Mirror, Mirror

         

         Durinda stood quietly in her chambers squinting into the mirror with dismay. Once she had been the beauty of the country, the envy of all young women and the conquest of all young men. But now, she was foreign even to herself. Lines slowly creasing her face were etched against her skin, now garish and tanned. Instead of the perfect body so many had long ago marveled over, she now sported stretch marks, cooking burns, cuts and scrapes, and bruises; all battle wounds from ten harsh years of marriage she endured.

         She thought back to what her mother had told her years ago when she had confessed her love to Clifton. If only she had listened. She could’ve saved herself so much misery, so much pain. When she had everything, she threw it all away only to be left with nothing.

         “He is a nothing, a drunken fool, and will sooner let a wife and family starve then deny himself a moment without his true love, his gin! Durinda, I forbid you to marry him! A life with him would be a life of hardship and loneliness.” 

         The voice echoed in her head as clear as day. But she had been headstrong and blinded by her feelings. Later that very night she eloped with him and together they started a new life together, no dowry, no connections, and no family. What did her mother know about love? Her father had left them when she was nothing but a baby. She would show them all.

          But as life would often have it, things did not go as planned. Within the first couple of months of their marriage she soon began to see what a horrible mistake she had made as gradually her love faded away. It was as though she had fallen in love with an entirely different person, and ended up marrying a monster. Clifton was almost always drunk and whenever he was sober, he couldn’t find any work because of his reputation. Oftentimes he beat her. Once Durinda tried to run away, but just as she was leaving, he caught her in the act and told her that if she ever tried leaving again, he would kill her. Believing him capable, she resolved herself to suffering. To stay off the streets she was forced to do menial labor as a servant, scrubbing pots and pans, mucking stalls, just about any job she could get. It seemed all of her mother’s nightmare predictions were coming true.  And just when she thought life couldn’t get any worse, Durinda had just realized she was pregnant and that was now where she stood, a crossroads in the journey of life. Perhaps she should wait until it was later and Clifton was drunk. He definitely would go easier on her then, but still a small part of her everyday still dreamed that he would one day transform back into the charming, handsome man she had grown to love. Perhaps the prospect of parenthood would change his lifestyle. After all, this was their child. Glancing once again into the mirror that only seemed to taunt what she had become, she forced herself to walk into the kitchen and tell Clifton the news.

          The moment she told him, she could tell she had been horribly wrong. As he began to rant and rave at her, it took all of Durinda’s will not to run away.

“A BABY?!” he roared, “Another screaming squabbling mouth to feed in this dump?!  And you expect me to support you as well as this thing?!”

“This thing is your child, and like it or not you’re going to soon be a father! And you know what else? It might be a good thing to try to act like a human being for once and treat me with respect!”

“Respect?! RESPECT?! I’ll show you respect! IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT?!” 

And with that he slapped her across the face so harshly that she flew back and hit the wall. She touched the red mark across her face and sobbed.

“All I want is for you to be happy for us. And care for me like you used to, when you told me you loved me, and that I was the fairest one of all.”

Clifton snorted.

“I may not be a gentleman, but I certainly can’t tell a lie. Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?”

And with that he stomped out the door. No doubt to the bar where he would drink away her week’s worth of wages in one night. Drying off her tears, Durinda straightened up in fierce determination. Fine, she ‘d raise the baby by herself if need be, but something, anything had to be changed and she would do whatever it took to change it. With no hesitation she walked over to the midwife Larissa’s cottage. Boldly she knocked on the door.

Were it not for the hot blood flowing through her veins, Durinda would have otherwise felt horrified. She knew what strange rumors circulated about the old midwife throughout the village, whispers of sorcery and dark magic. But yet, in their moment of need, the fine ladies of the village would always call upon Larissa and she could always ease their pain, so while quite ostracized, she was also quite well liked.

         As she was thinking of this, an old face poked her head out of the door. Larissa smiled at Durinda, silver hair in a pool around her face.

         “Hello dear, what brings you here at this late hour of the night?”

         Durinda froze for a second. But then she remembered Clifton, the bruises that covered her body, and the future of her baby.  And when she saw the softness in Larissa’s eyes, she knew that this woman could help her take control of her life once again.

         “Please,” she whispered. “Help me. Help my baby.”

         And that was the beginning of Durinda’s new life.

         During the day she continued working throughout the village, but by night Durinda slipped out while Clifton was in a drunken stupor to get herbs for her baby and learn magic from Larissa. Soon she knew how to light a fire with just a simple spell, protect her crops from weather with a mere potion, and even scrub pots and pans in the half the time she did manually with just a little flick of the wrist. At one such session, she noticed a blood red book with strange symbols.

         “Larissa, what’s that?” she inquired.

Larissa’s expression grew grim.

         “That my child is a book of dark magic. While people such as us use our magic for good, others conspire to use their power for just the opposite. While it is true that with the light magic that we use, we are more limited with what we can do, we are also less likely to lose our way. Spells of death and despair fill that black book, and nothing good has ever come from somebody opening that book.” 

But feeling curious, when Larissa wasn’t looking Durinda took the book, and read it the next day while she was working. Many of the spells disturbed her. But others intrigued her. Imagine being able to trap your enemies in inanimate objects for the rest of their lives. Or by adding years to your life by taking life from others. But pure fear and common sense told her not to attempt such spells, so the following night she slipped the book back to its original resting place and didn’t say a thing about it for the rest of her lessons. Still, the dark spells that she had seen remained engraved into her mind, constantly whispering to her, tempting to be spoken.

Nine months later, Larissa delivered Durinda a beautiful baby girl named Miriam. Durinda’s labor was long and painful, and while Larissa did what little she could to make her comfortable, it seemed as though her baby was almost cursed from the start with a magic so powerful that nothing could be done to ease the pain. Finally, hours later, the agony ended and a baby girl was born. Tears in her eyes, Durinda cradled Miriam in her arms, and sighed in relief. She would do whatever she could for this baby from now on.  Her daughter was her life.

         The first month with Miriam was pure bliss. Every day she woke up Durinda had something to look forward to. While she worked she would sing songs to Miriam and almost every other day they would visit together at Larissa’s.

  But one day on a humid and stormy morning when Durinda went to lift Miriam out of her crib she screamed. The child was limp and lifeless. In frenzy she ran over to Larissa’s begging, pleading for help, but Larissa said it was too late. There was nothing she could do.  Hearing that something inside of Durinda snapped and she refused to take no for an answer. 

“If you won’t do something I will!” she shrieked. And she cursed, chanting a spell, the first spell that she remembered from the book she had stolen.

“What…” Larissa began to say, but then she was cut off as she began to scream and writhe in pain. Durinda watched in terror as she saw all of the life get sucked out of Larissa and blow in the wind, but then remembered the baby in her arms. Holding Miriam’s dead body up to the sky, she offered it to the spirits.

“Please,” she said, “exchange this woman’s life for the life of my baby.” 

But the dark spirits had already begun to run their course, absorbing into Durinda’s skin, restoring her youth and beauty.

“No!” she screamed, “It’s not for me it’s for my baby!” But just as she was saying that, the spirits lifted up the limp forms of Larissa and Miriam, snatched them up, and carried them down, deep into the recesses of the Earth.

For a while, Durinda just laid there pounding her fists on the cruel barren ground filled with a complete sense of hopelessness. She tried chanting several of the other spells she vaguely remembered hoping that somehow, some way she could revive the two lives that she had taken. But with each curse that she uttered, it seemed that her soul grew darker, and her emotions numb. Soon she felt nothing at all.  After hours of no success she knew she had failed. The two people in her life that had changed her entirely as person were now gone, exiting a chapter in her life story as quickly as they had entered. There was nothing she could do. Forcing herself to be calm, Durinda slowly walked back into the house and looked in the mirror. She looked exactly as she used to if not prettier. She smiled at her reflection, a twisted grimace forming on her face. How odd that so much had happened but she hadn’t shed a single tear. Perhaps she had cried so much in the past couple of years, she was incapable of crying any longer. Look how much time she had wasted crying, all that she could’ve accomplished. She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t used those spells before, if she hadn’t been so hesitant, maybe Miriam would still be alive, and maybe she would’ve been able to get away from Clifton, to take her revenge.

“Well, “she muttered to herself, “better late than never.”

That night when Clifton stumbled in, she was waiting for him. Earlier in the day, instead of going to her normal job, she had gone to Larissa’s house and read over this particular spell. She didn’t want it to backfire because of some technical thing that she missed like it had earlier that day. Had she cast the spell more deliberately and not purely out of anger, she would’ve been able to restore Miriam’s life. She had known that one’s emotions had to be clear in order to cast a spell correctly, even simple spells, but Durinda had let her heart take control of her head and that was a mistake she would make sure never would happen ever again.



         “I must be really drunk”, thought Clifton as he came home that night.

In a daze he saw the younger form of Durinda standing at the door.

“Just as beautiful as the day I met you”, he muttered to her, hoping to see the look that she had full of bashfulness and love when he first talked to her, but instead she returned a look of hatred and angst.

Holding up a mirror to his face, she began muttering something he couldn’t comprehend.

“What are you saying?” he began to ask, and suddenly he felt as though his body were being pulled apart at all ends and he found himself trapped as though stuck behind a glass. He tried to punch his way out, but to no avail.

“Durinda!” he began to scream. “What are you doing!?”

But his words were drowned out by her hysterical cackle. He saw her face as though through a thick mist.

“You should’ve cared for me, but you beat me. You should’ve called me gorgeous, but instead you insulted me. You should’ve let me be free, but instead you controlled me. Now I am controlling you. For the rest of eternity, you will tell me each and every day how beautiful I am, as you should’ve when you were living. So, mirror mirror on the wall…whose the fairest one of all?”