Prologue
The dark stones of the room glistened with shining beads of damp that had slowly encroached upon the lavish wall hangings and soft carpet. These were laden with the thick, heavy dust of accumulated silence – years of unchallenged, unchanging silence.
Occupying one corner was a tall mahogany wardrobe, once highly polished so that the bevelled rectangles on the doors served almost as mirrors. The only other carving on it was on the sharply curving headpiece; the figure of a sitting wolf, motionless but sentient, guarding this forgotten place. Dust was ingrained in the crevices of its paws and tail, and yet none had settled in the cracks of its eyes, which gleamed as it crouched there, a grey-coated watcher.
In contrast to the wardrobe was, on the outside wall, an elaborate, elegant dressing table, covered in beautiful engravings of pine forests and mountains, wild deer, birds, and other scenes and animals captured in the wood. Around the curving s-shaped legs, intricate chains of flowers twined. But an ancient mixture of dust and damp filled the etched lines with black grime, black as deep forest earth, which could just have been seen through the layer of silver dust, had there been any eyes to see it. Only the wolf's, gazing across the room.
Above the dressing table was a small, arching window, each glass pane lined with the same black grime. Little light came in through the window, and so the darkness and silence weighed down upon the air.
A mirror had been placed in the centre of one of the walls adjoining that of the window, that it might reflect what light there was around the room. It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. Around its top was carved not a wolf, but an inscription: 'Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.' There was terrible power in those words and in that beautiful mirror. It did not reflect the light; it reflected nothing, but stood, waiting.