[story] facsimile
author: sleepyduck
Every five-year-old thinks that her poppa is the greatest poppa in the world. But I actually have tutors to tell me why.
"Your father is a great king," Master Jerrode would lecture. "He was chosen to rule these lands by the Elder Ones who created the universe." Master Jerrode made me memorize all of poppa's titles and powers.
At first, I hated the lessons. "If you do not pay attention," Master Jerrode threatened, "your father is going to be upset. Perhaps he won't make the sun rise tomorrow."
"I don't care," I said, although I was a little sad when poppa made it cloudy and dark the next day.
Master Jerrode became sterner. "If you do not want the responsibilities of being the daughter of the Chosen Avatar of the Elder Ones, perhaps I should find your father a new princess." That got my attention.
The lessons finally became useful when I started meeting the other children who came through our palace.
"My poppa can talk to birds," Fern told me when we met. Fern was my age. Her poppa was the Master Royal Messenger.
"Oh yeah? My poppa can move mountains with his bare hands," I replied. "And anyway, your poppa has to do what my poppa says."
"My father rides on giant flying horses," Marié told me. Her poppa was the Ambassador from the North-Beyond-the-Mountains.
"But my poppa is immortal!" I shot back gleefully. "No weapon can hurt him, and he cannot die."
The only one I could not impress was Kitchen Boy. Kitchen Boy wasn't his real name, but we called him that because he was one of the servants. We weren't supposed to talk to him at all, but Kitchen Boy was fun to have around -- he was the only one I knew who didn't grow up in a palace. "How can your poppa be immortal if there was a different Chosen Avatar before him?"
But Master Jerrode had taught me well. "Each Avatar has a specific assignment from the Elder Ones," I recited. "When the previous Chosen Avatar completed his Charge on earth, the Elder Ones summoned him back, and sent my poppa with a new assignment." I stuck my tongue out at him. Kitchen Boy was two years older than me, but I was still smarter than him.
I was happiest when poppa took me along on his kingly duties. "Tonight, I will make the stars shine just for you," he would say. I got to see poppa heal the sick and make the soil fertile. And whenever poppa sparred with the palace soldiers for practice, poppa would always win.
As I got a little older, poppa took me along less and less often when he went to perform his kingly miracles. Master Jerrode's lessons too focused less and less on poppa's powers, and more on topics like history and art. But by then, I did not need Master Jerrode to tell me how amazing poppa was. Everyone else I met constantly reminded me.
Soldiers would tell me that poppa's blessing on their helmets or their shields saved their lives. Villagers would leave gifts at the palace because poppa had given them a child or saved their harvest or diverted a flood. And all the servants would follow "Your Highness" with "forever shall your father rule" when they addressed me.
Kitchen Boy was the only one who was skeptical. He didn't have his own poppa, and he was not very fond of mine. ("Your poppa, in his infinite wisdom, sent all the men in my village off to war right before my momma had me," he told me once.)
"How do you know that your poppa is really immortal?" Kitchen Boy asked once, after getting into the palace wine cellar. "Has anyone tried to kill him?"
I gaped at him. "You cannot say such things! That's blasphemy, and treason, and -- and --"
We were hiding in one of the hidden passages that the servants used to move around the palace. Master Jerrode would tell poppa every time he caught me talking to Kitchen Boy, so we had to stay out of sight.
"What about you? Are you immortal too?" Kitchen Boy asked.
"No, I am just a normal girl. But poppa has proclaimed that he will not let anything hurt me, and what he says, so it shall be."
"Then what would happen if someone tried to" -- Kitchen Boy suddenly reached behind me and lifted me off the ground -- "kidnap you!"
"Then poppa would probably turn them into a frog before they could leave the palace," I squealed. "Put me down!"
"Maybe we should find out," he said. But he put me back down. No matter what he said, Kitchen Boy still feared my poppa.
Kitchen Boy started appearing in my dreams. "Run away with me," he would say. Or "let me show you what the real world is like."
But before those dreams could get interesting, they would always be interrupted by my other dream -- my older dream, the one that I've been having since I started my lessons.
It always started with me back in my bed. A small pinpoint of light would appear in the looking glass at the far end of my bedroom. The light would grow larger and brighter, until it became a flickering candle flame. Then she would step out of the looking glass.
The girl bearing the candle looked exactly like me. As I grew older, she did too. She had my voice. And when I asked her who she was, she would say, "I am the princess Alyssa," which was my name too. She would not answer any of my other questions. "I am you," she would say, "so it is pointless to ask me about yourself."
Then the nightly ritual would begin. Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass would set her candle down, and climb on top of me on the bed. She would press her ear into my chest ("so that I can better hear your thoughts," she once explained) and whisper, "Now tell me everything."
Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass made me tell her everything that had happened that day. "Whom did you see? What did you say?" she demanded. And then, "And what did you think of that?" She would not let me leave out any detail. "Is that all?" she would ask when I stopped talking. "You shall not wake until you have told me everything. And I will know if you are holding anything back."
I was terrified when Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass first started visiting my dreams. Marié and Fern did not have dreams like these. But poppa did. "You and I are special," he said. "And it's for your own good." He made me promise to do as Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass said.
Kitchen Boy gave me my first rose when I was ten. "I want to tell you something," he said, "but not here." He took me through the secret passages until we found the linen store. The fabric muffled our voices.
"My name is Cal," he said. So he did have a name.
"And I have something else to show you," he said. "But you have to promise not to tell anyone about what happens here. Not a soul."
I promised. He stepped closer, and I looked up at him expectantly. He brought his head down, and pressed his lips into mine.
He backed away. "And now I bid you good day, Your Highness." He mock-bowed, then turned and left. I stood there for a full minute, wide-eyed in shock. Then I let myself smile.
Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass visited me in my sleep again that night, like she always did. "Tell me everything," she demanded. I left out the part about Kitchen Boy.
"Is that all?" Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass asked.
"Yes," I said.
Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass got off me. "There is something else. Think harder."
"I've told you everything," I said.
"Then you lie!" She brought her knee up and pressed it down into my stomach, driving the air out of my lungs. Her hands reached for my neck and her fingernails cut into my skin. "I can hear your thoughts. You cannot keep any secrets from me. Now tell me!"
I relented. "Kitchen Boy gave me a rose today," I gasped.
When I woke up, I could still feel the cuts where the other Alyssa's fingernails had dug into my neck. I crept toward the looking glass. In the daylight, it behaved exactly like a looking glass should. I studied my neck. It was completely unblemished.
Poppa was waiting for me that morning. "Master Jerrode tells me," he said, "that you been playing with that servant boy again. Forbidding you from seeing him does not seem to work. So I have sent the boy and his mother far away from the palace."
"Poppa, no!"
"Don't worry, they will be well provided for. And this is for the best. If I had waited any longer, you would undoubtedly find the separation even more painful. Forget the boy; there will be others."
I had been taught that poppa had the wisdom of a hundred sages. This was the first time I disagreed with him.
Then that autumn, Marié came to say goodbye. "My poppa says my kingdom and yours cannot be allies anymore," she told me. "We have to leave by sundown."
My poppa had even less time for me after that. "Not now, Alyssa. We are preparing for war." Then one day: "But tell me, Alyssa, what is Master Jerrode teaching you these days?"
I started telling him about my history lessons.
"I will have to find someone else," he decided, "to prepare you for your new duties." Poppa had given my hand in marriage to the prince of Riverwest.
"Who is the prince, poppa? How old is he? Is he handsome?"
"His father has a large army. Riverwest will be a useful ally. And you will get to meet the prince soon."
Soon was a month later, when I followed poppa and a flock of nobles to deliver gifts to the Riverwest King. The ride was uncomfortable and smelly. I rode with poppa at the front of the procession. We were drawn by his strongest horses, which shook the carriage terribly. The kingdom's finest tapestries lined the carriage, which made it stifling hot and impossible to sleep. And poppa had promised to bring along his best cook, but all the food grew stale after the first week.
Night fell. The marshal called out the order to stop for the night, and the other carriages fell behind us. Our carriage continued a little while longer to set up camp farther down the road.
One of poppa's guards suddenly fell over. Then something hit the back another guard's neck, and he fell down too.
"Ambush!" poppa cried. The driver and the remaining guards all drew their swords. Then the terrible sound of metal against metal rang out. The horses, which were still lashed to the carriage, tried to run, and the sudden motion knocked poppa and me down. Then the carriage stopped again just as suddenly. The fighting continued around us.
The driver slumped over and his sword fell to the ground. A large man with a covered face crawled over him, and jumped into the carriage.
Poppa looked terrified. His face had turned white and he was covered in sweat. He drew his own sword, but it was a flimsy ceremonial thing. The attacker easily batted it aside.
The attacker thrust own sword into poppa's stomach. The tip come out poppa's back, covered in red. The sword twisted, then withdrew. Poppa collapsed.
"Poppa, no!" I ran to his side. "Poppa! Poppa!" This could not happen. Poppa was immortal. He had the strength of a hundred men. If he had so much as willed it, the attackers would have fallen on their own swords. "Poppa!"
"And who are you, little girl?" poppa's killer snarled.
I picked up poppa's sword. "I -- I am the princess Alyssa, the -- the daughter of the Chosen Avatar of the Elder Ones, and my poppa is going to --"
"Oh shut up," the attacker growled. The last thing I saw was his boot coming at my face.
I don't remember the trip back home. Poppa's healer said that I was fevered and delirious. I learned later that the rest of poppa's men eventually caught up from behind, and drove the attackers off.
I spent the next few weeks in the ward, drifting in and out of sleep.
The healers finally decided that I was well enough to leave. "There is someone who would like to see you now," one of them said. I followed him out, where I saw ...
"Poppa?"
"Daughter!" poppa boomed. His voice seemed to have grown deeper.
"Poppa -- I thought -- I thought we were attacked, and you were killed."
"No, little Alyssa. Your injuries must have confused your memories. Yes, we were attacked, but we were never in any danger. I personally fought off all of the bandits, and brought you back home."
"That's -- that's not what happened, poppa."
"Daughter! Remember that your father's word is law. But now, why would I lie to you?"
Poppa had never called me "daughter" before. I ran up to him and ran my hand against his stomach.
"What are you doing, daughter?"
"Were you hurt, poppa?"
Poppa unfastened his shirt to show me. "See? Not a scratch."
That was true. I still had my scars and bruises from the fight, but poppa's stomach showed no mark of the sword that had run him through.
Poppa took me back to my bedroom. The bedroom was exactly as I remembered it, but something seemed different about poppa. I wondered if his smile had changed, or maybe the way he walked. Once, I tried counting the creases on his forehead.
"What are you doing, daughter?"
"Poppa, didn't you always have four lines on your forehead?" It was something I had done long ago, sitting on his lap and playing with his hair, tracing the creases on his face.
He remembered too. "Of course, daughter. See: one, two, three, four. The fourth one is just very faint."
I didn't see the fourth line. But when I saw poppa the next day, all four creases where there, sharply visible.
After I recovered, poppa stopped paying attention to me again. The war consumed all of his time. His temper grew shorter, and he raised his voice more often. He became angry all the time. So I was surprised to see him smiling one day.
"What happened, poppa?"
"Riverwest finally agreed to send their army north. Next summer, my daughter, we will take the North-Beyond-the-Mountains."
"Is that where Marié is from?"
"Who?"
"Princess Marié," I explained. "Her poppa was the Ambassador who flew here on a white horse with wings."
"What about her?"
"You're not going to hurt her or her poppa, right?"
Poppa laughed. "They could surrender now and save us the trouble."
"What will you do if they don't surrender?"
"Then next summer, one hundred thousand men will march to their capital and destroy everything in their way."
"No!"
"You foolish girl. This is what war is."
"Promise me you won't hurt Marié," I pleaded.
"I will do no such thing! Know your place, daughter. I will run the war as I see fit."
"Promise me, or I'll -- I'll --"
"Go away, you dumb child. Your father has work to do."
"Promise me, or I'll tell everyone that you were killed by the bandits last year!"
Poppa's eyes narrowed. "You dare threaten your own father!" His hand slammed into my face. He had never hit me before.
His voice grew low and menacing. "You had better watch what you say, daughter" -- he spat out the world -- "or I will have you replaced."
I did not go to sleep that night. I piled up my dresses to make a lump under the blanket on my bed, then sat beside the looking glass, waiting.
Soon enough, my twin stepped through the looking glass into the bedroom. Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass climbed onto the bed, like she did every night, and crawled to the bundle of dresses. I jumped on her from behind.
"I will tell you no more!" I screamed. She tried to use her elbows to hit me. I pressed her face harder into the bed. She grabbed ahold of my arm, and dug her fingernails into it. Then she brought it to her mouth, and sank her teeth in.
I howled in pain. She kicked me off her back, then rolled on top of me. Now she once again had her weight on me, staring down at me, like every other night. But this would be the last time. My other arm still clutched the knife I had been waiting with.
"Let's see you try to replace me now!" I screamed. Still staring into her eyes, I rammed the knife into her side.
I found myself walking down the hall, the dripping knife still in my hand. Late at night, the palace was silent except for the sound of my footsteps. I arrived outside poppa's bedroom.
Nobody stopped me as I stepped inside. Poppa was fast asleep, alone. I pulled the blanket off him. Poppa was sleeping with his shirt open.
"If you are immortal, poppa, then I should not be able to do this!" I plunged the knife into his stomach, right where the attacker's sword had skewered him last year. His eyes flew open and he gasped awake. "And when you come back, poppa, perhaps there will be a mark on you this time," I laughed giddily.
I left the knife protruding from the his belly and crawled off the bed. Poppa's bedroom had a looking glass too, his even larger than mine. I walked up to it. No reflection stared back. None of the bedroom was visible in the looking glass either.
I brought a hand up to the glass. I felt a cool liquid resistance, but only for a moment. Then my hand passed through.
I stepped into the mirror.
Every five-year-old thinks that her poppa is the greatest poppa in the world. But I actually have tutors to tell me why.
"Your father is a great king," Master Jerrode would lecture. "He was chosen to rule these lands by the Elder Ones who created the universe." Master Jerrode made me memorize all of poppa's titles and powers.
At first, I hated the lessons. "If you do not pay attention," Master Jerrode threatened, "your father is going to be upset. Perhaps he won't make the sun rise tomorrow."
"I don't care," I said, although I was a little sad when poppa made it cloudy and dark the next day.
Master Jerrode became sterner. "If you do not want the responsibilities of being the daughter of the Chosen Avatar of the Elder Ones, perhaps I should find your father a new princess." That got my attention.
The lessons finally became useful when I started meeting the other children who came through our palace.
"My poppa can talk to birds," Fern told me when we met. Fern was my age. Her poppa was the Master Royal Messenger.
"Oh yeah? My poppa can move mountains with his bare hands," I replied. "And anyway, your poppa has to do what my poppa says."
"My father rides on giant flying horses," Marié told me. Her poppa was the Ambassador from the North-Beyond-the-Mountains.
"But my poppa is immortal!" I shot back gleefully. "No weapon can hurt him, and he cannot die."
The only one I could not impress was Kitchen Boy. Kitchen Boy wasn't his real name, but we called him that because he was one of the servants. We weren't supposed to talk to him at all, but Kitchen Boy was fun to have around -- he was the only one I knew who didn't grow up in a palace. "How can your poppa be immortal if there was a different Chosen Avatar before him?"
But Master Jerrode had taught me well. "Each Avatar has a specific assignment from the Elder Ones," I recited. "When the previous Chosen Avatar completed his Charge on earth, the Elder Ones summoned him back, and sent my poppa with a new assignment." I stuck my tongue out at him. Kitchen Boy was two years older than me, but I was still smarter than him.
I was happiest when poppa took me along on his kingly duties. "Tonight, I will make the stars shine just for you," he would say. I got to see poppa heal the sick and make the soil fertile. And whenever poppa sparred with the palace soldiers for practice, poppa would always win.
As I got a little older, poppa took me along less and less often when he went to perform his kingly miracles. Master Jerrode's lessons too focused less and less on poppa's powers, and more on topics like history and art. But by then, I did not need Master Jerrode to tell me how amazing poppa was. Everyone else I met constantly reminded me.
Soldiers would tell me that poppa's blessing on their helmets or their shields saved their lives. Villagers would leave gifts at the palace because poppa had given them a child or saved their harvest or diverted a flood. And all the servants would follow "Your Highness" with "forever shall your father rule" when they addressed me.
Kitchen Boy was the only one who was skeptical. He didn't have his own poppa, and he was not very fond of mine. ("Your poppa, in his infinite wisdom, sent all the men in my village off to war right before my momma had me," he told me once.)
"How do you know that your poppa is really immortal?" Kitchen Boy asked once, after getting into the palace wine cellar. "Has anyone tried to kill him?"
I gaped at him. "You cannot say such things! That's blasphemy, and treason, and -- and --"
We were hiding in one of the hidden passages that the servants used to move around the palace. Master Jerrode would tell poppa every time he caught me talking to Kitchen Boy, so we had to stay out of sight.
"What about you? Are you immortal too?" Kitchen Boy asked.
"No, I am just a normal girl. But poppa has proclaimed that he will not let anything hurt me, and what he says, so it shall be."
"Then what would happen if someone tried to" -- Kitchen Boy suddenly reached behind me and lifted me off the ground -- "kidnap you!"
"Then poppa would probably turn them into a frog before they could leave the palace," I squealed. "Put me down!"
"Maybe we should find out," he said. But he put me back down. No matter what he said, Kitchen Boy still feared my poppa.
Kitchen Boy started appearing in my dreams. "Run away with me," he would say. Or "let me show you what the real world is like."
But before those dreams could get interesting, they would always be interrupted by my other dream -- my older dream, the one that I've been having since I started my lessons.
It always started with me back in my bed. A small pinpoint of light would appear in the looking glass at the far end of my bedroom. The light would grow larger and brighter, until it became a flickering candle flame. Then she would step out of the looking glass.
The girl bearing the candle looked exactly like me. As I grew older, she did too. She had my voice. And when I asked her who she was, she would say, "I am the princess Alyssa," which was my name too. She would not answer any of my other questions. "I am you," she would say, "so it is pointless to ask me about yourself."
Then the nightly ritual would begin. Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass would set her candle down, and climb on top of me on the bed. She would press her ear into my chest ("so that I can better hear your thoughts," she once explained) and whisper, "Now tell me everything."
Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass made me tell her everything that had happened that day. "Whom did you see? What did you say?" she demanded. And then, "And what did you think of that?" She would not let me leave out any detail. "Is that all?" she would ask when I stopped talking. "You shall not wake until you have told me everything. And I will know if you are holding anything back."
I was terrified when Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass first started visiting my dreams. Marié and Fern did not have dreams like these. But poppa did. "You and I are special," he said. "And it's for your own good." He made me promise to do as Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass said.
Kitchen Boy gave me my first rose when I was ten. "I want to tell you something," he said, "but not here." He took me through the secret passages until we found the linen store. The fabric muffled our voices.
"My name is Cal," he said. So he did have a name.
"And I have something else to show you," he said. "But you have to promise not to tell anyone about what happens here. Not a soul."
I promised. He stepped closer, and I looked up at him expectantly. He brought his head down, and pressed his lips into mine.
He backed away. "And now I bid you good day, Your Highness." He mock-bowed, then turned and left. I stood there for a full minute, wide-eyed in shock. Then I let myself smile.
Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass visited me in my sleep again that night, like she always did. "Tell me everything," she demanded. I left out the part about Kitchen Boy.
"Is that all?" Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass asked.
"Yes," I said.
Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass got off me. "There is something else. Think harder."
"I've told you everything," I said.
"Then you lie!" She brought her knee up and pressed it down into my stomach, driving the air out of my lungs. Her hands reached for my neck and her fingernails cut into my skin. "I can hear your thoughts. You cannot keep any secrets from me. Now tell me!"
I relented. "Kitchen Boy gave me a rose today," I gasped.
When I woke up, I could still feel the cuts where the other Alyssa's fingernails had dug into my neck. I crept toward the looking glass. In the daylight, it behaved exactly like a looking glass should. I studied my neck. It was completely unblemished.
Poppa was waiting for me that morning. "Master Jerrode tells me," he said, "that you been playing with that servant boy again. Forbidding you from seeing him does not seem to work. So I have sent the boy and his mother far away from the palace."
"Poppa, no!"
"Don't worry, they will be well provided for. And this is for the best. If I had waited any longer, you would undoubtedly find the separation even more painful. Forget the boy; there will be others."
I had been taught that poppa had the wisdom of a hundred sages. This was the first time I disagreed with him.
Then that autumn, Marié came to say goodbye. "My poppa says my kingdom and yours cannot be allies anymore," she told me. "We have to leave by sundown."
My poppa had even less time for me after that. "Not now, Alyssa. We are preparing for war." Then one day: "But tell me, Alyssa, what is Master Jerrode teaching you these days?"
I started telling him about my history lessons.
"I will have to find someone else," he decided, "to prepare you for your new duties." Poppa had given my hand in marriage to the prince of Riverwest.
"Who is the prince, poppa? How old is he? Is he handsome?"
"His father has a large army. Riverwest will be a useful ally. And you will get to meet the prince soon."
Soon was a month later, when I followed poppa and a flock of nobles to deliver gifts to the Riverwest King. The ride was uncomfortable and smelly. I rode with poppa at the front of the procession. We were drawn by his strongest horses, which shook the carriage terribly. The kingdom's finest tapestries lined the carriage, which made it stifling hot and impossible to sleep. And poppa had promised to bring along his best cook, but all the food grew stale after the first week.
Night fell. The marshal called out the order to stop for the night, and the other carriages fell behind us. Our carriage continued a little while longer to set up camp farther down the road.
One of poppa's guards suddenly fell over. Then something hit the back another guard's neck, and he fell down too.
"Ambush!" poppa cried. The driver and the remaining guards all drew their swords. Then the terrible sound of metal against metal rang out. The horses, which were still lashed to the carriage, tried to run, and the sudden motion knocked poppa and me down. Then the carriage stopped again just as suddenly. The fighting continued around us.
The driver slumped over and his sword fell to the ground. A large man with a covered face crawled over him, and jumped into the carriage.
Poppa looked terrified. His face had turned white and he was covered in sweat. He drew his own sword, but it was a flimsy ceremonial thing. The attacker easily batted it aside.
The attacker thrust own sword into poppa's stomach. The tip come out poppa's back, covered in red. The sword twisted, then withdrew. Poppa collapsed.
"Poppa, no!" I ran to his side. "Poppa! Poppa!" This could not happen. Poppa was immortal. He had the strength of a hundred men. If he had so much as willed it, the attackers would have fallen on their own swords. "Poppa!"
"And who are you, little girl?" poppa's killer snarled.
I picked up poppa's sword. "I -- I am the princess Alyssa, the -- the daughter of the Chosen Avatar of the Elder Ones, and my poppa is going to --"
"Oh shut up," the attacker growled. The last thing I saw was his boot coming at my face.
I don't remember the trip back home. Poppa's healer said that I was fevered and delirious. I learned later that the rest of poppa's men eventually caught up from behind, and drove the attackers off.
I spent the next few weeks in the ward, drifting in and out of sleep.
The healers finally decided that I was well enough to leave. "There is someone who would like to see you now," one of them said. I followed him out, where I saw ...
"Poppa?"
"Daughter!" poppa boomed. His voice seemed to have grown deeper.
"Poppa -- I thought -- I thought we were attacked, and you were killed."
"No, little Alyssa. Your injuries must have confused your memories. Yes, we were attacked, but we were never in any danger. I personally fought off all of the bandits, and brought you back home."
"That's -- that's not what happened, poppa."
"Daughter! Remember that your father's word is law. But now, why would I lie to you?"
Poppa had never called me "daughter" before. I ran up to him and ran my hand against his stomach.
"What are you doing, daughter?"
"Were you hurt, poppa?"
Poppa unfastened his shirt to show me. "See? Not a scratch."
That was true. I still had my scars and bruises from the fight, but poppa's stomach showed no mark of the sword that had run him through.
Poppa took me back to my bedroom. The bedroom was exactly as I remembered it, but something seemed different about poppa. I wondered if his smile had changed, or maybe the way he walked. Once, I tried counting the creases on his forehead.
"What are you doing, daughter?"
"Poppa, didn't you always have four lines on your forehead?" It was something I had done long ago, sitting on his lap and playing with his hair, tracing the creases on his face.
He remembered too. "Of course, daughter. See: one, two, three, four. The fourth one is just very faint."
I didn't see the fourth line. But when I saw poppa the next day, all four creases where there, sharply visible.
After I recovered, poppa stopped paying attention to me again. The war consumed all of his time. His temper grew shorter, and he raised his voice more often. He became angry all the time. So I was surprised to see him smiling one day.
"What happened, poppa?"
"Riverwest finally agreed to send their army north. Next summer, my daughter, we will take the North-Beyond-the-Mountains."
"Is that where Marié is from?"
"Who?"
"Princess Marié," I explained. "Her poppa was the Ambassador who flew here on a white horse with wings."
"What about her?"
"You're not going to hurt her or her poppa, right?"
Poppa laughed. "They could surrender now and save us the trouble."
"What will you do if they don't surrender?"
"Then next summer, one hundred thousand men will march to their capital and destroy everything in their way."
"No!"
"You foolish girl. This is what war is."
"Promise me you won't hurt Marié," I pleaded.
"I will do no such thing! Know your place, daughter. I will run the war as I see fit."
"Promise me, or I'll -- I'll --"
"Go away, you dumb child. Your father has work to do."
"Promise me, or I'll tell everyone that you were killed by the bandits last year!"
Poppa's eyes narrowed. "You dare threaten your own father!" His hand slammed into my face. He had never hit me before.
His voice grew low and menacing. "You had better watch what you say, daughter" -- he spat out the world -- "or I will have you replaced."
I did not go to sleep that night. I piled up my dresses to make a lump under the blanket on my bed, then sat beside the looking glass, waiting.
Soon enough, my twin stepped through the looking glass into the bedroom. Alyssa-from-the-Looking-Glass climbed onto the bed, like she did every night, and crawled to the bundle of dresses. I jumped on her from behind.
"I will tell you no more!" I screamed. She tried to use her elbows to hit me. I pressed her face harder into the bed. She grabbed ahold of my arm, and dug her fingernails into it. Then she brought it to her mouth, and sank her teeth in.
I howled in pain. She kicked me off her back, then rolled on top of me. Now she once again had her weight on me, staring down at me, like every other night. But this would be the last time. My other arm still clutched the knife I had been waiting with.
"Let's see you try to replace me now!" I screamed. Still staring into her eyes, I rammed the knife into her side.
I found myself walking down the hall, the dripping knife still in my hand. Late at night, the palace was silent except for the sound of my footsteps. I arrived outside poppa's bedroom.
Nobody stopped me as I stepped inside. Poppa was fast asleep, alone. I pulled the blanket off him. Poppa was sleeping with his shirt open.
"If you are immortal, poppa, then I should not be able to do this!" I plunged the knife into his stomach, right where the attacker's sword had skewered him last year. His eyes flew open and he gasped awake. "And when you come back, poppa, perhaps there will be a mark on you this time," I laughed giddily.
I left the knife protruding from the his belly and crawled off the bed. Poppa's bedroom had a looking glass too, his even larger than mine. I walked up to it. No reflection stared back. None of the bedroom was visible in the looking glass either.
I brought a hand up to the glass. I felt a cool liquid resistance, but only for a moment. Then my hand passed through.
I stepped into the mirror.