by Cameron Jace
“And then what?” Loki gasped.
“And then my famous Snow White journey began,” Snow White said. “She sent me to the Black Forest to collect roses and play with the wolves without me knowing what was really going on, why she suddenly hated me, why she was jealous of me, or why she wanted me dead. She sent the Huntsman after me to kill me,” Snow White lifted her head and stared into Loki’s eyes. She was sobbing harder, and Loki saw the air rippling around them again, the way it happened when they were close to exposing their presence to Angel and Carmilla in the cottage. “He’s a vicious person, full of darkness in his heart, and she told him to stake me in the heart and bring it back to her, along with my liver as proof of my death.”
Loki was amazed that Axel’s theories were mostly right. But digging deeper into the mystery of all those fairy tale characters was the least of his concerns. The air around him was rippling harder with Snow White’s continued sobs. He wanted to hold her even closer to his chest to muffle her cries a little. But he didn’t. He decided it wouldn’t be right to deprive her of expressing herself. Sometimes tears, although painful, wash the pain away, and he wanted Snow White to let it all out, even if it meant manifesting their presence in the Dreamworld.
“That’s how they thought vampires—Dhampirs in my case—were killed at the time. Her plan was to rid the vampires, and herself, from the threat I was imposing as the chosen girl. She also wanted to use my blood to bathe in, and gain my powers for herself. She was blinded by lust for beauty and power,” Snow White continued. Then she cried out her last words, “My mother had become my own enemy.”
That was when Loki saw the Queen of Sorrow noticing their presence in the dream.
26
What Dreams May Come
Loki saw the air ripple like radioactive waves before his eyes. The Dreamhunter and the dreamer’s identity had been exposed in the Dreamworld.
In a flash, the servants tilted their heads toward Loki and Snow White. They seemed shocked for a moment…all but Carmilla.
She turned her head toward the intruders. She did it slowly as if she had all the time in the dream on her side. It was as if she’d been expecting them. A wicked smile curved on her fine lips as she looked at Loki holding Snow White tighter in his arms. It was as if he was protecting her from a hurricane that was about to huff and puff their lives away.
The Queen of Sorrow’s confidence was intimidating. Loki expected her to snarl at them with fangs and red eyes. Instead, she held her chin up high, brushed her hair back behind her shoulders, and looked down upon them like a lion watches its prey. Her face oozed with vitality, shining bright and deceivingly elegant as if there was no beast living behind her blue eyes.
A trickle of blood dripping from her lips exposed her disguise, and showed her wrath. Slowly, her tongue appeared from between her heart-shaped lips. It wasn’t a human tongue. It looked more like a snake’s tongue, forked and split at the tip. It was thin and it stretched long enough that the Queen managed to lick the trickle of blood from her chin. Drawing her tongue back, a smile curved itself on her face. She closed her eyes, swallowing the blood then opened them again. It was puzzling how she looked so beautiful and yet capable of doing something so gruesome. She wiped her lips with her fingertips, showing a pearl ring around her middle finger.
Loki was speechless, almost paralyzed, and unable to shake the Queen’s presence away. Carmilla was incomparable to all of the stories he had heard before. Her presence was powerful and unavoidable. Again, Loki experienced that strange feeling like he had when he was in the closet and felt the need to obey the Queen. It was a wicked feeling, as if she was able to control him in some way. It was if he had to obey her, and he needed all his strength to resist her deadly charms. No wonder they called her, ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed.’
“Don’t let her control you,” Snow White told Loki. “Avoid her eyes.”
Loki was still hypnotized. The short moment of confrontation felt like long days, struggling against his own shadow to free himself from her—or from the evil inside that inexplicably connected him to her.
“Look at me, Loki,” Snow White pleaded, caressing his face.
Slowly, Loki glanced back at Snow White. It wasn’t easy, though. Looking at Carmilla made him understand a little bit about the darkness inside him. He knew that whatever darkness he possessed, Carmilla knew about it and was trying to use it against him. How much did she know about his past?
The only thing that saved him from Carmilla’s effect was looking back into Snow White’s eyes. It brought him back to his senses.
It brought back…home…where he could choose who he wanted to be.
Freed from her trance, Loki looked back at the Queen, a little blurry now behind the steam. He held Snow White’s hand for assurance. He needed it while he thought about how to escape this dream. This or the Queen would devour them both like the young girls she’d killed before.
“The Fleece,” Loki remembered. He reached to tap it three times on his wrist, sending an emergency call to Axel and Fable. It was time they break the mirror with Lucy’s axe to save them from this horrible, never ending dream.
As he tapped his wrist, he carefully observed the Queen of Sorrow. To his surprise, he couldn’t feel the Fleece on his hand. Loki’s eyes widened and his heart pounded against his chest. Looking at his wrist, it was impossible to believe what he saw or didn’t see.
The Fleece was gone.
The Queen of Sorrow laughed in a high pitch that sent a chill through their spines. Loki knew she was laughing at him. He looked back at her and saw her wrapping his Fleece around the fingers of her right hand. She was biting into an apple with the left. He had no idea how he lost his Fleece, or how the Queen had possession of it. It didn’t matter. The Queen wasn’t going to give it back, and now he was trapped in this dream until the Waker’s sand passed through the hourglass in the waking world.
Loki’s instant reflex was to step forward to protect Snow White who stood behind him, as if he was ready to take a bullet for her.
“What are you doing?” Snow White snapped.
“I will try to distract her,” Loki said. “You should escape, and then wait until the dream is over and wake up in the real world. I’m sure Axel and Fable will pull you back to the castle safely.”
“And you?”
“I lost my Fleece, which means I’m trapped here. I can only wake up when the dream ends, or—“Loki shrugged, and didn’t know what to say. All that came to his mind was to flash his Alicorn at the silently observing Queen. Her silence and confidence were scarier than her wrath. It was as if she’d known they couldn’t escape so she was in no rush to finish them off.
Carmilla smirked at Loki’s heroic reaction. It was a belittling gesture, and Loki wished his Alicorn would finally provide some usefulness. He’d taken the long journey to Sorrow wanting to kill Snow White, only to realize that the Queen was the evil one behind all of this. All this talk about going back home didn’t matter now. He remembered when his mother had told him that he’d come to Sorrow to discover who he really was, and that there was a difference between who he was and where he came from. Right now, Loki was where he wanted to be; in love with a girl he came to kill, again. Snow White was his home.
Carmilla handed one of her servants the bitten apple, which had a small worm climbing out of it. She wiped her mouth with the tip of one of the dead girls’ dresses. Loki assumed she had that eerie power over him because of the Fleece. He wondered if owning a Dreamhunter’s Fleece was the same as owning his soul. Flashing his Alicorn, he wanted to step forward to fight like a man, but the Queen was faster.
Carmilla showed her snake tongue again, curling from between her lips toward them. Reciting an indecipherable incantation she rippled her tongue in the air, spraying some kind of invisible force at Loki. It wasn’t poison. Instead, Loki found himself elevated off the floor. She pushed him with her tongue without laying a hand on him, the same way Snow White had manhandled Big Bad
in the castle in the waking world.
Against his will, Loki flew in the air, his arms stretched sideways as if he were a man floating in space. Carmilla pushed her hand a little further and Loki flipped back in the air. He was prepared to hit the wall with his back and then land on his tailbone. Instead, he ended up plummeting downward, splashing back into the bathtub he’d came through when he first entered the dream, only the tub was full this time.
Loki made sure he still gripped his Alicorn as he slipped underneath the blood, milk, and chocolate. He doubted he’d make it out alive. He was dizzy from the Queen’s push and imagined he’d lose consciousness under water.
Is this the way it’s going to end? In a bathtub? That’s some fairy tale.
Lying on his back with eyes closed at the bottom of the tub, he wished there was something he could do to energize himself and go back to fight the Queen and save Snow White. He was fighting the urge to pass out.
No one’s supposed to die before they know who they are. He remembered Charmwill had told him once. This can’t be the end.
If only there was some magic he could use like in the fairy tales. Where were the Godmothers, the Godfathers, and Mother Goose when you needed them?
But Loki wasn’t used to believing in fairy tales—at least not before this dream, and he doubted such a person would appear right at this moment and save his life. His head was too weary to give ‘Ora Pedora’ one last try. How could he even speak underwater if he had the strength to?
Pick yourself up, Loki. You can do it.
His inner voice gave him a momentary burst of strength, and he tried to lift up his hand.
But he was too late. The tub grew arms, like an octopus, and wrapped them around his hand, pulling it back down. He tried to move his legs but the octopus’ arms chained them as well. The octopus seemed to only move when Loki resisted drowning.
Loki decided he wouldn’t move his free arm for now, or it would chain it, too.
What did my mother say about the Chanta? Didn’t she say that I should follow my bliss and then the whole world would conspire to help me? I need to use that Chanta right now. It has to be true. Why would she lie to me? Do I have the strength to feel it?
Loki thought he should be able to use the Chanta now. He knew his longing for Snow White, and the journey he’d taken, must have changed him in a better way. He wasn’t the Minikin-hating half-angel who whined about everything in his life anymore. A week ago, if he would have been this close to death, he might not have cared to live that much, because all the things he loved and longed for had been wiped from his memory. But now, he had friends; he had a girl he liked, and ironically, he had a new home. Even if it was called Sorrow, even it was in a town called Hell, he still wanted to live in it. Charmwill had told him that there were many towns called Hell in this world, but not one was called Heaven. Maybe all Loki had to do was decide to make this Hell town his own Heaven. Maybe Heaven wasn’t just a place; home wasn’t just a place; maybe it was us who make a place become Heaven or Hell. Home was where the heart was, where we bled, where we laughed, met those we love, where we built, and what we fought for. Home was the dry soil we kept nurturing unconditionally, the place we took care of, faithfully believing that one day the rain would fall and quench the earth’s thirst. Only then, the cracks in the earth would heal and green dreams would grow from the ground.
Loki wanted to survive this moment, more than ever. He wanted to enjoy his life with his friends, the girl he loved, and maybe devote his life to helping others when he could.
But maybe Loki was too late.
He was out of the breath, and out of answers.
If he had any chance left, it was his free hand that the octopus hadn’t wrapped its curvy arms around yet. How could he use this one last chance appropriately?
His only free hand was closest to the pocket where he kept Sesame, the fortune cookie. Was Sesame going to be able to tell him what to do now? He knew that it wasn’t necessary to vocalize the question he wanted to ask. He could simply use his mind and it would understand and answer him.
Loki pulled Sesame out slowly from his pocket, not to alert the octopus arms, and held it to his side.
All he had to do was ask it a question and crush it open with his hand. He’d always believed in Sesame, and now, it was his last hope.
Wait. Don’t do it. Remember when Charmwill said that one of the things you keep hanging onto is useless, that you will only be able to use the Chanta when you let it go?
Almost fainting, Loki remembered that he couldn’t figure out what that item was. But it seemed clear now. It was Sesame he had to get rid of. It was a useless fortune cookie. Whatever it told him was all lies—even when it hit the jack pot. He’d used it in the past and relied on it without questioning or thinking for himself. It was his lazy teenager way of letting someone else make his decisions for him, and that might have been his greatest mistake all along.
Loki crushed Sesame open this time, but without asking it questions or awaiting answers. He crushed it to get rid of it, not wanting to own it or use it again. He had no use for a fortune cookie in his life anymore. He’d become who he chose to be as long as he breathed. He was the sum of the choices he made. Everything that happened to him was part of his previous decisions, and even if it was sometimes hard to make his own decision, he was old enough to face it, and young enough to correct his mistakes.
I’m young enough to do it, and old enough to do it right.
Loki chose to fight the Queen to save the princess. Ironically, he’d never thought he’d say that because before this moment he’d always mocked fairy tales thinking they taught children silly things like dragons existed. But he’d missed the point. Fairy tales don’t teach us that dragons exist; they teach us that dragons can be killed. He’d never believed in fairy tales, but now he had to.
Once Sesame was crushed open, Loki experienced an unusual strength in his soul. It was like a burden on his shoulders had been lifted and he now felt lighter and freed from the chains of the unknown. He’d found his potion after all. His Chanta was his belief in himself, only himself, that he was the only one that could decide his future.
Amazingly, the octopus let go of Loki after he’d crushed Sesame. Loki rocked up to his feet, inhaling all the air his lungs permitted him. Dripping with blood, milk, and chocolate, he continued inhaling as he embraced the miracle of life like a long lost lover.
Letting the air fill his veins and adjusting to his surroundings, Loki saw he still had another problem.
Neither Carmilla nor Snow White was there, not even the Queen’s servants. Instead, Loki saw someone else through the bathhouse’s stream.
It was Charmwill Glimmer.
“Charmwill?” Loki wiped his wet face clean. “I didn’t know you could enter dreams.”
“I was once a Dreamhunter myself,” Charmwill said, dressed in his cloak and walking with his cane. “But that was a long time ago, before I devoted my life to protecting the Book of Beautiful Lies.”
“But how did you enter this Dreamory?” Loki said. “Are you lying next to me and Snow White in the Dream Temple now?”
“Not at all,” Charmwill chuckled, hiding all the secrets Loki wanted to know behind his smile. “Does it matter how I got here?”
“You’re right,” Loki said, stepping out of the bathtub. “Snow White matters.”
Charmwill nodded sneakily as if it was what he’d always wanted to hear Loki say.
“Where is she?” Loki said.
“Carmilla took her, and she has no intention of giving her back to you,” Charmwill explained.
“But the Dreamory might end any moment now,” Loki said. “I can’t wake up without her.”
“Is that what you want to do?” Charmwill asked, his eyes piercing through Loki.
“Of course, it’s what I want to do,” Loki said impatiently. He hated when Charmwill needed confirmation of his words. “I thought you were here to help me save her.”
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��You know I am always here for you, but I thought you were here to kill her so you could find your way back home,” Charmwill said.
“I don’t need this kind of talk right now. Time is tight Charmwill,” Loki pleaded. “It doesn’t matter if I go home now,” he hesitated for a moment then said, “I know it’s strange and I have no rational explanation for it, but Snow White is now my home.”
“Why didn’t you say that all along?” Charmwill smiled from ear to ear. “Let’s go save the princess like they do in fairy tales,” he waved his cane at Loki, too enthusiastic for a man his age. “Follow me.”
“Where are we going?”
“Carmilla has Snow White in her carriage, which is driven by magical wolves,” Charmwill said. “She wants to imprison Snow White in a tower. If you stop talking, we could save your princess.”
“Why imprison her in a tower if all she wants is to kill her?” Loki asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I really need you to stop talking now,” Charmwill said as he hurried through a side door out of the bathhouse and into the Black Forest. A set of horses were lined up in front of them, ready and able.
“I hope you know how to ride horses,” Charmwill said. Pickwick landed on his shoulder after he’d been playing outside.
“You never taught me that. I only know how to drive a car that plays music which doesn’t exist,” Loki said. “I suppose you don’t have any of those in the 19th century.”
“Of course, not,” Charmwill replied. “A princess has to be saved the old fashioned way, on a horse, in a forest or castle, right after you slay the dragon.”
“That’s so text book fairy tale,” Loki said. “I thought this world was all messed-up fairy tales.”
