And suddenly he was there. He was there! He was on a battlefield, I could not tell where, but it was hot, and he wiped the sweat from his brow.
But oh! He was so handsome, still. The style of his auburn hair had changed a bit, and he wore a blue uniform and carried a long rifle. He also had a cocked hat (what we later called a tricorne), all of which showed him off so much better than the dour black doublets and frilly collars in which I had seen him last. He had also grown a mustache, but I would have recognized him anywhere for his eyes, which were as blue as the Danube River.
I stared for too long, yet not long enough, before asking, “Is it . . . can I use it to find someone? Is there a way to know where the person is?”
The old man’s gold tooth really got a thrill out of that one. “Ah, we are searching for a lost love?”
“Something like that.” Exactly like that. I felt my throat tighten with the tears at seeing him again.
But the old man shook his head. “No way to tell, unless he says so in conversation.”
“I . . . can hear him speak?”
“Yes,” the peddler said, “if he is speaking. Ask to see someone else and check.”
“I wish to see my assistant,” I said, much as I hated not to see James.
Immediately, the picture switched to my assistant, who was helping a customer. “Yes, we have Goethe’s poems right here,” he was saying.
“I’ll take it,” I told the old man, knowing I would pay any price. “And do not wrap it up.”
As soon as I left the stall, I told the mirror, “Let me see James.” I stared at him all afternoon, but he did not reveal his whereabouts.
Every spare moment, I looked at James, overheard his conversations, which made me feel guilty for spying, but not that guilty, for I had to find him.
I felt even less guilty when I heard this conversation, in a barrack (the language James was speaking was English, so that narrowed his whereabouts down, at least somewhat).
“D’ya ever plan to marry, James?” a man, one of his friends, asked him.
James shook his head, sadly. “There was a girl a long time ago, so long it seems another lifetime.”
His friend laughed. “Yes, another lifetime. What is your age—maybe twenty?”
“Well, it seems like a long time,” James said. “Anyway, I loved her, and she went away. I told her we would find each other again, but I’m afraid I’ve lost her.”
His friend slapped his shoulder and pretended to weep, but I knew he’d meant me. I had to find him.
I tried for years, but to no avail. I could see him, but I could not talk to him, and he was always on some battlefield somewhere. If only Google had existed, I could have narrowed down his whereabouts, researched his uniform. But no. It was no better than a photograph, but it was better than nothing.
In the meantime, I discovered some interesting things about that mirror, one of them being that I could reproduce it, make a second one with a sort of copying spell, and the duplicate had the same powers as the original. This realization made me a bit angry, for I realized the seller had charged a great deal for what might well have been a duplicate. Still, it was useful, for it meant I could give a mirror to someone I wished to be able to see me—while still keeping one for myself. In this way, we could communicate, like a sort of nineteenth-century smartphone.
I used it to help a girl, Cornelia, whose story is included below.
1
Wheels
Bavaria, 1812
Cornelia
For seventeen years, my life was like the Isar River, which flowed past our mill, beautiful but all too consistent, always the same, lapping gently against rocks worn down by time. My sisters told me of the ocean, which rolled and churned, changing by the second, sometimes leaping up to take them by surprise, but my life had no surprises. My life was like the river, dependable and dull. Until it wasn’t. And then I wished it was.
There was once a girl with a very big problem. Well, two very big problems, only one of which was her inability to spin straw into gold.
Allow me to begin at the beginning, for I know this story far better than I would like to. It is the story of a poor miller’s daughter who found love—or something like it—with a handsome student who was not what he seemed, and she was never the same again.
No, indeed, she was forever altered. I know it is so for that girl was me.
Is me, for I am still alive and I am still on the horns of a dilemma, which is appropriate because my name, Cornelia, means “horn.”