Avon Fantasy Reader No. 9 — page 128: what you’re looking at

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

trance into which he must have fallen, but not yet was he able to tear him- self away. He looked at the mirror again. In spite of the darkness that had fallen, the mirror stood out with ghostly luminance, and principally from the figu- rine came that impalpable glow. A tremor of excitement shook Nicholas. All fear had banished itself from the face of the golden doll, golden-green, rather, under that unearthly light; an elfin princess with body as enchant- ing and perfectly molded as the features that had first bewitched him. She was wholly free of the cavern. She was running toward him. She had for- gotten the terror that lurked in the depths of the cave. : As he backed away slowly, a state of abnormal ecstasy and dream-sus- pension enveloped him. So intensely vivid was the drama unfolding within the world of the mirror that he could not cast off its spell, nor did he wish to. He was unaware of descending the steps. His mind’s eye had vision only for the golden-green captive; teasing him, tantalizing him, keeping him aquiver, the sculptured beauty of the figure of the tiny fugitive. Sleep abandoned Nicholas all night long. He listened for a voice, for a bell-like call in the attic afar, for the murmur of the crystal maiden. He lay half in a panic lest she escape during the night and become lost, leaving to him only the unseen terror that had not yet burrowed its way out of the tunnel. The hectic tautness, combined with the state of suspension, outlasted night. The anxiety of waiting through the dawn hours fostered a fame within him, like an invisible sun, whose glare gave him no peace and per- mitted him no restful descent into slumber. And when at last he began again the climb up the attic stairs, he tip- toed while his ears strained for a sound from above—the shatter of glass— _ the tinkle of a crystalline voice—fugitive footsteps— But silence deepened curiously, until he fancied a roaring in his ears from the strain of attempting to hear. Was it the surge of blood in his veins, violent over the scuffle of his ascent? He stood upon the attic floor, now, and all speculation ebbed away. A torrent of reflected radiance like moonlight upon quicksilver issued from the mirror. Far larger in size, looming to almost full-grown human propor- tions, gigantic against the background of interminable desert, the golden- green captive seemed on the verge of stepping through the mirror. Her eyes summoned him, her arms were raised in supplication for escape. Nicholas ran to the mirror, his hands outstretched. They touched. hers, dissolved, blended. He hurtled headlong, pulled and catapulted and twisted fantastically. He was rigid, frozen, unable to press his way out of a solid | sea of glass. | Far away, upon the other side of the mirror, beyond the crystal cliff that imprisoned him inside a timeless world, he saw his own rightful body, Nicholas, peering down at him, at this alien figure he had become, this 126 Comicdooksico f