Episode 5 of the Mirror Falls series, written, narrated and sound‑designed by Tod Maffin, follows Danielle – a 42‑year‑old mechanic who moonlights as an amateur magician – as she attempts a daring trap‑door illusion during the town’s monthly Entertainment Night. The performance is paired with Sandra’s Zunukwa dance, a First Nations monster legend about a basket‑carrying wild woman who steals children. Danielle rigs an old hydraulic system from a Western Star loader to open a trapdoor beneath the stage, intending to make a child, Leo, vanish inside the basket. A mis‑wired hydraulic reverses the door, catapulting Leo and the basket into the orchestra pit; the audience believes the trick succeeded, while Leo later emerges, covered in dust, to a mixed reaction. The episode interweaves detailed town lore – the rundown Gas ’n’ God garage, the Twilight Theater’s history, local characters (Mohit, Sandra, Leo, Mary George, etc.), and the Zunukwa folklore – and ends with production credits acknowledging Indigenous territories, music licensing, and the creator’s newsletter. The narrative balances humor, community portraiture, and a commentary on small‑town resilience and the thin line between magic and mechanical failure.
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The audience seemed hostile that day. Judgy. Cranky. But Danielle had been practicing this for months, and she sure as hell wasn't about to let it a group of self-important doofuses shake her confidence. "Funny thing about mirrors," she said loud enough to reach the back. "Mirrors can hide something you expect to see or reveal something you never knew existed." From the back, a 6-year-old shouted, "We can still see her!" Stephanie, the school's art and music teacher, was standing in as the magician's assistant. The plan was for her to walk behind the tall mirror propped up on the stage, then switch places with her friend Sue, who'd been hiding behind it. But the kids were spaced out too wide for the optics to work, and both women were clearly visible. Some of the kids started booing. They didn't want to be there. And neither did Danielle. Danielle never meant to be the town's go-to entertainer. She meant to be its mechanic. That part worked out fine. Danielle ran the garage at the Gas 'n' God, a low concrete building with a coffee pot that had been burned onto strong sometime in the '90s. If your car made a noise you couldn't describe, Danielle could fix it. If it made a noise you could describe, she'd fix it faster. She's single. The dating apps aren't much help when you live in a remote town. The real magic trick, she sometimes jokes, is luring people to town in the first place. She even put an ad in all the island papers. "It's a nice place, Mirror Falls," the ad read. "About 400 people live here. It has what you expect: a coffee shop called Dark Side of the Moon, a gas station called The Gas 'n' God, and a faulty electrical system." To pass the time, she taught Mohit, the young gas station attendant, some mechanical tips. The magic came later. Or maybe it had always been there, just poorly concealed. Daniela is 42. She loves magic, loves it the way people love model trains or military history. She practices card tricks behind the counter, palms greasy from brake fluid, cards sticking together at the corners. She bought scarves in bright colors and made them vanish, usually into her sleeve, occasionally onto the floor. She once tried sawing a piece of rebar in half for a trick and had to reassure 3 customers that extended medical would probably cover the ensuing injury. She loves magic, but magic does not love her. At the Fall Fair, Danielle pulled a rabbit out of a hat, which was so traumatized by the experience It shat all over her. At the Legion dinner, she tried to disappear a coin, but accidentally disappeared it into the gravy boat. People smiled with that tight, polite smile you give someone who's trying their best. That was the worst part. Danielle knows the smile. She knows exactly how bad she is. But towns have entertainment nights, and Danielle felt a responsibility. This practice daytime run with the kids was meant to bolster her confidence for tonight's actual show, not shatter it. Shatter it. She got through the practice, although it sure felt like Stephanie played her out with the piano a little sooner than she was supposed to have. It's a terrible name, but Entertainment Night is what Mirror Falls calls its monthly, socially mandatory evening of earnestly performed music, dance, singing, comedy, and Danielle. Actually, there are two Entertainment Nights in town, but we're not counting Dave Campbell's monthly attempt at passing his driver's test, which brings the whole town out to watch. The official night happens at the Twilight Theater, one of the few times its owner Roger will unlock the doors. Not for rehearsal, mind you, or tech setup. Just the performance, and that's it. The Twilight was originally a performing theater back in the '60s, a raised stage, two trap doors that led under, and a small orchestra pit. Once the films came through though, most of that was just left to collect dust. Other than entertainment nights, and a recent performance of Come From Away by the high schoolers, one of the last times the stage had been used was back in the late '90s. Some teens from the one-room high school in town staged a performance of Sweeney Todd there. I don't want to give away the ending, but suffice to say, the demon barber of Fleet Street isn't exactly the nicest person. What's supposed to happen is this: he gets the victim into the barber chair, murders her, she slides off, the trapdoor opens, and she disappears under the stage. Theater magic. What actually happened that night is he murdered her, tipped her out of the chair, and because the trapdoor hinges hadn't been used in decades, nothing opened. The teen just landed on top of it and stood there. Center stage. Very visible. After a long beat, she shrugged and gave it her best ad-lib. "They sure don't make murder devices like they used to!" And then walked off on her own, crushed by grade 8 shame. That teen, some 30 years later, was now standing backstage. Ready to redeem herself. The headline act this month was a dancer from one of the nearby First Nations in town to perform the dance of the Zunukwa. The Zunukwa is a monster story passed down through generations of the island's Indigenous nations. A crazy woman, twice the height of a normal person, with pursed lips, messed hair, stalking the forest at night with a huge basket on her back. In some tellings of the story, she's called the Wild Woman or the Basket Woman. She lives on the outskirts of town, finding children that stray just a little far from their house, tying them up, putting them in her basket, and taking them home with her to eat them. You can hear her, kids are told. Sounds like an air raid siren. That's not wind blowing through the cedar trees. That's a tsunekwa. Some storytellers say she can bring herself back from the dead, regenerate any wound. Others say mosquitoes came from the ashes of her corpse. Luckily for children in this story, the tsunekwa isn't particularly bright or coordinated, so the kids can usually scramble out of the basket and run home. She's also got bad eyesight, so the darkness helps. But, legend has it, some kids met their end fate in her fire. You can see the tsun-nikwa sometimes in dances like the Red Cedar Bark Ceremonies. Dancers put on the mask, a long scraggly wig, and hoist a basket onto their back. Sometimes they'll add giant carved hands with the faces of children on them, said to represent the kids she's stolen. The dance is slow. Sleepy and creepy. Mirror Falls has a relationship with its tsunekwa. One of the town's elders, Mary George, uses it as a warning: "Don't bother the forest. You don't know what's in there." She lived in town as long as anyone can remember and told every kid she encountered to do what their parents said and stay away from the forest. You don't want to be eaten, do you? It didn't hurt that you could sometimes see light far deep into the woods at night. Probably just the Northern Lights, or maybe the cannibal woman. But it was a story she also told the adults. We shouldn't bother the tsunukwa, or the forest for that matter. "Some things are better left alone. Some secrets never divulged." No one quite knew what she meant, and she was prone to riddles and an overactive imagination involving government surveillance, so most people just humored her. But everyone knew the highway ended at Mirror Falls. It was the end of the inlet too. No services were west of town. A big mountain and forest. Even planes can't get too far west. It's one of those dozen or so places in Canada where some geomagnetic anomaly sends their instruments crazy. It's just one big blur in Google Maps. They all are, those spots. So everyone just avoids west of town. Especially so ever since Father Marcel went out that way and didn't come back. Really, the only people who ever head west into the forest are those AI tech bros that show up every month to go hiking. Danielle's friend Sandra was going to perform the tsuneko dance. They've been friends for years. Sandra stayed at Danielle's place the night before because the Mirror Falls Motel and Cabins were closed for renovations. It gave Danielle the opportunity to pitch an idea: a combination performance—dance and magic. You scoop the kid, I rig the trapdoor to make them disappear. Now that's a pretty big deviation from the actual dance—one dancer, one drummer—and it took some convincing, but in the end Sandra agreed. "Just this once," she said. "Please don't make me look stupid." The theater was packed.. As usual for entertainment night, Guy and Kim from the Golden Walk brought their niece Nora, who was in town visiting. It was the highlight of their year to have a kid to look after, even just for a week. Len and Barb Haskett were there, married 41 years, still introduce each other as "my first husband" and "my current wife." Even Pete Lawson, who ran for town council once, lost badly, and now refers to it as "that time when I was in politics." The lights dimmed. Sandra emerged from the wings in the towering tsuniqua mask. She stalked the stage, gesturing slowly, like she was digging something up from the ground. She walked toward Leo, the youngest of the 7 Miller kids who'd been promised a king-sized Coffee Crisp for his cooperation. Sandra took the basket off her back and placed it carefully on the small X Danielle had marked on stage. She scooped up Leo, who was giggling, even though his mom was in the front row whispering, "No, cry, cry." Sandra carried Leo across the stage, ready to place him into the basket. To make sure that the trapdoor would open properly, Danielle had rigged it with some old hydraulics in her shop. Once the kid was in the basket, Danielle would pull the lever offstage, opening the trapdoor, disappearing the kid like magic, leaving the dancer to show the audience that the kid was gone. And that's what would have happened if Danielle had just used regular hydraulics. But she would not be embarrassed. Not this time. To make sure nothing went wrong, she took the hydraulics from a Western Star log loader This is a heavy-duty Class 8 loader, certified to lift 4,900 kilograms. Leo was 20 kilograms. Earlier back at the station, Mohit and Danielle had discussed keeping the settings on low. "Once you pull the lever," Mohit said— the power flickered and then he vanished like he usually does when this happens. "Low settings. Fine." It was still about as safe as it could be. Subtle as swatting a fly with a municipal garbage truck. Danielle watched as Sandra slowly lowered Leo into the bottomless basket. She pulled the lever. The mechanics under the stage roared, and a huge puff of dust— a whole cloud, really— enveloped the stage, which was fortunate because Danielle in her race to get things installed, had accidentally reversed part of the setup, and instead of the door dropping open, it flew back the other way, catapulting Leo and the basket a foot into the air and into the orchestra pit. The sound from the machinery masked the thump of his landing. Leo popped his head out of the basket like a confused gopher. Sandra froze on stage. Danielle poked her head out from the wings. She could see the audience. They had huge grins on their faces. The dust obscured any view of Leo's flight, so as far as they were concerned, all that happened was Leo in the basket disappeared. "Keep going," Danielle whispered. Sandra nodded to the drummer and spent a couple of minutes finishing the dance. Then, right at the end of it, from the very back of the hall, a small shaky voice called out, "Mom, I think I'm gonna barf." There stood Leo, covered in dust. He'd found the orchestra pit access door, made his way back into the lobby and into the audience. It was the best trick Danielle had ever performed. Danielle didn't take home that month's box of licorice. That went to Nurse Kelly, who did a surprisingly entertaining sock puppet performance detailing the ramifications of untreated gonorrhea. But it didn't matter. "How did it go?" Mohit asked when Danielle came back to the station. "It was terrible," she said.
It was perfect. <LYRICS>I am strolling along, just minding my business, humming a song. I'm happy by myself, not a care in the world.
This is the life, just me, myself, and I.</LYRICS> Mirror Falls is produced with gratitude on the territory of the Coast Salish people. Special thanks to Luanne Neal of the Kwakwaka'wakw Nation. Tad Nation, who also performed the Zuni quadrum heard in this episode. Story and sound design by Tod Maffin. Join other Mirror Falls fans and chat about this episode at chat.mirrorfalls.com. You can subscribe to Tod's free newsletter about Canada at farandwide.news. Music licensing by Epidemic Sound. Theme song by Nicholas Gabrielson, with the Martin Landstrom Orchestra.
There ain't no doubt about it, I'm no longer blue. So glad we are through, just me, myself, and I.
