Season 9, Week 16: “A Terrible Beauty Has Been Born”

MIRROR, MIRROR

Have you ever found something after you stopped looking for it? I am a finder of magical antiquities – for a fee, of course – and this happened to me during a recent job. But I wish I had never taken this assignment, because, for the first time, I had to leave an artifact behind. It was just too dangerous.

I have an unusual job, but I’m a legitimate finder – no theft, no frauds, and no scams. If I can’t verify the piece or the owner doesn’t want to sell it, fine. I may have a disappointed client, but I work on a retainer, so I still get my per diem and expenses. It’s a solitary job, with lots of travel, cheap motels and bad food, but it suits me. Some people just aren’t meant to have normal lives.

I had just started tracking a dragon’s egg for a collector when it happened. I had been searching a long time for the Magic Mirror (you know the one – “mirror, mirror on the wall . . . .”), but had yet to find it. The Magic Mirror was special. Not only could it show you who was the fairest of them all, but it could show you the past and, most importantly, the future. My client was a hedge-fund manager who thought it would give him an investing advantage. I didn’t like his motives, but he paid well, with a ridiculous bonus for success.

After months of chasing rumors, speculation, and wild guesses, finances forced me to move on to a different case and find the dragon’s egg. I didn’t give up on the mirror because I never quit, but I needed a break. I had traced the egg to an old couple living in Nebraska, and went there to get it. While I was driving through the heartland of America, I spotted the Grimm Brothers’ Traveling Fairy-Tale Circus off in the distance. That looked promising. The dragon’s egg would have to wait.

There were seven battered trucks parked off the highway in an old fairground, just south of the small farming town of Grantsville, Nebraska. The sad little caravan was all that was left of the Fairy-Tale Circus. It looked like the trucks must have just arrived, because the Seven Dwarfs were still setting up the main tent, but there was no whistling while they worked. Aging shadows of their former selves, the Three Little Pigs were slowly assembling their booths of straw, wood, and brick, while the Big Bad Wolf was starting dinner in a big pot.

Prince Charming, Snow White, Rapunzel, and the members of the Royal Entourage (“Your Photo With A Star, Only $5.00! Autographs Extra.”) were sitting around the camp fire, mending their costumes. They looked as if they belonged in a rest home, not out on the road.

The years had taken their toll, and now that they were no longer sustained by imagination, the troupe was reaching The End. The death of Once Upon A Time was near, and few would mourn its passing, although I would be one of them. It hadn’t always been like this, of course, but modern life had been hard on fairy tales.

I started to wander around. No one seemed to care, since today’s curiosity seeker might be tomorrow’s customer, and both had been in short supply. That was when I finally found the mirror.

It was in a dirty tent, and it didn’t look like much. The mirror had been sought by kings and queens, coveted by mighty wizards, and questioned by evil sisters. At times encrusted with precious jewels, the mirror was now spotted and dusty, with the barest of wood frames.

The sun-bleached sign outside the old tent read:

Magic Mirror!
Questions Answered!
Know the Future!
$10.00 for 3 Questions.

The tent was empty except for a mirror perched on an easel next to a small table with a wooden donation box on top of it. A sign read, “Deposit $10 Before Asking Questions and Be Careful!” After I paid, the mirror began to glow a sickening green with swirls of blue, and in the center red letters appeared, spinning randomly like a tornado and growing larger until they filled the mirror. The thing was either magical or a great screen saver. The letters finally stopped:

To lords and ladies I sing
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

My mouth was dry – at last, this might be the true Magic Mirror!

“What if you’re not a lord or lady? What happens then?" I asked.

That’s two questions.
I answer peasants’ questions for $10.
But I do not sing.
Ask your last question.

"You’re kidding! My last question?"

Yes.
Thank you for your donation.

The lights died and the mirror went blank. I had fallen for one of the oldest tricks in fortune-telling – “Be careful” – really? I thought hard about my next questions and paid another $10. The mirror glowed, and the letters swirled and formed new words:

You again?
Ask your three questions.

"How do I know you’re the real Magic Mirror from the fairy tales?"

Time will tell.

“'Time will tell?' What kind of an answer is that?"

Two questions again.
Yes.
A correct one.

This was getting expensive, but I needed verification, so I made yet another donation. The mirror swirled, although this time it drew a laughing clown’s face, and I hated clowns. I continued anyway. I wanted the mirror to prove it could see the past.

“Show me my first kiss.”

Here it is.

An image appeared. “That’s my mother kissing me just after I was born!”

I was mad, but the mirror was right, and at least I knew it could see the past – and now for the present.

“Why am I here?”

To buy me for another’s profit.
Peasant.

I ignored the insult and asked about the future, my client’s real interest.

“What will time tell?”

The Magic Mirror would not speak.

“You must answer – under fairy-tale law, a deal is a deal, even with peasants. I paid my money, I want my answer: what will time tell?”

Be careful.
Are you sure you
want to know?

“Yes! Answer me!”

You have been warned.
A Beast will be born in the desert,
beautiful, yet terrible to behold, and
in time, it will awaken to travel
to Bethlehem, and destroy all!

The words gradually faded from sight. What kind of answer was this, warmed-over Revelations? I knew that language from somewhere, but where? Was it true, or just a game? The mirror certainly was tricky. I had no money, but I still had plenty of questions. What was the Beast? When would it be born? Could it be stopped?

The more I thought about it, the less certain I was. I had traded a little cash and my peace of mind for some words floating in a mirror. The sign said to be careful and the mirror had warned me, too. I should never have asked that last question.

The only thing clear to me was that this was the real Magic Mirror, and it was too powerful for a hedge-fund manager to own. It needed to stay right where it was.

Being a finder of magical antiquities was dangerous. Even though fairy tales were nearly over and their magic almost gone, in some objects that magic lingered on to show us the power of imagination, and remind us of what we had lost.

I'd never quit a job before, and the decision stung, but leaving that mirror behind was the right thing to do. I went back to my car and got on the road toward Grantsville, instead.

I still had to find that dragon’s egg. I sure hoped this one wouldn’t hatch.

******************

Given the source of the topic (“Easter, 1916” http://www.online-literature.com/donne/779/), I included references to two other poems by William Butler Yeats:
“Sailing to Byzantium” http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/781/
“The Second Coming” http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/780/