Cinderella Dressed in Ashes ( Book #2 in the Grimm Diaries ) (2 page)

“The devil began to search for this Anderson but couldn’t find him because there were too many people who shared the name.

“Eventually the devil decided he didn’t care who’d invented such a wicked mirror. He intended to use it, so he walked to the edge of Hell and gazed through his telescope, peering over at Heaven. People were always too happy and giggly there, drinking milk from vines dangling from rainbow colored trees, swimming in milky rivers, and lazily having the time of their lives—well, afterlives in their case.

“Two ideas popped in the devil’s head in the shape of two ugly horns—that’s how he got his horns, by the way. They ended up being permanent tumors on his head. One of the ideas he forgot and could never remember. The other is the one I want to talk to you about.”

The girl in the back snickered again, making two horns with her finger. A few children imitated her. The woman in the veil directed one of her scary looks over the crowd of children again so they would stay silent.

“A big smile shone on the devil’s reddened face,” the woman continued, trying her best to appeal to the children. “He took the mirror and went over to the edge of Heaven, focusing it on people’s faces so they’d see the worst in themselves. He thought it would be a good way to tempt some of the people over there to join him. The devil never believed himself to be evil, actually. He thought all he did was bring out the worst in people, just as this Anderson Mirror did.

“Peering, like a peeping tom, at the pearly gates, the devil lost his balance and dropped the mirror.”

The children, still listening to the story, held their breath.

 “The mirror fell all the way down to earth,” the woman stretched her arms like a magician toward the skies.

The children held hands and stared up at the night sky, worried.

“The evil mirror splintered into millions and millions of shards onto the world,” she narrated. “Each splinter tinier than a grain of sand, but filled with enough darkness to consume one’s soul.”

The children blinked their eyes, still staring at the sky above.

“The mirror’s splinters entered people’s eyes without their knowledge. No one got hurt, because evil never hurts in the beginning. It stays with you and grows until its final sting drops you to the floor.”

The children couldn’t take it anymore, lowering their heads and rubbing their eyes as if waking up from a bad dream. Some made their friends check their eyes for splinters.

“Although the troll-looking devil lost the mirror, he was in awe,” the masked woman said. “He didn’t have to do the hard work of making people evil, because the mirror, whose source was unknown, filled the world with evilness. It bothered him at first that he wasn’t the Prince of Darkness anymore but he tried not to think about it. There was greater darkness, pure, penetrating, and shining like a
mirror
.

“The people with splinters in their eyes were many,” the woman in the veil said. “They didn’t really notice at first but when their eyes glowed with a golden tint, the evil in them surfaced.”

The woman in the veil’s eyes flickered for a moment. She caught her breath and then asked, “Do you know of a woman called Justina?”

“Yeth,” the lisping girl said. “She is the Godmother of Justice. She tried to balance the good and evil in the world with a scale with one pan filled with apples, the other with snakes. Charmwill told us
storieth
about her.”

“Well, in that particular day when the splinters filled the world, Justina’s scale changed. The snakes on one side of the pan grew bigger and much heavier than the apples, so big that the scales almost broke.”

The children let out a muffled shriek.

“Who made this mirror?” the girl from the back asked.

“That’s the one question that’s been troubling everyone in the world,” the woman in the veil smirked and leaned back, “fairytale characters, the most.”

“Did the splinters reach them, too?” a boy said.

“But of course. It changed the destinies of characters, and turned some of the good into evil.”

“But you said evil is a point of view,” the girl from the back insisted.

“Well, it’s hard to explain,” the woman in the veil said. “Someday, when you grow up, you’ll understand what I mean.”

The children murmured to each other that her answer was typical of grown ups. Whenever adults were caught contradicting themselves they had to give vague answers like:
it is hard to explain
or
you will understand when you grow up
. “The effect the splinters had on the Fairyworld was one of the reasons why The Grimm Brothers forged the fairy tales into the happy stories you hate,” the woman in the veil added.

“But there must be some kind of cure,” the lisping girl cried out, “or maybe there is a hero who could rid the world of the evil splinters.”

“There is neither,” the woman in the veil said, sounding happy about it. “People think they can do something about the evil in the world, but they can’t. The splinters are always there. But,” she raised a finger. “There is a myth that the creator of the mirror left a
clue
somewhere.”

“A clue?” the children inquired.

“Yes.”

“What is a clue?” a boy asked.

“A clue is a hidden knowledge that serves as a solution to a big problem,” she said.

“What does that mean? We don’t understand,” most children protested.

“Shut up. A clue is a clue,” the woman lost her temper, only for a brief moment. “That clue was the secret to controlling the splinters. Of course, both the so-called good and evil folks wanted to get their hands on that clue. The good people thought if they find the clue, they’ll be able to save the world from all its darkness. The so-called evil people wanted to use it on a greater scale. They thought of actually ruling the world if they found the clue. Can you imagine how powerful one would be if they had control over the splinters in people’s eyes?”

“I bet the devil wanted it for himself,” the girl in the back said.

“Very true,” the woman in the veil said. “But I wouldn’t give the devil that much credit. The evil in the splinters was beyond his control. This was a power like no other.”

“What kind of clue did the Creator leave?” the lisping girl rubbed her chin.

The woman under the veil laughed, “I can’t tell you, because like every one else, I want the mirror. Let’s just say it’s hidden somewhere in the Dreamworld,” she whispered.

“That means that the Boy Who was a Shadow can get it,” a boy said. “He is a Dreamhunter.”

The woman’s forehead wrinkled slightly. “How do you know that he’s a Dreamhunter? Did Charmwill tell you that?”

“We also know that he was once a dark boy, a Huntsman, working for the Queen of Sorrow,” another girl said. “She thinks she is smart, but she will lose in the end.”

The woman stood up with anger in her eyes, “How do all of you know this? Charmwill could not have told you that!” she demanded.

“Of course, he didn’t. The last time he was here, he only told us he was going to see the boy,” the lisping girl said.

“Then how did you know?” The children heard the sound of grinding teeth coming from behind the veil.

“We learned some of the stories through this,” one girl stretched out her hand, revealing a piece of purple candy.

“What is this?” the woman tried to snatch it but the girl pulled away.

“It’s the magic candy he gave us before he left,” the girl in the back explained. “He said the candy would make us have happy dreams each night while we slept, but we discovered the candy revealed stories to us from all around the world. One of those was the Boy Who was a Shadow’s story and how Carmilla had his Fleece.”

“You know about Carmilla, and the Fleece, too?” the woman in the veil sounded furious.

“Wait,” the lisping girl leaned back, pulling her friends with her. “How could you not know about the candy if Charmwill sent you?”

“Look!” the girl in the back pointed at the woman, “her eyes!”

The children squinted in the dark, still keeping their distance.

“Oh. My. God,” a boy said. “She has the golden tinge shining in her eyes. She has a splinter from the mirror!”

“She fooled us,” the other boy said. “She isn’t a friend of Charmwill. She’s here to find out about the
clue
to the mirror. She thinks Charmwill may have told us about it.”

“Damn you all, little horrible children” the woman’s voice gushed. She talked in a darker tone now. A breeze of wind pulled the veil off the woman’s face as if it had hands and was determined to expose her.

“Run!” the lisping girl screamed.

The Children of Hamlin ran away from the woman in the veil, the way their ancestors wished their children had run away from the Pied Piper centuries ago. Although they hadn’t met the woman in the veil before, they suddenly felt they knew her. Her face was engraved in their deepest nightmares. They felt in their hearts that they had inherited her evil image from their parent’s nightmares, and their grandparent’s nightmares, but they didn’t know how this was possible.  They were running away from a great evil who pretended to be friends with Charmwill Glimmer.

Alone in the dark, the Queen of Sorrow pulled off her veil like a devil pulling off his mask. She wiped her dress off as if she’d become dirty sitting around the Children of Hamlin, and cursed them under her breath.

Her pumpkin coach arrived, and a short hunched man with a silver tooth hurried to open the door for her.

“My Magnificent Majesty,” the hunched man pulled off his hat. He wore white gloves and used a crooked cane to hold himself up against the weight of his hunched back, which resembled a sack full of dead children. Igor the Magnificent was the Queen’s driver.

“The best thing about you, Igor, is that your back is arched. It’s like you’re cursed to show your respects forever,” the Queen of Sorrow said mockingly. “I wish every one else working for me was like that.”

“Don’t worry, Magnificent Majesty,” Igor said. “They will all bow for you eventually,” he opened the door, and the Queen stepped up into her coach.

Inside the coach, sat her favorite mirror.

“How did it go, my Queen?” Bloody Mary asked. “Did you find out about the clue to the Anderson Mirror?”

“No, Mary,” the Queen took off her gloves, finger by finger. “But I learned a couple of other things that worry me.”

“And what would that be, Majesty?”

“Charmwill, although dead, communicates with the Children of Hamlin through some kind of candy that makes them dream of things he never revealed to them in his previous stories,” Carmilla said.

“I know this worries you, my Queen,” Bloody Mary said. “But you chopped off his head and buried him in the Sands of Time. We’ve got more important work to do now. Don’t you agree?”

“I sure hope so, Mary,” Carmilla said. “The other thing is that Charmwill never told them who he really is. I wonder why.”

“That’s interesting,” Bloody Mary said. “Charmwill was full of tricks.”

“I’m sure I’ll find why he chose not to tell them his True Name soon,” Carmilla said. “But let’s get back to the important stuff; I need to find the
clue
to the Anderson Mirror. I have to get my hands on its power.”

“Why don’t we start with the Huntsman? You have his Fleece now,” Bloody Mary said, laughing satisfyingly as the Queen turned her head to look at her. “Maybe he could lead us to it.”

“I already did. I sent him on a mission,” Carmilla smiled proudly, wrapping Loki’s red Fleece around her fingers. “And could you please look the other way, Mary? You’re disgusting.”

1

The Phoenix

The door of the Schloss sprang open, followed by a gust of a sinister wind spiraling in the hallways.

Snow White, sleeping in her coffin, opened her weary eyes. Her heart tightened in a strange way as if some invisible force wrapped a velvet rope around it and started squeezing. Something dreadful was coming her way.

The first recognizable voice was Fable screaming outside the castle.

“Don’t—” Fable shouted.

The sinister and howling wind ate the rest of Fable’s words like a cookie monster, protecting whatever evil was approaching Snow White.

“Wake up, Shew,” the wind laughed. Snow White wondered if she had just imagined the wind talk to her. “It’s time to…” the wind laughed again.

“Stop!” Axel’s voice splintered like shattered glass across the wind’s wings.

Axel and Fable. I remember them. They’re Loki’s friends.

Snow White had been waiting for Loki all day. He’d went to Candy House to meet up with the Crumblewood’s foster mother. He was supposed to return to the Schloss before sunset.  It was midnight.

Snow White heard someone enter the castle downstairs. Whoever it was, he or she were breathing heavily, smelling of uncanny evil—a scent Snow White had worn on her soul for years before Loki’s kiss.

I need to gather my strength and get out of the coffin.

Snow White felt weary, unable to step out of it. She needed to feed but had stopped herself all through the day, waiting for Loki. Although Loki’s kiss had unchained her from the castle’s curse, she still had to feed. Being a Dhampir didn’t mean she wasn’t partially a vampire. She was the granddaughter of Night Sorrow himself and the Chosen One whether she liked it or not. Saints and monks couldn’t take care of the evil that lurked in this world anymore, and spitting in the face of evil wasn’t a good girl’s quest. She had to be one of
them
, partially evil, and strong enough to face their darkness.

Snow White still had a lot to learn about who she was. Quenching her thirst without hurting people was one of her priorities.

As the intruder neared, she felt even weaker. If only someone had taught her how to use her Dhampir powers. She had been imprisoned in the Schloss for a hundred years.

“Prophecies suck,” she mumbled, grabbing the coffin’s edge. She gathered her strength and climbed out of it, limping her way through as if there was mud on the floor, she made it toward the foggy window. The window was closer than the door, and she was hoping she could see who was causing Fable and Axel to shout with such distress.