Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 126: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Nicholas climbed, his heart pounding so that his ears heard, and hurriedly slid the screens aside from the mirror. plate-sized opening that he had made in the coat of paint showed the same bafiling reflection as before. He seized the chisel and began to chip at the black film. =. The layer grated loose with maddening slowness. It fractured in flakes too small to be measured. The particles dusted the floor at the base of the mirror, and sometimes whirled into his eyes with a sting. But he became more accustomed to the work, more intent on discovering what the magic mirror concealed. He scraped twice as long and cleaned three times as much surface as the day before, nearly a third of the mirror. | Still the scene hovered beyond definition. There were hints—no more than hints—of a bleak landscape; an entrance, hole, tunnel, cave, or hill of some sort rising stark from the plain; and the limbs of a fugitive. A captive fleeing—from what? Away from a pursuer—a monster, an ogre’ Toward refuge in the great spaces, the fringes yet hidden by the black paint— 3 His thoughts fleeted over the ways in which the full scene might manifest itself. He wondered what far place was mirrored in the glass. Since it was a magic mirror, obviously it wouldn’t act like an ordinary mirror. Instead of reflecting what lay close to it, it reflected something at a great distance; and if at too great a distance, very likely Nicholas would never know or find the exact spot. Even after he stopped working, his mind remained nervously alert under the stimulus of the image, vibrant to its potentiali- ies, quivering with the fever of anticipation. When he opened the door for the third time, and climbed again to the attic, and found the mirror as he had left it, he hunted around until he brought to light an old file. With this he sharpened the chisel. His eagerness - could tolerate no further delay in exposing the secret of the mirror. The paint flaked off in the same tiny chips as before, but faster, much faster. The boundaries of the brooding landscape became wider, the dark cave stood out starkly upon the desert. Nicholas grew conscious of a glow, an aura of pallor that reflected into his eyes from the figure at the entrance to the cavern. The mirror, stripped of the coating of black paint, disclosed a flat desert, a wilderness, unbroken by stone, dune, bush, stream or creature, a void that stretched endlessly in all directions, Upon that desolation stood only the cave, a horseshoe in shape, tunneling to the far distance. And from the cav- ern emerged a figure, dimly outlined save for its face which reflected the luminous pallor. a That diminutive figure seemed to be running out of the cave. The figure looked tiny, like a toy, a mere doll, because it was so remote in the depths of the mirror. Its eyes were closed. Its face showed terror, as though it fied _ blindly—from what? What footsteps following faster down that infinitely 124 Conmicloooks His heart stopped pounding. The mirror reposed as he had left it. The com