“How do you know more about vampires than I do?”
“If you’ve ever read Bram Stoker’s Dracula, you’ll know that vampires have the ability to manipulate the weather, especially those from the 18th century.”
“She’s from the 18th century?”
“That’s what I read in the forum. I’ll tell you more about her. If. We. live.”
Loki watched the vapor coming out of Axel’s mouth shaping into letters on the surface of the misty night in front of him. ‘If. We. Live.’
“You saw that? The letters?” Loki said.
“I did,” Axel had already closed his eyes. “Blink, Loki, blink, and it will be gone.”
He blinked once, and the letters were gone. But now there was this sound that scared him. Loki flung his eyes open. The girls were singing again. Those girls he’d first heard when he arrived in Sorrow. He listened to them singing faintly, somewhere in the dark:
Snow White one, Snow White two,
Sorrow was coming out for you.
Snow White three, Snow White four,
Black as night, go lock your door.
Snow White five, Snow White six,
Blood red lips and crucifix
Snow White seven, Snow White eight,
Row your boat, before it’s late,
Snow White Nine, Snow White ten,
The Schloss will get you and what then?
“Can you hear that?” Loki asked Axel.
“Yup,” Axel clutched his lips together, stressing on the letter ‘p’ so hard Loki worried Axel wasn’t going to open up again. His cheeks bubbled up like a balloon, and his face went blue. Loki poked one cheek with his finger. Axel let out a breath with one long pfoof.
The mist started to clear, and Loki could see the Black Forest in the distance.
“We’re almost there. Ease up,” Loki said.
“Can you see Big Bad and his friends?” Axel said.
“No,” Loki saw a dense orchard of Juniper Trees blocking the entrance to the forest. “But I can see their empty log boat.”
“They must’ve found the Schloss by now.”
“Maybe,” Loki took a deep breath and dragged Axel behind him into the dark of the forest.
Tingling goose bumps grew on Loki’s skin, and hair prickled on his back. The forest had a presence of its own, an aura of chilling cold and muddy ground that smelled like the crushed bones of the dead buried underneath. It was both fascinating and frightening. Suddenly Loki saw flashes of things that happened here hundreds of years ago. He didn’t know how but he saw a vision of a princess running away from something—or someone. Then the vision vaporized away.
“Are you alright?” Axel worried.
“Fangtastic,” Loki replied, as always, too proud to show his fears.
The crawling Juniper Trees blocked the view of the night sky above them. It felt like they were entering a cave made of arching trees.
“Hey, I just remembered something I once read about,” Axel said.
“What now?”
“Those Juniper Trees were mentioned in a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.”
“I bet it was a bright and happy Christmas-like tree,” Loki used his Alicorn to make his way through the dense bushes.
“Not at all,” Axel said. “You probably don’t know much about the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. They are full of gore and killings. In this specific fairy tale, the tree was an incarnation of a boy who was murdered by his stepmother and buried in the ground.”
“Really?” Loki noticed that whenever someone told him something about fairy tales lately, they didn’t seem as giddy and happy like he’d always thought of them. He continued walking in silence for a while.
“Hey,” Axel whispered as if not to disturb the trees. “I think something tapped me on my back.”
“Shhh,” Loki said, trying to find his way through the dense trees. His flashlight was hardly lighting the way.
“I am serious,” Axel insisted. “Something touched me.”
“Once we find the castle, we’ll look into this thing that tapped you,” Loki sighed.
“It just happened again,” Axel shivered. “It’s as if many tiny cold hands are tapping on my head and my back.”
“OK, OK, just stop tapping me,” Loki said.
“What?” Axel asked. “I didn’t touch you.”
Loki froze in place. He questioned why ghosts would tap him on his back instead of just Booing at him.
Loki turned around. Axel was gazing upward at an unseen sky blocked by the curling branches. Small white snowflakes were dropping all around, passing through the voids between the trees.
“This is a divine warning,” Axel said, wrath from the sky.”
“What?”
“Can’t you see that it only snows behind us, never in front of us? It’s as if the snow is hunting us.”
“Crap.”