Cinderella Dressed in Ashes

“Now, we check the weight of the scale underneath the bed,” Dame Gothel said.

“Explain why to my daughter,” Carmilla said.

“The weighing of the heart is actually the weighing of the soul,” Dame Gothel began. “The soul, or the Ka, how ancients like to call it, is a mystery even to the greatest wizards and mentors. We don’t know how it looks like, how it smells, or even what it really does. But we knows that it’s somewhere in the heart. The soul leaves the body when it dies, and thus the body ways less. The difference between the weight of the body before and after death equals the weight of the soul. If it’s twenty one grams, then the girl is ready for sacrifice. I see the difference isn’t twenty one grams yet for this one, majesty,” Dame Gothel pointed at the poor girl on the bed.

“This is crazy,” Shew protested. “She’s dead. What good is it if you know how much her heart weighs?”

“Within forty two minutes after she dies from biting the cake, she still can be resurrected,” Dame Gothel said. “Do you want me to resurrect her, majesty?”

“Please do,” Carmilla authorized.

Dame Gothel tapped her snake’s head before it spat poison into the girl’s face. Unlike the usually deadly poison, this one brought the girl back to life.

The servants helped the girl sit back up and leave the room.

Carmilla gazed back at Shew with a slight smug smile on her face. Shew got the message. Carmilla was giving her a choice. Either swim in the girls’ blood or fully turn into a vicious vampire, part of the Sorrow’s family, or Carmilla would have to rip out her heart. Of course, she couldn’t rip Shew’s heart out unless it was twenty one grams, which meant she had to have her heart weighed now.

Shew glanced back briefly. The chamber was a huge ambush. A couple of huntsmen stood by the door behind her, and she guessed others waited for her outside if she managed to escape. She had nowhere to go.

“What do you say, princess?” Carmilla said. “You could stay one of the Sorrows, surrender to your nature and family ties, or you could be stupid enough to think you’re the Chosen One.”

Shew’s only hope was to allow Dame Gothel to weigh her soul and hope it weighed less than twenty-one grams. What would happen if it weighed enough?  All Carmilla had to do was prevent Dame Gothel from bringing her back with the snake’s bite.

Stay strong Shew. If you have really managed to split your heart in the past, then you found a way out of this chamber.

It crossed her mind that maybe Charmwill would interfere and save her from this room. He was there for Loki, and she thought he might do the same for her. In her heart, she knew Charmwill was dead, and she didn’t know if the dead still appeared in the memories of the Dreamers.

As all of these thoughts were spinning in her head, the Queen was becoming impatient.

Two huntsmen grabbed Shew from the back and pulled her toward the weighing table. Carmilla had decided Shew was never going to submit.

Snarling at the huntsmen wasn’t enough. They were strong men who fed on darkness itself. One of them strapped her mouth shut with what looked like a dog’s muzzle and she couldn’t free herself from the other’s grip.

Shew didn’t give up. She kicked one of them between the legs, but all he did was moan a little. Then she punched him in the face, seized his short moment of dizziness and banged his head against the other huntsman.

The girls let out a sound of wonderment, impressed by the princess.  Soon a couple of other huntsmen entered the chamber. Shew, still muzzled, ran right toward them, the huntsmen barely stopping her. She pulled one’s cloak and began choking him with it, even when the other huntsmen started grabbing her. Shew’s grip was firm. She wondered where the sudden surge of strength came from. No one had ever been able to face a huntsman.

“Brave,” the Queen of Sorrow smirked, adjusting her neck to see the action from her throne. Discreetly, she admired her daughter’s strength and stubbornness.

The huntsman finally freed himself and another knocked Shew down, punching her with his scabbard. Shew fell back, her lip bleeding. Another huntsman, angered by her behavior, decided to teach her a lesson and raised a hand to slap her.

“No!” the Queen of Sorrow snapped for a second, doing her best to stay in her throne. “You don’t humiliate my daughter unless I say so,” she followed. The huntsman looked puzzled, his hands hanging in the air. “Hang him by the noose,” Carmilla demanded.

A number of the other huntsmen entered the room and took him away to kill him.

However, this didn’t stop the Queen from signaling to the three huntsmen left to pull Shew toward the weighing table. They lay the princess on it and held her by the legs and shoulders as Dame Gothel approached with her deadly Sanguinaccio cake. She didn’t need to cut her arm. She used the blood dripping from Shew’s lip.

Shew was still kicking and swearing, too many hands holding her down.

“You still have a choice,” Carmilla said, still sitting, and patting one of her panthers at her feet. “Look at all those beautiful girls you can taste.”

“I’m not going to feed on poor children,” Shew growled behind the muzzle. “I could have been one of them. You can’t do this.”

“I can do anything,” the Queen said. “I could even bring the sun and moon down if I desire. I just like them the way they are.”

Dame Gothel smudged the cake against the thin bars of the muzzle, stuffing Shew’s mouth. Shew tried spitting the cake out, but it was too big. She kicked her feet but the huntsmen were stronger.

“Pretty weak for a Dhampir Princess,” Bloody Mary said from inside the mirror. Her voice was full of envy, hate, and malice. She was a young girl with such demonic hatred drooling from her tongue. Shew remembered Alice telling her that Bloody Mary had her own story of how she came to be who she was. Shew wondered who trapped her in the mirror and why. How could she have such influence over Carmilla?

“Don’t worry, Mary,” Carmilla said, her voice uncannily caring. “Soon after I kill the princess and enjoy her heart and liver, I’ll have enough time—youth and beauty—to learn the secrets of the Anderson Mirror from the ashen girl.”

The cake’s taste was already on Shew’s tongue. She wondered what Bloody Mary had to do with Cerene and the Anderson Mirror. Why was the Queen telling Bloody Mary not to worry?

As Shew faded into darkness, she wondered if Bloody Mary had a splinter in her eyes.

If Bloody Mary didn’t have a splinter of the mirror in her eyes, then who would?

Shew was too late to figure out the connection. She thought Bloody Mary was right. What kind of Dhampir was that weak? Wasn’t she prophesized to kill all vampires? How so when she couldn’t save herself?

Shew gave in to another Sleeping Death, one that she was unlikely to wake up from.

31 A Conversation with Death

Shew hadn’t died in a dream before, so she didn’t know what to expect.

She thought she’d see herself leave her own body and fly like angels in the air, watching how her body lay still on the weighing table. Last time when she thought she was dead at the Wall of Thorns, it turned out she’d been saved by a mysterious someone. No one was going to save her this time.

Will I never know if my soul weighed twenty-one grams? Instead of having an out of body experience, Shew found herself locked inside her own body, unable to move. It was as if she were trapped in the carcass of her flesh and bones, watching the world from behind the bars of her eyelashes.

She couldn’t hear anything, nor could she see her soul flying in the air. She had no choice but hope her soul didn’t weigh twenty-one grams so Dame Gothel would bring her back for a later test like the girl before.