Authors: Cameron Jace
Crows started cawing and gathering around the trees all around him. Loki raised his head, assuming that this meant the dream was about to end. Soon enough there’d be earthquakes and mountains falling and they’d wake up. But was it safe to wake up while she was unconscious? He didn’t know.
Laying her back on the ground, he saw her lips were dripping blood. It didn’t make sense. He wondered if she had bitten the Queen while struggling in the air.
But that wasn’t the case. Next to Snow White’s paralyzed body, Loki saw a bitten apple. It was a blood apple, the juice that seeped from it was red, and he assumed Snow White had taken a bite off it. Carmilla must have forced her to bite on it while they were in the carriage.
Behind him, Loki heard Charmwill screaming. Loki stood to his feet and saw Charmwill in the distance. He was on his knees, his hands bound behind his back, and surrounded by the huntsmen. They were half-circling him with their swords to their sides. Each of them wore that same black cloak that didn’t show their faces. The wind puffed through their hollow heads and stirred the cloak as if they were black ghosts. They had caught Charmwill and were about to execute him. Loki wanted to run to him.
“Don’t come for me, Loki,” Charmwill pleaded. “I’m not as important as her.”
Loki stood stranded, looking back and forth between Snow White and Charmwill. He didn’t know whom he should save. The dream was about to end and he could only save one. The earth underneath him rumbled. The earthquake was nearing.
“Save the princess,” Charmwill screamed, sounding afraid. Never had Loki heard such a shiver in his guardian’s voice before.
Loki expected the Huntsman to appear from the dark to kill Charmwill. He needed to think fast. Was he going to face the Huntsman against Charmwill’s advice? Was he going to think of a way to save Snow White and give up on the man who unshadowed him and had blessed him with a second life? It was a hard call. It was like choosing between past and future, old and young, and it was going to break Loki’s heart either way.
Slowly, someone appeared from between the huntsmen circling his guardian. But it wasn’t the Huntsman. It was Carmilla.
She walked slowly among her huntsmen, approaching Charmwill. A number of goblins next to her were pulling the Queen’s favorite mirror behind her. They stopped in front of Charmwill and Carmilla tilted her head, meeting Loki’s eyes in the distance.
“I swear if you say that Peekaboo-I-see-u thing one more time I’m going to kick your majesty’s royal ass,” Loki snapped.
Carmilla let out a short laugh then turned her shoulder towards him, as if ignoring him. She reached her hand into the mirror and pulled a sword made of sharply edged glass. She walked closer to Charmwill and patted him on the cheek like a puppy.
“You know how long I’ve wanted to kill you, Charmwill?” she asked the old man who lowered his eyes silently with shame. “So long that I’m willing to let your prodigal Dreamhunter get away with the princess.”
It wasn’t surprising that Charmwill knew Carmilla. Loki hadn’t figured out most of the truth about this fairy tale world after all. He just knew that he wasn’t going to kill the princess, and that he had chosen to stay in Sorrow and forget about finding out who he really was. But it killed him inside him to see Charmwill like this. He’d known how proud the man was. Charmwill had never been afraid of death. It was the shame that he feared; the shame of getting down on his knees and bowing to the forces of evil. Even if he were immortal, killing Charmwill in the dream was putting him into sleep forever in the real world. The rules that applied to the Demortals also applied to Dreamhunters in the matters of life and death.
“Stay where you are, Loki,” Charmwill pleaded again, his head still low, ready for the Queen to chop it off. “The dream is ending. You’ll be safe if you have patience.”
“But I can’t leave you,” Loki felt a tear roll down his cheek. He was about to take a step toward him. The only thing that stopped him was that it was a step away from Snow White as well. “You don’t want to kill him,” Loki diverted his eyes toward the Queen. “You want Snow White, and she’s here with me,” the words ached in his heart when he said them, because he didn’t really mean them. He knew deep inside that he wasn’t going to be able to give up on the pale princess. But he was trying to fool the Queen to buy some time.
“I don’t need her,” Carmilla said nonchalantly, raising her glass sword in the air, “at least not now.”
“What do you mean you don’t need her?” Loki grimaced.
“I forced her to bite on the apple. It’s a blood apple. She’s cursed now with being one of us. And she’ll stay cursed until someone finds the cure, which I’m sure you will never find, foolish Dreamhunter.”
“Tell me what the cure is,” Loki demanded, knowing it was indeed a foolish request, as if the Queen of Sorrow was going to tell him.
“You can take her along with you to the real world. She’s no threat to me at the moment. The apple will turn her into a dark vampire. She’ll probably kill you once you pull the stake out,” Carmilla took a deep breath, preparing to bring the sword down on Charmwill.
“Don’t worry, you’ll know how to save her if you open your heart and cross the oceans in your mind,” Charmwill said to Loki. “Just wake up with her and you’ll be alright. And Loki,” Charmwill turned his head to face him. “Take care of Pickwick.”
Pickwick fluttered through the air and rested on Loki’s shoulder. Charmwill’s request might have sounded ordinary to the Queen, but Loki understood its many meanings. For one, Pickwick held all the true fairy tales that Charmwill collected and protected all his life. Now, it had become Loki’s responsibility to do so. Two, Loki felt it was an honour; Charmwill handed him the flag to continue his quest with his blessing. Loki decided he’d close his eyes so he’d not see his guardian die.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to kill me while facing me,” Charmwill told the Queen, raising his head proudly up. “I’m Charmwill Glimmer. If you want to kill me, you should know I only die with honour, head up, and not stabbed in the back.”
Loki heard the glass sword slice through something and Carmilla letting out a sigh of relief. It was as if she’d always wanted to kill him, and Loki wondered about the many secrets he’d unravel within time about this world.
Charmwill’s death came with a hysterical fluttering of crows. When Loki opened his eyes, the Queen was gone. He saw mountains falling in the distance, crumbling to dust. A river flooded nearby and the stars fell like snowflakes from the skies.
He walked back to Snow White, lifted her up with both his hands, and stood in front of the mess. A flood was approaching as he stood still in front of it. He knew whatever it was going to do him, it didn’t matter as long as he had saved the girl he’d come here to kill.
27
When Loki woke up, Axel was pounding his chest with his fist.
“Get off me,” Loki pushed Axel away and sat up, still feeling a bit dazed. “What the heck is wrong with you?”
“I’m giving you CPR.” Axel said.
“Why? I’m not dead!”
“A second ago he was almost kissing you,” Lucy murmured in the background. She was texting someone, like usual.
“You looked very much dead to me,” Axel explained himself, ignoring Lucy. “I didn’t really mean to kiss you. I meant to breathe in your mouth.”
“Where did you even learn CPR?” Loki said, rubbing his wrist, feeling stripped without his Fleece.
“I took a course,” Axel said proudly.
“God bless me for tolerating you,” Loki rolled his eyes. It had been a rhetorical question.
“It was a course on how to rescue your pet,” Axel felt the need to elaborate.
“Do I look like a pet to you?” Loki stood up, brushing the snow away. The weather was still cold and a bit crazy. “And don’t answer that,” Loki warned him.
“What’s with you waking up so grouchy from the dream?”
“You have no idea what happened down there,” Loki said impatiently. “And didn’t I warn you about stepping into the Dream Temple?”
“I’m sorry,” Axel said. “You looked like you were dying, and I had to save you. Am I in danger now?”
“I don’t think so,” Loki said. “The dream is over anyways,” Loki was still in shock from his encounter with Carmilla. Charmwill’s image flashed before his eyes again, and he tried his best not to cry, at least not in front of his friends. He looked at Snow White sleeping in the glass coffin inside the Dream Temple. She looked alright. He had to bring her back safely into the castle. He’d already lost Charmwill and he was in no way going to lose Snow White. Looking at the Waker, he saw they still had enough time.
“Why are you being nice to Axel?” Lucy said to Loki. “Why can’t you just tell him he’s useless and can’t do anything right?”
Axel’s face reddened. This time, he looked angry. He’d taken his share of humiliation from Lucy already. Loki knew that whatever Axel did, he did it with a good heart because he was a true friend, and he had no time to stand up for him against Lucy now.
Thinking about Axel, reminded Loki of Fable. He wondered why she hadn’t said a word since he woke up. Turning back, he saw Fable staring at him as if she’d seen a ghost. She was definitely worried about Loki, but there was something else in her eyes that worried Loki.
“What?” Loki snapped at her, feeling uncomfortable with her silent stare.
“Did you lose your Fleece, Loki?” Fable asked as if she was his mother taunting him for losing something precious. He had a gut feeling that losing the Fleece wasn’t good at all, and he knew Fable felt the same way.
“Don’t worry, I don’t think it’s that dangerous,” he lied again to her so she wouldn’t panic.
“What happened in the Dreamory, Loki?” Fable was curious. “We were so worried about you two.”
Loki took a deep breath, glad to be alive. “You won’t believe it when I tell you, Fable,” he dropped his head as Pickwick landed on his shoulder.
“And why is Pickwick here?” Fable squinted. “Where is Charmwill?”
“I will explain everything later,” Loki wasn’t going to tell her that Charmwill died right now. If he did, she’d get emotional and then he’d probably burst into tears as well. “We need to get Snow White back to the castle and we need to hurry.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Lucy blew on her fingernails then pointed behind Loki.
Axel was already pushing Snow White’s coffin across the thin ice toward the castle.
“Axel,” Loki hurried after him, and Fable followed, “what are you doing?”
Axel wasn’t responding. He was pushing the coffin with all his might, running as fast as he could before the ice broke underneath him. Cracks spread behind him as if chasing him, but he was surprisingly faster.
Lucy didn’t bother risking her way back to the castle over the ice. Loki and Fable tiptoed on the ice carefully and slowly after Axel. They held hands and chose different routes than the one taken by Axel because it was unsafe. When they arrived, Axel had already pushed the coffin into the castle. The Schloss was calm and showed no anger.
“I. AM. NOT. USELESS,” Axel shouted back at Lucy across the ice.
Fable let out a laugh. She actually liked how he stood up for himself for once and actually did something heroic by crossing the treacherous ice. It was the way he said that he wasn’t useless that sounded funny to her.
“You definitely aren’t useless,” Fable kissed him on the cheek.
Loki had never seen Axel smile so much. Fable’s kiss made him feel like he was her hero, which might have been all he wanted to prove from the beginning.
After Axel succeeded in pushing the coffin to the castle, they pulled the coffin back up to Snow White’s room. Before pulling the stake out, Loki told them about Carmilla’s curse and how she forced Snow White to take a bite of the apple. He explained that Snow White might be under its influence, and that none of them might be safe with her. They decided to postpone pulling the stake out, and that Loki would do it by himself. Besides, they were tired and needed to go home to clean before their foster mom arrived tomorrow.
Sitting outside the castle, Loki told them all that happened. Even Lucy couldn’t resist. She sat next to them listening to Loki tell about his adventure in the Dreamworld.
“I knew I was right,” Axel said. “Didn’t I tell you about the liver theory, and the heart, and that the Queen wanted to eat them? And didn’t I tell you about the Huntsman? I also remember reading the part about the Brothers Grimm changing Snow White’s mother into being a stepmother in the later versions. I just didn’t tell you because I thought it was irrelevant.”
Fable didn’t comment that Axel didn’t discover any of this by himself and that he had read it in the diary entitled J.G. he’d found in the secret library. She decided she’d keep treating her brother as an
un-useless
hero for the night.
“I know you’ve been right about many things,” Loki laced his hands together. “But what does all of this mean, Axel? There are so many missing pieces.”
“Loki is right,” Lucy commented. “Knowing Snow White’s story doesn’t fully explain what is going on. It seems like there’s something much bigger about this fairy tale world—and I totally sympathize with Carmilla by the way.”
“And we’re going to find out,” Axel said enthusiastically. “We’re a team now, and this is our adventure. We’ve just started it.”
“Don’t think too much about it, Loki,” Fable patted him. “What all of this means is that you didn’t kill Snow White and that’s what matters,” Fable hugged him. Axel scratched his back, a little uncomfortable with her touching Loki. “Didn’t I tell you from the beginning that she needs your help, Loki?” she said.
“You did,” Loki nodded. He wondered if he should have listened to Fable from the start, but he knew that he had to take this journey to find out what he really wanted.