Act I

The Whitfield plantation had been dead for twenty years before Eli ever arrived. It showed in the rotting porch beams and the fence posts that leaned like drunkards and the cotton fields that had grown back to pine and briar. But the land was still good, rich and black, and that was why men like Josiah Whitfield kept coming back to it, even in death.

Eli was Josiah's illegitimate son, born to a sharecropper's daughter who died in childbirth. He'd been raised by the woman who cleaned Josiah's house, a Cherokee woman named Sarah who taught him to read and to work and to keep his mouth shut when white men were speaking.

At nineteen, Eli was strong and quiet and knew his place. He lived in a cabin behind the main house, worked the land that wasn't his, and ate what he could grow or catch. Josiah's legal family—the widow, the legitimate son Caleb, and the two daughters—lived in the big house with a white picket fence and a garden that was always perfect.

Eli didn't envy them. Envy required hope, and Eli had learned long ago that hope was a luxury he couldn't afford.

One afternoon, while digging a grave for a chicken that had died of some disease, Eli's shovel struck something hard. Not rock. Metal. He dug it out: a silver hand mirror, maybe eight inches across, covered in ornate Victorian scrollwork. The back was engraved with the Whitfield family crest—a lion rampant, which seemed ironic, given that the family was being eaten alive by debt and decay.

Eli wiped the mirror with his shirt and looked at his reflection. Dark skin, sharp features, eyes that were too old for his face. He didn't like what he saw.

He took it home and put it on the shelf above his cot. He didn't know why. It just felt like it belonged there.

Act II

The mirror worked on the third night. Eli was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about how cold it was going to be this winter. He didn't have enough wood for the stove. He didn't have enough food for the month. He was thinking about all the things he didn't have, and then, almost without meaning to, he thought: I wish I had something warm to eat.

The mirror glowed. Just for a second, a faint silver light, like moonlight on water. Then it was gone.

Eli sat up. On the floor beside his cot was a plate of food. Roasted chicken, potatoes, cornbread. Real food. Not the beans and hardtack he usually ate.

He stared at it for a long time. Then he ate. It was the best thing he'd ever tasted.

The next day, he tested it. I wish for a blanket, he thought, standing in front of the mirror. A thick wool blanket appeared at the foot of his cot. I wish for a new shirt, he thought. A shirt appeared. I wish for a pair of boots. Boots appeared.

It was real. The mirror was real, and it was his, and he could have anything he wanted.

For the first time in his life, Eli allowed himself to hope.

He started small. A warm coat. A pair of shoes. A sack of flour. Then bigger. A cow. A pig. A sack of gold coins he found buried behind the cabin one morning, as if they'd always been there.

He didn't tell anyone. Not Sarah, not the other sharecroppers. This was his secret, his miracle, his chance to be something more than what the world had decided he was.

But secrets have a way of leaking out in a place the size of a plantation.

Act III

Caleb Whitfield was twenty-four, spoiled, and cruel. He'd been educated at a university in Atlanta, though he'd dropped out before graduating because he found the whole endeavor beneath him. He spent his days drinking whiskey and his nights playing cards with the local men, losing money he'd never earned and blaming everyone but himself.

He noticed the changes on the plantation. The cabin behind the main house, which had always been a shanty, now had a new roof and a proper door. Eli, who had always been thin as a rail, was filling out. He had clothes that fit. He had boots. He had a confidence that Caleb found offensive.

"Who's been giving you money, boy?" Caleb asked one evening, catching Eli by the fence line.

"Nobody," Eli said, and kept walking.

Caleb followed him. "I'm asking you a question. Who's been giving you money?"

Eli stopped. He turned around. He was taller than Caleb, broader, and there was something in his eyes that Caleb hadn't noticed before. Not anger. Something worse. Certainty.

"Nobody's giving me anything," Eli said. "I'm making my own."

Caleb laughed. "You? Making your own? You're a sharecropper's bastard. You don't make anything. You eat what we let you eat."

Eli didn't say anything. He just looked at Caleb for a long moment, and then he walked away.

But Caleb was a man who couldn't let things go. He followed Eli that night, hiding in the pines, watching as Eli went to the cabin and stood in front of something on the shelf.

The mirror.

Caleb couldn't see what it was from the distance, but he could see Eli reach for it, and he could see the way the cabin lit up from the inside, as if a lamp had been turned on. Except there was no lamp. No fire. Just a silver light, pulsing like a heartbeat.

Caleb's eyes widened. Whatever that thing was, it was power. And power belonged to the Whitfield family.

He waited until Eli fell asleep, then crept into the cabin and took the mirror.

Act IV

Caleb took the mirror to the big house and locked it in his father's old study. He stood in front of it and wished for money. A sack of gold coins appeared. He wished for a new suit. A suit appeared. He wished for a bottle of whiskey. A bottle appeared.

But the mirror was not done with him.

The next morning, the plantation began to decay. The porch beams rotted overnight. The fence posts fell over. The cotton fields turned brown and died. It was as if the mirror had been holding the plantation together, and without it, everything was falling apart.

Caleb didn't notice. He was too busy wishing. More money. More whiskey. More women.

But the mirror was changing. The silver frame was darkening, the glass clouding. And in the glass, Caleb began to see things. Faces. His father's face. The sharecropper's face. Eli's face. All of them looking at him with the same expression: disappointment.

He tried to look away, but he couldn't. The mirror was pulling him in, showing him things he didn't want to see. The cruelty he'd inflicted on the workers. The lies he'd told his mother. The way he'd treated Eli like dirt when Eli was the only person on the plantation who had ever shown him kindness.

Eli found him three days later, sitting in front of the mirror, catatonic. The mirror was cracked, the glass black as oil. And Caleb was weeping.

"I didn't know," he whispered. "I didn't know."

Eli took the mirror from him. It was cold now, lifeless. He carried it outside and buried it in the cotton field, beneath the roots of an old oak tree.

Then he went back to his cabin and waited for spring.

The plantation died that year. The Whitfield family left, never to return. The land was reclaimed by pine and briar, and the mirror slept underground, waiting for the next person foolish enough to wish for something that couldn't be earned.

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