Princess Morgane loved no one. She practiced a cold forthrightness, and lived among flowers and mirrors. She wove red roses into her hair and gazed at her reflection. She was unable to see any young woman, or any young man, because she only saw herself mirrored in their faces. And cruelty and desire were unknown to her. Her black hair fell around her face like slow waves. She wanted to love herself: but the reflections of mirrors had a calm and distant frigidity, and the reflections in ponds were too gloomy and pale, and the reflections in rivers always flowed away, trembling.
Princess Morgane had read in storybooks the story of Snow White’s talking mirror that foretold the slitting of her throat, and the tale of Ilsée’s mirror from which emerged a second Ilsée who killed Ilsée, and the adventure of the mirror of the city of Miletus that led the Milesian women to hang themselves by the rising of the moon. She had seen the mysterious painting in which the fiancé extended a broadsword before his fiancée, because they had met themselves in the evening mist: for doubles are heralds of death. But she did not fear her own reflection, since she had never seen herself unless veiled and candid, never cruel or voluptuous, never herself exactly as she was. And neither the slats of polished green gold, nor the heavy glazes of quicksilver, presented Morgane with an image of Morgane.
The priests of her country were geomancers and fire worshipers. They arranged sand in square boxes, and traced lines in it; they performed calculations by means of their parchment talismans, and made black mirrors with mixtures of water and smoke. And in the evening, Morgane came before them and threw three meal offerings into the fire. “Behold,” said the geomancer; and he showed her the liquid black mirror. Morgane looked: at first a bright vapor lingered on the surface, then a colored circle seethed, and an image rose up and ran gently out of the smoke. It was a white, cubic house with long windows; and beneath the third window hung an enormous bronze ring. And all around the house reigned an expanse of grey sand. “This,” said the geomancer, “is where one can find the true mirror; but our science can neither locate it nor explain it.”
Morgane bowed and threw three more meal offerings into the fire. But the image wavered and grew dark; the white house sank, and Morgane stared vainly into the black mirror.
And the following day, Morgane wanted to set out on an expedition. The dismal hue of the sand had seemed familiar to her, and so she left for the west. Her father gave her a choice caravan with silver-belled mules, and she was carried in a palanquin, the walls of which were made of precious mirrors.
In this way she crossed Persia and examined remote hostelries, those built near wells by which travelers regularly passed, as well as the disparaged houses where women sing through the night and pound pieces of metal.
And at the frontiers of the Persian kingdom she saw many white, cubic houses with long windows; but the bronze ring hung from none of them. And she was told that such a ring was to be found in the Christian land of Syria, further West.
Morgane crossed the flat banks of the river that enclosed this country of humid plains where the licorice forests grow. There were castles dug out of single, narrow stones that stood on their tips; and the women sitting in the sun along the caravan’s way wore coils of russet horsehair around their foreheads. And there live there those who lead bands of horses and bear silver-pointed lances.
And further on is a remote mountain, inhabited by bandits who drink wheat brandy in honor of their divinities. They worship green stones of strange shapes and prostitute themselves to each other within circles of flaming bushes. Morgane was terrified by them.
And further on is an underground city of black men who go unvisited by their gods, except in sleep. They eat hemp fibers, and cover their faces with chalk. And those who intoxicate themselves at night with hemp slit the necks of those who sleep, that they be sent away to the nocturnal divinities. Morgane was terrified by them.
And further on extends the grey desert, where the plants and stones are indistinguishable from the sand. And it was at the entrance of this desert that Morgane found the ringed hostelry.
She called for her palanquin to halt, and the muleteers unloaded their animals. It was an ancient house built without cement; its stones were blanched by the sun. But the hostel keeper could not tell her about the mirror: for he knew nothing of it.
And that evening, after they had dined on thin pancakes, the master told Morgane that this ringed house had been, in ancient times, the dwelling of a wicked queen. And she had been punished for her cruelty. For she had ordered the beheading of a religious man, who lived in solitude in the middle of the sandy expanse and bathed travelers with holy words in the water of the river. And as soon as this order was carried out, the queen perished, along with the entirety of her race. And the queen’s chamber was sealed off in the house. The hostel keeper showed Morgane the door, walled off by stones.
Then the travelers laid themselves to rest in the square quarters of the inn and beneath its awning. But toward the middle of the night, Morgane woke her muleteers and had them break through the walled doorway. And she entered through the dusty breach, carrying an iron torch.
And Morgane’s people heard a shriek, and they followed the princess into the room. She was kneeling in the middle of the walled-off chamber before a beaten brass dish filled with blood, and she was looking into it, entranced. And the hostel keeper raised his arms: for the blood in the basin was still wet in the sealed chamber from the day the wicked queen had placed a severed head into it.
No one knows what Princess Morgane saw in the mirror of blood. But along the route back, her muleteers were found murdered, one by one, night after night, their grey faces turned to the heavens, after they had joined her in the palanquin. And this princess came to be known as Morgane the Red, and her reputation as a prostitute and a terrifying throat-slitter of men preceded her.