Sonja Nitschke

And, per usual, the original (terrible) first draft beneath the cut:

Nikki squinted one eye open and looked around. She was in a dark and musty cellar. In fact, it looked exactly like the other one, except there was no dragon chained to the walls.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“In the Mirror Lands,” Jubrin said. “Weren’t you paying attention? I suppose we’re in a reflection of the basement we just left.”

“Will I be in a library when I climb the stairs?” she asked.

“I actually don’t have a clue. It could lead to another building. The Mirror Lands aren’t a literal reflection, but a true reflection of a Reality. And sometimes the Reality we just left won‘t be the one reflected in the Mirror Lands.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nope,” said Jubrin cheerfully. He crawled up her shirt and showed her a small, rectangular mirror that fit in his palm nicely. “This is how we get back if we ever need to. I’d only use it in great need though. Sometimes, if you decide you need to return to the Mirror Lands, the Mirror might not be so amicable, or the price will be more than you will be willing to pay.”

“What sort of price?”

Jubrin grinned, his teeth sharp and white. “Oh I don’t know. A memory, a life, a prick of blood. The Mirror is very whimsical.”

Nikki stared at Jubrin, mouth open. He was so…non-chalant about it all. “Are you serious?”

“Perhaps,” he said, dropping the mirror in her pant’s pocket and scuttling up her shoulder. He flicked his tail on her neck again and said, “Let’s go.”

She began to climb the stairs, which were rather dusty than its reflected counterpart was, and had no pictures at all. Nikki decided that now was as good a time as any to ask her question. “So, are you really a he? I can’t really tell in the usual way…but it seems so odd to call someone with a name an it, you know.”

“I am a Gremlin,” Jubrin said.

“But a boy gremlin, or a girl gremlin?”

“I am simply a gremlin. We aren’t humans, we don’t have all the body parts that they and their animals have, because we are gremlins. I do have a wonderful nose that can smell all sorts of things, like a coffee brewing or the tang of electricity through the wires of a particularly well designed machine. But we can’t eat it, because we don’t have a digestive tract.”

His voice sounded sad, and Nikki was quite sure that if she could have craned her neck around to look at him, the tips of his pointed ears would be drooping.

“Oh,” she said. Then, almost as an afterthought, “I’m sorry?”

“Not necessary,” Jubrin said, with the familiar dismissive gesture.

They reached the top of the stairs to find that the door was crumbled and moldy. A black spider the size of Nikki’s fist skittered across the rotted planks into a shadowy hole. Wispy cobwebs fluttered around them, like old curtains in an untended home.

“I don’t like this place,” said Nikki and shivered. There was a small wind, and it was a chill one.

“It probably doesn’t like you either.”

She stepped from the rubble to find herself at the edge of a wood. The grass was green with yellow dandelions like so many small suns smiling. A few paces away, there was a man who looked both young and old twirling one of the flowers between his calloused fingers. His feet were bare and his brown robe was sparse with many patches that had been sewn with large, uneven stitches. He had a small wooden harp slung across his back.

“Good morning,” said Jubrin, waving his small grey hand at him.

The bard glanced up, dropping the flower. “Good? You must be smaller than you look if you have not noticed the tragedy that has struck if you call this morning good.”

“We have, actually,” said Nikki. “We were just wondering if you know anything about it, at all?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be sitting here in this field looking at daisies. The Order of the Bards are in disarray. Our library, our carefully recorded library, vanished. The scrolls of wisdom are gone, and folly will come in return. Our memories are good, but if we are unable to return to our source, the songs will disappear. People will forget how King Malcolm rose against his tormenters and with but a handful of men he drove them back into the sea because his courage was so fierce. They will forget how Princess Eirin gave herself to the dragon to save her people and, as he swallowed her, plunged a hidden dagger into his throat. They will forget, and they will die.”

Jubrin whispered in her ear, “The Bards are alright in their own way, but they don’t know how to handle moments of catastrophe without their books and their tales. Bit of a crutch they’ve made for themselves, I’m afraid.”

“Is there anybody else who might know what’s going on?”

The Bard shook his head.

“Well, thanks,” said Jubrin, tugging on Nikki’s earlobe. “I’ll suppose we’ll try the Prince then. The Royal City is just a few miles away, isn’t it?” he asked the Bard.

The Bard laughed and then spat in the general direction. “If you want to go ask that cretinous prince of fools anything, then go right ahead.”

“Thanks,” said Jubrin. “Let’s go, Nikki. I’m sure we’ve interrupted our friend here from his flowers long enough.”

“Wait!” The bard rushed forward, his hands clasped so tightly in front of him his knuckles were white.

“One gift, one boon, I ask of you.” His eyes flickered between the gremlin’s slate grey ones and Nikki’s hazel ones.

“What?” asked Nikki, wondering if now would be a good time to mention she didn’t have any money or valuables on her person.

“One story, one poem, or…or even a limerick,” the bard said.

“Gremlins don’t possess things of that nature. We are gremlins, not story tellers.”

“You?” the bard asked, turning to Nikki.

She stared at him, at his clasped hands, at his hungry eyes. She opened her mouth to tell him of the Wizard of Oz and Jack Pumpkinhead, or perhaps of the Martian Chronicles and found that she could not. She could give him a summary, but that wasn’t the same as the story, was it? “Well,” she said, “I do know one rhyme, but I’m afraid it’s very short.”

“Anything!”

“The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown, the lion beat the unicorn all around the town, Some gave them white bread, some gave them brown, Some gave them plum cake and drummed them out of town.”

“And, what happens next?” asked the bard.

“She did say it was short,” Jubrin said.

“But it’s incomplete,” said the bard, frowning a little.

“You’re a bard, finish it,” said Nikki.

Jubrin swished his tail. “But in the meantime, we really need to be going. Tata.”

They found a road paved with flat grey stones not far from them and Jubrin said, “This is the main road and it will lead to the Royal City.”

“How do you know?” asked Nikki.

“It’s not a dirt road. It’s paved to make it easier for weary travelers to seek an audience with the King. Whether they actually see him though, well.”

“Oh.” Nikki chewed her lip for a moment, which she often did when she was thinking about something, and then said, “But how will we be able to see him if people of his own land don’t?”

“I haven’t the faintest,” said Jubrin. “But we’ll think of something. We could say that we’re ambassadors from the Reflected Lands and he’d see us then. Of course if he found out we were lying, he could possibly have us dipped in oil and slow roasted over a monstrous bon fire.”

Nikki shuddered. “Fun.”

“Not really.”

Nikki again wondered if sarcasm was lost on the small gremlin, then said, “But aren’t we from the Reflected Lands?”

“Sort of, but are we ambassadors?”

“I don’t know, I just want to find the Stories,” said Nikki impatiently.

“We will,” said Jubrin, “or we won’t.”

“Well, that’s very comforting,” Nikki said, folding her arms in front of her chest.

“Now, we have to figure out a way to make it in the Prince’s favour to decide to grant us an audience. He’s fond of war, bloodshed (especially if it ends in death), and anything valuable. I don’t believe that the first two options are readily available to us, and I’m not sure about the last. You don’t happen to have anything valuable, do you?”

Nikki hesitated, and put her hand over her chest. “I have one thing, but it’s not a precious stone or anything. It’s just a ring my mother gave me, before she died.” It was on a cheap chain around her neck, hidden behind her shirt.

“Do you treasure it a lot?” asked Jubrin.

“I guess.”

Nikki lied for she didn’t guess that she treasured it. She loved that silly thing, slept with it every night, showered with it, panicked if the chain happened to break. “Why?” she asked.

“Because, the Prince likes things of value to their owners. It doesn‘t have to be a physical treasure, like a precious gem or something like that, it just has to be very much well loved.” Jubrin climbed on top of her head and started to play with her hair. “But if you only guess you love it, then you don’t love it all that much, and if you don’t love it all that much he won’t be interested, and then we’ll have to hope Luck decides to notice us, but he doesn’t notice anyone unless it’s by chance.”

“Oh.” Nikki felt sick, the kind of sick one gets before a test that will more than likely determine the rest of one’s life –~~ only much worse.

Jubrin tugged on her lobe, and out of the corner of her eye she saw his thin arm outstretched, pointing. “Look! There it is.”

The it to which Jubrin referred was the hugest castle Nikki had ever seen. The walls towered above the little village at its feet, a giant among them. From each of the five turrets there was a scarlet flag emblazoned with a silver sword fluttering in the breeze. The castle sprawled across the land like a sleeping lion, ready to spring, ready to unsheathe its claws, ready to kill. What kind of prince lived in this fortress?

“It’s amazing,” she whispered.

“It’s rather drafty actually. Come on.”

With every step, the fortress loomed forbiddingly larger until they were so close that Nikki saw it cast the entire town in shadow. She mentioned this to Jubrin, who said, “Only when the sun is behind it.”

Which, she thought, was hardly comforting.