Beauty Never Dies by Cameron Jace Read Free Book Online Page B

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    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, 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 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 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 in 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