by Cameron Jace
“What’s happening?” Loki asked. “How come they’re suddenly welcoming you?”
“They aren’t welcoming me, Loki,” Snow White said. “They’re afraid of me,” she didn’t seem happy about such an incredible power, though.
“Afraid of you?” Loki said. “But they were just chasing the calash wanting to kill you moments ago.”
“That was before I was born,” Snow White raised her head, and Loki worried she’d turn into a ruthless vampire again for a moment. “Now that I was born, my enemies feared me the most.”
“I don’t understand. Why? What powers do you possess? What makes Night Sorrow’s messengers so afraid of you?”
“I’m Snow White von Sorrow, Loki,” she said as the Wind of Change arrived and started repainting the forest back into the castle like magic brushes drawing the world. “Why do you think I was imprisoned in the Schloss for a hundred years? Why do you think that killing me is worth ninety-nine vampires? And why do you think the Town Council of Sorrow wants me dead, sending the best Dreamhunter to kill me? It’s time for you to know who I really am.”
24
The Pale Princess
“Didn’t it occur to you why Angel was so important to the vampire clan?” Snow White continued. “Didn’t you wonder why they bothered searching the whole world for him, hunting him down, wanting to breach into the Kingdom of Sorrow when all he wanted was to live peacefully away from them?”
Loki thought her questions were sound, but couldn’t imagine why.
“Because Angel married my mother, Carmilla, a human, descendant of the very first vampire hunters in the world, the Karnsteins, Sorrow’s oldest enemies, which meant that sooner or later he was going to have a child with her…” Snow White hesitated for a second.
“I understand that the Sorrows didn’t want a descendant from their enemy’s blood,” Loki said. “But that doesn’t explain why the panthers feared you.”
”You don’t get it, Loki,” Snow White said. “In the vampire world, there is a prophecy that a Sorrow vampire will marry a Karnstein human and have a child with her. That child will be a girl and she will be a Dhampir—“
“A Dhampir?” Loki said. “I always thought that Dhampirs were just myths falsely documented by the historians.”
“No, it’s not a myth, Loki,” Snow White said. “A Dhampir is the daughter of a vampire and human. A Dhampir is real and is absolutely prohibited in the vampire world, because the prophecy said that a Dhampir girl will have certain powers that no vampire wants to confront.”
“Powers like what?” Loki knew the answer already, but couldn’t say it out loud.
“The Dhampir girl will have the power to end the reign of all vampires in the world,” Snow White said. “I’m that girl, Loki,” she added, almost disappointed.
Loki took a moment to comprehend what she’d just said. It explained why everyone wanted her dead, but it was just too crazy and out of this world. How is a sixteen-year-old supposed to have the power to kill all vampires in the world?
“Dhampirs, if trained well, are much stronger than any vampire in the world. They’re sometimes compared to gods, and they have a natural desire for killing vampires. If I learn to control the powers I have in me, I will be able to cause the vampire’s apocalypse. That’s why the Sorrows wanted to kill me badly, waged wars against my father’s kingdom, and wanted to breach its borders.”
“So you’re the chosen one?” Loki said, and it wasn’t really a question. He just needed to speak the words loud enough to believe them. So many questions filled his head now. He could understand that the vampires wanted the princess dead because she threatened their existence, and that Igor and Lucy’s father probably worked for them, summoning him to Sorrow to kill her. But what didn’t make sense was why the Council of Heaven thought that killing Snow White equaled ninety nine vampires? Shouldn’t the Council of Heaven be on Snow White’s side, or was it that they still considered her a vampire, and nothing else mattered to them? The biggest question of all was if Charmwill knew any of the things Snow White had told him, and if so, why didn’t he tell him?
“So who imprisoned you in the Schloss? Was it Night Sorrow? Did he finally catch you?”
Snow White tried her best not to tremble. She looked away from Loki’s questioning eyes, through the window in her room, overlooking the wonderful meadows and rivers outside. “It wasn’t Night Sorrow who imprisoned me in the Schloss,” she said with her back to Loki.
“Then who?”
“Will you believe me if I tell you?”
“Of course, I will,” Loki stood up, wondering why she wouldn’t look at him. “What kind of question is that?”
“It was Carmilla,” she said, her voice was low as if she were embarrassed.
“What?” Loki stepped forward.
“Carmilla, my mother, trapped me in the Schloss,” Snow White said.
Loki tried to touch her shoulders, but she didn’t let him. She turned around, her eyes full of tears. “Why would she do that? I thought she was a great woman, mother, and lover. The sacrifices she made, her love for your father. She fought the world to bring you into it. How could your mother end up imprisoning you? I thought the one who wanted to hurt you was the Wicked Stepmother. Did Carmilla die, and did your father remarry, maybe?”
“No, my father didn’t remarry,” Snow White said.
“That’s unbelievable,” Loki said. “How could she trap you for all these years?”
“Well, in many ways, she wasn’t my mother anymore. It’s really hard to explain,” Snow White said. “Just for the record, the Grimm’s wrote the first version of my story in 1812, when I was sixteen. In this version, they mentioned the queen was my mother. This text is available to the world.”
“Really?” Loki wondered how Axel missed that part.
“They rewrote most of their tales again in 1857, and they changed her from being my mother to a Wicked Stepmother, claiming they did it to tone down the tale so it’d be suitable for children. They changed it to hide the truth.”
“What are you implying?”
“That the gruesome things she would do to me later would sound less horrifying if you think of her as my stepmother,” she buried her face in her hands then turned back to the window, then she used her powers to turn it into a portal seeing into her memories…
In consecutive flashes, Loki saw Angel and Carmilla cuddling their adorable infant, Snow White. When she smiled, wiggling her small feet in the air while on her back, the world of the Sorrows was filled with joy. Angel and Carmilla hugged each other; the servants sent their blessings, the trees outside the house danced and the branches tangled with mirth. Snowflakes decorated the days, and tiny purple-glowing faeries lit up the night. Most of all, Snow White kept wiggling her small feet.
Later, Carmilla went to look into the mirror, and saw that she had aged unexpectedly fast. It was if she’d grown ten years older in a day. She touched her face with the tips of her fingers, wondering what happened to her skin; it used to be smooth and baby-like, now there were many wrinkles and even her hands aged. Avoiding an inevitable panic attack, and out of wishful thinking, Carmilla tried another mirror, hoping it would show her otherwise.
“Mirrors were made of copper or obsidian stones in those days,” Snow White began. “The reflective and silvered ones people use nowadays weren’t invented yet. Still, no matter how many mirrors she tried my mother had aged all of a sudden. After she’d bravely given birth to me; her years turned into sand falling unapologetically through the hourglass of time. I don’t know how, but no matter how many mirrors reflected her sudden decay, she couldn’t believe it was true and thought it was some kind of a curse bestowed on her. In her denial, Carmilla became addicted to mirrors, sending her messengers over to Europe to buy the latest mirrors invented by the most prestigious scientists. It was an odd thing to do, but it was as if she thought that all these mirrors were wrong, and that there was this one mirror that would show her real beauty. On
the other hand, my father hated mirrors, because sometimes they reflected his darker soul when he hadn’t fed enough. But he didn’t stop Carmilla from buying the most expensive mirrors in the world, even if he knew they weren’t going to change a thing about her unexplainable aging,” Snow White spoke fast while the images flashed in the window. “My mother started to grow ill and tired, complaining of continued fatigue and feeling as though her bones were breaking in her body. She fainted repeatedly, became dehydrated frequently, and needed more servants to take of her as if she were elderly and not a young and beautiful queen.”
Loki saw images of Angel taking care of Carmilla. He sent for doctors from Europe to investigate her illness and hopefully heal her. After trials and errors, the doctors proved to be useless. Only gypsies and fortunetellers could explain Carmilla’s dilemma.
“It turned out that giving birth to a Dhampir had sucked the energy and vitality from my mother,” Snow White said. “As the chosen one, I was unconsciously feeding on her soul so I could grow up and become a woman. The situation had been predicted in the prophecy, too. It said:
‘The chosen one will feed on her mother’s beauty and energy until she grows up to become a woman of sixteen years. Only then will her powers blossom, and only then will she be capable of ending the vampire’s reign. And then the human mother will die, because only one of the two women can stay alive.’”
“Didn’t Angel know about any of this?” Loki commented.
“No, because no Dhampir had been born before me, and like you were led to believe, people thought Dhampirs were just a myth,” Snow White said. “Angel was torn between wife and daughter, and he was eventually going to face an even greater crises; Carmilla couldn’t offer him his dosage of three drops of human blood from her pricked fingers anymore. She grew so weak that it was impossible for her to give away her blood.”
“What did he do then?” Loki said.
“There was nothing like Carmilla’s blood that could quench his thirst so he spent much time hunting outside the kingdom for animals like before,” Snow White said. “He was becoming a blood addict. He started losing his mental sharpness and was stripped of the humanity his soul once bore. He was mostly a vampire after all, and he had to face his true nature. He couldn’t feed on his servants or his huntsmen, let alone the locals of his kingdom because he couldn’t trust anyone with his secret. How could he explain to his own people that he was a descendant of his own enemy?”
Loki saw flashes of the events before his eyes. He saw Snow White, the child, walking now. The servants, who seemed to be taking care of her instead of her parents, brought Snow White to see Carmilla from time to time. Carmilla looked older, sick in bed, isolated in her Queen’s chamber. Her face turned into sheer delight when she saw her daughter, though. They spent little time together due to the physical pain Carmilla was suffering, sacrificing herself for the growth of her daughter.
Then the window shifted to Angel, uncombed, unshaven, looking like half the man he once was. He was sitting in a cave in front of a fire with gypsies and wizards all around, trying to find a cure for his wife—and for himself. He found none. He was holding a crumpled letter in his hand, which he unfolded and read over and over again. It was from his father, Night Sorrow, advising him to let go and complete his transformation into becoming a vampire and turn his wife as well, surrendering to his destiny.
‘Once Sorrow, always Sorrow,’ his father had written.
Night allured him with becoming the King of Vampires if only he got rid of his daughter. Lastly, Night mentioned that the spells Carmilla had cast on his kingdom preventing vampires from entering were soon to be broken. Angel wadded up the letter and threw it into the dancing arms of the hungry fire.
The window showed Carmilla again, barely standing in front of a large mirror in her room. She let out a cry when she saw her ill image again, and threw a silver candlestick at it, crashing it into pieces.
“When Carmilla understood that no mirror was going to lie to her and reflect a beautiful Queen, she refrained from looking into mirrors anymore. It deepened her sorrow and weakened her faith in me. Seeing what was happening to her, made her have some disdain for me, and she couldn’t stand feeling that way, so she ordered the mirrors to be taken away from the castle.”
“Is that why your room here is full of mirrors?” Loki asked.
“They sent all the mirrors to my room because I asked for them. It seems that I liked mirrors,” Snow White said. “My father refused to have mirrors anywhere else in the castle. Even then, we managed to get by,” Snow White said. “Carmilla showered me with presents and I cherished the little time we spent together, not knowing the real reason for her illness. Angel was always looking for a cure, until a doctor informed my mother of the horrible fact; that she was going to die within months. Her body had suffered enough—and mine was growing fast. She was going to give in to the pain and aging eventually. Still, there was one last hope that Angel hadn’t considered yet.”
“To turn her into a vampire,” Loki easily predicted.
Snow White nodded. “She asked Angel to turn her into a vampire, but he refused to make her into what he had resisted to become all of his life.”
“I imagine he had no choice,” Loki said.
“Exactly,” Snow White let out a long sigh. “If Carmilla died, who was going to take care of me while he was away looking for a cure or fighting the vampires? The thought of Carmilla never getting better tortured him. He blamed himself for dragging her into his cursed life and couldn’t stand the thought of being unable to feed on her blood drops again,” Snow White looked at me for a second then shied away. “Eventually, he turned her into a vampire,” she said in a voice I could barely hear. “Although his transformation wasn’t complete, he learned from Night Sorrow that he had the power to turn her into a half-vampire like him.”
“Since you didn’t project an image for this, I take it you don’t want me to watch it happening,” Loki noted.
“Not you,” she said. “I couldn’t bring myself to see it.”
“I understand,” Loki said. “So how did it go, your dad saving your mom’s life?”
“A vampire does not have their lives saved, but cursed. Trust me,” Snow White said. Loki could see her chest rise and fall like an unsure tide searching for a shore to crash on. “Carmilla woke up the next morning alive and beautiful as ever. I heard stories about how her beauty was intimidating to other women in the castle, shining a darker light onto their average looks.”
“And you?”
“I was no problem anymore. The life energy I sucked unconsciously out of her, she could compensate for with her new strength. I remember her becoming so acute and sharp, seeing things far away, hearing inaudible conversations and predicting the weather, and even running as fast as Angel. My father taught her how to control her cravings, and feed on sparrows, bats, and animals.”
“So she was able to stay a half-vampire like Angel as long as she didn’t feed on human blood,” Loki said.
“But like always, there was a catch,” Snow White said. “It turned out that no mirror reflected my mother’s new beauty. Instead, all mirrors only reflected a beast, which was probably what she was changing into on the inside.”
“But that wasn’t the case with Angel. Why was she different?”
“The Karnsteins were no ordinary vampire hunters. They were descendants of a holy bloodline, and thus, the curse of seeing a beast in the mirror when she looked into it was a righteous punishment.”
“Your family is doomed, princess,” Loki commented.
“Still, we managed to survive. Carmilla avoided mirrors again, fed secretly with Angel while raising me, and kept the secrets from the rest of the kingdom,” Snow White said. “Things were kind of acceptable until the day we received that package,” Snow White said.
“What package?”
“One day, in my father’s absence, we received a package from Europe,” Snow White said. “It was from a Justus
von Lieblig, a German scientist who’d been gifting my mother with the finest mirrors the whole time she was collecting them, before she banned them. This time, Justus sent us his latest invention; a silvered mirror like the ones we use today. The servant accepted the gift and sent the mirror directly to my room, of course. I have to say that I was fascinated it by it. I had never seen my reflection so clear in my life.”
“Seems like just a regular mirror to me,” Loki said.
“I wish it was, but that’s not true. In my boredom, and loneliness, I started talking to the mirrors in my room. In the beginning, I was only talking to my own reflection, killing time, and substituting them for dolls and playmates. I wasn’t allowed to go to school anymore—of course, I wasn’t told how dangerous I was yet. The girl in the mirror was just some lonely girl imitating my moves and combing her hair at the same time I did mine, saying the same words I said. Then one day, the mirror started talking to me, and it wasn’t my voice or hallucinations. There was another girl in the mirror,” she said. “I couldn’t see her, but could hear her. She sounded a little older than me, and she told me that she was trapped inside. To my surprise, she didn’t like talking to me. She said that she was capable of healing my mother and making her reflection look beautiful, and she kept asking to meet her over and over again.”
“Did you tell your mom about her?”
“Only once; she became angry with me, and threatened she’d break all the mirrors in my room if I mentioned it again. I explained to her that I was feeling lonely and needed someone to play and talk with, especially after I had been grounded when I bit the prince. Remember him?”
“Ouch,” Loki pursed his lips, trying not to laugh. “I forgot you had an irresistible taste for hot, good looking young princes. Yummy, yummy.”
Suddenly, the door burst open, and the Snow White Queen, Carmilla, walked in.
Loki sprang up, standing with his back plastered to the wall. Snow White laughed. “Be cool,” she said. “It’s just a new scene that you have to observe.”
