In the Kingdom of Sorrow, Cerené was a nobody. She could’ve been killed without anyone missing her.
“Are you still thinking about why the Queen spares me?” Cerené broke the silence.
“So you actually have an idea?” Shew said.
“Yes,” Cerené looked sideways, inspecting for intruders then leaned forward, “the Queen wants my Art!”
“Oh?” Shew raised her eyebrows.
“You think your Art is that valuable?”
“You have no idea,” Cerené’s face lit up from behind the ashes, titling her neck upwards, and making both her hands into fists. “My Art is astounding!”
“Alright, then it’s time for you to show it to me.” Shew would have preferred if Cerené just told her what the Art was. The things Cerené had shown her were fascinating, though. It was reasonable to think the Art was worth the suspense and the wait. What could Cerené possibly have that the Queen would desire enough to spare her life?
Shew’s thinking confirmed the Queen’s phoniness when she warned her not to mingle with Cerené. In fact, the Queen must have told her the Italian fairy tale for a reason, something to stir Shew’s thinking.
“Remember when I told you my Art is made of a Heart, a Brain, and a Soul?” Cerené said. “There are two Brains, the tools for my Art, one of them can only be obtained from a house in the Black Forest.”
“House?”
“An evil house,” Cerené leaned in, whispering.
“Huh? Evil house,” Shew said. “If it’s such an evil house, why would it help your Art?”
“There is something special in the house, something we need.”
We? Shew thought. Although I am barely contributing to anything, I like the idea of ‘we’.
“What kind of something special?” Shew wondered.
“A furnace!” Cerené exclaimed. “One where children are cooked.”
12
A Trail of Breadcrumbs and Candy
Cerené called it the Candy House, an abandoned house on the top of a hill beyond the forest. She described it as the second most haunted house in the Kingdom of Sorrow.
“If this is the second, what is the first?” Shew asked, following the tiny ashen girl into the dark of the forest. The way Cerené guided her through the secrets of Sorrow, reminded Shew of an imaginary childhood she should have experienced. Had she not been a prisoner of the Schloss by her father King and mother Queen, she should have experienced the kind of adventures Cerené did. The girl might have been poor but the world was her playground. Nothing could’ve been more fun than a childhood of exploring the doghouse in the garden and pretending it was a rabbit hole to another dimension. Of course, in Sorrow she didn’t need to pretend anything. Surreal and imaginary was normal.
“The most haunted house in Sorrow is the Schloss itself,” Cerené said, ducking to avoid a bending tree branch—trees acted mostly like humans in Sorrow, using their branches like arms, tickling you, playing with you, and sometimes doing things that were more sinister.
“The Schloss is not haunted,” Shew squinted her way through.
“Oh, yes, it is,” Cerené said. “Did you know your cellar was a dungeon used for torturing enemies and that the Schloss had been seen in others places around the world before your father even built it in Sorrow? It’s a Genus Loci.”
“What’s a Genus Loci?”
“All the things I just mentioned about the Schloss before. Basically, it’s a place with a soul of its own. Pay attention, Joy.”
“Oh,” Shew said. “I get it,” Trust me, you don’t have to tell me about the Schloss.
“The fact that you and the Queen live in the house makes it haunted already,” Cerené chuckled nonchalantly.
“I’m not offended by what you just said, thank you very much,” Shew let out half-a-laugh. Shew began regretting she had told Cerené to speak her mind. The girl was too frank to be honest.
“Don’t shake hands with the trees by the way,” Cerené said without looking back. “It’s a trap.”
“Shake hands?” Shew saw two tree branches taking the shape of human wooden hands and shaking each other as if they were friendly. One of them turned to Shew and offered her a hand. Shew snarled at the tree branches. She scared them so much that they ran away on eight branches, like spiders on eight legs.
“What have you done?” Cerené peeked back from between the bushes. Her ashen face was barely visible. Only her blue eyes and white teeth showed—the toothpaste had been working its magic.
“I snarled at them,” Shew said impatiently. “I’m fed up with all the scare. I think it’s time I use my powers.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Cerené objected. “They already fear you. Many things in the forest fear you. They know who you are, and it scares them.”