The boy recalled that the mirror was said to be on a snowy mountaintop, but neither the boy nor the girl knew how to find such a place, so they began searching for people whom they could ask.

They met a homeless man whose teeth chattered as he spoke.

"I- I- don't know of such a thing," said the homeless man. "But if you find it, please help me wish for some warm clothes."

They met a soldier, who rolled his eyes.

"A mirror that grants wishes!" he said. "Do you wish to add even more chaos to this world?"

They met a child, whose eyes lit up upon seeing them and ran straight to the girl, hugging her around the legs.

"You are so pretty, sister!" said the child, looking up at her and beaming with a small set of uneven teeth. "How do you make the lights dance around you so?"

The girl felt something warm in her heart, and kneeled down to look the child in the eyes.

"Would you like to see a trick?" she said.

But the child's mother hurried out to pull the child away, eyeing the girl with unease.

"Monster!" she said. "Don't come near us." Behind her, the child waved merrily at the girl even as other adults ushered her back into the worn concrete building.

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The girl was upset. The boy could feel the walls nearby crumbling and the ground beneath them shaking dangerously.

"Why don't you go sit in that pavilion," he said, "and I'll ask."

The girl was still upset, but she nodded.

When the boy returned, she was sitting on the edge of a fountain with no water.

"What did they say?" said the girl.

"They said they didn't know anything about a mirror like that, but not far from here there is a larger town with more travelers. We may find something there," said the boy.

"Oh," said the girl.

They were both silent.

"What does 'monster' mean?" asked the girl.

"I don't know," said the boy.

Nobody ever called him such a thing before. When they looked at him they saw only a poor blind boy who was down on his luck, and were kind to him. But those same people warned him to stay away from the girl, and the boy was suddenly reminded of when he had first left the island.

All the children on the island had been told to clamber into a wooden object that thrummed with solid, steady bass tones and felt flat and hard to the touch, protecting them from the symphony of water that swirled all around them. After a long time they alighted, and there were people, more people than the boy had ever met, so much that the cacophony hurt his ears. Through it all he heard hushed words, words of warning and disquiet, and he recalled the uneasy, fast-paced piano notes and the disjointed, grainy echoes of strings on air.

"I think it is a name that people use to call that which they do not understand," he said.

There was a place that the children could all go, together, but the boy split off from the group because from that direction he heard the march of trombones and a regimented percussion, and he wanted to find the source of some quiet, beautiful marimba tones that stood out to him amidst the noise.