Magic Mirror

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

What on Earth do you do with a magic mirror?

Ellie Jones turned the thing over and over in her hand, in some confusion. It was silver, and it had handle, but the size was like those stupid hand mirrors that women used to carry in their purses back when “I need to go powder my nose” was a thing.

The silver was tarnished and the elaborate scroll work on back and handle spoke of something very old. Not that Ellie was an expert. She was an accountant, not an art major. But it seemed to her this was older than most “antiques” she’d come across which were, at most, Victorian. And they looked subtly alien, like nothing she’d ever run across before.

This story is now part of a collection for sale here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09W3WBJYJ

71 thoughts on “Magic Mirror”

    2. As Arthur Wealey was wont to say ” Don’t trust anything if you can’t where it keeps it’s brains”. NEVER deal with magical stuff, you could be grabbing Stormbringer or worse.

  5. The funny thing is an accountant is a good pairing for a Chief Engineer. They have lots of ideas, and ideas cost money. They always cost money.

    But they can be very useful ideas too…

    1. Funny that. Was explaining just the other day that my first job with a small independent government agency was as an engineering technical advisor to the center comptroller. Center had at that time about a $2.5 billion budget. I found that most of my job consisted of sitting in meetings and quite literally translating between the engineers and the accountants who could otherwise spend days talking right past each other. With my dual degrees in Industrial and Systems Engineering and fifteen years of corporate work I was bilingual in that regard. My main technique was to act dumb, listen to a statement by either side, then state I was not sure I understood, then restate it in terms the other side could comprehend.
      The engineers quickly caught on to what I was doing, accountants not so much, but I was never told to stop. Except of course by a few contractor reps trying to pull a razzle dazzle in a meeting to decide whether to increase the funding on an already overrun contract.

        1. so, I found I have 36k words, supposing I didn’t mislay any of the stories. I’m writing two others to round it out, and then I’ll throw it at the betas, probably this evening.

  13. Awwww.

    There are some scary ones, but overall the modern fairy tales you have come up with are a comfort read, So that’s a good thing to put out soonish… no pressure… heh, this year is like a Sarah garden hose.

  14. There hadn’t even been any glass mirrors until the seventeenth century. Or at least she was sure she had seen that in the Treasures of the Louvre exhibit in the Denver Art Museum last month.

    ::laughs with glee::

    Oh, that’s brilliant and I stealing the technique.

    1. Like the county’s Sheriffs Office road advisory, “The road is closed due to a large rock the size of a large rock.”

      1. I’ve seen a few of those.

        The weirdest road closure I’ve heard of was in Michigan. Uniroyal made a giant tire for a World’s Fair a long time ago. After the Fair closed, it wound up standing beside I-94 south of Detroit. One night there was a wind storm, the concrete base cracked, and this 80-foot tire rolled onto the highway, turned like it was going to roll on down the road, and stopped.

        Took them most of the day to move it off the road.

      2. Actually it was better: “a large boulder the size of small boulder is completely blocking east-bound lane.”

        2. That was this year, large boulder the size of a large boulder” was last year and large boulder the size of a house was the year before. The sense of humor is ironic.

  24. What shall we do with a magic mirror?
    What shall we do with a magic mirror?
    What shall we do with a magic mirror,
    early in the morning?

    Shine it up and wish for broadly!
    Shine it up and wish for broadly!
    Shine it up and wish for broadly,
    early in the morning!

    1. Throw it in a well and run like the dickens
      Throw it in a well and run like the dickens
      Throw it in a well and run like the dickens
      Ear lie in the morning.

  25. Dear Hostess although I have deep distrust of magical items (Irish ancestry and WAY too much D&D with evil Dungeon Masters/Mistresses) that was a really lovely story.

    1. It’s an ancestral keepsake with an explicit tie to your bloodline, and without any obviously tragic histories attached to it.
      Casting it away would probably invoke a curse.
      Safer to keep it.
      Wrapped up, of course.
      At the bottom of a locked chest.
      Upon which you’ve placed many heavy items.
      Preferably somewhere that’s hard to get to, and distant from where you sleep.

  32. I really should not put a damper on such a lovely story, but if the “inheritance” of the magic is through the male line “the Jones,” but the magic only works for the females of that line, our protagonist would have to find a niece (daughter of a brother) or cousin (daughter of an uncle from her father’s side) to inherit the mirror… Sorry, that has bothered me since I read the story.

    1. ???

      She’s still her father’s daughter….. it’s rules of inheritance, even if the last name changes. Not like Jones is that rare of a name, so having the same name as an ancestress isn’t that odd– assuming the mirror didn’t change it to reflect (heh) the “right” name.

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