Wonderwings and other Fairy Stories | Page 3

be, she could not discover the secret. She grew sad with disappointment.
The young queen saw that she was sorrowful. "You are not happy here. What is the matter?" she asked. "What can I do to make you glad?"
The Queen-mother held out her hands imploringly. "Only give me your secret," she begged. "Tell me how you gain the love of your people and keep it through all the years. Tell me so that I may teach my young son how to hold his throne?"
"Is that all?" exclaimed the Queen. "Come, I will show you."
[Illustration: "She led the way to her own lovely sleeping-chamber."]
She led the way to her own lovely sleeping-chamber, hung with rose silk and panelled with polished silver and amethyst, and she pointed to a great mirror set strongly into the wall. "Look within!" she said.
Wonderingly, the Queen-mother obeyed. On the surface of the mirror the faces and forms of herself and the young queen were reflected; but after a few moments, as she gazed, these faded away, and in their places came a picture of a mine, with blackened toilers filling tracks with coal. That, too, faded, and a golden cornfield showed upon the polished glass; under the hot summer sun the busy reapers moved, wiping the sweat from their brows when they stopped a moment to rest. A third picture was of weavers making cloth. A cottage home came next, and a lordly mansion of the rich, and a homeless child seeking shelter under a city bridge. So scene followed scene, beautiful, or sad, or sordid, sometimes wild and violent, and sometimes gay and peaceful, showing in the main a people happy and content.
"What is it?" asked the amazed Queen-mother at last. "How come these pictures here?"
"They are the life of my state reflected on this magic mirror for my help," replied the Queen. "Long ago, when the first queen came to rule the new kingdom of Westroyal, the fairies brought this mirror and set it in the wall as here you see it. Faithfully ever since it has reflected the daily happenings through-out the land, the people's toil and pleasures, their dangers and their comforts and rewards. So each queen has known her country. Your son, looking in his mirror, sees but himself; I see the sufferings of my people and know what things they need, and so plainly are these pictures set before me that I cannot rest till I have used my power to give relief."
"Oh!" cried the Queen-mother, "now I see why you are loved. How can I get such a mirror for my son?"
"That I know not," replied the Queen.
Then the Queen-mother returned sad at heart to the kingdom of her son, pondering on what she had seen.
Once again she walked in her garden alone. "How shall I get such a mirror?" she wondered. "What should I do?"
As once before, a voice replied "I know! I know!"
The Queen-mother looked over the garden wall. Hobbling along the road was the old woman who had bade her go to Westroyal. "You who helped me before, help me again!" cried the Queen-mother. "I have obeyed you. How now shall I get a magic mirror for my son?"
The old woman looked up at her. "Go to the Deeps," she said, and she hobbled off.
Now this was a dreadful command to the Queen-mother, for the Deeps was a horrible black pool in the roughest and most dangerous part of the country. It was said to be formed of the country's tears and to be also bottomless, and to be haunted by beings of strange shape. There were stories of their mysterious power and evil ways. Yet go she must, if going meant the gaining of a magic mirror for her son. And she must go alone, for only so could any seeker find the pathway to the pool, so it was said.
"I will go at once, before my courage fails," she said, and she left her sheltered garden and set off across the land.
She had many weary miles to travel, past villages and towns and fields, and she was footsore and faint when at last she reached the winding track that led between the darkening hills. Yet on she went, following the murmur of a tiny stream that dropped through thick-set bushes into a shadowed valley. On she went still, and now the darkness came, and she had lost her way. She stumbled over fallen logs, pushed with bleeding hands and torn clothes through bramble wildernesses, and found at last her way again to the narrow track beside the little stream that murmured in the dark.
On she went, and down. The stream suddenly widened into a round blackness open to the sky, but walled in by jagged rocks. It was the pool. Utterly spent through weariness and