by Cameron Jace
"We will have a girl?" I smiled in the middle of all my sorrows.
"Two, maybe," Sirenia said, then waved her hand as if it were a trivial detail. "Who cares about numbers? The point is that one of them is really, really a threat to the Sorrows."
"How so?"
"Your child, Carmilla, is said to have the power, an unknown one, to eliminate all vampires in the world, if not all evil in the world."
46
Fable's Dreamworld
"Where is he?" Cerené asked with terribly scared eyes. Fable could see her chest rise and fall, her eyes scanning the night, looking for the boy who had cut off her hands before.
"I don't know, Cerené." Fable realized she was as scared as her. She reminded herself that if Loki killed her in the dream, they'd probably prepare another coffin for her in the Waking World cellar. "The problem right now is that we don't know which direction he could attack us from," Fable told her.
She looked at the dense trees surrounding them. How did people find their way in such forests?
"Maybe he won't attack us," Cerené suggested. "Maybe something happened to him. Or why would he have stopped?"
"Loki likes to play games, remember?" Fable said, taking hold of her scared horse.
"He didn't sound like he wanted to play games this time. Something must have happened."
"Let me take a look," Fable offered reluctantly. It occurred to her that Loki might have been setting a trap for them. But why? He was strong and angry enough to kill them both. It didn't make sense.
"Be careful, Fable," Cerené said. Fable rode slowly toward the trees.
"Which reminds me." Fable stopped and turned around. "What happened to me in those last three months?" If she was going to risk checking on Loki now, she preferred to know.
"You know what happened," Cerené said, grimacing. "You're the one who told me the details."
Fable sighed. "Remind me, please."
Cerené looked puzzled. "You want me to tell you all that you told me happened to you? Right now? It's a long story."
It seemed Fable had no choice. Cerené seemed curious already about Fable's behavior. Better turn around and check on Loki.
Fable's horse led her past the dense trees into a darker part of the forest. With her poor eyesight, she felt terrible. But it didn't take long to realize that something was sprawled on the ground. Fable squinted, but all she could see was a silhouette. She kept squinting until the scene made sense. She was looking at Loki's unicorn lying on the ground. Oh my God! It had one of its legs chopped off. Poor thing. Fable's horse stepped back. She held it tighter by the reins while she kept squinting. And she was glad she did. Looking closer, she saw Loki lying unconscious on the floor. Someone had chopped off his unicorn's leg and…killed him?
"Fable!" Cerené called worriedly from afar.
Fable turned back, and rode as fast as she could. If someone or something had killed Loki, she didn't want to confront it.
"Someone cut off his unicorn's leg," she told Cerené, as she rode ahead. "Follow me!"
But Cerené wasn't following.
Damn it, Cerené.
"Come on!" Fable yelled, tilting her head.
Cerené stood paralyzed, pointing at something behind the trees. Fable had to stop and turn around again.
She saw what it was.
A figure, dressed in black, showed partially in the darkness. It must have been who killed Loki. Cerené sat on her horse, pointing at it.
"Let's go," Fable shouted, and slapped her horse as hard as she could. The horse complied and ran.
"Don't look back," Fable panted as they escaped. "We're not going to slow down. We're heading to meet Jack, even if takes us forever in this forest."
Cerené nodded, saying nothing.
But it wasn't too long before Fable's horse tripped on something. She flew into the air, appalled by whatever was going on, then landed on her side on the ground.
Fable's small size privileged her with a sort of agility. It didn't hurt badly when she fell. She mopped her mud-stained head and propelled herself on all fours, looking for her horse. Cerené was lying unconscious next to Fable's three-legged horse.
What? I didn't trip on something? Who chopped off my horse's legs?
Someone had chopped Cerené's horse's leg off, too.
Who was it? Who was the person in black?
Shew came to mind. Fable, still a bit dizzy, crawled to her. She lay a few feet away, sprawled on the ground. Fable crawled and crawled.
What was happening? How is everything falling apart so fast? I'm supposed to save Shew and Loki.
She crawled faster, hoping nothing bad happened to the comatose Shew. But then Fable stopped on all fours. Slowly, she raised herself up. A dark someone was hovering over Shew's body.
47
The Queen's Diary
The fourth and fifth days were the worst. Other than the fact that we were almost starving, Angel and I lived on opposite sides of the raft.
All he could think about, all he wanted and desired, was feeding on my blood.
Angel recited some protecting hymns he had learned from Amalie Hassenpflug, a set of prayers to tone down the beast inside him. They didn't last long, although they helped me relax for a few hours during the day. Then he tried his luck swimming away while the sirens pretended to sleep, only to realize it was an ambush. They awakened and sang while he was in the water. One time, his body stiffened so hard I thought he was going to sink and die. I reached out to help him back on the raft. Once he embarked it, I pulled away to the farthest edge.
This was how we lived inside the whale. We were lovers. We were enemies. We were enchanted. We were unenchanted. We shared a love, but it was forbidden. We shared a raft, but like estranged lovers on separate beds. We were surrounded by mermaids. No, really by vicious sirens. We listened to music, but the kind that wasn't good for the soul. We were young, but felt so old. Basically, we lived a fairy tale, so dark and unfair.
"Come with us, Carmilla," Sirenia said. "We won't hurt you. We will make you queen."
"You could rule the world," another siren offered from behind.
"You could hold the moon in one hand, the sun in the other," a third tempted me. "You could be life."
"You could be Death," a fourth wailed.
"You can live forever," a fifth said.
"You could have anything you want," a sixth said.
"You can feel joy!" the seventh uttered.
I didn't say anything. I curled in a fetal position by the edge of the raft, caught between my fear of water and Angel's sorrow. I could see him from the corner of my eye, punching himself. He had pulled a large fish's spine from the sea, and hit himself with its sharpened sides constantly. It was insane. I think he did it to put the beast inside him to sleep, to stop himself from biting the prophecy girl and ending all hope for good defeating evil in this world.
I closed my eyes, shivering to a cold breeze.
"Why are you doing this?" Sirenia began. "There is no good and evil in this world. There is no such thing. It's only sides you take, decisions you make. And you apparently don't need to be on this side." The damn siren snickered, pointing at the raft. She began playing the tune again.
"Stop it!" Angel screamed from the other side.
"What is this music?" I asked, hoping I could pull any helpful information from the siren. "Why can't I remember it?"
"So you never have immunity to it," Sirenia said, finally answering one of the mysteries. "If you can remember its tune, you will be able to re-sing it, maybe change it a little so it doesn't have the same effect on you. If you listen to it too long, you'll grow bored with it. How can it affect you and Angel then?"
"Also," another siren offered, "so you can never play it on us and hurt us!"
"Shhh!" Sirenia turned back and slashed the siren across her beautiful face. She seemed to have spilled a secret Sirenia didn't want me to know. If only I knew how to play this tune, I could get rid of the sirens. But why
weren't they hurt by it when singing it? I assumed the tune never hurt the singer, only the listener.
Sirenia turned back to me, faking that motherly face, as if she cared for me. "If you let Angel bite you, all of this will end. Both of you will be vampires and this tune will never hurt you, because vampires can memorize it."
"I'm not going to let him bite me!" I screamed. A feeble scream, actually. A hollow whistle, weakened by hunger, stress, and hopelessness.
Angel ached.
"Don't provoke him." Sirenia giggled. "Anyway"—she waved her hands at her sides with her palms upward—"that's why the nameless witch is a better solution. She will give you all you want."
"If you so want me to go meet your witch, why don't you just come and get me?" I roared this time, with all the breath left in my lungs.
"They can't," Angel said, standing up, barely steady. He was trying to avoid my gaze. My sight must have provoked his thirst. He looked like an older Angel, millions of years older. His hair was actually graying. "They lose their powers out of the sea. Getting them upon this raft kills them." He had his fists clenched. "If only I had the strength to pull them up."
Although Angel was in his darkest hour, the sirens paddled back a little. I wished I could pull them nearer. But how?
"Well, he is right." Sirenia acted indifferent, checking her fingernails. "That's why we have you trapped on the raft. You can't pull us up, but neither can you survive on the raft before hurting each other."
***
On the sixth day, I lay on my back. I couldn't feel my hands, and my mouth was dry. I had drunk from the whale's salty water, but it didn't help. If Angel attacked me, there was nothing I could do. I couldn't even see clearly.
Where was he? Was he that curled-up bump at the side of the raft?
"I believe in you, Angel," I said slowly, each syllable feeling like a load on my shoulder.
He didn't reply, but I could hear his faint whimpering. Punishing himself must have tired him, which was good. He shouldn't have the strength to even cross over to bite me.
"Tell me more about the song," I panted, testing if the sirens were still there, as everything seemed blurry before my eyes.
"It was created long ago," Sirenia said, as if telling me a bedtime story. "Once upon a time, a Man with a Flute was deceived by men who claimed they knew the word of God."
"The Piper," I said.
"So you know the story of how all of this began," she said. "The Piper made this music to serve all his needs. We only know a little of it, and few people can play it on the Singing Bones, for there are even fewer Singing Bones scattered across the world."
"Like the one with Captain Ahab?"
"Yes, like that one," Sirenia said. "Don't ask me how he found it. Ahab is a fool. He wants to find the Tower of Tales."
"No," I protested. "He said he wants to find a whale. He said he had no interest in the Tower of Tales."
Sirenia laughed, mocking my naivety. "Everyone wants to find the Tower of Tales because everyone wants to find the Promised Land, where man can live forever and in peace without being hunted by his past. Isn't that why you want to meet Lady Shallot?"
"I'm sure Captain Ahab told me he was looking for a whale."
"What do you care, Majesty?" Sirenia said. "Soon you will need to make a decision. Soon, My Queen."
"Stop calling me your queen."
"But you are," Sirenia said. "We can't change Fate."
Her mentioning Fate surged an idea into my mind. Could it be that this was my only solution?
"Six days, Majesty," Siren whispered, nearing my ear. "You have made it on this raft for six days." With all her evil, her voice was musical. "The longest I saw was seven. No one ever made it after seven days."
"Why? What happens after seven days?"
Sirenia didn't answer me. She sighed. I tilted my head to look at her. She was holding something in her hands. What was that? Bones? Human bones? "That's what happened to them, Majesty." She smiled, nudging the bones. "The whale, whose name is Moby Dick, releases a flood of water into his insides to clean out waste every seven days. No one can survive this flood—unless you're a mermaid, of course." She giggled. "And no matter how these bones can sing after you die, you won't be here to enjoy the music."
48
Fable's Dreamworld
Fable was still staring at the dark man hovering over Shew's body. He was wearing a black cloak. He seemed to have no eyes. No soul.
Fable shivered on all fours. She had failed her friends, Loki and Shew—and Cerené, actually. But she sensed something dreadful was about to happen. Was this the feeling she'd had since she had awoken in the Waking World today?
"You dumb little miserable girl!" a woman growled from behind her.
Fable winced, caught between two evils. She preferred it nearer the woman, though. The man in the dark cloak was beyond terrifying.
"What have you done?" the creature behind her continued. It surely had the voice of a woman, but looked like some… What was Fable looking at? A deformed, short, but broad, figure of what looked like a woman. She had an ugly face and crooked nose, long and bending, with two oversized and hairy holes. And she had chicken feet showing from underneath her cloak.
Fable gasped and took an involuntary step back again. Where was she supposed to go?
Running away crossed her mind, but she wouldn't give up at the last minute. She could breathe, couldn't she? Then she had to fight until the end. She wondered if she knew of a magic spell to fight this creature. But none came to mind. Would the spider web sew this woman's mouth shut? What good was a heart-splitting spell now?
"What in the Piper's name have you done?" The creature/woman trotted toward Shew's unconscious body. Fable avoided her as she passed, noticing the man in black had disappeared.
"What have you done?" the woman repeated, holding Shew in her arms, wailing like a mother who had lost her child. How could such a beast care for Shew? Why was she asking Fable this question? It wasn't rhetorical. She really demanded an answer.
"I—" Fable hesitated. "I used a spell."
"A spell?" The woman's ugly face grew uglier, almost goblin-like. "What spell?"
Fable cleared her throat. Who was this woman? Did she really care for Shew? "A spell." Fable shook her shoulders. How could she explain that she didn't know where she'd learned this spell? "One that split Shew's heart among us."
"Us?"
"Um—uh—the Lost Seven." Was she supposed to say this? "Alice!" She raised her head at the curving tress above. "Charmwill!" she yelled. "Someone help me!"
"You did what, you filthy little witch?" The woman was showing her dark side finally. She seemed to care for Shew, but she wasn't one of the goodhearted. Boy, she smelled so bad, of rotten chicken and… blood.
"Do you even know what language this spell is?" The woman talked as if she knew Fable from long ago. Then she dropped Shew to the floor and pounded her two hands over her head, like a mourning woman at a grave. "My sweet Queen of Sorrow, forgive me for the stupidity of this little girl," she called out.
Queen of Sorrow?
Fable stood, perplexed. Why was this woman so concerned? Why did she care about the spell?
"Look at how pale the Princess is," the ugly woman continued.
Fable noticed Shew was even paler than usual. As a half-vampire she must have always been pale, like she was in the Waking World. But now her paleness was bluish and her skin seemed to be aging unreasonably. Had Fable messed with the spell? Was this what the woman was telling her?
"How long has it been since you spelled the incantation?" the woman asked.
Fable refused to answer. This woman looked like she wanted to hurt Shew.
"Your friend is going to die if you don't tell me," the woman growled.
"About ten minutes ago." Fable gave in, as she had begun to worry. With all their differences, they both seemed to care for Shew's safety now.
"Then there is still hope," the woman said.
&nbs
p; "Hope for what?" Fable said, glimpsing that Cerené was still unconscious.
"You messed up the spell. It's one of the hardest to remember and tell. It's written in an ancient Anguish Language, so nothing of what you said was exactly what you think it was. Words will sound like other words, and you wouldn't know, you filthy witch."
"But I can feel the weight of her heart in my chest." Fable touched her own chest. It was true. She'd almost had no power over the spell in the cave, but she really did feel that her heart was heavier. She didn't know how to explain it, but it was true. It reminded her of Shew insisting that she felt Loki's love in her heart when they were in the Waking World. It seemed laughable, and didn't make sense, but now Fable understood.
"That may be true, although I'm not sure," the woman said. She pulled out a huge, glinting knife, and pointed it at Fable. "But you never asked yourself how Princess Snow White would live after the transformation? If she gave each of you part of her heart, what heart would she live with until she gets her parts back?"
Fable's jaw dropped at her own naivety. It made sense from a logical point of view. But what was supposed to be logical about a dream?
"Are you saying she has no heart inside her now?" Fable almost slapped herself for asking. Of course she didn't. "But—" She was speechless, her eyes watery. Did I kill the Princess of Sorrow? Instead of saving her and Loki, I killed her?
"You shouldn't have learned this spell, ever!"
"I don't remember how I know it." Fable's tears forced her to hiccup continuously. She was a failure. There was no doubt about it. She didn't deserve to be a Lost Seven.
"Don't lie to me," the woman shouted. She was slow-moving, but theatrical and overly dramatic. Her shouting scared the birds in the forest away. "You know me. I don't like it when you lie to me!"
"What?" Fable snapped, unable to take it anymore. "I don't know you. Who are you?"
"We don't have time to play games, Fable." She began pulling Shew to a certain spot in the forest. "We need to find the Princess of Sorrow a heart right now, or she will die."
