Текст книги "Cinderella Dressed in Ashes"

Автор книги: Cameron Jace

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

13

A Sack Full of Dead Children

A nose appeared from behind the door.

It was a crooked nose, bigger than the biggest carrot they’d ever seen, and slightly dented in the middle. Baba Yaga’s deformed face came after, creeping out under the thin beam from the pumpkin lantern above her. Her face reminded Shew of crumple pies, covered with bumps and sticky juice. Baba Yaga’s face looked like a face someone had nibbled on many times.

“It’s her,” Cerené whispered, shivering and holding Shew’s hand. “The shawl she wears is made of cracked children’s bones.

“Don’t worry,” Shew said.

Shew watched as Baba Yaga began to step out of the house. She walked as fast as a dead turtle. Her body was round, like a cauldron with a head. Her feet protruded from under her feathery cloak. Shew gasped as she noticed Baba Yaga had chicken legs and chicken feet!  She thought they must have been the creepiest feet in the world.

“Why is she taking so long to come out of the house?” Shew whispered, noticing that Baba Yaga, with her crooked nose and chicken legs, looked like a giant evil bird.

“It’s the sack that’s slowing her down,” Cerené whispered back. “The sack on her back is full of sedated girls. She’s on her way to the Queen.”

Shew saw Baba Yaga bend her already-arched back lower and pull a sack twice her size through the door. She walked down three wooden steps on the porch, flapping her eerie chicken legs as the children’s heads thudded against the floor.

Baba Yaga seemed more comfortable with pulling the sack behind her when she got to the grass. As she walked, she smoked a cigar.

“You want to know what the cigar’s tobacco is made of?” Cerené said. “It’s Rapunzel ashes!”

Shew shook her head and listened to Baba Yaga sing as she pulled the sack down the hill:

Hush little children, don't say a word.

Baba’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

And if that mockingbird won't sing.

Baba's gonna cut and slice its wings.

The birds in the trees fluttered away immediately. Her voice made the squirrels run; abandoning their precious nuts, and it made snakes come crawling out of the trees. The witch took another drag from the cigar and sang again:

Hush little girls, don't you cry.

Baba’s just sacked you and you don’t know why.

Hush little girls, now say goodbye

Baba’s gonna eat ya, ’n tonight you’ll die.

“Sometimes when she needs more money, she sends some of the boys to Georgie Porgie, the Boogeyman,” Cerené added. “He likes to make children cry, and he pays well for the children’s tears.”

They watched as Baba Yaga disappear in the dark, then Cerené and Shew dashed into Candy House and closed the door behind them.

“You’re sure she’s not coming back now?” Shew said.

“No, it’ll take her some time to reach the castle,” Cerené said, hiking the stairs down to the basement.

Wherever Cerené went, Shew followed, even if it was into Hell itself.

Cerené, still holding her glass urn against her chest and her broom in one hand, ushered Shew through a maze of candle lit corridors in the cellar, which looked like a small dungeon. They passed through rooms that had bars like jails where Baba Yaga kept the children. The prison-like rooms were empty now that she had the children in her sack outside.

“Come on, hurry,” Cerené demanded. “Don’t act like a princess walking on eggshells. It doesn’t suit you.”

“This place looks like Hell,” Shew commented.

Cerené crouched under a lower ceiling leading to a bigger room. Finally, she stopped and pointed at a furnace in the middle of the space. She looked excited.

Shew couldn’t believe Cerené was happy about this place. The smell was unbearable. Something had been burning recently, probably the children Baba Yaga ate. She wondered about the people in the Waking World who thought fairy tales were fluffy stories that made children sleep and what they would do if they knew the Brothers Grimm forged the happy stories.

Cerené patted the furnace gently then looked back at Shew, “beautiful, isn’t it?”

The furnace was rusty, brown, and covered with green sticky vines that snaked slowly around it. It had dead frogs plastered to it like stickers on a refrigerator. Its door had two holes that looked like eyes staring back at Shew. Behind the eyes, she only saw the blackness left from burning children.

Shew wanted to play along and pretend it was beautiful, but she couldn’t do it. The cellar of Candy House was the scariest place she had seen.

“I guess it’s time to show me your magic, Cerené,” Shew sighed, praying Cerené’s magic would not turn out to be something wicked. She hoped it was as fascinating as she’d claimed it to be after all they’d been through. It would be painful to discover that Cerené was just another lunatic stained by evil.

She is just like you, Chosen One. You are made from evil clay, designed to fight your own kind. In a world so bleak like Sorrow, who do you think can face the darkness and lead people to the light? Cerené with her naivety and hurt she’s suffered? Axel and Fable, two teenagers still trapped in the paradise of childhood?

 “Aren’t you excited to finally see my Art?” Cerené knelt down and lay her heavy broom aside. She opened her glass urn and smelled it as if it were an exotic perfume. “Do you still remember the elements needed to conjure the Art?”

“Heart, Brain, and Soul,” Shew showed her she was paying attention. “The Heart is ashes from a Rapunzel plant, the sand is from the eyes of one of the sleeping beauties in the Field of Dreams which is property of the Sandman himself, and the lime is just chalk from school.”

“Toothpaste!” Cerené celebrated while mixing the ingredients together in the urn. She watched them glow slightly purple as Cerené decided to wipe her teeth again with some ‘toothpaste’ she’d saved.

“Now what?” Shew was curious.

“Now this,” Cerené held the iron broomstick. “You think it’s a broomstick, right?”

“It is a broomstick,” Shew dared her.

“Nah. I just had to fool the Queen of Sorrow and all the other servants into thinking it’s a broomstick,” Cerené smiled proudly. “And it’s not a witch’s broomstick either—”

“What is it then?”

Cerené cleaned the iron broom with the tip of the red dress Shew had dressed her with in the Field of Dreams—she was wearing a ragged blue servant’s dress Tabula had given her today.

After cleaning it, Cerené pulled the broom up to her mouth and blew into it, producing a sound like a heavy fart. She blew into it one more time then peeked with one eye into the hole of her tool. “You still don’t know what it is?”

Impatiently, Shew shook her head into a no.

“A blowpipe,” Cerené whispered. “The first part of the tool, the Brains, is the furnace we came all the way for. The second part is the blowpipe, a magical one, in fact.”

“What does a blowpipe do?” Shew said.

“It’s better than a magic wand!”

14

A Breath of Magic

“Better than a magic wand?” Shew wondered.

“A blowpipe is even better than a magic wand. I’ll show you in a minute,” Cerené held the blowpipe underneath her armpit and clapped her hands together three times. The furnace lit up. “This isn’t my magic by the way. I saw Baba Yaga do it.”

“At least she didn’t say ‘Open Sesame,’” Shew mumbled—another thing she’d read in one of her victims’ books. Cerené didn’t quite get what she was talking about.

Under the shimmering fire of the furnace, Cerené smeared one end of the pipe with the Heart’s purple and sticky mix. It stuck to it looking like a liquid lump. She gazed one last time toward Shew, winked at her, and pushed the sticky end of the blow pipe into the furnace, holding the other end with the two folded layers of the red dress.

Swoosh went the mixture once it met with the fire from the furnace. Slowly, it turned into a molten concoction, and the purple color turned into a hellish orange like the surface of coals on fire.

“Beware!” Shew warned Cerené as the fire flickered.

Although the blowpipe was too long and a bit heavy for Cerené, she titled her head back, smiling with a sweaty face at Shew.

“Why are you smiling in God’s name?” Shew’s face knotted.

“You care about me?” Cerené asked, almost losing balance.

Shew shrieked, but Cerené adjusted her small feet awkwardly as if walking the tight rope in the circus.

For the first time, Shew finally understood what was so strange about Cerené’s shoes. They were made of … glass.

Shew furrowed her eyebrows.

The black texture she couldn’t identify before was as flexible as rubber but looked like dirty glass in the shimmering fire.  She could tell they were glass because of the way their surface reflected the shimmering light of the fire from the furnace.  Momentarily, she thought the shoes were made of Obsidian stones, but no, this was glass, an unusually flexible type of glass that fooled the observer into thinking they were poor quality leather.

There was something else about the shoes, nonetheless. It was what had caught Shew’s attention here in front of the furnace. When Cerené was about to lose balance from tilting her head back and holding the heavy blowpipe, the shoes helped Cerené keep her balance. Cerené’s shoes were not ordinary in any way.

“Don’t you worry, Joy,” Cerené gritted her teeth, gripping the blowpipe with both hands as if she were pulling a stubborn fish out of the water. “I’ve done this many times.”

Having gained balance again, Cerené pulled the blowpipe out and placed it on what looked like a butcher’s table, the glowing molten mixture glued to the blowpipe’s far end.

Cerené knelt down and started blowing from her end into the blowpipe, shaping the molten into a bubbly looking mold. The molten breathed like a frog’s throat when she blew. The fiery substance looked as if it were alive; submitting to the amount of air Cerené blew into it through the pipe.

“Wow,” Shew said. “How do you do that? What is that?”

Cerené took a deep breath, tired after blowing, “You’ll see in a second,” she said. “Could you pull a rock from the floor and run it over the mold?”

“What?”

“Just do it,” Cerené said. “While I blow into the pipe, shape the mold however you like. Did you ever carve wood or work with clay?”

Shew said nothing. She felt embarrassed that she never had.

“Don’t worry,” Cerené understood. “Use your imagination to make this into whatever you like. I will see what shape you’re thinking of and then I will breathe into it to create what you’re imagining. I’m very good at it.”

“I can’t.”

“Just think of something. Make it into a vase or cup,” Cerené’s cheeks had reddened like coals from under the sticky ashes on her face.

Although Shew didn’t know what this was, she picked a rock and started molding the fiery clay-like thing. She worried briefly about the unbearable heat, but then started doing as Cerené had directed her.

The rock’s sharp edge cut through the molten like a knife through butter. Cerené rolled the blowpipe on its axis while Shew shaped her imagination into existence. She found herself creating what looked like a cup. When the molten began taking reasonable shape, she cut a bit too deep. A sticky part of the mixture thumped like thick mud onto the floor.

“Ooops,” Shew stepped back, watching the molten crawling on the floor like lava from a volcano.

“Ooops?” Cerené raised a single eyebrow. “I like the way you invent those silly words. “Ooops, sounds like someone suffering from a hiccup,” she amused herself one more time. “Don’t worry. You’ll learn how to do it. I have made the same mistake.

“Other artists think that at some point when the new creation is hot, for the shape to hold it needs to cool down, but I know better,” Cerené said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this is my Art, Joy. I don’t need to cool it because when I breathe into it, it becomes alive,” Cerené said.

“Alive? You mean this glass is alive?”

“You haven’t seen anything yet. This is only the beginning,” Cerené said.

“Are you aware that you’re literally playing with fire?” Shew couldn’t help but wonder if this was the reason for Cerené’s wounds. Maybe she just burned herself playing with fire.

“Playing with fire!” Cerené jumped in  place, shaking the mold. “Never thought of it like that. Isn’t it enchanting?”

“It is,” Shew said, staring at the piece of the molten she’d shaped into a cup.

“Now, come hold the blowpipe so I can show you the real magic,” Cerené handed her the pipe.

“There is still more to show than this?”

“You have no idea. Hold the pipe about one third away from my end for balance. I will blow into it now,” Cerené said. Then she took a deep breath closing her eyes. She squeezed her fingers and took an even deeper breath. “If I pass out, don’t worry,” Cerené said.

“Pass out, why?”

There wasn’t enough time to get an answer. Cerené blew into the pipe with all her might, eyes closed again. Her face and ears reddened, and her cheeks bubbled like shimmering light bulbs. It looked like she was blowing into it with her very essence, with her own soul.

Soul? She said the third part was the Soul! That’s her talent. She completes the magic with her breathing.

While Cerené breathed into the pipe, the molten grew increasingly bigger like a balloon about to explode, except this one was getting more flexible like warm clay she could shape with her breath.

Cerené blew harder without stopping for a breath. The molten color changed from orange slowly to blue. It was a lovely light blue like the color of clear skies, waving like a ghost among the darkened walls of the cellar.

Shew struggled to hold tightly to the blowpipe. Cerené’s mouth was fixed on the other end of the pipe, eyes still closed as if she were shaping the mold with her imagination.

The blue changed into lighter shades, almost transparent with a glittering surface like some kind of see-through diamond.

Isn’t it beautiful? Shew remembered Cerené saying about the furnace. The furnace was as ugly as the witch who owned it, but the molten was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. It was mesmerizing to see evil fire assist the glowing molten mix take shape and turn into something more resilient and sparkling.

“Cerené,” Shew uttered, lost in the beauty of the transparent diamonds sparkling inside the witch’s hellish basement. “This amazing Art of yours I’m looking at, what is it exactly? “

Cerené stopped blowing for a moment. She took a deep breath, eager to reply, “This is glass, Shew, the Forbidden Art, and I’m a glassblower.”

15

The Forbidden Art

Shew didn’t quite understand what Cerené meant by the Forbidden Art.

She only knew that glass was more popular in this time in Sorrow and the rest of the world. Glass was as precious as gold or diamonds was in the Waking World. It was so precious that people killed each other for it.

Why would it be a Forbidden Art? Shouldn’t glassblowers like Cerené be cherished?

The molten glass at the end of the blowpipe took the shape of a flower with seven petals in the middle of Baba Yaga’s cellar. Shew was in awe.

How did the petit ashen girl acquire such a gift? Why did she live the life of a Slave Maiden when her name should have been praised all over the world for her talents? No wonder the Queen of Sorrow spared her. She must know something about this.

The stunning, flaring, glass flower shone bright in the cellar. Shew noticed it produced an irresistible aroma, like lilies.

Finally, Cerené opened her eyes, inhaling all the air she could into her lungs. The pain in her chest didn’t matter as much as her masterpiece. She took the blowpipe from Shew and plugged her mouth into it again, blowing even more. She looked like a pied piper playing a huge flute. Instead of melodies waving out of the other end, it was Cerené’s magic in the shape of precious glass.

“It’s getting bigger,” Cerené said after inhaling one more time. “I’ll take it outside,” she climbed the stairs up to the ground floor. Shew walked beside her and opened the Candy House’s door for her. Cerené stepped outside, her magical glass flower hanging at the end of her pipe like a kite.

“Don’t worry. It’s not getting heavier,” Cerené said, coughing. “I could build a glass castle with it and it would still weigh as much as a balloon.”

Shew was speechless, unable to take her eyes off the ever-expanding creation at the end of Cerené’s blowpipe, now lighting the outside of the whole Candy House like an enormous Christmas tree with flickering diamonds.

Cerené stopped blowing the pipe and ran down the hill with her flower above her and the full moon behind her. The flower, although glass, passed through trees like ghosts, illuminating them from the inside like x-rays. It sparkled like silver fireworks in the sky.

“Did you see that?” Cerené said.

“I can’t believe it,” Shew said, running after her.

“Did you really see that?” Cerené repeated. This time Shew understood she wasn’t talking to her.

Cerené was talking to the moon.

Shew raised her head, and this time, she was sure. The moon up in the sky was smiling at Cerené—maybe Shew, too.

It wasn’t evidence that the moon was a girl, but it was smiling. Shew couldn’t believe she’d spent her life imprisoned in a castle awaiting her sixteenth birthday. Who would have thought that such beauty existed in the Kingdom of Sorrow?

“Now look at this,” Cerené blew again. The flower started transforming into something else, something more curvy and detailed; a crystal sea horse.

“Unbelievable!” Shew yelled, jumping in place.

“Wait a while and see how far this goes,” Cerené smiled. She was happy Shew liked her Art. Shew assumed that Cerené did this on her own, without ever sharing it. “As long as I can still breathe, there are no limits to my imagination.”

Slowly, the glittering sea horse moved its head and bent down to look at Shew. It had real crystal eyes, and its smile looked like a crescent moon.

“Cerené?” Shew was a little worried. “Did it just come alive?”

Cerené nodded, unable to talk and catch her breath at the same time.

“I’m Splash,” the sea horse said.

Shew clamped her hands on her mouth with disbelief.

“I’m Shew,” she offered her hand.

“No, you aren’t,” Splash rubbed his nose against her hand. “You’re Joy.”

Shew’s eyes widened. She gazed back to Cerené for clarification.

“Part of making the glass through my own breathing is that it represents my psyche,” Cerené said. “I see you as Joy, so it believes it, too.”

“I’m Joy,” Shew said to Splash, lending her hand.

Splash’s eyes sparkled, and then bowed a little lower, “do you know what your next move is, Joy?”

Shew giggled, not quite comprehending.

“Look for the Phoenix,” Splash nodded.

Shew’s heart raced, “What is the Phoenix, and how do you know about it?”

“The Phoenix is a who, not a what,” Splash said. “And is a key to a big treasure.”

Suddenly, Cerené coughed, unable to breathe properly. She starting losing balance again, and her shoes weren’t helping much.

“Tell me what you know,” Shew demanded from Splash, her eyes on Cerené.

But she was too late. Without Cerené blowing with her soul in the pipe, Splash’s sparkles dimmed, and he wasn’t capable of talking.

“Hey. Let me hold the blowpipe for you,” Shew ran to help Cerené.

Cerené elbowed Shew away. She was a bit violent about it. It was a sudden and unexpected move while both of them were having the time of their lives.

“What’s wrong? Let me help you,” Shew insisted, wishing Cerené could rest and then blow again so she could learn more about the Phoenix from Splash. “You’re tired from blowing. Let me do it.”

“No,” Cerené let out a hollow cough. She looked like she wanted to shout but was too weak.

Cerené fell to the floor and passed out, letting go of the pipe, Splash’s glass image fading into the background of the night.

Shew didn’t care about Splash now. She held Cerené and let her rest on her knee, as she tried to wake her up. A few seconds later Cerené woke looking exhausted.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she told Shew, her eyes throbbing.

“It is, but what matters now is you. What happened to you? Why didn’t you let me blow the pipe?”

“Because I care about you,” Cerené said.

“I know you care about me, but why didn’t you let me blow the pipe to help you?”

“The Forbidden Art has a price to it,” Cerené explained. “You have to pay a part of your soul to obtain it, or everyone would perform it,” Cerené said.

“What kind of price?”

“Each breath I blow into the pipe is a breath deducted from my life,” Cerené said.

“You mean…”

“It shortens the magician’s, I mean the artist’s life,” Cerené nodded. “Not just that. Every time the artist practices the Art, they are one step closer to insanity.”

“Then why do you do it?” Can’t you see you’re too young to die or go insane just because you want to play?” Shew shook her as if trying to wake her up from a nightmare.

“I’m not too young for anything,” Cerené stood up, still feeling weary, picking her blowpipe up like a soldier refusing to give up in a battle. Splash had turned into a blackened piece of molt, a dead piece of glass, cold without fire or soul in it. “I love doing my Art. It’s all I have. I’m not worried of losing years in my life as long as I have now to live.”

“Listen to me,” Shew stood up. “This is not right, Cerené. You have to stop practicing this Art.”

“Why?” Cerené’s temper flickered again. “What if I lose a couple of years of my life? People like me usually die young, or worse, live too long and endure pain and humiliation,” she pointed at her scars and the recent bite marks. “I am going to live my life the way I see fit.”

“What about going insane?”

“Ha!” Cerené let out a bitter laugh. “Look around you, Joy. This is Sorrow. It is insane.”

Shew didn’t know what to think. She had seen Cerené’s Art and how magical and addictive it was, but what kind of price was this? How could every breath you give be a breath taken from you? Who taught Cerené such an Art?

“Besides, you haven’t seen my magic in color yet,” Cerené said. “I can make a huge butterfly with colorful wings as big as the night sky.”

“Really?” Shew couldn’t resist the idea.

“Really,” Cerené nodded. “Remember when I said I’ll take you to Rainbow’s End? That’s the place where we can mix the Art with all kinds of colors—”

An awful singing voice interrupted the quest to go to Rainbow’s End. It was Baba Yaga. She’d returned, unexpectedly. She’d probably seen the Art lighting the night from afar.  They saw her sack bobbing behind her as she climbed the hill in their direction.

Baba Yaga continued singing, licking her lips when she saw them.

“Run!” Cerené pulled Shew’s hand and they ran up the hill.

A little farther up Shew saw Cerené slowing down.

“I lost my shoe!” Cerené panicked.

“Can’t you walk without it? Why are you limping?” Shew said.

Looking closely at Cerené’s bare feet, Shew didn’t need to wait for an answer. Someone had cut Cerené’s toe on her left foot. The unusual shoe helped her walk better.

“Who did this to you?” Shew asked. Then it was clear that Cerené lost one of her toes to the vicious Rapunzel plant. Every magic has a price to it. Cerené must have made herself this unusual shoe to help he walk.

Cerené ran back down the hill in the witch’s direction, looking for her shoe, and, as usual, Shew followed.

Hysterically, Cerené went looking for her shoe without noticing that she was two strides away from Baba Yaga.

Shew watched the old witch smile and drool at her victim approaching her. Shew sped up, passing Cerené, and snarled at Baba Yaga. Cerené didn’t even notice, passing both of them and traveling further down the hill, still looking for her shoe.

Baba Yaga let Cerené pass because she’d been intimidated by the princess with fangs, but when Shew didn’t bite, Baba Yaga smiled slowly, showing her dagger sharp yellow teeth.

“If you’re going to show your fangs, you better use them,” she laughed.

Shew looked puzzled. The witch was right. Why hadn’t she just bitten her?

“You’re a monster, but you don’t have it in you,” Baba Yaga said. “You’re too weakened, probably by love. It does that to people. Your reluctance to face evil will have dire consequences, because you’re neither good nor bad. You’re nothing. A Dhampir needs to transcend beyond the chains of love to get hold of her powers,” she grabbed Shew by the neck and lifted her from the ground. Shew tried to free herself but the witch’s grip was choking her.

“Let me go!” Shew snarled at her one more time.

“I’ll admit that you scared me in the beginning, but the good in you prevents the dark side to blossom,” Baba Yaga said. “What a shame. I would have loved to see that dark in you, but now I am going to have to eat you.  Your mother will never know.” Baba Yaga opened her mouth wide and prepared to bite Shew.

“Get away from her!” Cerené had found her shoes. She raised her blowpipe in the air, aiming to hit Baba Yaga but hit Shew instead when the witch moved.

The hit, although accidental, was hard. Shew fell to the ground. Cerené, although tiny, hit hard.

Helpless, she stared at the moon above. She hated that she was weak. How could Baba Yaga tell her that she wasn’t strong enough when the Wall of Thorns considered her an intruder? As she fainted, she thought of the decision she had to make soon; either stay softhearted and forget about being the Chosen One, or embrace her darkness and use it to face all evil. She had to learn how to fight fire with fire, or die in this dream and forget about it.

The world faded to black around Shew. Cerené was screaming from the top of her lungs.