by Cameron Jace
Dizzy, and about to faint from the pain, I was confused. Were the panthers afraid of my daughter because of her being the Chosen One, or because she was evil as them?
Which of my daughters won the war in my womb?
And then I passed out, with the panthers surrounding me.
Chapter 59
The Queen’s Diary
Angel would later tell me a story about the panthers approaching me. A certain panther with reddened eyes, an outcast who didn’t want to abide by whatever rules or prophecies the black panthers lived by, cut my umbilical cord with its teeth and snatched my daughter away from me.
He told me the panther took her and ran away, but Angel wouldn’t let him. My husband wrestled the panther, then shot it and brought my daughter back.
It was a heroic story that made me love him more. Many times we’ve told it to our daughter and laughed at it. The daughter I came to call Snow White, believing she was the Chosen One. And the husband who lied to me, and never told me the truth about what happened while I had fainted among the panthers.
A lie that I ended up paying for in the end.
***
Angel returned to his war against his father at the borders. He had claimed they managed to kill all the panthers and now had to deal with bigger forces trying to enter Sorrow. It didn’t explain whether the coffin on the ship was really going to be sent to Sorrow or not, but it confirmed my theory about Atlantis and Night Von Sorrow trying to kill our daughter.
According to Angel’s words the day he left back to the borders, all we had to do was wait sixteen years until the Chosen One grew up and killed them all.
“Are you sure she is the Chosen One?” I asked Angel, wondering if he really never knew about her having a twin.
“She is our daughter, isn’t she?” he smiled wearily.
“Are you trying to tell me you never knew what Lady Shallot told me when you sent me to her?”
“I never did,” he said. “Lady Shallot only told me that it may not be a good idea to have the baby unless she talks with you.”
“And you’re not curious?”
“I am, but I respect the rules of the universe.”
“You’re not buying into that, are you?”
“I believe in the universe, Carmilla. And like I was told by Lady Shallot not to tell you about the origins of the sun and the moon, I respected not knowing what she had told and the conditions for you to have a baby.”
I reminded myself that Angel didn’t know that I knew about the moon. In the same time I didn’t know about the sun. And he didn’t know about the twins. I began to wonder if this universe was all in our mind, a devious weapon we’ve created to fool ourselves and tell lies. Because frankly, I didn’t see my relationship with Angel prospering with all those lies on our tongues.
But Angel left anyways, and I was left to raise the Chosen One mostly by myself. As days went by, I realized that Angel hadn’t just left me with the burden of raising a child alone for the first time, but also with the guilt of having let the other one die.
For days I’d be breastfeeding Snow White, and wonder what it meant for her to have killed her sister in my womb. I mean this lovely child with the lovely pale skin killed her sister to win a war against evil?
It was mind shattering.
Did good have to commit atrocities to win the war against evil? What did that make of those who claimed they were good?
Or was it really that evil was a point of view? The Chosen One never thought of killing her sister as evil, since there is a higher noble cause for it.
Questions like these made me fall into a hole of madness — and loneliness — every day.
With every day I witnessed Snow White grow, I realized I missed her nameless sister even more. So much that sometimes I didn’t feel so happy and giddy about the Chosen One.
There was this day when Snow White was still an infant, giggling in my arms. She kept giggling so much that she fell asleep from being tired of giggling. For whatever reason, I stared at her and found myself asking her. “Did you really kill your sister?”
It was a nonsensical question. A mix of madness and loneliness, trying to talk to an infant that hadn’t learned to talk yet. It was ridiculous.
But then something happened. Snow White opened her giggly eyes. Her forefinger neared her mouth and then she made a sound, “Shhh.”
I grimaced in one of the craziest moments in my life. Did she really tell me to shush and never mention her sister, or was it all in my mind?
“Did you just shush me?” I had to ask a child that can’t talk.
Snow White kept her forefinger on her mouth, her eyes slightly narrowing now, her giggle dissipating into an oblivion of darkness, and said, “Shhhheeeew.”
Then she slept in my arms, leaving me undone, confused, and really scared. I believed she was shushing me again, only her dozing off made the end of ’shhh’ turn into a ‘sheeew.’
This was the day I started to call her Shew.
And this was also the night all my real nightmares began.
Chapter 60
The Queen’s Diary
That night I dreamed of my other daughter, a black swan in Swan Lake, swearing she’d take revenge on me for giving up on her. She was scary in that dream. I feared her even more than I feared Shew some years later.
“You let her kill me,” my swan daughter said. “You will pay for it.”
“I didn’t meant to,” I argued. “I didn’t really know she would kill you. I wanted you to be alive. Believe me.”
The black swan said nothing. She only smirked, saying, “Mother, you will pay for it. And, oh my, you have no idea how bad I will hurt you.”
Sweating in my bed, I woke up and grabbed for a glass of water as I glimpsed at the moon shining bright in the midnight sky. Our lovely Marmalade, who wouldn’t answer me, ever, but at least she wasn’t as scary as my other daughter.
Then I dropped the glass, splintering it to pieces on the floor.
There was something outside staring at me behind the semi-open window with the curtains fluttering in front of it.
It was a swan. A black one. It spread its blood-spattered wings against the light of the shiny moon behind it, and its eyes gleamed red.
I was sure it was my other daughter, and it was also staring at baby Snow White sleeping. I had no idea how this was possible. Maybe it was just an incarnation of my unnamed, unborn daughter. Maybe I was only hallucinating, and maybe I was still dreaming.
Puzzled, I didn’t know what to do. I pinched myself, trying to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, and it hurt. I thought of reaching out for the black swan. Maybe my motherly love would ease her pain, but I was frozen with fear.
Then my evil baby girl, the black swan, started singing. It wasn’t the same tune that Lady Shallot sang, or the one the swans were singing at the lake. It was a different tune. A sadder one, but it was also a tune I could only hear but never memorize.
Only this time, I saw the black swan falling to sleep while singing it. It — or she — was hypnotizing herself into sleep with that song. This was when I gathered my courage and walked toward her. By the time I reached her, I saw she wasn’t sleeping. She was dying — for the second time.
Then she spoke. “I will hurt you in ways you can never imagine.”
The song she was singing was a Swan Song, sung before saying goodbye to this world. She was singing the song of Atlantis, sung hundreds of years earlier by the mermaids of this island.
It was then when I turned and faced the moon above. Marmalade was a full moon that night. And for the first time, she looked sad. I got it now. She hated me too. She believed I was destined to be evil. And now that she knew about my daughter, she seemed to take revenge too.
“You’re on your own, Queen of Sorrow,” Marmalade finally spoke to me. “I will save all those I can from the dangers of the night, but not you. Never you. You and the darkness of the night will embrace forever.”
A black cloud ob
scured the moon, and I held the black swan in my arms, crying myself to death, for I didn’t understand what was going on.
“To hell with the rules of the universe,” I sobbed.
Was my daughter attending her own funeral, one that we hadn’t even attended or cherished? Was she reminding me in some cosmic way that I killed her; that I favored her sister? That however hard I tried, it was hard to know which one of them was actually the good swan and which one was evil?
Her body turned into ashes in my arms, and the wind blew her remains away toward the moon.
My pain was too hard to bear - I could hardly breathe. Not knowing was a greater punishment than knowing that you have done wrong. I had to live with my pain until many years later, when I understood what was really going on.
All I knew was that all the answers had to be connected. My other daughter, Night Von Sorrow, the witch, and the coffin in the Demeter ship were all links on the same chain, which supposedly led to one conclusion.
If I had only figured it out earlier.
Chapter 61
The Queen’s Diary
To summarize my day after the incident, just imagine the following in consecutive flashes: Me cuddling Shew, my adorable girl. Me feeling so lonely after that I only practiced witchcraft to kill time. Me screaming at the maids, going mad. Me waiting for Angel for days. Angel coming back exhausted. We don’t make love. He plays with Shew and smiles like he never smiled at me. Me feeling jealous of Shew. Me thinking I am going mad. Me loving Shew. Me almost hating her. Almost hating Angel. Almost hating my life. Me unable to sleep because of the nightmares. Me unable to even stay peacefully awake, because of a swan who kills herself at my window every night. Me haunted. Depressed. Me happy. Smiling at birds. Me feeling trapped in the snow outside. Me thinking of my childhood. Me reading books. Thousands of books. Me finding a lot of information in those books, but never comfort. Me cursing the day I met Angel. Me cursing the universe.
Me lost in the Kingdom of Sorrow, still having to pretend I am the strong Queen of Sorrow each day to help build the land.
And most important of all, me feeding a child each day, while most of the nights Angel returned only to suck a few drops from my pricked finger.
There were days when I wished he’d just turn into a full vampire and leave me alone. There were days when I didn’t mind him biting me and turning us both into vampires if that would have made us connect and get closer.
Until one day I realized that I wasn’t sacrificing myself for a greater cause. In reality I was just getting older and withering away.
There was this special day when I looked at a mirror some sailor had gifted us, all the way from Germany. Like I said, mirrors were still gold all around the world. They were rare and unlike those we use today, and they cost a fortune.
But it was upon discovering this mirror that I realized I was addicted to mirrors. Maybe because I had been cursed not to see my reflection when I was a young beautiful girl, fresh with a pure smile that hadn’t been stained by the terrible burden of aging and facing the realities of life. And maybe I was just addicted to mirrors. Period.
Who knows?
But it was that day when I realized I had aged quickly. It was if I had grown ten years older in a day. I touched my face with the tips of my fingers, wondering what had happened to my beautiful skin. It had been smooth and baby-like before, and now there were so many wrinkles, as if they were the writings of the story of my life on my skin.
What had happened to me? Was I ill?
Avoiding an inevitable panic attack, I used my Queen’s powers and ordered my servants to buy mirrors from across the globe.
“But we’re not allowed to breach our borders, my queen,” said Tabula Rasa, my dearest servant. And she was right. We were only allowed to accept ships solicited by Lady Shallot into the island.
“I see,” I said and left to meet with Charmwill Glimmer again.
I had to wait for days until he came with another ship of immigrants.
“What can I do for you this time, my Queen?” he said, with Pickwick on his shoulder.
“I want to import a few mirrors,” I said.
“You know you’re not supposed to leave the island or send any of your men outside to the world. It’s a breach of the deal, or Atlantis may be exposed.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I need the mirrors. Besides, I am the Queen of Sorrow. I should be able to import whatever I wish for.”
Charmwill resided to silence then asked, “May I ask why you need more mirrors?”
“I don’t like the one I have in the castle.”
“It’s one of the finest in the world, created by a German gentleman who is a master of his craft.”
“I don’t like it,” I fidgeted. “It’s foggy and I look much older in it.”
This was one of the rare times when Charmwill’s face dimmed. And he was firm, “I can’t allow that to happen, my Queen. Please go back to your castle. You have a noble mission on your hand. Raise your daughter, and please… stay away from mirrors.”
Little did I realize that day, that this was the beginning of the end.
Chapter 62
The Queen’s Diary
Of course, I didn’t give up.
I started studying mirrors and their history, foolishly, through the pirates of the Seven Seas, whom I was able to make a connection with through a few of the kingdom’s misfits; intruders who had fooled Lady Shallot into being victims and needing shelter. They weren’t as evil as the Sorrows, only hustlers and thieves who’d smuggled themselves inside the kingdoms borders.
Mirrors were made of copper or obsidian stones in those days. The reflective ones people use nowadays hadn’t been invented yet. I repeatedly sent my messengers — pirates — over to Europe to buy the latest mirrors invented by the most prestigious scientists.
I was partially aware of my paradox. I had started being interested in mirrors when the first mirror I looked in reflected my sudden aging. I was pretentiously arguing with my own looks that that particular mirror was wrong. I didn’t look that old. But in the back of my head, especially after I’d stared into tens of other mirrors in the following years, I knew all those mirrors weren’t wrong, but the arrogance — and fear — in me made believe there was just this one mirror out there that would not disappoint me and would reflect my beauty. There was this one mirror who’d stand by me and compensate me for all I’ve been through.
Of course, I had to hide all this from Angel, who, on the contrary, hated mirrors.
As the mirrors began to pile up in my secret chamber in the castle, I began to grow really ill and tired, complaining of continued fatigue and feeling as though my bones were breaking in my body. I fainted repeatedly and needed servants to take care of me as if I had become an elderly woman and not a young and beautiful queen.
And finally, Angel had to stop his war at the borders and return home when he heard about my situation. He sent for doctors from Europe — breaking the deal on his own terms — to investigate my sudden illness and hopefully heal me.
After trials and errors, the doctors proved to be useless. Even Lady Shallot hadn’t the slightest idea what was going on with me. Only the gypsies and fortunetellers could explain my dilemma.
And their explanation made me sink deep into the black hole that led to this very night I am writing this diary. The Night of Hollows Eve when Snow White had turned seven years old.
Chapter 63
The Queen’s Diary
The gypsies summoned Dame Gothel, who turned out to know a lot about me and Angel. I didn’t argue or ask, because I knew she’d been sent by Lady Shallot herself to be part of the island. She asked Angel to leave the room so she could talk freely. After some resistance, Angel cooperated.
“What is wrong with me?” I asked her.
“At first, I thought it was because of King Angel Von Sorrow feeding on you every night,” she said.
“How do you know that?” I almost jumped out of bed
, even when I was this tired.
“Let’s not get into specifics, but Lady Shallot has her own eyes into the kingdom. I am one of them, so shall we continue your examination?”
I couldn’t utter the yes, but nodded silently.
“The blood Angel takes from you is supposed to also strengthen you,” she began. “So that can’t be it.”
“Then what is it? Am I really aging?”
“Too fast, actually,” she said. “And it has to do with your daughter Snow White.”
“What about her?”
“Like other things mentioned in the prophecy, she who gives birth to the Dhampir, in other words the Chosen One, will have her vital energies sucked out of her.”
“Vital energies?”
“Life,” she was blunt about it. “In order for your daughter to complete her transformation, you will age faster and die before you even see her grow to be of sixteen years of age.”
Again, no words could be uttered on my part.
“The Chosen One will feed on her mother’s beauty and energy, until she grows up to become a woman of sixteen years,” Dame Gothel repeated to let it sink. “Only then will her powers blossom, and only then will she be capable of ending the vampires’ reign. And then the human mother will die, because only one of the two women can stay alive.’”
“The king knows about a lot of things,” she said vaguely. “But please, don’t let me be part of your struggles.”
“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.”
