The Many Adventures of Geoffrey the Llama King

Tale

‘There was once a beautiful young girl of the name Alexia. All over her kingdom there were suitors who lined up for even a glimpse of her flawless face and to give her gifts from all over the lands.

‘One of the suitors was actually a woman named Effie, who was in awe of Alexia’s looks, but also extremely jealous.  Her gift to Alexia was a mirror. This mirror was no ordinary mirror, no. This mirror had been cursed by a witch named Isadora.

‘Now, Isadora was a good witch, and had been tricked by Effie that she was doing the right thing toward Alexia. The spell that she put on a mirror was a spell to allow Alexia to see other cities through the glass, as her father forbade her from leaving the castle. But what Isadora did not know was that Effie had made an identical mirror, which when the spell was placed on Alexia’s mirror turned the other mirror into a window from a different world into Alexia’s. This was only known to Effie.

‘Alexia spent day after day staring into her mirror, enjoying looking at the other places, but one day she saw a place that was nothing like the others she had seen. This place was filled with flying metal birds and moving boxes, like carriages but without the horse. There were castles that reached to the clouds and lots of other strange and wonderful things. But the main thing that took Alexia’s fancy was a boy on the other side of the glass.

‘Effie had sent the other mirror somewhere that she knew Alexia would like; a place where she would be free. The boy saw Alexia one day, watching him, and was interested. So he stole the mirror from where it was in a little shop that his family owned, and spent days in front of it, getting to know Alexia, and, in turn, she getting to know him. His name was Oliver and he was only three months older than Alexia.

‘Alexia and Oliver told no one of each other or of their mirrors. But one day, the two realised that they were in love. Driven by their love for each other, Alexia searched for a way into Oliver’s world so they could be together, as she knew her father would not allow her to marry one of such low class. She looked all through the libraries in the kingdom until she found a forbidden book; a book of magic.

‘Hiding this book, Alexia waiting for the right day before she opened to the spell she found, casting it, and throwing herself into Oliver’s world. When dinner came around, her father went looking for her, but all he found was the book, a note that she left for him, and the mirror.

 ‘My mother read me the story once. I thought it was just a tale, but it can’t be. Not anymore. We’ve seen the mirror and have been transported through to a different world; how can it just be a story?

‘The spell had a loophole. Every fifty years the portal that allowed Alexia to go from her world to Oliver’s opened again, sending anyone who touched the mirror into Oliver’s world.

 ‘The portal opens on the other side too. And I think that Oliver’s world is this world. So all we have to do is find the mirror and go back to Llama Land. The times are different in this world from ours; the portal opens again in three days as of today, so we have three days to find the mirror, or else we’ll be stuck here for another fifty years, and Llama Land will just be a story that we tell to entertain, and we will forget it was ever real.’