Almare - The White Mirror

She stared at them with expressionless eyes. She was tall, much taller than Raelee, and had long golden hair. This was almost as decorated with the beautifully colored shells as her throne room. The long mermaid tail waved back and forth as she stared at the strange humans who had just entered her palace. Virginia felt very uncomfortable just standing (swimming) in front of her. There was something piercing about the lovely queen’s stare. To ease her nervousness, Virginia bowed and everyone else followed. This seemed satisfactory to the queen, and she got up and swam gracefully over to them.

“Welcome,” she said, nodding toward them slowly. “We have been waiting for you. Raelee did an excellent job bringing you here, I see.”

Raelee beamed. Virginia rolled her eyes.

“So, you want to get to the mirror, hmm?” the queen asked.

“Yes. Your Majesty,” Virginia thought of adding, a little too late.

“I suppose that can be arranged. I wasn’t going to let you, you know, but Raelee came up with something.”

Raelee beamed again. The queen seemed not to notice.

“You’re good friends with King Wendell, aren’t you?” the queen asked.

“Sure are,” answered Tony, acting almost as proudly as Raelee. “I’m building him his very own new palace.”

“Bouncing palace,” laughed Wolf quietly.

“I’m glad,” the queen smiled. “All I ask in return for my services here is that you mention them to him. His debt might come in handy one day.” She chuckled softly. Virginia could not make out whether she liked the queen or not. She seemed a dangerous mix of power and beauty. Virginia would just have to wait and see.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Acrotis interrupted, blatantly impatient, “but when are we going to the mirror?”

“Good question, my dear,” the queen said, turning her eyes with interest to Acrotis for the first time. “One that is soon to be answered, I assure you.”

Virginia listened intently.

“The White Mirror is not in Eulonia. It is at the very bottom of the sea. You may think this is the bottom, but there are many different levels of land in the ocean. The mirror is at the deepest place known to any merperson. The Dwarves planned it this way. They wanted nothing to ever be able to reach the mirror. Therefore,” the Queen said, “They hid it in a place not even a merperson could swim to.”

Panic began to creep into Virginia’s mind. If the mirror’s at the bottom of the ocean and a merperson can’t reach it, then who can?

“But,” the Queen continued, and Virginia started to relax, “There is always a loophole. Those who are wearing the magic rings that you yourselves have on your fingers are able to swim so deep that even light is sucked into the water. It is like a black hole down there.”

“Wouldn’t the mirror be crushed?” Wolf asked.

“No, most Dwarf mirrors are made to withstand incredible forces put upon them. Some, though, do not have that power. I think you,” she said, gesturing toward the red-faced Tony, “know that best of all. But even for this there is one exception. There is a creature that can break the mirror with its incredible strength, strength even greater than that of the entire ocean. I’m going to send this creature with you to the mirror.”

Even greater, in Virginia’s mind, than the question of what this creature could be was, “Why?”

“No matter how much you want to get your son back,” the queen explained with compassion in her voice for the first time, “You must realize that the mirror has taken people into it, and those people have never been seen again. They are as good as dead. If you go through it, it will be activated again, and that could make it, I don’t know, bloodthirsty somehow. I’m sorry,” she said as Virginia started to protest, “but I can’t take the chance, none of us can. Even Cinderella has agreed to my plan.

“If, after you enter the mirror, there are disappearances elsewhere,” the queen said, “then we will know it has started again. The creature I’ll send with you will stay by the mirror until one of two things happens: You come out of the mirror, or we get word that there has been a disappearance. If you come out, good. The creature will escort you back to Eulonia. If there is a disappearance,” the Queen looked at them as if they were going to try to bite her head off, “then the creature will break the mirror.”

Virginia was stunned. It wasn’t, her mind was telling her, an unfair thing to do. It was a smart, rational thing to do, actually. But it was the first time that she had realized how much trouble they were in. Even to Virginia’s ears, the queen’s explanation of their plan seemed suicidal. No one had ever come out. Why were they being so arrogant to think that they could, when so many others had not?

Uncomfortable silence. It was clear enough. They would live, or they would die. Virginia accepted it. There was only one question left, and Tony asked it for her.

“What’s the creature?”

“Oh,” said the Queen, actually smiling. “I think you know her.”

“We do?”

“Her?”

“She’s Nessie. The Loch Ness Monster.”

It was indeed the Loch Ness Monster. It was roaming the ocean as they spoke, the Queen explained while they swam down a different corridor than the one they had entered the throne room from. The merpeople could contact the creature with what seemed like some kind of primitive sonar. The queen had called it to come earlier, “So she should be here any minute,” she told the white-faced group following her.

They came out of the coral palace through a little door facing the broad expanse of underwater land behind Eulonia. It looked like the surface of the moon, the edge of the watery world.

“Isn’t it going to kill us?” Tony asked for the hundredth time.

“No. Nessie is very tame. There’s nothing to worry about, trust me.”

No one believed her. Even Raelee looked slightly worried, and was very glad she wasn’t going to be joining them.

Virginia peered fearfully out into the blackness. Swim,swim,swim. The ring kept pulling her toward the mirror, even though she didn’t know even the way. It was all she could do to restrain herself from shooting off in some random direction. The little rounded piece of gold on her hand felt heavy as years.

As she was straining her eyes, Virginia saw something. The water was clouded, and she couldn’t be sure if she was really seeing anything. But soon she knew her eyes weren’t deceiving her. Out of the mist two amber orbs appeared. They were attached to a head that could not have housed a grapefruit sized brain, but the head, Virginia saw with mounting panic, was attached to a neck. The neck was longer than Tony, Wolf, Virginia, and Acrotis all strung together. This was frightening. But what made Virginia’s blood turn to ice was its body. Ten thousand tons. That was an understatement. It was huge. It took Virginia’s breath away, as if she had just seen all the water on earth combined into a wave that was about to crash down on her head. That’s how they all felt as this monster came out of the mist toward them.

Its tail was as long and thin as its neck, and the only way one could tell the two apart was by the relatively tiny head attached to the front end, the only small thing about Nessie. She was a gray color, and her skin looked scaly, slimy. Virginia was terrified.

“Nessie!” the Queen shouted happily and swam over to the colossal beast. “I’ve missed you so much!” She scratched its chin like the monster was a dog. A big dog.

Nessie blew bubbles out of her nose almost affectionately. Then she stared at Virginia, Wolf, Tony, and Acrotis as if she wanted them to pet her, too.

Tony was beside himself. “It’s... gonna...eat...us...”

“Come on, Dad,” Virginia said shakily, “Patrick, remember? Focus.” She was telling herself as much as him.

The Loch Ness Monster came slowly over to the group. No one moved a muscle.

“Nice monster,” Wolf murmured soothingly.

Nessie, to Virginia’s great misfortune, turned its head toward her. Virginia tried very hard not to catch its eye, for fear of it being like dogs or monkeys; offended when stared in the eyes. She decided just to squeeze her eyes shut.

Nessie stuck her face so close to Virginia’s that, had she not been underwater, the hot breath of the beast would have caressed her face. As it was, Virginia could feel a stream of bubbles against her cheek. She slowly opened one eye.

The monster’s amber gaze did meet her own. There was something in it, Virginia realized through her horror, that was intelligent. And not evil intelligence, either. Something in the monster was aware, and caring even. She saw all that in Nessie’s eyes, in one glance. She was instantly beginning to see how much of a plus ten thousand tons of protection could be.