After a while, Lucy decided to help in her own way. She made Axel fetch an ax from her four-wheeler. She suggested they’d use it if they needed to break the mirror in case Loki was stuck in the Dreamworld. It was impressive how she’d learned everything Loki explained to her about the process in no time at all—still, he was worried why she had an ax on her four-wheeler in the first place.
Loki was proud of his three assistants, learning the rules of the Dreamworld, and helping him as the Dreamhunter. The four ran back and held the glass coffin by its corners, standing at the threshold of the angry castle. Axel and Fable grabbed the two corners in front, Axel and Lucy grabbed the backsides. The ground between the castle and the Dream Temple sloped slightly upward, which made it harder to push the coffin forward, but would be easier on the way back. It was strange that an icy pond good enough for skating had formed over the ground. It would be dangerous if it cracked and someone fell into the freezing water underneath. Loki had no time to question if the icy pond over what once had been solid earth was part of the castle’s soul.
A lightning bolt struck again. The castle was huffing and puffing. It made such boiling and bubbling sounds Loki thought it was ready to explode.
“I understand that the castle is angry with us, but why is the weather getting worse?” Lucy yelled back, the wind eating at her words and taking her breath away.
“Snow White is manipulating the weather,” Axel offered his expertise. “You know vampires can control the weather, right?”
“That’s not her now,” Fable corrected him. “It’s the castle!”
“Enough with the chitchat,” Loki said. “Adjust the timing of the Waker, Axel,” Loki shouted. “Make it thirty five minutes. We need about five minutes to move the coffin to the Dream Temple, and hopefully five minutes when I come back from the dream.”
“Done!” Axel said.
Loki’s hands were ice cold. The wind was so intense he imagined he might go flying through the air like a street sign ripped from its foundation.
“Is everyone ready,” Loki gazed into their faces one by one. “Let’s go!”
They started pulling the coffin out.
If the castle had hands and feet, it would’ve chased them—Loki looked behind him to make sure it wasn’t. It was roaring as if it was the belly of a ferocious beast. Loki thought its huge double doors opened as wide as a whale’s mouth for a second, but wasn’t sure. The sounds it made were loud and deafening, and the weather was quickly nearing an intolerable state. Still, they had to keep on going.
The little slope upward was exhausting, the ice cracking slightly underneath them.
“Don’t look down,” Loki advised.
They reached the Dream Temple and pulled the coffin into the middle. Loki knelt down and parted Snow White’s eyelids with freezing fingers, and dropped the Baby Tears in her eyes. Her eyes took on a bluish-gold tint with tiny white spots floating around in them as if they were inside a snow globe. Then he closed her eyes and covered them with his two Obol coins.
“Why cover her eyes?” Lucy asked.
“The eyes are windows to the soul,” Loki shouted, spitting snow. “In this case, they are windows to the Dreamworld. Covering them prevents evil from crossing over from the Dreamworld to our world.”
“So what’s the Incubator?” Fable said, looking at Axel, praying he had found the right word.
“I hope you didn’t mess it up, Axel,” Loki said. “Or I will enter the dream, oblivious of where it will take me.”
“Don’t worry, Loki, I got it,” Axel said proudly. “I got it; a word and a number. It will help you enter Snow White’s dream, and you’ll enter it right where she wants to show you what happened to her.”
“So what is it?” Fable yelled impatiently.
“The word is ‘Jawigi’,” Axel yelled as lightning screeched in the sky. “It’s the word that is written on the library’s floor.”
“Does it have a meaning?” Loki asked.
“It’s the key to the Dreamworld,” Axel said. “It turns out the Brothers Grimm created this Dreamworld, Jawigi, for some reason.”
“What?” Fable said. “I don’t understand. What does Jawigi have to do with the Brothers Grimm’s names?”
“The ‘j’ and ‘a’ are from Jacob’s first name, Axel explained. “The ‘w’ and ‘i’ are from Wilhelm, his brother. The ‘g’ and ‘i’ are from their family name Grimm. It’s a code, something like an anagram.”
“So who are the Brothers Grimm again?” Lucy asked. Everyone stared incredulously at her.
“They wrote the Snow White fairy tale,” Axel said.
“And what’s the number?” Loki asked, the wind ruffling his hair.
“What do you think?” Axel said. “1812, the year the tale was written, about two hundred years ago.”
Loki connected the Ariadne Fleece to a mirror, watching its surface rippling. This time the rippling was accompanied with a purple shimmering light. Loki wrapped the other side of the fleece around his wrist. Undeterred, he could still hear the castle’s anger behind him. Then he lay next to Snow White, and whispered the word Jawigi in her ear, repeating it three times. He watched her head move slightly as if nodding while staked and asleep.