Smoke and Mirrors

This short story collection gathers approximately thirty pieces of short fiction, poetry, and prose ranging from dark fantasy and horror to science fiction, fable, and retellings of myth and fairy tale. The works vary widely in length, form, and subject matter while returning repeatedly to questions of illusion, identity, loss, and the boundaries between the ordinary and the supernatural.

The opening poem, "Reading the Entrails: A Rondel," establishes the collection's tone. A speaker addresses a lover, describing the future as shaped by cards, stars, and fate, then promises to visit unseen at night and take what it wants while the lover sleeps.

In the prose introduction, Gaiman compares stories to mirrors set at angles to reality, then transitions into a story he long conceived as a wedding gift. "The Wedding Present" follows Belinda, a veterinarian, and Gordon, an architect, who find among their wedding gifts an anonymous typed description of their wedding. Each time Belinda rereads the document, the text has changed into a bleaker alternate version of their marriage, while their real life remains mostly happy. Belinda theorizes the document absorbs the bad marriage they might have had. When Gordon dies suddenly of a congenital heart defect at thirty-six, Belinda burns the document and waits for the scar it described to appear on her cheek.

"Chivalry" is among the collection's lightest stories. Mrs. Whitaker, an elderly English widow, finds the Holy Grail in a charity shop and places it on her mantelpiece. Sir Galaad, a knight of the Round Table, arrives seeking the Grail. Over multiple visits, she refuses his offers, including a legendary sword. On his final visit, he presents three treasures: the Philosopher's Stone, which grants serenity and transforms base metals to gold; the Egg of the Phoenix, which conveys heat and freedom; and an Apple of the Hesperides that could restore her youth. She accepts the Stone and the Egg as a fair trade but firmly rejects the apple, calling it improper to offer such things to old ladies. She wraps the Grail in Christmas paper, gives Galaad fruitcake, and cries quietly after he leaves, having learned that Marie, the young shop volunteer, has run off with him on his horse.

"The Price" takes a darker turn. A narrator living in the country describes a mysterious black cat that appears on his porch and sustains increasingly severe wounds each night. Using night-vision binoculars, the narrator sees a shape-shifting figure, the Devil, coming up his driveway. The black cat fights the Devil in silence each night to protect the household, sacrificing its body in the process. The narrator wonders how much more the cat can give.

In "Troll Bridge," a boy named Jack encounters a troll beneath a bridge at three stages of his life. At seven, he bargains with the troll, arguing he is too small and promising to return. At fifteen, with Louise, his first love, he again begs for more time. In his mid-thirties, after his wife Eleanora leaves him, Jack finds the bridge and surrenders. The troll eats his life, stands up wearing it comfortably, and walks away whistling. Jack, now the troll, remains under the bridge forever.

"The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories" follows an unnamed English writer to Los Angeles, where a studio has purchased his novel about Charles Manson's supernatural offspring. Through absurd meetings with rotating studio personnel, the writer watches his book's premise get dismantled. Between meetings, he befriends Pious Dundas, a ninety-year-old Black groundskeeper who tends ornamental carp and tells him about June Lincoln, a forgotten 1920s film star who kissed one of the fish, leaving a lipstick mark that persists decades later. The studio abandons the project. Dundas dies. The writer stops by the fish pool one last time, unable to distinguish the three white carp, and heads to the airport, already forgetting.

"Changes" traces the societal impact of Reboot, a cancer treatment developed by a scientist named Rajit that cures most cancers but changes the patient's biological sex. Told in numbered vignettes spanning decades, the story follows Reboot from breakthrough to cultural upheaval: Recreational users called "freebooters" take bootleg versions to shift gender at will, the word "change" itself becomes taboo, and various nations respond with oppression or exploitation. Rajit, dying of prostate cancer in his nineties and having never taken Reboot, insists his nurse walk him to Copacabana beach, where he collapses among golden, beautiful people who are neither men nor women. His last word is "Angels."

"We Can Get Them for You Wholesale" exploits its protagonist's fatal weakness. Peter Pinter, whose only flaw is an inability to resist a bargain, hires an assassination firm after discovering his fiancée's infidelity. A salesman offers escalating bulk discounts, from two kills for the price of one to wholesale rates for larger orders. Peter learns from a genealogy service that roughly fourteen million deaths would make him King of England. That night, he calls and asks how much it would cost to kill everyone in the world. The answer is nothing: "We only have to be asked" (208). Strange noises begin outside. When the thing comes through his door, Peter does not scream for long.

Several shorter pieces punctuate the collection. "Nicholas Was..." reimagines Santa Claus as an ancient prisoner forced by Arctic-dwelling beings to deliver gifts, envying mythological sufferers like Prometheus and Sisyphus. "Don't Ask Jack" describes a mysterious Jack-in-the-Box that whispers to sleepwalking children, telling them things they can never quite remember. "Babycakes" is a stark fable in which all animals vanish and humanity substitutes babies for food, leather, and testing, until the babies vanish too. "Virus" is a poem about a computer game so addictive it consumes civilization.

"Murder Mysteries" features a young Englishman stranded in Los Angeles who gives a cigarette to a stranger on a bench. The stranger identifies himself as Raguel, the angel of Vengeance, and recounts the first murder in Heaven: The designer-angel Carasel was found dead beneath the Hall of Being, where angels construct the blueprints for the universe. Raguel discovers that Carasel and his partner Saraquael became lovers while designing the concept of Love. When reassigned to design Death, Carasel lost interest in Saraquael, who killed him out of anguish. Raguel destroys Saraquael with holy fire. Lucifer weeps and protests the punishment as unjust. Raguel then realizes that Zephkiel, a wingless elder angel, is God in disguise and that God orchestrated the tragedy so Lucifer would witness divine injustice and begin to doubt, precipitating his eventual rebellion. Back on the bench, the stranger kisses the narrator's cheek and whispers that he never fell.

The collection closes with "Snow, Glass, Apples," a retelling of Snow White from the stepmother-queen's perspective. The princess is a vampire who drained her father's life through nightly feedings, leaving his body covered in bite marks. The queen orders the princess killed, but the girl survives in the forest, preying on travelers. The queen poisons apples with her own blood and a dried-herb powder, and the princess bites one and falls dead. Years later, a prince revives the princess by dislodging the apple during sex with her preserved corpse. The princess returns, and the prince's soldiers seize the queen and thrust her into a kiln to burn alive. The queen resolves not to scream and thinks of a snowflake landing on the princess's white cheek without melting.