“It has been a very long time, by the reck­on­ing of my old world, since I last vis­ited. I was but eleven years of age, and now I am six­teen. I have had five years in which to con­sider what occurred back then, five years to grow stronger and more resis­tant to the ways in which your kind plays with the thoughts and per­cep­tions of mine.

“Now since my sec­ond visit to this world, the looking-glass mir­ror that I had used for a means of pas­sage had lain dor­mant. This remained the case until not so long ago — by my reck­on­ing, which doubt­less means lit­tle you you, this would be the year 1871. A good friend of mine, a young gen­tle­man by the name of Samuel McGregor-Matthews, helped me to make it work again.

“Not long after that, there was a falling-out in our house­hold con­cern­ing whether or not Samuel was fit to be a hus­band — for some rea­son my idi­otic father insisted I should seek a ‘real’ man, by which he of course meant a wealthy one. I resorted to the mir­ror as my means to escape that ridicu­lous inci­dent, but it turned out that Samuel’s spell was not quite as good as was desired and when I attempted to return I found that I could not. No mat­ter — I had a lit­tle some­thing to take care of in the way of revenge.

“Pre­vi­ously, this place had had quite an effect on me. But this time, older and wiser, it was I who had an effect on it! You have of course enjoyed the delights of the tower I cre­ated with mere will, and met those ser­vants of mine that I con­jured with but a thought. But faeries them­selves — I have found you a lit­tle less tractable than I had hoped. How­ever, with­out a King and Queen, you squab­ble like chil­dren! So eas­ily manip­u­lated and made to turn against each other! So eas­ily played like pawns!”