“N—nothing. Nothing is wrong.” But I could not keep the ripples of tears from my voice, and without thinking, I wiped my eyes.
“I may be able to help.” She came closer, and in the strained moonlight, she seemed almost birdlike in her movements.
“No, you can’t,” I said, shivering again.
She held up a cloak that I had not seen before. She enveloped me in it, draping it around my shoulders, then smoothed it with firm hands. She had barely spoken to me before, yet her touch felt so warm, so like my mother’s that I began to sob. She took me in her arms, enveloping both of us in the cloak, which seemed to grow to our size.
“Is this about your young man?” she asked.
And, all at once, I was pouring out the whole story, my dull life, my romance with Karl, my plight. All the time, she held and rocked me like a mother, like my mother.
“I am so foolish. I do not even know where he is, who he is, where he lives. I do not know if he will come next week. I do not know anything about him!”
Kendra did not answer for a moment, but then she said, “I can help you with that.”
“How?” I sniffled.
She backed away, allowing the cloak to fall around my shoulders. From somewhere within the folds of her dress—I knew not where—she extracted a mirror, silver and larger than my head, trimmed with ornate scrollwork like something from a museum. She held it out to me. “Take it.”
I did. It felt cold and heavy, like a block of ice. I sniffled and looked my question. Why a mirror? Even in the darkness, I could see that my face was red and blotched with none of the beauty that women expecting babies are said to have, beauty which, no doubt, came from their husbands’ love. I made to hand the mirror back.
But she said, “No, keep it. This is a magical object you hold in your hand.”
“Magical how?”
“With it, you can see anyone you wish, merely by asking.”
This seemed insane. “But what good will that do me? I need Karl to come back. I need him to . . .” Love me. Want me.
“With this mirror, you can observe him, see where he is, who he is.”
The mirror suddenly felt heavier. My hand trembled with its weight.
Kendra reached out to steady my arm. “Just ask the mirror to see him.”
Her hands gripped me like pincers. This was impossible. Still, if I did what she asked, she would let me leave, so I said, “Can I please . . . I have to see Karl.”
I expected nothing. Yet suddenly my face disappeared, replaced by a scene that looked like one from a book, a room with floors that shone like the river in sunshine and lights that hung from the ceiling, surrounded by showers of diamonds. A palace! Through it all walked a young man I did not recognize at first. He was dressed in the blue uniform of a Prussian army officer. As he drew close, I realized it was Karl.
He passed another man. The man bowed down.
“Your Highness,” the man said.
Only then did I realize where he was, what I was looking at. I had seen it before on walks with my mother as a little girl. We had stared in admiration, though of course I had never been inside. The palace!
Karl was the son of our king! A prince!
The mirror fell from my hand. I heard it shatter before I hit the ground.
4
“Young woman! Young woman! I am sorry, but I do not know your name, though we have met so many times, I feel I know you.”
I cracked open my eyes. The dark sky swam up toward me, and I closed them again.
“Oh no,” I said, for I knew Karl, a prince, would never marry a miller’s daughter. My life was over! But it wasn’t true. The mirror couldn’t really have shown me Karl. It was some sort of trick.
The bookseller held out the mirror. Miraculously, it was unbroken. I gaped at her.
“I can’t . . . I don’t understand.” But I seized the mirror. I did not understand its magic. Perhaps it was a trick. Maybe it wasn’t really Karl I had seen.
“I need to see Karl!” I hoped that the mirror would show me something different.
Another room took shape in the mirror’s mists, another beautiful room with walls of gold. But the face was the same. Karl. My Karl. He was talking to someone, likely a servant.
Karl looked down, perturbed. “I require a moment alone.”
“Yes, Your Highness. But dinner is soon to be served.”
“Alone,” Karl repeated.
The servant left and closed the door. Karl paced upon the crimson carpet and, for a moment, it felt wrong to spy on him, But we had been lovers. He had loved me.
Had he not?
As if in reply, Karl settled onto a large chair and buried his head in his hands.
He sat a few minutes. Then he straightened up his shoulders and called for his servant to dress him for dinner.
“You must go there,” the bookseller said. “Go to him.”
“How can I? What can I say?” Yet I was already planning it. I would wait to see if he came next week. But if he didn’t, I would go to him, storm the palace, demand that he be with me, with our child.