The Mirror That Only Reflected Kindness

In a little town between the hills, where the roofs were red and the chimneys always smoked a bit in the mornings, there stood an old well in the square. The well was made of stone and had stood there for so long that no one remembered who had built it. One evening, when the sky was pink and the bats had begun their soft circles, an old man came walking across the square. His cloak was patched and his shoes were dusty, but his eyes were calm as a still lake. His name was Orvar, and he had once been a wizard. Now he was only tired.

Orvar walked over to the well and sat down on its edge. From an inside pocket he drew out something small, wrapped in blue velvet. It was a mirror, oval, scarcely larger than his palm, with a silver frame so thin it looked like a spider's web. He held it up to the evening light and smiled a little, as if he and the mirror knew each other well. 'You have served me long,' he said softly. 'Now you may serve someone else.' Then he pressed the mirror carefully into a crack in the well stone, where it glinted once and held fast, as though the stone had been waiting for it all along.

Once the mirror was in place, Orvar rose slowly. He brushed a little dust from his cloak and looked up at the sky, where the first star had just been lit. 'Mirror,' he said quietly, 'you show only what is kind. Nothing else. That is my last gift.' He nodded once to the well, the way one nods to an old friend, and then walked away across the square. His steps were slow but sure. When he disappeared around the corner by the baker's, the air itself seemed to breathe out, as if something great had just been finished.

The next morning the square was full of people. The baker carried out his fresh loaves, the fishmonger set out his sausages, and the children ran past with cheeks red from the morning air. No one yet knew what had happened at the well. It was a woman named Greta who first saw the mirror. She had come to fetch water. As she bent forward to turn the handle, something glinted beside her. She set down the bucket and peered closer. And there, in the stone, sat a small oval mirror she must have walked past a thousand times before.