Amalie and I exchanged thoughts. We hadn't known that.
"There is only one ship that will take you," Cinder said. "You will work as servants who clean the floor of the ship and make food for the crew."
"What ship is that?" Amalie asked suspiciously.
"It's called a whaler," Cinder replied. "It hunts whales."
"Why would that ship take us on board?" I was curious to who would agree to take two doomed lovers like me and Angel.
"Because its captain is crazy," she said. "He is an insane man who is obsessed with the whales of the sea and fears no one, not even vampires." Cinder stopped to rethink. "But when I say he fears no one, he still fears…"
"Him." Amalie nodded. "We understand."
"What's the man's name?"
"Captain Ahab," Cinder said.
"Who is he?"
"Like I said, a hardheaded, whale-obsessed captain. He has always been, and has rarely lived on shore. No one knows the reason for his obsession with whales."
"I don't care," I said. "As long as he will help us cross the Seven Seas."
"Then there is one last thing you need to do before you sail." Cinder pulled a sack from behind the oven. It was tightly bonded and looked rigidly old, and was, of course, glazed with cinder. It was made from strong fabric, though, and so light I could carry it myself. "When you eventually reach the Tower of Tales, Lady Shallot needs to be paid," Cinder said. "Lady Shallot doesn't need money or food, as she has the power to create all she needs."
"How does Carmilla pay, then?" Amalie asked, and I began remembering the devil's words—that everything came with a price.
"By doing favors for the unfortunate," Cinder said. "Anything that helps lost souls in the world. That's how she gets paid. This sack holds something Lady Shallot has wanted all along." Cinder handed it over to me. "Guard it with you life, or you will not be granted a kingdom even if you reach the Tower of Tales."
I took the sack in and hugged it. It made me look naive. But, in Angel's absence, I was responsible for arranging our escape. "I suppose I shouldn't open it."
"I think you better not, although I have never been warned not to," Cinder said. "I haven't opened it myself since my mother gave it to me."
"Your mother?" Amalie said.
I knew what she was thinking. Unbeknownst to Cinder, this sack was almost six hundred years old.
Cinder nodded. "It's an important sack that meant the world to her. She said I wouldn't understand what's inside even if I opened it. She said this sack holds the Mystery of the World."
I swallowed hard I made enough sound to look foolish. But who was I to hold the Mystery of the World in my hands, even according to the strange girl called Cinder?
"Why me?" I asked. "I mean, this sack seems important—you might have given it to someone else asking for a new life."
Cinder picked up her blowpipe and started working again. "No one ever asks to cross the Seven Seas," she said. "But there is another reason why I gave you the sack."
"Which is?" both Amalie and I asked.
"My mother, Bianca, told me you would come," she said, surprising me.
"How did she know that?" I asked, eyes wide open. "Did she tell you my name?" I couldn't believe this was really happening to me. Every time I tried to escape the idea that I was special in this world, I was shown otherwise.
Cinder breathed in the pipe, feeding the fire for her Art, and then pulled back. She caught her breath and said, "My mother told me to give the sack to the girl born in Styria the day Blood Apples broke the seven-year curse."
25
Fable's Dreamworld
Fable's eyes flipped open.
Waking up in the Dreamworld held a certain dread. She found herself panting while lying on her back on the bed of a forest. The trees above her almost blocked the thin moonbeam and danced like thousands of snakes. Fable assumed this was the forest Shew had told her about, where she followed Cerené to Baba Yaga's house and where Loki hunted her down. Fable never thought it would scare her that much. After all, she was face to face with danger, not in the comfort of reading about it in a book she could close whenever she wanted to take a break.
She jumped to her feet, noticing she was dressed in some old tattered dress, sweating all over. So no more kickass jeans and boots? Why did the Dreamworld dress her like this? It wasn't like Fable was a somebody in all these tales. She was just a normal kid from the Waking World thrown here to help friends she'd made only three days ago.
Fable also found her grip still tight on the breadcrumbs Babushka had given her, apparently the only item that had managed to pass to the Dreamworld. She searched her ugly clothes for a pocket without a hole in it, then poured the breadcrumbs in.