Cinderella Dressed in Ashes (The Grimm Diaries #2)
Cameron Jace
‘Evil is a point of view.’
~Anne Rice
‘Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead.’
~Hans Christian Andersen “Love is like death, it must come to us all…but never can it be cheated, and never will it be forgotten.”
~Jacob Grimm “…for obvious reasons, I have changed the names of the people and places concerned…”
~Bram Stoker
in his preface to the 1901 Icelandic edition of Dracula.
PROLOGUE
A Splinter of Mirrors
The Children of Hamlin didn’t care for the woman in the luxurious black veil.
She claimed that Charmwill Glimmer sent her to tell them a crucially important story, one that would expose a great secret about the evil in the Fairyworld.
Still, the children didn’t like that most of her face was concealed. They could only see her distant blue eyes and long eyelashes, and the silken white gloves she wore.
“Where is Charmwill?” the lisping girl asked suspiciously. “Why can’t he tell us the story himthelf?”
“Charmwill is on a faraway quest,” the woman said. “It might take him years before he comes back.”
“That explains why he didn’t appear last Christmas,” a boy supposed. “Santa Claus was worried about him.”
Another boy suggested Charmwill was fighting the evil entities that wanted to steal the Book of Beautiful Lies.
“No, that’s not why he’s away,” a girl with gaping front teeth interrupted. “He’s with The Boy Who was a Shadow, right?”
“Something like that,” the woman nodded. Her voice was flat and lacked passion. She wasn’t as cheerful as Charmwill, reminding them of their overly conservative parents in Hamlin. She hadn’t even allowed them to play with her veil the way Charmwill let them play with his beard—and she didn’t have a parrot!
“So do you also have a Book of Beautiful Lies?” a boy asked.
“I’m afraid not,” the woman replied, a bit confused.
“Then how will you tell us your story?” the gapped tooth girl frowned.
“Charmwill helped me memorize it,” the woman answered.
“But Charmwill said stories had to be written down,” a girl from the back interrupted. “He said memorizing stories wasn’t enough, because one person tells the story to another, then another, and then another. In the end, the final story will come out different than the original.”
The mysterious woman sighed. She was doing her best not to burst out screaming, “trust me!” She inhaled all the air she could, “I made sure I memorized this story word for word. It’s an important one,” she tilted her head slightly, gazing at them from behind the fire. There was something strange about her eyes. “May I ask why you all call him Charmwill?”
The children laughed mockingly at her, “because he is the famous Charmwill Glimmer, the best storyteller in the world.” A girl said and raised her hands in the air. Other kids imitated her.
“So he has never told you his real name?” The woman’s eyes dimmed with confusion.
“What are you talking about?” the lisping girl asked. “That is his real name!”
The woman squinted behind the fire. She was thinking while rubbing her chin over the veil. A moment later, her eyes widened, “I was just joking with you. Of course, that’s his real name. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to tell my story,” she rubbed her hands together with fake enthusiasm.
The boys and girls sighed, a bit sleepy, mumbling a ‘yes’ or two between the lot of them. They doubted anyone could match Charmwill’s skills in storytelling, but thought they would give her the chance to try.
She began, “Once upon a time…”
“Is this going to be boring?” the lisping girl asked. “All stories that start with ‘Onth upon a time’ end with ‘And they lived happily ever after.’ It’s so boring.”
“So lame,” a boy commented.
“As if we don’t know how it’s going to end,” the girl from the back said. “That’s why we like Charmwill’s stories. They are different. Full of darkness, humor, intrigue and mystery.”
“Yeth. You never know who’s who in his stories,” the lisping girl said. “And it’s hard to tell who’s good and who is evil.”
“Oh, so you don’t like it when you can differentiate between good and evil?” the woman inquired.
“Charmwill said there is nothing absolutely good or evil,” the girl in the back said. “It’s our choice to make it one way or the other.”
“Indeed,” the woman in the veil looked like she was smiling behind the luxurious fabric. “Evil is a point of view.”