The Magic Mirror

A Fairy Tale

The next morning started with a pained and tortured scream.

"What's wrong?" Marcos running forward a hand on the sword hilt that rested at his hip, ready to vanquish any foe swiftly and immediately. His concern seemed entirely unprecedented of they happened to be in a pleasant meadow that smelled like wild flowers and honey with a host of white, fluffy clouds floating above and the babble of a pleasant stream nearby . As if to make the ridiculousness of the scene any more apparent a butterfly landed on the knight's shoulder. He brushed it away gently and looked down at Niarosa with a raised brow.

She was by the horses, leaned over her luggage, feverishly pulling items from her bags. She held up her lavender cloak with one hand and pointed at it accusingly.

"This is wrong!" she snapped.

Marcos raised a brow and looked the cloak over carefully. But after a full five seconds of consideration he could only shake his head and shrug.

"..is it... the wrong color?" he guessed.

"No no no!" she insisted, and grabbed another lavender cloak from her bag. "The color isn't the problem here. It's the fact that I have two of them!"

Marcos folded his arms now and the look of disapproval on his face became unmistakable.

"My lady," he said, with a slight and charming wince. "I don't believe errors in wardrobe preparation call for so much... screeching."

"Screeching?" Niarosa exclaimed at the very pitch that was normally considered screeching. She got to her feet and shoved a cloak into the knight's hands heavily. "This is not error in my packing! I have only been traveling with one lavender cloak for this journey- it was the only one I packed because it was the only one I owned-"

He looked from her, to the cloak in his arms, and then back with a disturbed expression.

"...and yet," he said, his attempt to be patient sounded more and more forced. "There are two."

"My cloak multiplied last night!" Niarosa said, "..and so did my hair brush and my necklace!"

Niarosa stepped aside to reveal the objects she had laid out on the grass. The hairbrushes side by side were entirely identical- down to a chip in the wooden handle. The necklaces were exact replicas of each other as well.

The knight bent down to look at them and picked up a necklace curiously. He offered a strange glance at Niarosa.

"I'm just as perplexed as you are," she assured him. "What's worse is that my other things are missing! My ruby studded broach, a bar of soap and a stocking- I tell you there is mischief a foot and it wreaks of magic!"

The enormous black dog that usually stuck to Fritz's heels came bounding from the tree line a few yards away with its tail between its legs. It ran to Marcos to quiver at the knight's legs.

"What's wrong with that thing?" asked Niarosa.

"Dumpling is a very cowardly dog," Marcos smiled slightly as he said it and pat the pathetic mutt on the head. "I haven't seen your friend Fritz this morning. Where has he gone off to? Surely he knows more about this kind of thing."

Niarosa put a hand into her pocket and sighed with relief. The stone was still there. So long as Fritz wasn't making anymore get aways with it she really didn't care what he was doing. As if only to prove her wrong the forest beyond them suddenly erupted into an enormous cloud of leaves and wings. At first Niarosa thought that these must be a horrible cloud of insects but as the swarm grew nearer she saw the cretins for what they were. Fairies.