“Run!” Cerene pulled Shew’s hand and they ran up the hill.
A little farther up Shew saw Cerene slowing down.
“I lost my shoe!” Cerene panicked.
“Can’t you walk without it? Why are you limping?” Shew said.
Looking closely at Cerene’s bare feet, Shew didn’t need to wait for an answer. Someone had cut Cerene’s toe on her left foot. The unusual shoe helped her walk better.
“Who did this to you?” Shew asked. Then it was clear that Cerene lost one of her toes to the vicious Rapunzel plant.
Cerene ran back down the hill in the witch’s direction, looking for her shoe, and, as usual, Shew followed.
Hysterically, Cerene went looking for her shoe without noticing that she was two strides away from Baba Yaga.
Shew watched the old witch smile and drool at her victim approaching her. Shew sped up, passing Cerene, and snarled at Baba Yaga. Cerene didn’t even notice, passing both of them and traveling further down the hill, still looking for her shoe.
Baba Yaga let Cerene pass because she’d been intimidated by the princess with fangs, but when Shew didn’t bite, Baba Yaga smiled slowly, showing her dagger sharp yellow teeth.
“If you’re going to show your fangs, you better use them,” she laughed.
Shew looked puzzled. The witch was right. Why hadn’t she just bitten her?
“You’re a monster, but you don’t have it in you,” Baba Yaga said. “You’re too weakened, probably by love. It does that to people. Your reluctance to face evil will have dire consequences, because you’re neither good nor bad. You’re nothing. A Dhampir needs to transcend beyond the chains of love to get hold of her powers,” she grabbed Shew by the neck and lifted her from the ground. Shew tried to free herself but the witch’s grip was choking her.
“Let me go!” Shew snarled at her one more time.
“I’ll admit that you scared me in the beginning, but the good in you prevents the dark side to blossom,” Baba Yaga said. “What a shame. I would have loved to see that dark in you, but now I am going to have to eat you. Your mother will never know.” Baba Yaga opened her mouth wide and prepared to bite Shew.
“Get away from her!” Cerene had found her shoes. She raised her blowpipe in the air, aiming to hit Baba Yaga but hit Shew instead when the witch moved.
The hit, although accidental, was hard. Shew fell to the ground. Cerene, although tiny, hit hard.
Helpless, she stared at the moon above. She hated that she was weak. How could Baba Yaga tell her that she wasn’t strong enough when the Wall of Thorns considered her an intruder? As she fainted, she thought of the decision she had to make soon; either stay softhearted and forget about being the Chosen One, or embrace her darkness and use it to face all evil. She had to learn how to fight fire with fire, or die in this dream and forget about it.
The world faded to black around Shew. Cerene was screaming from the top of her lungs.
16
A Bird of Fire
When Shew woke up, the sky was filled with ashes, and the sound of flickering fire surrounded her. Trees were on fire. Plants were on fire. And even the air was saturated with it.
Ashes in the sky again, dancing a song of evil.
Shew checked her head, the wound wasn’t serious but she was bleeding. She stood up slowly, her eyes blurry, making everything look hazy as if the world was melting slowly around her.
A couple of breaths later, she understood that her vision was just fine. The world was really melting around her. Lava-like molten crawled down toward her from the top of the hills. It glided slowly over the grass, burning it as it crossed over, taking irregular shapes.
Shew raised her head, looking for the source of the lava creature, and saw it was the witch’s house. It was melting like ice cream in the sun. The Candy House was on fire. Cerene sat with her hands wrapped around her knees, both tucked against her chest.
She was humming those scary rhymes again.
Cerene’s hair was the color of fire, almost burning, shaped like a bird’s wings, fluttering above her head as ashes fell down from the sky.
“Look for the Phoenix,” Splash’s words still echoed in Shew’s ears, and she thought she was looking at it.
17
A Puzzle of Seven Cards
“Stop it, Fable,” Axel said. “You’ve been walking back and forth forever.”
“What do you want me to do, Axel?” Fable stopped at the edge of the purple light encircling the Dream Temple. “This dream is locked forever, and we can’t do anything about it. I’m not going to wait here until this purple wall comes down by itself a hundred years from now,” she turned and gazed at the light again.
“And I’m not going to lose you to this Dream Temple. I have big plans for you. We’re going to have a great life. You could be the greatest witch in Sorrow. I could be … hmm … the owner of the biggest restaurant. Which reminds me, I was thinking we could go grab a bite at the Belly and the Beast, what do you think?”
“Why don’t you stop thinking about food for just one tiny second in your life!”
“There’s no such a thing as a tiny second, Fable. It’s either a second or it isn’t,” Axel said. “Besides, food is good. Haven’t you heard the wise man’s saying, ‘good food, good mood’?”
“Did you ever notice that most so called
“We need to feed so the blood circulates in our body and we can think clearer,” Axel defended his cause.
“People feel sleepy after they eat, Axel,” Fable said. “You just don’t know it because you eat all the time. You’re living on the dark side of the moon.”
“Whatever you say, sis; I need to energize myself so I can look through J.G.’s diary,” he flipped through the diary they had found in Bedtime Stoories. “This is all so confusing, a diary that belongs to a J.G. and a Dreamhunters Guide that is signed by a V.H. Who are these people, and how are they related to each other?”
“I’m sure J.G. is Jacob Carl Grimm,” Fable said, happy her brother forgot about food.
“Or someone who wants us to think this is J.G.’s diary,” Axel winked.
“Don’t read too much into everything,” Fable said. “Why are you suddenly reading this diary? Did you give up on Loki’s Dreamhunters Guide?”
“I didn’t, but I can’t find anything more useful in it at the moment,” Axel said. “And he has the original Book of Sand with him in his pocket.”
“And we can’t even get that unless we cross this stupid purple light,” Fable sighed. “See, what I am talking about. I need to walk past the purple light.”
“No!” Axel demanded.
“Let me just touch it,” Fable said. “It might not even be passable.”
“I said no, Fable. Don’t make me use my Kung Fu skills to stop you,” Axel said.
“Why do you have to be the older sibling?” Fable mumbled. “Why wasn’t I born first?”
“Because I tricked our parents into bringing me into the world first,” Axel said.
“Really?” Fable stuck out her tongue. “So seriously, you didn’t find anything else in Loki’s phone?”
