by Cela Day
Now the object glinted in the moonlight, and Lady wrapped her trunk around it.
As Lady lifted it, Bianca saw it was a full-length mirror.
What does Lady want with a mirror?
Then, without warning, Lady slammed the mirror to the ground.
ANASOPHIA WAITED ON the platform just beneath the slanting roof of the big top.
After poisoning the foolish girl—despite whatever help she’d thought to gain from those conniving dwarves and the overgrown misshapen beast she treated like a pet—Anasophia had returned to Madame Mysterion’s tent and taken her beauty back, just in time to prepare for her performance.
Her enemy in the mirror had said nothing until Anasophia forced her to describe what she could see.
“On the horizon, all is darkness.” The queen, once more looking like an old hag, spoke slowly, solemnly. “I see nothing more.”
A pause.
“And yet,” she added, “it is still true that the smallest light can shatter even the deepest darkness.”
“I did not ask you for poetry,” Anasophia sneered as she threw the blanket over the mirror. “So long as darkness reigns, I am satisfied.”
And now Anasophia stood on the platform in darkness black as pitch. She was comfortable in the dark; it was her element.
Only the weak needed light to guide them.
Far below the crowd waited impatiently for her appearance. Anasophia loved to look down on them, for she was far above them: they were small and weak, but she was great and strong. They had no meaning except when gathered together for the purpose of adoring her. Although she didn’t love them, she needed them, for she sucked the adoration from them as a leech sucks blood from a host. She felt a throb of anticipation, knowing that as the crowd watched her—as their hearts went out to her, and their astonishment at the feats she performed grew—her power would be fed.
Although the fools didn’t know it, they made her stronger.
The spotlight flashed on and the crowd gasped at the sight of her: at her beauty, and the wonder she stirred in their hearts.
She moved forward onto the wire, confident as always, for she didn’t move as a mere mortal moves. Her alignment with dark powers held her aloft as she did things on the wire no mere mortal could do.
And tonight she was more confident than ever, knowing the girl, her only rival, was dead.
Anasophia had just reached the middle of the wire when she felt the first hint of something strange, like a breath of wind in a closed room. It threw her off-balance and she almost stumbled; some foolish woman in a ringside seat muffled a shriek.
Anasophia paused for one long second while she recovered. Then she plunged forward into one of her favorite maneuvers, for it always resulted in a surge of adulation from the crowd. She knew she would feel their response like strong tonic in her veins.
She dropped alongside the wire and spun around it—a gasp went up from the crowd, yes!—
Then something inside her snapped. Not in her body: she felt it in her mind, in what was left of her heart, and in the shriveled thing that was her soul.
As her power shattered, Anasophia knew someone had destroyed the mirror and freed her enemy, the queen. Not by accident: this was a deliberate attack, wrought by someone whom another power—not her own, and stronger than the darkness she served—had given permission to destroy her.
She’d believed herself free of that other power, having fled far from what she thought was its domain. But in that moment she learned she was mistaken, for she knew the bright light that suddenly shone into the darkness of her soul.
Knew and hated it as, in that final moment of illumination, it stripped her of everything.
With a wild shriek of despair, Anasophia plunged from the wire like a rock.
“LADY!” BIANCA CRIED. “Let me down!”
Lady obediently released the mirror and reached for Bianca. Bianca slid off Lady’s trunk and ran to see what Lady had done. The mirror’s glass was shattered, although several large pieces were still intact within the frame.
It was another moment before Bianca realized that, instead of a fractured reflection of the night sky overhead, the face of an old woman peered back at her.
Almost breathless, Bianca looked over her shoulder, but no one was there.
She looked back at the mirror. The face was familiar—
It was the old woman who had sold her the apple.
“You!” Bianca cried, horrified. “You tried to poison me!”
“No,” the old woman said calmly. “That was my cousin, your stepmother—may she be accursed! She used this face to deceive you—”
The old woman broke off, mouth rounding in a look of surprise. Her eyes closed. Slowly, like the dawning of the sun, an expression of delight spread over her haggard face. And then, a moment later, her features began to change. The wrinkles in her skin smoothed out, and the white hair on her head turned golden.
A moment later Bianca found herself looking into Anasophia’s face. A chill of fear touched the back of her neck—
But then the woman in the mirror opened her eyes. They were blue, like Anasophia’s, but unlike the cold danger Bianca had seen in her stepmother’s gaze, these eyes were warm.
Kind.
Eyes meant for laughter, and tears.
“Who are you?” Bianca asked, for she knew this woman was not Anasophia.
“’Though I am a queen, I was both thrall and prisoner.” Joy surged through the woman’s voice. “But now by this good beast, this gateway to your world—opened by dark powers and made my prison—is destroyed, and with it the power of my enemy, and yours. In attacking you she overstepped. For though the High Prince’s patience is long, he will not allow evil to go on always, unchecked.”
The queen smiled at Bianca.
“The Prince who sent Lady?” Bianca asked shyly, for she’d never talked with a queen before.
“Yes. Like your Lady, I serve him. And ‘tis by his command this portal closes. So fare thee well, Princess! For now, I think you will.”
The queen vanished; the mirror darkened. For one brief moment, Bianca saw the reflection of the moon high above—
And then the last shards of glass fell from the frame.
In the distance the band played the tune that was a signal to everyone on the show that something had gone terribly wrong.
LATER, WHEN POLICEMEN gathered at the scene of the tragedy under the big top, no one could explain how the high wire walker missed the net. It was in place and intact—the trapeze artists had used it only minutes before Anasophia’s fatal performance—but somehow the trajectory of her fall had caused her to land, face-first, on the rock-hard ground.
The physician who was called found it difficult to believe the old woman whose body he examined could have performed on the high wire at all. But he kept his thoughts to himself, for there she lay, dead as a doornail, and hundreds of witnesses had seen her fall. Besides, the impact had damaged her face and body almost beyond recognition.
And he’d never thought much of the circus anyway.
“What can you expect from such people,” he sniffed, as he pulled a sheet over the body and closed his bag.
WHEN BIANCA LEARNED what had happened she immediately went in search of Papa. He was very upset, but not as she’d expected. Instead of anguished grief, more than anything he seemed confused.
“She was my wife,” he said to Bianca a few days later as they ate dinner together in the car that once more belonged only to the two of them.
It wasn’t exactly a question, but it didn’t sound as if he felt sure of the truth of it, either.
Bianca said nothing. She simply waited for his next words.
“And yet it all seems like a dream.” Papa’s expression was one of deep puzzlement. “A very strange dream. I know this must sound odd, but she just doesn’t seem real to me. Not like you do,” he added, reaching out to squeeze one of Bianca’s hands in his.
She squeezed back. Eld had s
aid Papa needed to be freed from Anasophia. She wasn’t sure he was entirely free yet, but she hoped his head—and his heart—were clearing.
“Must you go?”
The season was ending. Before long the circus would head south to camp for the winter, but Eld had told Papa the brothers would not be going with them.
Eld cleared his throat as he tied off the sack that bore the mountain.
“You see, Princess, we aren’t just wandering about in this world. We go where we’re sent. And just now, we have another place to go.”
“People to see,” Digger added.
“Princesses to save,” Dragger put in.
“That’s right!” the other brothers chorused.
“But when will we see you again?” Bianca felt tears in her eyes, but didn’t want to cry in front of the brothers, so she patted Lady’s trunk for strength.
“Not for us to say.” Eld’s voice was gruffer than usual. “Though I will say this: in all my years of serving the High Prince, I’ve never known him to allow the truest friends to be parted forever.”
“And meanwhile if we can visit, we will,” Glint piped up.
“There’s a Big True,” Grinder added under his breath.
“All right.” Bianca was determined to be brave. She bent and hugged all the brothers, ruffling their beards and delighting their hearts.
“May you and your Lady fare well,” Eld said, slinging the sack onto his back.
“Be blessed, be well!” cried the brothers.
They turned and walked off into the dawn, Eld with the mountain-sack on his shoulder.
Bianca stood and waved after them until they disappeared into the brightening morning light. And then she buried her face in Lady’s foreleg and had a good long cry while Lady snuffled her shoulders.
THE FOLLOWING YEAR Papa married Daphne the horsewoman, who was as kind to people as she was to animals. Bianca wasn’t even sure he remembered his brief second marriage to Anasophia except as one remembers a dream, for he never mentioned her again.
It wasn’t until a few years later—as Papa and Daphne and Mickey grew older and began to tire of traveling—that they discovered the little nuggets the dwarves had chipped from the mountain and given to them were real gold.
So Papa and Bianca sold the gold and used the money to retire the circus, buying an enormous spread of land where everyone—performers, roustabouts, and animals—who wanted to stay could live.
The big house they built had many guest rooms, for Papa and Daphne and Bianca were hospitable folk. In one large but cozy room tucked beneath the eaves Bianca set up seven single beds in a row against one wall, just in case.
Bianca and Lady remained inseparable. Bianca planted an enormous garden of watermelons for Lady, and stood with her to greet the children who came from miles around to meet Lady and wonder at her.
And the fact that Bianca couldn’t stand even the sight of a candied apple for the rest of her life did absolutely nothing to stop them from living happily ever after.
THE END
More ‘Stories for the Quest’
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Thank you! Cela Day
About the Author
WHEN NOT TRAVERSING the imaginary worlds she creates in her fairy tales and fantasy stories, Cela Day lives in a tiny cottage with her husband and a lot of plants, all of which ("whom?" she adds hopefully) have names. She believes reading The Chronicles of Narnia cover-to-cover countless times as a child taught her more about grammar and readable syntax than any English class she ever attended. She’s also drawn many "architectural" renderings of the castle of her dreams, which will most certainly feature plant-friendly southern-facing windows and a lush meadow for Talking Horses.
