“This is the wrong note,” the man screamed and pulled his hair. He had hair like Einstein, and wore an oversized tuxedo. “This is a B# not B,” he poked keys furiously.
Shew rolled her eyes, sitting with her hands on the piano. Who was this annoying man? She played several keys trying to comply.
“That is even worse,” the veins in his neck throbbed. He looked like he was battling invisible bees pecking on his face. He was unusually hairy. “This is an A.”
“A is good,” Shew tried to make a joke. “A+ is even better.”
“What?” he glared at her, looking as if he was about to choke her with the piano’s strings, chop her fingers off and use them as keyboard keys. “What is an A+?”
Ignoring the mad man behind her, she read the title of the melody she was supposed to play. It said:
The Magic Flute in G major
By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
“I’ll never understand why a piece of music named The Magic Flute is played on a piano,” she poked, knowing it would drive her teacher crazy. “It should be played on a flute, Mr.—” she didn’t know what to call him so she glanced back at the transcript and saw his name scribbled at the bottom. “Mr. Oddly Tune?” she scowled. “Are you sure it isn’t Dudley?”
Oddly almost jumped, kicking his feet against the base of the piano.
“She is making fun of you because you’re not firm with her,” the Queen of Sorrow called over the banister on the second floor. “I want her to memorize this song by noon and perform it at the ball we’re having tonight.”
“But that’s impossible, my Queen,” Oddly said. “She's horrible.”
“Don’t call my daughter horrible,” Carmilla said calmly. Oddly sweat beads the size of lemons. “Or I’ll have you hung by the noose.”
“That’s not fair,” he mumbled. “I am a respected musician. I shook hands with Mozart himself."
The Queen shook her head and left the hall, calling for her servants on the other side of the castle.
“Don’t worry, Dudley,” Shew said. “I think I got it. This is an X minor, right?”
“There is nothing called X minor!” Oddly’s face reddened. It deformed as if his cheekbones were cracking from the inside. His back curved awkwardly and his feet grew big, ripping his shoes apart. Hair was growing swiftly all over his feet and face. Mr. Oddly was turning into a werewolf.
What should I do now? Is this memory or just a dream going nowhere?
Oddly, the werewolf grabbed Snow White’s fingers and banged them against the keyboard. “This is an A, you filthy brat,” his eyes yellowed and his fangs showed. The odd white hair on his head smoothed out and grew longer down his shoulders. “And this is a B!” he banged her fingers again.
“That hurts, Mr. Dudley,” Shew said.
“It’s Oddly you irritating princess,” he said in an evil voice that sounded if his throat had turned into a sewer pipe spitting out its guts. “I’m going to break your fingers one by one. You’ll never play an instrument for the rest of you life.”
“Mother!” Snow White pleaded. Mr. Oddly clamped her mouth shut with his hairy hand. “If you scream, I will hurt you again. Be a good girl and come with me.”
She pulled his hand away. “Come with you where?”
“Night Sorrow wants to talk with you,” the werewolf grinned.
So that’s what the memory is about. I am being kidnapped and taken to my grandfather?
“You know what?” Shew said. “That’s an awful lot of hair,” her fangs grew and she bit him in the neck. She didn’t know if it was part of the memory or her own action, having been overly annoyed by this music teacher. “Mozart this!” Snow White sighed impatiently and kicked him between his hairy legs.
It was interesting, how Oddly dropped to the floor like an electrocuted fly, buzzing a little then turning back into a music teacher who looked like Einstein. Only this time he was dead. Anyone who entered the room would have thought she just killed an innocent man.
“If this is how my teen years were like, then it was fun. I’m so enjoying this,” she mumbled, wiping the blood from her lips. “I bet I’d be a superhero in school. How come they don’t let me go to school?”
“Because you’d end up biting all the yummy boys,” Cerené said from the end of the hall, still wearing her ragged clothes, ashes covering her face. She carried a bucket of water and a broom. She had grown to become a beautiful fifteen year old and still wore her mysterious slippers.
“Cerené,” Snow White found herself smiling.
“Let me clean up the mess, princess,” Cerené said, staring at the blood all over the piano keys.
“It’s not my fault. He was a werewolf, I swear.”
“I saw the whole thing, hiding in the fireplace,” Cerené said. “Let’s pull him out into the Garden of Graves.”
“What’s the Garden of Graves?”
“You don’t know what the royal graveyard is?”
“Oh, I was just joking,” Shew said. “Do you think we should do that?”
“There are a lot of people buried in the Garden of Graves already. I guess they are some of your mother’s victims,” she winked at her, implying she knew about Carmilla’s bathhouse slaughters. “There is room for one more hairy man. Hurry up before your mother sees us.”
Snow White made sure no one was coming and started pulling Mr. Oddly outside. “Let’s bury Mr. Dudley,” she said.
“It’s Oddly,” Cerené laughed.
The two girls struggled pulling the large man out to the garden through the servants’ backdoor. It was nighttime and the only light guiding them was the moon. The Garden of Graves was full of purple and yellow poppies. It was the royal family’s graveyard so it had to look classy, “so this is where I’m going to be buried when I die?” Shew mocked herself. Her family was immortal, so this whole garden was bogus.
“I want to be buried in a lovely place like this with all these flowers,” Cerené said casually then dropped Oddly onto a muddy spot and started digging with a shovel. She was unusually enthusiastic about it. Her smile was lovely, but wicked, and a little weird. The ashes sticking to her face and clothes made her look like someone who was up to no good.
That’s one disturbed childhood you had, Shew!
“I see you love burying people,” Shew commented.
“Werewolves,” Cerené corrected her. “I hate them,” her cheek twitched slightly.
Cerené had tied her blonde hair—with the fiery aura—into a reckless ponytail. It looked like she did it with strings from her broom. Shew wondered why Carmilla allowed one of her servants to look so poor and untidy.
“Next time if you want to scare a werewolf away, use red wine,” Cerené suggested.
“Really?”
“I heard it from an old wise woman in the forest,” Cerené assured her. Shew thought it was absurd.
Cerené sweat as she dug the grave. When she wiped the sweat from her face, she accidentally cleaned some of the ashes away. Shew saw Cerené had cute freckles buried underneath.
Then she saw something else that had been hidden under the ashes: a cut on the lower part of her cheek, running thinly toward her neck.
“What is that, Cerené?” Snow White asked, taking the shovel from her. The cut looked like a torturing wound.
“Why do you always ask about what doesn’t concern you?” Cerené stiffened angrily again. It was a brief but alarming behavior, but alarming. Shew had never seen such a sudden change in someone’s mood.
“I’m sorry,” Snow White said. “Let’s forget about it. I’m glad you’re helping me.”