The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen (19 page)

The hunger in her voice reminded me of Peg Powler and the Wild Hunt. Clearly, Madame Factor wasn’t nearly as good as she was beautiful. I began to be very frightened.

“Or I could make you uglier,” Madame Factor said. “Or I could turn my mirrors on that stupid bag of yours and burn it to a crisp.”

I moaned and clutched Satchel to my chest. Something inside it nudged me sharply. I reached inside, grabbed the first thing I felt, and flourished it over my head. “But you won’t,” I said. “You’ll let me go.
And
you’ll tell me what I want to know. Because if you don’t, I’ll break all your mirrors.”

Madame Factor burst into a storm of scornful
hnya, hnya
s. “With one little apple? I don’t think so. I can turn it into applesauce.”

“Then why don’t you?” I said, and threw the apple as hard as I could at the nearest mirror.

The apple hit the glass with a dull thud and rolled away. The mirror wasn’t even cracked. My heart sank.

Madame Factor gave a horrible screech. “You broke it!” she wailed. “You broke my mirror!”

I turned around and gasped. Elizabeth Factor had changed. Oh, she was still tall and slender, but her golden hair was more like wisps of dry grass, her teeth like steel chisels, and her sparkling green eyes like bulging, malevolent grapes in a face that would have sent a demon screaming.

I reached into Satchel again, groped around hopefully, and pulled out a giant drumstick, too big for even a turkey leg. Ostrich, maybe? It didn’t matter. It was big and heavy and shone with grease. I started to feel somewhat less frightened. “There’s just something knocked loose,” I said. “Maybe this will fix it.”

“You’re an ungrateful, selfish little girl,” Madame Factor wailed, “and nobody likes you. I could have made you beautiful. I could have made you
popular
.”

I raised the drumstick threateningly. “I didn’t come here to be made beautiful. I came here to ask you some questions. You can answer them or I can destroy your mirror. You choose.”

Madame Factor writhed. “I’ll answer, I’ll answer. Next time an ugly girl wants to see me, though, poof. She’s a toad before she opens her mouth.”

I ignored this. “I want to know about the magnifying mirror you got from Snowbell the Swan Maiden in Lincoln Center. The whole story. Every detail.”

Madame Factor took me literally. I got
far
too much information about what Snowbell was wearing and what Madame Factor was wearing and the magic mirror shades that allowed her to leave her Salon, and what kind of spell she used to give Snowbell’s hair that otherworldly shimmer. Finally she got to the part about seeing a fine mirror in Snowbell’s nest, and taking it as payment for her services.

“So the mirror’s here?”

“I couldn’t do a thing with it,” she said disgustedly. “All it would do was show me my real face, in extreme close-up. I couldn’t wait to get rid of it.”

“Who did you give it to?”

“I don’t know,” said Madame. “
Hnya, hnya
.”

I stepped up to the closest mirror and swung the drumstick threateningly.

“Don’t!” she screeched. “It’s true. Every Equinox, the Dowager starts sending me the latest crop of debs so I can make them beautiful for the Solstice Ball. I never pay attention to their names.”

“Was one of them blonde?”

“My dear.” Madame Factor shrugged. “When I’m done with them, they’re all blonde. One was almost
elfin
—there really wasn’t much to do. But she thought there was. You ought to have seen what she thought she looked like. Yes, I have a mirror for that, too. She thought she was too fat—that type always does—and her nose was too big. I said I’d grant her wish if she’d get rid of Snowbell’s mirror for me.” She glanced at my drumstick and licked her lips. Her tongue was pointed, and an unpleasant shade of gray. “Can you put that thing away?”

Tiffany was a member of the Dowager’s court, and she was going to be presented at Midwinter. But so were a couple of the other girls. “When did all this happen?” I asked.

“How should I know?” Madame Factor said, honestly surprised. “I’m not a mortal. That’s all I can tell you. Now will you go away?”

As I was about to put the drumstick back into Satchel, I caught sight of Airboy, still frozen between two mirrors. I’d totally forgotten him. “You have to release my sidekick first,” I said hastily.

Elizabeth Factor growled and waved her hand, now tipped with scarlet claws. The imprisoning mirrors rolled away and Airboy staggered forward, looking furious.

“You okay?” I asked.

Ignoring me, he stalked toward the mirrors in front of the door, which slid aside to let us through. As we left her salon and ran down the steps, the last thing I heard was Madame Factor neighing after us. “You are ugly, you know. You’re fat and sloppy and your hair’s a disaster. You’ll never look like a hero. Never.”

 

 

“W
ell!” I said as the geranium red door of Elizabeth Factor’s Beauty Salon closed behind us. “I think that went pretty well, considering.”

Airboy glared at me. “Considering you made a total mess of it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You. Bombing around without a plan or telling me what you were going to do next. One minute I’m an Ambassador; the next, I’m a sidekick. What happened to cooperating?”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “You were the one who said being an Ambassador was a bad idea. I was just trying to divert her attention.”

“You were taking over.” Airboy’s eyes burned like black coals. “I cooperated. I saved you. If I hadn’t stopped you, you’d have ended up being her slave.”

This was true, but I was in no mood to admit it. “I got her to release you from those mirrors,” I pointed out.

“Once you remembered I existed.” And he stomped off, taking the magic map with him.

I had to ask a brownie the way to the nearest Betweenway station.

 

Back at school after the weekend, I went looking for Airboy.

After an evening spent on the window seat in my room staring out over the Park, I’d come to the conclusion that Airboy had a point. I
had
kind of taken over. Ad he had definitely saved me from becoming Elizabeth Factor’s slave.

His reaction had been kind of extreme, though. And it had been truly un-groovy of him to leave me in Midtown without a map.

Still, I was ready to apologize if he was.

I didn’t see Airboy until lunch. He was sitting as far from our table as he could get, hunched over his usual sushi. When he looked up, I gave him a friendly nod. He looked right past me.

Cooperation. Right. I should have let Madame Factor turn him into a fish.

When I got to our table, Espresso waved me to a seat next to her. “Hey, Neefer-girl! How’s the questing gig?”

I sat down and launched into the exciting tale of my adventures in the Garment District. I skipped over the part where Airboy appeared, and then of course I had to slide over how I learned to cross Seventh Avenue and pretend I’d left the magic map at home and leave out the whole thing with the Ugly Mirror because, well, because. But I told them all the important stuff.

When I finished, Stonewall looked thoughtful. “Tiffany, huh? You know, there are a lot of blonde debs in New York Between. Aren’t you jumping to conclusions?”

“I’m not jumping to anything. I thought about it all day yesterday. Tiffany
has
to have the mirror. Why else would she disappear?”

“If the other deb was Bergdorf, she could have it,” Mukuti pointed out.

“It makes more sense the other way,” Fortran said. “Besides, Bergdorf’s a total minion. Can you see anybody giving her a magic mirror when Tiffany was around?”

There was a thoughtful silence. Danskin said, “Well, if Tiffany had the mirror, wouldn’t we know? I mean, I can’t see her taking one of the great talismans of New York and not using it.”

“Tiffany, Queen of New York!” Mukuti chortled. “She’d like that.”

Fortran laughed. “I bet she’s lurking on top of the Woolworth Building, planning to take over the world!”

“Then why is Bergdorf so freaked out?” Danskin asked.

Espresso shrugged. “Minion, remember? Maybe Tiffany left the mirror with her, stashed in a bag of last season’s lip gloss.”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” I said. “Here’s something I never thought I’d hear myself say: I want to find Tiffany.”

Stonewall groaned. “Oh, yeah,” he said sarcastically. “You’re the hardest-working mortal changeling in New York Between. Boo-hoo.” I looked at him hard. He didn’t seem to be teasing. “Can we talk about something other than Neef’s quest for a while? Everybody got their Hallowe’en costumes? Fortran, you still set on that monkey-warrior thing?”

Fortran glanced at me. I shrugged. Stonewall was in a mood. It happened.

“Nah. Too much trouble.” Fortran hesitated. “What do you think about a troll?”

Stonewall narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Well, you’re approximately the right color, so that’s a start.”

I watched Fortran decide this was supposed to be funny. “Good one,” he said doubtfully. “Should be easy, then. What about you, Mukuti?”

“I’m tired of always being something Indian,” she said. “Miss Van Loon’s is all about diversity, right? So I was thinking about one of those nasty Russian water nymphs. You know, a rusalka. I could get my hair all wet.”

“Oh, your godmother’s going to love
that
,” Stonewall said. “Dripping all over your clothes
and
shorting out all her nifty amulets. The ones that actually work, that is.”

Danskin gave his friend the kind of look you’d give someone who was turning into a toad. “Hey, lighten up, Stoney—or should I call you ‘Too-Much-Coffee Man’?”

Espresso giggled nervously.

“What about you, Neef?”

I glanced at Stonewall. His eyes were hard and unfriendly under his golden eyebrows. If this was just a mood, it was certainly a foul one. Even if I’d decided about my costume, I wouldn’t have necessarily wanted to say anything.

I gave a noncommittal shrug.

“How about somebody from the Wild Hunt?” Fortran asked helpfully. “That gives you lots of scary choices.”

“It’s obvious,” Stonewall said. “Peg Powler.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Well, you’re not exactly skinny, are you? And there’s the hair—definitely fly-away. A few weeds, a little green paint, and you’ll be ugly enough to scare the little kids into fits.” He stood up and slung his red leather Shoulder Bag across his back. “I’ve lost my appetite. I’m outta here. You coming, Danskin?”

Danskin shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so.”

“Whatever,” Stonewall said, and sauntered away.

We all looked at each other.

“Better wash your face, man,” Espresso told me.

I hadn’t even known I was crying.

 

That night, I spent a long time in front of the mirror on the Castle stairs, trying to figure out how ugly I actually was. I’d never really thought about it, but Stonewall obviously had. I’d considered asking Astris or the Pooka, but decided I probably didn’t want to listen to them trying to tell me the truth without hurting my feelings.

The mirror didn’t care about my feelings. Its magic was to show me what was real.

In fact, I hadn’t turned into a monster or a toad. I was still plain ordinary-looking. Being ordinary might make me a monster to someone like Madame Factor—or Stonewall—but it shouldn’t matter to a hero. Maybe a real hero didn’t have to be as beautiful as the day, as long as she was as sharp as a drawerful of knives.

What I couldn’t decide was whether or not I actually believed that.

 

Next day, Stonewall had lunch with the Downtown artists and Danskin sat with the Lincoln Center crowd. The rest of us talked about school stuff. Nobody mentioned Tiffany or Hallowe’en costumes. The day after that, I walked into the lunchroom and saw Stonewall sitting at the East Siders’ table, next to Bergdorf.

I felt weird. More mad than hurt, disgusted that he’d turned out to be such a jerk. I felt like an idiot, too, because I’d liked him.

I sat where I didn’t have to look at Stonewall making up to Bergdorf, but I could still hear him saying things like “Ooh, sweetie. How sick-making!” and “What was she thinking? Blue is
not
your color” and “Of course I’ll help you with your Hallowe’en costume. Ugly stepsister, you said? We can do a lot with that.”

“Neef,” Fortran said crabbily, “are you listening to me at all? Because I’ve been working on your mirror thing, and it would be nice if you even pretended to be interested.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I am interested. It’s just—”

Fortran gave an impatient bounce. “Forget it, Neef. Stonebrain’s under an evil spell or something. Nobody cares what you look like.”