(sneak preview)
Once upon a time there was a little house in a big
wood.
Not all little houses in big woods are quaint or
charming, or even safe. Some of them are piled to the rafters
with stolen car radios, others house illegal stills used for
making moonshine (so called, they say, because one carelessly
dropped match could lead to a fireball that'd be visible from the
Moon.) Some of them are the lairs of big bad wolves dressed as
Victorian grandmothers, not that that's anybody's business but
their own.
But this particular house is quaint. Roses scramble
up the door-frame like young executives up a corporate hierarchy.
Flowers bloom radiantly in its small but neat garden, and for
once they aren't opium poppies or coca plants or
commercially-exploitable varieties of the mescal cactus. Just in
case there's any doubt left in the onlooker's mind, it has a
shiny red front door with a big round brass knocker, which in
these parts is a sort of coded message. It means that if you go
inside this house, the chances are that you won't be strangled,
stabbed, smothered with a pillow or eaten, although you may
easily die of terminal cuteness poisoning. If you're particularly
observant, you can probably deduce more about the people who live
there from the seven brightly coloured coats and hats hanging
just inside the porch, and the fact that the lintel of the
door-frame is only four feet off the ground.
The conclusive evidence is round the back, where the
occupants of the little house put out the trash. No need to get
mucky rummaging about in the dustbin bags; shy, timid, razor-
clawed forest-dwellers have ripped the bags open, and the rubbish
is scattered about like confetti on a windy day. There are
approximately three hundred and twenty empty beer cans,
forty-nine squashed styrofoam pizza trays, roughly half a pound
of cigarette butts and ash, some slabs of cheese with
green fur growing on them, several undergarments that were
obviously worn too long to be cleanable and then slung out, some
crumpled balls of newspaper still smelling strongly of vinegar,
and a thick wadge of the kind of newspapers that have small
pages, big pictures and not much news inside them.
In this little house in the big wood, therefore,
seven small men live on their own, with nobody to look after
them. Nobody to clean and tidy; nobody to make them
lovely home- cooked, low-fat, low-cholesterol meals
with plenty of fresh green vegetables and no chips or brown
sauce; nobody to remind them to take their muddy boots off before
coming inside; nobody to throw away their favourite comfy old
pullovers when they aren't looking. How sad. How terribly,
terribly sad.
Don't worry, though. All that's just about to change;
because any minute now, a poor bedraggled girl will come
stumbling out of the bramble thicket twenty-five yards due east
of the front door. She'll see the friendly-looking cottage with
its cheerfully red front door and she'll make straight for it,
like a piranha scenting fresh blood. And in a week or so, you
won't recognise the place. It's inevitable; it has to happen. No
power on earth can stop it.
Surely..?
Beautiful.
Stunning. Breathtaking. Fabulous. Gorgeous. Out of
this world.
Satisfied that there had been no change since the
last time she looked, the wicked queen turned away from her
reflection in the mirror, slid back a hidden panel in the wall
and switched on the power. The surface of the glass began to glow
blue.
She frowned and tapped her fingers on the arms of her
chair. For some time now she'd been trying to summon up the
courage to upgrade her entire system, which was virtually
obsolete; lousy response time, entirely inadequate memory, all of
that and more. All that could be said for it was that she was
used to it and it worked. Just about.
Somewhere behind the glass, mist started to swirl.
She watched as it slowly coagulated into a spinning, fluffy ball,
which in turn resolved itself into a shape that gradually became
less like a portion of albino candyfloss and more human. The
queen yawned. In theory she should be used to the delay by now,
but in practice it irritated her more and more each day. She
fidgeted.
The ball of mist had become a head; an elderly man,
white-haired and deeply lined, with cold blue eyes and a cruel
mouth, but with an air of such dreadful loneliness and despair
that even the queen, who had put him there in the first place,
never liked looking at him for too long. At first he appeared in
profile; then his face moved round until his eyes met hers.
"Running DOS," he said. "Please
wait."
He vanished, and his place was taken by a
brightly-coloured cartoon image of a spider spinning a web.
Originally she'd meant it to signify cheerful patience, but now
it was getting on her nerves. At least she'd had the good sense
to disable the jolly little tune it used to hum when she first
set it up. If she insisted on driving herself mad, there were far
more dignified and interesting ways of going about it.
Just when she was beginning to think there must be
something wrong with the mirror, the spider abruptly vanished and
the old man was back. He gave her a barely perceptible nod. Good.
At last.
The queen cleared her throat. With a system as
painfully inflexible as this one, it was essential to speak
clearly; otherwise there was no knowing what she'd get.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall," she
enunciated, in a voice that would have secured her a job as a
newsreader on any station in the universe, "who's the
fairest of them all?"
The old man sneered. "Bad command or file
name," he said. "Please retry."
What? Oh yes. Damn. She'd said who's instead of who
is. She scowled and tried again, and this time the old man looked
her steadily and replied:
"Snow White, O Queen, is the fairest of them
all."
The wicked queen lifted her head sharply.
"Repeat," she snapped. Instantly the head shifted a few
fractions of an inch, back to the position it had been in just
before it made its previous statement.
"Snow White, O Queen, is the fairest of them
all."
The queen sighed. "Diary," she commanded,
and the head turned seamlessly into a cute graphic of an
old-fashioned appointments book, with a two-dimensional pencil
hovering over its pages. She snapped her fingers twice and the
pages began to turn.
"Stop," she commanded. Next Tuesday, she
saw, was almost completely free, apart from lunch with Jim Hook
and an entirely expendable hairdresser's appointment.
"Insert new diary entry for Tuesday 15th," she said.
"10.15 am to 12 noon; murder Snow White, end entry."
The moving pencil wrote and, having writ, dissolved
into a scatter of random pixels. She snapped her fingers, and the
old man reappeared.
"All right," she said, "that'll do.
Dismissed."
The old man nodded. "This will end your Mirrors
session," he said. "Okay or Cancel?"
"Okay."
There was a soft crinkling noise and the mirror
seemed to blink; then all the wicked queen could see there was
her own flawless, immaculate face. She studied it for a moment as
she reached for her powder compact; then, having dabbed away a
patch of incipient pinkness, she stood up, snuffed out the candle
and stalked melodramatically out of the room.
Although it was dark now, the mirror continued to
glow softly; a common occurrence with such an outdated
model. In the far corner of the room, something scuttled.
"We're in," whispered a tiny voice.
Three white mice dashed across the floor, in that
characteristic mouse way that makes them look as if they haven't
got any legs, and are being dragged along on a piece of string.
They scampered up the curtain, abseiled down the tieback cord,
swung Tarzan-fashion and landed on the mantelpiece, directly
under the mirror.
"We're in luck," whispered a mouse.
"Silly bitch has left the power on."
All three mice twitched their noses. "Are you
ready for this?" one of them hissed. "We could get
ourselves in a lot of trouble."
The other two treated the coward to a look of
distilled, matured-in-oak-vats scorn. "Pull yourself
together, will you?" squeaked the mouse who'd spoken first.
"After everything we've been through to get here, this is
hardly the time to get cold feet."
"Paws," interrupted the third mouse.
"Come on, guys, stay in character."
"All right then, paws. Look, either we're going
to do this or we aren't. Let's have a decision on that right now,
before we go any further."
"Fair enough," muttered the apprehensive
mouse. "I'm not saying we shouldn't, I'm just
saying we should think about it."
"I've thought about it. Come on, Sis, where's
your sense of fun?"
"In this costume, there isn't room. And before
you ask whether I'm a man or a mouse, I'm neither,
remember?"
The other two pointedly ignored that last remark.
"Come on," said the first mouse, "let's get it
over with. Show of hands?"
"Paws."
"Show of hands. All in favour? Right, Sis,
that's two to one. We do it."
For a brief moment the mice were perfectly still, as
if composing themselves. Then the first mouse reared up on his
hind legs, waggled his forepaws like a small furry boxer and
squeaked, "Mirror."
They waited breathlessly until the cotton-wool
effect slowly began to extend inwards from the corners of the
glass. The head appeared.
"Too easy," muttered the mouse called Sis.
"I think we should..."
The head opened its eyes and stared straight ahead;
then it frowned, looked from side to side; then, its frown
deepening, downwards.
"Um, hello." The first mouse twitched his
nose twice, unhappy with the way the face was looking at him. He
could feel tiny spores of panic beginning to germinate in the
back of his mind, but for some reason he found it impossible to
say anything else. The head's eyes seemed to be dismantling him,
taking the back off his head and probing around in the circuitry.
"What's the matter with you?" Sis whispered
urgently. "That thing's examining us and you're just sitting
there doing paperweight impressions. Say something to it quick,
before it eats our brains."
"I can't," the first mouse hissed back.
"I think it knows who we really are. Sis, I'm
frightened."
"I can see that," Sis snarled. "Get
out of the way and let me handle this." She pushed past him
and sat up. "Mirror," she said.
The head looked at her, and she imagined that she
could feel icicles forming on her whiskers. "Mirror,"
she repeated. The head studied her for a moment, during which she
realised just how long a moment can be, namely three times as
long as a life sentence on Dartmoor and not quite so nice.
"Running DOS."
The head vanished and was replaced by the spider;
only it wasn't the friendly, cuddly little spider the queen had
summoned. Instead it was big and black and hairy, one of those
particularly unpleasant South American jobs that eat small
mammals and move faster than a photon that's late for an
appointment.
"It's different," muttered the first mouse.
"It wasn't like that when she did it."
"It's not sure it likes us
yet," Sis replied, trying to sound matter-of-fact about it
all. "Once it's decided we're friends it'll be all right,
you'll see."
The other two mice didn't seem so sure; at least,
they shuffled round behind her, forming a short, fluffy queue.
She ignored them and carried on looking straight at the mirror.
Inside, of course, she was absolutely petrified, which shows that
she still had the sense she was born with.
"Look," breathed the third mouse behind her
shoulder. "He's back."
Sure enough, the head was there again. He didn't look
appreciably less hostile, but he nodded. Sis took a deep breath
and curled her tail tight around her back legs.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall," she managed
to say; then she dried. Because it was all a bit of fun, because
they'd never expected to get this far anyway, they'd never
actually got around to working out what it was they were actually
going to do, once they'd hacked their way into the wicked queen's
magic mirror and all her incalculable powers were theirs to
command. This is embarrassing, Sis muttered to herself. She knew
she had to say something,or otherwise the mirror would get
suspicious again. She didn't know what it was capable of doing to
them if it finally came to the conclusion that they had no right
to be there, but she was prepared to bet that it went rather
further than the threat of legal action. On the other hand,
breaking into the palace and hijacking Mirrornet just to play a
couple of games of Lemmings seemed somehow rather fatuous. Think
of some magic, quick, she commanded what was left of her brain.
She thought of something. It was nothing special, but
it was all she could think of. "Mirror," she said, in
as commanding a voice as she could muster, "show me the man
I am to marry."
The head looked at her as if she had chocolate all
round her mouth. "Bad command or file name," it
sneered. "Please retry."
"You're a mouse, idiot," the first mouse
whispered in her ear. "You can't marry a man if you're a
mouse. Think about it."
"Oh, right. Mirror mirror on the wall, show me
the mouse I am to marry."
The head's brow creased. "Bad command," he
said doubtfully, as if he wasn't quite sure of himself.
"Error. Incorrect format. Ignore or Cancel?"
"Cancel," Sis replied firmly. Somehow she
felt better now that she'd seen the head looking worried. She
decided that the only way to deal with this was not to let the
wretched thing see that she was afraid of it; no, there was more
to it than that. The answer was not to be afraid of it at all. It
was, after all, only a Thing, and she was a - Mouse. Well,
a mouse strictly pro tem. For the first and last time a mouse.
Even if she was a mouse right now, that was still several dozen
rungs further up the evolutionary ladder than a sheet of
silver-backed glass in a plaster frame. "Mirror," she
said calmly, "listen to me. I want you to - "
"Bad command or file - "
"Shut up," she said; and when the head
promptly stopped talking, somehow she wasn't surprised. "I
want you to turn us back into human beings. Now," she added
sternly.
"Sis," the first mouse hissed furiously,
"what do you think you're..?" Before he could complete
the sentence, he wasn't a mouse any more. He was a teenage boy,
dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and sitting, rather to his
surprise, on a mantelpiece several inches too narrow for his
backside. He slid off and landed on the floor.
"Ouch," said his younger brother.
"Damien, you're sitting on my leg."
The three ex-mice untangled themselves, and as soon
as he was sure which arms and legs were his, Damien scrambled up
and scowled horribly at his sister.
"What the hell did you do that for?" he
cried. "All the trouble I went to to turn us into
mice..."
"I'd had enough," his sister replied.
"Mirror, turn Damien back into a mouse. He's not fit to be a
human."
"Sis..." The mouse that had very briefly
been Damien landed on its back, squirmed round, scrabbled for a
foothold and was lifted up and dumped unceremoniously into Sis's
cardigan pocket. Her other brother gave her a look of mingled
terror and respect and wisely said nothing.
"Right," she said. "Now at least I can
think straight. I hate mice," she added, with a slight
shudder. In her pocket something wriggled and squeaked.
"That's why I'm glad," she went on, "that we've
got a cat."
The wriggly object in her pocket suddenly became
terribly still. She patted it affectionately and turned back to
face the screen.
"Now then," she said. "Mirror, are you
still there?"
The head nodded. It was, she noticed, looking at her
oddly; almost as if it had never seen a human turn her brother
into a mouse in a fit of pique before. There was
something else in its eyes besides surprise, though; she gave it
a long, curious look and worked out what the something
else was.
Respect.
Ah, she said to herself, now we're getting
somewhere. She took a deep breath and made a conscious
effort to relax, letting the fear and tension melt out of her
like ice-cream through the disintegrated tip of a cone. In
charge. In control. Now you can do anything you like.
"Mirror," she said, "first I want a
million pounds. Next, I want a big house in Malibu and another in
Chelsea, and a ski lodge in Switzerland and a Porsche with a
personalised number-plate and..."
She froze; someone was coming. Her brother - the one
that wasn't a mouse - yelped and scrambled under the table,
thereby occupying the only teenager-sized bolthole in the room.
She looked round frantically. Not out of the window; this is a
castle, remember, so out of the window would mean a long fall
into a stagnant moat, and that's if she was
lucky. Only one door. Nowhere to run and nowhere to
hide. Oh...
"Mirror," she said. "Hide me,
quickly."
The head looked at her, and in its eyes there was
enough raw contempt to keep the book reviews page of the Guardian
fully supplied for a year. "Bad command or file name,"
it said disdainfully. "Please retry."
"Mirror!" she repeated imploringly, but the
face vanished abruptly and was replaced by a pattern of
slowly-revolving geometric shapes, the one that makes your head
spin if you watch it for too long. Whimpering, she tugged the
curtain away from the wall and slipped behind it, just as the
door opened and the wicked queen burst in, with an electric torch
in one hand and a heavy Le Creuset frying pan in the other. She
surveyed the room slowly and carefully, and sniffed.
"Mirror," she commanded, "where is
she?"
The geometric shapes vanished and the head came back.
"She's hiding behind - " it began, but got no further;
because behind the curtain, Sis had found the power switch and
turned it off.
You can't blame her, of course. You could even say it
was really rather resourceful, in the circumstances. And, also in
her defence, it's hardly likely that she knew about the quite
terrifying possible consequences of pulling the plug on an
antiquated system like this one. After all, not many people do
know that the principal drawback of Mirrors 3.1 was the very real
risk of crashing the whole thing if you tried to shut it down
without going through the proper procedure.
Suddenly, everything vanished.
Text reproduced with permission.
© 1998 
Uwe Milde
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