”

 

Snowbell, it turned out, was the swan princess—the white swan, Odette. She was sitting in a large, untidy nest in a dressing room crowded with water lilies, irises, and reeds growing in painted china tubs. Her swan skin was spread over a couple of chairs to air out, and she had a fluffy pink jacket draped over her shoulders. She looked crabby.

“Where have you been, Minx?” she complained as my rescuer opened the door. “I’ve been calling and calling. I can’t reach my . . . What on earth is
that
?”

The girl Minx began to take the pins out of Snowbell’s hair. “It’s a mortal, madame,” she said, her voice soft and soothing as honey on a sore throat.

“Why did you bring her here?” Snowbell snapped. “You
know
I need to be alone.”

“I thought she might amuse you, madame.” Minx softened her voice even more. “Your dancing made her
cry
.”

“Is this true?”

Minx wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Yes, madame,” I said hastily. “Buckets.”

“Do you think you could cry now?” Snowbell asked hopefully.

“I can’t do it just like that. It was the music. And your dancing, of course.”

Snowbell preened. “Oh. Well. I’m glad you liked it.”

“Oh, I
did
,” I said, and swept her my best curtsy. “I know you’re tired, but would you mind terribly if I asked you a question? I’m on a quest, and you’re the only person in New York who might be able to help me.”

Minx was brushing Snowbell’s hair in long, gentle strokes. Snowbell’s round black eyes began to drift shut. She snuggled deeper into her nest. “You may ask.”

“I’m looking for a mirror.”

“Lots of mirrors in Lincoln Center.” Snowbell still looked relaxed, but the edge was back in her voice.

“This is a special mirror. A magnifying mirror. About yea big.”

She opened one eye to watch me do my measuring thing. She stiffened. “I see. And what makes you think I know where this mirror might be?”

Minx, still brushing, waggled her eyebrows frantically. “I heard,” I said carefully, “that a certain dwarf gave it to the most beautiful swan maiden at Lincoln Center. I knew it had to be you.”

Snowbell relaxed again. “Not Sooty?” she asked languidly. “Odile, that is. The black swan. We’re supposed to be exactly alike, you know.”

“You
are
?” I was afraid I’d overdone the shocked surprise, but Snowbell smiled lazily. “I thought that was just part of the story. You’re way more beautiful than she is.”

“I think so, too,” Snowbell said simply. Minx rolled her eyes. “Yes, little mortal. A dwarf gave me the mirror you describe.”

My heart stared to beat hard. “Do you by any chance still have it?”

Snowbell moved restlessly under Minx’s hands. “I’m getting bored,” she announced.

It was time to stop beating around the bush. “Where’s the mirror now?”

“Not here,” Snowbell said. “Now, go away.”

And that was that. I tried to flatter her back into a good mood, but she got all temperamental and threw the hairbrush at me. She was reaching for her ballet shoes when Minx hustled me out into the corridor.

“I gotta hand it to you,” she said. “You almost did it. I had a bet with myself she’d throw you out as soon as you said the word ‘mirror.’”

“Why?”

Minx sniggered. “What would you rather know? Where the mirror is or why mentioning it makes Snowbell go berserk?”

I glared at her. “Is Folkishness catching, or what?”

“It’s catching,” Minx said. “I know, I know. The Diplomat would have me herding butterflies. Oh, yes, I’m an Old Loonie. I even remember the rule about giving fellow-mortals aid if asked. Number Two-oh-eight, right?” I nodded. “Okay, here’s your helpful fact for the day. Snowbell’s glamourist has the mirror. You’ll find her in the Garment District.”

“Aren’t there a lot of glamourists in the Garment District?”

“Minx!” Snowbell honked from the dressing room.

Minx put her hand on the door. “She’s called Elizabeth Factor.” She hesitated. “Watch out for her. She’s an ex-fairy godmother, blacklisted by the Bureau of Changelings. I don’t know why, but it can’t be anything good.”

Something hit the door hard, with a crash and tinkle of breaking glass.

“Good luck, kid,” Minx said. “If I see Danskin, I’ll tell him you did just fine without him.”

 

 

W
hen I left the Ballet Theater, it was raining hard. The red apple cart was gone—no cabbie, no buck-toothed horse, not even an apple core. Instead, there was a black pony standing patiently by the curb with his rear hoof cocked up and rain dripping from his long black mane.

“Pooka!” I ran up to him. “What are you doing here?”

The Pooka tossed his head, flinging an arc of diamond raindrops high in the air. “And a fair night to you, too, even if you cannot tear yourself away from your revels in time to catch the coach your godmother was good enough to enchant for you.”

“It was an apple cart. And I never asked her to,” I said sulkily.

“You didn’t have to,” the Pooka said. “Just as you didn’t have to ask me to come take you home. Are you going to get up now, or do you enjoy standing in the cold and wet?”

It took me two tries to haul myself, my silver skirts, and the wet and slimy velvet cloak onto the Pooka’s back. As we trotted toward the Park with the rain trickling down my neck, I couldn’t help thinking the Betweenway would have been dryer.

 

Overnight, frost spirits turned the rain to sleet. In the morning, Astris magically produced a pair of purple rubber boots and made me wear them to school.

I was not in a good mood. Astris was mad about the cloak and the rain spots on the dress, my schedule held a full day of Diplomacy, I had no idea when the next weekend would allow a trip to the Garment District. And there was the humiliation of Danskin’s leaving me standing in the lobby of the Ballet Theater like a wicked stepsister at the ball.

Diplomacy was all about cooperation, and involved putting puzzles together in teams of two. I got Bergdorf. As we compared shapes and colors in frozen silence, I had plenty of time to think about what I would say to Danskin when I saw him at lunch.

I couldn’t yell at him (see Rule 1). If I took a page out of Airboy’s book and ate by myself, I’d be stuck, well, eating by myself. If I made snide comments about oath breakers, à la the East Siders, Stonewall would be mad at me. And I didn’t want that.

“It’s a Chinese dragon!” Bergdorf exclaimed, fitting a golden eye into place.

I stared at her, startled. It was just surprise that she’d spoken to me, but her smile hardened into a chilly sneer. I thought of explaining, then decided I’d probably mess that up, too.

Mortals are much harder to deal with than Folk.

When the horn blew, the dragon was finished and I’d decided I’d simply pretend that Danskin didn’t even exist. If he tried to talk to me. If he was even there.

When I got to the table, I flashed a diplomatic smile to show that I was perfectly happy, sat down, and opened Satchel.

“Hey, Neef,” Danskin said. I pretended I hadn’t heard him and wished for macaroni and cheese. Satchel, feeling frisky, shot out a piece of flatbread and a chunk of cheddar.