It was the end the 18th century and Snow White’s curse seemed to spread everywhere. People were turning into what the locals called vampires all the time, and were hunted and killed however young their age. They ripped out their heart after staking them for it was rumored the heart was the center of the disease. It was called the vampire craze, a historical event that the Brothers Grimm couldn’t forge since it was documented by other historians, starting from Europe and spreading overseas to the Kingdom of Sorrow.
We couldn’t risk anyone knowing about her so we locked her in the castle, waiting until she reaches the age of sixteen. A gypsy healer told us that this was when she would heal, that her soul would weighs exactly 21 grams when she is sixteen. The weight of the soul was measured in a mysterious way that I didn’t know of, but it the soul weight was part of the weight of the heart and could be only measured by weighing the heart with some ancient instrument that I have never heard of before. No heart can be cured before it grows big enough to hold a soul that weighs 21 grams inside it. Snow White’s heart when she becomes sixteen years old.
One night, when she was eight, she came to my room late at night while my husband was out in the battlefields.
“Shew?” I asked.
She didn’t reply, approaching me in the dark as if she were sleepwalking, and stopping by bed. Her face glittered beneath the candle light. I saw that tint of gold in them again like golden fireflies shimmering in the dark.
She didn’t talk. She just pulled my hand from under the sheets and sucked on my thumb after pricking it with the edge of her fangs. She only drank a couple of drops and smiled at me with her now-not chubby cheeks. She looked incredibly lively and more beautiful after she did. My daughter was beautiful monster.
It was not in her intentions to hurt me. She did love me as much as I did.
“Mom?” She wondered as she tucked herself under the sheets and hugged me. To tell the truth, she didn’t say mom. She addressed me by my real name, which I prefer to keep for myself for now. I don’t think you can understand if I told who I really am. “Do you remember the day I was born?” she asked.
I wondered why she asked because I do remember it clearly like looking into a pure crystal ball. It was a strange day. A very strange day.
“Do you?” I wondered, running my hand through her hair.
“No. But I have these dreams where I am someone really important in this world like my father, a fearless warrior. I have to choose between saving the world,” She stopped for a second. “Or destroying the world.”
Then she went to sleep.
***
Now in the cottage, I stopped telling my story at this point and looked at Jacob Grimm’s dead body.
“That’s enough for a Deadtime story,” I whispered to him and rolled his eyes shut with my hands. I placed two mirror coins onto them to block his eyes from looking into the Dreamworld from the afterlife. “Still you’d wonder about me, right? If I was so tender and she was the monster, how did I become what I am now?” I let out a painful laugh. “Well, that’s a long story, Jacob. I will write this in my diary tonight and when the time comes, I will be able to write it in the Grimm Diaries. 2012 is coming to a close and the war of altering the tales will start again.”
I made sure I placed the mirror coins upon his eyes so everyone will know that I was here when Jacob died. This was my trademark. The mirror coins were exclusively mine. I made them from the shards of shattered mirror glass that I broke myself after it witness death. A mirror that witnesses death is as dear to me as a poisoned apple that steals the breath.
After I turned around to leave the cottage, I stopped for a moment as I saw something. There were seven items on a round table beside the door: A fork, a plate, a cup, gingerbread, a chair, a knife, and some magical beans.
Each item belonged to one of the Lost Seven.
“Ha. You believed in this stuff until your last breath, Jacob,” I sighed, fiddling with the items. “You still believe they weren’t dwarves, and you were right. But if you’re so proud of having found three of them, I didn’t tell you that I found them all. The Lost Seven. I found them scattered across the universe and the Dreamworld, most of them not knowing who they are. I will capture them and make them remember. And when I do,” I said as opened a small box with a dead heart in it. “This heart’s soul will weigh exactly 21 grams. And this heart will be mine.” I closed the box and tucked in.
As I bent over to poof the only candle in the cottage and put it to sleep, I saw a pair of boots showing from under the curtains. I smirked for I knew who it was. I couldn’t figure out how she found her way into the Dreamworld – she must have had another Dreamhunter help her. I preferred to let the intruder not know that I saw him. I was happy she heard the story to know what I am capable of.