365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

45. Mirror, Mirror

45. Mirror, Mirror: What if your mirror started talking to
you?

"Rose Red."

The word echoed hollowly throughout the great hall. The voice was deep and the tone a low timbre. Each cadence seemed to ring with a solemn authority, striking its power against the little girl.

She stood as if frozen, while waves of consciousness rushed over her, drowing her beneath its whirling swells. The voice was bodyless, but it was no secret where it was issued from.

"Rose Red," it said again, this time even more terrible.

There could be no hesitance. The voice demanded complete obedience. It compelled her -- tugged at her in ways she did not understand.

Rose Red let the thick door close behind her, scared and yet with calm acrions. She felt her feet move, step by step upon the dusty floor. Shadowly piles of mysterious contents hulked above her. It was not a large room, nor was it bright. Yet the way was shown clearly to her by a force inside of her and yet outside: magic.

"Rose Red."

She stood, quivering, in front of a tall, oval shape, shrouded beneath a simple gray cloth.

"Remove my covering and gaze upon me."

Her tiny hand grasped upon the edge of the sheet. White fingers clutched it, not shaking, though she herself was. She had not expected to find this in the attic of the palace. She had only been looking for a new toy.

With a sweep, she pulled the cover off. It feel in a graceful arc to the floor, as if influenced by a swift wind into lovely contortions.

Rose Red looked upon herself.

She almost screamed. To see oneself, as physical as you, and yet it was not you...

"Who are you?" she whispered, for Rose Red knew that the girl that stood in front of her was not her. It was not a mirror. The girl moved independently of Rose Red, and her breathing, though silent, caused her thin chest to heave most frightfully.

The voice that issued from the look-alike's mouth was the same deep, manly, power-drenched one to beckon her. It was all the more horrible for its outlet. "I am not. I was and will be."

She stared in fascinated terror. The girl stared at her with dead eyes, and she did not move as humans do. There was a rigidity, a formality to her actions. Yet Rose Red sensed more life existed in the small, slight form than in all of the kingdom.

"Who were you?" Rose Red asked.

"I was your mother."

Rose Red inhaled sharply. Her mother was alive and well in the castle. She was not this -- Rose Red hesitated to call it a monster. It was too beautiful to be so, albeit strangely, coldly beautiful. This mirror was not Snow White.

"You are as red as she is white," the girl intoned.

Rose Red knew that. Whereas her mother possessed striking black hair and scarlet lips, Rose Red had shiny red hair. Everything about her was that color: her skin was a light, blushing pink and her mouth seemed permanently stained with the juice of cherries.

"You are as dark as she is light."

Rose Red felt a chill that started from inside of her. What did that mean? Was the girl, the mirror image of her, implying that Rose Red was bad.

"Where she shines you cannot."

Rose Red started to bend down slowly to pick up the sheet. The girl did not look directly at her. She merely closed her eyes, almost chanting the words now that sounded like a prophecy. The ring of the future clung to each cadence of her dreaded voice.

"If she reigns, you will rot. The sky will set a golden suns, before the day comes for no one."

Rose Red flung the cover onto the girl, and in the brief second where it floated down upon her frightful figure, Rose Red saw that she was a mirror. She was the reflection of a lovely, golden mirror, and before she was completely obscured, the girl's hideously empty eyes popped open and she thundered, "I will be as I appear now.'

Then she was hidden, silenced, and her words with their truth released.

*

A/N: I read a Snow White story on Wattpad years ago that inspired this... I wish I could find it.

Anyway, guess what? This book just hit 1k reads today! Thank you so much for reading! It's the best Valentine's gift I got today! (And I received a kitty cat post-it note dispenser, so that's how you can tell it was a darn good gift!)