by Cameron Jace
At the shores of Italy, I had to book a ferryman to cross the waters to the island of Murano. Penniless and exhausted, I didn't have a clue how to achieve that. It occurred to me to tell one of the ferrymen that I was of a noble descent, that I was the main reason for the Blood Apple he was biting. But that would have only led to my capture, as I glimpsed a few of my father's soldiers around the shore—I didn't know how to identify a vampire then, so if they were around, I didn't notice them.
Watching the sun sinking low, I considered sneaking into one of the boats, disguised as one of the many veiled Italian women crossing over. It had been Angel's idea to wear a veil since we escaped so I'd go on unrecognized. But I couldn't do it. Not because of my cowardice or inexperience, but because of my fear of water.
I wasn't going to try and see my reflection in the waters anyway. My family, in spite of our differences, still meant a lot to me. It was also too dark at the shore after the sun had died in the nighttime waters. But the shaky and small boat didn't offer much safety, and my unreasonable fear of the unknown—the water—knew no salvation.
I ended up standing helpless at the shores, watching everyone merrily crossing over to Murano as if they were taking their boats over the River Styx, but crossing over to heaven.
"I could help you for a price," I heard someone say.
When I turned around, I saw a thin and scruffy man in a purple suit. He looked more clownish than elegant, although the French nobleman's outfit suggested he was wealthy.
"How much can you pay to cross over to the bay?" His hands hung in the air theatrically, as if he were a ringmaster trying to entice me into a circus.
"I don't have any money." I didn't fear him. He was neither a Karnstein nor a Sorrow. Frankly, he didn't look like he belonged here.
"Who said the price is always money?" He smirked.
I pulled my veil tighter around me and took a step back.
"No." He flashed his hands again. "You misunderstood me, my friend."
"How can you help me, then?" I was desperate.
"I have a boat." He pointed at one at the shore. "And I only take one passenger with me. For a price, like I said."
"If you say I misunderstood you, then what price would you have me pay?"
"Nah." He waved his hand. "Nothing really special." He cocked his head. "I'm a nice guy—well, not everyone thinks that, but that's how I think of myself. I help people, actually." He glanced at the sky momentarily, and then his cheeks twitched. "Let me rephrase that: I help desperate people."
"What would you have me pay?" I insisted, thinking to get away from him.
"Your soul." He smiled. He wanted it to be a sincere smile, but it came out really awkward. Not weird, but as if he wasn't really good at what he did. "Would you mind selling me your soul?" He seemed desperate now. I almost laughed.
"Are you who I think you are?" I squinted in the dark.
"I have a lot of silly names," he said. "But I'm only trying to help."
"Help?" I chuckled. "You do dress silly, I must say. You're nothing like I pictured you."
"Really?" He was disappointed. "I was told this was the latest fashion in Europe."
"I'm really disappointed in you," I said. "I mean, you're so feared all over the world. How did you manage to make people fear you like that?"
"I paid a few people, generously, at the beginning of time," he said. "You seed an idea in people's heads for centuries, and you got yourself a place in history. Could you please not tell anyone?"
I didn't know what to say or feel. In my darkest moment, I got my release, laugh, and joy from a reluctant devil. How ironic was that?
"I could not tell anyone." I smirked. "For a price."
"Huh," he sighed. "That was good. Care to work for me?" he joked. "All right. All right." He waved his hands again and summoned the ferryman on his boat. "Skeliman! Would you please cross this woman over to Murano?"
"For free?" Skeliman sounded like an old, grumpy man. I couldn't see his face, as he was hiding behind the shades of night.
"It's a favor," the devil said. "Please?"
"Skeliman the Ferryman does no favors."
"All right." The devil walked funnily toward him, annoyed by the muddy ground on his new boots. "I will pay you myself. A golden egg. How about that?"
Skeliman agreed under one condition: that I didn't try to see his face. I said yes, as long as I sat in the middle of the boat so I was the farthest I could be from the water.
As I got to the boat, I turned to ask the devil a question I couldn't resist. "So selling one's soul to the devil is just a lie?"
"Of course not," Skeliman answered on behalf of the fashionably dressed devil. "A lot of people sell their souls to the devil. You should have sold your soul to him now, if you don't mind me saying. Better than selling it to…"
"Sell it to whom?" I asked.
"You don't want to know," the devil interrupted.
"There is someone else people sell their souls to?" I was curious.
The devil nodded silently, his hands behind his back. He seemed worried.
"You don't want to talk about H—" The Skeliman meant that mysterious someone, but choked on the last word. Was he going to tell me his name? "Only the sorrowful and unlucky have to sell their soul to Him. Let's call him 'Him' for now. I worry if I say his real name, actually."
"Why? Who is Him?" I asked.
"Darling." The devil approached and slightly pushed me into the boat. "It's better not to talk about Him. If you're ever miserable enough to sell your soul to him, then God help you." He stopped to consider what he'd just said with a grin on his face. "You see all those miserable people in the world around you? Most of them have sold their souls to Him." He gazed up at the skies. I thought it was hilarious. "Now have a safe trip to Murano." He waved farewell to me as Skeliman rowed away. "The land of mirrors." He spread his hands and nodded at me. "It was nice doing business with you." He shrugged. "I guess."
My heart sank as I gazed at the darkened horizons. I didn't know what was worse: the dark or the shiny mirrors awaiting me in Murano.
23
Murano Island was a flare of colorful two-story buildings. It had to be one of the most enchanted places on earth. The ground was painted with all kinds of colors, specifically orange and green, and so were the buildings. In some neighborhoods the island looked like a flaming eruption, balanced beautifully with the sky's eternal blue.
It turned out that Murano was where glass was invented. In fact, the art of glassblowing had been a centuries-long secret, only concealed behind the hands of Murano's talented artists, all before those artists were wrongfully exiled from the island due to the catastrophes they had caused with the fire they used for their art. Glass only came from fire and sand.
Everywhere in Murano people blew glass into vases, artifacts, cups, and all kinds of souvenirs. It startled me how the beauty of transparent silver glass was born from the pits of the deepest and hottest fires, something I hadn't known or seen in Styria. It seemed like a beautiful paradox, how the world could give birth to good from evil and the other way around.
Sadly, my fascination was short-lived.
Everywhere I went mirrors shimmered in the sun, reflecting upon me. I wanted to shrink into myself and disappear. In the beginning, I thought I could just avoid the few places where they made those new and shiny silver mirrors, which hadn't been anywhere else in the word then, but I was wrong. There was no place to hide from the mirrors, and I couldn't take it.
I fought my way to Amalie Hassenpflug's house, hiding behind my veil, and realizing that I had begun to fear mirrors. It wasn't just a precaution or submission to what I had been raised to get used to. What started as a taboo had turned into fear. It seemed like the possibility of ever looking in a mirror was done for me.
I knocked on Amalie's door, and told her what Angel told me to say—that I was the love of his life, purgatory, and after.
Amalie was welcoming and very helpful. She explained
to me how she was a vampire slave, half turned only to serve the vampires in Lohr as a blood vessel to feed on whenever they wanted to drink—she still suffered from the aftereffects, but didn't want to share them.
Amalie had been forced by Night Von Sorrow to pretend she was Angel's mother when his father had sneaked him among humans in Lohr to study them and locate the Karnsteins. Angel loved her dearly, for she understood his love for humans and his wish to emerge from the depths of hell to become a good man. I spent all day listening to her, but then it was time for her to face me with the dark truth about my love for Angel.
"Can I ask you how much you love Angel?" she said. "I don't want some poetic answer filled with descriptions and metaphors. I want a realization, deep down in your heart"—she pointed at hers—"that it is an inevitable truth, that you love Angel Von Sorrow."
"You mean like 'until death do us apart'?" I asked, already blushing, because the buzzing in my heart had never been logical or explainable.
"Not even death," she said. "It can't tear you apart."
I said nothing, only stared at her.
"You know he might be immortal, don't you?"
"He had talked about it, but he isn't sure," I said. "Because he is still a half-vampire. Only vampires are immortal. If he could ever find a cure to become all human, he certainly won't be immortal anymore."
"You're right, Angel might not be immortal yet," Amalie said. "The thing that he doesn't know yet is that True Love, if that is possible, grants his kind immortality, even if he is still a half-vampire."
I was supposed to shriek, but no sound came from my chest. Maybe I'd taken the impact of the information inside me. The idea of the one I loved living forever left me undone. I didn't know whether it was good or bad. After all, I wasn't an immortal, and didn't know if I wanted him to spend his eternal life without me. I was curious about one thing, though. "True Love?" I cocked my head. "How do we know it's True Love, Amalie? What does True Love even mean?"
Amalie sipped her tea and shook her shoulders. "Who knows what True Love really is? They call it Adage in our world of Sorrow. A simple word of infinite unconditional love, not just for a love interest but for a child or a god."
"Adage." I couldn't stop myself from repeating the world whenever I heard or thought about it. "Then why are you asking me about my love for Angel? I don't suppose it's the immortality issue by itself."
"Of course not," she said. "The situation both of you are in is like this: you're hunted by two families, whether good or bad, it doesn't matter, because evil is only a point of view." She held my hands. "If you both insist on being together, there is no place on earth you can escape to. If not from the Karnsteins, then never from Night Von Sorrow. Wherever you go, he will eventually find both of you."
"Are you suggesting I leave Angel?"
"No," she said. "Hold back your young and impulsive heart for a moment. Give reason a try, and listen to me."
I nodded, feeling the warmth and kindness of her hands.
"If you both are up to what it takes when it comes to love, there is one escape from Night Von Sorrow," she explained. "It's not quite in our realm."
"I don't understand."
Amalie sighed, and I worried. "The only place to escape the vampire king is in 'other worlds'—some like to call it 'Fairyworld,' but I don't know why. They are partially intertwined with ours but separate. Magical worlds, unlike anything we have ever seen, beyond a vampire's sight and reach."
"I don't mind at all, as long as I am with Angel," I said, not quite comprehending. But as long as a solution was available, I was into it.
"Good." She pulled back her hands and took a deep breath. "I'm only offering you this because you can't live in Murano, the only place where vampires are afraid to venture. Because of the glasswork we produce, they have to stay away, as fully turned vampires will burn if exposed to their reflection in mirrors long enough. Murano should have been a great escape for you, but considering your curse, you can't live here either. Also, we don't know where Angel stands with mirrors now. Some days he can't stare at them, and some he can, so it makes us wonder what his situation will be in the future."
"Not being able to stare at mirrors, it's as if I'm a vampire myself," I murmured, wondering why I shared such a trait with them. Why had the nameless witch ever done this to me?
Amalie looked at me and said nothing. The notion of me sharing a serious trait with vampires bothered her a little. But she knew, like me, that I wasn't a vampire. Or did she?
"Come with me." She took my hand again and stood up.
"Where to?" I asked.
"I want you to meet a girl who can help you and Angel escape to another realm where you can create your own kingdom and hopefully live happily ever after."
"Happily ever after," I murmured. I liked the sound of it. No fairy tales had been told then, so it was an expression I had never heard before. "Who is this girl?"
"A very special one." Amalie sighed again. "She is about fourteen, and a bit different to all of us. In fact, you would never think she is special when you see her. I think the Creator of All Creators wanted her like that. We know very little of her. It's rumored that she is immortal, in her own way, as she can always rise up from the ashes again if she dies, but don't ever ask her or confront her about it." Amalie stopped and raised a finger.
"Who is she?" I was curious now about the girl.
"A glassblower, one of the best of those who have mastered what we call the Art," Amalie said. "Her name is Cinder."
24
Cinder was an ashen girl, dressed in tattered cloth, and her skin was not only covered in cinder but glazed with it, as if she had never washed. She paced briefly before me and then sat in front of a clay pot near an oven, flaring with so much heat I had to back away a little. I noticed she limped when she walked, but I was told not to ask much. Cinder sat with her blowpipe next to the oven, uninterested in our presence. Amalie had told me Cinder resembled a Phoenix on the way to her small cottage at the shores of Murano. Her curling hair atop and behind her head made her look like one. Fiery, unmistakable hair, hardly affected by the cinder, although it had been exposed to it many times.
"Please sit down as I finish my Art," she said, and continued blowing the blowpipe into the fire. Amalie had told me they suspected Cinder had lived a thousand lives, always ended by some fire known and documented by historians. There was no evidence of it, though, and they doubted Cinder herself knew it. All Amalie was sure of was that Cinder's mother had given birth to her in the thirteenth century, a few weeks after she had escaped the Piper of Hamlin. To my surprise, Cinder's mother was one of the Lost Seven who had escaped, like my father had once told me. Still, I couldn't find my place in this centuries-long story—although I know all about it now.
"Carmilla needs an escape, a new life, with her lover Angel," Amalie told Cinder. "I know you know the way to other realms."
Amalie had told me Cinder only knew this because of her many lives and travels through them. She had even told stories about the sixteenth-century burning of London, although she never knew how she knew. All she said was that her mother had told her—a mother by the name of Bianca, one of the first glassblowers escaping to Murano, who had died centuries ago. Strangely, Cinder seemed to think her mother had only died recently.
"The ways to other worlds aren't through land," Cinder said. "You have to cross the Seven Seas."
"The Seven Seas lead to other realms?" I asked.
"They lead to Lady Shallot in the Tower of Tales." She coughed. "I can guide you on how to escape to the Seven Seas, but it will still be your responsibility to find the Tower of Tales."
"What is the Tower of Tales?" Amalie asked.
"Where every tale ever told is documented, and where every new tale is written." Cinder seemed annoyed by our ignorance.
"Tales as in fantasy?" I said.
"Tales as in story," Cinder answered. "Each life we live, each one of us is a story. If we consider other's st
ories fantasies, then who says our own isn't a fantasy too?"
Cinder seemed to talk in riddles while remaining totally uninterested in them. She also didn't look like one who should say these things. Frankly, I didn't understand most of what she said, so I focused on what I needed to know. "Can vampires reach the Tower of Tales?"
"I have no idea," she said. "But once you reach it, Lady Shallot should sew you a new realm from her ball of thread that weaves the worlds, and you can always ask her not to let certain evils pass through."
"Thread?" I asked reluctantly.
"Lady Shallot lives in a room atop the Tower of Tales," Cinder said. "She's lived there alone for centuries. Her only job is to create new worlds from the magic of the thread she weaves."
Amalie nodded, although I wanted to inquire more. "That sounds convenient," she said. "All Carmilla and her lover need is to cross the Seven Seas and find the Tower of Tales and then ask for a new kingdom to start a new life?"
"Finding the tower isn't an easy task, as it changes its coordinates at sea all the time to stay away from the Dark of the World," Cinder explained. "If you don't find it, you will be lost in the Seven Seas, and maybe exposed to H—" Cinder shrugged and put her blowpipe down for the first time.
"Him?" I asked, remembering my conversation with the devil.
"Whatever his name is, he lurks around the Seven Seas." Cinder glared at me, obviously curious about how I knew about Him. But she dared not ask. "He will push you so hard if you're lost at sea."
"Push you for what?" Amalie skipped asking who "Him" was, since it was apparent Cinder didn't want to talk about the subject.
"To sell him your soul." Cinder's eyes reddened briefly, a shade of warning orange. "But God help you not to cross his path."
"I understand," Amalie said, as she nudged me not to ask more. But how was I supposed to cross seas with Angel, not knowing what kind of evil lurked in them? "So how does Carmilla get to cross the Seven Seas?" Amalie asked.
"In your situation, no ship will take you." Cinder finally looked at me. "They're afraid of the vampires and their king. I have also heard about you and your lover," she said. "Don't go on thinking that the world isn't after you. I heard innocent people were promised a reward of seven years of free salt for catching you both."
