The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen

by Delia Sherman

  It would have been so easy just to shove the wheelchair away from the door. But Astris had dinned it into me that only oldest sons and wicked magicians are mean to old people. Heroes give them their cloaks, or half their lunch. And I was a hero, right?

  Well, I didn’t have a cloak. And I suspected that toothless mouth wouldn’t be able to deal with bread and cheese. I thought a moment, then opened Satchel and wished. A cup nudged into my hand. I pulled it out, steaming fragrantly.

  The Deputy sniffed loudly. “Is that hot chocolate? I haven’t had hot chocolate in over a hundred years.”

  “It is. And I’ll give it to you when you let me pass.” The Deputy’s voice edged into a whine. “I’m not a wicked witch or an evil dwarf. I’m just a poor old mortal, good for scaring away cowards and weeding out bullies. You’re obviously neither. Go on in. But give me the chocolate first.”

  I shoved the cup into the Deputy’s bony hands and opened the door.

  This time, it really was the Schooljuffrouw’s office, complete with books and huge wooden desk, with the Schooljuffrouw behind it, looking into a large crystal ball. When I came in, she covered it with a piece of cloth.

  “I understand you want a quest pass,” she said.

  When the policeman got past the guardian dogs, he’d found a magic treasure. I’d only found another guardian. I took a tight grip on my impatience. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “A quest pass is a privilege, you know. No student is entitled to one just for the asking. You have to have a good reason.”

  “I have to find the Mermaid Queen’s Magic Mirror,” I said. “If I don’t, she’ll drown Central Park in salt water.”

  The Schooljuffrouw frowned. “Our policy here at Miss Van Loon’s is to avoid taking sides in inter-Neighborhood squabbles and let our graduates handle them.”

  “I’m the only changeling the Lady’s got.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  I twisted my hands behind my back. “Listen, I know the Green Lady is hard to love. She’s unreliable, she’s dangerous, and she can’t stand mortals. She doesn’t even like me very much. But she doesn’t deserve to be wiped out. She was the Genius of all Manhattan once. She’s been here since the island was covered with swamps and hills and forests of poplar and maple.”

  “The island has changed since then,” the Schooljuffrouw said. “The Lady has not changed with it.”

  I was starting to feel desperate. “Well, what about the Park Folk? If the Mermaid Queen poisons the water, a lot of innocent Folk are going to get hurt.”

  “Innocent? Park Folk? The Wild Hunt’s hardly innocent. If they had their way, they’d eat every live thing in New York.”

  “There are other Folk in Central Park besides the Wild Hunt!” The Schooljuffrouw winced—I was shouting. “What about the giants and wyrms on Wall Street?” I went on more softly. “What about the Scalpers on Broadway and the ogres and the disease spirits and the alligators in the sewers? What about the Mermaid Guard? They’re all just as dangerous as the Wild Hunt. Which, by the way, only the Lady can control.”

  The Schooljuffrouw held up her hand. “Enough. I note your persistence and your affection for the Park. These are points in your favor. You could have been more polite, though, and you need to watch that temper of yours. Thankfully, the final decision is not mine.” She reached into a drawer, pulled out a sheaf of papers, and handed them to me. “Fill out these forms and give them to the Secretary.”

  I took the forms. “I need this quest pass soon, Schooljuffrouw. I’ve got to get the mirror to the Mermaid Queen by Midwinter, or it’s all over.”

  “Midwinter? That’s months away,” the Schooljuffrouw said. “You’ll hear when you hear. That’s the rule.”

  The Deputy had been right: I was very late to Diplomacy. The Diplomat didn’t even give me a chance to explain, just pointed me toward a bulging sack of feathers. Tiffany almost burst trying not to laugh, and I saw the Harbor changeling Airboy staring at me warily, like a cat watching a beetle. Maybe he knew about the Mermaid Queen’s threat. Maybe he thought it was a good idea.

  I turned my back on all of them and got to work on the feathers. By the time I finished sorting, the last horn had blown, the last changeling had left the schoolyard, and the sun had set.

  I traded my starless Inside Sweater for my coat and took the Betweenway home.

  Chapter 11

  RULE 4: STUDENTS MUST NEVER VISIT ONE ANOTHER’S NEIGHBORHOODS WITHOUT PERMISSION OF ALL RELEVANT GENIUSES, THE SCHOOLJUFFROUW, AND A NATIVE GUIDE.

  Miss Van Loon’s Big Book of Rules

  Not knowing when, or even if, I was going to get my quest pass made me crazy. I wanted to do something—find the ballet-loving dwarf, maybe, or even go track down the goblin’s nymph and make her tell me where she had found the mirror. Espresso said I should go for it; Stonewall pointed out that champions who go off on side quests usually don’t come back.

  Mukuti suggested I go to the library and work on the Bloody Mary problem.

  This almost counted as a quest. The Librarian had a very Folkish attitude to all the Van Loon’s rules on library use. Open your magic bag in the library, turn down the corner of a page, leave a book open on its face, and she’d be on you like a pigeon on a crumb.

  I left lunch early and went up to the library. The Librarian was sitting at the checkout desk, reading a book and petting the library cat, which was asleep on her lap.

  “Good morning, Librarian,” I said in a library-friendly murmur. “Can you please tell me where I can find the books on urban Folk lore? Oh, and exorcism, too.”

  She fished a pair of glasses on a chain out of the pocket of her scarlet Inside Sweater and peered at my starless sweater. “That’s advanced material,” she said. “I’ll need to see a letter of permission or a quest pass before I can—”

  I couldn’t have this conversation again. I just couldn’t. “Never mind,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”

  Back in the hall, I saw a slender shape darting toward the stairs.

  Airboy had been listening at the library door.

  Ever since the Equinox, I’d been tripping over Airboy everywhere. In Diplomacy and Mortal History, I could feel his black eyes drilling holes in me from the back of the room. In the lunchroom, he’d moved to sit nearer our table. And every time I’d tried to talk to him, he pretended I wasn’t there.

  This time, I’d make him pay attention.

  I bounded up the stairs three at a time, reaching the third floor just in time to see him disappear through a door at the end of the hall. I followed him into a room sporting a row of sinks, marble stalls, and some unfamiliar plumbing against the wall.

  I was in the boys’ bathroom.

  Airboy spun toward me, his cheeks blazing. “Get out!”

  Thinking fast, I locked the door. Somebody rattled the knob. I shouted for them to get lost. They yelled. I made retching noises. They went away.

  I turned to Airboy. “Why are you following me?”

  Airboy turned to the sink, turned on the water, and splashed his face. “I don’t talk to liars, cheats, and thieves.”

  “Who are you calling a thief?”

  “You stole the Mermaid Queen’s Mirror, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t. I won it in the Riddle Game. If anyone’s a cheat, it’s the Mermaid Queen. Did you know she tried to drown me?”

  “That’s her right.” Airboy turned off the tap and faced me. “She’s a Genius. You’re just a mortal land-dweller. And you took her mirror.”

  “What’s the big deal? Champions win talismans from Folk all the time—it’s the whole point of questing.”

  “The big deal,” Airboy snarled, “is that the Queen can’t run New York Harbor without the mirror. Ships run into each other. The Kraken sank a ferry Outside and ate some of the passengers. The Queen’s in a horrible mood. Nobody’s safe. When Flotsam reported you hadn’t drowned, the Queen turned her into shark bait.”

  I hadn’t known Airboy could even
say that many words in a row. “Gosh,” I said weakly. “I didn’t know.”

  “I liked Flotsam.” Airboy’s voice wobbled. He took a breath and went on. “Then the Queen drowned Canoe, so Oxygen’s the Voice of the Mermaid Queen now, and he’s not really ready. She made him threaten to destroy the Park even though he told her it would just make the Green Lady mad.”

  “That’s horrible,” I said.

  “Like you care,” he sneered. “Barbarian.”

  Coming from a subject of a queen who fed her subjects to sharks, this was totally unfair. “I am not!”

  “Are too!”

  “Am not!”

  “Are!”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Everyone knows how the Park Folk enchant Outside mortals to steal pets and leave them for the Wild Hunt, and how the Hunt kills any mortal changeling caught inside the wall after dark and pretends it was an accident, and how it’s not even safe for mortals to dance there at Solstice, and—”

  “Shut up!” I yelled. “It’s not like that.”

  “I knew you’d deny it,” he said simply.

  I couldn’t hit him—that would just make him more sure he was right. I was on the edge of a total fairy fit. And then, suddenly, I wasn’t.

  I’d had an idea.

  There’s a story about a girl who was under a spell that made her speak flowers and jewels. My best ideas feel like that. And this was one of my best ideas.

  “You don’t have to believe the Park’s not a total jungle,” I heard myself say. “Come visit, and I’ll show you.”

  Airboy’s mouth opened and closed. “That’s against Rule Four,” he managed at last.

  “Do you really care about rules? I don’t believe it. I think you’re scared.”

  “Am not,” he said.

  “Come to the Park, then. I dare you.”

  He hesitated. “I don’t have to. I already know everything I need to know.”

  “So do I.” The words poured glittering out of my mouth. “You’re a coward, Airboy, and the thing that scares you most is that you might be wrong and I might be right.”

  “I’m not wrong. I’m not.” He looked like he was going to cry.

  “I challenge you,” I said. “I challenge you to come to the Park with me.”

  It worked like magic. Airboy’s face uncrumpled and his shoulders went back. “Very well. I accept.”

  When my initial triumph wore off, I realized two things. One, I’d just broken about a million rules without even noticing. Two, getting Airboy into the Park was going to take some help.

  It went without saying that I couldn’t ask the Pooka and Astris. And my friends would probably freak out about the rules. Which left me only one place to turn.

  Instead of going home that evening, I took the Betweenway to the Metropolitan Museum.

  I’d spent a lot of time at the Museum while I was growing up. I’d learned things from every exhibit and docent there, but the Old Market Woman and Bastet were special, like extra fairy godparents. But they’re not fairies of any kind. The Old Market Woman is a Greco-Roman marble sculpture. Bastet, who swears she’s a genuine Egyptian cat goddess, is a hollow bronze statue. And Van Loon’s rule against talking school business is about Folk, not art.

  Why this should have seemed so important after my afternoon rule-breaking orgy, I don’t know. But it did.

  I found Bastet and the Old Market Woman in a gallery, watching my mortal friend Fleet copying Hopper’s Portrait of a Woman.

  Last summer, Fleet had been an Executive Assistant-in-Training to the Dragon of Wall Street, dreaming of being an artist and in immediate danger of being eaten for disorganization. In return for her getting me in to see the Dragon, I’d rescued her, and now she was the official changeling of the Metropolitan Museum, with thousands of paintings eager to teach her how to paint.

  When I came up, the Woman was complaining that Fleet had her nose all wrong. Fleet looked harried. Bastet looked amused. The Old Market Woman looked furious, but that didn’t mean anything. It’s the way she’s carved.

  “Hi, guys,” I said. “I’ve got a problem.”

  “We missed you, too,” Bastet said.

  “A problem? Wonderful.” Fleet put down her brush. “Let’s go to the Fountain Court and talk about it.”

  I’d only meant to ask them about sneaking Airboy into the Park, but I ended up telling them everything: about school and the Big Book of Rules and Espresso talking Village and diplomacy and the goblin and Swan Lake. For different reasons, I didn’t mention the Lady or Tiffany.

  When I was done, I listened to the bronze dolphins spouting water in the fountain and felt peaceful.

  The Old Market Woman broke the silence. “The Museum’s practically in the Park,” she said. “If you bring the Harbor child here, we can sneak him out the back door.”

  “Great idea!” I said sarcastically. “And how am I supposed to get him here?”

  Bastet grinned. “Field trip.”

  First she had to tell me what a field trip was, and then we had to figure out how to make it work. It took a while, and several dishes of chocolate ice cream from Fleet’s Briefcase (Satchel didn’t do ice cream), but eventually, we got a plan worked out. It was kind of complicated, and included a truly mind-boggling amount of lying, but we all thought it had a good chance of working.

  Over the next couple of days, I set things up. I lied to Astris, to the Curator of the Metropolitan Museum, to the Mortal Historian, to the Schooljuffrouw and the Diplomat. I lied to my friends, which bothered me more even than lying to Astris. The only person I told the truth to was Airboy, whose only comment was, “Works for me.”

  It worked for me, too. Three days later, every Van Loon’s changeling currently studying Mortal History gathered in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum. Everybody (except Airboy) looked happy and excited. I was as nervous as a mouse at an owl convention, but it must have looked like excitement, because nobody noticed.

  I’d proposed a field trip as a way of learning about the development of mortal customs through the ages. Each one of us would pick a custom, research it, and write a report. I’d picked burial systems. Bastet, my docent, was supposed to introduce me to some Egyptian mummies and Roman sarcophagi and Greek funeral steles. Airboy’s project was to find out how mortals who didn’t have magic bags got food. His docent was—surprise, surprise—the Old Market Woman. Airboy and I had already filled our notebooks with fun facts about funerals and food. All we had to do was get back from the Park in time to hand them in.

  The Historian went over the rules and regulations one last time. “Don’t wander away from your docent and don’t talk to any of the exhibits without permission. Be polite. Don’t touch anything. No fairy food from the cafeteria. I’ll be in the Frank Lloyd Wright Room. We’ll meet in the Great Hall an hour before sunset.”

  Everyone scattered. I followed Bastet through the Egyptian Department, down to the Costume Institute, and through some storage rooms to the back entrance. The Old Market Woman and Airboy joined us a minute later.

  The kouros on guard duty opened the door.

  It was a beautiful day, all crisp and blue and green and gold like a Fra Angelico landscape, perfumed with damp earth and fresh water. Airboy hung back in the shadows, so pale and stiff and blank-eyed he could have been an exhibit himself: Statue of a Frightened Boy. Bright autumn sunshine poured onto the marble floor like honey.

  “Race you,” I said, and took off into the Park at a run.

  I heard footsteps pounding behind me. Grinning, I turned onto the path that led to the Reservoir.

  Airboy caught up to me by the Reservoir and we clambered up the steep embankment side by side. It felt so good I had to laugh. To my surprise, Airboy cracked a shy smile.

  “Welcome to the Reservoir,” I said cheerfully. “You ready to meet some of my Water Folk?”

  The smile disappeared. Airboy nodded once, stiffly.

  I threw some pebbles in
the water, breaking the smooth copper-green surface of the water into a million tiny ripples. Shadows moved in the depths. Then Algae the undine, the nixie Pondscum, and two naiads popped their heads out of the water.

  “What’s up?” Algae asked.

  Pondscum glared at Airboy. “Who’s that?”

  There was a liquid chorus of exclamations and questions, all running into one another like drops of water: “Mortal or City Folk?” and “Is he your boyfriend?” and “Doesn’t he look delicious!”

  Airboy had retreated into statue mode again. “Cool it, guys,” I said. “This is serious. I want you to meet Airboy of New York Harbor. He—”

  The water women started yelling. “Traitor” was the nicest thing they said. The nastiest gave me an itch in a place I couldn’t scratch.

  “What’s it going to hurt to hear what he has to say?” I asked. “You know you’re curious.”

  They were, although it took a while to get them to admit it, and a little longer to get Algae to undo the itching spell.

  “We’re listening, Salt Boy,” said Pondscum finally. “Talk.”

  I bit my lip and waited.

  Airboy opened and closed his mouth a few times, looking as much like a fish as a mortal boy can look. The water women laughed.

  Airboy took a deep breath. “Salt Water Folk know very little about Fresh Water Folk. I want to learn more.”

  “So you can poison us better,” said Pondscum, obviously unimpressed.

  “So I can find a reason not to poison you.” His voice was steadier now.

  Algae and Pondscum looked at each other and shrugged. “Seems fair to me,” Algae said. “What about you guys?”

  The naiads murmured softly to each other. “What if he’s all salty, and poisons the water?” one of them asked nervously.

  Airboy knelt down and held his hand over the water. “Taste,” he said.

  I had to admit it: the kid had guts. The water women had pointy little teeth that showed when they talked, teeth that could have stripped his fingers to the bone. He had to know that they were tempted. But he offered them his hand just like he trusted them.