by Cameron Jace
“No, I want to know what he knew.”
“Believe me, he was torn between wife and daughter.”
“Without telling me?” I said. “At the least, I deserved to know.”
“It’s not like he isn’t going to be affected if you die,” Dame Gothel said. “Think about his fate when you can’t offer him your blood anymore.”
I realized that hadn’t even crossed my mind.
“He will either have to die as well, or fully turn into a vampire by sucking blood off other people.”
“My God,” I cupped my face with my hands. “Is there any way to save us, Angel and I?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know of any,” Dame Gothel said.
My mind was reeling thinking about the Chosen One, who had not only killed her sister, but was about to kill her parents. I was in a lot of conflicted pain. I didn’t know what to make of things anymore. All I did was dismiss Dame Gothel, and fall deeper into my black hole of desperation.
I know you would wish I had a better story to tell at this point, but it wasn’t so. I simply spent the next few years watching Snow White grow up while I spent most of my time in bed. The few occasions when I and Angel needed to make an appearance, we used a lot of preparation, including a spell that made me look a bit younger in front of the nation.
And because everything came with a price, this spell actually accelerated my aging on the other hand.
But I stood my ground as a mother. Day and night, I tried my best to leave my bed and help raise my child who was sucking my life out of me.
Angel on the other hand began to drift into a pool of guilt. He had tired of trying to stop his father’s men at the borders, and felt ashamed by drinking my blood, knowing it would speed up my death.
So he preferred to stay away.
I didn’t see him much then, but I was told he’d been spotted uncombed and unshaven, looking like half the man he once was. Some peasants saw him in a cave in front of a fire with gypsies and wizards all around, trying to find a cure for me and him. He found none. Others said his father sent him tens of messengers, tempting him into opening the gates on the borders and giving into who he was destined to become.
Angel denied all temptation, withering away without my blood.
All this hell reminded me of many things, but Fate was always on my mind. I had sold my soul to his sorrow to save Angel. Never would I have imagined such sorrow as this hell we were living in.
Bit by bit, I swirled down into a pit of madness. And my madness wasn’t both, depression or the likes. My madness was my mirrors.
Chapter 64
The Queen’s Diary
Every day I purchased more mirrors, stood in front of hundreds of them. Prayed and begged them to sympathize with me and show me a younger Carmilla. I even talked to these mirrors, asking them to lie to me. I ended up smashing every mirror I bought in the end, my tears seeping through cracks of glass.
Finally, when I understood that no mirror was going to lie to me and reflect a beautiful queen, I refrained from looking into them anymore. My sorrow deepened, and my faith in the universe — which was already weak to begin with— diminished.
The mirrors I hadn’t had a chance to break yet were all sent to my daughter’s room. My daughter who was slowly becoming my enemy. Not just because of my sorrow, but because of the vampire qualities she had begun to show.
Snow White had begun to love the sight of blood.
I can go on and on about how I noticed it. But to summarize, she had literary sucked blood off my hands a few times when I had accidentally pricked my finger. Then she began to suck the blood of peasants in the field. I had to lock her back in her room, unable to explain her tendencies. Angel had not returned yet, so there was no one I could trust to share it with.
But what did I really care? I was beyond hope. My death looked sooner than I thought.
All until another ship arrived to the kingdom. Smuggled would be the accurate word. The pirates I had collaborated with to send me mirrors had started to sneak in their own goodies. But this certainly was different than their other shipments.
Inside that certain ship was a package.
Specifically, a coffin.
A coffin I had predicted the arrival of since my daughter had been born.
Part Five: The Coffin of Sorrow
Chapter 65
The Queen’s Diary
The coffin’s arrival was like an underground secret all over the kingdom. It turned out that the pirates had created an illegal market, shipping all sorts of things onto the island behind the king and the queen’s back. I wondered how Charmwill and Lady Shallot would feel about it if they knew.
On the other hand, I could have ordered the pirates caught, but I would have been risking losing the coffin.
My messengers went all over the land, asking and investigating. A certain coffin had been bought on a ship by the pirates. A coffin that had been said to carry the darkest secret of all. Priced extremely high, and not anyone was allowed to talk about it. The peasants claimed the coffin had been on the Seven Seas for years. They had claimed it belonged to the Sorrows. That it had been in Night Von Sorrow’s possession once. And that it had been destined to arrive on the island.
The coffin that was supposed to only be opened in the Kingdom of Sorrow.
Still, we couldn’t find it.
I wish I could have found Angel, but he hadn’t returned for months and no one, not even his huntsmen, had any idea of his whereabouts. Eventually I used his huntsmen to help me with the search for the coffin.
I was going crazy, wanting to find it. My illness didn’t make things any easier for me. And Snow White was still locked in her chamber by my orders, spending her time with so many mirrors — I preferred that the mirrors stayed in her room to know if her vampire-like tendencies were powers acquired for the Chosen One, or if she was actually becoming a vampire. If she were a vampire, she wouldn’t be able to tolerate the mirrors. But she seemed to love them. She loved one of them in particular. A beautiful mirror that I was told was designed by Justus Von Lieblig, a German scientist who’d invented the first silver mirror in the world.
But back to my search, which wasn’t fruitful. I had to force coercion. The huntsmen began to threaten the peasants in case they were hiding the coffin somewhere.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I frowned at the huntsman. “If the coffin arrived to the island, why would the peasants hide where it is?”
“We don’t know,” the huntsman answered, irritated by taking orders from me, not Angel. “But it seems like everyone is afraid to talk about it.”
“Why? What could possibly be so scary inside it?”
“We wish we knew, but we heard people say it was the scariest of all scares.”
“What is that supposed to mean? The worst there would be is a corpse, maybe belonging to someone important to Night Von Sorrow. Someone he had worked years to bring to Sorrow.”
“You mean a vampire’s corpse?” the huntsman looked worried.
“It could be.”
“Is it possible that this vampire could be resurrected?”
“How should I know?” I roared, mostly out of pain and anxiety.
But in my mind I was beginning to wonder; who was it inside the coffin? Who did Night Von Sorrow want to sneak into Sorrow so much that he didn’t kill us while on the Seven Seas? Was it really Dracula like we were told? Or was it someone else?
I wondered if it could be the Piper, but why would he need to sleep in a coffin?
For a moment, I wondered if my daughter, who was seven years old already, knew about it. I went to her room to ask her, and there, before I entered, I heard her talking to someone.
Furious, I dashed into her room. “Who are you talking to, Shew?”
Shew claimed she was talking to the mirrors, that there was someone answering her and talking to her. She even called that someone tenderer than me, which angered me even more. I taunted her and threatened to break the mi
rrors if she wouldn’t tell me who she was talking to, but she insisted it was the mirrors.
I ended up not having enough time to investigate the matter, as the huntsmen claimed they may have traced the coffin. I locked Shew back up and left to find the coffin.
Chapter 66
The Queen’s Diary
Unfortunately, we ended up not finding the coffin again. The coffin had begun to feel like a mythical secret, as if it never existed and we were only chasing shadows. But I knew it was true. I had seen it and I heard Night Von Sorrow’s conversation.
“How is this possible?” I screamed at the huntsmen. “How can’t I find something in my own kingdom?”
“Maybe it never really arrived,” the huntsman suggested. In their eyes I saw them wondering if I imagined it, if I only wanted to believe in the existence of a coffin. “We think you should rest, your Majesty.”
I had always known the huntsmen didn’t much believe in me. It wasn’t clear why, but maybe they just believed I was going to turn evil like everyone else believed. I had to let them go and find a solution myself.
It was all so stressful. My aging and the pain, my mysterious daughter, and now the coffin that I was sure would put most of the puzzle pieces together.
A gypsy advised me to wear a red dress, claiming it would help me heal. And I did. At this point I was willing to try everything to get cured, just for the sake of it.
Then, for the last time I turned to Charmwill Glimmer again. I met him, like always, by the shore.
“Do you think I am losing my mind?” I asked him. “I heard of a disease in Europe. I heard of people having no control of their thoughts. I heard they were locked into cellars because they were dangerous to society. Do you think this is what’s happening to me?”
“You’re not mad, my Queen,” Charmwill said. “You just broke the rules by breaching the borders. Who knows what the consequences may be?”
“The consequences are that a coffin has been snuck into the kingdom. A coffin that I have seen on the Demeter.”
“Do you know what was in the coffin?”
“Why does everyone ask me this?” I said. “I don’t know, but the coffin was so important to Night Von Sorrow. He said he needs to deliver it to an island.”
Charmwill questioned my story, and I recited all I knew about it, including my theories.
“I would claim that I know a lot,” he said, “but I have no idea what would be in that coffin.”
“But you agree that it doesn’t make sense that Night Von Sorrow didn’t kill us, right?”
“I agree. It’s a puzzle to all of us. But you said it yourself; he wanted to find Atlantis to locate the Piper’s flute.”
“It’s not just that,” I said. “Please believe me, I can feel it. Something horrible is about to happen. I can feel it.”
“I’d calm down if I were you, my Queen. If the coffin is on the island then it will be found.”
I didn’t have much to say to this. I needed more help than just mere logic. In my anger, I burst out at Charmwill, “I don’t understand you at all, old man. All you care about is the ships and the newcomers.”
“That’s my job.”
“What job is it exactly? And why are you doing it? I thought we were supposed to raise the Lost Seven on the island, and all you bring on the ships are more misfits.”
“Who said I never brought the Lost Seven?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I waved a weakened hand in the air. “The only Lost Seven I’ve heard about is Marmalade, the moon who strangely won’t answer me and promises to never help me in the dark.”
Charmwill approached me slowly. “It’s been around ten years since you set foot on the island, my Queen. Your daughter is seven years old now, and you still don’t understand?”
“Understand what?”
“The Lost Seven are on the island already,” Charmwill said. “They were all shipped here in the first year.”
I frowned, unable to comprehend what he just said. “Is that true?”
“It is.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because neither you nor Angel should know about them. The Lost Seven are protected by your majesty, as you protect the island. But they’re also protected from you, as you don’t know who they are.”
“Why would you want to protect them from us?” I said. “Why would you think we could hurt the Lost Seven?”
Charmwill hesitated. “Because of the prophecy.”
“What about the goddamn prophecy?”
“Because it says you will hurt them, my Queen. I’m sorry to say this, but it’s just what the prophecy predicted.”
Chapter 67
The Queen’s Diary
Charmwill wouldn’t tell me what he was talking about. He went back to the ship, and I pulled my frustration back with me to the castle.
I felt so isolated and so unloved that I thought I could have a talk with my distant daughter. Maybe she’d understand or lend a helping hand. To my surprise, she was out in the garden with Tabula Rasa. I found myself standing in her room full of mirrors, still addicted and fascinated by them after all those years.
The mirrors in my daughter’s room were lined up in what seemed like a circle. I stood in my elegant red dress and golden crown braided into my fake hair — I had a spell to conceal my real hair that was falling out at the time. The golden fake locks hung down on my shoulders. Reflected in the mirror, I found myself smiling. I had managed to fool the mirror into making me look beautiful with that spell.
I took a deep breath before I stepped into the middle of the room. Of all the mirrors, there was this one that Snow White loved the most. The one that supposedly talked back. I couldn’t explain it, but it drew me, like it was pulling me in with invisible ropes of velvet.
I stared at the mirror’s silvered surface, my breath shuffling in my chest, as the door behind me closed on its own. I couldn’t take my eyes off the mirror, still. Then I was about to faint when it talked to me.
“You don’t have to use your beauty spell when looking into me,” said the mirror, or whatever voice came out of it. A young girl’s voice. Lovely and sweet, but devious with a tinge of madness.
I wasn’t going to answer it. That would be acknowledging the impossible. A speaking mirror.
“Please, my Queen,” the mirror said. “Let go of the spell, and I promise I will show you real beauty without the need for witchcraft or lies.”
Now I had to give in and speak back, because I had been desperate to hear those words for years. “Do you promise?”
“I do,” she said. “I will show your real beauty, beyond the weakness of flesh. I will show how you look from the inside, Your Majesty.”
And so I did. I knew a few words to break the spell. Within moments I had turned back to the ugly and old Carmilla who had aged years before her time.
But to my surprise, the mirror didn’t show that.
The mirror showed a younger Carmilla. Even younger than when I gave birth to Snow White. It showed the Carmilla I knew before I met Angel. The happy, full-of-life girl that people envied, for she was the one who had brought prosperity to her father’s land. My cheeks were as red as apples, my hair curled in gold with the crown threaded to it, and my skin was as white and pale, as was preferred in the land of Styria.
“Is this real?” I said, touching my face.
“Does it matter?”
“I hope it’s real.”
“It’s what you deserve to look like, not what the world made you look like.”
“I love it,” I said. “I could stare at my beauty for hours.”
“And maybe compensate for the years of your youth when you were not allowed to look into mirrors, Your Majesty.”
“You’re right. I suffered a lot.”
“And it’s time to be rewarded.”
“I hope to God you’re not playing with my emotions, because I wouldn’t be able to take another betrayal from everyone.”
“How?”
“Ask me?”
“Ask you what?”
“Ask your mirror,” she said. “Ask her who is the fairest of them all.”
And here came the memorable words again, “Mirror, Mirror on the wall?” I spelled each syllable as slow as possible. My eyes were investigating the mirror as if it were alive. I hoped I wasn’t imaging it.
“Yes, my dearest Queen?” the invisible girl in the mirror replied.
“Mirror, Mirror on the wall,” I repeated, as if to make sure the mirror was really talking to me.
“I’m at your service, Queen of Sorrow,” the girl in the mirror said.
It was the first time someone had ever addressed me as the Queen of Sorrow in that tone. The girl made my name sound powerful and elegant, not weakened or shameful. I had always looked at the sorrow in my life as weakness, but she made it sound powerful. She made it sound so good that Fate would have envied me now. “Just ask, and I shall answer,” the girl continued. “Your wish is my command.”
“Mirror, Mirror on the wall,” I repeated again. “Who is that I see, standing tall?” I inched closer to the mirror, straightening my weakened back, and pushing my chest forward, my voice implying power.
“It’s you, Queen of Sorrow,” the girl in the mirror replied. “You’re the fairest of them all.”
I narrowed my eyes, worried, still suspicious of a mirror that talked. But seeing my reflection over and over blinded my judgment.
“I need you to always be with me,” I said to the mirror. “I don’t think I can live without you.”
“Soon, my Majesty,” the mirror said. “Soon, I will even make everyone see you like you see yourself in the mirror. You just need to be patient.
I hated that I had to wait. I hated that I was under the mirror’s command. So I had to ask questions. I had to be sure she would not give up on me. “Who are you?” I said. “What’s your name?”
