The Magic Mirror

by Michael Gemignani

alive, but I could not even be certain of that. To make matters worse, I did not even know where we were. We had been following the mirror=s directions ever since we left Henryville, but if I were forced to retrace my steps to go home, I am confident I would soon be lost.

  To drive on and on with such uncertainty was wearing on me, and on David as well, though he did not talk much about it. We each had our quest, and David=s was somehow bound up with my own, though neither of us was sure how. Once we found Robin B if we found Robin B then we were faced with convincing Robin to return to his parents. Would David assist me then? And he was still faced with returning to his discordant household.

  He and I were learning what we assumed the mirror wanted us to learn, though I could not put into words what I had learned thus far. Yes, I was certain that profound changes were taking place in me, but I could not list them nor describe them. I felt they were useful changes, changes that would make me into a better person, but who was to be the judge of whether I was better or worse, or just the same Adam I always was.

  Tomorrow we would set off again down some road, and then the morrow after that we would be driving still more. On and on, tomorrow and tomorrow. When we would even reach some big city, much less the city where Robin was, assuming Robin was still there. This was all so mysterious, so filled with uncertainty and frustration.

  Yet it would someday end. It would have to end because the time we had to find Robin would run out, whether we were successful or unsuccessful. I promised Martha and Samuel I would return to them within three months, with our without Robin, and I would be true to my word.

  The time limit to accomplish our task brought with it a temptation to find a comfortable place to stay until that time when we had to return. We would have failed, of course, deliberately failed, but it would be so much easier than this constant driving, always consulting the abominable mirror that seemed to lead us from trouble to trouble.

  It was hard to keep going. If I did not find Robin, I could take care of Martha once Samuel died. I could also stay in touch with my parents. I could visit them on a regular basis now that I knew my way through the forest. It would all work out, or I could make it work out somehow.

  But the seemingly easy way was not, I realized the way that love demanded. Martha and Samuel loved me only because they accepted me as a substitute for their only son, but I was not their only son. I was not their flesh and blood, but a stranger who wandered uninvited into their lives. I could love them and they me, but if I could return Robin to them, that, it seemed to me, was the best way I could show my love for them, even if it meant giving up the place they had offered me in their hearts and home.

  I had consulted the mirror many times, but I was still not certain what the mirror did. It seemed to show us what would happen in the future, as when I saw policemen running to the basement of the town hall in Hardwick to free David, or when it showed us that we would push David=s car to the service station because it was out of gas. True, it seemed to show us the path we should follow, but was that only because the mirror knew that that was the path we would follow anyway? Was the mirror telling us what we ought to do, or was it telling us what we would do? The only way we could find out would be to disobey the mirror. If the mirror showed us turning left and we turned right instead, we would have proved the mirror could not predict the future after all. And then what would happen? Would the mirror break? Would we find ourselves hopelessly lost? It was not an experiment I wanted to try. No, so long as the mirror showed us a road to travel or a place to be, we would follow the road or stop at the place. We had no choice but to trust the mirror.

  What are we destined to do, and what do we do freely? This is a question I am sure has been debated by wise men and women from the earliest times that human beings began to ask themselves why they existed. My own view is that we choose to do what we do, but I can think of no way to test this. Thus, I do not know if the mirror is giving me a glimpse of my destiny, or it is showing me the best of many possible choices.

  It would be easy for me to run away, to pitch this trying struggle overboard and simply settle down somewhere, get a job, seek someone to share my life with, and try to forget my parents, Martha and Samuel, Hardwick, and all the other adventures the mirror has involved me in so far.

  I don=t know what the future holds, but if the past is any guide, the struggle will not grow easier. I do not know what I should say or do once I meet Robin, assuming that I will meet him. I suspect I will. The mirror keeps leading me on, and it may well be that it is teaching me lessons that I must learn before I meet Robin.

  And what has Robin learned? What does he think of the path that he chose and that caused his parents so much grief. I feel a tugging now at my own conscience, for I myself fled from my own parents and may have caused them grief. In some perverse way, I hope they are grieving for me because it would show me that they loved me after all. If they never loved me, they would rejoice that I was no longer a burden to them.

  Perhaps at the end of this adventure, when Robin has returned to his parents, I to mine, and David to his family, I will disobey the mirror. But will I dare to disobey it even then? I simply cannot say now. And, in any case, David and I do not seem to be close to the end of our adventures together

  A City at Last

  Though the weather was generally cool, the day promised to be sunny. The dawn created glowing stripes in the blinds of our latest motel room. Those ribbons of light splashed down to the floor and flowed up onto my bed covers. David and I crawled out of our beds and began to ready ourselves for another day of travel.

  The last two days, for a welcome change, had been uneventful. We had kept driving according to the mirror=s directions, but the mirror had not led us down any more dirt roads or into any further adventures. Indeed, the last two days had been so dull that both of us were hoping that something interesting might happen today.

  It would. When I consulted the mirror, it showed that we should turn right onto a major highway at the next intersection. Further down that highway, there were an increasing number of houses, shopping malls, and a host of other buildings, and in the distance we could see a grand cluster of buildings of truly impressive height and elegance. Sunlight reflected off the glass of many of these buildings added to their grandeur.

  In all my life I had never seen such a spectacle as this. But then, I never went far from my home in the country until I ran away. The only previous glimpses I had of such a thrilling spectacle was on a small television screen or in the few books I could scavenge.

  Thus, today we would find ourselves on the outskirts of a large city. Was it the large city in which we would find Robin? The mirror did not tell me that. It just told us to drive toward the city, at which time I assumed it would give us further instructions. But after living in the country, and then visiting only small towns, I knew that one way or another this would be a great adventure.

  I excitedly asked David if he had ever been in such a large city before. I was somewhat deflated when he told me not only that he had, but that he had lived in one with his parents before they had their fatal accident. He was not nearly as enthusiastic about the city as I was. He was simply tired of driving and hoped that at last we would find Robin and be able to go home. . Even though we were still some distance from the tallest buildings, there were cars, more buildings, more of everything, than I had ever seen close together before. Because I had never had an automobile, I never learned to drive, but I admired David that he was able to navigate so skillfully in such a crush of traffic. I would have been terrified if David had asked me to take the wheel.

  There were signs everywhere, some overhead telling us which lane to use to get to a particular destination, some giving warnings, such as not to drive on the shoulder of the road, but most of the signs advertised something that someone wanted us to buy, whether it was a room at a motel, a meal at a restaurant, a car from a dealer, and on
and on.

  The signs I found most amusing were those stating we could drive no faster than 50 miles an hour. For in this crowded stream of cars in which it took several minutes to get through a traffic light, we hardly seemed to be going faster than I could walk. If this was the big city, I much preferred the country. This was much too confusing for me, but I assumed I would adjust to the multitude of cars, people, signs, buildings, and all else that descended on me and confused my senses.

  It seemed that the world around me was full of distractions. How could anyone deal with so many claims on their attention and still drive safely? But I did not have to drive. I could read the signs, and observe the other cars and the people in them. The drivers seemed so intent, so serious, but how could they be anything else? Even David fixed his gaze on the cars ahead as they started and stopped, slowed to a crawl and then sped up. Stop and go, slow and speed up. Try to make up for the time one lost at the last traffic light. Hope vainly that the wall of cars might part and we might drive on unobstructed.

  We were at last in a large city, but I heartily wished that Robin was in some small town like Hardwick instead. Why would Robin want to come to a place like this, so alien to what he was used to as a boy?

  Perhaps that was it. Life in the country can be lonely and boring. From watching television and even trips to town, he came to believe that there was much more to the world than he could find within the confines of his parents= farm. First, like me he wandered just a short distance from his home. Then he wandered further, and finally, like me, he ventured out into the wider world to see if he could discover greater pleasures and diversions. He might also have been thinking about finding riches and a life grander than that he had experienced thus far.

  And, somehow, he had arrived at a city like this. Had he, like David and I, had adventures on the road? Had he learned wisdom, discipline, and love, or anything at all that would have helped him negotiate this complex environment after living such a simple life?

  As I was concerned about Robin, I was equally concerned about myself. How would I behave in this world that seemed so alien? Would what I learned from the men of the forest, from Martha and Samuel, from Hiram and Emily, from my parents have any relevance to how I was to behave here?

  But David had been in a city before. He knew what to expect and how to act in this strange environment. I would have to cling to him more closely, trust his judgment, follow his lead, and, most of all, follow the directions that the mirror gave us. This was all I had to lean on to avoid getting hopelessly lost.

  Yes, the mirror had shown me tall buildings when I wanted to know where Robin was; and, yes, I had seen such buildings on television and in pictures before, but the pictures did not prepare for the reality. I felt lost, fenced in by walls and cars that closed in around me. In one way, it reminded me of the path through the forest wall, the trees standing guard on both sides, daring me to breach the barrier they formed.

  But the trees did not frighten me, even in the dark of night, as much as my present surroundings frightened me in the light of day. The trees were merely silent sentinels that did not reach out to threaten. Now there was confusion and noise, structures I dared not enter because I did not know what they concealed. There was no way to stop the car and rest near the road.

  This apparent chaos was new to me, and I did not like it. I did not like it one bit. I thought again of the simplicity of life with Martha and Samuel,