Authors: Cameron Jace
“I love you, too,” Loki said back to the ocean, watching lines of clear water rolling down Snow White’s face. She was shivering.
Hanging tight onto a pole with one hand, Loki took off his jacket, and put it over her shoulders, pulling it tight around her. His legs stood fixed on the ground, rebelling against the swaying ship.
“Thank you,” she nodded, and blushed as if no one had treated her with care for some time.
“Don’t you dare lose it,” Loki said, trying to escape the drama. “It’s my father’s. He gave it to me the last time we were sailing with my uncle Jack Sparrow in the same awful weather, looking for a patch-eyed mermaid.”
Snow White looked at him with blurry but smiling eyes. “You’re horrible!” she yelled.
“And you love it!” Loki’s hands were about to lose grip on the pole they clung to.
Snow White rolled her eyes, and then sneezed in his face unintentionally.
“Can’t say I feel sneezed at,” Loki said, wiping his face with one hand. “I can’t tell the difference between you sneezing and the spewing sea.”
“I have never met anyone with a twisted sense of humor like yours,” she said.
“Isn’t that what close friends are about? Accepting each other’s awful personalities?” Loki accidentally spit water onto her face. “And sometimes, each other’s—“
“Spit, I get it,” she said, soaked to the bone. Her hands pressed on Loki’s for balance as he pulled the jacket tighter around her one more time. Her hair was sticking to her temples over her soft shoulders and down her back, slapping her lightly on the cheeks.
“The weather is so beautiful,” Loki said all of a sudden.
“Where did that come from,” she wondered.
“I always thought it was the worst pick up line, but in this weather, it surely is amusing,” Loki said. “I could also ask, ‘if you come here often’,’” Loki laughed. “How do you like me now that I am trying to make normal, lame conversation?” he said as a bomb fell right behind Snow White. There was a pirate war going on here.
“It’s not good if I die in my own dream you know,” Snow White commented, a little tense because of the explosions. “Or I will never wake up again.”
“I know,” Loki said, water trickling down his nose. “That was the whole point of me entering your dream, to kill you once and for all.”
Both of their eyes met again. The blurry and wet atmosphere didn’t stop them from clearly gazing into each other’s souls. It was a long stare, a wondrous one. Loki couldn’t believe that this was the vampire princess he’d come to kill two days ago. Even if she still turned out to be a demon, and even if she was tricking him for some reason, it didn’t matter. Demon or victim, Loki knew that he wasn’t going to be able to kill her. Not after this dream. Not ever. It wasn’t because she was a stronger demon, but because he couldn’t kill someone he liked. If she had really tricked him, then she played it well.
“Who are you really, Miss Snow White?” Loki asked, actually longing for an answer.
“The real question is who are you, Loki Blackstar?”
Loki let out a big laugh, one that came from the heart. He certainly liked her in the Dreamworld better than the waking world.
“What are you laughing at?” she wondered.
“In all this mess around us, the world could end tomorrow, and I couldn’t care less,” he replied.
“Why?”
“Because somehow the only thing I care about right now is this moment with...you,” Loki said, and this time it wasn’t hard to confess it. He didn’t care if Charmwill came jumping out of the water like a mermaid with Pickwick on his back, and staked Snow White then taunted Loki for what a fool he was. It didn’t matter. Not the slightest.
“Even if it’s a dream?” Snow White said.
“I think the worst part about this awfully big adventure is that it’s only a dream,” Loki said, aware that he’d previously declined wanting to be with her forever. The truth was that the way he wanted to stay with her in this dream was unexplainable. “So back to work, tell me what’s going on? Where are your parents?”
Snow White pointed at another ship in the ocean, the one the pirates were shooting at with the intention of hijacking. “There! That’s my mother and father sailing away from Europe. They’re going to get hijacked by pirates as you can see. The pirates will kill everyone on board, but my parents will escape.”
Loki watched the pirates shoot passengers ruthlessly on the other ship, stealing from it and sending the stolen items on smaller boats back to their ship.
Loki saw Carmilla and Angel’s ship sink. Minutes later, he saw Angel lifting Carmilla onto his back like an infant onto its daddy’s shoulders. Angel swam relentlessly like a shark that knew the ocean well. Carmilla wrapped her body around his body, almost choking him, but he didn’t complain. Loki was starting to like Angel immensely—he wished his father would turn out to be as strong as Angel Night von Sorrow.
“Angel was getting very strong,” Snow White said. “The blood of ravens, the blood of animals, and specially my mother’s blood helped him discover the strength of vampires in him, even without fully becoming one.”
“You’re not trying to tell me that he’ll swim all the way to the shore from here, with your mom on his back?”
“Seven days,” Snow White showed Loki seven proud fingers, right in his face, risking her own fall from the pole. “His powers grew scary-cool,” she added. “He was strong enough to keep swimming. He never slept. He could even breathe underwater for a long time. Whenever he found a log in the ocean he would leave my mom on it for minutes as he went hunting fish for her to eat.”
Loki wanted to tell her that he didn’t quite believe this part. Vampire or not, he couldn’t imagine someone with that kind of heroism and strength. But he didn’t, because she came from a fairy tale world—that she claimed was real—and characters with the heroic powers like Angel’s filled every fairy tale ever told.
“I assume we’re not going to be able to see this heroic act,” Loki speculated.
“No one’s stopping you from jumping into the ocean,” Snow White smirked.
“Nah,” Loki squeezed water out of his t-shirt with his bare hands. “I didn’t bring my swimsuit along.”
Snow White leaned forward, while showing a curious look on her face. “May I ask if it was a one-piece or two piece swimming suit?”
“Ha, ha,” Loki said, literally. He placed his palm onto her face gently and then playfully pushed her away. “Now, call your genie-in-a-bottle to sweep us away after your parents. I really want to know what happens next.”
Snow White clapped her hands. Although she was soaking in salt water, looking like a homeless person, she still clapped in a majestic and elegant way. “Your wish is my command,” she said playfully.
“Sometimes, when she doesn’t have her fangs out,” Loki talked to the night sky above. “I think she’s just awesome.”
This time, they were back in the 19
th
century Schloss, standing in Snow White’s room, which was full of mirrors.
Loki fell back on her enormous bed; it was soft and comfy. He saw drawings on the ceiling, full of doves, ravens, owls, and apples, with the color pink being the most dominant.
“You’re not here to take a nap,” Snow White said. “That’s my bed, and you didn’t ask permission.”
“It’s your bed, your castle, and your dream. I believe we’ve been over that, my princess,” Loki sat up, resting his elbows on the cushiony bed. He had a big smile on his face. “Speaking of naps, how long is this dream. I thought it was only supposed to last around forty two minutes?”
“Time is different between the Dreamworld and the waking world,” she said. “I don’t know how, but when the dream is about to end, the crows will start to gather—”
“And then the world will fall apart,” Loki nodded. “I know.”
She sat next to Loki on the bed, a bit too close for a boy who was afraid of demon girls up until less than half an hour ago. “What?” she narrowed her eyes. “Never been with a girl alone in her room?”
“Room, yes. Bed’s a bit different,” Loki said, averting his eyes from her.
She said nothing, trying her best not to laugh at how polite he was trying to be.
“And also not when the girl’s father is the King of Sorrow,” Loki shrugged.
Snow White moved even closer. This close, he couldn’t stop looking at her lips, red as blood. Whoever had written this about her forgot to say: lips red like strawberries, like candy and cherries, like as hot as chilies and freaking attractive. He felt so silly.
“Tell me,” Loki said, literally pushing her away a little. “So Angel swims all the way to the shore, finds an island, and makes it his Kingdom of Sorrow. What happens next?”
“They found land after being lost in the ocean for seven days. They decided to build their own kingdom there. Years went by, and the kingdom became one of the greatest in the world.”
“So far so good,” Loki said. “Your parents escaped their pursuers and started a new life as king and queen.”
“That was the case until Night von Sorrow found the kingdom,” Snow White said.
“What?”
“Like I said, Night wasn’t going to give up hunting them. My father gathered and trained an army of young and strong huntsmen and soldiers to protect the borders. It was a very special army,” she explained. “And although the kingdom was safe, my father paid the price of having to fight Night’s vampire army at the border forever. Each day he fought them, and people died to keep the Kingdom of Sorrow safe.”
“And your mother?”
“My father prevented her from getting involved. She was ruling the kingdom in his absence, which was enough of a burden already. Maybe he also wanted to keep her safe because he needed her blood—I’m not sure, but every two to three days, he had to travel back to her to get his drops of blood.”
“Ah. I forgot about that. She was his most important source of power against the vampires.”
“Exactly,” she said. “So my mother, being the Queen of the Kingdom of Sorrow, was lonely and stressed most of the time. Although she was still young, she wanted to have a child to fill the void and the absence of my father.”
“You?”
“Yes. She begged my father repeatedly to have me, but he denied her wish at the time.”
“Why?”
“He said that he needed to win the war with vampires first, that he couldn’t risk what could happen to her or the baby if he lost the war.”
“And what was your mother’s reaction to that?” Loki asked.
“There was nothing she could do, but her lonely life and the responsibilities of the kingdom were suffocating her, and she started killing time by practicing witchcraft.”
“That’s an odd thing to do.”
“She’d been into witchcraft long before that, never for evil purposes, though. She learned how to cast protecting spells on the kingdom’s borders to prevent the avenging vampires from entering when she first built the kingdom with my father. Still, she always felt lonely, and she pleaded with my father repeatedly to have a child. She accused him of not loving her anymore, and that was why he didn’t want her child. Eventually, my father granted her the wish of having me.”
“So did she really wish you’d have lips red as blood, skin pale as snow, and hair black as a window frame like it’s mentioned in the Grimm Brothers fairy tale?”
“Yes, and she had her reasons. On the night my parents decided they wanted to bring me into this world, Carmilla used a spell she’d learned, wishing for me to look like my father in every way. She loved him dearly, and she wanted me to grow to be a stronger woman than her. She hadn’t seen anyone as strong as Angel in her life, and she thought if I looked as beautiful as my father, I’d be as powerful and determined as him.”
“I understand totally,” Loki said. “A man who can cross the ocean with his lover on his back is no ordinary man. So tell me about that spell.”
“Looking like my father meant that I’d inherit the features he‘d been described as having when he escaped from Transylvania to meet her in Styria. Remember the descriptions he was famous for, the ravens and everything black Night had sent after him?”
Loki nodded.
“The ravens and panthers he’d fed upon were black, the trails of blood were red, and the snow he struggled through was white,” she elaborated. “In my mother’s attempt to honor my father’s courage, she cast a spell and wished that it would grant her a daughter with lips red as the blood of the ravens he fed on, skin as white as the snow he walked on, and hair as black as the long nights she had to wait through for him to return to her.”
“That explains it,” Loki said, looking at her tenderly. He thought he wouldn’t have liked her if she’d look any different.
“Now, prepare yourself for a horrifying sequence of events. What you’re going to witness now is of such importance I can’t describe it.”
Loki heard a rumble outside the room. He thought it was the sound of horses, which was illogical.
“Are you ready for the next ride?” Snow White walked to the closed door and gripped the doorknob.
“No Wind of Change this time?” Loki followed her as she opened the door.
“No,” she said, and opened the door, snowflakes entering the room. This time, the door didn’t lead to a hallway, but to a cold forest where snow was falling late at night.
“I wish I had that kind of shortcut from my Cadillac’s door to the bathroom,” Loki said, stepping out into the Black Forest.
The night outside was black, white, and blue, with golden glittering stars up in the sky. There were red glinting eyes flickering in the dark beyond the thick trees. Loki saw a calash, pulled by two unicorns, racing through the night. It was driven by Angel, whipping at the unicorns and demanding speed.
Loki and Snow White stepped outside where the calash was approaching. One of the unicorns tripped on a fallen tree branch and twisted its legs, disrupting the balance. The calash came crashing down on its side. Angel took a flight into the night sky like a loose cannon and landed on his feet in the snow. The man’s strength was unimaginable. One of the unicorns stood up then ran away into the night, fearing the red eyes.
Angel headed back to the calash, calling out for Carmilla. He opened the door and she fell out into his arms as he knelt in the snow.