Mirror Mirror

by Gregory Maguire

But whatever deceit you’ve concocted to abuse us with,

You bitches literally sent him out chasing a fairy tale Lucre

“Murder?” “Of course. That’s the only way Borgias agree to die.”

“There is no de Nevada family in Navarre, or none that would recognize this wandering cousin,” said Vicente coldly. “You wrote to Fra Ludovico—?” “I wrote lies for the purpose of protecting my daughter.

Thought as much.

“I will see him now. Ranuccio, is that it? Do I remember? Ranuccio. Where is he?” “You may not see him,” said Lucrezia. “He disappeared from the region shortly thereafter.

O unknowable universe!

pause.

Comma

In the end she was a willful child, like most. Her ending was likely inevitable.”

Remind me never to ask a Borgia for comfort.

“The dog doesn’t figure in this story of grief. It has no name,” he said.

Yes he does his name is Next >:(

The beast turned to Vicente and put its head between Vicente’s knees. With its new tongue it licked Vicente’s hands.

;o;

The beast knocked the brush aside and shuffled through yesterday’s ashes to the back wall of the fireplace. It leaned its head and its shoulders—there was no denying they were now shoulders—into the wall. It disappeared into the stone as neatly as a corpse is swallowed by a flooded quarry.

resis-tance

No hyphen

We are never enough to ourselves because we can never be enough to another. Any one of us walks into any room and reminds its occupant that we are not the one they most want to see. We are never the one. We are never enough. The holy find this some mincing proof of God. Damn them.

Or perhaps it was that she seemed like one who didn’t worry about what it meant never to be enough. The absence of such a care on her brow filled her with an unearthly beauty that I could neither achieve nor abide.

They looked at her with baleful gloom, as if scraping carrots efficiently was their chief ambition in life.

Maybe it is, Bianca.

“Do you forget me?” “Well, yes,” said Heartless. “Actually.” “I am—” He paused, as if not quite having sorted it out for himself. “I am Nextday, you cretinous lumpheads.”

may

Might

We blew a quantity of glass and shaped it into a shallow bowl, and painted the inner skin with a coat made of tin and quicksilver. We made for ourselves a mirror that could look like an eye into a room, so we could watch how humans look at themselves, and learn by their example how to look at ourselves.”

To ready the mirror, we left it out in the air so its shape could fix, and it could adjust to the code of the world in which humans live, and not to our code. Then to cure it we submerged it in a bath of water. But it sank, and we couldn’t see it. It had become invisible to us.”

“If you can call that food. Pfaaah,” muttered Tasteless.

Okay I get it she sucks at cooking

Heartless came up and pressed his hand to hers,

<3

I WASN’T looking to find you,” said the figure. “Are you a goose?”

So he does talk.

Within stood no Virgin with open hands, no carpenter with a Child on his shoulders, as she might have expected to see. Instead, a crudely carved stone tree with a coil of serpent wrapped around its base. A single apple, outsize, weighed down one branch. The serpent ignored the apple. Though its head was turned toward Bianca, its fangs were weathered into stumps.

Uh.......huh?

“You didn’t leave me in charge,” said Fra Ludovico. “In charge of la Borgia? I can’t even get up on a donkey anymore without a ladder, a hoist, and a week of fasting. The notion of asking me to govern a Borgia! But I did my part nonetheless, you know.”

“I measure time by the seasons of the Church,” began Fra Ludovico, “and every year begins anew, with Advent; it’s the same year, over and over, indistinguishable one from another—” “I’ll turn you out on your fat old behind, you pious fool—” “About six years, more or less.”

We are nothing if not practical.

That was when the old sow could still speak, of course, though her tongue became detached shortly thereafter.” “For blasphemy?” “If she’d been subject to that punishment for blasphemy, she’d have been mute since she was three.”

Vicente had to smile despite himself—weakly, affectionately. “You’re as superstitious as Primavera, in your own way,” he said. “Now that’s blasphemy.”

“Michelotto,” she called. “Michelotto, my boy. It’s time to brush my hair. Come and give your poor mother some attention.”

Oh, now we're acknowledging him?

But Michelotto was her son and nephew both. In the years following the death of her father, her brother, and her son Rodrigo, and with the collapse of the romance of her marriage, she had come to cling to Michelotto, despite all his fancifulness. And she had begun to feel fond of him. Because she could expect nothing of the Punishment—not even that he bear the family name—she had found a way to love him without stint or mercy. This didn’t keep her from wanting, on a regular basis, to brain him.

Lucrezia found something liberating in the disguise she’d taken on, and she enjoyed hobbling and sighing as if she were really a healthily farting old dame instead of a lithe and beautiful thirty-two. Michelotto kept a good distance from her.

He wouldn’t leave and she wouldn’t go on with him in tow. At last she stooped and found a small, sharp rock. With a steadiness of hand that surprised all three of them, she pitched the missile at the goose.

I'll be honest I really thought she was going to throw that at Michelotto

sewn

Sown

Primavera with all the produce of Montefiore, and the hunters and poachers and snarers at her disposal, hardly could prepare a meal as sumptuous as this.

Okay so can she not cook or are the dwarves just picky

Lucrezia flung the plate of food, uneaten, in the window over the girl’s corpse, and made her way with haste back up the hill and toward Montefiore.

No good deed goes unpunished.

How long had Cesare been dead?—three years, four, and her father only a year or more than that? Since then she had turned into a monster—

The girl’s pale skin was whiter than before—was it cadaverous! Perhaps. Lucrezia fled, praying it might be so.

Right healthy teenagers get shocked to death all the time

durable child

lol

The mirror, maddening one minute, was helpful the next. Lucrezia began to realize that it alerted her when the dwarves were ready to leave.

It's probably just sick of your shit

They constructed a clumsy box with wheels and shafts, and practiced hauling it about. They were on a campaign of some sort.

They would take the mirror, without permission, and damn the cost. They wanted to keep Bianca safe.

Summer would be here before long; she would reign as the goddess of dawn. The peacocks screamed at the competition; she threw her head back and answered them.

Okay you need to chill

Her look was so venomous and straitened that without delay he flung down the blossoms in two intersecting lines, making a yellow cross on the ground. It didn’t hold her back. She trod upon it and kept going.

Fra Ludovico sucks

“Bother,” she answered, distractedly.

Thought she said brother I am going blind

Had she a mind to, she could have sliced his heart out of his chest and held it up for review, and he would never have awakened until the sedation wore off. How helpful to have a talent for cooking.

“I am told not to open the door to anyone,” came the voice of Bianca de Nevada from within.

That does seem wise.

But my companion has fallen ill,

And whose fault is that Lucre

Weren’t you bothered by someone yourself, recently?

And how would you know that?

It was stored in the wheelbarrow, and Gimpy, the roundest among them, got in with it, to cushion it with the softness of his belly.

Smort

with all the musty coprolitic warmth and personality of home.

Ew

So I took his hand, and I let my middle finger trail across the center of his palm, as faintly as I could manage given we were lighting out cross-country.

JFC is she doing what I think she's doing

Seven small men and a rather large dog began to be seen about the coffin.

The dog came up and put its head in Vicente’s lap. He scratched it behind the ears, courteously enough, but in time he shooed the mongrel away. He had never liked dogs much.

Well there's gratitude for you