Magick Mirror

  MAGICK MIRROR

  Copyright © 2016 by M. G. Herron. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. This story may not be reproduced without express written consent.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  MAGICK MIRROR

  1. THE VIDEO GAME

  2. THE WIZARD AND THE MIRROR

  3. BACK TO SCHOOL

  4. IRL GAME

  5. NO CHEATING

  6. UNBREAKABLE MIRROR, BREAKABLE HEART

  7. TRUE OF HEART

  MORE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  M.G. HERRON’S STARTER LIBRARY

  ALSO BY M.G. HERRON

  MAGICK

  MIRROR

  —

  M. G. Herron

  1

  THE VIDEO GAME

  It was no use arguing with his mother when her mind was made up. Not that Anders always listened to his own advice, of course.

  “You need to get out of the house,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked, eyes fixed forward, hands still gripping a Nintendo controller.

  “Because you’ve been moping for weeks.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I don’t care. Now, let’s go!”

  Anders sighed. He had a different opinion about what he needed to do. He liked the calm darkness of the basement. He liked the bright rectangle of the flat-screen TV. He liked getting lost in the story worlds and landscapes of video games. Adventure on a screen transported him from the fog of melancholy and allowed him to forget that Nadine hadn’t spoken more than two words to him in twice as many weeks.

  Reluctantly, Anders joined his mother on a short drive to Spence’s Bazaar. They parked the sedan and browsed the rows of paint-chipped, warped wooden tables outside the faded red barn that housed the bazaar. The vendors showcased all sorts of knick-knacks—cell phone cases, used radios, knockoff mp3 players, kitchen utensils, you name it. The late October air was cold enough for scarves. Anders silently protested by refusing a coat.

  “I thought you liked this place.”

  “I do.” He suppressed a shiver.

  “Well, cheer up then,” his mom said. “This section is just junk and secondhand clothes. I want to go look at the furniture.”

  Anders groaned. He couldn’t bear the agony of browsing battered armoires with her again. She spent an excruciating amount of time shopping for furniture. He grasped for an alternative and remembered that Halloween was on Monday.

  “I need to get a Halloween costume.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t want to dress up for Halloween this year.”

  “Ben is. Maybe I can find something here.”

  “Fine.” She stepped under the awning and went in a side door of the converted barn. “Meet me back here at 11:45.”

  Anders sighed with relief when she disappeared into the crowd. He wandered around outside. In a tent containing piles of knock-off vintage wear, he discovered several items that might combine to make a convincing Mad Hatter costume—but it was twenty bucks for the Wellington top hat alone, and he’d only brought thirty with him.

  Ditch the costumes, a quiet part of his mind prodded. Where are the video games?

  Anders stepped into a side door and found himself face to face with a girl twisting pretzel dough behind a flour-dusted counter. He caught her eyes—brown. His heart sank. Nadine’s were hazel with flecks of yellow. They got brighter and more beautiful when she cried.

  Anders blushed and hurried on, shaking his head to banish the other vivid memories which rose unbidden in his mind. He stalked past the sandwich shacks and barbecue food stalls and emerged in a crowded area with toy and game sellers.

  He slowed his steps and felt a churning in his gut that he recognized as excitement. These vendors mostly stocked out-of-fashion baseball cards and board games, but every once in a while he was able to scrounge up a gem. He had purchased several vintage video games here through the years: Super Metroid for the Super NES, Golden Eye 007 for the 64. He’d even found an Atari 2600 port of Ms. Pac-Man from 1984. Never an Atari system that worked, though. Those were rare, and coveted by collectors.

  “Hey, kid,” a middle-aged man called from a corner stall. He had a thick Japanese accent. “What are you looking for? Baseball cards? Board games?”

  He pushed brass wire-rimmed spectacles up on his nose. His skin had the sun-kissed tint of well-seasoned traveler. Anders knew most of the vendors in this part of the bazaar by sight, but he’d never seen this guy before.

  “How about video games?”

  “Ah, yes.”

  The man bent down and lifted a heavy plastic bin onto the scratched glass countertop. Through the transparent sides, Anders could see a green X mark on the game cases.

  “I don’t have an Xbox. Do you carry Atari games?”

  “Ah, you have a taste for the classics. No Atari, but…”

  He pushed the plastic bin aside and produced a shoebox from which he reverently lifted the cardboard lid. It was filled with old Nintendo and Super NES cartridges, some in their original (if battered) packaging.

  “Swe-et!” Anders said. “How much?”

  “Depends.”

  Willing to haggle, Anders flipped through the cartridges, reading the names on their faces and checking them against the mental list he kept of his collection at home. “Yoshi’s Island, got it. Mega Man X, got it. Super Mario World, got three of ‘em. Final Fantasy VI! Awesome. I don’t think I have that one.”

  At the back, he found an SNES cartridge in its original packaging. The name was written in Japanese letters, but even if they had been English the art was so battered and faded he could barely make it out.

  Anders lifted it and flipped the package over. Printed in the bottom right corner below the Japanese letters was the copyright and date, “© 1999 Nintendo.” He slipped the cartridge out of the cardboard case. The cartridge art showed a blonde youth holding some sort of artifact in his hand. A scaly red dragon roared at him, backed by a haunted mountain landscape.

  “What’s this one?”

  “Ah. That is Magick Mirror.”

  “Huh. I’ve never heard of it before.”

  The clerk took the game from Anders and translated the description on the back for him. “It says, ‘released for the first time in Japan … only a hero brave and true of heart can face his fears and defeat the dragon within.’”

  Anders frowned. He remembered something he had read on Wikipedia. “Do you think it’s weird that the Nintendo 64 was released in 1996, but they made this game for the older system, the SNES?”

  The old guy shrugged and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Beats me. Tell you what. One time, special price! Fifteen dollars each … buytwogetonefree.” He said it as a single word. “Then you find out what it means, true of heart.”

  Anders nodded. He liked the old kook. “I’ll take that one, FF6, and Tetris.”

  “You can never go wrong with Tetris.”

  Spending his cash on video games seemed like a much better bargain than buying a costume he would only wear once. Anders carried his prizes outside into the brisk autumn air, feeling light on his feet for the first time in weeks. Now, to collect his mom and get home so he could check out the new games.

  2

  THE WIZARD AND THE MIRROR

  He looked up Magick Mirror on IGN.com and all the game-related online wikis he could find, but none had any record of the game. Ben was the master of obscure Internet searches, and he didn’t tu
rn up anything either. Though they learned that Nintendo continued producing SNES games until 2000, they concluded that there were no records of the game in English because it was an import.

  Anders took the time to locate the Japanese characters and paste them into a search engine. A single entry on an obscure vintage game database finally surfaced—the page had a picture of the cover, a translation of the description, and the title in bold letters: Magick Mirror. Just as the old man said. An editorial note stated that the game had been released in 1999 and discontinued the following year.

  Anders gawped. He had stumbled on a relic.

  With a hasty goodbye to Ben, Anders signed off chat. He pattered down the basement steps, slid the cartridge into the Super Nintendo and flipped it on.

  The title animation flickered to life, backed by a haunting flute and a soaring symphony. The words MAGICK MIRROR etched in an oblong crystal faded into the foreground. Anders dove into the game and stayed there for hours.

  Magick Mirror was an elegant blend of a Ghouls ’n Ghosts-style haunted house button-masher, and turn-based role playing games (RPGs) like the classic Final Fantasy series. Anders cheered when he found English subtitles in the settings menu.

  At its core, the story was a romantic adventure with a magical twist—boy meets girl, girl gets kidnapped by evil wizard, boy rescues girl after tromping across the world gathering items, exterminating monsters, and unlocking better weapons and magical abilities with each new quest. The dungeons were surprisingly interactive. Anders spent hours stacking, combining, demolishing, and moving every crate, barrel, and stone gargoyle. Nothing was decorative—nothing superfluous.

  No matter how much he leveled his character up, the puzzles required increasing ingenuity to solve. Equipping his newest, most powerful item was never enough; he had to think each challenge through and find a logical solution. Anders couldn’t imagine why the game had never made it to the States. Even with 16-bit graphics, he was hooked.

  By Sunday night, Anders had rounded up the bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and jade mirrors, and puzzled his way through all five major dungeons using the special skills with which each mirror was imbued. The bronze mirror gave him the strength to lift big rocks and the jade mirror granted wisdom, which unveiled most of the world’s map. Two hours past midnight on Sunday night, as he was closing in on the princess’s location, the story took an unexpected turn: the evil wizard morphed into the scaly red dragon from the cover and absconded with the princess once again. A faerie told Anders’ character that only the crystal mirror was capable of uncovering the dragon’s secret lair.

  Unlike the previous quests, he was not given any further clues to point him in the direction of the crystal mirror. And the other non-player characters (otherwise known as NPCs) who directed him before seemed to be tapped out of helpful hints.

  Exhausted from a weekend of gameplay and little sleep, Anders shut off the TV and curled up on the basement couch. His dreams swam with multi-colored mirrors and vermillion dragons, and the princess had Nadine’s face.

  When he woke, his eyelids felt like anvils. The digital clock below the TV read 5:58. Normally, Anders would stay in bed until his mother dragged him out of it, but since he was already awake and the incomplete final quest nagged at his curiosity … He pushed the SNES’s purple switch forward.

  On a hunch, Anders returned to the character’s house where the game first began. There, waiting for him, stood the spirit of the good wizard, who had died in an epic battle in the opening cut scene. He hovered over the floor, waiting.

  GREETINGS, ANDERS. The text unfurled across the screen. I’M GLAD YOU FOUND YOUR WAY HOME IN TIME. THE QUESTION IS, ARE YOU NOW PREPARED TO WIELD THE CRYSTAL MIRROR?

  A yes/no dialogue popped up. Anders selected YES.

  VERY GOOD! the wizard responded. IN THAT CASE…

  The wizard held up a crystal mirror in his hand, a translucent geode with pixelated edges angled like a parallelogram. The television screen warped and wobbled. Anders was momentarily impressed to see such a vivid rendering on an old console game. A moment later the rangy, wildly grinning spirit of the wizard materialized in front of him in the dim light of the basement.

  Anders lurched to his feet.

  “Well done, young Anders!” The tip of the wizard’s pointy hat wobbled as he nodded. “Very well done, indeed. I believe this belongs to you now.”

  “What the—”

  Stunned, Anders could do nothing but drop his controller and accept the crystal mirror.

  “The crystal mirror’s magical ability is insight. It allows you to see that which others do not. With it you can uncover the dragon’s lair, drive the beast from it, and rescue the Princess Nadine.”

  Anders blinked. “Sorry?”

  The wizard didn’t seem to hear him.

  “Perhaps you’ll find a use for this as well.” The wizard removed and held out his hat, a tall, cone-shaped affair, midnight blue and patterned with starbursts. His hair was thinning beneath it. “Good luck, noble warrior.”

  “But the princess. Her name—it’s not…”

  Without another word, the wizard warped, faded, and vanished.

  Anders looked down at the crystal mirror, felt its solid weight in his hands.

  “Nadine,” he finished. “What just happened?

  “Anders!” his mother called from the top of the stairs “You’re going to miss the bus!”

  Anders stuffed the translucent geode into his backpack, scrambled up the stairs and bolted through the house without making eye contact with his mother. It was only as the door slammed behind him that he realized he was clutching the wizard’s hat in his hand.

  3

  BACK TO SCHOOL

  Anders took the three steps onto the school bus at a sprint. He smiled awkwardly at the driver, who gave him a knowing scowl from behind a mask of green paint. Two metal bolts stuck out of his temples.

  Anders panicked as the bus lurched forward. His breath quickened and his throat went dry. He stumbled his way down the aisle, past his classmates dressed as monsters and ghouls and zombies and—

  A tall boy in a black leather trench coat stepped into the aisle. He wore reflective sunglasses and held out two fists toward Anders as he approached.

  “You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

  Anders froze. His jaw hung open. His hands began to shake.

  “I know, it’s perfect, isn’t it? I look just like Lawrence Fishburne. Hey, take it easy dude. It's just me. It's Ben.”

  Ben helped Anders to an empty seat. Anders struggled out of his backpack, whose weight with the crystal mirror inside seemed to constrict his movement. He put his head between his knees.

  "Are you all right?"

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Anders mumbled, wiping sweaty palms on his jeans. “It’s just a game. It’s not real. It’s not real.”

  When he managed to get his breathing under control, he zipped open his pack and removed the crystal. He ran his fingers along its smooth edges. It was real all right.

  “I didn’t mean to freak you out, man,” Ben said.

  “It’s okay,” Anders said. “Not your fault. Nice Morpheus costume.”

  “Thanks. Is this your wizard hat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sweet.” Ben picked the hat up and stuck it on Anders’ head. “Where’s the rest of the costume? No robes? A magic wand? A spell book?”

  “Uh…” Anders lifted the crystal mirror in his hand. “Just this.”

  “Neat. What is it?”

  Anders felt his panic returning. He stumbled over his words as he rushed to fill Ben in.

  “Listen, you remember that game I told you about, Magick Mirror? Well you’ll never believe this… I barely believe it myself, to be honest… but this is the crystal mirror from the game.”

  “Sick! Y
ou didn’t tell me it came with a replica.”

  “No, it’s not a replica. I mean it’s actually from the game. This morning, the spirit of the good wizard appeared in my basement—“

  “Hi, Ben.” A cat poked her nose over the back of the seat. “I like your costume.”

  “Thanks, Lucy. Yours is rad, too. What kind of cat are you supposed to be?”

  “A Siamese. Elizabeth dressed up as my twin. We coordinated last week.”

  Ben patted Anders’ shoulder as he slid out of the seat they shared and in next to Lucy.

  Anders sighed and gazed down at the crystal in his hands. He could see through it to the floor of the bus. If Ben doesn’t believe me, he thought, no one will.

  As Anders turned his mind inward, the crystal’s surface clouded with mist. The tendrils slowly solidified into a 16-bit sprite of his own self, dressed like the hero in Magick Mirror. In the top left corner, four red hearts appeared—just like in the game.

  The blue pill. Where is the blue pill when you need it?

  His character turned back into mist and the mist formed wispy words, which read, THE CRYSTAL MIRROR’S ABILITY IS INSIGHT. FOCUS THROUGH THE GLASS TO ACTIVATE IT.

  Anders looked around. No one else seemed to be paying attention to the incredible magic he held in his hands. Ben was letting Lucy explore the pockets of his trench coat. Pulled by a fearful but insistent curiosity, Anders turned in his seat and held the crystal mirror in front of his eyes.

  “Sup, Merlin?” Ben asked.

  “Just…testing a theory,” Anders said. Through the mirror, Ben transformed into a dashing adventurer, dressed in rugged browns and greens topped with an Indiana Jones hat. He gazed down at a map in his hands, and the map was marked with crisscrossing dotted lines leading to a bold X, which shined out of the parchment and reflected in Ben’s glasses.