Cinderella Dressed in Ashes ( Book #2 in the Grimm Diaries ) (16 page)

The next page showed a beast so ugly Axel twitched his lips, preferring not to look at it.

“The Beast,” Fable mused. “I can’t even tell if it’s a boy or girl. Why would Shew share her heart with such an ugly creature?”

“The next one is a Star,” Axel flipped to an almost empty page that only had the word star handwritten in the middle. “How convenient, one of the Lost Seven is the moon, and the other is a star. This J.G. lost his mind.”

“And who’s the seventh of the Lost Seven?” Fable flipped the page herself. “What is this?” she looked as if someone had just burst her balloon.

“The Phoenix,” Axel stared at the picture of a bird with purple wings, the bird looked as if it was burning. “You know what a phoenix is, right Fable?”

“Of course, I know. I do your homework, Axel,” Fable said absently.

“You do my homework but you don’t know that beans are vegetables,” he mumbled.

“A phoenix is a bird that burns at the end of its life then rises again from its own ashes,” Fable explained.

“Like Zombies,” Axel giggled. Fable was too entranced by the picture of the Phoenix to comment. “Why do I think this is a big clue?” Axel said.

“It is,” Fable said. “But I don’t know what it means.”

“I’m not following,” Axel replied.

“When we were chasing Loki, I heard him mutter something to himself repeatedly, as if he was trying not to forget it,” Fable raised her eyes, meeting Axel’s. “He kept saying, ‘The Phoenix.’”

“So?”

“I have no idea,” Fable said. “All I know is that according to this J.G., she is one of the Lost Seven,” Fable turned back to the Dream Temple protected by the purple light. “Loki isn’t there to kill Snow White. He’s there for the Phoenix,” she uttered her discovery.

“So the Queen sent him to kill the Phoenix?” Axel said.

“Why kill her?” Fable said. “She probably wants to find her to collect Shew’s first piece of heart. Are you sure there isn’t anything else about the Phoenix in this diary.”

“Um,” Axel flipped through the pages. “The only other mention of the Phoenix is an article here where J.G. explains his frustration about the Phoenixes.”

“I don’t follow,” Fable said.

“He says that the Phoenix is the only one of the Lost Seven that he knew the real name of—he is very big on the power of what he calls ‘true names’,” Axel said. “He writes that whenever he has his hands on manuscripts with the Phoenix’s real name, he is confused by other manuscripts that call her something different.”

“So the Phoenix is a girl,” Fable said. “Do you have those names?”

“Wait a second,” Axel flipped. “I have come across them but the writing was too small and almost wiped out—here it is,” he handed Fable the diary.

“I have dyslexia, and you’re handing it to me?” Fable said, already reading it.

“You read smaller fonts better than me,” Axel argued.

“OK,” Fable drew her glasses closer. “One of the names is Cerené—I am not sure how to spell it. And at some point he thought her name was Ember. And then at some other point he thought her name was…” Fable raised her eyes to meet Axel. She looked like she’d seen her dead mother.

“What is the name?” Axel said. “You’re freaking me out.”

“Cinderella,” Fable said. “Carmilla is after Cinderella!”

“How can she be after Cinderella by making Loki enter Shew’s dream? Shouldn’t he be entering Cinderella’s dream wherever she is?” Axel said.

“I don’t know, Axel,” Fable breathed rapidly in front of the purple light. “This locked dream has to end so we know. Are you sure it wasn’t mentioned how a locked dream ends in Loki’s phone?”

Axel pretended he didn’t hear her. He wasn’t going to tell her what he’d read. It was death itself.

18

Rainbow’s End

Although Shew believed Cerené was the Phoenix, the knowledge didn’t answer all of her questions yet.

Who was the Phoenix, really? Why did she have to look for her?

At least, the dream made much more sense now. This dream wasn’t about the Queen wanting to kill her. Loki used the Phoenix Incubator because Carmilla wanted to take Shew back to her relationship with Cerené, thinking Cerené would lead her to the Phoenix.

 What was the point in reminding Shew she had a dear friend in her childhood called Cerené, and why didn’t she remember that part of her childhood?

She had figured out Cerené was Cinderella. That wasn’t the hard part. A girl covered in ashes, lived with a stepmother and stepsisters, slept in a dark room next to cinders, and had one precious glass shoe she couldn’t live without. It had to be her, only she wasn’t the kind you’d expect to read about in a picture book in the Waking World. Cerené was the real flesh and blood Cinderella. She had a feeling that whatever she’d learned about Cerené was trivial.

Cerené wasn’t the kind of girl who dreamed of attending the king’s ball and meeting the prince. She was not waiting for a Godmother to dress her in the most beautiful dress and send her a pumpkin coach. She was a young girl who had surpassed all the evil bestowed upon her by enjoying the one thing she did best, the Forbidden Art.

The Art was Cinderella’s getaway, the computer game boys played escaping into their own imaginary world, the embroidery medieval woman excelled at as they wove threads into canvasses of beauty. The Art was Cerené’s drug that took the pain away. It was her hope to live another day; it was the glass shoe she’d left behind, the way Hansel and Gretel left their breadcrumbs, so happiness could retrace her steps and find her one day.

Still, Shew wondered who saved her each time she was about to die. Was it Cerené? Was Cerené capable of creating fire? If so, why didn’t she tell Shew about it? If Cerené could create fire they wouldn’t have had to go to the furnace in Candy House. It couldn’t be Cerené.

Shew thought of Bianca again. There was no other explanation. Bianca was the person in the hood who chased Shew. She was Cerené’s guardian angel, and she burned whoever hurt her daughter.

However, that would only explain what happened near Candy House, Bianca saving her daughter from Baba Yaga and burning the place down, but who burned the Wall of Thorns? The wall was no threat to Cerené. Was it possible that Bianca protected Shew, maybe because she wanted Shew to take care of her daughter?

There were too many questions leading nowhere. The one thing that made sense was that Cerené was one of the Lost Seven Shew had split her heart with, which was also a useless piece of information.

Shew had no recollection of how she split her heart or how she did it. She knew she split her heart because of a solitary memory of the day Carmilla cursed her and trapped her in the Schloss after failing to find the Lost Seven. Carmilla had been asking her about the Lost Seven and how she managed to split her heart with them, not knowing that Shew didn’t remember doing so in the first place. Shew had no explanation why parts of her memory were lost.

Now, at the Rainbow’s End, Shew watched Cerené play with her blowpipe at the reservoir, which was a lake of pure light, shimmering with the main
seven
colors of a rainbow. This was the place Cerené had promised to take her to see from the beginning, the place they’d gone through hell and back to reach, the only place where the Forbidden Art could be colored. And it was beautiful.

Cerené had showed Shew how she dipped molten glass into the colored lake of light. All she had to do was pick the color she desired. Cerené loved a mesh of colors so most creations came out the color of rainbows.

She also created a huge butterfly with flapping fiery wings, but then killed it when she was out of breath. Cerené’s most amazing creation was smaller butterflies she blew from her pipe, fluttering their wings into the world, as if the blowpipe had been their cocoons. The Butterflies had a long lifespan, not demanding Cerené’s continuous breathing because they were such light creatures. It took them about ten minutes, fluttering freely in the lake before their light dimmed and they turned to stone and fell into the lake.

In her awe, Shew called Cerené the God of Small Things. She was able to create life through her pipe, only it was a short-lived life. The Gods must have chosen Cerené for a reason. But for some other reasons, decided they wouldn’t allow how to create a full life.

Shew smiled, watching Cerené run with her blowpipe under the rainbow. She wondered if all Gods were like her, creators of magnificent things, yet as lost as Cerené. What if the Gods created the entire world by using their imaginations to overcome their pain?

While Shew was watching Cerené play, she heard girls singing a nursery rhyme in the distance. They were tapping their feet and jumping rope somewhere behind the trees. Shew thought they sounded like the creepy girls Loki had told her he’d heard in Sorrow. They were singing a new song:

Cinderella dressed in ashes,

one glass slipper and some matches,

burned the world all down in ember,

ash to ash and sin to cinder.

Shew closed her eyes, wishing the voices would go away. She’d never known who the girls were. She feared their rhymes, though, and thought they always foretold a sinister future.

Instead, she watched Cerené happily play in the reservoir, remembering how they had gotten here after Candy House had melted.

Cerené had shown Shew the way to Rainbow’s End. They had walked in silence for about an hour. Cerené had gotten her single glass slipper and now walked normally. Baba Yaga had escaped, and Shew dared not ask about what had happened while she was knocked out. Splash had told her to look for the Phoenix, and here she was, walking side by side with her. Hell, the Phoenix was Shew’s best friend.

They had passed by the small village of Furry Tell,  but Cerené demanded they shouldn’t stop there.

A match made in Hell—I mean Heaven—I must say.

“What are you doing, Joy,” Cerené said, standing in the middle of the reservoir blowing her pipe and mixing the molten with the Rainbow’s colors.

“I’m coming,” Shew said, waking up from the recent memory. She walked over and stepped into the lake of light. It felt ticklish at first,  like she was standing in a mist.

Rainbow’s End was actually a rainbow’s end. Shew didn’t know where the other rainbow’s end was, but she was sure they had one end of the rainbow in Sorrow. If that didn’t say enough about their kingdom, then she didn’t know what would.

For a moment, Shew pitied her own mother, Bloody Mary, and Night Sorrow. Whoever had surrendered to the hate and darkness in their souls could not have laid eyes on Rainbow’s End. How could succumb to darkness  once you saw this place. She looked up at the arching rainbow curving away in the sky beyond the midnight trees. The rainbow was visible in the dark.

Cerené had melted her mix with the fire that had been burning Candy House and continued blowing it all the way to Rainbow’s End. It broke Shew’s heart that her friend was closer to death with each breath she blew, but there was no reasoning against the happiness in Cerené’s eyes, even when it meant being one step closer to death.

Cerené breathed to keep the fire alive so she could mix it with the rainbow from the lake. It was the only way to color her magic glass art. She said that ordinary glassblowers in the world used quartz and other natural colored stones—Shew knew nothing of these stones. But Cerené explained that she was no ordinary glassblower. She was a Keeper of the Art.

Now, all the huge glass flowers she created were colored like butterfly wings. She’d breathed a glass castle for them, which they spent some time inside, but it didn’t last long after the fire died. Cerené had even blown a small rocking boat, which floated upon the Lake of Light—Shew didn’t question how—but that fire died too. When all her molten fires ended, Cerené wasn’t going to go back to get fire from the furnace in Candy House, not today.

If only Cerené could create fire, her powers would have been complete, and would have created her own wonderland to live in.

“Do you have any idea why you have been given that talent?” Shew asked while they sat on top of a hill next to the Rainbow’s End. Cerené had played all she wanted and was exhausted. Where they sat, the rainbow was an arm’s length away.

“It’s magic, not talent,” Cerené said. “But I don’t know why. Must there be a reason for magic? Its fun, and I love it.”

“Were you cursed when you born or something?” Shew said playfully. “I know I was cursed.”

“You were?” Cerené wondered.

“It’s a long story. I’d rather have to make my own choices than walk in the footsteps of a destiny I was made to fulfill.”

“So you’re not just a lunatic vampire like your mother?”

Shew laughed, “No, there is actually a logical reason for my existence.”

“I wish I knew of the reason of my existence,” Cerené said absently. “But I don’t care. I am having fun,” she snapped.

“You think we’re good friends, Cerené?” Shew said with caution.

“Friends forever,” Cerené giggled.

“So could I ask you something without you being upset?” Shew said.

“Something like what?” Cerené was as reluctant as Shew.

They locked eyes for a while, the moment freezing and time stopping. Shew thought it was finally the right time she’d ask Cerené for some clarifications without her getting upset. She inhaled deeply, and tried to ask Cerené as gently as possible.

“Like where you’re from for instance? I promise I will listen without judgment. I’m not going to question your answers like I did in the Field of Dreams.”

“I was born on Murano Island,” Cerené said casually. She’d been feeling much better since she’d arrived at Rainbow’s End. She felt safe here, the place where her art took its optimum form.

“Murano? Never heard of it. Where is it?”

“Near Venice,” Cerené said without elaborating.

“That’s where?” Shew knew it was in Italy—another thing she’d learned from one of her victim’s phones in the castle. She still wanted to hear it from Cerené.

“Italia,” Cerené’s eyes widened. “It’s practically an island,” she lowered her head to whisper something to Shew. “It’s shaped like a shoe,” she made an invisible shoe with her fingers.