As White as Snow Read Online Free

hungry, but quickly rejected the idea of food. All she had were yesterday morning’s pastries, which came in different shapes and looked delicious, but always turned out to be the same dough with slightly variable fillings. Some were sweet and some savory, and all of them left a greasy film on the roof of her mouth.
    Either the heat or her nightmare must have woken her up. Maybe both. The clammy sheets twisting against her skin might have triggered the nightmare. It was familiar, but she hadn’t had it in years. After she started school, dreams about bullies had replaced it, nightmares that continued in the daylight, repeating again and again until reality and dream intermingled, leaving her unable to say when she was awake and when she was asleep.
    This nightmare was from earlier, though. From the years before she learned fear.
    In the dream, Lumikki stood before a large mirror. She was little, about two years old. At first, all she could see in the mirror was herself and the dark room she was standing in. She lifted her arm and her mirror image did the same. She smiled. She grinned. The reflection did the same. Then, in the mirror, she saw another girl appear behind her in the room. Thegirl was a little older than her, but very similar in appearance. They were even wearing the same white dress.
    The girl placed her hands on Lumikki’s shoulder. The hands felt warm and safe. Then the girl leaned in and whispered,
“Du är min syster alltid och alltid och alltid.”
You will be my sister forever and ever and ever.
    Lumikki turned to her.
    Why the hell did she always turn, even though she knew that nothing good would come of it? Up to that point in the dream, she felt good. She felt warm. When she turned, everything went cold. No one was standing behind her. She was in the dark room all alone. She turned to look at the mirror again. The girl was there. She stroked Lumikki’s hair and Lumikki felt her gentle touch. Lumikki wanted to push the hand away, but when she tried, her hands met only air.
    “Vill du inte leka med mig?”
the girl in the mirror asked sadly. Don’t you want to play with me?
    Lumikki shook her head violently. She just wanted the girl to go away. The girl wasn’t real, and Lumikki was afraid.
    “Jag blir så ledsen,”
the girl said. It makes me so sad.
    Then she started to cry. Lumikki wanted to look away. She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut. But she couldn’t stop looking. Even though she knew. She knew she didn’t want to see the girl’s tears.
    The tears were red. They were huge drops of blood that ran down the girl’s cheeks and dripped from her chin, streaking down her dress. When Lumikki finally tore her eyes away,she looked down and saw that her own dress was no longer white, but streaked with blood.
    That’s when she woke up. Always right then.
    Lumikki had never understood where the nightmare came from. Had she caught a glimpse of a scary movie by accident when she was little? Had one of the older kids at daycare or on the playground told her a ghost story?
    It was obvious why the nightmare had returned now, though. You didn’t have to be a dream analyst to figure that out. The reflection of Lumikki and Lenka. Lenka’s claim that they shared a father. That they were sisters. The parallels screamed so loud she would have had to press her hands to her ears not to hear them. What made Lumikki shudder wasn’t that the nightmare had come back after so many years. It was that the dream might not be just a dream.
    That didn’t make any sense, though. If Lenka’s story was true, which Lumikki wasn’t ready to swallow, at least not yet, they’d never met before. So preschool-aged Lumikki couldn’t have had a memory of standing in front of a mirror with her sister.
    She didn’t believe in visions. That was nonsensical drivel.
    So this had to be just a coincidence. Or maybe she’d overheard something. Maybe a word here and a word there from her parents’ otherwise carefully masked