Lisa and Megan tried as many different things as they could think of to make the mirror reveal anything magical. Megan even sarcastically tried the incantation from “Snow White”; asking the mirror who was the fairest of them all. Finally, with the daylight streaming in the tower windows beginning to dim, Megan convinced Lisa to give it up for the moment.
“Come on, Liss, there’s probably something you’re supposed to do that you haven’t read about yet. Just go back and figure it out.”
“I guess you’re right. OK. But come on Meg, is this place the coolest or what?”
Megan looked around the cluttered, filthy tower room. “Sure, Liss. Coolest dump I’ve seen.”
For the next few days the girls, even Lisa, devoted themselves to preparations for their mother’s visit. Afterward, with the castle dubbed “promising”, Lisa returned to the library in earnest, poring over Agneta’s thin, neat script. Three days later found Lisa back in the tower room, this time examining the full-length mirror with care. It was when she rearranged some of the clutter and slid the mirror away from the wall that she found it. Hidden in the back was an old, crudely-made wooden box, and tucked in beside it was an ancient book. Lisa took them downstairs to the library and laid them out on the table. Then she called Megan in.
“I found it,” she said. “The big mirror isn’t the one. It’s in this box. And that book is the instructions.”
“OK this really IS cool,” said Megan, opening the book.
“Careful,” said Lisa, “it’s so old it’s falling apart.”
Together they gently leafed through the grimoire, with its gruesome illustrations, arcane diagrams, and dense text.
“Can you even read this?” asked Megan.
“Only some of it,” admitted Lisa. “I’ve gotten a lot better after reading Agneta’s diaries; I don’t even need the dictionary that much any more. But some of this might be Latin or some other language. But Agneta could read it, so maybe there are dictionaries in here somewhere.” She waved her hand to indicate the library.
“How’d you find it?”
“I went back and read a bunch of diary entries. About three years’ worth. I noticed when Agneta was talking about the mirror she mentioned holding it and carrying it sometimes. And then she mentioned the box, and a hiding place. I figured the dressing mirror wasn’t hidden; it was just sitting out in the open. So there had to be something else. But she mentioned the big mirror a lot too, so I dragged it out from the wall and went all over it. And there these were, stashed in the back. Ooh, and Meg, I think she made that box out of coffin wood!”
“Ew,” said Megan. “So now what? Does she say what it’s supposed to do?”
“She never used it. She took seven years to make it, but then she changed her mind and just put it away. I’ll have to go back to some entries before she started to try to find out why she wanted it. But I bet the instructions for using it are in the book.”
“Good luck with that,” said Megan, looking around for something to wipe her hands with. “I’ve got to get back; the kitchen planner is due soon. That’s going to be our biggest project yet.”
“You’re redoing the kitchen?” asked Lisa.
“Totally,” said Megan. “it’ll be just like a restaurant kitchen.” Megan had discovered that renovating a castle — or at least directing designers and work crews who were renovating your castle for you — was more entertaining than she would have guessed.
But Lisa suddenly asked “Meg, do you think there’s anything weird going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“I dunno exactly. But look at what we’re doing. We have all the money in the world, and we’re in Europe and on our own. Would you expect two rich young chicks to spend all their time working on a castle?”
“If it was their own castle…”
“No, really, Meg. How long have we been here, doing nothing else? Since we arrived, we haven’t left town. Learning the language has been super easy, but I wasn’t any good at languages before. I nearly flunked French. Why aren’t we hanging out on a private island in the Mediterranean? We probably own one.”
“Do you want to go hang out on an island?”
“No, that’s my whole point. I just realized that this castle, and the diaries, and the mirror, and now the book — those are all I really want to do now. It’s just…weird.”
“You don’t have to stick around, Liss, but I’m going to get the kitchen started, then I have about five other projects on the list.”
“But think about it for just a sec, Meg. You’re twenty years old, how did you turn into Martha Stewart?”
“I just want this place — our own place — to be nice again,” said Megan. “I like working on the castle. It’s what I want to be doing right now.”
“OK, ok, never mind,” said Lisa. She was still puzzled, but let the matter drop. Megan rushed out of the library to meet the kitchen planner.
