Orson Card - Maps in a Mirror - The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

The salamander tried to climb it, but found it slippery—though he had always been able to climb every other wall he found. “Magic. Must be magic,” The porcelain salamander mumbled.

So they circled the wall, hunting for a gate. There was none. It was all around them, though they had never entered it. And at no point did a tree limb cross the wall. They were trapped.

“I’m afraid,” said Kiren. “There’s good magic and bad magic, but how could such a thing as this be a blessing? It must be a curse.” And the thought of a curse caused too much of the old misery to return, and she fought back the tears.

Fought back the tears until night, and then in the darkness, as the salamander scampered here and there, she could fight no longer.

“No,” wailed the salamander.

“I can’t help crying,” she answered.

“I can’t bear it,” he said. “It makes me cold.”

“I’ll try to stop,” she said, and she tried, and she pretty much stopped except for a few whimpers and sniffles until morning brought the light, and she saw that the wall was exactly where it had been.

No, not exactly. For behind her the wall had crept up in the night, and was only a few feet away. Her prison was now not even a quarter the size it had been the day before.

“Not good,” said the salamander. “Oh, it could be dangerous.”

“I know,” she answered.

“You must get out,” said the salamander.

“And you,” she answered. “But how?”

And throughout the morning the wall played vicious taunting games with them, for whichever way neither of them was looking, the wall would creep up a foot or two. Since the salamander was faster, and moved constantly, he watched three sides. “And you hold the other in place.” But Kiren couldn’t help blinking, and anytime the salamander looked away the wall twitched, and by noon their prison was only ten feet square.

“Getting pretty tight here,” said the salamander.

“Oh, salamander, can’t I throw you over the wall?”

“We could try that, and I could run and get help—”

And so they tried. But though she used every ounce of strength she had, the wall seemed to leap up and catch him and send him sliding back down to the ground. Inside.

Soon she was exhausted, and the salamander said, “No more.” Even as they had been trying, the walls had shrunk, and now the space was only five feet square. “Getting cramped,” said the salamander as he raced around the tiny space remaining. “But I know the only solution.”

“Tell me!” Kiren cried.

“I think,” said the salamander, “that if you had something you could stand on, you could climb out.”

“How could I?” she asked. “The wall won’t let anything out!”

“I think,” said the salamander, “that the wall only won’t let me out. Because the birds are flying back and forth, and the wall doesn’t catch them.” It was true. A bird was singing in a nearby tree; it flew across just afterward, as if to prove the salamander’s point. “I’m not alive, you see,” said the salamander. “I’m moving only by magic. So you could get out.”

“But what would I stand on?”

“Me,” said the salamander.

“You?” she asked. “But you move so quickly—”

“For you,” he said, “I’ll hold still.”

“No!” she cried. “No, no!” she screamed.

But the salamander stood at the edge of the wall, and he was only a statue in porcelain, hard and stiff and cold.

Kiren only wept for a moment, for then the wall behind her began to push at her, and her prison was only three feet square. The salamander had given his life so she could climb out. She ought at least to try.

So she tried. Standing on the salamander, she could reach the top of the wall. By standing tiptoe, she could get a grip on the top. And by using every bit of strength she had in her, she was able to force her body to the top and gradually heave herself over.

She fell in a heap on the ground. And in that moment, that very moment, two things happened. The walls shrank quickly until they were only a pillar, and then they disappeared completely, taking the salamander with them. And all the normal, natural strength of an eleven-year-old child came to Kiren, and she was able to run. She was able to leap. She was able to swing from the tree branches.

The strength was in her as suddenly as strong wine, and she could not lie on the ground. She jumped to her feet, and the movement was so strong she nearly fell over. She ran, leaped over brooks, clambered up into the trees as high as she could climb. The curse had ended. She was free.

But even normal children grow tired. And as she slowed down, she was no longer caught up in her own strength. And she remembered the porcelain salamander, and what he had done for her.

They found her that afternoon, weeping miserably into a pile of last year’s leaves.

“You see,” said Irvass, who had insisted on leading the way in the search—which is why they found her immediately—“You see, she has her strength, and the curse is ended.”

“But her heart is broken,” said her father as he gathered his little girl into his arms.

“Broken?” asked Irvass. “It should not be. For the porcelain salamander was never alive.”

“Yes he was!” she shouted. “He spoke to me! He gave his life for me!”

“He did all that,” said Irvass. “But think. For all the time the magic was on him, he could never, never rest. Do you think he never got tired?”

“Of course he didn’t.”

“Yes he did,” said Irvass. “Now he can rest. But more than rest. For when he stopped moving and froze forever in one position, what was going through his mind?”

Irvass stood up and turned to leave. But only a few steps away, he turned back. “Kiren,” he said.

“I want my salamander,” she answered, her voice an agony of sobs.

“Oh, he would have become boring by and by,” said Irvass. “He would have ceased to amuse you, and you would have avoided him. But now he is a memory. And, speaking of memory, remember that he also has memory, frozen as he is.”

It was scant comfort then, for eleven-year-olds are not very philosophical. But when she grew older, Kiren remembered. And she knew that wherever the porcelain salamander was, he lived in one frozen, perfect moment—the moment when his heart was so full of love—

No, not love. The moment when he decided, without love, that it would be better for his life, such as it was, to end than to have to watch Kiren’s life end.

It is a moment that can be lived with for eternity. And as Kiren grew older, she knew that such moments come rarely to people, and last only a moment, while the porcelain salamander would never lose it.

And as for Kiren—she became known, though she never sought fame, as the most Beautiful of the Beautiful People, and more than one of the rare wanderers from across the sea or from beyond Rising came only to see her, and talk to her, and draw her face in their minds to keep it with them forever.

And when she talked, her hands always moved, always danced in the air. Never stopped moving at all, it seemed, and they were white and lustrous as deep-enameled porcelain, and her smile was as bright as the moons, and came back to her face as constantly as the sea, and those who knew her well could almost see her gaze keep flickering about the room or about the garden, as if she watched a bright, quick animal scamper by.

Ah-Cheu was a woman of the great kingdom of Ch’in, a land of hills and valleys, a land of great wealth and dire poverty. But Ah-Cheu was a middle person, neither rich nor poor, neither old nor young, and her husband’s farm was half in the valley and half on the hill. Ah-Cheu had a sister older than her, and a sister younger than her, and one lived thirty leagues to the north, and the other thirty leagues to the south. “I am a middle woman,” Ah-Cheu boasted once, but her husband’s mother rebuked her, saying, “Evil comes to the middle, and good goes out to the edges.”