Instead, she watched Cerené happily play in the reservoir, remembering how they had gotten here after Candy House had melted.

Cerené had shown Shew the way to Rainbow’s End. They had walked in silence for about an hour. Cerené had gotten her single glass slipper and now walked normally. Baba Yaga had escaped, and Shew dared not ask about what had happened while she was knocked out. Splash had told her to look for the Phoenix, and here she was, walking side by side with her. Hell, the Phoenix was Shew’s best friend.

They had passed by the small village of Furry Tell,  but Cerené demanded they shouldn’t stop there.

A match made in Hell—I mean Heaven—I must say.

“What are you doing, Joy,” Cerené said, standing in the middle of the reservoir blowing her pipe and mixing the molten with the Rainbow’s colors.

“I’m coming,” Shew said, waking up from the recent memory. She walked over and stepped into the lake of light. It felt ticklish at first,  like she was standing in a mist.

Rainbow’s End was actually a rainbow’s end. Shew didn’t know where the other rainbow’s end was, but she was sure they had one end of the rainbow in Sorrow. If that didn’t say enough about their kingdom, then she didn’t know what would.

For a moment, Shew pitied her own mother, Bloody Mary, and Night Sorrow. Whoever had surrendered to the hate and darkness in their souls could not have laid eyes on Rainbow’s End. How could succumb to darkness  once you saw this place. She looked up at the arching rainbow curving away in the sky beyond the midnight trees. The rainbow was visible in the dark.

Cerené had melted her mix with the fire that had been burning Candy House and continued blowing it all the way to Rainbow’s End. It broke Shew’s heart that her friend was closer to death with each breath she blew, but there was no reasoning against the happiness in Cerené’s eyes, even when it meant being one step closer to death.

Cerené breathed to keep the fire alive so she could mix it with the rainbow from the lake. It was the only way to color her magic glass art. She said that ordinary glassblowers in the world used quartz and other natural colored stones—Shew knew nothing of these stones. But Cerené explained that she was no ordinary glassblower. She was a Keeper of the Art.

Now, all the huge glass flowers she created were colored like butterfly wings. She’d breathed a glass castle for them, which they spent some time inside, but it didn’t last long after the fire died. Cerené had even blown a small rocking boat, which floated upon the Lake of Light—Shew didn’t question how—but that fire died too. When all her molten fires ended, Cerené wasn’t going to go back to get fire from the furnace in Candy House, not today.

If only Cerené could create fire, her powers would have been complete, and would have created her own wonderland to live in.

“Do you have any idea why you have been given that talent?” Shew asked while they sat on top of a hill next to the Rainbow’s End. Cerené had played all she wanted and was exhausted. Where they sat, the rainbow was an arm’s length away.

“It’s magic, not talent,” Cerené said. “But I don’t know why. Must there be a reason for magic? Its fun, and I love it.”

“Were you cursed when you born or something?” Shew said playfully. “I know I was cursed.”

“You were?” Cerené wondered.

“It’s a long story. I’d rather have to make my own choices than walk in the footsteps of a destiny I was made to fulfill.”

“So you’re not just a lunatic vampire like your mother?”

Shew laughed, “No, there is actually a logical reason for my existence.”

“I wish I knew of the reason of my existence,” Cerené said absently. “But I don’t care. I am having fun,” she snapped.

“You think we’re good friends, Cerené?” Shew said with caution.

“Friends forever,” Cerené giggled.

“So could I ask you something without you being upset?” Shew said.

“Something like what?” Cerené was as reluctant as Shew.

They locked eyes for a while, the moment freezing and time stopping. Shew thought it was finally the right time she’d ask Cerené for some clarifications without her getting upset. She inhaled deeply, and tried to ask Cerené as gently as possible.

“Like where you’re from for instance? I promise I will listen without judgment. I’m not going to question your answers like I did in the Field of Dreams.”

“I was born on Murano Island,” Cerené said casually. She’d been feeling much better since she’d arrived at Rainbow’s End. She felt safe here, the place where her art took its optimum form.

“Murano? Never heard of it. Where is it?”

“Near Venice,” Cerené said without elaborating.

“That’s where?” Shew knew it was in Italy—another thing she’d learned from one of her victim’s phones in the castle. She still wanted to hear it from Cerené.

“Italia,” Cerené’s eyes widened. “It’s practically an island,” she lowered her head to whisper something to Shew. “It’s shaped like a shoe,” she made an invisible shoe with her fingers.

“Oh, really?” Shew said, trying to solve some of the puzzle, and figure out what Carmilla had to do with this.

“They say a prince lost a poor girl he loved, but found her through the glass slipper she left behind,” the story seemed to mean the world to Cerené. “The gods honored their love by shaping Italia after a shoe.”

“That’s a fabulous story,” Shew pretended she hadn’t heard it before. “Any idea who the prince or the girl is?”

“It’s a fairy tale, Shew. Be reasonable,” Cerené said. “Sometimes you strike me as naïve.”

“So you speak Italian?” Shew changed the subject.

Embarrassed, Cerené shook her head no, “I don’t know how.”

“You’re an immigrant, right?”

“You make it sound like an insult,” Cerené’s eyebrows narrowed.

“Not at all,” Shew said. “I think everyone in Sorrow is an immigrant, except my father and mother. How did you come to Sorrow then, and with whom?”

“I really don’t remember. I must have been very young. I have some memories of the ship I came on though.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I remember hiding underneath fish on a smaller boat for days so they wouldn’t find me,” Cerené said. “I must have had someone with me, but I don’t know who, because I was very young.”

“You remember why you were hiding?”

“I am probably an illegal immigrant,” Cerené’s lips twitched, just slightly. “I do remember the ship’s name for some reason though.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Jolly Roger, that’s its name. There was a man with a hook instead of a hand on it, but that’s all.”

“That’s a rather a detailed memory for someone who doesn’t remember much,” Shew remarked.

“Like I said, I must have been very young. You know when we first met, I’d been here for a year or so,” Cerené said.

Shew tried not to look surprised, but everything around her seemed connected. How was it that Cerené had traveled on the Jolly Roger, and why didn’t she have any other memories of her journey?

Jolly Roger was the name of the ship Shew and Loki embarked on in the Jawigi Dreamory. It was the pirate ship that attached Angel and Carmilla’s ship in the middle of the ocean when they were escaping Night Sorrow.

Shew didn’t comment on the Jolly Roger. She preferred to hear Cerené’s story.

“Once I arrived in Sorrow, I was sold as a slave to…” Cerené lowered her eyes, and looked like she didn’t want to say. “Some family you know.”

“Does your family live in the forest?”

“It’s not my family,” Cerené gritted her teeth, looking at Shew. “I have to live with them or I won’t be allowed to stay in Sorrow as an immigrant. They threaten to expose me as being an illegal immigrant if I don’t do as they say. You know what’s ironic about this? Not that I am afraid they’d deport me, but that I don’t know where to go if they do.”

“Wouldn’t you want to go back to Murano Island?”