“What is the name?” Axel said. “You’re freaking me out.”
“Cinderella,” Fable said. “Carmilla is after Cinderella!”
“How can she be after Cinderella by making Loki enter Shew’s dream? Shouldn’t he be entering Cinderella’s dream wherever she is?” Axel said.
“I don’t know, Axel,” Fable breathed rapidly in front of the purple light. “This locked dream has to end so we know. Are you sure it wasn’t mentioned how a locked dream ends in Loki’s phone?”
Axel pretended he didn’t hear her. He wasn’t going to tell her what he’d read. It was death itself.
18
Rainbow’s End
Although Shew believed Cerene was the Phoenix, the knowledge didn’t answer all of her questions yet.
Who was the Phoenix, really? Why did she have to look for her?
At least, the dream made much more sense now. This dream wasn’t about the Queen wanting to kill her. Loki used the Phoenix Incubator because Carmilla wanted to take Shew back to her relationship with Cerene, thinking Cerene would lead her to the Phoenix.
What was the point in reminding Shew she had a dear friend in her childhood called Cerene, and why didn’t she remember that part of her childhood?
She had figured out Cerene was Cinderella. That wasn’t the hard part. A girl covered in ashes, lived with a stepmother and stepsisters, slept in a dark room next to cinders, and had one precious glass shoe she couldn’t live without. It had to be her, only she wasn’t the kind you’d expect to read about in a picture book in the Waking World. Cerene was the real flesh and blood Cinderella. She had a feeling that whatever she’d learned about Cerene was trivial.
Cerene wasn’t the kind of girl who dreamed of attending the king’s ball and meeting the prince. She was not waiting for a Godmother to dress her in the most beautiful dress and send her a pumpkin coach. She was a young girl who had surpassed all the evil bestowed upon her by enjoying the one thing she did best, the Forbidden Art.
The Art was Cinderella’s getaway, the computer game boys played escaping into their own imaginary world, the embroidery medieval woman excelled at as they wove threads into canvasses of beauty. The Art was Cerene’s drug that took the pain away. It was her hope to live another day; it was the glass shoe she’d left behind, the way Hansel and Gretel left their breadcrumbs, so happiness could retrace her steps and find her one day.
Still, Shew wondered who saved her each time she was about to die. Was it Cerene? Was Cerene capable of creating fire? If so, why didn’t she tell Shew about it? If Cerene could create fire they wouldn’t have had to go to the furnace in Candy House. It couldn’t be Cerene.
Shew thought of Bianca again. There was no other explanation. Bianca was the person in the hood who chased Shew. She was Cerene’s guardian angel, and she burned whoever hurt her daughter.
However, that would only explain what happened near Candy House, Bianca saving her daughter from Baba Yaga and burning the place down, but who burned the Wall of Thorns? The wall was no threat to Cerene. Was it possible that Bianca protected Shew, maybe because she wanted Shew to take care of her daughter?
There were too many questions leading nowhere. The one thing that made sense was that Cerene was one of the Lost Seven Shew had split her heart with, which was also a useless piece of information.
Shew had no recollection of how she split her heart or how she did it. She knew she split her heart because of a solitary memory of the day Carmilla cursed her and trapped her in the Schloss after failing to find the Lost Seven. Carmilla had been asking her about the Lost Seven and how she managed to split her heart with them, not knowing that Shew didn’t remember doing so in the first place. Shew had no explanation why parts of her memory were lost.
Now, at the Rainbow’s End, Shew watched Cerene play with her blowpipe at the reservoir, which was a lake of pure light, shimmering with the main
Cerene had showed Shew how she dipped molten glass into the colored lake of light. All she had to do was pick the color she desired. Cerene loved a mesh of colors so most creations came out the color of rainbows.
She also created a huge butterfly with flapping fiery wings, but then killed it when she was out of breath. Cerene’s most amazing creation was smaller butterflies she blew from her pipe, fluttering their wings into the world, as if the blowpipe had been their cocoons. The Butterflies had a long lifespan, not demanding Cerene’s continuous breathing because they were such light creatures. It took them about ten minutes, fluttering freely in the lake before their light dimmed and they turned to stone and fell into the lake.
In her awe, Shew called Cerene the God of Small Things. She was able to create life through her pipe, only it was a short-lived life. The Gods must have chosen Cerene for a reason. But for some other reasons, decided they wouldn’t allow how to create a full life.
Shew smiled, watching Cerene run with her blowpipe under the rainbow. She wondered if all Gods were like her, creators of magnificent things, yet as lost as Cerene. What if the Gods created the entire world by using their imaginations to overcome their pain?
While Shew was watching Cerene play, she heard girls singing a nursery rhyme in the distance. They were tapping their feet and jumping rope somewhere behind the trees. Shew thought they sounded like the creepy girls Loki had told her he’d heard in Sorrow. They were singing a new song:
Shew closed her eyes, wishing the voices would go away. She’d never known who the girls were. She feared their rhymes, though, and thought they always foretold a sinister future.
Instead, she watched Cerene happily play in the reservoir, remembering how they had gotten here after Candy House had melted.
Cerene had shown Shew the way to Rainbow’s End. They had walked in silence for about an hour. Cerene 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 Cerene demanded they shouldn’t stop there.
“What are you doing, Joy,” Cerene 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.
Cerene 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 Cerene’s eyes, even when it meant being one step closer to death.
Cerene 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
