Blood, Milk & Chocolate - Part 1 (The Grimm Diaries Book 3) (6 page)

11

The
following years, I was spoiled with the precious love and care of my mother,
and especially my father, Philip Karnstein II.

At age
seven I was pampered with all kinds of exotic dresses from all over the world.
Those I liked best were the embroidery dresses my father said were exclusively
designed by fairies in a faraway place called Neverland. I was always
surrounded—also guarded and protected—by too many servants eager to
please me. Visitors from other lands still came and kissed my hands for
blessing.

At the
times of gathering apples, we always had the Avalon festival, where I was
carried on a high chair by peasants and walked through the land to greet the
locals. Avalon was said to mean "apples," and of course I had no idea
what was going on exactly. But it never hurt to wave back at the people who
thought I was an angel or something.

On every
Hallows' Eve, in the time of harvest, they sat me on a chair made of a huge pumpkin—also
imported from Neverland—and walked me again through the city, waving at
all the peasants.

My parents
never let me out of their sight. They even denied me the right to play with
other children at the Pond of Pearls, a beautiful lake that everyone loved to
visit and watch their reflections in the water, as mirrors hadn't been invented
yet—at least, we hadn't known about them in Styria. Only a few elegant
women, like my mother, used copper and obsidian mirrors, which were nothing
like the silver mirrors introduced to us many years later. Their reflection was
bobby and unclear. They also cost a fortune and had to be imported, not from
Neverland but from a factory called
Kurmainzische Spiegelmanufakturin
in
Lohr in Germany. The factory resided near the
Spessart
forest, which
meant "Woodpecker" forest, and was repeatedly visited by Austrians.
The Germans and the Italians, on an island called Murano, competed for the best
glass and mirror manufacturing in the world at the time.

Still I
never got to play with the children at the Pond of Pearls, and never got to see
my reflection in the water like them. I thought it would be enchanting to see
my reflection and know what I looked like exactly. I never knew why I wasn't
allowed to play by the Pond of Pearls until later.

For the
time being, I was occupied learning the history of our ancestors. My family
turned out to be unusual and greatly important in deciding the fate of the
world. The Karnsteins weren't just descendants of a noble Austrian family with
blood ties to Mary Antoinette, the Queen of France—a close friend to my
mother who never really said "
Let them eat cake
," which was
another fabricated story told by historians.

We, the
Karnsteins, were descendants of the first vampire hunters in history. Our great
ancestors had been the ones who supposedly invented the profession. It wasn't
an easy task. You have no idea how much misery it bestowed on us.

My father,
who had been away and secretly fighting vampires most of the time, explained to
me how it all started. Contrary to common belief, vampires hadn't been there
from the beginning of time, and nor were they the descendants of devils.
Vampires had been
created
, and under most unusual circumstances.

Before I
tell you my father's story, you should know there was a Vampire Craze all over
Europe in my time. People argued whether vampires really existed, and brutally
killed whoever was suspected to carry the disease. The story started with
people dying, buried, then returning home from their graves, only to bite the
rest of their families a day later, turning them into vampires. Walking around
with fangs and red eyes then sleeping in graveyards and coffins at night had
been previously thought of as an infection.
The kind of
infection that had to be stopped from spreading.
Europe had been damaged
and horrified by the Black Death plague a few centuries earlier. All they could
think about, and all they feared, when coming across an unusual phenomenon like
vampires, was that it had to be a disease.

Few
people, like the Karnsteins, knew the truth about vampires.

My
father's story was that vampires were created around 600 years ago in the small
town of Hamlin, around the year 1300. The town of Hamlin was geographically and
culturally very close to Styria. The story was that the founders of the town of
Hamlin had recruited a "Man with a Flute" to get rid of an invasion
of thousands of rats that threatened to spread a horrible plague. The man, whom
my father called the Pied Piper, lured the rats out of Hamlin with the magic
melody of his flute. My father said it was rumored, but he wasn't sure, that
the tune was called "The Magic Flute," which was orchestrated by a
new Austrian musician named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whom he and my mother were
planning to watch playing in Vienna soon. It always boggled me how the Piper
played a tune composed by Mozart centuries later, but later I learned how. The
Piper managed to lure all rats out of Hamlin, but the elders refused to pay him
in return. According to my father, the elders considered themselves religious
and thought of music as the voice of the devil.

"But
they were the ones who asked him to play the music," I protested.

"That's
the irony of it," my father said. "The elders accepted music to get
rid of the rats but denied paying the Piper because they thought it was the
voice of the devil."

"What
happened next?" I asked.

"The
Piper returned a few years later, looking very different to what he had been
before," my father said. "The merry jester with the flute who wanted
to please everyone turned into a dark man, wore a black cloak, and rarely spoke
any words."

I remember
wincing at the description, thinking my father was describing the devil
himself.

"The
Piper played the flute again, but this time he lured the children of Hamlin out
of town," my father said. "Every single one of them."

"Why?"
I frowned.

"Revenge
for not getting paid," my father explained. "Historians will tell you
that he lured the children to a nearby lake and drowned them in it, but that is
far from the truth."

"Just
like Shakespeare stole
Romeo and Juliet
?" I asked.

My father
chuckled then dragged from his pipe. "Rather like it."

"So
where did he take them?"

"Before
I tell you that, you have to know that only seven children escaped the
Piper." My father felt the need to educate me. It seemed like he had to
teach me our ancestors' history for some future reason he had in mind.

"Seven
children escaped? Where did they go?"

"No
one really knows," my father replied. "But the Piper is still looking
for them to this very day."

I began to
fear this Piper more and more.

"We
call them the Lost Seven," my father added.

"The
Lost Seven." I repeated the words on my lips, as if not wanting to forget
them. My intuition told me I would be repeating the words for the rest of my
life.

"Other
than the Lost Seven, all children were deported by the Piper to a faraway
place," my father said.

"Neverland?"
I squeaked, but my father shook his head. I grimaced, as I sensed he was going
to tell me something I wasn't ready for.

"The
Piper took the children of Hamlin to Transylvania."

Instantly,
I shrieked and clapped my hands on my mouth. I had been told that Transylvania
was part of vampire lore. "But how do you know, Father?" I asked.
"This story seems far-fetched."

My father
patted me and stood up. He walked to his huge library and climbed a ladder to
get a book from the highest shelf. When he came down I saw it was a book of
rare poems, documented and authenticated, although the poets remained unknown.
"This is a special book, written by our great ancestor himself," my
father explained.

"The
very first Karnstein?"

My father
nodded as he opened the book. "After the children were sent to
Transylvania to be turned into an army of vampires by the Piper, who had vowed
revenge on the whole world, only one child managed to escape."

"Our
ancestor!" I proudly clicked my fingers.

"Exactly,"
my father said. "Our ancestor escaped after he learned all about the
vampires. That's why we, the Karnsteins, are the only ones who know how to kill
them."

"So
what's in the book of poems?"

"A
poem that explains it all." My father flipped the pages then laid the book
on the table, low enough for me to read it. I was reading a poem called
"The Pied Piper of Hamlin."
An incredibly long
poem.
Then my father pointed at a part that made it connect. I read with
an open mouth, realizing how history was both fabricated and true at the same
time. Each person knew part of history's true incidents but then added his own
flavor or
lie
to it.

The poem I
read was later published under a pen name of Robert Browning, and was known of
one of the greatest. The part my father pointed at read:

How their
children were stolen away,

And there
it stands to this very day.

And I must
not omit to say

That in
Transylvania there's a tribe

Of alien
people who ascribe

The outlandish
ways and dress

On which
their neighbors lay such stress.

And that
had been my first encounter with how most of the things around us weren't as
they seemed, and that historians taught us lies.

***

Three
years after my father educated me about my ancestors, I turned fifteen years
old. Not only was I right in the middle of my teenage years, and on the
threshold of becoming a
girl
, I was about to learn one of the darker
secrets of my childhood.

I was old
enough to be told why I wasn't allowed to see my own reflection in the Pond of
Pearls—thinking about it
now,
I don't have the
slightest idea how I lived without seeing my reflection for fifteen years. How
did I tolerate not knowing how I looked like? I guess that since I had never
seen my face, I wasn't curious about it.

The truth
was that I was mentioned in a prophecy, spread by a blind woman who supposedly
lived in a
dragonship
in the middle of an endless ocean called the
Missing Mile, somewhere far away in a land few mortals knew how to reach—I
myself thought it was myth until I sailed to it years later.

The blind
woman's name was Justina, the Godmother of Justice, and
her
predictions were told to my parents by a mysterious messenger who had access to
the Missing Mile
. My family had always been into superstitious
traditions.

Justina
claimed I was the curse-breaker. I was a special child, a white soul,
a
gift to my people. Not just that. She claimed I was the
nameless witch's all-time nemesis, and that I was going to give birth to an
even more powerful girl than myself in the future.

But these
blessings came with a price—the same way everything came with a price.
A price that only
I
had to pay.

As it
turned out, the universe always demanded balance. For everything it granted us,
it took something in return—a basic law in alchemy. The curse that had
been lifted when I was born wasn't going to just fade away. It morphed into
another shape of a curse somewhere else in the universe.

Ironically,
she who lifted the curse had to pay the price to keep the world balanced.

In my
case, the price I had to pay would seem benign, even shallow, at first. It even
seemed that way to me in the beginning, until I realized the atrocity of such
sacrifice.

My curse
was simply this: I wasn't allowed to see my reflection in any clear mirror or
reflecting surface for the rest of my life. If I ever did, something horrible
would happen to me and my family and my land.

12

It's hard
to describe how an adolescent girl's life without a mirror is like. I can't
even bring myself to remember it now. I need to take a deep breath before I
write about it.

Give me a
second, please.

At
seventeen, all the talk about my ancestors soon escaped my adolescent memory. I
don't know what it was that actually made the idea of not seeing how I looked
liked intolerable. I had always thought of it as a great sacrifice. When you're
young and naive, you think that sacrificing yourself for others is a good
thing.

Maybe it
was knowing
that I was "prohibited" to see my
reflection. Deny anyone anything and they only want it more. Maybe it was my
hormones kicking in. How was I supposed to walk over the threshold of womanhood
without seeing and—hopefully—admiring my looks? Sometimes, I
wondered if all this was only a camouflage faked by my parents so I never saw
how hideous I looked.

But it
didn't make sense. How did all those visitors look at me as if I were the most
beautiful of them all?

My curse
began to bother me. Who was that witch who cursed me, and why weren't we
allowed to speak her name, let alone know it in the first place? Why did she
curse
me
?

Although I
repeatedly asked my parents about her, they never succumbed to my wish to know
her name, or where she was from. All I knew was that she hated our ancestor and
I was supposed to be her nemesis. That was all. They said it was for the best
for everyone.

Those
unanswered questions weren't helping me occupy my mind, as I needed to forget
about my curse. They didn't help me forget about my reflection and pretend I
was the only one in the world who didn't need to see it.

My father
and mother grew more concerned about anything resembling mirrors, including my
mother's precious copper mirror.

Still, my
father and mother worried if my blossoming into womanhood would urge me to
break the rule and have greater interest in watching myself in the water's
reflection, like any normal teen would do. This resulted in me being almost cut
off from meeting any boys.

As
obedient as I was, I seemed to forget all about mirrors again—which also
worried them.
Why isn't she curious about her looks? What is wrong with her?
You know how parents are. Sometimes there is no way to please them.

My parents
worried whenever I neared any kind of water: rivers, streams. Any shining
metallic objects, like armors, worried them, although they believed the curse
specified my reflection in either water or a mirror.

I spent my
days hearing about girls staring at their reflections in the Pond of Pearls,
debating who was the "most beautiful of them all." The famous and
shiny pond looked like liquid pearls underneath a full moon from far away. I
could only see it from my mother's chamber when I visited, now that I wasn't
even able to leave the few chambers I was allowed to enter in the castle. Each
day I contemplated if I should burst out of the castle and run to the Pond of
Pearls, defying my parents' wishes and having to live with the consequences of
breaking the curse.

I didn't
want to be special anymore. I didn't want to be a hero, saving the land. I
didn't want to be pampered. I just wanted to be a normal girl—something I
was never granted, neither then nor now.

***

On my
seventeenth birthday I had asked for a bigger chamber with a better view of the
Pond of Pearls. My wish was granted a few months later only after endless
debate between my parents.

I had to
promise them each day that I wouldn't break the rule. A look at the pond from
afar wouldn't hurt anyone. My father's soldiers guarded the gates leading to
the Pond of Pearls anyway.

It was
only a few days until I realized the luxurious castle I lived in had been
nothing but my personal prison.

But whom
was I fooling? Watching the Pond of Pearls each day from my window intensified
my need. I have never seen girls giggle as much as when they saw their
reflection in the water.

The
curiosity was also sparked by admiring my mother's beauty
—the
more she aged, the more beautiful she looked to me.
Older,
but more beautiful, more graceful and elegant.
She didn't know that,
though.

"You're
so beautiful, Mother," I told her, fiddling with strands of my golden
hair, which I had to keep ridiculously short so I couldn't see it often—they
were afraid the sight of my beautiful hair would increase the need to see my
face.

"Not
as beautiful as you," she said, combing her hair.

"Do I
look like you?" I asked, although she had told me I did so many times.
"My father, maybe?"

"A
bit like both of us," she said. "Didn't you see the pictures our
artists have drawn of you?" We had many of them, but my face painted in
oil wasn't satisfactory. What if they just lied to please me?

"You
have your father's eyes," she said. "Ocean blue, almost like the
pearly waves of the pond…" My mother shrugged, and averted her eyes from
the window. She did it abruptly, as if she'd seen a ghost there. She just
didn't want to talk about the Pond of Pearls. "I'm really sorry,
Carmilla," she said. "It's all for the best."

"I
don't need you to tell me this is for the best," I said. "I just need
you to tell me that I'm beautiful."

"Oh,
God," she almost shrieked, her eyes moist. "You have no idea how
beautiful you are. If it wasn't for this curse—"

"I
want you to tell me I am the most beautiful girl in Styria," I said. I
guess my need for appreciation had suddenly kicked in. Aggressively. The desire
of being beautiful crawled up my spine. It messed with my brain. I had been
tolerating my curse, suppressing my emotions, and lying to myself for seventeen
years. The anger had suddenly surfaced and reddened my soft cheeks.

My mother,
who was about to hug me affectionately, stopped suddenly. Something about the
way I'd said my last sentence worried her.

"Tell
me, Mother, that I am the most beautiful of them all." I nodded at the
girls playing outside in the castle's garden, those girls who saw their
reflections on a daily basis, those girls who combed their hair by the pond for
hours, those who pinched their cheeks to show ripeness and youthfulness through
the redness of their face. Those girls I was never going to be like. "Tell
me, Mother," I demanded.

Come to
think of it, this was my first brush with the darkness in my soul, which
surfaced many years later. I don't think you have any idea what it felt like.

"Fairest,"
my mother said, doing her best to hide her worries.

"Fairest?"
I asked.

"You
are the fairest of them all, Carmilla," she said, her smile old and
wrinkled and dry, like early autumn leaves.

"Fairest?"
I repeated. "What does that mean, fairest? I want to be the most beautiful
of them all." I pointed at the girls gathering by the pond as I stepped
forward. I waved at the girls who had suddenly become my enemies, those girls
who could do things I couldn't, things any seventeen-year-old girl should've
been doing. The truth was that I didn't want to be the most beautiful. I just
wanted to be normal. "I don't want to be fairest!"

"Carmilla."
My mother hiccupped against the tears promising to leave her eyes. Theodora
Goldstein's eyes were flooded with empathy that didn't quench my thirst to be
the most beautiful of them all.

"Tell
me I'm the most beautiful of them all, Mother." I wasn't myself anymore. I
was the beast of anger and unfairness in me. I was all my darkness. I was all
that I wasn't supposed to be: angry, envious, and hurt. "Tell it to me
every day. I don't care if you're lying to me. I don't care if I am ugly. If I
am paying the price to keep all of Styria happy then this is the least you can
do."

I found
myself running into her arms and crying myself to death. It felt better that
way. The weakness I cherished in my mother's long arms helped the beast in me
to rest in sleep. The beast inside was in pain. A pain I couldn't explain
myself. Again, I don't think I understood completely by then.

As I dozed
off in her arms, feeling the need to crawl back in her womb and hide away from
this unfair world, several apple trees caught my eye through the window. It
made me feel I hated apples the most. For those silly fruits to grow, for those
silly red things to bring prosperity to Styria, I had to pay too much of a
price. And by looking at them, all I could see was the color of blood the
vampires had sucked out of the Karnsteins.

***

To this
day, I still respect my mother for not succumbing to my insecurity and wanting
to be called "most beautiful of them all." Somehow, the phrase
"fairest of them all" rang better with her, and I accepted it
eventually.

I began
watching other
girls
closer, noticing their beauty—or
ugliness—and realized how much it affected their lives. To be honest, I
envied some of them. But I also pitied most of them; girls who were average
looking and had lesser chances and opportunities in life because of their
looks. I thought it wasn't fair how some boys preferred the beauties to them
without knowing who these girls really were. For a girl who was never going to
see her own reflection, I felt occasionally blessed when I realized that I
could imagine myself the most beautiful in the world and never have to face the
contradicting truth.

But again,
not seeing how I looked drove me crazy day after day. I couldn't even get a
feeling of it in the eyes of other boys my age. None of the boys in our land
dared to lay eyes on me. They feared my father, who, although kind and gentle
to me, was a feared warrior and count outside our castle's walls. His
overprotectiveness turned the beautiful boys away from me.

One day I
sat weeping for hours under a willow tree, wondering how I was going to ever
meet my knight in a shining armor—although I preferred his armor wasn't
"shining," so I would not see my reflection and be the cause of my
family's pain.

The other
disadvantage was that I never learned how to swim. In fact, I began fearing
water in many ways. All circumstances led me to give in. I was never going to
see my reflection. Ever.

Until…