Текст книги "Cinderella Dressed in Ashes"
Автор книги: Cameron Jace
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
30
The Weighing of the Soul
Shew was standing in front of the Schloss. The world around her was quiet as if everyone had died.
It was noon. The beautiful sun slanted its rays upon the huge curvy design of the Schloss’ facade. Shew held the rim of her dress with both hands and entered the unguarded castle. She was expecting a surprise celebration for her sixteenth birthday—her intuition told her this was the day Alice had mentioned.
Inside, the Schloss was strangely vacant. She could find no one. The blue curtains covered every enormous window inside. The curtains looked like wall tapestries with golden curvy drawings, and they blocked the sunlight from peering at the wide hallways. A single, stubborn sunray still managed to peek its way through the thin gap between the curtains, slicing the brownish walls with thins lines of gold.
Shew nudged her toes free, kicking her shoes in the air, each shoe landing on one of the cushiony chairs on both sides of the hallways. They were made of mahogany and cypress with tulip poplars. Everything in this part of the dream was detailed and sharp.
She lifted her dress up with both hands again and walked barefoot beneath the shades of the curtains. She felt comfortable walking barefoot. The sound of her feet flapping on the marble floor was her only company.
The castle’s residents must have hid somewhere to surprise her, she told herself. Important day or not, it still was her birthday and she was longing for celebration. In fact, it was Shew’s last birthday. She knew she’d never grow older than sixteen.
The further she walked in the hallway the more the silence grew on her. Silence usually made her feel uneasy. It made her think that life had stopped, and she feared it would stay that way forever. The silence in the huge castle was deafening today.
Where are Cerené and Alice?
As Shew swallowed, a butterfly broke the silence, fluttering before her eyes. It had blood-orange wings with black spots all over.
Shew followed the butterfly’s path as it fluttered underneath the thick curtains shielding it from the sun. It looked like a ballerina dancing on air in the shades of her private dreams. The butterfly continued its flight up high toward the mosaic cross-arched ceiling. Shew watched it with fascination as if it were her first time in the Schloss.
Looking ahead again, Shew realized she was walking toward Carmilla’s private chamber, a special place she’d built while Angel was away. It featured Carmilla’s individual throne and it was a part of the castle where no noblemen were allowed—she’d only allowed the Huntsmen in when one of the Slave Maidens resisted.
Shew’s bare feet walked her, almost hypnotized, to the huge double-sided, heavily engraved door leading to the chamber with Carmilla’s throne.
There was a circular handle on the door, made of shiny brass. It was the shape of a snake curved all the way around so it’s mouth looked like eating its own tail. She grabbed it and pulled the head apart from the tail. The door opened on its own, the sunshine widening Shew’s pupils.
The butterfly fluttered into the large place, which was illuminated with the light coming through the huge windows on the left and right.
Shew stood at the threshold, examining the place behind the door. It had a bluish golden hue to it with a cross-arched frescoed ceiling even higher than the hallways. The large windows were framed in gold, and were so large that a carriage could pass through them, allowing infinite amounts of golden and dusty sunlight to fill the space.
A few feet away from Shew, a red carpet led the way up to the throne where her mother, Carmilla, sat elegantly, chin up, with a conservative smile on her face.
Light didn’t hurt vampires like Carmilla after all.
Carmilla’s throne, made of black obsidian stones, had her full name engraved on top:
She Who Must Be Obeyed
Queen Carmilla Karnstein.
The Queen of Sorrow.
The throne was framed with engravings, some that Shew had known of and knew how to read, and some written in the same undecipherable language Loki’s necklace was written in. Few of the readable names Shew could read now were Mircalla, Carmilla, and Ayesha, all among a number of other name that didn’t mean anything to Shew.
Looking at Carmilla, Shew thought her mother was born to be a queen, unlike her who never felt she fit the role of a princess.
Carmilla’s golden, voluminous hair trailed down her shoulders. Part of her hair was braided into a headband at the top. Of course, it was also attached by a braid to her thin crown on her head, except that this time the hair waved like an Uraues poisonous snake, protecting the crown from harm as if it would lash out and bite whoever dared to take the crown from her.
Everything was so vividly detailed in this part of the dream, Shew couldn’t take her eyes off her mother. Carmilla had icy blue, cat eyes; devilishly innocent, seductive, and smart. Thin eyebrows crowned her majesty’s eyes. Her eyelashes, black like raven feathers, were so beautiful they looked fake—they weren’t.
Carmilla had her hands rested upon the sides of the throne and two panthers with green eyes slept at her feet. The panthers weren’t sedated. They behaved out of fearing the Queen of Sorrow.
The Queen’s favorite mirror stood at her side, along with a thin old woman with milk-white hair at the other.
In front of the panthers, three steps down, stood Shew’s birthday cake, three feet high, all white like a wedding cake, topped with dark chocolate with red cherries scattered on top.
On both sides of the red carpet leading to the throne, stood a number of peasant girls. They were young, ripe, and beautiful.
The girls were the first to break the tension and welcome Shew with their eyes, standing firm in their place, somehow afraid to move because of Carmilla. They had their hands laced behind their backs and heads bowed down a little, wearing their own poor dresses.
Immediately, Shew scanned the girls, looking to see if Cerené was among them. A sigh of relief escaped her when she didn’t find her. It made sense. The Queen wouldn’t sacrifice the Phoenix’s blood, no matter what.
Shew knew all these girls were going to be slaughtered and the Queen was going to swim in their blood. Finally, Shew broke the tense silence by stepping into the chamber.
The girls started clapping and Sirenia Lark, the Queen’s favorite singer, started humming while playing her magical harp. Sirenia was a siren who Carmilla had met on her journey with Angel, escaping Night Sorrow. She used to lure men with her voice and eat their flesh. The Queen liked that.
Shew walked among the girls, tenderly glancing at them one by one.
You have to save those girls, Shew.
When she reached the three steps before the panthers, Carmilla signaled for her to stop. The Queen stood up slowly, and the girls held their breath, pulling their feet together and adjusting their dresses.
Carmilla’s presence sucked the air out of the room; even Sirenia held her breath and stopped playing the harp. The two panthers jumped up straight from their eternal sleep and padded slowly next to the Queen as she descended from her throne.
Carmilla walked as if she were a panther herself. Even the sunshine disappeared where she laid her foot on the floor, pretending a horde of clouds had blocked its path, leaving the candlesticks to provide the light.
Carmilla’s hair floated over her shoulders as she walked. She stopped before Shew.
“You’re a princess now,” Carmilla said in a voice submerged in womanhood. “Being sixteen,” Carmilla followed, not bowing down to face her daughter. “It’s a special day for you, Shew,” she stretched her long arms to hold Shew by the shoulders, then hesitantly knelt down and hugged her. “But before celebrating, we need to weigh your heart one more time. Dame Gothel!” She summoned the woman with milk-white hair.
“Majesty,” Dame Gothel paid her respects.
“Did you weigh all the girls’ hearts?” Carmilla asked.
“All but one, majesty,” Dame Gothel said.
“Then weigh it here in front of us before we weigh Shew’s heart,” Carmilla demanded and returned to her throne.
Shew heard the girls whisper something so she took some steps back, trying to listen. She heard them mention that in order for the Queen to swim in a girl’s blood and benefit from it, the peasant’s heart had to weigh twenty-one grams. This, or the Queen wouldn’t slaughter the girl but would keep her for later.
So that’s why she wants to weigh my heart. Unless mine is twenty-one grams, it’s no use to her. Why twenty one grams?
Shew watched as Dame Gothel laid a peasant girl on a special table with a scale underneath. The girl resisted for a moment but gave up eventually, intimidated by Bloody Mary’s voice, cursing her from the mirror.
“Could you explain out loud how the weighing process goes, Dame Gothel,” Carmilla demanded. “We’ve never told Shew about the process before,” Carmilla followed.
She wondered if they had sedated her before they weighed her heart in the past.
“But of course, majesty,” Dame Gothel sounded neutral. She didn’t sneer or try to look evil. She was doing her job. “First, we let the girl eat the Sanguinaccio cake,” Dame Gothel pulled a cake heavily topped with white cream and showed it to Shew. “It’s a rare recipe from Italy, an exotic land beyond the Missing Mile.”
“Shew already knows about the shoe-shaped island,” Carmilla nodded at her daughter. “Continue, please.”
“Before we feed the cake to the girl, we have to cut her arm slightly,” Dame Gothel made one of her servants cut the girl’s arm with small knife, collecting the drops of blood into a cup, which looked a little bit like Cerené’s, only it wasn’t glass. Dame Gothel took the blood and spattered it upon the Sanguinaccio cake as if pouring sugar on a pie. “Now the cake is ready for the girl to eat,” Dame Gothel said. “But first we have to check the girl’s weight on the scale underneath the table,” she explained. “And then I will feed her the Sanguinaccio cake,” she let the girl only take a bite from it. The girl fell asleep instantly.
“And what happens when she eats the cake?” Carmilla said.
“She dies,” Dame Gothel said bluntly, pulling out a snake from somewhere under the table.
“What?” Shew took a step forward but stopped when Dame Gothel waved the snake at her. “You can’t do that!” Shew grunted.
“Don’t mind my daughter, Dame Gothel. Continue,” Carmilla waved her hand as permission to proceed.
“Now, we check the weight of the scale underneath the bed,” Dame Gothel said.
“Explain why to my daughter,” Carmilla said.
“The weighing of the heart is actually the weighing of the soul,” Dame Gothel began. “The soul, or the Ka, how ancients like to call it, is a mystery even to the greatest wizards and mentors. We don’t know how it looks like, how it smells, or even what it really does. But we knows that it’s somewhere in the heart. The soul leaves the body when it dies, and thus the body ways less. The difference between the weight of the body before and after death equals the weight of the soul. If it’s twenty one grams, then the girl is ready for sacrifice. I see the difference isn’t twenty one grams yet for this one, majesty,” Dame Gothel pointed at the poor girl on the bed.
“This is crazy,” Shew protested. “She’s dead. What good is it if you know how much her heart weighs?”
“Within forty two minutes after she dies from biting the cake, she still can be resurrected,” Dame Gothel said. “Do you want me to resurrect her, majesty?”
“Please do,” Carmilla authorized.
Dame Gothel tapped her snake’s head before it spat poison into the girl’s face. Unlike the usually deadly poison, this one brought the girl back to life.
The servants helped the girl sit back up and leave the room.
Carmilla gazed back at Shew with a slight smug smile on her face. Shew got the message. Carmilla was giving her a choice. Either swim in the girls’ blood or fully turn into a vicious vampire, part of the Sorrow’s family, or Carmilla would have to rip out her heart. Of course, she couldn’t rip Shew’s heart out unless it was twenty one grams, which meant she had to have her heart weighed now.
Shew glanced back briefly. The chamber was a huge ambush. A couple of huntsmen stood by the door behind her, and she guessed others waited for her outside if she managed to escape. She had nowhere to go.
“What do you say, princess?” Carmilla said. “You could stay one of the Sorrows, surrender to your nature and family ties, or you could be stupid enough to think you’re the Chosen One.”
Shew’s only hope was to allow Dame Gothel to weigh her soul and hope it weighed less than twenty-one grams. What would happen if it weighed enough? All Carmilla had to do was prevent Dame Gothel from bringing her back with the snake’s bite.
Stay strong Shew. If you have really managed to split your heart in the past, then you found a way out of this chamber.
It crossed her mind that maybe Charmwill would interfere and save her from this room. He was there for Loki, and she thought he might do the same for her. In her heart, she knew Charmwill was dead, and she didn’t know if the dead still appeared in the memories of the Dreamers.
As all of these thoughts were spinning in her head, the Queen was becoming impatient.
Two huntsmen grabbed Shew from the back and pulled her toward the weighing table. Carmilla had decided Shew was never going to submit.
Snarling at the huntsmen wasn’t enough. They were strong men who fed on darkness itself. One of them strapped her mouth shut with what looked like a dog’s muzzle and she couldn’t free herself from the other’s grip.
Shew didn’t give up. She kicked one of them between the legs, but all he did was moan a little. Then she punched him in the face, seized his short moment of dizziness and banged his head against the other huntsman.
The girls let out a sound of wonderment, impressed by the princess. Soon a couple of other huntsmen entered the chamber. Shew, still muzzled, ran right toward them, the huntsmen barely stopping her. She pulled one’s cloak and began choking him with it, even when the other huntsmen started grabbing her. Shew’s grip was firm. She wondered where the sudden surge of strength came from. No one had ever been able to face a huntsman.
“Brave,” the Queen of Sorrow smirked, adjusting her neck to see the action from her throne. Discreetly, she admired her daughter’s strength and stubbornness.
The huntsman finally freed himself and another knocked Shew down, punching her with his scabbard. Shew fell back, her lip bleeding. Another huntsman, angered by her behavior, decided to teach her a lesson and raised a hand to slap her.
“No!” the Queen of Sorrow snapped for a second, doing her best to stay in her throne. “You don’t humiliate my daughter unless I say so,” she followed. The huntsman looked puzzled, his hands hanging in the air. “Hang him by the noose,” Carmilla demanded.
A number of the other huntsmen entered the room and took him away to kill him.
However, this didn’t stop the Queen from signaling to the three huntsmen left to pull Shew toward the weighing table. They lay the princess on it and held her by the legs and shoulders as Dame Gothel approached with her deadly Sanguinaccio cake. She didn’t need to cut her arm. She used the blood dripping from Shew’s lip.
Shew was still kicking and swearing, too many hands holding her down.
“You still have a choice,” Carmilla said, still sitting, and patting one of her panthers at her feet. “Look at all those beautiful girls you can taste.”
“I’m not going to feed on poor children,” Shew growled behind the muzzle. “I could have been one of them. You can’t do this.”
“I can do anything,” the Queen said. “I could even bring the sun and moon down if I desire. I just like them the way they are.”
Dame Gothel smudged the cake against the thin bars of the muzzle, stuffing Shew’s mouth. Shew tried spitting the cake out, but it was too big. She kicked her feet but the huntsmen were stronger.
“Pretty weak for a Dhampir Princess,” Bloody Mary said from inside the mirror. Her voice was full of envy, hate, and malice. She was a young girl with such demonic hatred drooling from her tongue. Shew remembered Alice telling her that Bloody Mary had her own story of how she came to be who she was. Shew wondered who trapped her in the mirror and why. How could she have such influence over Carmilla?
“Don’t worry, Mary,” Carmilla said, her voice uncannily caring. “Soon after I kill the princess and enjoy her heart and liver, I’ll have enough time—youth and beauty—to learn the secrets of the Anderson Mirror from the ashen girl.”
The cake’s taste was already on Shew’s tongue. She wondered what Bloody Mary had to do with Cerené and the Anderson Mirror. Why was the Queen telling Bloody Mary not to worry?
As Shew faded into darkness, she wondered if Bloody Mary had a splinter in her eyes.
If Bloody Mary didn’t have a splinter of the mirror in her eyes, then who would?
Shew was too late to figure out the connection. She thought Bloody Mary was right. What kind of Dhampir was that weak? Wasn’t she prophesized to kill all vampires? How so when she couldn’t save herself?
Shew gave in to another Sleeping Death, one that she was unlikely to wake up from.
31
A Conversation with Death
Shew hadn’t died in a dream before, so she didn’t know what to expect.
She thought she’d see herself leave her own body and fly like angels in the air, watching how her body lay still on the weighing table. Last time when she thought she was dead at the Wall of Thorns, it turned out she’d been saved by a mysterious someone. No one was going to save her this time.
Will I never know if my soul weighed twenty-one grams? Instead of having an out of body experience, Shew found herself locked inside her own body, unable to move. It was as if she were trapped in the carcass of her flesh and bones, watching the world from behind the bars of her eyelashes.
She couldn’t hear anything, nor could she see her soul flying in the air. She had no choice but hope her soul didn’t weigh twenty-one grams so Dame Gothel would bring her back for a later test like the girl before.
But how long did she have to wait? How could she count forty-two minutes while she was dead?
She remembered Loki’s kiss, the way he fought for her in the castle. She remembered when she teased him in the seven-year-old birthday dream, the flirty time they had in their last dream together. They had laughed, cried and bantered with each other. Loki almost died for her in the octopus bathtub. He didn’t give up, though. He followed her to the Queen’s pumpkin coach then shouted his silly ‘Ora Pedora’ and used his Chanta. Shew wondered if she could believe in the Chanta like him. It seemed unlikely. Loki had managed to fulfill his journey and learn who he really was. Shew was still dancing on hot coals. Neither did her feet get used to heat nor did she find a way to cross to a cooler place.
Right now, she was dead, walking the thin rope between before and after.
Charmwill crossed her mind somehow. Other than mourning his death, she thought Loki was lucky having the old pipe-smoking mentor. Someone who’d stand beside him each step of the way, but not interfere unless necessary. Why didn’t she have someone like that? A Chosen One needed a mentor like Charmwill. She wondered if there was a Godmother coming to save her now. Why was she so alone?
When she had first learned that Wilhelm Grimm sent Alice to her, she thought Alice was some kind of mentor. But what kind of mentor stole the necklace given to you by your lover?
She wondered if it was better to die instead of trying to solve the endless riddles of the world she lived in. Everyone she met seemed to have an agenda and a complex story. She had always thought her destiny was going to be crystal clear: here are the bad guys, and there are good; shoot the bad, help the good, audience clap as the curtains fall down.
But her life in Sorrow was far from black and white, and solving a riddle, only meant the birth of another. For instance, how could she and Cerené have been on the same pirate ship, the Jolly Roger? Could that have been a coincidence? Everything seemed connected in the most mysterious ways in Sorrow.
Shew laughed in her mind—her lips had paled and were not hers anymore. She was laughing at the idea of dying without knowing who she really was, and what she was capable of; the worst torture of all.
She gave in to the dimness of her mind, the curtain of afterlife draping down on all living things, listening to the faint and distant voice of Dame Gothel, saying, “Twenty-one grams, majesty.”
Shew wanted to scream but she had no mouth. She felt someone moving her body, and she predicted they were taking her corpse to the bathhouse for the Queen to feast on her heart and swim in her blood.
But then she felt the emptiness around her as if everyone had simply left the chamber, probably preparing the bathhouse and then coming back to pick her up. They had no reason to worry about the princess’ corpse. It wasn’t going anywhere.
Although her paralyzed eyes were fixed on the ceiling, she saw someone in front of her, a woman in red with a scythe in her hand.
Oh, Great, hello Mrs. Death.
“You know who I am?” Death spoke. She had a sweet voice actually, and it helped a lot that she was a woman. Maybe she’d understand Shew better.
“The cookie monster?” She couldn’t help the sarcasm. You don’t meet with Death every day. Shew didn’t think leaving an impression was a bad idea. The woman in red didn’t respond.
So I offended Death. What is she going to do. Kill me?
“You know how many other souls I have to collect today?” she said bluntly, not appreciating Shew’s cheesy response.
“Busy day, huh?” Shew’s mind responded. “Can’t you just mass murder them all?” she said.
Death’s face looked liked it changed a little. She was trying not to smile.
“I mean how about tsunamis,” Shew couldn’t stop talking. “Earthquakes and volcanoes, they’re your doing, right? I always liked plagues. You just send the rats out into the world and go have a cigarette while the disease spreads. By the end of the day, everyone’s dead. Neat.”
“You talk too much,” Death said, banging her scythe against the floor.
“Are you going to cut my mind’s tongue?” Shew said, wondering why death felt like a hallucinogenic drug.
“Stop it, princess,” Death said. “I’m not necessarily going to take your life today.”
“I knew it,” Shew said. “You can’t kill me. I’m the Chosen One. It’s predictable that I won’t die. I’ve watched a lot of movies on teenager’s laptops, trapped in the Schloss.”
“You’re being silly, which actually means you’re trying to cover the fact that you’re sorry because you haven’t been strong enough,” Death said. “And if you think Death is the worst that could happen to you, then you’re greatly mistaken.”
“There’s something more painful than death?” Shew wondered. “Stupidity?”
Why does death feel like I’m high, smoking a hookah above the clouds?
“You know what’s worse than Death? Living a life of suffering and wishing for it,” Death said in a raspy voice with the kind of intensity Shew had initially expected Death to utter.
“So will you spare me? I spared a boy once,” Shew said.
“You spared him because you loved him,” Death said. “I don’t love you.”
“I am sure you don’t love anyone,” Shew said.
“I spared your mother the day you were born,” Death said.
Hearing this, Shew didn’t feel like joking anymore, “You did?”
“Do I look like I am joking?”
Hearing that from Death, Shew couldn’t argue, “of course, you aren’t. But I have the feeling you want to compromise.”
“Your mother was going to die giving birth to you,” Death explained. “I gave her a second life to take care of you.”
“It doesn’t look like she appreciated you saving her, I must say,” Shew commented.
“If I give you a second life, will you appreciate it?” Death said. “Will you stop your reluctance?”
“I could lie to you and you anything you want to hear right now,” Shew said. “You know that, right?”
“If you lie, you’re lying to yourself,” Death said, and turned around, walking away.
“Wait!” Shew said. “Aren’t you going to save me?”
“Of course, I won’t,” Death said, not looking back.
“But you promised!”
“I promised nothing,” Death said. “You were wondering why you had no one like Charmwill Glimmer in you life, someone who’d teach you how to be a Chosen One. Unfortunately, this isn’t how things happen in the Kingdom of Sorrow.”
“Then how am I going to learn?” Shew yelled. Ironically, her pain increased with every step Death took away from her.
“You should have learned a lot already. Everything you see, everyone you meet is for a reason,” Death’s voice was fading to grey. “Don’t worry. You won’t die, not this time. You’ll be saved, but not by me, but someone who loves you.”
Death’s words didn’t ease Shew’s feeling of betrayal. Mrs. Death came here, jumbled her thoughts for a while, and left her be. Shew didn’t understand the purpose behind her conversation with Death. Who loved Shew enough to save her? Loki was as good as dead to her, and she couldn’t think of anyone else but her father. She knew nothing about his whereabouts, and doubted he would show up all of a sudden. Shew assumed this was actually the end. Death had only been laughing at her.
Then something touched Shew’s lips.
