“Wow, this is like magic,” Lucy said.
“This is magic!” Fable said. She stood tangent to the circle, preparing to throw a good amount of Magic Dust into Loki’s face. “Take care of yourself, Loki. You’re a great Dreamhunter. From this moment on, there is no turning back.”
“Don’t forget to say the prayer,” Axel reminded him as Fable blew Magic Dust from the palm of her hand into his eyes.
“Yeah,” Loki said. “I will recite it silently,” he gripped his Alicorn, and quietly hoped it would be useful this time if he needed it.
“Hey,” Axel and Fable shouted in one breath, staring at Loki as he was becoming more and more drowsy. “Come back,” Axel said. “This world you hate so much isn’t that bad, you know,” added Fable.
Loki took a deep, cold breath, and said the prayer:
Now I lay me down to sleep.
If I die before I wake.
Forbid all evil
My soul to take
He couldn’t bring himself to say, ‘forbid Snow White my soul to take’ this time. He knew there was something evil waiting for him in the Dreamworld, but he wasn’t sure it was her.
Loki sank into Snow White’s Dreamory; into her memory of how she became a vampire, and what had really happened to her. Little did he know that it would change his, and the lives of the people in Sorrow, forever. The Boy Who Was Only Shadow was about to open the Dreamworld and expose the secrets of fairy tales.
21
She Who Must Be Obeyed
Loki opened his eyes in Snow White’s dream. He knew that his body in the waking world looked as if he were in a coma right now, and that if anything went wrong in the Dreamworld, he might never wake up again.
Loki lay on his back. Although there was no headache like in the last dream, he blinked a few times to clear his blurry vision. He also preferred not to stand up until he figured out the place and made sure it was safe. Wherever he was, the place was full of hot steam, and it seemed to be the reason for his unclear vision.
The smell of some aromatic soap filled the air. At first, he thought he smelled ripe apples, then he also smelled flowers, followed by dozens of other alluring smells, including chocolate, milk, and…
…it was hard to recognize that last smell, although it stood out the most, but it seemed oddly out of place.
One thing was obvious; he was in a bathhouse, lying on his back in a bathtub.
When the steam thinned, Loki was able to see the drawings on the ceiling. They were like nothing he’d expected, depicting horrifying scenes of a bathhouse—probably the same one he was in. Painted in an ancient European fashion, they illustrated young beautiful girls being dragged by servants to a huge bathtub where a beautiful woman laid bathing. She had inescapably attractive features, posing like a Queen, even in the bathtub. Everyone around her bowed their heads out of respect—or intimidation. She wore a thin, golden crown, braided into the golden locks of her wavy hair. She was bathing in what looked like a mixture of milk and dark chocolate syrup. Loki wondered why a queen would enter a bathtub with her crown on. Was she insecure about losing it?
But that wasn’t the horrific part. It was the drawings of the young girls lying slaughtered like lambs all around the woman with the crown. Each one had been bitten on her neck. Their blood filled the curvy grooves in the bathhouse’s floor, feeding the bathtub where the Queen bathed.
Loki rocked back on his feet, gripping his Alicorn, inspecting his surroundings. Most of the steam had cleared, and it was obvious he was in the same bathhouse depicted in the painting, now vacant with no traces of blood. Still, Loki could smell it in the air. Now he understood that it was the last smell he’d thought was out of place.
This close, the curvy grooves in the floor looked like an Octopus’s arms stretching from the sides of the curvy, and peculiarly big, bathtub. Loki jumped out of it and inspected the place further.
The bathhouse was built of crème-colored fancy bricks. The walls were carved with absolutely amazing scenes of battles like the ones he’d seen on the castle’s walls. Blue and gold were the most dominant colors, and almost everything around him incorporated curves in one way or another. It was as if the place had been sculpted carefully by the hands of the likes of Michael Angelo.
A seven year old version of Snow White appeared out of the hazy steam in front of him. She was holding onto her white dress with her small hands, swaying her body slightly back and forth. Her hair was long and black, flowing down her shoulders, and pulled back in a red ribbon. Her eyes were as blue as the clear summer sky, her lips were cherry red, and her skin was blindingly pale.
“So this isn’t really a dream?” Loki said. “Is this a memory of you being young again?”
“Bit of both,” Snow White replied.