Cinderella Dressed in Ashes

2 A World Between Dreams

I can control this. The word ‘Phoenix’ has no power over me in my subconscious. I have no idea why Carmilla made him use it. If only I could just control my dream and send Loki to another place. A place where…

Snow White opened her eyes to the bluest morning skies, bespattered with millions of tiny cloudy patches like snowflakes on a blue veil waving over the world. The sun appeared, slowly wiping the sky clean of the imaginary snowflakes. Weaves of the first threads of an upcoming rainbow curved all over the horizon, and the birds welcomed the morning with their songs as the sun kissed her face.

Her closed eyes twitched against the sun's warmth—she’d expected to be sent straight to hellish nightmares. Slowly, her eyelids opened up like a flower trusting the light, and her pupils made peace with the flare. She breathed easier and felt the warmth of the day gently piercing through her and reaching behind her eyes. Snow White felt as if she lay in a bed with a cushiony, slightly bumpy mattress. How was it possible she was in bed and could see the sun and the sky? How could she smell the flowers of endless fields surrounding her, and how were butterflies fluttering over her head as she lay down?

A butterfly with orange wings touched her nose briefly. Snow White propped herself up on her arms and inhaled the image through her eyes as if they were fabulous words from a fascinating poem.

What a beautiful dream. My dream. Or is it that I am dead and went to Heaven?

Finally, she discovered she was actually sleeping in a bed made of willows in the middle of the meadows away form the Schloss. Puckers of purple poppy blossoms were scattered like brocade, lightly tossed in heaps along the green distance leading to a river before a set of hills. Rills of water ran in curvy waves through the field, feeding the river in the distance, with dandelions dancing on both sides. The sun slanted through the gaps between thick trees of the forest to her left and splayed over the field, meeting with the sunrays from above. It made her feel like sitting in a bubble of pure light.

Snow White took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of the lovely scenery into her soul. The world was so beautiful around her she wished this wasn’t just a dream because she wanted to stay here forever. Usually, forever wasn’t associated with dreams.

“Shew!” someone waved at her in the distance.

She looked and saw a boy with shoulder-length black hair and a face that somehow lit up from afar. His eyes shone in the distance like an emerald green star falling down in her palms. He moved swiftly like a panther, confident and elegant. The smile on his face was partially welcoming like a long awaited hug, and partially wild like a kid using the world as his playground. He was about fourteen or fifteen years old, wearing a lot of armor and a sword at his side.

Snow White saw she was wearing a 19^th century white dress. She was in the Kingdom of Sorrow, in a place she didn’t remember. Was this another version of the kingdom her dream made up?

“Look what I got you,” Loki knelt down in front of her. “My princess,” he added with flirty eyes.

Snow White couldn’t take her eyes off him, not really caring about whatever he had for her. If he would just bring himself into her arms she would have no need for anything else.

“If you’re going to stare at me that way, you’re going to have to talk to me,” he said playfully, pulling her hand and ushering her to the field. They landed half-buried in purple poppies. “Or dance with me at the next ball in the castle, maybe,” he laughed, and grabbed a bite from a golden apple. It was if the sunrays followed his laugh, splaying onto his face and dimming the rest of the world.

She found an apple placed into the palms of her hands, too. He must have tossed it while she basked in his charm. Carmilla, her mom, had warned her of beautiful boys—after biting the prince, could she blame her?

“If you aren’t going to finish yours,” Loki pointed at the apple in her hand. “I will.”

Typical boy, she thought. Carmilla told her about boys being selfish and eating their woman’s food all the time. Thinking of it now after knowing that Angel fed on her mother’s blood for so long, it seemed plausible.

Loki reached for her apple.

“Get your hands off it,” Snow White pulled away and slapped him lightly on the back of his hand. “It’s my apple.”

“What a princess you are, my princess. No manners at all,” he smirked, locking eyes with her, “all feisty.”

Snow White blushed and looked away. Those eyes were hard to resist. Who said feisty in this time? There was something wrong with this dream.

Looking at the apple, she felt a little confused, as if trying to remember something that was just out of reach. Her gut instinct told her not to bite into it.

She looked back at Loki with his intense eyes locking with hers again. He stared at her forehead, her brows, then skipped and gazed at her mouth. His lips twitched for a moment, and his steady breathing suddenly felt rushed.

His silence was killing her, the way he slowly stared back at her lips in a triangular gaze that he repeated over and over again. Her eyes started to mirror his, examining his lips. The more she did it the more the world around them disappeared and dimmed. She could merely see his face and hear the deafening silence only interrupted by their breathing.

Snow White shifted her eyes abruptly and took a crunchy bite from the apple, killing the tension. Dangerous apples or not, who cared?

This is a dream, isn’t it? How is it so sweet when Carmilla controls him?

“Poison,” Loki said.

“What?” she glared in a muffled voice. The chunk of the apple almost lodged in her throat. She forced it in.

“Your eyes are like poison, my princess,” Loki said, “beautiful poison that could kill me if you stare at me too long.”

“Oh—” she relaxed. “Behave, Loki,” she patted him playfully on the chest of his armor.

“This is me behaving,” he said, leaning forward in his heavy armor, looking adorable. “Trust me.”

Snow White fought the blushing this time. He seemed to enjoy it, anyway, leaning forward to tempt her.

“I can send you to jail,” she warned him with a lying finger. “I am the princess.”

Loki laughed that stargazing, sun-sucking, radiating laugh. “And I shall go to jail,” he bowed his head obediently. “If my princess so wishes.”

Snow White shied away, giggling with a hand over her mouth.

“I am all yours, princess,” Loki brushed a blooming flower over her nose.

“Stop calling me princess, huntsman,” she said.

“I can’t,” he stuck the white flower into the curls of her hair. “You’ll always be my princess.”

“Always?” she asked.

“Always,” Loki nodded and pulled her nearer and kissed her.

Snow White couldn’t breathe. Loki’s move was abrupt and forceful. She could not resist his lips though, not even in a dream. She gave in and kissed him back, eyes closed. He took her hand and placed something in it. A silver necklace with a round pendant.

Snow White felt him close her fingers on it like a guarding seashell, and then he squeezed her hand. She complied almost hypnotically. Whatever that necklace was, she was sure it was worth invading his lips.

Unexpectedly, his lips tasted different; bitter, salty and even … smelled of blood.

Snow White pulled away and saw Loki’s face had saddened, his eyes gazed into hers. He pressed on the necklace one more time and nodded toward it as if not wanting anyone to know he gave it to her.

What was going on? Is the Schloss watching this dream? Is he afraid to tell me something, again?

The dream had felt strange from the beginning and now Loki’s silence worried her even more. His green eyes filled with terror. No, not terror, it was more of regret. He was afraid, but of what?

“One of us is going to do something terrible very soon,” he said.

“What are you talking about?

“When the time comes, do it,” he whispered in her ear. “Choose wisely, and remember that whatever happens, however evil I look, I love you,” he clamped his hand over her mouth as the sun began to fade away from behind the veiled blue sky, dimming the world the way curtains are pulled down to keep the light out of rooms. The poppy field around her paled and died on its own, slowly, the plants fell to their knees as if they were drunk.

“This isn’t the dream yet,” Loki whispered. “It’s the World Between Dreams. This is the real me calling for you, Shew, before things go wrong. This might be the last time we meet the way I am now before the Huntsman in me takes hold.”

Suddenly, some of the plants around Loki glided like snakes all over his body and pulled him down.

“Loki!” Snow White screamed.

“Read it,” he said before the plants covered his mouth, rendering him unable to talk.

As the dream turned into a nightmare all around her, she opened her palm and examined the necklace. What was he trying to tell her?

The necklace was made of wood, shaped in the form of a circle fixed on a horizontal access. Its design looked like a circle from afar. She looked harder and saw some engravings. They looked like letters, but they were undecipherable. What use was it if she couldn’t decipher it?

She looked back at Loki, pulled by the snakiest poppies down until the earth almost swallowed him. The plants had started wrapping around her legs as well.

This is the World Between Dreams. He had said. It explained why this place seemed so lovely. It was a mental bridge in Loki’s conscious before they descendent down the Dreamworld. He used it to tell her something through a necklace she couldn’t read.

Snow White stared at the skies above, feeling dizzy. It was time to enter the real dream, or rather nightmare. She took one last look at the curious engravings on the necklace. They looked like this: