Worlds Collide (The Land of Stories #6)(39)

Froggy thought about it, but it was a mystery to him, too. There was only one possible conclusion he could come up with.

“Maybe it’s just like the woman said,” he suggested. “Perhaps the key to freeing yourself from the mirror is freeing someone else first.”

The little girl got to her feet, but when she turned back to the mirror, she wasn’t a little girl anymore. A beautiful middle-aged woman with long raven hair was now standing before Froggy.

“I’m so old,” she said. “Why have I aged so much?”

“This must be the age you were when you went inside the mirror,” Froggy said. “The longer you were trapped, the more you faded into a little girl.”

The woman stared at her reflection, and after a moment, it astonished her. She looked into her own eyes as if she were seeing a long-lost friend. Suddenly, a wave of memories illuminated her mind like a swarm of fireflies flying into a dark cave.

“I remember,” she said. “I remember where I was born, I remember where I grew up, I remember all the places I lived, I remember the faces of my loved ones… and I remember my name.”

“What is it?” Froggy asked.

“Evly,” she gasped.

Her face quickly filled with shame upon the discovery. It was so overwhelming that she had to take a seat on a small stool.

“Why the long face? This should be a happy moment for you.”

“Because it wasn’t the only name I had,” Evly said.

She walked around the cottage and recited her memories as they came to her, as if she were narrating a film she saw behind her eyelids.

“When I was very young, I was kidnapped by an evil enchantress and forced to work as her slave. I was deeply in love with a young man named Mira, who tried to rescue me. The Enchantress caught Mira and imprisoned him inside a magic mirror as punishment. I was devastated and quickly planned my own escape from her. I poisoned the Enchantress and ran far away, dragging Mira’s mirror into the forest beside me. And then I made a decision that turned me into a monster….”

Froggy laughed. “I have a hard time believing that.”

“No, I mean it,” Evly said. “I was so heartbroken over Mira, I had a witch cut out my heart and turn it into stone. It made all the pain go away, but it also turned me into an irrational, unsympathetic, and cruel woman. I devoted the rest of my heartless life to freeing Mira from the mirror. I married a king in hopes of using his resources, and I tried killing my stepdaughter. The world found out and hated me for it, and I became known throughout the kingdoms as the Evil Queen….”

The name should have sent shivers down Froggy’s spine, but he remained completely unaffected. He listened to Evly’s memories as if they were a story he had never been told, completely unaware that the two of them shared some of these memories.

“Years later, I tried freeing Mira using the Wishing Spell. By the time I collected all the items the spell needed, Mira had faded into nothing but a reflection. He died in my arms just a few moments after being freed. There was a big battle at the time. Soldiers had found me in an abandoned castle, cannons were being blasted outside, the castle began to crumble. The magic mirror crashed over me and I’ve been trapped inside ever since.”

Evly covered her eyes and cried as if the story she had been watching had come to a tragic ending.

“And what about your heart?” Froggy asked. “Is it still made of stone?”

Evly placed a hand over her chest and gasped.

“No, I can feel it beating!” she said. “How is this possible? What sort of magic could restore someone’s heart?”

“I understand completely,” Froggy said with a smile. “It’s called a second chance. After a lifetime of sorrow, the mirror dimension has granted you an opportunity to start over.”

“I don’t deserve a second chance,” Evly said. “After all the pain I’ve caused over the years, I deserve to spend eternity inside a prison cell.”

“Then perhaps it’s a chance for redemption,” he suggested. “You were too late to free Mira, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late for everyone else. There are plenty of people who feel trapped in the mirror and could use all the advice you’ve been storing.”

“But why me?” Evly asked. “Surely there are much more suitable candidates than an evil queen.”

“Well, maybe not,” Froggy said. “Maybe you were meant to go through all that pain and heartbreak so you could save others from their own. Maybe the Evil Queen is just a chapter in your life and not the whole story. Maybe the world has dreamed bigger plans for you than you’ve dreamed for yourself.”

Tears filled Evly’s eyes as she thought it over. It was difficult to accept kindness from a world she thought so cruel.

“I should take my own advice and stop feeling sorry over the things I can’t control,” she said. “Thank you for guiding me through it. As much as I’d like to continue looking for your friends, I suppose I’m quite useless to you from this side of the glass. Good luck to you, whoever you are.”

Evly kissed the mirror near Froggy’s cheek and left the cottage, taking her first steps toward a new beginning. Once she was gone, Froggy left the mirror and wandered into the darkness of the mirror dimension.

“What a nice lady,” he said to himself. “I wonder which friends she was talking about….”