A Kingdom of Mirrors

The first mirror was a gift. The second was a precaution. By the fortieth, the palace had become a method. Courtiers learned to approach the queen from angles that did not multiply her too many times. Advisors who spoke while facing glass found their words coming back with better grammar and worse mercy.

A child from the lower town asked, at a public audience, which of the queens was the one who signed the grain orders. The hall laughed, then did not. The queen smiled with all of her faces at once.

She ordered the mirrors covered for a week. In that week the kingdom ran more honestly and less beautifully. Trade continued. Bread was bread. The queen, unreflected, slept as if she had put down a heavy coat.

On the eighth morning the covers came off. The queen looked into the nearest glass and nodded, satisfied, at a version of herself that had used the week to become slightly more certain. The child was given an apprenticeship in the records office, where there are no mirrors, only ink, which cannot flatter as quickly.