Happily Never After

by Kristen Duvall

  Happily

  Never After

  An Anthology from Fey Publishing

  Happily Never After

  First Edition, June 2014

  ISBN: 978-0692237649

  Published by Fey Publishing

  http://www.feypublishing.com/

  Assembly Copyright © Fey Publishing

  Individual contributors retain copyright of their work

  This work is a piece of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, or used in another book, without written permission from the authors and/or publisher.

  Table Of Contents

  The Law of Mirrors by Christina Elaine Collins

  Rat-a-tat-tat by Adam Millard

  SmallMarg and the StarHeart by Jax Goss

  Glass Fifty-Three by Craig Pay

  Tiesa's Truth by Dominica Malcolm

  Something Wicked This Way Spun by A.D. Sams

  Letters from the Belly of a Whale by Calvin Mills

  The Rawheads and the Little Girl by Danielle Forrest

  The Pollen Camp by Jan Stinchcomb

  Thirst by Andrew Patch

  The Rumpled Man by Setsu Uzume

  Beware: Here Be Dragons by Sara Opalka

  The Door Mouse Does Death a Favor by Windsor Potts

  Wolves at the Door by Andrea L. Staum

  Mr. Trueworthy by Carol Smallwood

  Iron Henry by Kasidy Manisco

  The Law Of Mirrors

  by Christina Elaine Collins

  Milla hasn’t let me go outside all morning. All this preparation for the visitors.

  She turns on the faucet, and the water comes spurting out: cold. I shiver. The thought of visitors irritates me, though I’m told I should be excited this time. The daughter of the Russian diplomat is my age. My mother mentioned this fact as if it would make a difference, as if it would make the formalities less boring. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. It all depends on what the diplomat’s daughter is like.

  I wonder if she’ll want to go outside.

  Milla wets the sponge and scrubs my arms. “Now turn a bit, so I can get your back.”

  I twist, and the drain holes chafe my skin, pressing a hundred tiny circles into my buttocks and the backs of my legs. “Ouch,” I groan.

  “Careful.” Milla winces.

  “Would it kill anyone to make tubs more comfortable?”

  “Yes, actually.” She smirks, lifts my hair, and scrubs my shoulders and neck.

  “What?”

  “Tubs weren’t always like this, you know. They used to have just one small drain at the front, and a plug.”

  “Why?”

  “So water could collect.”

  I laugh. I like when she tells jokes about the old days.

  “It’s true.” She keeps scrubbing, her face serious. “Course, if anyone tried to build one of the old tubs now, they’d—you know—” She pauses to slide a finger across her throat.

  She lifts my arms and washes underneath. It tickles and I squeal, pulling away. Milla smirks again and adjusts the faucet; the water warms up. She leans in to scrub behind my ears, her face close to mine. Her eyes close to mine. I catch a glimpse of something in them, a tiny face, one in each, barely there, barely detectable. I blink and look away. I wonder if Milla noticed. Moments like these happen now and then. Everyone knows it, and no one mentions it.

  Milla rinses my hair and pulls me to my feet, drying me with a towel. She dresses me, braids my hair, and escorts me down the hall, to where my mother and the visitors wait in the parlor.

  My mother turns. “Ah, here she is—fashionably late. This is my daughter Elayne.”

  A man with a sour expression—the Russian diplomat, I assume—rises and bows. “A pleasure. And this is my daughter Dasha. She’s come for the trip. Has never left Russia, so I thought it was time.” His English is clean; I’m surprised. Past diplomats have needed translators.

  The girl beside him, also wearing a sour expression, curtsies. I curtsy back.

  “Elayne will be your host this week.” My mother smiles at Dasha, who doesn’t smile back. She turns to me. “Can you keep her company until dinner? We have matters to discuss.”

  I nod—not that I have a choice. My mother and the diplomat leave, talking rapidly about something to do with peace treaties, and Dasha and I stare at each other.

  “Want to go outside?” I say.

  “In this weather? I’d rather not.”

  “Oh. Is it raining?” I forgot she just came from outside. From inside, of course, there is no way of knowing if it’s clear or gray, night or day.

  “No. Too sunny. Bad for my complexion. But we can sit by a window if you want.”

  Window. I frown. I’ve heard that word before.

  It was Milla who said it. During one of her bath stories. There used to be a thing called windows, she told me. Clear things that let you see outdoors while you are indoors. But they have long been banned—at least in this country. They must be legal in Russia.

  Before I can tell Dasha we don’t have windows, she pats her hair. “Can I use your mirror?”

  “What?”

  “Can I use your mirror? I need to fix my hair.”

  I stare at her.

  She frowns. “Isn’t that the right word in English? Mirror? Looking glass? Zerkalo?”

  Is she mocking me? Or does she really not know? She couldn’t have made it all the way to the capital without knowing, surely. “I don’t have one,” I say.

  “No mirror? A pretty girl like you?”

  “Pretty? What’s that?”

  She laughs. “Well, aren’t you the modest one.”

  I consider asking for clarification, but decide it’s not worth it. Probably some Russian lingo that doesn’t translate.

  “Can I use someone else’s mirror then?”

  “No one else has one.”

  She frowns again. “No one in the whole palace?”

  “No one in the whole country. At least, no one’s supposed to.”

  She snorts. “Sure.”

  “What’s funny?”

  She stares at me. Her smile fades.

  So she really doesn’t know.

  This isn’t the first time this has happened. My mother has had other foreigners visit and forgotten to explain the law. Many countries know about it by now, but there are always the occasional visitors who don’t. The ones who didn’t pay attention when they crossed the border. The ones who didn’t realize that the border patrols were looking for more than weapons when they searched their luggage. The ones who didn’t connect the dots, when the guards asked if they had any glass. Metals. Water. Pots. Buckets.

  “No mirrors,” I say quickly. I feel a surge of guilt for using the word. “I guess no one told you. All specular surfaces are banned. So is anything that collects water. And portrait painting.”

  She blinks at me, then shakes her head. “Sure. Fine.” She sighs, as if I’m a child telling lies and arguing with a child is not worth her time. “How do I look, then? How’s my hair?”

  “Sssshh!” I look over my shoulder. We’re the only people in the room, but you can never know who’s listening through walls.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s treason.”

  She stares at me again.

  “Showing any interest in your appearance is punishable by death,” I say.

  “Are you joking?”

  “No.

  “But why? I don�
��t understand. Why can’t people see their reflections?”

  I shrug. “It’s been like that since before I was born.”

  “You mean you don’t know why it’s been like that?”

  I sniff. “Of course I know why.”

  But when I try to think of the specific reasons, I draw a blank. No one has ever asked me before. And perhaps no one has ever told me before. “It’s bad for you,” I say at last. I know that, at least.

  “Why?”

  Does she know any other word? “It just is.”

  She runs a hand through her hair. “Are you saying I won’t be able to see myself at all while I’m here?”

  “Yes. I suppose that’s what I’m saying.”

  She stands up. “But I’m here for a week.”

  I shrug. “I’ve done it for fourteen years. Nearly fifteen.”

  Her eyes widen. I try not to look into them. “You mean you’ve never…seen yourself?”

  “No.” I don’t count the tiny shape I’ve glimpsed in Milla’s pupils.

  “But don’t you ever wonder…”

  I flash her a look of warning.

  “Haven’t you ever been curious?”

  I stand up. “I could report you.”

  She holds up her hands. “Fine. I’m sorry. It just doesn’t seem fair—I’m not even a citizen. I shouldn’t be subject to this. I do wish there was something I could look at, even a hand mirror…”

  I watch her scramble around the parlor, peering at every surface. None of them will reflect, of course, but maybe she thinks our system isn’t thorough. Her forehead shines. Is she sweating? As I watch her panic, I’m glad I’m not dependent on something the way she is, so dependent I can’t go a day without it. My mother must have known what she was doing when she made that law.

  I also wonder if there’s something I’m missing out on.

  I turn from this last thought, the way I turn from that tiny face in Milla’s pupils.

  When Milla finally comes to retrieve us for dinner, I follow her happily. Dasha follows me, unhappily. As we walk, Milla tries to fill the silence by giving Dasha a tour, pointing out this room and that painting. Dasha nods with insincere politeness. By the time we get to the east wing, Milla gives up on her tour-guide efforts.

  A noise fills the wing. Milla waves at us to keep walking, but I turn to look. I can never resist. I peek around the corner, at the men dragging a woman across the floor. She screams and twists and kicks, but the men are twice her size. They are pulling her toward the stairs. That can only mean one thing.

  “Where are they taking her?” Dasha says.

  “The lower prison hall,” I say.

  “What did she do?”

  “She’s been caught with one.”

  Her face pales. She doesn’t ask for further explanation; she must be catching on.

  The woman looks a few years older than me. She has yellow locks that curl at the end, lips painted a deep red that I can see all the way over here, and a dress suggestive of a merchant or doctor’s wife. I wonder what she wanted with a mirror. It amazes me how some still get through. Smuggled through the border, or hidden under floorboards until the coast seems clear. But those people never get away with it for long. Not with my mother in charge. And not with her generous rewards for reporting mirror criminals.

  “What are they going to do to her?” This time Dasha whispers.

  “Hang her, obviously.”

  She pales even more, so I decide not to go into the details. Like how they’ll pin back the woman’s eyelids and force her to watch her execution in the same mirror she’s been caught with. I’ve never actually seen a hanging—I’m not allowed to attend, they’re meant for the villagers—but I hear they’re fascinating. And effective.

  This woman knows it’s going to happen to her. Her screams claw at my ears. I watch the guards take her through the doors and wonder, like I always do, what drove her to mirrors—to madness, as my mother says. It occurs to me that Dasha might know the answer. I glance sideways at her, but Milla ushers us along and I don’t ask.

  “Have you ever been down there?” Dasha mutters as we walk.

  “Where?”

  “The lower prison hall.”

  “No. My mother won’t allow it.”

  She doesn’t say anything else, and we continue in silence. I don’t tell her that the lower prison hall is only for mirror criminals. That we have a second unit, the upper prison hall, for people caught with other specular surfaces—buckets of water, materials like glass and silver, things harder to prove as having criminal intent. Those people receive a lesser sentence, only a lifetime in prison. It’s trickiest with cases involving water because the suspect can dump the evidence in the dirt, but my mother always makes sure there is hard proof before sentencing someone. She’s much fairer than her stepmother was, they say. And in more ways than one, others joke, though I don’t get the joke—perhaps because I never knew my stepgrandmother.

  oo00oo

  I haven’t been the best host to Dasha this week.

  As she and her father prepare to leave, she doesn’t seem at all sad. Milla and I watch their carriage depart. Dasha doesn’t stick her head out the window to look back or wave. She probably can’t wait to get back to her mirrors.

  Until a week ago, Dasha was like me, never having left her home country. I consider how I would have answered if she and I had become friends this week and she’d asked me to go with her to Russia and stay in their imperial palace with nesting dolls and Rublev paintings. And windows. And baths that have only one drain hole.

  And mirrors.

  There is no point in wondering, because we’re not friends. The carriage disappears around the bend. I look away, at the impenetrable wall in the distance, closing off what had once been the palace lake, according to Milla. Or what is still the palace lake, I suppose. Who knows what’s left behind there.

  Milla sighs—I think she fancied the Russian diplomat—and turns to me. “Time for lessons, then.”

  I groan, following her inside. “But I worked all through lunch yesterday. Do they study this much in Russia?” It’s the first country that comes to mind.

  Milla raises an eyebrow. “Are you being ungrateful again?”

  “No.”

  “Our society’s considered the most intellectual in the world. You should be proud.”

  “I am.” I realize my mistake. She’ll go off on one of her rants now.

  “Be thankful. Your mother’s made us better, forced us to focus on our insides. Saved us from vanity, envy, superficiality. Self-consciousness. Insecurity.”

  “I know, I know.” I’ve heard it all before. I realize now that this is what I should have told Dasha, when she asked why we have the law. But these things are like the alphabet, and you never think to explain the alphabet to anyone. My mother is so good, so principled, that most people can’t stop talking about her. Milla is one of those people—maybe even her most adamant follower—going on and on about her goodness and wisdom. There are, of course, the few who don’t like my mother, but I don’t hear much about them. I mostly hear about all the good she’s done for humanity, but I’d rather hear these things from my mother herself. Teatime on Mondays is when I get to see her—the best part of the week—and that’s today; I’m already impatient. I had to miss last week because of Dasha.

  “She’s also made us more productive.” Milla is still going on. “Less time grooming in front of the mirror. Did you know, before her intervention, the average woman looked in the mirror eight times a day? Some even admitted to seventy. Seventy! And men weren’t far behind. Can you believe how much time we used to waste on our reflections?”

  I nod and point out that she has spinach in her teeth.

  When we get to the study room, Milla makes me solve pages of equations. I stare at the numbers and symbols, but they blur together. I look over at her as she flips through a book.

  “Have you ever looked in one?” The words come out quiet.

  �
��In what?” She licks her finger and turns a page. She always licks her finger, even when the pages aren’t stuck together.

  “You know.”

  She looks up. I wait for her to scold me, to tell me I should never talk like that. She looks at the wall. “Yes.” She blinks. “I mean, before the law of course. Remember, I’m much older than you, older than your mother, even. I was around before the law. And that’s how long it’s been since I’ve—” She shakes her head. “I’m grateful. I was young then, and now—” She laughs, but not her usual, cheerful laugh. “Why would we want to watch ourselves grow old? Why would we want to see that? We’re being kinder to ourselves this way. Your mother’s being kinder to us.”

  oo00oo

  The servants set up the drinking tubes in front of us.

  I lift the tube to my mouth and sip my tea, black, just as I like it. My mother lifts hers and we sip together. I treasure this hour, just me and her, because she is so busy the rest of the week. She tells me all kinds of things about politics and geography and asks me what I’m learning in lessons. It’s my favorite day.

  The servants bring in a rolling cart with tarts, biscuits, and fruits—pears, bananas, oranges, and some red, round fruit I’ve never seen before.

  One of the attendants gasps. “How did these get in here?” he hisses at the other.

  The second attendant’s face turns the same color as the strange fruit. “I—I’m sorry—I didn’t see them. There’s a new chef. He must not have been told—”

  “How could you forget to tell him? Consider yourself dismissed.”

  “It’s all right.” My mother waves a hand. “It’s been, what, fifteen years? I think I can manage the sight of an apple.”

  An apple…the stories…they say my mother almost died because of an apple.

  “I’m most embarrassed, Your Majesty. We don’t want you to have to think about it—you don’t need any reminders.”

  We watch the servants scurry out of the room with the cart.

  I sip my tea and ask, as casually as I can, “Why’d she try to kill you?”