Of the prince who was made of mirrors
But Kiran did not radiate from within, as the sun does or a fire on a winter's night. His radiance was the radiance of a mirror: he merely reflected what others cast upon him, and when no one looked at him, he was dark as a windowpane at night.
The elders of the kingdom told the story of his origin in whispers. When Kiran was born, they said, he had been a child like any other, rosy and screaming and hungry for his mother's warmth. But his mother, the queen, was a woman of icy beauty who had never been touched without shuddering. She regarded the child in her cradle as an object that belonged to her but did not belong with her. "He shall become strong," she said to the king, "strong and invulnerable. He shall never cry like the common children in the street."
And so she summoned a wet nurse who fed the child but did not caress it. She summoned tutors who instructed the child but did not love it. She summoned servants who dressed the child but did not embrace it. And with every passing year, something in Kiran grew harder and colder, until his heart had finally turned to glass — transparent and sparkling, but fragile and cold.
The strangest thing, however, was this: Kiran himself did not know that his heart was made of glass. He believed it was made of pure gold, the noblest of all metals, and that all other people merely possessed hearts of common clay.
Of mirrors that lie and people who remain silent
When Kiran turned twenty, he assumed the rule over the kingdom, for his father had died of a peculiar disease that the physicians called "exhaustion of the heart" — he had given so much of it to his wife and received so little in return that in the end nothing remained. The mother withdrew into a tower, where she contemplated her reflection and wished to be seen by no one, not even her son. Especially since her son had never been the son she had wished for — for she had wished for no son at all; she had merely wished for another surface in which her own magnificence could be mirrored.
King Kiran's first act was to have all the rooms of his palace lined with mirrors. "Thus I can admire myself from every angle at all times," he said to his counselor, an old man named Erasmus, who had advised his father before him. Erasmus said nothing to this, as he said nothing to many things, for he had learned that kings may employ counselors but rarely desire their counsel.
Kiran was indeed of striking appearance. His hair gleamed like raven's wings, his eyes had the color of a winter sky, and his body moved with the grace of a dancer. When he rode through the streets, the people turned their faces toward him, and he interpreted every glance as admiration. That some of these glances contained fear and others indifference and still others that polite emptiness with which one regards rulers whom one may not contradict — of this he wished to know nothing, and therefore he knew nothing of it.
"Am I not the greatest king this land has ever seen?" he asked Erasmus one evening.
"You are certainly a king of remarkable qualities," Erasmus replied cautiously.
"Remarkable?" cried Kiran, and his face contorted for a moment into an ugly grimace, like a mask that slips and reveals a glimpse of something dark beneath. "Merely remarkable? I am extraordinary! I am unique! Tell me that I am unique!"
"You are unique, Your Majesty," said Erasmus, and in his voice there was a weariness that Kiran did not notice, because he heard only what he wished to hear.
Satisfied, Kiran turned back to his mirrors.
Of the princess who would not admire
It came to pass that year that the king wished to marry, for a king without a queen, he thought, is like a diamond without a setting — who would bring his worth to full display? He therefore had it proclaimed that the fairest princesses of all neighboring realms should come to his court, so that he might choose the worthiest among them.
They came from every direction: princesses with golden hair and princesses with black braids, princesses who could sing like nightingales, and princesses who could calculate like merchants. They all vied for Kiran's favor, and he savored their efforts as a man dying of thirst savors water — yet like a barrel without a bottom, his thirst was never quenched, no matter how much he drank.
Among all these princesses, however, there was one who neither sparkled, nor danced, nor sang. Her name was Alethea, which in the ancient tongue means "the Truthful One," and she was the daughter of a small, poor kingdom in the west, where the people lived on what the barren land yielded and looked one another in the eye when they spoke.
Alethea had dark eyes that seemed to see everything, and a mouth that rarely smiled, but when it did, it smiled without calculation. She had come because her father had sent her and she had not wished to contradict him, but she had resolved neither to please nor to lie.
When Kiran strode past her, he waited for her to blush or lower her eyes or release an admiring sigh, as the other princesses did. But Alethea did nothing of the kind. She looked at him the way one looks at a tree or a stone — with calm attention, but without that glitter he so desperately craved.
"Do you not find me handsome?" asked Kiran, and in his voice, despite its sharpness, there was a tremor he himself did not notice.
"You are of pleasing appearance," said Alethea. "But the exterior is like the frame of a painting. It says nothing of what is inside."
Kiran stepped back as though she had struck him. Deep within — there, where his glass heart hung, transparent and fragile — a high, piercing tone sounded, like someone running a finger along the rim of a crystal glass. This tone, had he known how to read it, was the sound of a truth striking the walls of his heart and setting them vibrating. But Kiran did not understand it. He understood only that this woman had denied him something he needed as desperately as the air he breathed.
"Out!" he cried, and his voice echoed off the mirrored walls, multiplied into a chorus of fury. "You dare insult your king? Out, and never return!"
Alethea bowed, as courtesy required, yet her eyes did not leave his. "I am leaving," she said quietly. "But before I go, I wish to tell you something you may not want to know but one day must: the mirrors you gaze into show you only what you wish to see. They do not show you what is."
Then she turned and walked from the hall, and Kiran watched her go with a feeling he could not name, because he had never felt it before. It was as though someone had made a crack in one of his mirrors, and through this crack something cold and dark was seeping in.
Of the attempt to fill the void
After that day, Kiran chose one of the other princesses as his wife — the most radiant and adoring of them all, a woman named Bella, who looked at him as though he were the sun itself, and who laughed when he laughed, and wept when he scolded her, and who seemed to have no thought of her own that did not depend on him.
For a time, Kiran was content. He awoke beside a woman who looked at him like a god, and he fell asleep beside a woman who told him he was the greatest of all kings, and all that lay between was filled with the sweet nectar of her admiration.
But something strange happened: the more Bella admired him, the less her admiration meant. It was as though he were drinking water that grew thinner and thinner until at last it was no longer water but merely empty air. He began to despise her for her admiration, for secretly he thought: if she admires me this much, then something must be wrong with her. A truly intelligent woman would see the hollowness in me. A truly intelligent woman would regard me the way that Alethea did — with eyes that are not dazzled.
But he pushed this thought aside quickly, for it was too terrible to think through to its end.
Instead, he demanded more. More festivities at which the people celebrated him. More monuments bearing his likeness. More poets singing songs of his greatness. More, more, more — and the more he received, the greater the void within him grew, until it sometimes woke him in the middle of the night and stared at him from the dark corners of his bedchamber.
On such nights he rose and wandered through the empty corridors of his palace, and the mirrors he passed cast back his image — but was there not, if he looked closely, something peculiar in his reflection? A transparency that should not have been there? At times it seemed to him as though he could see through his own face to the wall behind it, as if he himself had turned to glass, a pretty, empty vessel.
Then he would shake his head and return to his bed and tell himself that he was merely tired, that the light had deceived him, that in the morning he would be radiant and solid and golden once more.
But the nights on which he wandered and brooded grew more frequent, and the days on which he truly felt radiant grew rare.
Of the feast and the fall
In the seventh year of his reign, Kiran resolved to give the grandest feast his kingdom had ever witnessed. "We shall celebrate my seven years upon the throne," he proclaimed, "and all the people shall come and rejoice in my greatness."
The preparations lasted months. Artists were summoned to decorate the halls. Cooks were summoned to prepare the most exquisite dishes. Musicians were summoned to play the loveliest melodies. And in the center of the great banquet hall, Kiran had a statue of himself erected, three times the size of a man, wrought from the purest crystal, so that the light shone through it and cast rainbows upon every wall.
When the evening of the feast arrived, the people streamed into the palace. They ate and drank and danced, and Kiran sat upon his throne and watched, and every smile they offered him was like a drop of water on a glowing stone — it hissed briefly and was gone, leaving nothing behind but the scent of steam.
It was late in the night when a little old woman made her way through the crowd toward him. She was small and stooped, wrapped in a gray cloak, and no one knew how she had entered the palace, for guards stood at the doors, inspecting everyone who entered.
"King Kiran," said the old woman, and her voice was like the rustling of dry leaves, "I bring you a gift."
Kiran looked down at her, and in his eyes was that mixture of boredom and contempt he showed all those who seemed of no use to him. "What could you possibly give me, old woman?" he asked. "I have everything I need."
"Do you?" asked the old woman, and in her voice there was now something else, something that made Kiran shiver. "Then see for yourself."
She drew something from beneath her cloak — a small mirror, no larger than a hand, with a frame of dark wood into which strange symbols had been carved. "This," she said, "is the Mirror of Truth. It does not show what you wish to see, but what is."
Kiran laughed, but his laughter was hollow as a drum without a skin. "A mirror? I have a thousand mirrors in my palace. What use is one more?"
"Look into it," was all the old woman said, "and you will know."
Whether from curiosity, or from the wish to mock the old woman, or from some dark impulse he did not himself understand — Kiran took the mirror and gazed into it.
What he saw made his breath catch.
In the mirror there was no proud king to be seen. In the mirror there was a small boy, no more than five years old, huddled in the corner of a dark room. The boy was weeping silently, and his eyes were full of longing — longing for a hand to touch him, for a voice to comfort him, for eyes that truly saw him and did not look through him as though he were air. And when Kiran looked more closely, he saw that the boy's body was transparent like glass, and that in his chest something glinted — something fragile that threatened to shatter with every sob.
"No!" cried Kiran, and he hurled the mirror to the ground. "That is not me! That is not me!"
But the mirror did not break. It lay on the marble floor, and its face still gazed up at Kiran, and the small boy in the mirror gazed up as well, and in his eyes there was now not only longing but also shame — the shame of being seen as one truly is.
The music fell silent. The people stared. And Kiran stood in the midst of his own feast and felt for the first time in his life that all the mirrors he had erected around himself were nothing but colorful illusions, and that the only truth was that weeping, transparent boy who crouched inside him, waiting to be loved.
The shame overwhelmed him like a wave. He ran, past the staring guests, past the servants who hurried after him, out into the night, away from the palace, away from the mirrors, away from everything he had believed himself to be.
He ran until his legs would carry him no farther, and when he finally stopped, he found himself at the shore of the deep lake that bounded the kingdom to the east. The moon shone upon the black water, and Kiran saw his reflection — and for the first time he saw nothing radiant in it, only a man who knelt at the shore, gasping and sweating and afraid, a man who did not know who he was when he could not read in the eyes of others who he was supposed to be.
"What am I?" he whispered into the night. "What am I when no one sees me?"
The water gave no answer. It lay still and dark like an eye that does not blink.
Of the cottage at the edge of the world
Kiran wandered for many days through forests and mountains, without destination, without sustenance save wild berries and roots, without shelter save the canopy of the trees. He who had always been clad in silk now wore rags. He who had always been surrounded by servants now spoke only with the wind and the birds. He who had always contemplated his reflection now went for days without seeing another face save the implacable faces of the mountains.
It was a strange feeling, to be no one. At first it was terrifying — a void that seemed to hollow him out from within until he believed he must die of it. But then, very slowly, the void became something else. It became silence. And in the silence Kiran heard things he had never heard before: the murmur of a brook flowing over stones; the rustle of leaves in the wind; the distant call of a bird. And he began to understand that the world did not consist merely of mirrors that reflected his image, but of countless things that possessed their own being, independent of his gaze.
On the seventh day of his wandering, he came upon a small cottage at the edge of a deep forest. Smoke rose from its chimney, and through its window fell warm light. Kiran, exhausted and famished, knocked at the door.
It was opened by a man so old that his age itself seemed ancient. His hair was white as snow, his skin brown and furrowed like the bark of an ancient tree, and his eyes — his eyes were of a blue that reminded Kiran of something he had forgotten.
"I knew you would come," said the old man. "Enter."
Kiran entered, too weary to wonder. The cottage was small but warm, and on a simple table stood a plate of bread and a bowl of soup. "Eat," said the old man. "Questions come later."
Kiran ate, and for the first time in many years he truly tasted what he ate — not as a means to gratification, but as what it was: bread that tasted of grain and yeast; soup that tasted of herbs and roots. Simple things that were simply good.
When he had finished, he looked at the old man. "Who are you?" he asked. "And how did you know I would come?"
The old man smiled, and in his smile there was sadness and kindness at once. "I am a wanderer, like you," he said. "Long ago I walked the same path you are walking now. And I knew you would come because all who walk this path eventually arrive at this cottage. It stands here for those who have lost their way and wish to find themselves."
"I do not know who I am," said Kiran, and his voice broke, and to his own astonishment tears came — for the first time since his childhood, since those days when he had learned that tears served no purpose and summoned no one.
"That," said the old man gently, "is the first step. Not to know who one is means that one has ceased to believe one already knows. And whoever has ceased to believe he already knows can begin to ask."
Of the three trials
Kiran remained with the old man, whom the people of the surrounding villages called the Forest Sage, and he began to learn. But the learning was different from anything he had known. There were no books, no teachers, no examinations at which he could have excelled. There was only the work of the day – chopping wood, fetching water, tending the garden – and the conversations in the evening, in which the Forest Sage told stories and posed questions to which there were no simple answers.
"You must learn three things," said the Forest Sage one day, "before you can become a whole human being. You must learn to see without being seen. You must learn to give without taking. And you must learn to love yourself without admiring yourself."
"How am I to do that?" asked Kiran.
"That," said the Forest Sage, "you must discover for yourself. But I shall give you the opportunity."
The next morning he sent Kiran to a nearby village with the task of helping the people for one day — but without telling them his name, without revealing anything about himself, without expecting or accepting any recognition for his help.
Kiran went to the village and helped an old woman repair her roof. He helped a farmer round up his sheep, which had escaped their pen. He helped a mother who could not calm her children by telling them stories. And when the day drew to a close and the people thanked him and asked who he was, he said only: "A wanderer who happened to pass by," and walked away.
It was a strange feeling, helping in this way. At first he waited involuntarily for the admiration, for the grateful looks, for the words of praise. But when they came – and they did come, for the people were grateful – he did not accept them. He let them roll off him like water and moved on. And at the end of the day, as he walked back to the cottage, he felt something new in his chest: a warmth that came not from without but from within.
"You have passed the first trial," said the Forest Sage when Kiran returned. "You have learned to see without being seen. But the second trial will be harder."
The next day, the Forest Sage brought Kiran to a place where people lived who had nothing — neither house nor food, neither health nor hope. They were the outcasts of the kingdom, the forgotten, those whom no one wished to see. "Today you shall live among them," said the Forest Sage. "You shall give them what you have — not only your bread and your water, but your time, your attention, your ear for their stories. And you shall expect nothing in return — not even gratitude."
Kiran did as he was told. He sat among the outcasts, listened to their stories, which were often confused and bitter, and gave them what he had. At first it was difficult, for the people smelled unpleasant and spoke unkindly and seemed scarcely to notice his help. But then, when he looked into the eyes of an old woman who possessed nothing but the rags upon her body, he suddenly saw something he recognized — that same longing he had seen in the Mirror of Truth, that same loneliness that had kept him awake through the nights. And he understood that this woman was no different from him — except that her emptiness was visible on the outside, while his had been hidden within.
He took her hand, and she looked at him, and for the first time she smiled. And Kiran felt something in his chest grow warm and softer — as though someone had lit a candle in a room that had been dark for a long time.
"You have passed the second trial," said the Forest Sage when Kiran returned. "You have learned to give without taking. But the third trial will be the hardest of all."
On the third day, the Forest Sage gave Kiran the Mirror of Truth, the same mirror the old woman had given him at the feast. "You must look into it," he said, "and you must face what you see. You must look at it without running away. You must accept it without condemning it. You must love it without admiring it."
Kiran's hands trembled as he took the mirror. The memory of that evening at the feast was still fresh — the shame, the small boy, the void. But he knew he could not flee. So he looked into it.
Again he saw the small boy, huddled in his corner, transparent like glass. But this time Kiran did not run. This time he looked more closely. He saw the tears on the boy's cheeks. He saw the outstretched arms that could find no one to embrace. He saw the glass heart in the small chest, so fragile and yet still unbroken.
And something in Kiran broke instead — not the glass heart, but the wall he had erected around it. The wall of pride and contempt and arrogance that he had built so as never again to be as vulnerable as that small boy in the dark corner.
"You poor child," whispered Kiran, and he was speaking to his own reflection, to the child he had been and that still lived within him. "You tried so hard to be loved, and you did not know how. You built yourself an armor of brilliance and haughtiness because you thought no one could love you if they saw how small and frightened and needy you truly are. But I see you. I see you, and I do not condemn you. I see you, and I love you — not because you are special, but because you are."
And as he spoke these words, something wondrous happened. The small boy in the mirror stopped weeping. He looked up at Kiran with large, moist eyes, and for the first time he smiled — a shy, tender smile, like that of a flower feeling the first rays of sun after a long winter. And his glass heart, which had been cold and fragile for so long, began to change. It became less transparent, less hard. It became softer, warmer, more alive — until at last it was no longer made of glass but of flesh and blood, a beating, warm, human heart.
Kiran set the mirror down and placed his hand upon his chest. Where something cold and hard had resided for so long, he now felt something soft and warm — his own heart, beating properly for the first time.
He wept, and his tears were no longer the tears of shame but the tears of relief. And the Forest Sage stood beside him and laid a hand upon his shoulder and said: "You have passed the third trial. You have learned to love yourself without admiring yourself. You have learned the hardest thing of all: to accept yourself as you are, and not merely as you wished to be."
Of the return and the true crown
Many more moons passed in which Kiran lived with the Forest Sage and learned. He learned to truly see other people — not as mirrors of himself, but as beings in their own right, with their own stories, their own fears, their own longings. He learned that strength does not mean never weeping, but weeping and carrying on nonetheless. He learned that greatness does not mean being greater than everyone else, but being small enough to bow before a child.
At last, on a morning in spring, the Forest Sage said: "It is time for you to return."
"Back to my kingdom?" asked Kiran, and in his voice there was fear.
"Back to the people," said the Forest Sage. "You have found yourself. Now it is time to share what you have found with others."
Kiran set out on his way. The journey was long, but he no longer walked it with the arrogance of a king who expects the world to bow before him. He walked it with the humility of a wanderer who knows he is but a small part of a vast world.
When he reached his kingdom, many years had passed. A new king sat upon the throne — a distant cousin who had seized power when Kiran disappeared. The people scarcely remembered the prince who had once lived among mirrors.
Kiran did not appear before the new king to reclaim his throne. Instead, he settled in a small village at the edge of the kingdom, where the mountains began and the wind blew cold. He became a healer, for he had learned from the Forest Sage to gather herbs and bind wounds. And he became a listener, for he had learned that sometimes the best healing lies not in herbs but in an ear that truly hears.
The villagers soon called him the Quiet Helper, for he spoke little of himself and much of others. He owned no mirrors anymore — only a single small one in his house, which he needed to wash his face, not to admire it. And when he looked into it, he no longer saw a radiant prince or a desperate king. He saw a man with lines around his eyes that came from laughing and from weeping, a man with gray hair and rough hands, a man who was not special and yet enough.
One day a woman came to his village, a traveler from a distant kingdom in the west. Her name was Alethea, and after many years she had gone searching for a man to whom she had once spoken a truth he had not wished to hear.
She did not recognize him at first, for the man who came to greet her bore no resemblance to the prince who had once lived amid crystal and silk. But his eyes were the same, only they were no longer cold but warm.
"It is you," said Alethea. "I have been looking for you."
"Why?" asked Kiran.
"Because I wanted to know whether you ever found your way."
Kiran smiled, and in his smile there was not a trace of self-satisfaction, only gratitude. "I found it," he said. "And I have you to thank, for you were the first to tell me the truth, even though I could not hear it then."
Alethea sat down with him, and they talked all afternoon, and then all evening, and then all the next day. And when Alethea finally moved on, she knew she would return, and Kiran knew it too.
They married in the autumn of that year, in a small chapel in the village, without fanfare and without fireworks. Theirs was not a marriage of admiration but of understanding. They saw each other not as mirrors but as windows — as openings into another world that one could never fully comprehend but always continue to explore.
Kiran never became king again. He became something far harder and more precious: he became a human being.
The epilogue the fairy tale does not need, but the reader perhaps does
Many years later, when Kiran was old and white and bowed, he sat by the fire one evening and held his grandson on his lap. The boy was curious and lively and wanted to hear a story.
"Tell me about the glass heart," said the boy, for he had heard rumors, fragments of an old story that the villagers sometimes murmured.
Kiran gazed into the flames, and in them he saw the face of the small boy he had once been — not as a prisoner, but as an old friend whom he now knew and understood.
"Once upon a time there was a prince," he began, "who believed his heart was made of gold. But in truth it was made of glass — transparent and fragile and very, very lonely. He was so terrified that it might break that he encased it in an armor of arrogance and vanity. And he believed this armor would protect him. But do you know what? It only protected him from the things that could have healed him. It protected him from love. It protected him from truth. It protected him from himself."
"And what happened then?" asked the boy.
"Then," said Kiran, "the armor broke. And the prince thought he would die without it. But he did not die. He was only, at last, born."
The boy did not quite understand what his grandfather meant, but he sensed that it was something important. He nestled against Kiran's chest and listened to the steady beat of his heart — a heart no longer made of glass, but of flesh and blood and love.
And if they have not died, they are living still.
THE END.
* * *
Would you like to understand the psychotherapeutic function of this fairy tale? Then read The Psychology of Narcissism as a Fairy Tale — The Glass Heart.
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