Death's Daughter: A Disney's Descendants Story

Fun House Mirror

    The five adventurers crept through the ruined castle, Bats scrambled and fluttered over their heads, and the crumbling marble floor beneath them seemed to shift and slide in order to bear their weight.
     "This way," Carlos said, motioning to a narrow passage in front of him.
     They followed, trailing behind Carlos, the machine beeping, the sound growing louder. "Now this way," he said, rounding on turn. Evie was right behind him as they followed, the passage growing narrower. "And now—"
     "What's going on?" asked Evie, cutting him off. "Because I know my sizing, and I didn't just double in diameter in the last two and a half minutes."
     Indeed, the passage had narrowed to nearly her shoulders width. If it got any narrower they would have to turn sideways.
     Mal raised her voice. "Is it just my imagination, or are we wedged inside a mountain like—"
     "A piece of string dangling down a pipe? Toothpaste squeezed inside a straw? A hangnail In this cuticle right here?" Jay said, holding out his hand. "Dang, this one really hurts."
    "Are you describing the things you've stolen today? Because those are terrible analogies," Hesper said, looking at Jay with an pointed expression.
     "Maybe we should go back," suggested Carlos. "Except—I think I might be stuck." Just then, the walls shook, the castle rattle, and a chip of stone fell to the floor. The shard was big enough to do damage, and it narrowly missed Evie's perfect nose.
     She cried out. She wanted to retreat, but she couldn't, the corridor was too narrow. "Maybe it's some kind of trap! Let's go—it doesn't look safe!"
    "No," Carlos said. "Look! There's another passage," he added, wedging himself forward until he could pry himself through, into a just wider one.
     Hesper and the others followed him through. Turning right, then left. The walls were farther apart here, but they were oddly sloped, some tilting inward, others outward. The effect was rather dizzying.
     As they continued walking, another stone feel from the wall, shattering as it hit the floor, almost crashing down on Hesper's head. She jumped back before getting hit. "What is this place?"
     "We're in some kind of maze," Mal said, thinking aloud. "That's why the corridors keep turning, why passages keep splitting off and narrowing. It's some kind of twisted maze, and we're lost in it."
     "No, were not. We've still got the box," Carlos replied. It's the only thing that is keeping us from getting lost in here." The machine was still beeping, so they kept following him. Eventually the winding corridors soon gave away to more open spaces and all of them breathed a sigh of relief.
     As they kept walking down the narrow and straight hallways, the ceilings became shorter. All of them had to crouch down, except for Carlos, just to avoid it.
    "It's a room made for mice," said Mal.
    "Or dwarfs?" asked Evie.
    "Or children?" Hesper guessed.
    "No," Carlos said, quieting the others, pointing to something in the dark distance. They followed the line of his gaze, seeing first a pair of green glowing eyes, then another and another.
    "Goblin's," Carlos said. "This is where the goblins live. That's why the ceilings are so low and the corridors are so strange. This isn't a place for humans," he said, and when he finished, the air filled with a terrible, raucous laughter, the sound of claws and tapping and teeth grinding. The box had led them right into the goblins den.
     "Super," said Mal.
    "Yeah, good work," Jay snorted.
    Both Hesper and Evie just glared at Carlos.
    And these weren't the friendly, enterprise goblins off the wharf or the rude ones form the Slop Shop. These were the horrible creatures that had lived in the darkness without their mistress for twenty years. Hungry and horrible.
    "What do we do?" Jay asked, cowering behind Carlos.
    "We run," the girls cried together.
    They ran toward the only open passageway, the goblin horde shrieking in the darkness, following behind them, their spears beating against the walls.
     Jay shouted, "I guess they don't get a lot of visitors."
    "Well, maybe, they should stop eating their guests," Hesper said, nearly tripping over what she hoped wasn't a bone.
    "That door!" Evie said, pointing to a heavy wooden door. "Everyone in!"
     They hurried through the doorway, and Evie slammed the door after them, locking it, preventing the goblins from getting in.
    "That was close," said Mal.
    "Too close," Jay echoed. The goblins could still be heard on the far side of the door, cackling and tapping it with their spears.
    "Maybe they just like to scare people?" Evie said. "I heard they were mostly harmless."
    "Yeah, mostly," Hesper muttered.
    "Let's not wait to find out," Carlos said.
    When it sounded as if the goblins had gone, Evie cracked open the door. She made sure they were alone before she nodded to Carlos. They continued down the narrow hallways finding nothing but empty chambers until she spied a light shining from a hidden hallway. "Over here!" she called.
     Hesper and the others were about to enter the chamber that Evie had entered when they heard a scream. "A monster!"
    Mal and Hesper hurried. "What is it?" Mal asked. Hesper looked over Evie shoulder and screamed.
    Carlos and Jay bumped up next.
    "A beast," Evie yelled. "A hideous beast!" Evie was pointing at her reflection, where an old woman with a crooked nose and wearing a black cape was pointing right back.
    The hag was her.
    In fact she wasn't the only one. They all looked like hideous hags.
    Mal frowned at her reflection. "Charming. It's got to be some kind of spell."
    Hesper shook her head. "We've already established this; there's no magic on the island."
    "There was a moment—for a single second—when my machine burned a hole in the dome, and I think maybe that was what did it," Carlos said.
     "Did what, exactly?" Evie asked, spooked.
    "Brought Diablo back to life, sparked the Dragon's Eye and the gargoyle and the Cave of Wonders, and probably everything that used to be magical in this fortress," said Carlos.
     Evie couldn't bear to look at her reflection anymore. She began to panic; her throat was constricting. She couldn't look like this! She was beautiful! She was—
    "Fairest," agreed the mirror.
    "Not the voice!" Evie shouted, before she realized, what exactly she had heard. It was an actual magic mirror. On an actual wall.
    They all turned to the mirror, whose human-esque features had appeared as a ghostly presence in the reflective glass.

"Fairest you are, and fairest you will be again,
If you prove you are wise
and declare all the ingredients needed
for a peddlers disguise."
Said the Magic Mirror.

    "It's a word problem!" said Carlos, gleefully. He loved word problems.
    "No, it's not. It's a spell," Jay said, looking at him like he was crazy.
    "I knew it!" said Mal.
    "What's a peddler's disguise?" asked Jay.
    "Obviously—it's this. It's whats happened to us," said Mal. "Evie, do you know what goes into making a peddlers disguise? It sounds like if we can name all the ingredients, we can reverse the spell."
    "Not us," Carlos pointed out. "Evie. It says you know, the Fairest." He looked at Mal and Hesper, suddenly embarrassed. "Sorry, Mal. Hesp."
    "There's nothing fair about me now," Evie said. "But I have heard of the Peddlers Disguise though."
     "Of course you have. It's only your mother's most famous disguise," exclaimed Hesper. "Remember—when she fooled Snow White into taking the apple?"
     "Don't pressure me! You're making me panic. It's like, I used to know it, but now I can't think of anything except her." Evie pointed at her reflection. "I'm paralyzed."
     "I don't know I think it's kind of cool," Jay said. "You could steal a whole lot of stuff, looking like that."
     Carlos nodded. "He does have a point. You might want to give the whole getup a test run."
Evie started to wail.
    "Not helping," Mal scolded.
    Evie wailed all the more loudly.
   "Evie, come on. That's not you. You know that. Don't let Mal's Mother's evil fortress get under your skin," Hesper said, in the most calm and gentle voice she could muster. The sound of it sent chills down the boy's backs. Why was she so mysterious?
     "This is exactly what my—I mean, Maleficent does. She finds your weakness and picks them off, one by one. You think it's an accident that we stumbled across this Magic Mirror, right when we happened to have the Fairest along for the ride?" Mal said, sounding as passionate on a subject as Evie had ever her sound about anything at all.
     "You think it's on purpose?" Evie looked calmer, and even a little intrigued.
     "I think it's a test," Hesper replied.
     "Okay," Evie said slowly, nodding at Hesper and Mal. "You really think I can do it?"
     "I know you can, you loser," Mal said with a grin.
     "She means fairest loser," Hesper corrected, with the same grin.
     Evie grinned back at the two. "I've studied that spell a hundred times in my mothers grimoire."
     "That's the spirit," Mal said, thumping her on the back.
     "I can see the words of the spell as clear as if it were before me now," Evie said a little more loudly, standing a little straighter. She looked her old, ugly self right in the eye.
     "'Mummy dust, to make me look old!" she cried. Suddenly her wrinkles disappeared.
     Evie smiled. "'To shroud my clothes, black of night!'"
     In a flash they were wearing their own clothes again.
     "'To age my voice, an old hags cackle!'" she said, and even as she said it, her real voice returned, young and melodic once again.
     "'To whiten my hair, a scream of fright!'" said Evie, watching as her hair went back to the dark, beautiful blue hue. Hesper's once light blue hair returned to their normal thick locks, and the black seeped into Carlos's white hair.
     Evie was almost done now, and her voice gained confidence as she remembered the last words of the incantation. "'A blast of wind to fan my hate, a thunderbolt to mix it well, now reverse this magic spell!'"
     All five of them cheered and yelled and jumped around like crazy idiots. Even Evie was grinning now.
    She had never been so happy to see herself again, she that for once in her life, nobody even cared how she looked. Not even her.
    It was like magic.