“Hello?” Prin responded to his reflection. Although if this was him, he couldn’t see any real point in talking to each other.

“You seem a little lost.” Mirror Prin said.

“I am.” Prin admitted.

“Come closer.” The reflection Prin said, beckoning.

Prin stepped closer to his doppelganger. After all, what could he have to fear from . . . himself?

A black velvet cushion appeared at the base of the throne, and Prin sat down on it. Maybe he had been supposed to kneel. Hopefully it was enough to be looking up at him, like a child about to take part in the wisdom of a master.

The other Prin smiled, though it was not a kindly look. “Now, tell me why you waste so much of your time and energy worrying about these . . . people who don’t matter in the slightest. Their health, their well being, what they think of you, and all of that. It’s a minefield of anxiety up there and what do you gain from it?” He tapped the side of his head.

He was almost mesmerizingly pretty, his skin pale as milk and just as flawless, his lips tinged berry-red and forming each word in the most precise and showman like manner.

Did Prin actually look anything like this? Where were the knobby knees and gangly limbs ready to trip over themselves, the fly away hair, eyes too big for his face? He bet this mirror Prin never had a bad hair day because of humidity.

“Aster matters.” Prin said. “All my friends matter to me.”

“Sure they do.” Other Prin said. “As lunch.” He laughed in Prin’s face.

“Are you from the future?” Prin asked. He was afraid this vision would pop like a bubble any moment and he had to ask. Was this real? Was he real?

Other Prin shrugged, and even that was elegant. “Maybe so, maybe not. I guess that all depends on you.”

“Or, are you the cursed me.” Prin had an awful thought. This was the hungry one, the one who took over when he had to fade back and get out of the way.

“I’m you. You are the cursed one.” Hungry Prin said. “You are the hungry one.”

“Oh . . . right.” Prin hoped the bubble would burst soon and send him away from here.

“Anyway, this isn’t what I came to talk to you about.” His mirror self said. “But you can’t pursue power until you drop the dead weight.”

“I don’t want power.” Prin said.

“Sure.” Other Prin rolled his eyes, two blue planets trying to crash into his eyebrows. “I – you – just wanted to say that if you stop focusing on unimportant things and running around like a chicken with its head chopped off, you could smell out the witch right under your nose. Just a little friendly advice. From you to you.”

“What do you mean!? Where?” Prin stood up quickly.

“Right here in this house. You know which one.” Mirror Prin said. “She has been slipping up lately, making herself obvious.”

And of course, he must know, Prin reasoned.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Not that you will get much out of her, low level thing that she is.” The Prin on the throne crossed his legs and leaned his head on one bejeweled hand. “If you do away with her, things will go much better for one of your little friends. See, some curses are weaker than others, they will fade with time and have to be helped along. Not yours though.” He laughed again, a musical sound, custom designed for wicked delight. “Some get stronger. Especially when you feed them.”

Prin woke up with the sweaty sheet wrapped around him like a large snake. And something he had heard, he thought, in the transition, from far away as though they were moving in opposite directions, the other him called out “Watch out for fairies, nasty creatures.” Or something like that. And he would certainly take it under advisement.

Prin kicked his way free of the bedding. To his right, Elwin barely stirred, deep in slumber. Prin had a stab of jealousy for that deep, restorative looking sleep.

He knew he had been dreaming but couldn’t shake that he had really been speaking to someone. A separate entity wearing his face? Or truly a different him from a different time and place.

He did recognize that the dream of Aster and the bug-fairy had been purely invented by his own anxiety. Thank the gods.

“There’s a witch here, in this house.” Prin wriggled his nose, as though expecting to actually smell the witch. All he could smell was his own sweat.

But he knew who it was. Like a veil had been lifted, his vision was now clear, and he was amazed it took him so long. She wasn’t exactly subtle. Had she used magic to cloak her presence?

It didn’t matter because whatever she had done, it wouldn’t work anymore.

Prin stood up quickly, still half dressed from before, he put on his shirt and shoes. There was something telling him he may need to be dressed and ready to give chase. He wasn’t a terribly accomplished runner, but he would do his best.

Prin hurried away, leaving Elwin behind him. The thought flitted briefly through his head that it would be nice to have an Elwin along for whatever was to come next, but he didn’t have time for explanations and convincing.

He went toward Valor’s room, and the closer he got, the closer he got to the witch. He could feel her now, more than a smell, it was a presence. But he sniffed the air anyway and almost felt like it helped.

The rest of the household was oh so quiet, almost as though in a drugged sleep. Prin didn’t feel the least bit tired.

At Valor’s door it took everything in him not to burst through the heavy wood and run to his friend. But something told him to stop, use caution. He wasn’t afraid, although maybe he should have been. The feeling of the dream, heavy and surreal, still seemed to fill the air around him like the miasma of an old churchyard at midnight. Gravestones bent and crumbling.

He had to shake his head to come back to reality. Well, what do we do now?

Quiet. Spy.

Prin put his ear to the door. There were voices inside, and other sounds. It was hard to make out anything precise through the intentionally noise dampening door.

He turned the doorknob, painfully slow, and pushed the door open, a mouse’s foot print at a time. When at last he had a good crack to see and hear through, he looked. Although his senses had all they could handle to try and interpret the scene in front of him.

A curl of smoke slid out, riding a breeze through the door’s crack. The smoke came from a burner on a low table in the center of the room, out from the table radiated spokes of chalk symbols decorating the wood floor.

And rising from the fragrantly smoking burner, a multitude of voices. And the smoke itself, taking the form of a gesturing hand here, the ghost of a face there.

“What are you doing?” “Let’s speak of old business first” “Where is that one eyed snake you owe me?” “Who’s going to water my plants?” “And I told the old dog, he had better never touch me again!” “There is vinegar in the recipe, is there not?” “A dreadful storm next moon-day, a perfect time for catching lightning.” “Have you seen my good tablecloth? I lent it to you, I think.”

Aside from the cacophony of overlapping voices, Prin heard piteous mewling. There was an overturned crate with a heavy stack of books on top, and familiar soot black paws swatting and clawing through the slats, desperate to return to their poor master and offer what protection they could.

Valor himself was laying in his bed, a still, boy shaped lump. Asleep and hopefully unaware of what went on around him. Clearly in no shape to move or wake without being released from some spell or drug. Otherwise, even Elwin couldn’t sleep through this noise.

Presiding over this entire mess, like the conductor of an orchestra for the insane, was the serving girl. The one with the name no one could remember, the face that was entirely unnoticeable, the presence that you barely felt enter or leave a room.

It should come as no surprise. She could have been anyone at all.