Jaci Dawn

It was decided to bring the mirror into the great room, and to have Ella speak to it, again. Gran and Dish carried it into the room and stood it in the middle of the room, so that each side of the mirror was visible by someone. Horace even got into the mood by hopping down from his perch and hopping over to look into the mirror. He turned his head sideways and then the other direction sideways.
“Shouldn’t I be an owl?” he asked.
“You are an owl. It’s just the first time you’ve ever looked at yourself in a mirror,” Deke laughed.
“No, no. I know what owls look like. Let me tell you, female owls are always making amorous moves on me. I quite know what they look like. They have feathers and large yellow eyes. They do not look like this fellow in this reflection glass.”
Ella came around to the side of the mirror that Horace was looking into. She giggled. “Why, I do believe you are a House Elf, Horace! Or you can become one. You’ve even a sock for a night cap on. Don’t look so irritated at me, I’m just saying that’s what I see.”
Horace pecked at the mirror and the House Elf tapped the mirror with his nose. Horace lifted a wing; the House Elf lifted the corresponding arm.
“Well, how fascinating,” the owl and Elf muttered. No one but Ella could see the change in the owl – the reflection looked like that of a Northern barred owl, and nothing more.
Ella stared at the reflection, “So no one else can see Horace as anything but an owl? Have you looked into the mirror, Richard?”
Richard sighed and came around to the back side. His reflection was one of the fox from the woods. He started. “Well!”
Ella frowned. “How many tails do you have?”
“Five, I believe.” Richard turned around to look at his backside, and, yes, he had five tails.
“The Yokai had only three. So this means you are more powerful?”
“Only older. Perhaps wiser.” Richard bowed to his fox self and stepped out of view of the mirror. “That is most unnerving – a mirror that can reveal our true selves.”
“But I only saw me,” Billie said. She marched around and looked in the mirror. “I see me, I see Horace strutting, and I see… Ella, you’re a mouse.”
“But I see me.” Ella frowned.
“No, you are definitely a mouse.”
Everyone crammed around to the backside and peered at the mirror. One after another, they declared they could see themselves, Horace, and Ella – the latter as a mouse. Aric thought of bringing all the magic wands around.
“What happens if you hold one of Dad’s props?”
“Nothing! I’ve played with these all my childhood, and I can assure you that nothing happens.” Still, Aric shoved a spiraling one into her hand.
“Ask it to show the rest of us as the warriors we are,” he said.
Ella sighed. “Okay. Mirror. My friends want to see themselves as the warriors they really are.”
The mirror reflected mice, rabbits, and a deer. Everyone gasped.
“Wait. Mirror, is this a joke?” She meant it rhetorically, but green words appeared in mist in the mirror.
I DO NOT JOKE.
“Whoa!”
“What!?”
“Wow!”
“WOW!”
Ella backed up. “I’m trying the other side.”
She faced the other side. “Where are our parents?”
The mirror faded, then refocused inside an auditorium. It looked like the inside of an emergency shelter, with cots and people milling about. The exception were the armed guards by all the exits. The mirror moved in closer, until Ella was standing before her mother, who was sitting on a cot, talking to another woman that Ella recognized as Gran’s mother. They looked tired, and as if they hadn’t showered in days.
Ella touched the glass.
“We have to trust the kids,” Ella’s mother was saying.
“I know. I don’t like that they came in and took your husband and Dustin’s father. It feels evil.”
Ella’s mom patted the other woman’s knee. “I know. Phoenix can talk himself out of most things. I’m worried, too.”
Gran’s mother leaned over and put her head on Ella’s mom’s shoulder. “What if they found the kids, and they’re not telling us? The kids haven’t had time to practice their skills. We’ve sheltered them.”
“We never even told Ella who she was.”
Ella frowned, “Who am I, mirror?”
The mirror faded again, and focused on the governor’s office. Fred sat in a chair off to the side, looking miserable and nervous. The governor appeared to be his robust self, and sat behind the desk, hands clasped before him. Seated in the high backed chairs before the governor’s desk were Ella’s father, and Dish’s father.
Phoenix sat as straight as he could, but it was clear he was in some pain. He retained his bearing, however, and stared straight at the governor with his pale blue eyes. Dish’ father slumped in his chair, circles under his eyes, stubble across his jaw, and a look of rebellion on his face. The governor was speaking.
Ella touched the glass.

“Gentlemen, I understand that you do not know where your children are, or how to contact them. They seem to have abandoned you in your crisis. Typical teenagers, thinking of themselves first.”
Phoenix blinked slowly. Dish’s dad looked up at the ceiling as if in boredom.
“I promise you, this will not go well for you if the children do not contact us soon. If you still have a familiar, you are given permission to send it to your children. Tell them to give it up, come out of hiding. The only thing that will happen is that they will be stripped of all magical powers. The reign of the wizarding world is over.”
Phoenix blinked again. “There never was a reign of the wizarding world. I think you’ve read too many novels.”
“Don’t make us hurt you again, Doctor.”
Dish’s father shook his head, “If my kid was some sort of wizard, it don’t explain his bad grades or the fact that he can’t get it together to mow the lawn or take out the trash when I ask him to. That sound like magic to you, boss?”
“Frank, you are tempting me.”
Frank rolled his eyes, very much like Dish did. “I told you. He ran away. Probably spent the night with Gran. That’s what he does when he’s mad at me, or I’m mad at him. His mother just hides in the sewing room and pretends there ain’t a problem. Flipping bad that you killed his cat, though. Dustin can carry a grudge a long time.”
“Phoenix, let us talk about your children. Where do you think they would go?”
Phoenix looked at his fingernails. “Ella has a couple close friends, but she’s a solitary mouse. She’s always hidden in the attic, but I guess you checked that out, am I right? Aric? He’d take off on his bike. Nothing like BMX to work off the adrenalin. You arrested their parents without a warrant. El’s a smart girl. She’d know this is all bogus. She’d pursue all the legal channels. Aric would just run off with Deacon somewhere. I am assuming you haven’t Deacon in custody?”
“Your daughter would go to?”
Phoenix shrugged. “A civil liberties lawyer. El’s pretty sharp.”
Fred looked up. “We could lure them in,” he suggested.
“With what?” Phoenix sounded bored.
“We could kill you.”
A long blink. “Yes, Fred, you could. But my kids would come after you, not come to my rescue.” a short blink.

It hit Ella. “Wait. Mirror. Is he sending a message? Can you decipher my dad‘s blinks?” And Dish’s dad. He keeps tapping his fingers. Can you help me? Translate it?”

The words appeared on the mirror in red.

ELLA. DO NOT BELIEVE THEM. THEY CANNOT KILL US.
DUSTIN. I LOVE YOU.
ELLA. MOUSE.
DUSTIN. HARD ON YOU TO MAKE YOU STRONG.
GOVERNORS OFFICE. MOUSE.

The scene faded away, and Ella was staring at a reflection of herself as a mouse. She turned from the mirror and found pen and pad of paper, and scribbled the messages. Then she sat down.
“I think it’s a message,” she said. “And my dad knows the mirror is watching.”
Everyone crowded around her, except for Horace, who was still parading back and forth before the opposite side of the mirror.
They read what she had written down, and listened to her recount what she had seen. Dish, especially, was intent on the story. “He really said that?”
“The mirror said he did,” Ella promised him.
Meanwhile, Richard tried to get his large screen TV to pull up the local news channels. The television faded in and out, blinked blue screen with digital images, and then connected. Headline news: first executions of wizards tomorrow night at 6:oo PM. The camera focused on four photos of men:
Phoenix Peabody
Frank Delano
Michael Michaels
John Hexton

The teenagers looked at each other: Dylan’s dad, Gran’s dad, Dish’s dad, and Aric and Ella’s father. The news reporter showed no emotion. A gallows showed in the background.
“How barbaric,” Natalie exclaimed. “Isn’t there any outrage?”
“If there is, it is being suppressed,” Ella held back tears.
“The mirror is the heirloom, don’t you get it?” Deke jumped in. “It has nothing to do with El, but everything to do with the mirror. They don’t know El can talk to the mirror. They think she has as much magic as a grasshopper. The mirror is a portal, but it wants us to go through as mice. Or Ella to. We just have to figure out where Fred – or Yokai – will be.”
“Twerp, I hate to admit it, but I think you may be a genius.”
“Yeah, well, Dork, I’m beginning to like you as Aric’s big sister. Let’s not get sentimental.”
Billie walked around the mirror to look at her reflection, again. “It probably only wants Ella to go through.”
“I wouldn’t even know what to do.”
“Be the heroine.”
Ella felt the words like a slap on the face. “What is with you, Billie? I’m not trying to be anything. I just want the same thing you do: our parents and our lives back.”
“Maybe we could have done that long ago, when everyone stopped me from talking to Mike!”
“I did not. I was going with you, to help you. Kitsune stopped ALL of us, and told us it was dangerous.”
“Then you led us into those horrid crows!” Billie’s eyes began brimming with tears. “I’ve always been afraid of birds! And your heroic idea of saving us was to crawl – CRAWL – through a MOUSE den! We couldn’t see, and it smelled awful, and then there were those raccoons, and the hunters.” She started crying.
“Oh, Billie!” Ella reached for her friend.
“Don’t touch me!” Billie turned and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Everyone heard the lock turn.
Ella’s lower lip trembled. Madison touched her arm, “I’ll talk to her, El. You go ask the mirror exactly what the plan is, OK? It picked you.”