After many years the Palace of Perfect Mirrors became so vast that few visitors remembered where it began.
Its lower halls were workshops.
There the Keepers shaped delicate images from light, number, and proportion. Every mirror bore careful inscriptions.
Perhaps.
If these signs agree.
Only so far as the evidence reaches.
No apprentice was permitted to polish a mirror without first carving these words into its frame.
Above the workshops rose a broad staircase.
It was fashioned from pale stone worn smooth by generations of feet.
No one remembered who had built it.
Most scarcely noticed they were climbing.
Upon the first landing the inscriptions grew shorter.
Perhaps became likely.
If these signs agree became this explains.
Visitors nodded.
The language felt easier.
Higher still, the mirrors acquired names.
The Reflection of Hidden Rivers.
The Reflection of Invisible Winds.
The Reflection of Wandering Lights.
The names proved convenient.
No one wished to recite the long inscriptions every time they spoke.
The climb continued.
On the third landing, something curious occurred.
The names detached themselves from the mirrors.
People no longer said,
"The Mirror of Hidden Rivers reflects the world in this fashion."
They simply remarked,
"The Hidden Rivers flow beneath the mountains."
The mirrors remained where they had always stood.
Only the grammar had moved.
Yet almost no one noticed.
By the highest halls the mirrors themselves had nearly vanished from conversation.
Visitors spoke confidently of Invisible Winds, Silent Threads, Hidden Fires, and Deep Currents as though they had met them upon the road.
Children learned their names before they learned the mirrors from which those names had first arisen.
One autumn an apprentice descended to the oldest workshops in search of forgotten tools.
There she found an elderly Keeper seated beside the very first mirrors.
Their glass was cloudy.
Their frames were rough.
Their inscriptions, however, remained astonishingly long.
She laughed gently.
"Surely no one ever spoke like this."
The Keeper smiled.
"They all did."
"Then why do we no longer speak so?"
"Because every generation climbs the Stair."
The apprentice frowned.
"But the Stair leads upward."
"Does it?"
The Keeper handed her an ancient mirror.
Its frame was covered with patient qualifications.
Its image, though imperfect, remained faithful.
"Carry this," he said, "to the highest chamber."
She obeyed.
When she reached the summit she found scholars debating Invisible Winds.
Some argued over their strength.
Others over their hidden structure.
None mentioned the mirror.
The apprentice quietly placed the old glass upon the table.
The room fell silent.
Someone read the faded inscription aloud.
This image should not be mistaken for the thing it reflects.
For a moment everyone seemed embarrassed.
Not because they had climbed the Stair.
The Stair was useful.
Its steps spared endless repetition and allowed conversation to flow with ease.
No—
they were embarrassed because they had forgotten there had been steps at all.
That evening the Keeper ordered no changes to the Palace.
The Stair remained.
The upper halls remained.
The convenient names remained.
Only one addition was made.
Beside the first step he placed a small bronze bell.
It bore no instructions.
It simply rang, softly, whenever someone began to climb without noticing.
Most visitors scarcely heard it.
Some paused for only a heartbeat before continuing upward.
A very few turned around.
They walked back to the workshops, where the mirrors still wore their long inscriptions, and remembered that every confident name had begun life as a careful description.
From that day onward the wisest Keepers never forbade anyone to ascend.
They merely taught that every staircase should also have a way back down.
For the purpose of the Palace was not to imprison its visitors among lofty names, but to remind them, whenever necessary, how patiently those names had first been earned.
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