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beheld their glass doppelganger surrounded by an astral haze of slowly pulsing wings.  It is reported that when Jamalerdapala stood before the mirror on its completion, he exclaimed “My soul takes flight.  I will ascend to my new mistress, the moon!”
    Perhaps the fear of  buoyancy and ascension beyond the physical plane, combined with the prince’s well-known fear of heights, presaged the passage of the mirror from the hands of Jamalerdapala to Sultan Muliyat Khum of  Zanzibar.  The Sultan’s envoy, Gilead Mbano – one must suppose that the envoy was of Jewish descent, perhaps through Ethiopia – on Khum’s hearing of the munificence and glory of the crown prince, was sent to visit the Tamil palace of the generous noble in an effort to establish contracts relating to the exchange of spice for gold and ivory.  While touring the royal forest, the prince noted Mbano’s fascination with and keen knowledge of the local invertebrate fauna.  At the conclusion of the visit, the mirror was sent southbound with Mbano on the Sultan’s dhow, a gift to Khum, but more a gift for the envoy than for the Sultan, whom Jamalerdapala had never met.
    Nevertheless, though Mbano sat spellbound in its presence the entire journey back to Africa, the butterfly mirror spent little time in his company.  Upon its arrival at the stone ramparts of the Sultan’s fortress, it was whisked away to the Zanzibari royal harem, where only emasculated males might see its wonder.  It became a favored plaything of the Sultan’s wives and concubines, who stood nude before the mirror, preening themselves, in turn, before the oft-jealous eyes of those whose reflected form was not caught in its golden gaze.  For while silky-veiled rumors of pleasure and delight cast a shadowy erotic mist about the harem, the dwellers therein know only an unending jaded boredom.  The eunuchs, stripped of their libido, viewed the women’s vain displays with a detached sense of spiritual fulfillment – the mirror, to them, was an object of sublime transcendence.
    Seven generations of Sultan passed, while the harem remained bathed in an eternal sea of youth, white-hot sexuality and utter ennui.  The Butterfly Mirror was all but forgotten by those outside its carved ivory walls.  An occasional amber glow at night, combined with high-pitched giggles, sighs, and the scent of patchouli hinted at its presence, but only an obscure catalog, inscribed at the time of Mbano’s contract, recorded the actuality of the device.
    Were it not for the influx of outsiders seeking to establish a colonial foothold in the area, the mirror might still be in the inventory of the sultanate (decrepit and corrupt as it has become in this age of corporate ascendance).  We should thank the great cosmopolitan, Doctor Phineous Pilander for temporarily rescuing the wonder from dusty obscurity.  Doctor Pilander (who, history has revealed, was actually an irascible merchant of shallow moral character), was sent as Queen Victoria’s emissary in a last, desperate attempt to establish a consul at Zanzibar where previous attempts by the always-stodgy and sometimes-belligerent Royal Navy had failed.  The good Queen Mother had sent with her ambassador a pair of London pigeons as an example of “exotic English aviary fauna” – or so it was printed on the certificate of authenticity tied to each of the bird’s legs.  So impressed was the Sultan – now Umbayar Uthman Fada (the Khums since displaced by another dynasty on the murder of Khum III by bandits) – that he ordered the firing of all the fortress’s cannonade at once (much to the surprise of local fishermen, who received no warning of the coming salute) and the gifting of some token to the British emissary.  The Sultan’s vizier combed the records for a suitable something – anything, for the Fadas were in desperate financial straits . . . relatively speaking.  After an exhaustive search of the libraries, the vizier’s assistants