by Cameron Jace
I nod happily 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.
“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, 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 dreams 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 deep sleep. I needed to find out in which dream Cinderella’s real mother was buried and help her avoid an imminent death, so she eventually gives birth to a new Cinderella. A new Cinderella who 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. 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 behind the thick glass. I flip the slipper upside down and two glass coins fall into the palm of my hand, reflecting sunshine.
“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 making him forget about me forever. I wanted to stay a part of him, even if he remembers me as an imaginary girl he met in a dream.
Beauty Never Dies
A Grimm Diaries Prequel #3
A teaser story for the upcoming release of
The Grimm Diaries Series
by Cameron Jace
Copyright © 2012 Akmal Eldin Farouk Ali Shebl
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All facts concerning fairy tales publication dates, scripts, and historical events mentioned in this book are true. The interpretations and fantasy elements aren’t. They are the author’s imagination.
Beauty Never Dies
as told by Peter Pan
Dear Diary,
I hate diaries. I’d rather have a food fight with the Lost Boys in Neverland. But since today was awesome, I decided to write down what happened. And diary? You should be honored that the boy who wouldn’t grow up wrote in your pages.
Today, I woke up my love, Sleeping Beauty, from her hundred years of sleep. Some people say she was cursed by a wicked fairy. Others say it was by the Bothers Grimm. I didn’t care which is which because I missed her so much for the last hundred years.
I didn’t wake her up with a kiss like it was mentioned in these teeny-weeny fairy tale books. I woke her up with the most beautiful ceremony of all. One you did never read about in books.
It wasn’t easy though.
It all started with me standing over Count Dracula’s grave...
Scratching my temples, I was thinking if resurrecting him was the right thing to do. I needed him to wake up Sleeping Beauty. None of us, the fairy tale crowd, ever dared to wake him up. However, I wasn’t scared of him. I am not scared of anyone. I just don’t trust anyone. The night was misty and silent. No wolves howled nearby, as if they were tongue-tied, scared back into their caves in the forest.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” My hunchbacked assistant growled, his yellow eyes gleaming with evil in the middle of the night.
May I introduce you to the hunchback of Notre Damme?
Yes.
He is one of us immortals. After Esmeralda abandoned him, and the folks in Paris gave him a hard time, he decided to stop playing mister nice-guy, and turn into a badass hunchman. Did you hear that? Badass Hunchman! Something Marvel Comics never thought about.
“I know what I am doing, Hunchy,” I loved to call him that. It toned down the creepiness that oozed out of his nasty face. “All we have to do is pull out the stake from Dracula’s heart, and the Count will be back to life.”
“If it’s so easy, why didn’t others resurrect him, master?” He growled with that silly, evil grin on his face, showing his crooked, yellow teeth. I should’ve bought him dental braces because his words came out muffled when he talked, but Hunchy would simply eat the braces for lunch.
“Don’t call me Master,” I said. “You’re not Frankenstein. You’re Hunchy, the hunchman,” Hunchy looked puzzled. It wasn’t easy reading his face though. Each facial expression he made was just awful, even it was a happy one. “And to answer your question. No one woke Dracula up because they are all dumb,” I sighed, kneeling down, watching the Count buried in the soil of his coffin. Dracula had a thing for this Transylvanian soil that he couldn’t live without – let alone, die without. “Few people know where this grave is located. Actually few people know he is real.”
; “Do you think he is going to remember who is?” Hunchy grimaced, rubbing his hands. “Most of us immortals didn’t know when we woke up.”
“That. We’ll have to see,” I said, chewing on a white flower as I pulled the stake out.
Even Hunchy winced at the abrupt rise of Count Dracula from his grave. Dracula floated in the air above us, stretching out his arms sideways, looking pale and menacing in his black and red coat.
The colors of his cape and his pale skin reminded me of Snow White. How didn’t I notice the connection before? Dracula had skin white as snow, wearing a black cape with red lining inside, the exact colors that described the beauty of Snow White. I hate those three colors: white, red, and black. What happened to purple, yellow and the color of stars?
Thinking of Snow White sent a shiver through my spine, and it made me see through the silliness of Dracula’s theatrical act.
“Seen this. Done that,” I said to the flying Count, chewing on the flower. “Can you please just stop, and tone down the act, Count Dracula. This isn't Broadway. This stuff doesn’t scare us anymore. You’re so outdated.”
Hunchy chuckled at my comment. Dracula swooped down as if on an invisible elevator – a good trick, I must say. He took a step toward me and snarled, showing his hundred-year-old yellow fangs. His teeth certainly needed polishing.
“Cut the crap, dude,” I said. “Even Christopher Lee is scarier than you.”
Dracula looked puzzled, totally shocked. If you had seen the look in his eyes, you’d have thought that he'd just been punk’d on live TV. I didn’t blame him. He was trapped in the Dreamworld for a hundred years. The last time he was here in the real life, people feared him, and considered him the lord of darkness. He had no idea that the best he could do in the real world now was becoming some kind of an amusing tourist attraction. He’d sit back in a throne in his castle, and little kids would play with his face and gush about how this dude really looked like Dracula.
“He needs to fix his teeth.” Hunchy commented.
“Look who is talking,” I eyed him. “You two definitely need a dentist. Come on Draco,” I said to the count. “You don’t mind me calling you Draco, right?”
Hunchy sent out another one of his evil chuckles into the night. Dracula looked like he’d preferred to dig up his gave again and die, rather than being ignored and humiliated.
“I am Count Dracula,” He spat out on me. The smell of his breath was unbearable. I forgot that a hundred years in a grave caused bad hygiene. “How dare you order me around?”
I wiped the spit off my face and sighed. “Oh boy.” I mumbled, looking up at the full moon. I lowered my head, turned around, and ripped out his heart with my bare hands. It was a swift move, one of my endless talents.
Dracula arched forward, looking at his small heart throbbing in my hands. He didn't know he had one, I believed.
“Now we know who is who in this conversation.” I said.
“How did you do that?” Dracula moaned. “Who are you?”
“My friends call me Peter,” I said with a smug on my face. “But you can call me Pan.”
“Why should I call you Pan?”
“Because Pan is a god, and I practically own you.” I pointed at his heart in my hand. “And how come you have such a weightless heart? If you want to be effectively resurrected, we will have to feed you until this heart grows heavier. You can’t survive with such a small one.” I plunged his heart back into his chest, watching it wiring itself to his blue veins while his chest mended the wound. I loved how vampires healed so quickly.
“We’ll have to feed him.” Hunchy offered – as if I hadn’t said that.
“Bring him a boar,” I said. “As many boars as he likes. Let him suck their blood.”
“I thought you’d say we’d bring him one of the kids from Neverland.”
“Not now,” I explained. “I don’t want to quench his thirst for humans. I will need him to bite someone for me tonight. And he has to be craving for human blood to do that.”
“As you wish, Pete,” Hunchy bowed his, and whipped Dracula with a silver snake that was dipped in holy water an hour ago. Count Dracula screamed in pain. I could see smoke fuming out of his heated body. “Oh. Sorry. Did that hurt?” Hunchy mocked Dracula.
Those two were bad company. No future for their relationship. How did I end up with such annoying crowd?
I am Peter Pan, the prince of Neverland, the sixteen-year-old, beautiful boy who never grows up. If the Grimm’s hadn’t just messed things up, I wouldn’t have ended here with those old bastards. Even though I have nothing to do with the Brothers Grimm cursing their own characters, I found myself involved in all this mess. It was the price I had to pay, being in love with one of them.
“Why do you need to be so violent, Hunchy?” I wondered. “If you behave tonight, I’ll make you watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre when we get back to the castle, so you can feed on the pain of others like you want.”
“The 1974 version?” Hunchy’s eyes widened eagerly.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “With DVD commentary, deleted scenes, and extra blood—I mean ketchup and pizza—on the side.” I kicked the grass as I walked to my red Corvette. “Come on Draco. We’ve got work to do,” I said over my shoulder. “You know, I have second thoughts about calling you Draco because there is another more famous Draco than you.”
“More famous?” Dracula grunted. Even while in pain, fame mattered more than fangs. He was certainly an airhead.
.”“Draco Malfoy,” I said as I opened the back door for him and Hunchy. I wouldn’t let those two vulgar creatures ride next to me. My passenger seat is reserved for beautiful teen girls. “It’s a Harry Potter thing, and what’s ironic is that his name was probably inspired by you
Starting the engine, I pushed the gas pedal forward, and sent the Corvette into the night. Dracula was sucking the blood of a small dead boar in my backseat like a homeless beggar. The more I watched him in the rear-view mirror, the more he shattered all I knew about him being a child who loved scary movies.
I considered it funny when I talk about childhood. To describe a period of your life as your childhood, you must be a grown up. And that’s the one thing I never did.
On the way, Dracula described my Corvette as a fancy carriage. He wondered how it wasn’t pulled by two horses and still moved. I had to persuade him that my car was possessed by invisible demons. He said that he wanted two of them in his carriage in the future.
Arriving at my castle, I found her majesty waiting for me. Why would the Queen of Sorrow ever want to visit me? I hope the situation with Snow White didn’t get out of hand – or rather, out of apples.
Since I didn’t want her to know about Dracula, I let Hunchy usher her to the main hall over the bridge leading to the castle while I drove around and entered with Draco through a back door.
“May I ask who that woman is?” Dracula asked after entering my private chamber.
“The Queen of Sorrow,” I sighed. “You two are family, by the way.”
“Family? I have no family. I have been searching for my family and who, or what, I am since long ago.” Dracula said as he wiped the boar’s blood from his lips. Now that he fed, he seemed a bit more confident.
“That’s part of why I brought you back to life, Count Dracula,” I said, picking up an apple then cutting it with my knife. “I do know where you come from and who you really are.”
“You do?” he asked suspiciously.
“Here,” I showed him some pictures and ancient books. “This is your family. These are your ancestors. Some of them, you know. Some of them, you don’t.”
Dracula flipped through the pages and pictures with longing eyes, but then he threw it all away and got back to me. “What is this? This is absurd.” He claimed.
“Absurd and true. Perfect synonyms.” I cocked my head, as I slipped in comfortable white trousers and took off my shirt. If it were for me, I’d run naked all around, showing off my young and attractive b
ody, but I had a reputation to keep.
“These people don’t even exist,” Dracula protested. “They are fictional characters in fairy tales.”
If Dracula was aware of fairy tales, how come he didn’t recognize the famous name of Peter Pan? I had to assume that he wasn’t much of a reader in his time. Sucking blood and intimidating virgins didn’t really fit with being a bookworm. Can you imagine Dracula sitting by a fireplace, covered in a blanket with a pipe in his mouth, reading a book? What would that book's title be? 10 Ways to Suck Blood Without Making a Mess? Change Your Life and Become Scarier than Frankenstein in Seven Days? The Four-Hour Coffin Nap? The Hunger Games. ( Not the one about the future. The one about how to deal with hunger for blood )
“They are your ancestors, Draco,” I said firmly. “I don’t expect you to believe me right away, but this woman out there in the hall is your flesh and blood.”
“Absurd,” Dracula said the word three consecutive times. Each time he roared the word, he shattered the glass in the windows, and vases flopped in the air.
Interesting. I didn’t know he could do such things. So he wasn’t just a shallow fanghead after all.
“Ok.” I gave in. I was never fond of educating those who didn’t want to be educated. Let the chips fall where they may. I was a casual boy. I liked fun, faeries, food fights, and folklore dances. Add a little mayhem here and there, and you got me by Hello. “We could discuss this issue later. Right now, I need you for something else. However, I’ll have to get rid of the Queen outside first. Please feel free to enjoy the chamber while I am away. Just break no more vases please.”
“You’re going to leave me alone in here?” He stopped me by the door.
“You’re not going to whine like babies and want me to leave the lights on, are you?” I said impatiently.
“Of course not.”
“And you’re not afraid of other vampires, I assume.”