Cinderella Dressed in Ashes (The Grimm Diaries #2)

“But the stories and timelines aren’t exactly consistent,” Fable rubbed her ear, thinking and analyzing.

“We’re not going to discuss this again, are we?” Axel dared her eyes.

“I know, I know,” she waved her hands in the air. “All these books have been forged. They are bits and pieces of the reality we were led to believe was different. It’s as if some books were forged and some were hidden clues disguised in novels.”

“Written in codes and innuendos for geniuses like me to figure it out,” Axel said.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Humpty Dumpty” Fable teased him.

“Is that so?” Axel craned his neck and squinted one eyes. “How about this discovery? Remember when Loki told us Shew called her mother ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’?”

“I remember that one,” she said. “I thought it was very lame. I mean this really sounds like antagonist’s name in a Harry Potter book.”

“What if I told that it was the other way around? What if I told you that She Who Must Be Obeyed, aka Carmilla Karnstein, aka Mircalla, and aka the Queen of Sorrow has lived long before any of those books you mentioned were ever written?” Axel said.

“Can you prove that?” Fable hated when her brother was a smartass, but right.

“Look,” Axel showed her his most magnificent reference ever known to him: the internet, of course.

“Are you going to show me another book with the name She Who Must Be obeyed in it?” Fable pursed her lips.

Axel nodded confidently, “In 1886, a prestigious writer named Henry Rider Haggard, wrote a book that has never been out of print till this very day. The book is called ‘She.’ It’s about two travelers exploring the unknown African territories at the time. In their journey, they encounter a primitive race of black natives, enslaved by a mysterious white Queen, Ayesha, who reigns as the all-powerful ‘She’ who killed so many of them that the land was covered in red blood.”

“So what? All those color references could be a coincidence,” Fable inquired. “And her name is Ayesha. It doesn’t prove anything.”

“No, her name isn’t just Ayesha,” Axel said. “She’s known to be ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed.’” Axel slammed his chubby hand on the phone as if it were a precious treasure map.

“Are you saying this is Carmilla again?” Fable wondered. “And that this writer, like most of the others, wrote her history, disguised in a novel, to hint at the Queen of Sorrow’s existence?”

“Definitely,” Axel said. “There is even a part in the book where the author hints that she was feeding on her slaves, probably trying to tell us she was a vampire. This stuff happened 1886, in between the hundred years of Sleeping Death to all fairy tale character. We know that Carmilla has power over a small part of the Dreamworld called ‘Jawigi’, and that she must have had her way out of it while everyone was asleep, living far away in Africa until the other fairy tale characters woke up.”

“I really need to sit down,” Fable said, crossing her legs like and Indians flute player on the floor. “My head is going to explode.”

“If the Queen of Sorrow is all of those people,” Axel had to prove he was right. “Why wouldn’t Van Helsing be Loki’s father?”

“Carmilla’s story is different,” Fable wasn’t convinced. “It’s a bit too confusing. I was barely keeping up with fairy tale people being real, now the vampire lore, too?”

“It’s not that strange if you ask me,” Axel said. “If you accepted Shew being a vampire, then it shouldn’t surprise you that the Huntsman is connected to Dracula. The Huntsman was sent by the Queen to kill a vampire after all. Be it a Huntsman or Abraham Van Helsing it’s not that different.”

“OK, Axel,” Fabled inhaled. “Just let me digest this a little bit slower. I understand the V.H. thing, but this could still be a mere coincidence. Why would Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, do that?”

“Because, like the Brothers Grimm, he was forging the real history of vampires and fairy tales—which of course, no one would have ever thought they were connected,” Axel said. “I keep telling you that and you never listen.”

“And I suppose you’re going to tell that you don’t know why he forged it, the same way we still don’t know why the Brothers Grimm forged it.”

“That part is true,” Axel raised a finger in the air. “But what if I told you that Bram Stoker confessed forging the Dracula book to his liking, that it was a true story, and that he had to rename characters to protect them?”

“Now you’re crossing the line. No author would even admit that,” Fable said.

Axel said nothing, but a big smiled filled face, making way though his cheeks.

“You can’t prove that?” Fable challenged him.

“I can’t?” Axel accepted the challenge, surfing the internet on Loki’s phone. “Now look at this,” he urged Fable to come see.