Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

Did you look down? No. Did you respond in any way? No. You

just stood there, like a damned statue, saying nothing.

Fine, I thought. I left the ribbon on your dressing table and left the room. Do you know how that felt? Do you? You may as well have ripped my heart out and fed it to the wolves. I almost hated you then.

Don’t wince. What do you expect? Jesus. You can’t be that far gone.

Don’t worry, I didn’t hate you. That’s funny, me telling you not to worry. As if you would.

It took the girl about three years to get over that one. She felt pretty dumb for having tried in the first place, but eventually—you know how resilient kids are—she decided to try again.

By this time (you won’t have known this either), she’d got a job. It wasn’t much of a job, and it wasn’t a legal job, but a kid has to have some cash on hand, you know? You won’t remember Mr. Spinner. He was the janitor at the middle school. He used to tell these great stories to any kid who would listen. This girl was pretty starved for attention and interaction, so she listened. And maybe he listened to all the things she didn’t say, because, one day, he offered her a job helping him mop and buff the floors after all the other kids had gone home.

I saved up every penny I earned for a whole year. I realized my ? 327 ?

? The Mirror Tells All ?

mistake, see, with the ribbon. It was too cheap for your tastes. I knew this time I had to do better. So when the girl—yeah, that’s still me, in case you’d forgotten—had saved up enough money, she went into town again.

Quit squirming. I know there’s no action in this story. What do you expect? Not much can happen when the main character is just standing there.

The girl thought she was on the right track with the hair thing, even though the first time she’d got it wrong. And maybe she was feeling a little guilty for having thrown her mother’s good hairbrush at the mirror. That hairbrush was like something out of the court of some French king. Unbelievably ornate, with bristles tough as the day they were plucked from the boar. So very you. What I wanted was to find a matching comb. That, I thought, would bring you out of your stupor. Because sometimes, if I stayed up late enough at night, I’d catch you brushing your hair.

The girl found a comb, a perfect, silver comb that maybe wasn’t as ornate as the hairbrush, but was still eye-catching and breathtaking in its beauty. She didn’t even know they made stuff like that. It cost her every cent she had, but she didn’t care. Her mother would have to be blind to ignore this gift, she was certain.

This time she didn’t take silence as an answer. She held the comb out to her mother, and nothing happened. She waved it in front of her mother’s face, and nothing happened. She started shouting, “Mom, look! I brought you this comb! Look at it, take it, will you?”

and nothing happened. Her mom just stood there with that dead look on her face, staring into the mirror.

The girl wanted to cry, she wanted to sit down on the floor right then and there and wail her heart out. Do you remember what she did instead? No? She moved around behind her mother, and started combing her mother’s hair. That’s what she did. Gently, so as not to pull on the tangles, she combed out every strand until they lay, soft and shining, against her mother’s back. Then she put the comb on the dressing table with the brush and left the room.

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? Erzebet YellowBoy ?