The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen

by Delia Sherman

  It was Hallowe’en night at Miss Van Loon’s. The stairwell was dark as we groped up the steps. Stonewall went first, with Danskin. Fortran was next, followed by Bergdorf, Espresso, Mukuti, Airboy, and Tiffany. I brought up the rear.

  The sounds of the Hallowe’en Revels filtered up from below, shrieks of laughter and fake fear bouncing up the stairwell from the group of little kids playing Ghost Brother with an old sheet in the front hall. The assembly room was full of pretend goblins, fake were-animals, and carefully researched demons of many lands bobbing for apples, telling ghost stories, grilling pounded rice dango and popping corn over the Magic Tech’s bunsen burner. In the Questing Room, the bigger kids were braving the Haunted House’s peeled grape eyeballs and cold spaghetti entrails and hollow voices rising out of cardboard coffins.

  There weren’t any Haunted Mirrors, though.

  The day had started back home in Central Park, getting into my troll maiden outfit with Astris fussing over the hang of my rope tail and Pepperkaka telling me exactly what she’d do to me if I messed up her embroidered apron and her red felt hat from Finland. If I hadn’t been thinking about how I was going to be facing Bloody Mary’s iron claws in a few hours, it might have made me nervous.

  The celebration began at Assembly. Everybody wore their costumes to school, so instead of silent mortal kids in star-spangled gray sweaters, we were a colorful selection of goblins and demons and ghosts and bogeymen and ghouls from seven continents, all breaking the no-talking rule into bite-sized pieces.

  After the School Song, the Schooljuffrouw—dressed as a wicked witch, complete with warts, pointy hat, and cackle—led us in a group scream. She didn’t read from the Big Book of Rules.

  There were no lessons, but we all had to pitch in and decorate the school, following the plan the Art Tutor and the Magic Tech had been working on. As we hammered, pinned, draped, and painted, Miss Van Loon’s began to look less like a school for changelings and more like a playground for nightmares.

  Lunch was even more chaotic than usual, as if the Wild Hunt had taken over Miss Van Loon’s. Demons screamed, goblins threw food, and bogles ran from table to table, begging for treats. In the middle of it all, my friends and I sat around a table disguised as a poisonous toadstool and admired one another’s costumes.

  Espresso made a truly terrifying flower child in huge bellbottoms and beads and a vest with fringes down to her knees. Fortran, who’d changed his mind again, was a mad scientist in a white lab coat, heavy black glasses, and wild white wig like a dandelion clock. Mukuti was a rather shy rusalka in a flowing white dress, crocheted green hair, a wooden comb, and a totally un-Russian breastplate of protective charms. Stonewall had opted for the classic vampire look: pointy teeth, black tail-suit, and red-lined cape. He’d even dyed his hair black, which made him look weirdly normal.

  We all agreed, though, that Danskin’s costume was the best. In direct defiance of Rules 305 (Students must not wear glamours or alter their appearance magically) and 306 (Students must not carry or use magic talismans without written permission from their Neighborhood Genius), he’d stolen a feather cloak from Lincoln Center and turned himself into an actual swan, with a long snaky neck and snowy feathers. Or most of one, anyway: his broken arm hadn’t transformed.

  To my total astonishment, Airboy was sitting between Espresso and Mukuti, wearing the alte-zachin hendler’s fuzzy blue sweater, a blue wig, and big, ducklike feet. When Mukuti asked what he was, he shot me a hunted look.

  “A Blue Meanie,” I improvised. “They don’t speak, you know.”

  “Oh,” said Mukuti. “Right. Um, Neef? Do you know where we’re supposed to meet Tiffany?”

  I shrugged and ate my bread and cheese. Today was a day for comfort food. I didn’t even want coffee.

  “She’ll show when she shows,” Danskin said.

  “With any luck,” Fortran muttered, “she won’t show at all.”

  “She’s got the mirror,” I reminded him.

  Espresso looked up from her tabouli and wheatberry salad. “Do you have an actual playlist for this gig, Neef?”

  I shrugged. “I thought we’d play it by ear.”

  “No way.” Stonewall was firm. “The Angry One is dangerous , people. We need a plan.”

  An apple whizzed by my head and splatted against the wall. “We can’t talk here.”

  “Library?” Mukuti suggested.

  Stonewall stood up. “It’s worth a try. Come on, Danny. I’ll carry you up the stairs.”

  In the library, we found the quiet we were looking for. We also found Tiffany, cross-legged on the checkout desk with the library cat draped over her knees.

  She dumped the cat and stood up. I watched everyone who hadn’t yet caught her Bowery act take in the torn fishnet stockings, short black skirt, coat with silver buttons, and the black bandage covering half her face.

  Fortran whistled. “Wizard costume! Who are you supposed to be?”

  “The punk pirate queen,” Tiffany growled. “You got a problem with that?”

  Nobody did.

  Mukuti disappeared among the shelves. A moment later, we heard a cry of triumph. “Look what I found!” she crowed, reappearing with a book in her arms. “101 Easy Exorcisms. And the Angry One’s in the index.”

  “Groovy,” Espresso said.

  Mukuti sat on the floor, propped the book open on her knees, and flicked over a few pages. “‘Urban legend, wild power, iron claws, yadda yadda.’ Here it is: ‘Avoiding and Escaping: While she is killing her victim, run away as fast as you can, avoiding all mirrors in the future.’”

  Fortran laughed. “You’re making that up.”

  “I am not.” Mukuti showed him the book. “See? Right there, between ‘Black Dog’ and ‘Brownie.’”

  “That’s no help,” Tiffany said. “She’d still be bound to the mirror.”

  “And one of us would be dead,” Fortran pointed out. “Probably you.”

  Tiffany shrugged. “That’s probably going to happen anyway.”

  “Don’t be such a drama queen,” Stonewall said. “She’s bound to the mirror. She can’t hurt us as long as her mistress is there.”

  Nobody seemed to remember that I was still in Basic Talismans. “Her mistress?”

  Danskin preened his wing. “The one who bound her, of course—Bergdorf.”

  “Who isn’t here,” Stonewall said, and sighed. “I knew I’d forgotten something.”

  I don’t know how he got Bergdorf to come to the library. I do know he didn’t tell her about Tiffany, because when Bergdorf saw her, she screamed.

  Fortran giggled. Espresso kicked him. Tiffany jumped off the desk, grabbed Bergdorf, and shook her. “Shut up, you moron!”

  Bergdorf choked. “Oh, Tiff. I thought you were dead.”

  “Tiffany is dead,” Tiffany said. “I’m Woolworth of the Bowery, and I don’t give a fart in a high wind what you think. Once this mirror thing’s settled, I’m blowing this pop stand. Capisce?”

  Bergdorf opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, then nodded. “Okay. Woolworth. What do you want me to do?”

  “You bound her,” Tiffany said. “You have to banish her.”

  Bergdorf swallowed. “By myself?”

  “We’ll help you,” Mukuti said soothingly.

  “How?”

  We all looked at one another. “We’re working on a plan,” Stonewall said loftily.

  Bergdorf rolled her eyes. “How typical is that? I bet you haven’t even thought about the iron claws issue.”

  “The rule with genies is, they can’t hurt the person who summons them,” Mukuti said.

  “Hello? The Angry One’s not a genie? Who knows what her rules are? You dorks can do what you want, but I’m not going in there without a mask—preferably one made out of something sturdier than construction paper. Why are you all looking at me like that? Do you think I’m, like, stupid?”

  Stonewall cranked his jaw shut. “Masks. Of course. I should have thought of that.”
>
  “What Stoney means,” said Danskin, “is, ‘That’s brilliant, Bergdorf!’ ”

  Tiffany snorted. “Let’s not go overboard. She’s just not as dumb as she looks.”

  “I like masks,” Mukuti said. “Where do we get the stuff to make them?”

  Airboy smiled slyly. “Art Tutor. Magic Tech.”

  “Now we’re cooking!” Espresso high-fived him. “Groovy.”

  “And,” I added, not wanting to be left out, “if anybody wants to know what we want it for, we’ll just sing out, ‘Decorations!’ ”

  It worked like a charm. Before long we were back in the library with a roll of strong, flexible wire mesh and papier-mâché to make the masks and some paint and ribbon and glitter to decorate them with.

  Much to my surprise, I enjoyed putting my mask together, even if the final product was kind of lame. I was a troll maiden, after all, not a beautiful princess. It didn’t matter if my eyeholes were even.

  While we snipped, molded, glued, and tied, Mukuti and I got a crash course on genie management.

  Once a genie was summoned, it had to grant the summoner’s wishes, with a preference for doing exactly what you asked rather than what you really wanted. If you wished for a genie to be free, it was usually grateful to you for life.

  Except, as Bergdorf had pointed out, Bloody Mary wasn’t really a genie. She was just bound like one.

  “She’s wild,” Stonewall said. “She’s got her own rules. We can’t be sure the binding will keep her from attacking us when we summon her.”

  Mukuti offered to share her protective charms. Fortran said they were a load of junk. Tiffany suggested we break into the talisman closet and steal some real heavy-duty protection. Stonewall suggested we make a protective circle before we did the summoning.

  We added a protective circle to our plan.

  “So we just wish her into the bathroom mirror, right?” Bergdorf asked.

  “That don’t play,” Espresso said. “We gotta cut her loose from the Mermaid’s mirror before she can hit another one.”

  “And if we cut her loose,” Mukuti said, “she can hit anything she wants. Like us.”

  “Plus,” Bergdorf said, “if she’s free, she’ll be totally all over Miss Van Loon’s.”

  Fortran raised a finger. “Except, she needs to be in a mirror, and the bathroom mirror is the only one in the school. And we’ll be protected by the circle.”

  “We hope,” Bergdorf said gloomily.

  Tiffany laughed. “Total suicide. Sounds like a plan.”

  “It’s the beginning of one, anyway,” said Stonewall.

  We talked a lot more, but basically, that was it. That afternoon, in the brightly lit library, it sounded totally doable.

  That night, in the dark stairwell, I wasn’t so sure.

  The third-floor swinging doors squealed when they opened, like a tortured mouse. Bergdorf gasped. Someone—Fortran, probably—snorted. Laughter fizzed up in my throat.

  “Shut up!” Tiffany hissed.

  “Welcome to Spookville,” Espresso murmured. “Population, uncertain.” Which set us all off. Snorting and giggling, we groped our way along the wall to the girls’ bathroom.

  I heard a click as someone turned the knob and a creak as the door opened. Nobody moved.

  “I can’t go in there,” Fortran said.

  “It’s all right,” Stonewall said kindly. “We’re all nervous.”

  “I’m not nervous.” Fortran sounded indignant. “It’s just . . . it’s the girls’ bathroom!”

  Tiffany treated us to one of her new vocabulary words. “You dorks coming?” she added. “Or am I doing this all by myself?”

  We trooped into the bathroom, leaving Danskin outside so he could run (or fly) for help if things got really out of hand.

  The door creaked shut, leaving us, if possible, more in the dark than ever. “Now we make a circle,” Mukuti reminded us nervously. We shuffled around. There was a certain amount of stepping on feet and bumping our hips on sinks and our elbows on stall doors. When we’d all found places to stand and each other’s hands, I had the edge of a sink digging into my butt.

  I wished I was with the kids downstairs, pretending to be frightened.

  Our plan called for Bergdorf and Tiffany to set up the summoning. A match flared, illuminating a white mask with red circles on the cheeks and huge red lips—Wicked Stepsister Bergdorf. Pirate Tiffany lit two red candles at the trembling flame and stuck them on the shelf under the bathroom mirror.

  I looked around the circle. Reflected candlelight glinted off Fortran’s big black-framed glasses, Stonewall’s vampire teeth, and the sequins Espresso had glued to the flowers covering her mask. Airboy had fur over his whole face except where his eyes glittered through two narrow slits. Tiffany’s mask was nothing but a blank white oval scored down one side with parallel red lines.

  I took a steadying breath. “Ready, Tiffany?”

  “Woolworth,”she corrected angrily, and pulled the bundled mirror out of her pocket.

  Layer by layer she unwrapped it, stuffing the rags back into her pocket as she went. When the silver disk of the Mermaid Queen’s Magic Mirror lay naked in her hand, she put it on the floor. Then she stepped into the circle between Bergdorf and Stonewall and reluctantly took their hands. She was shaking so hard I could see the shadow of her coat trembling.

  “One, two, three,” Fortran counted.

  “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.”We chanted it three times, and then kept on chanting, not keeping count because you forget to count when you’re staring at a mirror as hard as you can, hoping and dreading to see something appear.

  The chant was interrupted by a wail that would have made a banshee wet its pants. I wanted to put my hands over my ears, but that would break the circle.

  I gritted my teeth and hung on.

  The wail swelled. A pale mist appeared above the mirror, a sickly glow that grew and shifted—now bruise-green, now rot-yellow, now the scarlet of fresh blood. Louder and louder grew the wailing, then cut off abruptly with a deep, painful gurgle that made me think of slit throats.

  Bloody Mary floated above the Mermaid’s mirror, swept our pathetic circle with mad, red-rimmed eyes, opened her terrible mouth, and cackled like a cageful of hyenas.

  We couldn’t agree, later, on what she’d looked like. Espresso saw a girl with blood-stiff black hair and a gashed throat. Stonewall saw a blood-drenched woman holding a horribly smeared knife. Mukuti saw a child veiled with blood. Fortran saw a woman with knife-tipped fingers and more teeth than any mouth should hold. She was bloody, too.

  Tiffany and Bergdorf wouldn’t tell us what they saw.

  The Bloody Mary I saw reminded me of the Bowery. She wore layers of filthy, ragged clothes, and her wild white hair escaped from a shapeless man’s cap, jammed down over a face that sank away from her knife-blade nose and the blood-smeared cliffs of her cheekbones.

  Near me, someone whimpered. My ears were full of hoarse, shallow panting. When I realized it was mine, I dragged a lungful of air into my chest. It didn’t make me less terrified, but the effort made me think of something besides how much those long, iron nails would hurt when she dug them into my face.

  Then Bloody Mary raised her hard, gray claws and lashed out at Bergdorf.

  Bergdorf screamed, ducked, and kept on screaming, even when the nails raked through the air a good two inches from her face. Fortran whooped, which was a mistake. Bloody Mary came after him next, with the same non-bloody results. By the time she got to me, I was pretty sure she couldn’t touch me. I still jerked back and maybe even screamed, just a little. Her nails were extremely thick and pointy. I thought I could see the dried blood on them.

  And then she was going for Stonewall and I was wishing I could wipe my sweaty hands.

  Airboy laced his fingers in mine so our hands wouldn’t slip. I did the same with Espresso.

  The wailing rose to a scream of frustration. Bloody Mary began to hurl herself randomly against
the invisible barrier. At one point, her face was an inch from mine, her bottomless eyes staring, her thin lips stretching painfully away from her broken, yellowed teeth. Her breath stank of rotting meat.

  I coughed and gagged and held on.

  She spun, rags trailing, matted hair flying, to scrabble at the air in front of Tiffany.

  Maybe if Stonewall and Bergdorf had been expecting it, they might have held her, but I doubt it. One moment, our circle was complete. The next, Tiffany had shaken herself free, snatched a large and glittering knife from her coat, and was attacking Bloody Mary with it.

  I watched, terrified, as they struggled knife against claw, fury against fury, both of them shrieking so loud I was sure the whole school would come running. Mary’s shrieks took on a triumphant note. Tiffany staggered.

  And what did the big hero and champion of Central Park do?

  I could have grabbed a candle and set fire to Mary’s rags or kicked the Mermaid’s mirror under the radiator or something, but I didn’t. I just stood there screaming something lame like “No, no, no!” while Stonewall and Fortran knocked the knife out of Tiffany’s hand, grabbed her wrists, and dragged her back into the circle, struggling and swearing.

  I sobbed in a breath and let it out slowly.

  Bloody Mary’s wail sank into a horrible moaning. I heard fear in it, and a horrible, hopeless sadness. It made me feel like life was nothing but betrayal and terror, that I’d never be happy or safe or full or warm, that it would be like this forever and ever and nothing I could do would ever change it.

  I looked around the circle. Everyone was standing like they’d been frozen as stiff as Airboy in a panic. All except one not-very-scary rusalka, who was kneeling on the floor with her knitted green hair falling over her mask, sobbing as only a mortal can.

  Then Bergdorf broke down, whooping and sniffling in a way that should have been funny, but wasn’t. I saw Espresso’s shoulders start to heave, and Stonewall bow his head. Fortran gulped and roared like a little kid. Beside me, Airboy began to moan softly.

  I didn’t get it. If they were trying to make Bloody Mary laugh and disappear, it wasn’t working. In fact, she sounded sadder than ever, sadder than a banshee, sadder than anything I’d ever imagined. As I listened, my throat began to tighten and my eyes stung. I realized, to my horror, that I was about to cry. I tried to suppress it, but I couldn’t. Soon, I was crying almost as hard as Bergdorf.