The Snow Queen's Mirror
The devil's magic mirror from the first chapter of Andersen's 'The Snow Queen'. It magnifies everything ugly and mean and shrinks all that is good and fair, and when the trolls drop it in their glee, it shatters into millions of splinters. Splinters blown into the eye and heart of the boy Kay make everything beautiful seem spoiled and let the Snow Queen carry him away, setting the whole story in motion. The mirror is thus the tale's opening image of a world seen through a corrupted glass, a figure Andersen would return to throughout his work.