“So why do they call you a Slave Maiden?” Shew asked.
“Because I am one,” Cerené said, unashamed. “I’m an orphan. I work for a family with a stepmother and two stepdaughters for a place to stay. I also work as a maid in the Schloss whenever they send for me, and I clean the School of Sorrow in exchange for bread.”
“What you just said only explains you’re a poor girl, not a slave,” Shew said.
“Girls like me are disposable. We are sent to do jobs that might kill us because we have no family to care when we die. They don’t even bury us properly in a graveyard,” Cerené said casually. “Some of us are used as bait for vampires on the borders. They send us to lure out vampires so your father’s army can kill them. They don’t care about us.”
“My father does that?”
“I like the King of Sorrow a lot more than the Queen but I heard he is heartless when it comes to war,” Cerené said, feeling she was allowed to speak her mind in front of an understanding princess. Shew knew nobody had ever granted her such a privilege before.
“So you were sent to me because if I bite you or kill you—”
Cerené stopped what she was doing and nodded. Both girls locked eyes for a moment. “And you didn’t mind?” Shew said.
“Mind?” Cerené let out a feeble laugh. “I don’t have the right to mind, princess, or wish.”
“Who said so,” Shew protested. “Tell me what you wish for, and I will grant it to you.”
“You know you’re different from how I pictured you, Princess?” Cerené said. “I didn’t imagine you like this.”
“Neither did I,” Snow White laughed. She wondered if she was really like that in the past. After all, and although this was a dream, she was a sixteen year old from the twenty first century trapped in a seven year old body in the 19th century, but it was her modern mind that was working here. Although Cerené looked to be eight or nine years old, she talked like she was older too.
“So what do you think of me biting the prince?”
“Oh, well,” Cerené hesitated.
“Speak your mind.”
“Well, I agree he was yummy,” Cerené giggled, covering her ashen mouth with her hands.
“I knew it,” Snow White clapped her hand with Cerené. “So I was right to bite the yummy out of him.”
“In your own sick way, I guess so,” Cerené laughed. “Is he dead?”
“I sure hope not,” Snow White said. “I’d like to bite him again.”
Cerené laughed so hard she fell on the floor. Snow White was happy to make her smile. It was like seeing sunshine in an abyss.
“Come here,” Snow White said, grabbing a towel to clean the ashes from Cerené’s face.
Suddenly, Cerené’s features tensed and she pulled away. “No,” she said. “I can’t wipe the ashes away. I can’t,” she made a fist with one hand.
“Why?” Snow White wondered.
“I just can’t,” Cerené took the towel from her and stood up, preparing to leave. “Would you ask anything else of me, princess?” She asked the question stiffly as if they hadn’t been laughing seconds ago.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Thank you, princess,” Cerené said and left the bathroom. Snow White leaned against the door’s edge, watching her walk away. What had offended her so much? Snow White just wanted to wipe the ashes away.
Watching her walk away, Snow White noticed Cerené wore strange slippers, slightly hidden under her dress. They looked as if they’d been burned and smeared with ashes. The slippers didn’t look like they were made from leather or anything Snow White had seen before.
“Those are strange slippers,” Snow White said, hoping to stop the girl from leaving.
Cerené stopped then turned around slowly. She looked even more worried now, “they are just a poor girl’s slippers,” she shrugged, “nothing special about them.”
“I didn’t say they were special,” Snow White approached her. “I could give you better slippers.”
“No.” Cerené reverted to her shyness again. What kind of secrets did this girl hide?
Snow White didn’t push her. She already knew these weren’t ordinary slippers, but what was the point of insisting to know?
Cerené stopped at the door on her way out again, “thank you,” she said without looking back.
“For what?” Snow White asked.
“For talking to me like a human being,” she replied and left.
Nineteenth century or not, Shew wasn’t fond of drama, but her curiousness about Cerené almost made her forget this was a dream.
Confused, Snow White retreated to the chair in front of the mirror. Looking at her reflection, she was stunned at what suddenly began to happen.
She was aging, and as she watched in astonishment, her body turned into the fourteen-year-old version of herself.
4
A Garden of Graves
So this is how this dream is going to work, shifting time whenever it wants?
Puzzled, Shew rested her hands on the table, which transformed into strips of black and white, shorter strips of black and longer strips of white. The table was taking the shape of a large piano.
Looking back in the mirror, she saw the whole room change behind her. She was being transported to another time and place in the dream, to a big echoing hall in the castle when she was around two or three years younger than she was in the Waking World.
Finally, the mirror in front of her exploded into ashes that turned into ravens as they flew out of the window, and all she could hear was the annoying sound of a man who she believed was her music teacher.
“This is the wrong note,” the man screamed and pulled his hair. He had hair like Einstein, and wore an oversized tuxedo. “This is a B# not B,” he poked keys furiously.
Shew rolled her eyes, sitting with her hands on the piano. Who was this annoying man? She played several keys trying to comply.
“That is even worse,” the veins in his neck throbbed. He looked like he was battling invisible bees pecking on his face. He was unusually hairy. “This is an A.”
“A is good,” Shew tried to make a joke. “A+ is even better.”
“What?” he glared at her, looking as if he was about to choke her with the piano’s strings, chop her fingers off and use them as keyboard keys. “What is an A+?”
Ignoring the mad man behind her, she read the title of the melody she was supposed to play. It said:
The Magic Flute in G major
By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
“I’ll never understand why a piece of music named The Magic Flute is played on a piano,” she poked, knowing it would drive her teacher crazy. “It should be played on a flute, Mr.—” she didn’t know what to call him so she glanced back at the transcript and saw his name scribbled at the bottom. “Mr. Oddly Tune?” she scowled. “Are you sure it isn’t Dudley?”
Oddly almost jumped, kicking his feet against the base of the piano.
“She is making fun of you because you’re not firm with her,” the Queen of Sorrow called over the banister on the second floor. “I want her to memorize this song by noon and perform it at the ball we’re having tonight.”
“But that’s impossible, my Queen,” Oddly said. “She's horrible.”
“Don’t call my daughter horrible,” Carmilla said calmly. Oddly sweat beads the size of lemons. “Or I’ll have you hung by the noose.”
“That’s not fair,” he mumbled. “I am a respected musician. I shook hands with Mozart himself."
The Queen shook her head and left the hall, calling for her servants on the other side of the castle.
“Don’t worry, Dudley,” Shew said. “I think I got it. This is an X minor, right?”
“There is nothing called X minor!” Oddly’s face reddened. It deformed as if his cheekbones were cracking from the inside. His back curved awkwardly and his feet grew big, ripping his shoes apart. Hair was growing swiftly all over his feet and face. Mr. Oddly was turning into a werewolf.
What should I do now? Is this memory or just a dream going nowhere?