Now, at the Rainbow’s End, Shew watched Cerené play with her blowpipe at the reservoir, which was a lake of pure light, shimmering with the main seven colors of a rainbow. This was the place Cerené had promised to take her to see from the beginning, the place they’d gone through hell and back to reach, the only place where the Forbidden Art could be colored. And it was beautiful.
Cerené had showed Shew how she dipped molten glass into the colored lake of light. All she had to do was pick the color she desired. Cerené loved a mesh of colors so most creations came out the color of rainbows.
She also created a huge butterfly with flapping fiery wings, but then killed it when she was out of breath. Cerené’s most amazing creation was smaller butterflies she blew from her pipe, fluttering their wings into the world, as if the blowpipe had been their cocoons. The Butterflies had a long lifespan, not demanding Cerené’s continuous breathing because they were such light creatures. It took them about ten minutes, fluttering freely in the lake before their light dimmed and they turned to stone and fell into the lake.
In her awe, Shew called Cerené the God of Small Things. She was able to create life through her pipe, only it was a short-lived life. The Gods must have chosen Cerené for a reason. But for some other reasons, decided they wouldn’t allow how to create a full life.
Shew smiled, watching Cerené run with her blowpipe under the rainbow. She wondered if all Gods were like her, creators of magnificent things, yet as lost as Cerené. What if the Gods created the entire world by using their imaginations to overcome their pain?
While Shew was watching Cerené play, she heard girls singing a nursery rhyme in the distance. They were tapping their feet and jumping rope somewhere behind the trees. Shew thought they sounded like the creepy girls Loki had told her he’d heard in Sorrow. They were singing a new song:
Cinderella dressed in ashes,
one glass slipper and some matches,
burned the world all down in ember,
ash to ash and sin to cinder.
Shew closed her eyes, wishing the voices would go away. She’d never known who the girls were. She feared their rhymes, though, and thought they always foretold a sinister future.
Instead, she watched Cerené happily play in the reservoir, remembering how they had gotten here after Candy House had melted.
Cerené had shown Shew the way to Rainbow’s End. They had walked in silence for about an hour. Cerené had gotten her single glass slipper and now walked normally. Baba Yaga had escaped, and Shew dared not ask about what had happened while she was knocked out. Splash had told her to look for the Phoenix, and here she was, walking side by side with her. Hell, the Phoenix was Shew’s best friend.
They had passed by the small village of Furry Tell, but Cerené demanded they shouldn’t stop there.
A match made in Hell—I mean Heaven—I must say.
“What are you doing, Joy,” Cerené said, standing in the middle of the reservoir blowing her pipe and mixing the molten with the Rainbow’s colors.
“I’m coming,” Shew said, waking up from the recent memory. She walked over and stepped into the lake of light. It felt ticklish at first, like she was standing in a mist.
Rainbow’s End was actually a rainbow’s end. Shew didn’t know where the other rainbow’s end was, but she was sure they had one end of the rainbow in Sorrow. If that didn’t say enough about their kingdom, then she didn’t know what would.
For a moment, Shew pitied her own mother, Bloody Mary, and Night Sorrow. Whoever had surrendered to the hate and darkness in their souls could not have laid eyes on Rainbow’s End. How could succumb to darkness once you saw this place. She looked up at the arching rainbow curving away in the sky beyond the midnight trees. The rainbow was visible in the dark.
Cerené had melted her mix with the fire that had been burning Candy House and continued blowing it all the way to Rainbow’s End. It broke Shew’s heart that her friend was closer to death with each breath she blew, but there was no reasoning against the happiness in Cerené’s eyes, even when it meant being one step closer to death.
Cerené breathed to keep the fire alive so she could mix it with the rainbow from the lake. It was the only way to color her magic glass art. She said that ordinary glassblowers in the world used quartz and other natural colored stones—Shew knew nothing of these stones. But Cerené explained that she was no ordinary glassblower. She was a Keeper of the Art.
Now, all the huge glass flowers she created were colored like butterfly wings. She’d breathed a glass castle for them, which they spent some time inside, but it didn’t last long after the fire died. Cerené had even blown a small rocking boat, which floated upon the Lake of Light—Shew didn’t question how—but that fire died too. When all her molten fires ended, Cerené wasn’t going to go back to get fire from the furnace in Candy House, not today.
If only Cerené could create fire, her powers would have been complete, and would have created her own wonderland to live in.
“Do you have any idea why you have been given that talent?” Shew asked while they sat on top of a hill next to the Rainbow’s End. Cerené had played all she wanted and was exhausted. Where they sat, the rainbow was an arm’s length away.
“It’s magic, not talent,” Cerené said. “But I don’t know why. Must there be a reason for magic? Its fun, and I love it.”
“Were you cursed when you born or something?” Shew said playfully. “I know I was cursed.”
“You were?” Cerené wondered.
“It’s a long story. I’d rather have to make my own choices than walk in the footsteps of a destiny I was made to fulfill.”
“So you’re not just a lunatic vampire like your mother?”
Shew laughed, “No, there is actually a logical reason for my existence.”
“I wish I knew of the reason of my existence,” Cerené said absently. “But I don’t care. I am having fun,” she snapped.
“You think we’re good friends, Cerené?” Shew said with caution.
“Friends forever,” Cerené giggled.
“So could I ask you something without you being upset?” Shew said.
“Something like what?” Cerené was as reluctant as Shew.
They locked eyes for a while, the moment freezing and time stopping. Shew thought it was finally the right time she’d ask Cerené for some clarifications without her getting upset. She inhaled deeply, and tried to ask Cerené as gently as possible.
“Like where you’re from for instance? I promise I will listen without judgment. I’m not going to question your answers like I did in the Field of Dreams.”
“I was born on Murano Island,” Cerené said casually. She’d been feeling much better since she’d arrived at Rainbow’s End. She felt safe here, the place where her art took its optimum form.
“Murano? Never heard of it. Where is it?”
“Near Venice,” Cerené said without elaborating.
“That’s where?” Shew knew it was in Italy—another thing she’d learned from one of her victim’s phones in the castle. She still wanted to hear it from Cerené.
“Italia,” Cerené’s eyes widened. “It’s practically an island,” she lowered her head to whisper something to Shew. “It’s shaped like a shoe,” she made an invisible shoe with her fingers.