“You two are just awful, talking about Snow White like that,” Fable said.
“Honestly, I hated the Snow White tale when I was a kid,” Axel said. “She was a pale girl who should’ve tanned more. Her father was absent and weak while her stepmother belonged to an asylum for the beautifully insane. I like Jack and the Beanstalk more. Jack was badass. He stole from giants.”
“Is that why you eat so much, to fight giants?” Fable said.
On the second floor, a long hallway led to a number of rooms on the right; ten rooms or more of wooden double-doors with golden handles the shape of a crow’s head. Loki started pushing the doors open then peeking into the rooms. The doors squeaked against the floor, and it took considerable strength to push them for they were very heavy. Only a hunk like Big Bad opened the doors with ease. The squeaking sound echoed in the huge, almost vacant, space. Loki heard a couple of birds flutter away somewhere.
“Those are really big doors,” Fable said, pushing hard with all her might, causing her body to bend over as if she was stretching in an aerobics class.
The rooms were ridiculously large, almost empty, except for an occasional bed with a nightstand, and large wooden wardrobes.
Fable welcomed each room with a happy dance of her own, tapping on the floor with a rhythmic tempo and stretching out her arms at her sides. She was excited, looking at the high ceilings as if waiting for the rain.
Since the rooms looked safe, Axel started opening more doors, feeling brave, silencing the fear inside him with the irritating sound of squeaking doors.
Axel pushed another door open and Fable dashed into the room with her dancing routine. Axel kept two forefingers crossed in the air, arching his back and examining the rooms like a bad cop with a crucifix in a B movie, the one who usually had two scenes left before he died.
“Don’t worry, Loki,” Axel said. “As long as I believe in the cross, I’m safe and protected.”
“It has to be made of wood or silver,” Fable suggested.
“If you really think it works, why didn’t you use it on her yesterday?” Loki said, walking back to the hallway.
“I was still weakened by my disbelief, but today I’m stronger,” Axel said, trying to sound old and wise, like mentors do in movies. “Ever hear the saying, ‘What doesn’t bite you makes you stronger’?”
“I want what you had for breakfast, because it must’ve been some good stuff,” Loki said. “Oh, wait. I forgot, the boogeyman ate your breakfast.”
Fable laughed; it was a snicker, almost like a sneeze.
Loki opened another room, and it was as empty as the rest. Was it possible that Snow White didn’t sleep in the castle? And why were there no mirrors anywhere? Such castles usually had mirrors, a lot of mirrors. Fairy tales were all about mirrors.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall?” Loki whispered, rubbing his fingers together as if tempting a horse with an imaginary cube of sugar in his hand. He turned back to look for a bathroom. There had to be at least one mirror in there.
“Hey,” Loki said to Axel and Fable. “Did you find any bathrooms?”
Looking out in the hallway, Loki couldn’t find Axel.
“Axel, where are you?” Loki wondered.
There was no answer; only Loki’s echoing voice.
“Fable?” he said.
There was no sign of Fable either, no sounds of clicking feet or singing to an invisible rain.
Loki swallowed hard, and pulled out his Alicorn.
“Stop playing tricks and come out now,” the loneliness of his echoing voice worried him.
What happened to them?
He hurried his pace, pushing more rooms open, merely glancing inside, and looking for them.
They weren’t here.
And not there.
“If you’re trying to pull a prank on me, it isn’t funny!” Loki said.
Three rooms away, he saw the sun bursting into the hallway which meant the room had been opened before he’d reached it. He approached it cautiously, listening to the cacophonic drumbeat of his heart. A light, too bright, was shining out of the room.
“Are you there, Axel?” Loki asked, two steps shy of the room’s entrance. The sound of his footsteps approaching added creepiness to the worrying symphony in his brain.
Loki stopped before the door, raising his stake with his back to the wall. He cocked his head–which Snow White had been twisting yesterday—trying to sneak a peek into the room.
And then, something wicked this way came.
It was a black creature, fluttering its large wings towards him, and hitting him in the head. Loki fell back in the hallway.
On his back, he took a second look at it and saw a huge crow, the size of a man, rustling its large wings, crossing over the staircase to the chandeliers, then flying away through an open window on the other side.