“I should want to, but my gut instinct tells me not to,” Cerené said. “I don’t know why I get that feeling.”
“I see,” Shew nodded, making sure to ask her questions slowly, watching Cerené’s temper. She wasn’t going to ask her again how it was possible to know her mother while she was too young to remember her. “Can you tell me about…?”
“Bianca?” Cerené smiled unexpectedly. “She taught me how to become a glassblower.”
“She was a glassblower herself?”
“The best, she’s my mentor,” Cerené laced her fingers together. “She could create over a hundred glass artifacts in one day. She had the rarest talents and breathing methods. She knew every stone, every ingredient and mix. She knew of metals that no one had ever heard of. I once saw her turn iron into glass.”
“Wow,” Shew said. “She must have been extremely respected and appreciated.”
Cerené’s lips twitched again. She curled her fingers together, “Not really,” she said. “You see, my mother originally lived in Venice, a famous city for its lagoons and glassblowing among other things. But as much as glassblowing was a wonderful art, it was also a threat to the locals.”
“A threat?”
“Like I showed you, it needs a lot of fire. Houses in Venice were made of wood. Once in a while the glassblowers lit a house on fire, accidentally.”
“So the locals considered a glassblower a danger to their houses?”
“Not just that,” Cerené seemed reluctant. “Venetians thought of fire as a bad thing and that it came from the deepest pits of hell. Burning someone’s house was a serious sin because fire was loathed. It is true that they had plenty of water to extinguish the fire since the city floated on it, but in contrast, it had a significant meaning to the Venetians. God had created them a nation of water. Fire was their enemy. They feared it and all kinds of superstitions were attached to it.”
“I see,” Shew said. “So your mother’s art wasn’t appreciated.”
“It’s ironic because glass was one of Venice’s most profitable incomes—very few understood that fire was an essential part of making it. Visitors came from all over the world to see and buy our glass,” Cerené explained.
“I assume the Venetian authorities prohibited anyone from exposing the secrets of making that kind of beautiful glass art,” Shew said.
“Yes, that’s true. But how do you know?”
“Because there is always big talk about glass in the Schloss,” Shew said. “My mother spent a lot of money to import glass from all over the world. It’s very expensive and rarely as good as Venetian art, which is almost impossible to acquire. In addition, glass in general is very precious in Sorrow. You must know that.”
“I know,” Cerené nodded in a way that led Shew to think she knew much more than just that.
“So how did your mother cope with the conflict of people in Venice hating and loving glassblowers at the same time?” Shew asked.
“At some point, priests accused glassblowers of communing with the dark side. They said that only an evil art would need that amount of fire to be created,” Cerené said. “They believed that the fire that lit Hell helped in creating fabulous art. So, to some extremists, glass was the art of the devil.”
“That’s absurd.”
“This whole life is absurd,” Cerené sighed. “They were concerned that the production of glass in Venice had increased immensely, especially my mother’s and some of her friends.”
“You just said your mother could create more than a hundred glass artifacts per day,” Shew said.
“And it didn’t cross your mind why?” Cerené said. “As amazing as her talent was, she couldn’t produce that amount of fire needed in a single day. It was impossible.”
“How did she do it then?”
“Well, the Venetians extremists explanation was that she had access to a volcano that fed Hell itself,” Cerené said.
“Let’s skip the ignorant beliefs,” Shew said. “I want to know how your mother really did it.”
It took Cerené a moment to permit the words to come out of her throat, “My mother wasn’t just any glassblower. She was a…”
Shew held her breath. She suddenly thought she knew the answer.
“A Phoenix,” Cerené said, her eyes darted away from Shew’s as if it was a sin.
Shew exhaled. She knew this was going to be the answer. The same way she and her mother were vampires in different ways, Cerené and her mother were Phoenixes in their own individual ways. She still needed to know what a Phoenix did exactly.
“A phoenix is originally a bird that rises from the ashes after it burns,” Shew said. “I don’t quite understand what your mother was.”
“A Firebringer, some call her a Firemage,” Cerené said.
“I don’t follow.”
“Well, the right description of a Phoenix, especially when you’re a glassblower, is artists with the breathing talent to make glass, but few of them also have a certain power.”
“Which is?”
“They could create fire at will,” Cerené said.
19
Pandora’s Box