Aaron’s mom came home soon after we arrived. “Hello, Elizabeth,” she said, poking her head in Aaron’s door. “And you must be Anjali?” She looked puzzled. Clearly she wasn’t expecting the object of her son’s obsession to be a ten-year-old toting a puppet.
“How do you do, Mrs. Rosendorn? I’m actually Jaya. Anjali is my sister,” explained Jaya.
“It’s nice to meet you, Jayda. You can call me Rebecca.”
“It’s Jaya, Mom,” said Aaron. “Close the door when you go, okay?”
She hesitated, but I could see her deciding that nothing too adult would happen with a ten-year-old in the room. “Okay, sweetie. Don’t forget you promised to do your laundry before Monday.” She shut the door.
Jaya made Anjali wave at the closed door. She was pretty impressive at manipulating the strings.
“Let’s see if we can turn Anjali back into a person,” Aaron said, taking Ms. Badwin’s wand out of his backpack and tentatively poking Anjali.
Jaya put Anjali’s hands on Anjali’s hips. “No good, I’m still a puppet,” she said in a parody of Anjali’s sweet, high voice.
“Try the other end,” I said.
Aaron turned the wand around and poked Anjali again. Nothing happened.
Jaya shook Anjali’s head no and put the puppet down. “Let me try,” she said, grabbing the wand.
“No, Jaya! Drop it!”
Her outline wavered, but the knot of protection held. “Why did the wand work on Marc, anyway?” she asked. “I made him a knot of protection.”
“He had to take it off,” I said. “We needed to use the shrink ray on him to get the Golden Key.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have made a new one.”
“You’re right. It was a mistake.”
Jaya liked being told she was right. “We all make mistakes sometimes,” she said generously.
Aaron was fiddling with the wand. “Didn’t Gloria Badwin say something about putting this thing in reverse?” He twisted the end cap one way, then the other, until we heard a click. He tapped Anjali again. The end of the wand glowed bright green.
“I wonder what that means?” he said. “Jaya, can you get me one of the other princesses?”
Jaya opened the box and fished out a lacy china shepherdess and an Incan figurine in a feather headdress. The wand glowed the same bright green as Anjali when Aaron touched the Incan girl. It glowed greenish amber when he touched the china doll.
“Does green mean royal? See if you can find those Russian dolls,” said Aaron.
Jaya felt around in the box. “Here.”
Only the innermost doll, the supposed Anastasia, gave a hint of green. The four outer nesting dolls tested red—completely nonroyal, presumably.
“Interesting,” said Aaron, tapping me. The wand read red. “I guess you really are a scullery maid, not a princess.”
“I’m a student and a page, thank you very much. I never claimed to be royal,” I said. “Give me that—I bet you make it turn red too.”
He did. The two of us fiddled with it until we were satisfied we’d seen both settings. It could identify royalty or, in reverse, transform princes and princesses into figurines. But no matter what we did, we couldn’t make it transform figurines into princesses.
“ ‘Shoddy thing! I knew I shouldn’t have cheaped out and bought the imported model,’” Jaya made Anjali say in Ms. Badwin’s voice.
“You should be an actress, Jaya—you’re really good at that,” I said.
Aaron rolled his eyes, but I could see he was amused. “Now what? Time to ask the mirror for help?” He pointed to the wall, where his blanket was still hanging.
I shuddered. “Ugh, do we have to?”
“What is this mirror, and what’s so terrible about it?” asked Jaya.
“It’s Snow White’s stepmother’s. It’s evil. It manipulates people, and it gloats,” I said.
“How bad can that be? I’m used to dealing with people like that,” said Jaya. She pulled the blanket off the mirror.
It reflected a fairly normal version of me and Aaron—maybe a little meaner-looking than usual—but it showed Anjali as a human girl, puppet size.
“Hey, look at Anjali!” said Jaya. “How can it do that? It’s a mirror! Doesn’t it have to reflect things the way they are?”
“It can’t just make things up,” I said, “but it reflects the truth as it sees it, so it must know Anjali is really a person. But it has a horrible vision of the world. Like I said, it gloats. And you have to talk to it in rhyme, and it never gives you a straight answer.” I fished out the little brass figurine that was Marc and put it down next to me. The mirror reflected it as a tiny human Marc.
I told the mirror:
Anjali’s reflection in the mirror answered:
Marc’s reflection continued:
“What does that mean?” I cried. “Where do we look for Dr. Rust? Where do we look for the lock? How can I lead anyone anywhere without my sense of direction? What are you talking about, you maddening mirror?”
It didn’t answer. Of course not: I hadn’t rhymed.
“And why should you care about my hair?” I added.
“I don’t know why it’s talking about your hair, but the lost vessel has to be the
“Even if we do get it back, I still can’t use my sense of direction. Something went wrong with the . . . with the object I borrowed from the Grimm Collection, the one my sense of direction was a deposit for. I think maybe Mr. Stone stole the . . . the real object.”
“You mean the mermaid comb? The one that makes you pretty?” said Jaya.
“Yeah,” I said, blushing. I longed to kick her.
“You traded your sense of direction for something to make you pretty? Is that what the mirror is raving about? That was so not necessary,” said Aaron.
“Thanks, Aaron, that makes me feel a lot better,” I said.
The reflections in the mirror were laughing at us. My reflection was batting her eyelashes and fluffing her hair; Aaron’s was swooning at her. I wanted to kick them too.
“So if Mr. Stone has the real mermaid comb,” said Jaya, “when we get it back, you’ll get your sense of direction back too.”
