A long time ago, there lived a servant to a greedy, corrupt royal family. He worked day in, day out, as did his fellow workers, but they didn't receive an inch of gratitude from them in return. He lived like this for ten years, then twenty, then fifty. The most recent monarch, a particularly horrible queen, had tormented them for five years.
One day, when he was about to fall asleep in his uncomfortable bed in the servant's quarters, he came to terms with the fact that he wasn't going to live forever, and that if he wasn't going to change the queen and those after her for the good of himself, then he would do it for the future workers.
During the one week during the winter months that he received a break, he crept out of the castle, out of the city, and into the forest beyond. He had heard by the talk of the town that there lived a powerful witch between the trees.
After hours of searching and wandering, and with a noticeable, cold ache in his aging bones, the servant found a hut in the woods.
He knocked three times, the third one loudest and most confident, and waited. After a couple of moments, he heard footsteps on the other side. When the door opened, there was a beautiful young woman standing in the way.
"Have you come for me?" she asked him.
He only asked her if she was the witch, to which she nodded and said "Yes, I am."
She led him inside, and he told her of the terrible queen and her equally terrible heirs and she nodded and listened the whole time. When he reached the end, she told him, "I have just the thing for you."
Leading him into a back room, she handed him an oblong mirror with an ornate gold frame, but faced the glass towards her, and did not show him it. "The moment she looks into this, she will be taken to the other side. An exact opposite of her will remain on your side, kind and graceful and all you would ever want in a queen. The same for her children."
The servant thanked her deeply and tried to take the mirror, but she resisted. "However, you are not to look into it. It will change you, too."
He left, after the witch insisted that she didn't want to be repaid for the favour. He hurried back up to the castle, holding the glass firmly away from himself and anyone else. When he returned to the dormitory, he wrapped up the mirror and gave it to one of the other servants to give to the queen, as a gift.
The next day, there was no noticeable change in the queen, nor was there any difference to be seen or noticed in her heirs. The next week, there were no more signs of such change, and the next year, everything was still the same.
Although the servant had long given up, he had thought about the mirror almost every day. One day, when serving the queen her afternoon tea, he couldn't help but notice that the mirror was hanging up.
Unable to resist his curiosity, he looked into it. But in the reflection, he did not see himself, but the witch. She didn't look taunting, or angry, or even pleasant as she had when she had opened the door to him. No, she most certainly looked disappointed.
"I told you not to look in the mirror," the reflection said.
And all of a sudden, it all made sense. The servant had looked in the mirror the night he had taken it back, by accident, and he was now trapped with the old queen.
Some say that the mirror still hangs on the top floor of an abandoned apartment building on the outskirts of London Town.
The queen and the servant have long passed away, but that is not to say that you won't find anyone else beyond it.