“What kind of clue did the Creator leave?” the lisping girl rubbed her chin.
The woman under the veil laughed, “I can’t tell you, because like every one else, I want the mirror. Let’s just say it’s hidden somewhere in the Dreamworld,” she whispered.
“That means that the Boy Who was a Shadow can get it,” a boy said. “He is a Dreamhunter.”
The woman’s forehead wrinkled slightly. “How do you know that he’s a Dreamhunter? Did Charmwill tell you that?”
“We also know that he was once a dark boy, a Huntsman, working for the Queen of Sorrow,” another girl said. “She thinks she is smart, but she will lose in the end.”
The woman stood up with anger in her eyes, “How do all of you know this? Charmwill could not have told you that!” she demanded.
“Of course, he didn’t. The last time he was here, he only told us he was going to see the boy,” the lisping girl said.
“Then how did you know?” The children heard the sound of grinding teeth coming from behind the veil.
“We learned some of the stories through this,” one girl stretched out her hand, revealing a piece of purple candy.
“What is this?” the woman tried to snatch it but the girl pulled away.
“It’s the magic candy he gave us before he left,” the girl in the back explained. “He said the candy would make us have happy dreams each night while we slept, but we discovered the candy revealed stories to us from all around the world. One of those was the Boy Who was a Shadow’s story and how Carmilla had his Fleece.”
“You know about Carmilla, and the Fleece, too?” the woman in the veil sounded furious.
“Wait,” the lisping girl leaned back, pulling her friends with her. “How could you not know about the candy if Charmwill sent you?”
“Look!” the girl in the back pointed at the woman, “her eyes!”
The children squinted in the dark, still keeping their distance.
“Oh. My. God,” a boy said. “She has the golden tinge shining in her eyes. She has a splinter from the mirror!”
“She fooled us,” the other boy said. “She isn’t a friend of Charmwill. She’s here to find out about the clue to the mirror. She thinks Charmwill may have told us about it.”
“Damn you all, little horrible children” the woman’s voice gushed. She talked in a darker tone now. A breeze of wind pulled the veil off the woman’s face as if it had hands and was determined to expose her.
“Run!” the lisping girl screamed.
The Children of Hamlin ran away from the woman in the veil, the way their ancestors wished their children had run away from the Pied Piper centuries ago. Although they hadn’t met the woman in the veil before, they suddenly felt they knew her. Her face was engraved in their deepest nightmares. They felt in their hearts that they had inherited her evil image from their parent’s nightmares, and their grandparent’s nightmares, but they didn’t know how this was possible. They were running away from a great evil who pretended to be friends with Charmwill Glimmer.
Alone in the dark, the Queen of Sorrow pulled off her veil like a devil pulling off his mask. She wiped her dress off as if she’d become dirty sitting around the Children of Hamlin, and cursed them under her breath.
Her pumpkin coach arrived, and a short hunched man with a silver tooth hurried to open the door for her.
“My Magnificent Majesty,” the hunched man pulled off his hat. He wore white gloves and used a crooked cane to hold himself up against the weight of his hunched back, which resembled a sack full of dead children. Igor the Magnificent was the Queen’s driver.
“The best thing about you, Igor, is that your back is arched. It’s like you’re cursed to show your respects forever,” the Queen of Sorrow said mockingly. “I wish every one else working for me was like that.”
“Don’t worry, Magnificent Majesty,” Igor said. “They will all bow for you eventually,” he opened the door, and the Queen stepped up into her coach.
Inside the coach, sat her favorite mirror.
“How did it go, my Queen?” Bloody Mary asked. “Did you find out about the clue to the Anderson Mirror?”
“No, Mary,” the Queen took off her gloves, finger by finger. “But I learned a couple of other things that worry me.”
“And what would that be, Majesty?”
“Charmwill, although dead, communicates with the Children of Hamlin through some kind of candy that makes them dream of things he never revealed to them in his previous stories,” Carmilla said.
“I know this worries you, my Queen,” Bloody Mary said. “But you chopped off his head and buried him in the Sands of Time. We’ve got more important work to do now. Don’t you agree?”
“I sure hope so, Mary,” Carmilla said. “The other thing is that Charmwill never told them who he really is. I wonder why.”