Ashes to Ashes and Cinder to Cinder

by Cameron Jace

  “You’re unbelievable.” I want to hit someone.

  “Thank you,” He smirks. “Believable is so boring.”

  “Didn’t anyone tell you that you have boy’s looks but a two-year-old girl’s brains?”

  “Are you a sexist or something?” He raises a single eyebrow. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to be a girl.”

  “Wow,” I take a step back and fold my arms in front of me. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation while a building is on fire behind me. “I didn’t expect that.”

  “What? I always wanted to be a girl so I could find myself some awesome guy like me.”

  “Wuteva,” I wave my hand in the air. “So the truth is that Bianca is not a witch. Not in the sense of the bad green witch with a broomstick.”

  “Who said that’s bad? I love the green Elphaba witch.”

  “I figured. Anyway, Bianca has a power that makes her the best glassblower in Venice.”

  “Don’t tell me she is the best blower in Venice.”

  I totally neglect his constant stupid sexual innuendos. “She can create fire at will with the power of her mind,” I look him straight in the eyes. “But she never used it in a bad way. It just allowed her to create infinite amounts of precious glass art without the usual cost of fire. But sometimes, she messed up and burns thing too.”

  As I am talking, the authorities swarm the streets, arresting all glass blowers without reason.

  “Wow. What you said will happen is just starting. Are you a clairvoyant or something?” Loki wonders. “Why are they so aggressive with the glassblowers?”

  This time, I pull Loki behind me and cross the streets. “Come on. We have to find her and save her.”

  “Kick ass girl. I like that.” He comments as he follows me. “For your information, the fact that you’re still a kickass girl in the Dreamworld is the second thing that make me want to know you. I might—“

  “—like me after all. I know.” I mumble as I drag him behind me, wondering why he’s become obedient out of a sudden.

  “How did you know I was going to say that?”

  Ignore comment. Period. “You see those marks smeared with cinder all over the walls? The ones that look like the palm of the hand?” I point out at the five-finger cinder-smeared shapes all over the walls of Venice.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s called Moutza,” I explain as we run through the fire that’s spreading all over. Masses of glassblowers resist the arrests and fight back, defending themselves against being accused of witchcraft. Shards of glass are scattered all over the ground. Such a waste of beautiful art.

  “And what’s a Moutza?”

  “It’s an ancient Greek sign, a traditional insult gesture which consists of extending all five fingers and presenting the palm toward the person you want to insult. It was used for accusing men and women of witchcraft in the past, where a chained witch was paraded around town sitting, facing backwards, on a horse or a calash, with her face smeared with Cinder to enhance their ridicule and repent from the sin of committing witchcraft before she killed her to lift the curse off the town. The locals would raise their five-finger hands in the air at her as they protest against such an act, yelling Moutza Moutza. It’s a metaphor word instead of saying Ash to Ash and Cinder to Cinder before they killed the witch.”

  “When did they change that? Wasn’t this called Ash to Ash and Dust to Dust?”

  “Do you see any dust here? Dust was for those buried in graves. Cinder is for those who burn. That’s where the word Cinderella originally came from.”

  “Wow. Wow.” he said. “Now don’t you dare destroy my childhood memories here. I never heard such claims before.”

  I turn around and face him. “Didn’t you ever listen to the song; A Dream is a Wish your Heart Makes in the Cinderella movie?” I am afraid this would take long days and night for me to explain to Loki.

  “What?” It amazes me how an arrogant boy like Loki cares about fairy tales. I understand though. It’s so hard to convince anyone that the fairy tales were forged. The best I can do is pretend that truth is only retellings and twisted fairy tales.

  “Listen to the words of the song,” I say. “A Dream? We’re in a Dreamworld right now. Heart? There is a heart that weighs 21 grams we all are searching for. True? We’re here in the Dreamworld, looking for the truth.” I know my words don’t make sense.

  Loki’s faces eases. He holds me by the shoulder with two gentle hands then kills me softly, looking in my eyes. “Alice?” His voice is so tender that I wonder where that came from suddenly. “I know you you’ve been through a lot,” His words calm me down. “But please, please, please,” Loki is saying please? I am melting here. “Gimme some of that Lewis Carroll Hookah you’ve been smoking … “

  “What?” I feel like I am being hit in the head with a sponge hammer.

  “This is just a dream,” he shouts out of a sudden. “It’s not wonder-freakin-land.”

  I yank his hands away and turn around, walking toward my goal. It’s totally my fault trying to explain to him what is going. To be honest, sometimes I think that I am living a lie. But this is the truth. “What do you care anyway? You said you’re just a Dreamhunter, helping me.”

  “But that’s Cinderella we’re talking about. The Cinderella.” He says, following me again.

  “You’re a guy. Since when do boys care about Cinderella?”

  “I don’t really care about anyone. It’s just that you’re totally messing with my brain.”

  “I know.” I sighed, as this isn’t the first time I will have to persuade someone with the fact that my ancestors altered the tales. “Here she is,” I scream. “Bianca!” I summon her.

  The authorities pull Bianca from her hair, smear her with cinder and ashes, and drag her on the ground. Her hands are chained behind her back and her hair looks it has been on fire. They are pulling her to the carriage to humiliate her and kill her. The reason why they have chained her is she can’t trigger fire at her will unless raises her hands in the air and does the fiver finger Moutza sign. If they release her, she would burn them all. Maybe burn Venice.

  “So all those Moutza signs were to address that she is a witch?”

  “Exactly,” I say, running toward her. “There is a boat. Look at it. They will send all the other glassblowers to Murano island forever as banishment. But they will have to kill and torture the witch, Bianca, in public first.”

  “But she is not a witch,” Loki finally sympathizes. “She only has some supernatural power and didn’t hurt anyone.”

  “We have to stop them, Loki,” I yell. “We have to get her on the boat to Murano. That’s my mission.”

  “Why?”

  “We just have to.”

  I kick one of the arresting authorities in the back but he hits me back as Bianca screams on the ground.

  “Who is she?” one of the authorities asks the other, pointing at the strange cloth I am wearing.

  “She is a witch too,” the other accuses me and kicks me while I am on the floor. He flashes a cross at me as I am trying to reach for Bianca.

  “I am not a damn Vampire!” I yell, looking up at the smoke covering Venice.

  “A vamwaht?” the man estranges.

  “Don’t you dare repeat the foul words she utters, Constantine,” one of authorities warns him. “You’d be reciting a devil’s spell and God forbid what should happen to those who lost their way in the dark alleys of blasphemy.”

  I want to scream and pull my hair, not knowing which bothers me more, the clichéd speech of the devil or the fact that the other man’s name is Constantine.

  “And what about him?” Constantine asks his assistant about Loki. “Look at the way he is dressed. He must be a devil worshipper too. A malevolent wizard.”

  “But of course I am,” Loki says as he punches him in his jaw. The man falls down silently. Wow. One hit in the jaw. “Hocus Pocus Zim Zalabim,” Loki can’t help it, talking to the unconscious man lying on
the floor. “That’s what wizards in jeans do to guys who call themselves Constantine.”

  As I unchain Bianca, Loki gets into a fiercer fight with the other man. He bangs the man’s head against the carriage before the man falls semi-conscious to the floor. “You have just been Avada Kadavarad, Monsieur. I wish I brought a magic wand with me to this ignorance fest.”

  “Monsieur is French, you idiot.” I don’t know why I feel the need to taunt him sarcastically. I think his attitude has gotten to me. Or maybe I am scared to fail at my mission.

  “Sorry,” Loki bowed down to the man in the middle of the smoke. “I don’t speak Italian but I can speak if you like. Aww.” He kicks the man to sleep one more time and turns back to me. “We have to go back now, princess, or will die in this awfully ignorant dream.”

  “No. We have to get her on that boat to Murano first.” I say and pull up Bianca into the carriage. It’s amazing how she trusts me and doesn’t think we’re going to burn her or kill her. “Don’t be afraid. We will help you.” I tell her in Italian.

  “Italian much?” Loki wonders, helping her.

  “I speak a lot of languages,” I say and hand him a whip. He retunes a suspicious look. “Here?” I can’t let him waist our time commenting silly comments. “Don’t start. You can ride this carriage to the boat, right?”

  “Of course, my princess,” He smiles and grabs it. “My apologies for the misunderstanding, Bianca,” He bows his head with respect. I don’t know if he is mocking us. “Anything to get us out this damn dream.”

  I close the door of the carriage, listening to Loki hitting some other guys then ride up the Carriage. As he whips the horses forward, he shouts, “Mama Mia!”

  Even Bianca laughs.

  Bianca thanks me, squeezing my hand tightly. “If you didn’t save me, I would have felt the rage eventually and lost control of my power, and that’s not good.”

  “I know,” I nod, noticing that she is pregnant. That is exactly what I am here for. I think my mission will succeed. “We will send you to Murano. This where you will have the baby.”

  “Thank you.” She keeps repeating and wanting to kiss my hand. I guess it’s an old Italian manner of appreciation. I try not to cry as I can’t tell her what’s going to happen to her after she brings the baby to the world.

  We arrive at the boat and she gets on it while Loki keeps urging me that it’s about time to start the ritual to get out of the dream. He says that if we stay too long in the dream, we could stay lost here forever. I don’t tell him that I know about that since this is exactly what had happened to Cinderella.

  “Ok,” I say. “Just one more thing,” I turn back to Bianca as she embarks the boat. “Have you chosen a name for your daughter?”

  A broad and full smile arrests her features as she nods. “Cinder.” She says, raising her ash smeared five-finger hands in the air, then she points at the cinder covering her face in a proud way.

  I nod cheeringly and let out a sigh. I did it. I have started what I came here for. It’s like putting the first brick in a million-brick wall, but it’s a start. My ancestors, the Brothers Grimm, should be proud.

  “I have a slightly better name if I may suggest,” I offer, shouting through the sudden wind which I assume is a sign that the dream is about to end. “Why not name her Cinderella?”

  “Cinderella?” Loki estranges me since he didn’t understand the rest of the Italian we spoke. “Now I have to shoot myself.” He mumbles.

  “Shut up.” I say to him and turn back, watching her face knotting as she considers my suggestion.

  Slowly, she raises her eyes to meet mine. Her face lights up. “Cinderella!” she nods three times and gets on the boat, but then she suddenly turns around and hands me one single and beautiful glass shoe. I understand she has made it herself. I smile, unable to confront her with the fact that she will die giving birth to Cinderella who will live a rough live being an orphan after that. But it had to be done. Many centuries ago, an Evil Queen cursed Cinderella in one of the immortal dream and buried her deep in it, so long that Cinderella has forgotten who she is. There was no way to bring her back from that eternal deep sleep. The only way was to find out in which dream Cinderella’s real mother was buried and help her avoid the imminent death so she eventually gives birth to a new Cinderella. A new Cinderella that will be a huge part in the fairy tale war, which repeats itself every one hundred years. I came here to make sure she is born and deliver her to Murano so the story takes the right, true, and untold start.

  It’s not easy to explain to you what and how this all goes, but at least if you read my little entry in this diary, it’s a start for you to ride on a dangerous and great adventure.

  I take the glass shoe willingly. It’s a present from a woman in a dream.

  “Will I be able to take this with me to the real world?” I ask Loki.

  “I don’t think so but we can try,” He says as he pulls me to the returning ritual. Doesn’t this glass slipper look like the seventeen slippers we found next to Bianca’s body in the real world?”

  “Yes. It does.”

  “Why seventeen slippers?”

  “Because Cinderella is about to do something incredibly important for the world when she is seventeen. Every year was marked with a slipper. It’s been predicted in a prophecy. And don’t you ask me about the prophecy now.”

  “Incredibly good, or incredibly bad?”

  “That depends on her, and the choices she will make. My job was just to connect the dots. To make sure she gets born.”

  Looking closely at the glass slipper, I see something shining bright inside, like two glittering mirror eyes staring back at me from the behind the thick glass. I flip the slipper upside down and two glass coins fall into the palm of my hand, reflecting sunshine into sharp rays of light onto my face.

  “Hmm…” I sigh as I prevent my heart from racing.

  “What’s that?” Loki asks. I guess my face exposed my worries. “Do the coins have any significant meaning?”

  “It means that the Queen of Sorrow was here.” I answer, looking at the boat sailing away from us with Bianca and the unborn Cinderella on it. I wonder if the Queen is on that boat as well, and if I have been fooled. If the Queen is on that bought, does it mean that Cinderella won't be born again?

  “The Queen of what?”

  “I mean the Evil Queen. The Snow White Queen.” I say as I notice something else inside of the glass slipper: a dead butterfly. I wonder what this means.

  Loki scratches his temples, looking like a decent young boy for a moment. “Snow White Queen? Cinderella? Seriously? So you’re some kind of a Godmother?” He wonders again as I laugh. He looks cute when he is serious. It’s sad that I will have to erase his memory once we go back to the real world. I can’t let him know that much. He doesn’t know who he is and what his role will be in saving the world.

  Although I should be erasing his memory completely, I can’t bring myself to it. I will use my powers and erase some of his memories, the dream part in particular.

  Although I am prohibited from doing this, I will not erase all of his memories of me. I will make him think that I am just a girl he met in his dreams, and that I don’t exist in real life. I couldn’t bring myself to make him forget about me forever. I wanted to stay a part of him, even if he will remember me as an imaginary girl he met in a dream.

  END OF The Grimm Diaries Prequels book 2,

  a prelude to the

  The Grimm Diaries Series coming out soon

  Please search http://amazon.com for other Grimm Diaries Prequels if you’re interested to know more about the Dreamworld and the series.

  Also, book 3 in the Prequels:

  will be available soon on amazon.com

  List of the Grimm Diaries Prequels coming out June and July 2012:

  1 Snow White Blood Red ( available free now )

  narrated by Snow White Queen

  2 Cinder to Cinder & Ashes to Ashes

  narrated
by Alice Grimm

  3 If Butterflies Could Kill

  narrated by anonymous

  4 A Dream Within A Dream

  narrated by Prince Charming

  5 Laces, Combs, and Apples

  narrated by Snow White

  To know more about the first full length book of the Grimm Diaries book 1: Snow White Sorrow, coming out 2012,

  please follow the link below:

  http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13557166-snow-white-sorrow

  Note from the author:

  Your review is extremely appreciated, whatever your opinion of the book is. I am a young Indie writer and

  I could learn even from the harshest reviews.

  As for the series, the prequels are not intended to give away much of the main plot, but to let you know what to expect from the series.

  Thank you for reading my humble book

  You can contact me at

  http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/995289.Cameron_Jace

  or

  http://cameronjace.blogspot.com/

  or

  camjace@hotmail.com