The Mirror Desert

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Read in full The Mirror Desert

20 pages, approximately 7 minutes while listening. Enter the child’s name in the reader above so the narrator can call the child’s name correctly.

1. 1

   At the edge of morning, Milo found a desert glittering beyond the garden gate. Every dune was sprinkled with tiny mirrors, flashing gold, peach, and sky-blue. Ember sniffed one bright shard, and it shimmered with a picture of his paws dancing in circles.

2. 2

   Milo pushed the gate, though it had no fence attached to it at all. The desert answered with a soft chiming sound, like spoons tapping teacups far away. “Adventure?” Ember yipped, already halfway through, his star pendant bouncing.

3. 3

   The first tall mirror did not show Milo’s hair sticking up or Ember’s sandy nose. Instead, it showed Milo sharing his water bottle with a wilting cactus, and Ember waiting patiently beside him. Milo blinked. “That already happened yesterday.”

4. 4

   A row of little mirrors popped up like toast. In one, Ember leaped over a silver puddle with perfect fox grace. Milo tried the jump, landed with both sneakers in the sand, and felt his smile shrink to a button.

5. 5

   Milo brushed sand from his knees and glanced at the mirror again. It now showed his legs carrying him all the way to Ember, who was waiting with a twitching tail. Milo took a breath. Maybe this desert was not asking him to be best—only honest and kind.

6. 6

   Milo stepped onto a silver dune, and the mirror-sand shimmered behind him—not with his face, but with tiny pictures of all his steps. Ember bounded beside him, leaving bright paw-shaped sparks. “It shows what we do,” Milo whispered, smiling. “Then let’s do something brave,” Ember said.

7. 7

   Ahead rose a dune as high as a sleeping whale, its slope polished like moonlit glass. Milo ran at it first, pumping his arms, but he slid back down in a squeak of sneakers. In the dune’s shine, he saw himself trying—and falling—and trying again.

8. 8

   Ember scrambled halfway up with nimble paws before tumbling into a sandy puff. Milo laughed, then stopped when the mirror beside him showed his laugh growing into a pointy shadow. His cheeks warmed. “I didn’t mean it mean,” he said softly.

9. 9

   Then the desert made a new picture: a tall, quick child racing up the dune in three easy leaps. Milo’s smile folded small. “Maybe my legs are too slow,” he murmured, and the mirror-sand under his feet turned cloudy, making each step feel heavy.

10. 10

    Ember padded close and pressed his small shoulder against Milo’s shin. In the cloudy sand, another reflection opened: Milo’s feet splashing puddles, kicking a ball, tiptoeing past sleeping birds. Milo breathed out. His legs had carried him to many good places already.