The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  Clearing his throat, he said loudly and clearly, “Moggropple, are you in there? I’ll release you if I can, but I have to know you’re in there. Reveal yourself, Moggropple!”

  He had scarcely spoken the last words when a soft glow appeared in each mirror, steadily brighter, and a shape formed around it. Soon the figure of a white-haired woman in a deep blue gown stood in each of the mirrors. She was a handsome woman, with mournful dark eyes and long elegant fingers and features of great refinement. She appeared to be in the middle years of her third century.

  “Which of you is the true Moggropple? Speak!” commanded the wizard.

  On the instant, a babble of sound erupted from the mirrors, filling the barn with quintuple echoes of a single voice crying, “Me! I am! Don’t listen to them, they’re all phantasms, I’m the real one! They’re not real, I’m real, I’m the only real one, me, I am, listen to me, don’t pay any attention to them, they’re all creatures of deception, I’m Moggropple, me, I am, I am! Me, not them, me! Set me free! I’m real, they’re not, me, in this mirror, this one, no, not those others, this one! Me! Me!” in overlapping, interweaving, contrapuntal disharmony. Kedrigern heard an angry voice, a shrill voice, a wheedling voice, an angry harsh voice, a shrill wheedling voice – all similar but all slightly different. He shrank back under the barrage, then dashed forward to fling the covers over the mirrors in quick succession, raising a considerable amount of dust in the process but bringing on silence.

  “Well, we know she’s in there,” he said, brushing his hands together and flicking dust from his tunic. “All we have to do is find out which one is the real Moggropple and how to get her out.” When Princess and Aponthey did not reply, and only looked at him as if he were raving, he added, “Any suggestions?”

  “Hit them with a hammer,” Aponthey growled.

  “I could not permit that. Much too dangerous.”

  “And very cruel,” Princess said, giving Aponthey a withering look.

  “What’s cruel about it? That’d get them out of their mirrors in a hurry, wouldn’t it?”

  “We can’t be certain. We’re dealing with magic, Aponthey, and magic is a chancy business. I want to go about this in a very methodical way, for all our sakes.”

  “Talk to them one by one,” Princess suggested.

  “An excellent idea.” Kedrigern turned to face the mirrors, hesitated, then turned back to Princess. “As a woman, and one who has herself experienced an uncomfortable enchantment, can you suggest a line of questioning?”

  “You’re the master wizard, Keddie,” she said with a deferential gesture.

  Acknowledging her words with a faint smile and a nod, Kedrigern turned to mirror I once again. He threw back the cloth, and Moggropple, arms akimbo, glared at him.

  “Well, get me out of here,” she snapped.

  “You’ll have to tell me how,” he replied.

  She gave an exaggerated sigh of patience strained to the limit of endurance and rolled her eyes to the heavens, muttering, “Wizards!” Then, collecting herself, she said, “It’s very simple. You face me so that I catch the first ray of morning sunlight. You arrange the others in a pentacle with one empty side. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Should the others face inward, or outward?”

  “Inward, of course. Don’t you know anything?”

  “Thank you. I’ll get back to you,” Kedrigern said, whisking the cover over the glass before the figure within could object.

  “That sounds pretty easy,” Aponthey observed.

  “Yes – if I spoke to the real Moggropple. Otherwise, I might have the formula for releasing mirror images into the world.”

  “What’s so bad about that? They wouldn’t take up any room, would they? Let them all loose, Kedrigern, so we can get out of this barn.”

  “Aponthey, don’t you realize how dangerous they’d be? They’re thinner than gold leaf and sharper than a magic sword. If one of them so much as bumped into a person sideways, that person would be sheared in half. Set one of these mirror people loose in a crowd, and it would be like scything wheat!”

  After a long and thoughtful silence, Aponthey said, “Well, all right, then, be careful. But get on with it.”

  Kedrigern threw back the cover of mirror II, and Moggropple at once said, “There you are! Here’s what you have to do to get me out of here, dear chap: face me so that I catch the last ray of the setting sun, and face the other four to a white wall on which you’ve marked, in black, the runes of –”

  “I’ll be in touch,” Kedrigern said, covering the glass and proceeding to mirror III. Here he was instructed to turn her to the midday sun while arranging the others in facing pairs. Mirror IV frankly admitted that she had no idea how to get out, and mirror V, to Aponthey’s delight, ordered the wizard to face her to the full moon and then smash all five mirrors with a silver hammer. Kedrigern covered mirror V and turned to Princess. He looked thoroughly disgusted.

  “Well, I spoke to them one by one. Any other ideas?”

  “I’m thinking, Keddie,” she said patiently.

  “Now that we’ve raised her hopes, we really must come up with something to help poor Moggropple. Think of her, caught in a mirror all these years. Aside from the professional embarrassment, it must be terribly uncomfortable to be squeezed into two dimensions when you’ve become accustomed to living in three.”

  Princess looked up at him sharply. Her eyes were bright with inspiration. A smile spread across her face. She clapped her hands, and with a soft humming of her little wings, she rose from her chair and perched on the top of the cherry armoire. “I think I’ve got it,” she announced.

  “My dear, I place the matter in your hands,” said Kedrigern with a bow and a flourish.

  “All right. I’ll take care of everything, but first you must arrange the mirrors so they face that narrow crack in the wall. Then keep out of sight and let me talk to Moggropple one by one.”

  “As you wish. Come, Aponthey, give me a hand with these mirrors.”

  “Not me. Pemmeny told me not to move them,” Aponthey said, raising his hands in a defensive gesture.

  “Well, I’m telling you they have to be moved. As long as they don’t face each other, there’s no danger. Come on.”

  Aponthey shook his head. “Those things are heavy. Use your magic.”

  “Magic is precious, as you well know. One does not squander it moving furniture. Give me a hand.”

  Grumbling and muttering Aponthey rose and joined the wizard. Little more was required than to turn each mirror around so that it faced the wall of the barn rather than the interior, but Aponthey’s grunts and gasps and stifled cries suggested the moving of mountains.

  When the work was done, and Aponthey was once more seated, rubbing his back and groaning, Princess flew to a point in front of mirror I. Admonishing the men to remain silent and keep out of sight, she threw back the cover of the mirror.

  “Who are you? Where’s the wizard? I told him what he had to do, so why the delay?” Moggropple demanded.

  “We’ve had a terrible accident. The other end of the barn has collapsed, and we’re trapped in here. The only way out is that narrow crack in the wall,” said the Princess anxiously, pointing over her shoulder, “and we can’t fit through it.”

  “Well, I can. Let me out, girl.”

  “Not just now, thank you,” Princess said, drawing the cover. She proceeded to mirror II, where she repeated the same story and received an almost identical response. On she went to III, and then skipped ahead to V. Each time, the exchange with Moggropple was similar to the first. Returning to mirror IV, she uncovered the glass and told the fabrication of the barn’s collapse.

  “Oh, fine, fine. Just what I needed. I finally have a chance to escape from this mirror, and now I’m trapped in a barn,” Moggropple said sourly. “Well, go ahead, free me, if you’ve figured out how.”

  “But you wouldn’t be trapped in here. You could slip through that narrow crack in the wall,”
Princess said innocently.

  “Don’t be absurd, child. Once I’m out of this mirror, I’ll go back to being a fully rounded, three-dimensional woman. You don’t think I’m going to go about thin as a shadow, do you? Be sensible. That’s all very well when one is in a mirror, but in the real world it won’t do.”

  “You’re the real Moggropple!” Princess cried happily.

  “Of course I am. What are you talking about, girl? Can’t you tell a woman from her reflection?”

  “They’re very convincing reflections. But never mind that. Don’t you have any idea how to get out?”

  “Not the least clue. It was all very sudden, you see.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard.”

  Both women were thoughtfully silent for a time. At last, Moggropple sighed and said, “Now, if only you had the crystal with you, there’d be no problem.”

  “The crystal?”

  “The crystal of Caracodissa. Surely you’ve heard of it.”

  “It doesn’t exist anymore, Moggropple. It’s been smashed to bits,” Princess said, lowering her voice to break the news.

  Moggropple gave a wail of dismay. “Then it’s gone! The spirit has been set free, and we’ll never find it again! All hope is lost!”

  “Wait a minute, now. Is it the crystal of Caracodissa that you need to get out, or the spirit in the crystal?”

  “The spirit that indwells can set me free, that and only that. The crystal is . . . it’s a crystal, nothing more. It’s the spirit that counts.”

  Princess’s face brightened. “If it’s the spirit you need, then there’s no problem. We have it in the house.”

  “But you told me that the crystal was smashed,” said Moggropple, bewildered.

  “It was, and the spirit flew off. But it came looking for you, and got caught in another enchantment. Now it’s trapped in a crystal bell.”

  “It risked its own freedom to help me. . . . What a dear little spirit it is! We became quite close in the years we worked together, but I never suspected such devotion . . . such loyalty.” Moggropple daintily wiped away a tear, and said in a husky voice, “It’s very touching.”

  Kedrigern was on his way to the house at the first mention of the spirit. When Moggropple had recovered her self-possession, Princess said, “The crystal is coming. But I must tell you: when we asked it, it told us it did not know how to get you out.”

  “Oh, it knows, all right. It doesn’t know it knows, but it knows, and I know it knows,” Moggropple assured her.

  And so it did. When Kedrigern returned and presented the bell to Princess, the little crystal was ablaze with swimming motes of light. At the sight of Moggropple, it began to tinkle merrily, vibrating with eagerness in Princess’s fingers. It tugged her forward, toward the mirror, and drew itself to Moggropple’s outstretched hand.

  “It wants to come to me,” Moggropple said.

  “But how? The glass . . .”

  “It must be remembering the counterspell. Trust it.”

  The bell pulled itself around, and Princess yielded her grip, very slowly, until she was holding it by the lip. All the darting lights in the crystal rushed to the handle, and when the handle touched the surface of the mirror, they streamed out in all directions, turning the mirror into an opaque luminosity, like a still lake under a full moon. The glow faded, and the glass seemed to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist dispersed by a morning breeze. Out of the mist stepped Moggropple, holding the bell.

  “I told you it knew,” she said coolly. She handed the bell to Kedrigern. “You may have this, if you like. It’s just an ordinary crystal bell now.”

  “And the spirit? What became of the spirit? She’s not . . .”

  Moggropple brushed back her snowy hair and turned to display a glittering crystal earring from her left ear. “We’re going to work together for a while. We’ve both been through difficult times, and we can be very supportive of each other.”

  “You must be famished,” Princess said, taking the witch’s arm. “Come inside. I’ll have Collindor fix something for you, and you can tell me your whole story.”

  As the two women left to make their way through the labyrinth of furniture, Kedrigern went to Aponthey, who had been a silent onlooker to Moggropple’s release. Smiling down on his host, Kedrigern gave the bell a shake, and it tinkled obediently.

  “All fixed. Now you can ring for Collindor whenever you like, and the bell will behave like a regular bell.”

  “What about all those women in the mirrors?”

  “Oh, they’re gone. They were never really there in the first place. They were reflections of Moggropple, and now that she’s out of the mirror, there’s nothing to reflect.”

  Aponthey looked at him, shocked. “I don’t like that very much.”

  “Neither do I. It was a nasty spell, any way you look at it.”

  “But where did those women go?”

  Kedrigern shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Where does your reflection go when you walk away from a mirror?”

  “I don’t fool with mirrors. Can’t trust them.”

  “Then don’t worry about it. Here, take your bell. Let’s join the ladies. I’m really for another helping of Collindor’s excellent trifle. Working magic gives me an appetite.”

  Aponthey’s guest bedroom was surprisingly tidy, the bed unexpectedly comfortable, for accommodations in an elderly bachelor’s residence. It had been a busy day, and Princess and Kedrigern were happy to settle down for the night in such comfort. They blew out the candle and said good night, and lay for a time in relaxed silence.

  “You had quite a long chat with Moggropple,” Kedrigern observed.

  “She was telling me about life inside the mirror. It was fascinating.”

  “Really? I should have thought it would be dreadfully dull. Repetitious at best.”

  “Oh no, not at all. She met all sorts of interesting people and had wonderful adventures.”

  After a thoughtful pause, Kedrigern said, “If it was so pleasant, why was Moggropple so eager to get out?”

  “She missed her old life, and her friends, and her house. You saw how quickly she was off once she found her broom. Aponthey offered her a very nice little room for the night, but she didn’t want to waste another minute.” Princess yawned and did not speak for a time, then she added, “It would have been different if she’d been young, she said. If she were a little girl, she’d have been tempted to stay there. She could have been a queen, you know.”

  Kedrigern responded with a sleepy mumble. Princess went on, “It really made quite an impression on her. She’s thinking of writing a book about it.”

  “A book?” Kedrigern asked, coming awake.

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “About being stuck inside a looking glass?”

  “Well, not exactly. She’s going to change things around a bit. I think she means to write it as though it happened to a little girl.”

  Kedrigern gave an irritable groan and raised himself on his elbows. He glared into the darkness petulantly. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. A little girl wanders into a looking glass and has adventures . . . who would read such humbug?”

  “Moggropple thinks it might be popular with children.”

  “She does, does she? What does Moggropple know about popularity? She’s been inside a mirror for over a century.”

  “Well, she’s certainly had time to reflect,” Princess said with a little snuffle of smothered laughter.

  “That’s not very funny,” said Kedrigern sourly.

  Princess did not reply. She turned sharply on her side, her back to the wizard, and drew the light coverlet up around her shoulders.

  I MARRIED A ROBOT

  Ron Goulart

  It wasn’t exactly her husband who arrived in the sturdy neowood packing case.

  What it appeared to be, once Maggie Quincade used an electric crowbar to pry the lid off the case that had just been delivered to her beachfront co
ndo in the Malibu Sector of Greater Los Angeles, was a robot. A big, about six and a half feet tall and impressively wide, chromeplated robot stretched out on his back with his hefty metal arms stiff at his sides and his silvery metallic eyelids tight shut.

  “What the hell is this?” Maggie inquired aloud. “I didn’t order a huge, ugly Guardbot – and I can’t think of anyone dippy enough to send me one as a gift.”

  She was a slim pretty woman, dark-haired and thirty-one. At the moment, she was wearing a short sinsilk nightie and a short nurayon robe. Bending from the waist, Maggie squinted in at the bulky bot. She reached and, gingerly, tapped the mechanical man on his broad chest.

  That produced a hollow bonging sound.

  Then the robot muttered, “Gurk,” and his right arm made a faint ratcheting sound as it swung a few inches upward.

  Clutched in the thick silvery fingers was a subpaper booklet entitled Your Botz, Inc. Guardbot Operational Manual.

  Maggie made a negative gesture with both hands. “Thanks, no. I’m not interested in operating a big lumbering nitwit of a machine. Obviously you’ve been shipped to the wrong . . .”

  A note fluttered free of the reclining mechanism’s upraised hand, landing on his silvery midsection.

  After inhaling and exhaling in a moderately annoyed way, Maggie reluctantly plucked up the note and unfolded it.

  In a font she didn’t recognize, the note said – Ben wanted you to have this in the event of his death. Activate the bot and he’ll explain everything. Well, actually, it wasn’t supposed to be one of our Botz, Inc. Guardbots, but the timing was all off and this is the best I can do. Take care and my deepest sympathies. Ira.

  “Ben’s not dead,” she said, taking a step back from the crate that sat there on her new thermocarpet.

  Actually Maggie wasn’t absolutely certain her husband wasn’t deceased. Since they’d separated five months ago she’d seen him once in person and twice on the phone. She hadn’t had any communication from him at all in nearly a week.