Cinderella Dressed in Ashes

“Easy on me, sis,” Axel said. “Wait until I tell you about Murano Island.”

“Murano is the island Venetian glassblowers were banned to,” Shew said. “And where Cerene was born. What about it?”

“According to the story by the mysterious Alice Grimm you met—which I am really curious about—, the creator of the mirror hid his clue to control it inside Cerene, right?” Axel said.

“That’s right. A clue that grants its discoverer power of the all splinters in the world,” Shew explained.

“I kept thinking about when this really happened,” Axel said. “I mean for something that created a conflict between the so called forces of good and evil since the beginning of time, how could Cerene be the clue?”

“I don’t understand,” Shew said.

“I mean Cerene is about your age,” Axel said. “The creator couldn’t have made the mirror and the clue in the late 18^th century. It must have been since hundreds, if not thousands, years ago. I don’t know what when the beginning of time is exactly.”

Shew felt like hit with a pebble in her face. Axel was right. Cerene was too young to be the clue. But maybe the clue passed through Cerene’s family. Maybe she inherited it from Bianca, and Bianca inherited it from her own mother.

”So I researched this Murano incident when glassblowers had been banned out of Venice for creating too much fire,” Axel said. “It’s a true incident, one of the most important historical events in the history of Venice and glassmaking. But do you even know when this occurred?”

“When?” Fable asked.

“1291,” Axel clapped his hands together. “That’s almost eight hundred years ago.”

“But that’s…” Shew’s face tightened.

“Impossible, I know,” Axel said. “But it isn’t, really. J.G. talks about the mirror in his diary. The creator, in order to make sure the clue never died, needed to create an immortal girl who carried it among centuries. But then, he must have learned that immortal could be killed in their dreams, so he had to make the girl even more eternal and undying that immortals.”

“What would that be,” Fable said. “Nothing is more undying than immortals.”

“Of course there is,” Axel objected. “There is something more eternal and legendary than any immortal you have ever thought of.”

“Spit it out, Alex,” Fable said while Shew thought she’d already known the answer. “What is it?”

“A Phoenix,” Shew answered on Axel’s behalf.

“Exactly,” Axel nodded. “Someone who’ll rise again from the ashes if burned. That’s why the creator made the clue a Phoenix so whenever she dies, she rises from the ashes again, and thus the clue lives forever and never dies,” Axel now clapped continuously, congratulating himself. “J.G. mentions here that he suspected that every time the Phoenix died and woke up, she woke up someone new, stripped of her past life’s memories, only very few information lived on with her when she was reborn, but nothing that had to do with whom she was before.”

“Cerene?” Shew wondered. The Slave Maiden, the cinder girl whose every breath she gave was a breath taken from her life? No wonder she didn’t care. Deep inside, she must have felt she can live this over and over again. That’s why she knew so many things Shew didn’t know about. Not only because Charmwill and Bianca talked to her, but because Cerene lived for so long that some knowledge like making glass stuck to her memory.

“The real Cinderella is not that helpless maid who longs to meet the prince in the ball,” Axel said. “Her role in the world is as equal and important as the Chosen One. The sad part is in order for her to protect the world, she’d better not know who she is or she’d start searching for the clue herself. Who knows, maybe if she find it, she’d decided to turn to the dark side.”

“Cerene would never do that,” Shew defended her.

“You of all people should know what darkness can do to people,” Axel said, “Remember the eerie songs you said Cerene sang whenever the world burned around her?”

“Yes,” Shew said. “Strange songs about London, ashes, and burning things.”

“I’m not sure but it looks to me like these are songs about things that had burned all along history and Cerene had been there when it happened,” Axel suggested. “She must have lived around every burning incident in history. The London fire, 1666, I would guess. That’s why she was singing London Bridge is Falling Down, which is rumored to have been about the London burning event,” Axel started counting on his fingers. “Ashes, Ashes which is part of the ‘Ring Around the Rosies’ nursery rhyme. It is said that this rhyme describes the incidents of the Black Death plague that killed most of the world. The plagued people were burned alive so they wouldn’t spread the disease. Fire, again. Remember when she told you about Le Fenice, the famous Venetian opera? It’s been burned through history as well. My guess is she was one of the burned. Cerene must have even seen when Rome burned, and when—”

“Enough!” Shew said. “Each time you mention her dying I feel like choking. Why should suffer something like that?”

“It’s her destiny, I guess,” Axel shook his shoulders.

“Does that mean, she isn’t dead?” Shew asked Axel. “Does it mean that she will rise again and will not sleep for a hundred years in the Field of Dreams?”

“I honestly don’t know, Shew,” Axel said. “I have so many questions in my head. Like who are the members of Cerene’s stepfamily? Why is she related to every burning incidents in history? Who burned these places, and why was she always there?”

“Which should answer who repeatedly saved me from the Wall of Thorns and Candy House when it burned,” Shew said.

“That’s if whoever saved you was actually saving you,” Axel pointed out. “It could be someone who was saving Cerene because she is the Clue, not you.”

“So what now, Axel?” Shew said. “There are too many mysteries, and I need to solve them to get to the Lost Seven before my mother.”

“In order to do so, we need someone to help us get to…” Axel said.

“To Murano,” Shew interrupted, and Axel nodded with approval. “Now that Carmilla knows who Cerene is and where she is from, she will go after her, whether in a Dreamworld or real life.”

“I’d really like to Murano with you,” Fable said. “I hope they have Venetian carnivals there where you wear those fantabuluos masks.”

“I’d like that, too. Never have tasted Venetian food. But I’m afraid that going to Murano isn’t easy at all,” Axel said. “I mean to travel back in time to the incidents in Murano in 1291, we’ll need to find Cerene first and enter her dream like Loki did with Shew…”

“And we have no clue where Cerene is in the Waking World,” Fable agreed.

“And even if we do, we’ll need a Dreamhunter to enter her dream,” Axel said, glancing briefly at the comatose Loki.

“Which we also don’t have,” Fable said.

“This brings us to square one again, where there is only one person who could help us,” Axel said.

“Charmwill Glimmer,” Shew and Fable uttered in the same breath. “He must know of a way to get us there, and I bet he could answer a lot of questions,” Shew said.

“Didn’t Cerene tell you there is a way to resurrect him?” Fable asked Shew.

“She said Charmwill told her his True Name when she met him in the cottage, and that it would help resurrect him if he dies,” Shew answered. “Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to learn it from her.”

“Because Loki chopped off her hands,” Fable said, Loki’s name sounding bitter on her tongue.

“There is really nothing we can do without knowing Charmwill’s True name,” Axel said, glancing at Bitsy arranging the alphabet magnet on the refrigerator. He arranged it after Charmwill’s name this time.

40 The Guardian