Note: I begin by summarizing the story, and then fully discuss the plot and all its’ twists. I highly recommend going and reading the featured story first. If it is available for free online, I will link to it in the story title below. Otherwise, continue reading only if you don’t mind spoilers! ~ LL

MIRROR’S KEEPER by Michael Bondies

A pretty redheaded girl stands at the gate of Mrs. Griper’s cottage, wrestling with her fear of the old hag. She’s bent on returning a cracked mirror she found for the advertized reward. And yet, the house has every sign of being a witches’ hovel. Lyris is nervous when Mrs. Griper insists she come inside and put the mirror in the kitchen.

As things unfold between these two women—young and old, ugly and beautiful, lithe and arthritic—they swap character roles. Mrs. Griper declares that there once was a horrifyingly ugly old witch who one stole a young girl’s beauty, and then after many decades, completely forgot about the monster she once was. She asks Lyris if this story sounds familiar, but the young girl is only puzzled.

When Mrs. Griper knocks over Lyris’ chair and wrestles with her in the dark of a closet, the beauty-stealing magic is undone. Lyris awakes sometime later, horrified to discover she’s become a decrepit old hag. From offscreen, we hear the one who was Mrs. Griper laughing with Lyris’ suitor.

PLOT DEVICES

I found this short, little story delightful. First, the setting was vivid because of all the witch-related tropes used. The description of Mrs. Griper’s house as being “like an ugly black toad” was laying it on thick, and yet the author just leans in to every witch caricature invented. Her house is covered in ivy, there’s a weeping willow, it smells like rotting mushrooms, the kitchen has a simmering black pot, Mrs. Griper dresses in black and has skin which droops “like melting candle wax”, complete with a hooked nose and shaggy grey hair! The only thing missing is a black cat.

All of this predisposes us, as the readers, to view Mrs. Griper as the antagonist. Lyris enters her house distrusting her, and we distrust her just as much. We may even feel a superiority to Lyris as she steps further into Mrs. Griper’s trap, thinking we would never fall so easily for so obvious a trick. In either case, all our loyalty is to Lyris and we hope she’ll be lucky enough, or have enough cunning, to escape whatever nefarious plot Mrs. Griper has lured her into.

THEME

In this story, the struggle between these two women elevates beauty and youth to a place of power. Whoever possesses them has the upper hand. Lyris, apparently, was once a witch who had grown old and preyed upon a young woman to steal her beauty and youth. She succeeded so fully that her stolen innocence kept her from remembering what she’d done and she lived her life as if she truly were the young, beautiful country girl.

We begin the story by hearing her perspective and feeling her repulsion at Mrs. Griper’s great age and ugliness. It’s natural that we want to side with her throughout the story. We might feel sad she loses in the end, despite knowing that she is the true antagonist. Objectively, it is easy to assert that 1) stealing is wrong, and 2) using magic to steal someone’s identity/life-force/appearance is quite nasty and wrong. And yet, Lyris is the “protagonist” at the first, and we may feel a genuine horror seeing her become the ugly witch at the end.

I enjoyed this twist, because it took me as a reader on a journey of emotion vs. cognition. It tricked me into rooting for the witch, and feeling disappointment that her victim outwitted her! It left me with vivid imagery that became more and more rich with meaning, the more I replayed the story in my mind. And I kept thinking about “Mirror’s Keeper” long after I’d put it down.

The best kinds of stories are like this. They make you examine your presuppositions and explore why right should win, and what is the definition of good. Evil is never subjective, but sometimes, we want it to be. That’s something worth mulling over.