by Cameron Jace
Fable's eyes darted toward the unconscious Cerené, and she wondered if Cerené were so afraid of the Queen of Sorrow that she only faked her unconsciousness. But Cerené loved Shew dearly.
Too many thoughts roamed in Fable's head, but survival was at stake. She knew the Queen was going to kill her once Shew was alive and beating with Loki's heart. She had to be prepared.
Fable waited and watched with amazement as Shew breathed back into life. She looked dazed, and her eyes seemed to reflect a bit of Loki's darkness, but she was alive and kicking.
Then she fell back to her death.
"Shew!" Fable screamed.
The Queen of Sorrow pulled her violently and threw her a few feet back. Fable watched as Shew shrieked back into life, gasping for the air in the forest like a newborn child.
Baba Yaga smiled at the Queen, who camouflaged her satisfaction by yelling. She told Baba to pull Shew into the Queen's carriage back inside the forest.
Fable looked back at Cerené and saw she was gone. So she had been awake all this time, just to make sure Shew was alive again. Smart girl.
Fable didn't hesitate, and stabbed the fat Baba Yaga with her own glinting knife. The poor girl was shocked to the bone. Fable knelt down and held Shew before the Queen could attack her. "Remember, I did all of this for you and Loki," Fable said. "I tried my best."
Shew, dizzy and confused, didn't seem to even know who Fable was.
"Let go of my heart," the Queen growled at Fable. God. She couldn't even say "let go of my daughter."
Fable pulled mud from the earth and threw it into the Queen's eyes. Then she ran hysterically into the dark of the forest.
"Charmwill!" she screamed into the dark. Soon the Queen would catch her. All Fable wanted was to end this dream. She had finally managed to get what she wanted, right? "Please help me. I have what I came here to get!"
"I'm here, Fable," a voice said.
Fable stopped. It was Alice Grimm.
53
The Queen's Diary
Angel and I bought a small boat from a fisherman on an island nearby. Fate, my sorrow bringer, had been unexpectedly generous and pointed him to us. We knew that we couldn't stay on land, or Night Von Sorrow would find us. We bought some food in exchange for a few days' discreet work and then pushed the boat back into the sea, on a new journey looking for the Tower of Tales.
Once in a while, the sirens swam around us and spat on us and tried to scare us. They even hummed their melodies again and again some nights. But having a boat was a blessing. Although some nights were tough, we still could sail away from them.
I wanted to go back and ask Fate why the mermaids were able to still harass us, but I didn't want to remind him of me. Nothing seriously sorrowful had happened to me since. Had he forgotten about me or was he just taking his time? After all, Fate thought that the best sorrows came after the highest of joys. I assumed he was waiting for me to be really happy, and then strike me with misery.
But neither Angel nor I cared. Life didn't change much. It was still dangerous, and promised almost nothing. Who knew what the tides had in store for us? But it was all good, as long we were together.
As long as we found the Tower of Tales soon enough.
One night, when the moon was full, I decided to open the sack. Now that I knew that its purpose was to hold on to something, it didn't really matter what I would find in it.
Angel was asleep when I dug my hand into it like a child fetching a present from his parents. My hands met a round thing. A plate.
I pulled it out. And stared at it. It was a white plate, among other things in the sack. This thing seemed to be the biggest in size.
What's the moon but a white plate? I remembered Captain Ahab's words. You could have summoned the moon yourself.
I grimaced at the thought. Then I gazed at the full moon above. I pulled the plate up and saw they really looked alike. Could it be real? I adjusted the plate so it exactly hid the moon behind it.
"Are you real?" I whispered, embarrassed at what I was thinking. Who'd believe Captain Ahab?
I pulled the plate down, ready to check the rest of the things in that mysterious sack. But then I saw it again. The moon was smiling at me.
Come on, Carmilla. This isn't happening.
Again, I adjusted the plate to hide the moon, and began to play "hide and smile" with it. She was smiling again, but whenever I caught her, she pretended not to.
I rubbed my eyes and looked again. It wasn't smiling. Of course not.
I put the plate back and decided I'd call it a night without checking the rest of the sack. I preferred Angel's warm embrace to the moon.
But then it came. I mean…she came.
I saw someone descending from the sky, shimmering with light that pooled and circled our boat. Colorful, tiny fish surfaced from underneath to greet the light. Not sirens or vicious creatures. They stuck their mouths out to the light and squeaked.
The light was too bright. I shielded it with my eyes. Then it dimmed a little, and I saw the moon wasn't up there anymore.
As my eyes got used to the light, I saw a glowing girl walk toward me. She was younger than me. She walked on water.
"Hello, Carmilla." She smiled.
I couldn't say a word, my eyes wide, staring at pure white light.
"You're real," I gasped.
"Of course I am," she said. I wished I could see her features better.
"But you never showed—"
"Shhh," she said. "It's too soon to talk about that. You're taking the right path so far. You have done extremely well."
"You watched me?" I said. "Then why didn't you—"
"Help you?" she said. "It's true. I help the goodhearted to sail across the sea at night. And sometimes I fight for them. But I only do it for those who have fought for themselves first. You can't have my services until you serve yourself. Look what you have done." She smiled, pointing at Angel sleeping. "He doesn't know he is immortal yet."
"What?"
"Because of you, Carmilla," she said. "You loved a man so deeply that you have granted him immortality with True Love."
"True Love." The words melted in my mouth. "Angel is immortal."
"Now, don't worry," she said. "I will take care of you, as much as I am allowed to, on your journey to the Tower of Tales."
"You will?"
"But let me check on something first," she said. "Could you dig your hand in your sack and count the items inside? Including the plate in your hand, of course."
"Oh," I said, and did as she asked.
"You don't have to pull them out and look at them," the Moongirl said. "Just count them."
"Six items." I rummaged through the sack without looking.
The Moongirl didn't seem happy.
"Wait," I said. "Seven. There is small bag of…something."
"Beans?" The Moongirl nodded, her face glowing again. "That's good, Carmilla. The plate in your hand belongs to me. It resembles me when I am full. Guard them all with you life. They are your ticket to cross over to Sorrow when you reach the Tower of Tales."
"Sorrow?" I had already grown to both love and hate that word.
"The Kingdom of Sorrow." The Moongirl smiled. "Your destiny, and the destiny of all of us. We're counting on you."
"You?" I didn't know what she meant. "Counting on me?
The Moongirl said nothing. She kissed me on the forehead and swooshed away before I knew it, leaving me and the fish in the sea undone without her light.
"One more thing, Carmilla," she called from above.
"Yes?" I stood up, staring at the night sky.
"Tell that bastard Captain Ahab that I am real." She took her place back in the sky, smiled at me once, then turned to a simple moon I had once underestimated.
"But of course." I laughed. "If I ever see him again."
54
Candy House
Fable sat at the porch outside Candy House, staring at the breadcrumbs in her hands. These weren't the ench
anted ones that the Queen of Sorrow had used to expose her. Those were hers, the ones that had traveled with her to the Dreamworld and back. Only Fable and her breadcrumbs knew what had really happened there.
She turned her head back inside the house, and saw Shew and Babushka busy with resurrecting Loki. Now that she had gotten his Fleece for them, the resurrecting ritual would take a day or so, according to Babushka.
Fable stared at them with empty eyes.
She stared at a mother eager to bring her son back to life, not really knowing what a monster he really was.
And she stared at Shew, heartbroken and feeling guilty, wanting to make it up to Loki after killing him in her Dreamory. Little did Shew know about Loki's heart inside her. Little did she know about the lie she believed.
Fable's face tightened. There was no such thing as True Love. Shew simply had Loki's physical heart in her. His real heart. But she didn't know it. That was why she had no memories of Loki being in love with her—only one questionable memory in the World Between Dreams when he'd asked her to save him. Other than that, it seemed that Shew had been made to love him because Loki's heart was dug into her chest by a dark witch who used to eat children and send girls to the Queen of Sorrow so she could bathe in their blood.
Fable hadn't told Shew about any of this. She pretended she was tired and wanted to talk later about the dream. Fable wanted to think it over before she told them a truth that didn't make sense yet.
A truth that would hurt Shew deeply. A truth made of lies.
She stood up, opened the door, and went inside. Neither Babushka nor Shew noticed. Of course, Loki took all the attention.
Who was this boy they were resurrecting? Fable was going crazy. How could he be so nice in the Waking World and someone else in the Dreamworld? This boy had never been in love with Shew in the past. From what I have seen, it's all a lie. A beautiful lie? I doubt it.
Still standing, she remembered meeting Alice Grimm before she returned from the Dreamworld. She had asked her about Loki's story, but Alice told her she didn't have enough time to explain. She helped Fable return to the Waking World, and asked her to go on with the plan and resurrect Loki, so he could help resurrect Charmwill and find the Lost Seven later. Fable had so many unanswered questions, but like always, there was not enough time.
When was there ever going to be enough time?
Fable found herself walking down to the cellar. She walked as if hypnotized. The secrets she kept were too much for her.
If Baba Yaga put Loki's heart inside Shew, and the Lost Seven had a piece of Shew's real heart in them, how was Loki alive? Whose heart did he have inside him?
It was mind-boggling, but not as frustrating as Fable's own story. How did she learn those Dark Arts, and where had she been the past few months? Why did Cerené stop her from telling anyone, saying, "They wouldn't understand"?
One of Fable's favorite books was H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, where the protagonist decided to use the eponymous device and return to the world he had just discovered, because not all of his questions had been answered.
Fable decided she'd do the same.
She lay down in the Dream Temple, not sure if she could enter the Dreamworld on her own, without another dreamer beside her. But she was some kind of Dreamhunter now, wasn't she? Why couldn't a Dreamhunter enter their own dreams?
She began the ritual, hoping it would work. She needed to go back. Really needed to go back. This time to know who she was. Who she really was. She put the two Obol coins on her eyes and whispered the Incubator to herself. This time she knew what it was without anyone telling her.
"The Witch," she said, and wondered why her eyes itched while she drifted away.
55
The Schloss
Lucy Rumpelstein didn't like the Queen's diary one bit. The itching in her eyes increased while she read, but she didn't pay it any attention. It might have been her lenses. What really bothered her was her disappointment with the Queen of Sorrow's diary. She had never pictured the Queen to be the person she had been reading about.
Axel, on the other hand, never thought he'd sympathize with Carmilla that much.
"This can't be her," Lucy gasped with frustration. "Where is her power, the cunningness, the evil? I bet this diary is fake."
"I doubt Pickwick is fake," Axel reminded her. "This diary has been guarded for one hundred years."
"Then what's wrong with the Queen of Sorrow?" Lucy said. "None of these events explain how she ended up the way we saw her. The way I love and adore her."
"She ended up selling her soul to Fate, didn't she?" Axel speculated. "I think that will have a great effect on the rest of the story."
"You think so?" Lucy's eyes brightened. It must be Fate, she thought. Fate must have wrapped her in perpetual sorrow and she'd ended up some kind of monster. Lucy liked the idea.
"I'm really more interested in the seven items in the sack," Axel said.
"What about them?"
"Never mind." Axel waved his hand in the air. Lucy didn't care about the sack. "Tell me something, Lucy. Do you have any idea why Carmilla didn't get the diary herself? Why ask you?"
Lucy said nothing. She had thought about it before, but couldn't find an answer. "See? I'm telling you something is wrong with all this diary thing."
"Tell you what," Axel said. "I see we're only halfway through the diary. There is a whole other story there, and there are so many unfinished threads to the tale."
"Okay, I will read on." Alice peeked back into the diary. "Look," she said. "There is a note, right after the chapter with the Moongirl."
"Then read it, please."
56
The Queen's Diary
All Hallows' Eve,
10th Year in the Reign of King Angel Von Sorrow.
1803 AD in the Waking World.
Less than a day until the Eclipse.
As I take a small break from the writing, I see you must think I have made this story up. You must think I am a deceitful liar, or how in the world did I end up where I am now?
You can surely find the answers in the events that followed on my journey to build my own Kingdom of Sorrow. You'd know things like what was inside the sack, and why I was given it. You'd know about the Moongirl and the Tower of Tales, and all the unimaginable things that shaped our lives inside the kingdom—the sort of things that don't even happen in fairy tales.
When you know about these things, I think you will understand.
Now, I need to go back to writing. The clock on the wall is ticking. Soon it will be midnight. I told you what that means. I will be obliged by then to do something horrible, terrifying, and unimaginable.
But before I begin, I take one last look at the canvas hung on the wall in front of me. It's sewn in beautiful threads, the finest in the world. I think it's Persian, but I could be wrong. It has a sentence written on it, in beautiful calligraphy. A sentence I have only fully grasped tonight. It's a well-known saying, one that will stay with me—and with you—forever. It says:
Things must be loved before they are lovely.
I feel an eminent heaviness in my heart as I read the words now. Why haven't I paid attention to it before, I don't know. But then again, I, the Queen of Sorrow, have always been a mystery, even to myself.
Thank You
Thank you for purchasing and downloading my book. I'm so happy to share this story with you, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
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