Cinderella Dressed in Ashes

31 A Conversation with Death

Shew hadn’t died in a dream before, so she didn’t know what to expect.

She thought she’d see herself leave her own body and fly like angels in the air, watching how her body lay still on the weighing table. Last time when she thought she was dead at the Wall of Thorns, it turned out she’d been saved by a mysterious someone. No one was going to save her this time.

Will I never know if my soul weighed twenty-one grams? Instead of having an out of body experience, Shew found herself locked inside her own body, unable to move. It was as if she were trapped in the carcass of her flesh and bones, watching the world from behind the bars of her eyelashes.

She couldn’t hear anything, nor could she see her soul flying in the air. She had no choice but hope her soul didn’t weigh twenty-one grams so Dame Gothel would bring her back for a later test like the girl before.

But how long did she have to wait? How could she count forty-two minutes while she was dead?

She remembered Loki’s kiss, the way he fought for her in the castle. She remembered when she teased him in the seven-year-old birthday dream, the flirty time they had in their last dream together. They had laughed, cried and bantered with each other. Loki almost died for her in the octopus bathtub. He didn’t give up, though. He followed her to the Queen’s pumpkin coach then shouted his silly ‘Ora Pedora’ and used his Chanta. Shew wondered if she could believe in the Chanta like him. It seemed unlikely. Loki had managed to fulfill his journey and learn who he really was. Shew was still dancing on hot coals. Neither did her feet get used to heat nor did she find a way to cross to a cooler place.

Right now, she was dead, walking the thin rope between before and after.

Charmwill crossed her mind somehow. Other than mourning his death, she thought Loki was lucky having the old pipe-smoking mentor. Someone who’d stand beside him each step of the way, but not interfere unless necessary. Why didn’t she have someone like that? A Chosen One needed a mentor like Charmwill. She wondered if there was a Godmother coming to save her now. Why was she so alone?

When she had first learned that Wilhelm Grimm sent Alice to her, she thought Alice was some kind of mentor. But what kind of mentor stole the necklace given to you by your lover?

She wondered if it was better to die instead of trying to solve the endless riddles of the world she lived in. Everyone she met seemed to have an agenda and a complex story. She had always thought her destiny was going to be crystal clear: here are the bad guys, and there are good; shoot the bad, help the good, audience clap as the curtains fall down.

But her life in Sorrow was far from black and white, and solving a riddle, only meant the birth of another. For instance, how could she and Cerené have been on the same pirate ship, the Jolly Roger? Could that have been a coincidence? Everything seemed connected in the most mysterious ways in Sorrow.

Shew laughed in her mind—her lips had paled and were not hers anymore. She was laughing at the idea of dying without knowing who she really was, and what she was capable of; the worst torture of all.

She gave in to the dimness of her mind, the curtain of afterlife draping down on all living things, listening to the faint and distant voice of Dame Gothel, saying, “Twenty-one grams, majesty.”

Shew wanted to scream but she had no mouth. She felt someone moving her body, and she predicted they were taking her corpse to the bathhouse for the Queen to feast on her heart and swim in her blood.

But then she felt the emptiness around her as if everyone had simply left the chamber, probably preparing the bathhouse and then coming back to pick her up. They had no reason to worry about the princess’ corpse. It wasn’t going anywhere.

Although her paralyzed eyes were fixed on the ceiling, she saw someone in front of her, a woman in red with a scythe in her hand.

Oh, Great, hello Mrs. Death.

“You know who I am?” Death spoke. She had a sweet voice actually, and it helped a lot that she was a woman. Maybe she’d understand Shew better.

“The cookie monster?” She couldn’t help the sarcasm. You don’t meet with Death every day. Shew didn’t think leaving an impression was a bad idea. The woman in red didn’t respond.

So I offended Death. What is she going to do. Kill me?

“You know how many other souls I have to collect today?” she said bluntly, not appreciating Shew’s cheesy response.

“Busy day, huh?” Shew’s mind responded. “Can’t you just mass murder them all?” she said.

Death’s face looked liked it changed a little. She was trying not to smile.

“I mean how about tsunamis,” Shew couldn’t stop talking. “Earthquakes and volcanoes, they’re your doing, right? I always liked plagues. You just send the rats out into the world and go have a cigarette while the disease spreads. By the end of the day, everyone’s dead. Neat.”

“You talk too much,” Death said, banging her scythe against the floor.

“Are you going to cut my mind’s tongue?” Shew said, wondering why death felt like a hallucinogenic drug.

“Stop it, princess,” Death said. “I’m not necessarily going to take your life today.”

“I knew it,” Shew said. “You can’t kill me. I’m the Chosen One. It’s predictable that I won’t die. I’ve watched a lot of movies on teenager’s laptops, trapped in the Schloss.”

“You’re being silly, which actually means you’re trying to cover the fact that you’re sorry because you haven’t been strong enough,” Death said. “And if you think Death is the worst that could happen to you, then you’re greatly mistaken.”

“There’s something more painful than death?” Shew wondered. “Stupidity?”

Why does death feel like I’m high, smoking a hookah above the clouds?

“You know what’s worse than Death? Living a life of suffering and wishing for it,” Death said in a raspy voice with the kind of intensity Shew had initially expected Death to utter.

“So will you spare me? I spared a boy once,” Shew said.

“You spared him because you loved him,” Death said. “I don’t love you.”

“I am sure you don’t love anyone,” Shew said.

“I spared your mother the day you were born,” Death said.

Hearing this, Shew didn’t feel like joking anymore, “You did?”

“Do I look like I am joking?”

Hearing that from Death, Shew couldn’t argue, “of course, you aren’t. But I have the feeling you want to compromise.”

“Your mother was going to die giving birth to you,” Death explained. “I gave her a second life to take care of you.”

“It doesn’t look like she appreciated you saving her, I must say,” Shew commented.

“If I give you a second life, will you appreciate it?” Death said. “Will you stop your reluctance?”

“I could lie to you and you anything you want to hear right now,” Shew said. “You know that, right?”

“If you lie, you’re lying to yourself,” Death said, and turned around, walking away.

“Wait!” Shew said. “Aren’t you going to save me?”

“Of course, I won’t,” Death said, not looking back.

“But you promised!”

“I promised nothing,” Death said. “You were wondering why you had no one like Charmwill Glimmer in you life, someone who’d teach you how to be a Chosen One. Unfortunately, this isn’t how things happen in the Kingdom of Sorrow.”

“Then how am I going to learn?” Shew yelled. Ironically, her pain increased with every step Death took away from her.

“You should have learned a lot already. Everything you see, everyone you meet is for a reason,” Death’s voice was fading to grey. “Don’t worry. You won’t die, not this time. You’ll be saved, but not by me, but someone who loves you.”

Death’s words didn’t ease Shew’s feeling of betrayal. Mrs. Death came here, jumbled her thoughts for a while, and left her be. Shew didn’t understand the purpose behind her conversation with Death. Who loved Shew enough to save her? Loki was as good as dead to her, and she couldn’t think of anyone else but her father. She knew nothing about his whereabouts, and doubted he would show up all of a sudden. Shew assumed this was actually the end. Death had only been laughing at her.

Then something touched Shew’s lips.