Authors: Cameron Jace
‘Once Sorrow, always Sorrow,’ his father had written.
Night allured him with becoming the King of Vampires if only he got rid of his daughter. Lastly, Night mentioned that the spells Carmilla had cast on his kingdom preventing vampires from entering were soon to be broken. Angel wadded up the letter and threw it into the dancing arms of the hungry fire.
The window showed Carmilla again, barely standing in front of a large mirror in her room. She let out a cry when she saw her ill image again, and threw a silver candlestick at it, crashing it into pieces.
“When Carmilla understood that no mirror was going to lie to her and reflect a beautiful Queen, she refrained from looking into mirrors anymore. It deepened her sorrow and weakened her faith in me.
Seeing
what was happening to her, made her have some disdain for me, and she couldn’t stand feeling that way, so she ordered the mirrors to be taken away from the castle.”
“Is that why your room here is full of mirrors?” Loki asked.
“They sent all the mirrors to my room because I asked for them. It seems that I liked mirrors,” Snow White said. “My father refused to have mirrors anywhere else in the castle. Even then, we managed to get by,” Snow White said. “Carmilla showered me with presents and I cherished the little time we spent together, not knowing the real reason for her illness. Angel was always looking for a cure, until a doctor informed my mother of the horrible fact; that she was going to die within months. Her body had suffered enough—and mine was growing fast. She was going to give in to the pain and aging eventually. Still, there was one last hope that Angel hadn’t considered yet.”
“To turn her into a vampire,” Loki easily predicted.
Snow White nodded. “She asked Angel to turn her into a vampire, but he refused to make her into what he had resisted to become all of his life.”
“I imagine he had no choice,” Loki said.
“Exactly,” Snow White let out a long sigh. “If Carmilla died, who was going to take care of me while he was away looking for a cure or fighting the vampires? The thought of Carmilla never getting better tortured him. He blamed himself for dragging her into his cursed life and couldn’t stand the thought of being unable to feed on her blood drops again,” Snow White looked at me for a second then shied away. “Eventually, he turned her into a vampire,” she said in a voice I could barely hear. “Although his transformation wasn’t complete, he learned from Night Sorrow that he had the power to turn her into a half-vampire like him.”
“Since you didn’t project an image for this, I take it you don’t want me to watch it happening,” Loki noted.
“Not you,” she said. “I couldn’t bring myself to see it.”
“I understand,” Loki said. “So how did it go, your dad saving your mom’s life?”
“A vampire does not have their lives saved, but cursed. Trust me,” Snow White said. Loki could see her chest rise and fall like an unsure tide searching for a shore to crash on. “Carmilla woke up the next morning alive and beautiful as ever. I heard stories about how her beauty was intimidating to other women in the castle, shining a darker light onto their average looks.”
“And you?”
“I was no problem anymore. The life energy I sucked unconsciously out of her, she could compensate for with her new strength. I remember her becoming so acute and sharp, seeing things far away, hearing inaudible conversations and predicting the weather, and even running as fast as Angel. My father taught her how to control her cravings, and feed on sparrows, bats, and animals.”
“So she was able to stay a half-vampire like Angel as long as she didn’t feed on human blood,” Loki said.
“But like always, there was a catch,” Snow White said. “It turned out that no mirror reflected my mother’s new beauty. Instead, all mirrors only reflected a beast, which was probably what she was changing into on the inside.”
“But that wasn’t the case with Angel. Why was she different?”
“The Karnsteins were no ordinary vampire hunters. They were descendants of a holy bloodline, and thus, the curse of seeing a beast in the mirror when she looked into it was a righteous punishment.”
“Your family is doomed, princess,” Loki commented.
“Still, we managed to survive. Carmilla avoided mirrors again, fed secretly with Angel while raising me, and kept the secrets from the rest of the kingdom,” Snow White said. “Things were kind of acceptable until the day we received that package,” Snow White said.
“What package?”
“One day, in my father’s absence, we received a package from Europe,” Snow White said. “It was from a Justus von Lieblig, a German scientist who’d been gifting my mother with the finest mirrors the whole time she was collecting them, before she banned them. This time, Justus sent us his latest invention; a silvered mirror like the ones we use today. The servant accepted the gift and sent the mirror directly to my room, of course. I have to say that I was fascinated it by it. I had never seen my reflection so clear in my life.”
“Seems like just a regular mirror to me,” Loki said.
“I wish it was, but that’s not true. In my boredom, and loneliness, I started talking to the mirrors in my room. In the beginning, I was only talking to my own reflection, killing time, and substituting them for dolls and playmates. I wasn’t allowed to go to school anymore—of course, I wasn’t told how dangerous I was yet. The girl in the mirror was just some lonely girl imitating my moves and combing her hair at the same time I did mine, saying the same words I said. Then one day, the mirror started talking to me, and it wasn’t my voice or hallucinations. There was another girl in the mirror,” she said. “I couldn’t see her, but could hear her. She sounded a little older than me, and she told me that she was trapped inside. To my surprise, she didn’t like talking to me. She said that she was capable of healing my mother and making her reflection look beautiful, and she kept asking to meet her over and over again.”
“Did you tell your mom about her?”
“Only once; she became angry with me, and threatened she’d break all the mirrors in my room if I mentioned it again. I explained to her that I was feeling lonely and needed someone to play and talk with, especially after I had been grounded when I bit the prince. Remember him?”
“Ouch,” Loki pursed his lips, trying not to laugh. “I forgot you had an irresistible taste for hot, good looking young princes. Yummy, yummy.”
Suddenly, the door burst open, and the Snow White Queen, Carmilla, walked in.
Loki sprang up, standing with his back plastered to the wall. Snow White laughed. “Be cool,” she said. “It’s just a new scene that you have to observe.”
“So why aren’t we transported?” A lonely trickle of sweat glided down his forehead.
“Because the scene takes place in this room,” she said. “Keep watching.”
25
Carmilla, as beautiful and glowing as ever, stood by the threshold of the room.
Her majesty was looking at the mirrors lined up in what seemed like a circle, making it harder for her to step in. She was standing in her elegant red dress and golden crown braided into her hair, golden locks hanging down her shoulders. Loki thought it was strange that the Queen wore her crown at home, and how it was always braided into her hair as if fearing that someone would steal it from her.
Carmilla took a deep breath before she stepped into the middle of the room. She avoided looking at her dark reflection in the mirrors as she walked ahead—even Loki avoided looking at her reflection; for some reason, he didn’t want to distort Carmilla’s beautiful image in his memory.
Carmilla hadn’t been in her daughter’s room because of those mirrors. But this time she was here for the mirror Snow White had told her about. Her curiosity had peaked, and she couldn’t help but investigate the talking mirror that promised to show her reflection as the beauty she was.
Carmilla could easily identify the mirror. It was the only one with a silvered surface, but that wasn’t its greatest attribute. Of all the mirrors in the world, this one granted the Queen the illusion of a gorgeous face even though she was half-vampire.
Carmilla cocked her head, unable to comprehend such a miracle. She approached the mirror eagerly, touching her face. It didn’t matter that all the other mirrors in the room showed her beastly nature. All that mattered was the one single mirror that made her look like the beautiful Queen she’d been before.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall?” Carmilla wondered slowly, her eyes investigating the mirror as if it were alive. She wasn’t sure if she was talking to herself or actually expecting the mirror to respond.
“Yes, my dearest Queen?” the invisible girl in the mirror replied.
“Mirror, Mirror on the wall,” Carmilla repeated, as if to make sure the mirror was really talking to her.
“I’m at your service, Queen of Sorrow,” the girl in the mirror said.
It was the first time someone had ever addressed her as the Queen of Sorrow, and it made something shimmer in Carmilla’s eyes. “Just ask, and I shall answer,” the girl continued. “Your wish is my command.”
“Mirror, Mirror on the wall,” Carmilla repeated again. “Who’s that I see, standing tall?” she inched closer, straightening her back, and pushing her chest forward, her voice implying power.
“It’s you, Queen of Sorrow,” the girl in the mirror replied. “You’re the fairest of them all.”
Carmilla narrowed her eyes, worried and also suspicious of a mirror that talked, but seeing her reflection blinded her judgment.
It occurred to Loki that he was watching the real version of one of the most famous scenes in the history of storytelling; the moment the Snow White Queen first talked to the mirror.
“Who’s the girl in the mirror, and did Justus send it as a gift, or did he work for someone?” Loki asked.
“Of course, Justus worked for someone,” Snow White told him. “The mirror was sent by Night Sorrow who had been working tirelessly to turn my parents into full vampires so they could join his forces. Night Sorrow had found a way to reach my mother without having to breach through the kingdom’s barriers. A haunted mirror was just enough. As for the girl in the mirror, I assure you that you know who she is. At least, you must have heard of her.”
“You’re mistaken,” Loki argued. “I don’t recognize the girl in the mirror.”
“You do, Loki,” Snow White insisted. “Think harder about how fairy tales turned out to be real, how the world of stories is connected and interwoven. Think about nursery rhymes you’ve heard, and about urban legends. It’s all so obvious. You only need to connect the dots.”
Loki tried harder to identify the girl in the mirror for a moment, but nothing came to mind. “I really don’t know.”
“What’s the name of the scary girl that hides in the mirror that most kids know about?” Snow White said. “Think of an evil girl who escaped a mirror, her prison, a girl that when you say her name three times in the dark, comes out and hurts you.”
“You don’t mean:--” The name was on the tip of Loki’s tongue.
“Bloody Mary,” Snow White nodded. “She’s real, and she’s the girl who turned my mother into a beast by appearing to her in the mirror.”
“That’s—“Loki was at a loss for words.
“That’s the truth,” Snow White said. “Sometimes, I wonder why no one ever questions where the mirror in my fairy tale came from. The person in the mirror who the Snow White Queen talked to was Bloody Mary.”
Carmilla’s eyes glittered suddenly. She looked as if she had been awakened from the hypnotizing effect of Bloody Mary. She sensed that this was all a work of evil.
“No, I am not the fairest of them all,” Carmilla resisted Bloody Mary’s suggestions. “And if I am, I know that I shouldn’t be seeing my reflection in the mirror,” she said while reaching for a candlestick to do away with the mirror. “This isn’t right,” she said. “You’re an evil mirror and you have to be destroyed,” she swung the candlestick at the mirror.
But before she could break it, the mirror’s surface rippled and showed her images of other vampire women who seemed to suffer from an aging condition like Carmilla—of course, none of them were a chosen one’s mother, but they were all aging after giving birth. The vampire women in the mirror seemed to have no problems with their aging condition because they had a solution for it. They fed on young human girls, and consumed their youth so they themselves wouldn’t age. Once they fed on them, the young girls grew older instantly and died while the vampire women grew younger and healthier.
Carmilla stopped in her tracks, her fangs drawing out. The women in the mirror were checking out their beautiful faces in their hand mirrors, enjoying their eternal youth. They were combing their nurtured hair, checking their fine skin, putting on makeup and lipstick and rubbing their lips together, putting on mascara, and slightly squeezing their cheeks into reddish patches full of life and energy.
“What good is beauty if one can’t see it?” Bloody Mary said, toying with Carmilla’s weakness. “You have done nothing wrong to deserve to become a beast. You deserve much better. You’ve sacrificed your youth, your love, and yourself for your daughter, because you love her.”
Loki wanted to scream into the dream to warn Carmilla of the girl in the mirror, but he couldn’t risk her seeing him.
“Will your daughter ever appreciate what you’ve sacrificed for her?” Bloody Mary said.
The images in the mirror turned into a single image of a seven year old Snow White who looked lovely, lively, and luminous.
“All this beauty she has sucked out of you has gone to waste,” Bloody Mary continued. “Your pain was never appreciated. You could have simply died young and beautiful without having to bring her into the world.”
The mirror rippled into a liquid surface and showed another live scene of Snow White in the future, wearing her white dress and walking barefoot in a garden of purple and yellow poppies. Men of all ages watched her with longing eyes in the background; knights, huntsmen, and princes as one of the servants placed a crown on Snow White’s head; the Queen’s crown.
“Sooner or later,” Bloody Mary said. “Snow White will be the fairest of them all by feeding on your pain.”