In a Glass Grimmly Read Online Free PDF

sometimes I can’t see the silk.”
    The queen stopped dabbing at her makeup, and their eyes connected in the looking glass. Slowly, her mother said, “Sometimes?”
    Jill sucked in her breath. Her mother knew. She knew Jill couldn’t see it. She would be so disappointed. “Yes,” Jill said hurriedly. “Sometimes I see it as if it were the brightest, most beautiful thing in the world.” And then, she added quietly, “Except you.”
    Her mother’s eyes slid back to the mirror. She
did
look disappointed. Her voice was flat when she said, “Well, perhaps one day you’ll learn to see it all the time. It takes a truly refined eye.”
    ----
    The next day, Jill returned to the turret room. The merchant was still working away at the invisible silk, pumping and picking and weaving. Jill watched him from the doorway. After a while, he looked up.
    “Ah, Princess! A pleasure to see you!” he said. “Come, come, look what I’m working on now!” Jill approached. “It’s the hem!” he said. “Can’t you see it? Along the edge, I’m running a slightly different color—something like the red mud at the banks of a yellow river. Do you see?”
    Jill stared. She saw nothing. She hesitated.
    At last, she said, “Yes.”
    The merchant looked up from the loom. His eyes were so pale. “Do you see it, Jill?”
    Jill shivered. Then she heard her mother say, Perhaps one day you’ll learn to see it all the time
.
    “Of course I can,” she told the merchant. Then she left.
    ----
    At last, the day came. Jill was woken very, very early in the morning to help her mother bathe. As she rubbed the bath oils and soap into her mother’s smooth skin, she said, “Mother, do you think I will look beautiful today?”
    The soapy water, lapping gently against the edge of the tub, was the only sound in the room. Then, slowly, the queen turned to her daughter. Jill could see her mother’s eyes working up and down her face. At last, the queen said, “Perhaps you will.” And she smiled.
    Jill’s heart sang.
    ----
    After Jill had bathed herself, the merchant came into her dressing room. He held his hands out wide before him. He beamed. He looked at the space between his hands, and then back at Jill.
    “Well?” he said, “what do you think?”
    Jill stared. She saw nothing.
    “I . . .” she began. Then she stopped.
    “Yes?” the merchant said, frowning.
    “I don’t . . .” she said again.
    His frown deepened. “Go on . . .”
    She opened her mouth to speak. And then, in her mind, she heard the words,
Perhaps you will.
    And she said, “Will you help me put it on?”
    The merchant smiled. “Of course, Your Highness.”
    He did not look at her when she dropped her towel. His voice was as tight as his eyelids when he said, “No underclothes, Your Highness. The silk will bunch up around it.”
    Slowly, with eyes closed, the merchant lowered the dress over Jill’s head. “Light as air, isn’t it?” he asked wistfully. She nodded and swallowed. Her eyes, too, were closed, and she concentrated on how beautiful her mother always looked, how graceful and lovely she was.
    And then Jill opened her eyes and looked at herself in the mirror.
    She caught her breath. A silken gown, as fine and shimmering as any that has ever been, hung weightless over her slender little shoulders. It was red and orange and blue and yellow, just exactly like a glittering, sun-dappled pile of coins as the sky is fading from pink to black. Just so did the colors of the dress blend in and out, yellow fading to orange fading to red and back again as the dress shifted over Jill’s little body.
    Jill clutched her hands to her chest. She had been right. Somehow, she had known just what it looked like. And her mother had been right. She did look beautiful. She knew she did.
    She smiled at Holbein Cornelius Anderson in the mirror. “It’s very beautiful,” she said, beaming. “Thank you.”
    The silk merchant suddenly looked confused.
    ----
    The Royal