Текст книги "Cinderella Dressed in Ashes"
Автор книги: Cameron Jace
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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 18 страниц)
She cried her heart out as she started dizzying. She was about to wake up to a lonely world without Cerené or Loki. She supposed her suffering was her destiny.
A single image broke her sobs in one last trick of fate. She saw Cerené eyes creating sand, and then she saw her cry Tears of Beauty, which glided down her cheek and into the glass urn. And she saw her growing hands again while asleep. The Field of Dreams was real. It worked.
Shew’s eyed widened, and she felt slightly better, brushing Cerené’s hair again, “I understand now why Charmwill wiped my memory of you,” Shew whispered to her. “In order for Carmilla not to get access to the darkness of the world, the Clue had to be put to sleep,” she kissed Cerené’s forehead. “I’ll see you in a hundred years,” she said as the sky began raining tiny shards of glass.
39
Back to Candy House
Shew sat on the couch in Candy House, pushing the remote control’s buttons.
She wasn’t looking for something to watch. Just killing time. Each click on the button, a new channel appeared on TV that meant nothing to her. Like most people who watched TV in an attempt to escape reality, Shew was trying unsuccessfully to forget about Cerené.
It amazed her how she realized that remembering Loki wasn’t heart wrenching like remembering the ashen girl. Maybe because Loki’s darker side was too evil to neglect, or because he’d pushed Shew so hard she had to kill him. But that wasn’t it. Shew knew the real reason. She couldn’t forgive him for killing Cerené, cutting her hands so cruelly, even if it had been predicted in one of the Brothers Grimm fairytales. The look of betrayal in her eyes still haunted Shew. That look, when Cerené was wondering how she could die before knowing who she really was, and before she could create fire by will.
What did Cerené do to deserve this?
Shew couldn’t even forgive herself. They were supposed to take care of each other, and she hated that Bianca was right. You’re not going to able to take of me the way I take of you. And after all, Cerené died because of Shew’s reluctance to kill Loki in the beginning.
Click. Another channel.
Click. All TV channels sucked she wished she’d never been introduced to that hollow box. She had lived a hundred years without it in the Schloss, and it didn’t feel like she’d missed much.
Shew was lost. Quenching her Dhampir thirst didn’t trouble her much, although she was paling out since she got back from the Dreamworld.
The door banged open upstairs, and Fable came down, walking to the refrigerator. Since she’d been into Loki’s body, she wasn’t feeling good, let alone entering the Dream Temple and crossing the purple light. She was greatly shocked by her experience with Loki trying to kill her in Furry Tell.
Loki tried to kill Shew as well, so she thought the two girls could talk about it, but Fable didn’t want to. Since they came back from the Schloss Fable yesterday, Fable had occupied herself with the silly task of teaching the alphabet to her favorite tarantula—he had only been capable of writing the word ‘dork’ in the past, only because he wanted to madden Axel.
“Concentrate, Bitsy,” she told him as she rearranged the colored alphabet magnet sticking on the refrigerator.
Bitsy didn’t speak, but he was able to crawl on the refrigerator’s surface and arrange the letters. Fable would tell him to write ‘I love flies’ or ‘Axel is a dork’ and he’d crawl vertically on the refrigerator’s surface and arrange those magnetic letters.
“Smart, Bitsy,” Fable cuddled Bitsy in her arms.
Shew let out a feeble smile, listening to Fable.
Then the door to Candy House sprang open and Axel entered with a couple of his nerdy friends. They were holding Shew’s glass coffin and pulling it inside.
One of his friends, wearing over-sized glasses seemed iffed by the weight of whatever was inside the coffin.
“Hang tight, nerdfighter.” Axel encouraged him as they parked the coffin on the wooden floor of the living room. “Hye. Hey. Hellelujah,” Axel hailed, high fiving each of his friends. “No one can know about this,” Axel warned his friends with a serious forefinger. “We don’t capture an extraterrestrial everyday.”
“Sure, Axel,” one of his friends says. “Or the government will haunt us down. I’ve seen it on History channel.”
Shew, sitting on the couch, exchanged glances with Fable standing by the refrigerator. They didn’t quite understand what was in the coffin.
“Sure, boys,” Axel smiled back at them and showed them out. “Just keep your mouth shut and don’t tell anyone I caught an alien,” he closed the door and turned back to Shew and Fable and opened the coffin.
“You told him there is an alien in the coffin?” Fable said, pointing at Loki’s corpse inside it. He was suffering from his coma-like Sleeping Death after Shew had killed him in the Dreamworld. Axel had painted him green, and even had two antennas sticking out of his head.
Shew snapped and came closer, “What did you do to Loki?”
“You convinced your friends Loki is an alien?” Fable said, her mouth wide open.
“It’s not really easy smuggling a corpse around town,” Axel puffed. “Carmen didn’t work, and the two of you are acting like girls out of some sad soap opera. You’re welcome by the way.”
“I need to clean Loki and take care of his corpse right now,” Shew was about to kneel down.
“Wait,” Axel said. “Loki can wait. I have something important to tell you.”
“Not more important that Loki,” Shew said.
“How about I tell you something important about Cerené,” Axel said, knowing Shew would change her mind. “I thought so,” Axel cocked his head. “Now you girls sit on the couch while uncle Axelus the Great solves all puzzles for you. Most of them, actually.”
Hesitantly, Fable and Shew sat down. Axel had been good with his researches so far, so they thought they’d listen to what he had to say.
“Now look, girls,” Axel said, pulling out his most precious books, Loki’s Dreamhunter Guide and J.G.’s diary. “I’ve listened to all you two had to say about the Dreamworld, Cerené, the Queen of Sorrow, the Art, the Clue, Murano, Baba Yaga, the Wall of Thorns and all your blah blah blah.”
“Get to the point, Axel,” Shew sighed.
“The truth is there is no ‘point’,” he said. “Actually, I have no idea what is really going on. All I know is that I’m surrounded by fairy tale people, and frankly I enjoy discovering who they are and how they are interconnected to each other and our real world history. Well, most of them are lunatics, but who isn’t—no offence, Shew, but you know you scared the hilly billies out of us in the Schloss.”
“Could you just skip all this mumbo jumbo,” Fable said. “Tell us what you know.”
“Here is what I know,” Axel rubbed his hands. “On my way here with my fellow nerdfighters, members of the awesome Harum Skarum forum, and dear friends of Genius Goblin, I replayed all you told us happened in the dream in my head. I mean I understand that everyone is searching for the Lost Seven, and that the Phoenix is one of them, but some things you said were really strange and needed analyzing.”
“Did that help?” Shew wondered. “Did you come up with a way to bring Cerené back, maybe,” she said out of wishful thinking. She’d left Cerené to sleep for a hundred years.
“The amazing news is I did figure out something even more important,” Axel said. “Everything you told me about Cerené, her Art, that she is glassblower, and her mother didn’t really interest me. However, two things did,” Axel scratched his chin. “Murano and Moutza.”
“What about them?” Shew asked.
“Doing my genius research, I discovered that Moutza is a traditional gesture of insult among Greeks,” Axel explained. “It’s done by extending all fingers of your hand and presenting the palm toward whomever you want to insult.”
“So?” Shew frowned. “It’s probably a coincidence.”
“Not when it was used in older times, reportedly in different regions in Europe in rituals of burning witches by the stake,” Axel’s eyes widened. “Witches who could make fire,” he leaned forward.
“Are you serious?” Shew said.
“Not just that,” Axel continued. “The witch was usually seated on a horse, facing backward, while they smeared her face with something dirty to humiliate her before they’d probably banned her or killed her. You know what that dirty thing was?”
“Blood?” Fable uttered, and Shew started worrying about her.
“Cinder,” Axel said proudly.
“Cinder?” both girls considered. Shew took a moment to comprehend the connection.
“Remember when Cerené told you her mother wanted to call her Cinder or Cinderella?” Axel said. “In J.G.’s diary, he mentions that the Phoenix is also called Cinder—one of her many names. Cinderella was her name inspired by the Phoenix and the way its ashes rose back from after it burned.”
“But what does that mean exactly?” She wondered.
“Like I said, I don’t really have a ‘point’ but I see the connections,” Axel said.
“Which means you have nothing useful to tell us,” Fable sighed.
“Easy on me, sis,” Axel said. “Wait until I tell you about Murano Island.”
“Murano is the island Venetian glassblowers were banned to,” Shew said. “And where Cerené was born. What about it?”
“According to the story by the mysterious Alice Grimm you met—which I am really curious about—, the creator of the mirror hid his clue to control it inside Cerené, right?” Axel said.
“That’s right. A clue that grants its discoverer power of the all splinters in the world,” Shew explained.
“I kept thinking about when this really happened,” Axel said. “I mean for something that created a conflict between the so called forces of good and evil since the beginning of time, how could Cerené be the clue?”
“I don’t understand,” Shew said.
“I mean Cerené is about your age,” Axel said. “The creator couldn’t have made the mirror and the clue in the late 18th century. It must have been since hundreds, if not thousands, years ago. I don’t know what when the beginning of time is exactly.”
Shew felt like hit with a pebble in her face. Axel was right. Cerené was too young to be the clue. But maybe the clue passed through Cerené’s family. Maybe she inherited it from Bianca, and Bianca inherited it from her own mother.
”So I researched this Murano incident when glassblowers had been banned out of Venice for creating too much fire,” Axel said. “It’s a true incident, one of the most important historical events in the history of Venice and glassmaking. But do you even know when this occurred?”
“When?” Fable asked.
“1291,” Axel clapped his hands together. “That’s almost eight hundred years ago.”
“But that’s…” Shew’s face tightened.
“Impossible, I know,” Axel said. “But it isn’t, really. J.G. talks about the mirror in his diary. The creator, in order to make sure the clue never died, needed to create an immortal girl who carried it among centuries. But then, he must have learned that immortal could be killed in their dreams, so he had to make the girl even more eternal and undying that immortals.”
“What would that be,” Fable said. “Nothing is more undying than immortals.”
“Of course there is,” Axel objected. “There is something more eternal and legendary than any immortal you have ever thought of.”
“Spit it out, Alex,” Fable said while Shew thought she’d already known the answer. “What is it?”
“A Phoenix,” Shew answered on Axel’s behalf.
“Exactly,” Axel nodded. “Someone who’ll rise again from the ashes if burned. That’s why the creator made the clue a Phoenix so whenever she dies, she rises from the ashes again, and thus the clue lives forever and never dies,” Axel now clapped continuously, congratulating himself. “J.G. mentions here that he suspected that every time the Phoenix died and woke up, she woke up someone new, stripped of her past life’s memories, only very few information lived on with her when she was reborn, but nothing that had to do with whom she was before.”
“Cerené?” Shew wondered. The Slave Maiden, the cinder girl whose every breath she gave was a breath taken from her life? No wonder she didn’t care. Deep inside, she must have felt she can live this over and over again. That’s why she knew so many things Shew didn’t know about. Not only because Charmwill and Bianca talked to her, but because Cerené lived for so long that some knowledge like making glass stuck to her memory.
“The real Cinderella is not that helpless maid who longs to meet the prince in the ball,” Axel said. “Her role in the world is as equal and important as the Chosen One. The sad part is in order for her to protect the world, she’d better not know who she is or she’d start searching for the clue herself. Who knows, maybe if she find it, she’d decided to turn to the dark side.”
“Cerené would never do that,” Shew defended her.
“You of all people should know what darkness can do to people,” Axel said, “Remember the eerie songs you said Cerené sang whenever the world burned around her?”
“Yes,” Shew said. “Strange songs about London, ashes, and burning things.”
“I’m not sure but it looks to me like these are songs about things that had burned all along history and Cerené had been there when it happened,” Axel suggested. “She must have lived around every burning incident in history. The London fire, 1666, I would guess. That’s why she was singing London Bridge is Falling Down, which is rumored to have been about the London burning event,” Axel started counting on his fingers. “Ashes, Ashes which is part of the ‘Ring Around the Rosies’ nursery rhyme. It is said that this rhyme describes the incidents of the Black Death plague that killed most of the world. The plagued people were burned alive so they wouldn’t spread the disease. Fire, again. Remember when she told you about Le Fenice, the famous Venetian opera? It’s been burned through history as well. My guess is she was one of the burned. Cerené must have even seen when Rome burned, and when—”
“Enough!” Shew said. “Each time you mention her dying I feel like choking. Why should suffer something like that?”
“It’s her destiny, I guess,” Axel shook his shoulders.
“Does that mean, she isn’t dead?” Shew asked Axel. “Does it mean that she will rise again and will not sleep for a hundred years in the Field of Dreams?”
“I honestly don’t know, Shew,” Axel said. “I have so many questions in my head. Like who are the members of Cerené’s stepfamily? Why is she related to every burning incidents in history? Who burned these places, and why was she always there?”
“Which should answer who repeatedly saved me from the Wall of Thorns and Candy House when it burned,” Shew said.
“That’s if whoever saved you was actually saving you,” Axel pointed out. “It could be someone who was saving Cerené because she is the Clue, not you.”
“So what now, Axel?” Shew said. “There are too many mysteries, and I need to solve them to get to the Lost Seven before my mother.”
“In order to do so, we need someone to help us get to…” Axel said.
“To Murano,” Shew interrupted, and Axel nodded with approval. “Now that Carmilla knows who Cerené is and where she is from, she will go after her, whether in a Dreamworld or real life.”
“I’d really like to Murano with you,” Fable said. “I hope they have Venetian carnivals there where you wear those fantabuluos masks.”
“I’d like that, too. Never have tasted Venetian food. But I’m afraid that going to Murano isn’t easy at all,” Axel said. “I mean to travel back in time to the incidents in Murano in 1291, we’ll need to find Cerené first and enter her dream like Loki did with Shew…”
“And we have no clue where Cerené is in the Waking World,” Fable agreed.
“And even if we do, we’ll need a Dreamhunter to enter her dream,” Axel said, glancing briefly at the comatose Loki.
“Which we also don’t have,” Fable said.
“This brings us to square one again, where there is only one person who could help us,” Axel said.
“Charmwill Glimmer,” Shew and Fable uttered in the same breath. “He must know of a way to get us there, and I bet he could answer a lot of questions,” Shew said.
“Didn’t Cerené tell you there is a way to resurrect him?” Fable asked Shew.
“She said Charmwill told her his True Name when she met him in the cottage, and that it would help resurrect him if he dies,” Shew answered. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to learn it from her.”
“Because Loki chopped off her hands,” Fable said, Loki’s name sounding bitter on her tongue.
“There is really nothing we can do without knowing Charmwill’s True name,” Axel said, glancing at Bitsy arranging the alphabet magnet on the refrigerator. He arranged it after Charmwill’s name this time.
40
The Guardian
Pickwick had been lost without his master for sometime.
Sorrow didn’t seem to be the town for him, and he couldn’t befriend anyone. Not because people were necessarily bad, but Pickwick was worried someone would get close enough to him and gain the secret to unlocking the Book of Beautiful Lies. Pickwick’s main purpose in life was protecting the book after Charmwill had been killed by the Queen of Sorrow.
Even Loki, who should have become Pickwick’s master after Charmwill’s departure, hadn’t been around for some time. Last time Pickwick checked, he saw Loki locked in a coffin in Candy House, looking like a Sleeping Beauty awaiting his resurrecting kiss.
Axel, Fable, and Shew forgot about Pickwick the Parrot. No one fed him or played with him. He knew that it was unlikely they would care for him when they’d only known him for two days, but he was used to his master taking good care of him. Even Nine the cat and Mr. Squirrel ate Pickwick’s food and were mean to him.
Pickwick fluttered his lonely days over Sorrow, picking up the food left in the Belly and the Beast’s garbage, still hoping his master would return. To be precise, he was trying to resurrect Charmwill.
In the old days, Charmwill had told Pickwick how some people were blessed with a second life, but only if a dear friend knew of their True Name, which was essential to the resurrecting process. Pickwick, like Cerené, did know Charmwill’s True Name. Ironically, he was mute and could not utter it.
Bored, Pickwick fluttered his way to the Schloss. It was a scary place, and Pickwick wasn’t brave. His main power as a mute parrot was being secretive, not courageous. He decided to turn around and flew back to Sorrow, passing by the Black Forest, the Swamp of Sorrow, and Buried Moon Cemetery.
Pickwick fluttered over Candy House for a while, wondering what everyone was doing. He stood by the window, watching Fable staring at the alphabet magnets on the refrigerator. She had Bitsy organize them after Charmwill Glimmer’s name. Bitsy was proud of himself, standing on her shoulder as she was wondering what Charmwill’s True Name could be.
Pickwick was about to lose his mind. If he could only speak, he could have told Fable about the name. It was an easy name, right in her face. Why couldn’t she see it?
In his frustration, Pickwick knocked his beak three times on the window.
“Pickwick!” Fable said, happy to see him. “Where have you been?” she opened the window for him and cuddled the parrot. “Bitsy, say ‘hi’ to Pickwick.”
It was obvious that the two didn’t like each other the least. Pickwick clawed himself atop of the refrigerator and pointed at Charmwill Glimmer’s name.
“I know. I know,” Fable said. “We all want to know his True Name so we can bring him back. Bitsy wrote it by the way. Isn’t he adorable?” Fable kissed her tarantula. Pickwick wiped his mouth with his wing on her behalf. “I really wish I could figure out Charmwill’s True Name,” she added.
Frustrated, Pickwick started pecking at the alphabet magnets with his beak, trying to rearrange them. He was going to write Charmwill’s True Name, but Bitsy got angry he messed up his writing and attacked Pickwick on the refrigerator.
Pickwick tried to push Bitsy away in a fight o hair and feathers. Finally, Pickwick knocked the tarantula down with a firm hit with his forehead. He began knocking his beak on the alphabets again. The letters were loose and he couldn’t arrange them with his beak the way he wanted.
Fable still seemed confused, “Are you trying to tell me that you know Charmwill’s True Name, Pickwick?”
Pickwick rolled his eyes, and let out a long sigh.
“What is it? Tell me,” Fable shook him by the shoulder as if he were human. She wrinkled his feathers, which he combed and took care of everyday just in case he met a parrotess—he thought of himself as a parrot prince so his princess had to be a parrotess.
Having been shaken enough, Fable recognized her stupidity. Pickwick was mute. She stood in front of the refrigerator and started rearranging the letters herself.
“So Charmwill’s name is anagram to his True name, the way Mircalla is an anagram for Carmilla?” she squinted, asking Pickwick. She thought she was good with anagrams, thanks to her dyslexia. But still, she couldn’t figure it out.
Pickwick fluttered all aver the room, happy Fable got it finally. He kissed her with his beak on the cheek—he always had a problem with that part, and wondered how he’d execute his first kiss when he met the parrotess of his dreams. Then Pickwick flew over, checking on Axel. He had no doubt Fable would figure out the anagram in a while.
Pickwick saw Axel playing some Zombie game on his TV. He landed on the couch next to Axel, wondering if he’d let him play. Killing zombies on the screen was fun. Besides, Axel was on one player mode since Loki was in the coffin.
Pickwick began pecking the remote with his beak, then trying to control it with his claws. It was a hard task.
The harder task was facing Axel who continuously shushed him away and told him to go sit next ever-annoying Itsy.
Pickwick decided Axel was an ass. He thought they should have named him Assel or something, and swore the first thing he’d do when he could speak again was tell him that.
It was almost sunset, and Shew sat outside by the porch.
Fluttering outside, he saw she was holding Loki’s necklace in her hand. Silently, Pickwick watched her trying to decipher the writing on the front and the back of the pendant. She tried everything that crossed her mind, and still nothing made sense. Even Pickwick couldn’t interpret the pendant’s meaning.
Axel kicked the front door open and stood on the porch as Pickwick tried to avoid him as if he reeked of rotten apples.
“I discovered something new,” he told Shew. “J.G. claims only three of the Lost Seven are here in Sorrow. The other four are still trapped in the Dreamworld.”
“So?” Shew asked.
“So Axelus the Great has to find them and save them,” Axel had his hands in his waist. “Why do I feel like I should have been the Chosen One?”
“You eat too much for a Chosen One,” Shew joked, still staring at the pendant.
“I’d roll the pendant on its axis if I were you,” Axel said. “If you do that, the two images will overlap and create a new readable image. It’s an old trick. Everybody knows that.”
How had she never thought of it?
Pickwick, clinging to a nearby tree branch, watched Shew roll the pendant. The front and back engravings, powered by the speed of rolling on the axis, merged and formed one coherent sentence.
The front:
And the back:
It was clear as night and day. Right there in front of her. They were like a jigsaw puzzle. All she needed was to connect them together.
Even Pickwick raised an eyebrow, reading the message Loki had been trying to send Shew all along.
Shew read the words and started crying hysterically. She was shivering hard with the pendant still in the palm of her hand. How could that be, she thought. She didn’t’ need to feel this right now after she’d killed Loki.
But before she could deal with the conflicting emotion of what she’d read on the pendant, Fable shouted from inside…
“Oh. My. God.” Fable shrieked. “I freakin’ know Charmwill’s true name!” she sounded strangely confused, though.
Axel dashed back through the door, and Shew followed, tears sticking to her eyes.
Pickwick followed them both, wondering how they’d feel about the discovery. He knew that knowing Charmwill’s True Name was going to be a shock. It was true that it was going to help them resurrect him, but it will raise more questions about the Dreamworld and what really happened to fairy tales.
“How could that be?” Fable said, pointing at the rearranged letters of Charmwill Glimmer.
Bitsy jumped on the refrigerator again, wanting to rearrange Charmwill’s name. He thought the name he was reading was so wrong. It just couldn’t be.
Pickwick picked up Bitsy with his beak and threw him away, plastering on the foggy window, giving time to Shew and Axel to read Charmwill’s name.
“Is this an anagram for his name?” Axel’s face knotted, unable to comprehend.
“But that makes no sense?” Shew said, still hanging onto Loki’s necklace. “Charmwill Glimmer, Loki’s Guardian, is actually…” she couldn’t pronounce the discovery.
“Fable?” Axel pulled her by the shoulder. “Are you sure? Did you maybe add a or subtract an alphabet?”
“No, I didn’t,” Fable pulled his hands away. “The same way Carmilla was an anagram for Mircalla, Charmwill Glimmer is an anagram for Wilhelm Carl Grimm.”
End of Cinderella Dressed in Ashes
Book #2 in the Grimm Diaries
Next book will be
Blood, Milk, and Chocolate
Book #2 in the Grimm Diaries
From the Queen of Sorrow’s point of view.
