The Mirror

Short story: Little House on the Prairie meets The Picture of Dorian Gray

Aug 31, 2024

Hello! Thank you for stopping by Naptime Novelist! To learn more about what kinds of stories you’ll find here, you can visit my Guidebook.

This story is perfect for fans of weird Westerns and Little House on the Prairie (or preferably both).

Evening was getting on, and the twilight nestled purple in the tips of the billowing grasses that stretched in ocean swells toward the horizon. Before long the setting sun would dip below the endless wasteland, leaving only the whispers of grass stalks, the yips of coyotes, and the wailing howls of wolves in the bottomlands by the river. Fierce, wild creatures unafraid because men were unfamiliar. They didn’t yet know what it was to be hunted.

The saddlebag bulged against my horse’s side. Out of sight, out of mind, or so I had hoped. But my skin itched for the quilt-wrapped bundle.

Through the gloaming, a stark shape poked from the waves of prairie grass. The ridge of a cabin, at long last. To my ears drifted the faint, deep rumble of a dog’s bark, the clank of a padlock against the barn door.

They saw me coming, of course, long before I arrived. There was no stealth on the prairie so long as the dregs of sunlight still clung to the flat earth.

A man, a long-barreled shotgun in his hands, stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the fireplace light behind him. “You looking for shelter, traveler?”

My tired horse clip-clopped to the cabin, then stopped, its heavy hooves digging into the dirt. Dismounting, I kept hold of the bridle. “You are the husband of Elizabeth Miller?”

The man’s loose stance shifted, tightened. “Who are you?”

“A cousin. With a delivery for your wife.”

A woman appeared in the doorway behind the man’s shoulder. Balanced on her hip, a small child clutched at her worn brown calico dress.

“No one brings mail or packages out here,” the man said. “We have to go forty miles to Liberty just to post a letter.”

“As I said, I am family.” I opened my saddlebag and pulled out the tightly wrapped bundle. My fingers thrummed with the nearness of it, separated from my sight only by a few folds of fabric. “I bring a gift.”

“Our barn’s locked with a chain. Any friends you’ve got hiding in the grass won’t be able to break in and steal the horses without making enough racket for me to hear, even if they could get past Ox.” The man gestured with the butt of his gun toward the thick-bodied dog straining at its lead.

“I have no interest in your horses,” I said. “I come alone.”

“Let him in, John,” Elizabeth said in a soft, steel-strong voice. “He’s not armed.”

The man squinted hard at me, travel-battered and weary, and took a step back from the doorway. Not a welcome, but permission.

I tied up my horse and moved toward the warm glow of the fire inside. The tips of my fingers tingled where the quilt touched me, and the package was heavy, strangely heavy.

At the doorway, the bearded husband with windblown hair said in a low, growling voice, “Her name’s not Elizabeth Miller anymore. Hasn’t been for years.”

“It’s Brown,” the woman said. Her voice was at once gentle as cotton and sharp as a paring knife. “Mrs. Brown.”

“You are the daughter of Jeremiah and Hannah Miller?”

“Yes, I am.”

In the light, her hair was the same chestnut color as my own, her nose straight and upturned like mine. So similar, after so many generations. Yes, somehow, against all odds, after so many long months of fruitless searching, this was the Elizabeth Miller I’d sought.

“Please sit,” she said. “We have plenty of fresh game. Wild prairie chicken and rabbit.”

Elizabeth set a small bowl on the checkered tablecloth. Leaning forward, I saw in the bowl fine grains like snow-white sand. White sugar, store-bought. Company sugar. I had traveled through this vast, empty land long enough to understand the value of such a luxury.

The meal was silent. The husband’s eyes never strayed far from me, and the three freckled children stared with shameless curiosity.

At last, clearing the dishes, Elizabeth broke the silence. “I don’t believe you said your name. I’d be glad to know how it is that we’re kin.”

“Möller,” I said. “Horst von Möller.” Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my pipe and tin of tobacco.

“That’s a fine pipe,” said Mr. Brown.

“Porcelain, hand-painted.” I held out the tin, and after a moment’s hesitation the man accepted, producing his own plain black pipe.

Heady and dark as the oaks I’d climbed as a boy, the tobacco softened the silence and dulled my awareness of the bundle leaning against the wall beside the door.

“It was many generations ago,” I said at last, turning to Elizabeth, “that our family trees last aligned. Nearly two hundred years.”

“That’s quite some time.” Elizabeth’s face was still, watchful, as she cradled the baby on her knee. When she spoke again, her voice rang with metallic cheeriness. “What brings you so far West now, Mr. Möller?”

I blew a smoke ring, round and large. “You served a delicious dinner to a weary traveler. Allow me to tell you a story, a folk tale of sorts from my home country, by way of repaying your generosity.”

Puffing again from my pipe, I kept my eyes away from the tightly wrapped quilts. “Once upon a time there was a wealthy man. He was a grasping, hateful man who wanted always what he did not have, and he raised his two sons to be grasping and hateful as well. When he died, he split his estate between his sons. Two rings, one for each son. Two castles, one for each son.”

“He had castles? Two castles?” one of the children said. Elizabeth hushed her.

“Castles, gold, jewels, and one thing more. The hateful old man had a beautiful mirror of Venetian glass.” I lowered my voice to a whisper, and the children’s eyes widened as large and round as the milky moon outside. “But there was only one mirror. The man left it to both his sons. And what do you think the two brothers did?”

“Shared it,” said the little girl, glancing at her mother and folding her prim hands on her dress.

“They fought over it,” said the dark-haired little boy.

“They did fight,” I said, “to the death.”

The children gasped, and Elizabeth’s eyes watched me even more closely.

“But to kill a brother is a terrible crime, and it brought a great curse upon the family. The widow of the murdered brother fled, taking her child with her, and her children and her children’s children have been fleeing ever since, moving from place to place, always without a home. That is their curse, to wander.”

A faint chuckle came from Mr. Brown, and he shook his head.

But I went on. “This family, the descendants of the murdered brother, over time forgot their curse. There were natural explanations, always, for their precarity. Famines, sicknesses, fires, bad luck. Women marrying for stability, only to find that suddenly the quiet husband has an urge to wander.”

At this I caught the faintest glance between husband and wife, a small shift in the air of the tiny cabin. Mr. Brown stood and took his pipe to the window.

“But the other family,” I said, “the family of the murderer – their curse was different. They kept the mirror. It hung in the grand hall until the brother moved it to his bedroom. When he was old and near death, he instructed servants to hold it before him at his bedside, and he died with his eyes upon it.”

The children’s freckles were stark now over their pale faces, and Elizabeth, eyeing me, gave a meaningful cough.

“What did he see in the mirror?” asked the little girl.

“An excellent question. A brilliant little girl you have,” I said to Elizabeth, then turned my gaze back to the rapt eyes of the children. “What he saw was what might have been. The life he might have led, the most exquisite possibilities. And when he died, the mirror passed to his eldest child. On and on through generations, to sons and grandchildren and great-great children, the mirror held captive the minds of this family, looking always to what might have been, to things grander and more beautiful than those they possessed.”

“How did they stop it?” said the little boy.

“Matthew, don’t interrupt,” Elizabeth said in a quiet warning voice.

“The children’s questions enhance my story, Mrs. Brown. They cannot offend me. Young man, I have heard it said that it takes seven generations to heal a great wound. At the end of those seven generations, how do you think they stopped it?”

“They broke the mirror!”

“Ah, but the mirror does not break. Even a hammer does not dent it.”

“They shared it,” said the little girl. “Gave it away.”

“You said you had a present for us!” the little boy bounced in his seat.

“It’s late.” Elizabeth stood suddenly, ushering the children toward their beds. “Time for little ones to be asleep.” She raised her eyebrows at her husband.

Mr. Brown moved from where he’d been leaning on the windowsill and strode to the door. “We’ve no extra bed,” he said to me, “but the barn will give you a roof over your head.”

The thick-bearded husband slept on the hard ground outside the barn door, his shotgun on his lap and his growling dog on a chain beside him.

In the darkness and the eerie prairie silence, my skin itched and my fingers twitched and my feet ached to creep out of the barn and up to the little log house. The mirror, or whatever malignant echo of generations lurked inside it, was fighting back, clawing at me.

The mirror was just inside, leaning up against the wall, still covered. It wouldn’t work, of course, my reckless, foolhardy attempt to undo generations of heartache. The curse would stay, clinging to the folds of my skin and seeping through my ears and through my eyes and into my brain and down my throat and into my heart.

I would take it. Take it home, take it back across this wasteland, back to where it belonged. If I was silent, if I was quick, if I snatched the gun and fired once at the thick-bearded man, if I reloaded and killed the snarling dog next, then there would be nothing stopping me –

No – I covered my face with my hands and pressed myself against the far wall of the barn. Beside me the two horses clomped their hooves on the dirt floor, shying away from me.

A prodigy, a genius, an inventor – I was all of these things in the unbreakable Venetian glass. Someone who had studied more, tried harder, had a father who did more than seal himself up, lusting after lives unlived.

If the husband was dead, if the dog was silenced – the soft-voiced woman had no gun in the house with her, and the children wouldn’t make a sound –

No – I needed to leave, to escape across the prairie, to put as much distance as possible between myself and this thing, this evil thing. But the dark-bearded man, with his ferocious, restless dog beside him, lay clutching his gun, blocking my only way out. There was no escape, not without noise, not without a fight. And if it came to a fight, I could not trust my own hands not to kill everyone in my path and snatch back the small, unbreakable thing that had caused so, so much trouble.

The thoughts crept in, suffocating me. A rising tide, talons in my brain, sinking in their claws, barbed and immovable.

Gasping, I dug my fingers into the dirt and prayed for morning.

“That’s an interesting way to sleep.”

I opened my eyes to find Mr. Brown towering above me. My back shoved against a corner of the barn, my arms looped around the heavy plow. Unfolding myself, I stood in the pale yellow light that seeped through chinks in the walls and poured through the open barn door.

Mr. Brown moved toward the house.

The nightmarish urges faded with the daylight, but I could feel them lurking, all sharp eyes and dripping teeth, in the recesses of my mind.

“I must be on my way.” On wobbling legs, I started toward my horse.

“Eliza made breakfast,” Mr. Brown said, not breaking stride.

“He’s awake, he’s awake!” The little boy jumped in the doorway. “Can we open the present, can we?”

My fingers twitched, my hands clenching to fists. Suddenly, I realized I was rushing toward the door. Pressing in just behind Mr. Brown, I entered the little house.

There it was, against the wall. Untouched, still covered. Take it, take it – remove the witnesses and run.

“I made breakfast.” Elizabeth’s voice, as cheerful in the sunlight as it had been wary in the dark, poked through my thoughts like a needle.

“I have to go,” I said, my voice a dry, rasping croak. I forced myself to turn and face the door. “No time.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Of course. Then let’s open this gift, at least, before you go. Very kind of you.”

She motioned to the two older children, who surged forward and began to unwrap the quilts.

The gun sat on its pegs above the doorway. Reach up, that’s all I had to do. The father first, and then the rest, with gun or knife or my hands, whatever it took.

Struggling for breath, I stumbled toward the door. Get away, I had to get away.

“Is it the mirror from the story?” the little boy shouted.

“The mirror was just a tall tale, Matthew,” Elizabeth said. “Mr. Möller, are you feeling well?”

I stopped myself, caught in the doorway, neither in nor out.

The children dropped the quilts to the floor, and Elizabeth gasped. “Oh. Mr. Möller, it’s beautiful.”

I forced first one foot, then the other, out the door and down to the soft prairie grass. My voice strangled in my throat as I forced words past my lips. “What do you see?”

Like sandpaper on my skin, my body ached to shove back through the doorway, to throw myself in front of the mirror –

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Elizabeth said.

I held my arms against the doorframe, stopping my body from propelling me back inside. “Tell me what you see.”

“Myself. The cabin. Matthew making faces.” Elizabeth frowned at me through the door, a skeptical concern lining her face, the look of a woman talking to a madman. “As with any other mirror. Though it is very beautiful. It’s much too fine for our little cabin, Mr. Möller. It’s far too grand a gift, and though you’re kin, we don’t know you –”

“Keep it.” Pushing away from the cabin, I stumbled to my horse and untied her. Sweat dripped down my face, and my fingers slipped on the knots. I couldn’t leave it, I had to take it back, it was my family’s, it was mine, mine. “Take it.”

“You must take something for the journey, some food –”

“No. Take it. You must take it.” Clenching my teeth, I dug my heels into the horse’s side, and the creature took off galloping across the prairie, its pounding hooves kicking up a swirl of dust that caught the slanted golden rays of the early morning sun.

Even the wind stilled as the sun neared its zenith, settling an otherworldly calm over the endless golden prairie. We walked slower now, my horse and I.

Exhaustion ate at my bones. My skin that had itched to reach for weapons, to cut down a family and steal back my heirloom – no, the heirloom, not mine, not anymore – was raw, the nerves sensitive and tingling. But the wounds would heal, in their way. They would scar, thicker and tougher and harder to break.

There had been no thunderclap, no earthquake. What had I expected? That the mirror would shatter, belch out an exorcised swirl of blackness? Was it enough, that Elizabeth had seen only herself, only what was real? Was that proof enough?

Seven generations to right a wrong. That much I had done.

To all the tender, fragile recesses of my mind, to the places that bore the ragged wounds of the mirror’s touch, each heavy step brought a fragment of a scar, a stronger rebuilding.

Black-centered flowers with candy-yellow petals rose above the grasses, reaching taller than my horse’s head. Their faces turned with the sun, drinking in the blinding light.

Ocean gold billowed around me in quiet vastness, in wildness. How had I ever thought it a wasteland?

Following its long arc over the massive bright blue sky, the sun drifted down behind me, leaving the mirror and the little cabin far to the West. I kept my face pointing East, homeward, where eventually the sun would peek up again in its first tentative movements of the new morning. The further we walked, my horse and I, the dimmer throbbed the pain, each step a little easier.

Thank you so much for taking time to read “The Mirror”! If you enjoyed this story, please feel free to let me know with a like, comment, or restack!

Here’s a little plug for my upcoming paranormal murder mystery serial, the follow-up to Judith Temple’s adventure Down in the Holler. If you haven’t caught up with DITH, you can find a list of episodes here.

Here’s a little teaser for Beasts of the Field:

When Judith Temple, a software developer moonlighting as a psychic detective, lends her services to help find a missing woman in rural Kentucky, she is stunned when her usually reliable visions appear to be…wrong. As Judith pushes for answers, she uncovers secrets the small town seems determined to keep hidden, by whatever means necessary.