Hesitantly, Fable and Shew sat down. Axel had been good with his researches so far, so they thought they’d listen to what he had to say.
“Now look, girls,” Axel said, pulling out his most precious books, Loki’s Dreamhunter Guide and J.G.’s diary. “I’ve listened to all you two had to say about the Dreamworld, Cerené, the Queen of Sorrow, the Art, the Clue, Murano, Baba Yaga, the Wall of Thorns and all your blah blah blah.”
“Get to the point, Axel,” Shew sighed.
“The truth is there is no ‘point’,” he said. “Actually, I have no idea what is really going on. All I know is that I’m surrounded by fairy tale people, and frankly I enjoy discovering who they are and how they are interconnected to each other and our real world history. Well, most of them are lunatics, but who isn’t—no offence, Shew, but you know you scared the hilly billies out of us in the Schloss.”
“Could you just skip all this mumbo jumbo,” Fable said. “Tell us what you know.”
“Here is what I know,” Axel rubbed his hands. “On my way here with my fellow nerdfighters, members of the awesome Harum Skarum forum, and dear friends of Genius Goblin, I replayed all you told us happened in the dream in my head. I mean I understand that everyone is searching for the Lost Seven, and that the Phoenix is one of them, but some things you said were really strange and needed analyzing.”
“Did that help?” Shew wondered. “Did you come up with a way to bring Cerené back, maybe,” she said out of wishful thinking. She’d left Cerené to sleep for a hundred years.
“The amazing news is I did figure out something even more important,” Axel said. “Everything you told me about Cerené, her Art, that she is glassblower, and her mother didn’t really interest me. However, two things did,” Axel scratched his chin. “Murano and Moutza.”
“What about them?” Shew asked.
“Doing my genius research, I discovered that Moutza is a traditional gesture of insult among Greeks,” Axel explained. “It’s done by extending all fingers of your hand and presenting the palm toward whomever you want to insult.”
“So?” Shew frowned. “It’s probably a coincidence.”
“Not when it was used in older times, reportedly in different regions in Europe in rituals of burning witches by the stake,” Axel’s eyes widened. “Witches who could make fire,” he leaned forward.
“Are you serious?” Shew said.
“Not just that,” Axel continued. “The witch was usually seated on a horse, facing backward, while they smeared her face with something dirty to humiliate her before they’d probably banned her or killed her. You know what that dirty thing was?”
“Blood?” Fable uttered, and Shew started worrying about her.
“Cinder,” Axel said proudly.
“Cinder?” both girls considered. Shew took a moment to comprehend the connection.
“Remember when Cerené told you her mother wanted to call her Cinder or Cinderella?” Axel said. “In J.G.’s diary, he mentions that the Phoenix is also called Cinder—one of her many names. Cinderella was her name inspired by the Phoenix and the way its ashes rose back from after it burned.”
“But what does that mean exactly?” She wondered.
“Like I said, I don’t really have a ‘point’ but I see the connections,” Axel said.
“Which means you have nothing useful to tell us,” Fable sighed.
“Easy on me, sis,” Axel said. “Wait until I tell you about Murano Island.”
“Murano is the island Venetian glassblowers were banned to,” Shew said. “And where Cerené was born. What about it?”
“According to the story by the mysterious Alice Grimm you met—which I am really curious about—, the creator of the mirror hid his clue to control it inside Cerené, right?” Axel said.
“That’s right. A clue that grants its discoverer power of the all splinters in the world,” Shew explained.
“I kept thinking about when this really happened,” Axel said. “I mean for something that created a conflict between the so called forces of good and evil since the beginning of time, how could Cerené be the clue?”
“I don’t understand,” Shew said.
“I mean Cerené is about your age,” Axel said. “The creator couldn’t have made the mirror and the clue in the late 18th century. It must have been since hundreds, if not thousands, years ago. I don’t know what when the beginning of time is exactly.”
Shew felt like hit with a pebble in her face. Axel was right. Cerené was too young to be the clue. But maybe the clue passed through Cerené’s family. Maybe she inherited it from Bianca, and Bianca inherited it from her own mother.
”So I researched this Murano incident when glassblowers had been banned out of Venice for creating too much fire,” Axel said. “It’s a true incident, one of the most important historical events in the history of Venice and glassmaking. But do you even know when this occurred?”
“When?” Fable asked.
“1291,” Axel clapped his hands together. “That’s almost eight hundred years ago.”