"What?" Jack said. "You haven't seen the Lost Seven before?"
"The Lost Seven?" She looked at him, her eyes moistening. Her mind was collecting all the incidents that led to this moment. All the memories that pointed at who she really was. She didn't know if she should feel honored or terrified. It somehow made sense why Carmilla pretended she was her foster mother now. But she wasn't ready to take the truth in. How in the world was that possible?
"Look who I found on the way," Jack said to the silhouettes of boys and girls. He pulled Fable closer and hugged her with one arm.
"The cute Fable. She is back!" Jack hailed. "Now we can discuss the plan, since all of the Lost Seven are present."
Fable's heart may have stopped for a few beats. She thought this couldn't be happening, that this must be the wrong dream. Someone must have tampered with the Dreamworld. How was she one of the Lost Seven?
But the surprises didn't stop there. Fable heard someone summoning her.
"Fable!" A girl stepped out of the dark. She was limping and was smeared with ashes. She put her blowpipe aside to take Fable in her arms. It wasn't that hard to assume it was Cerené. Fable kept staring at Cerené's hand, eyes wide and mouth open. How was that possible? How was Cerené alive? Wasn't this dream supposed to have happened after Loki chopped off Cerené's hands? What was going on?
27
The Queen's Diary
Angel arrived a few days later.
He was exhausted, spattered in blood, and his clothes were torn. There was no point in asking him about the details of his escape from his father's vampires, black panthers, and hunting ravens. Night Von Sorrow had sent an army of evil after him, and I was more than glad that Angel had made it to Murano, the best place on earth to escape Night Von Sorrow—but not for long.
There were rumors about a few vampires trying to enter Murano, enchanted with cloaks of invisibility to escape the mirrors of the island. But that hadn't been confirmed. What I did see with my own eyes were my father's soldiers, who faced no problems entering Murano, but I managed to hide in Amalie's house.
I took Angel in my arms. We kissed. It was normal to kiss each other's bloodstained lips by then.
A day later, at midnight, while it was rainy and heavy tides clashed at sea, we embarked the Pequod, Captain Ahab's ship. We made sure we were dressed poor enough to mingle with the other workers on the ship. We smeared our faces with cinder to look like we worked for glassblowers.
Soon enough, we found ourselves cleaning the floors of the ship. We were also given separate beds—Captain Ahab insisted on separating men's and women's beds—and slept the first night exhausted among tens of other poor workers on the lower deck. Only brief glances between me and Angel kept us together.
"Believe in me," were the words he always mouthed to me when he stood far away.
That night everyone spoke of Captain Ahab, who seemed to keep to himself in his room and never come out. Nevertheless, they called him the "Ungodly God," which never made sense to me. Stories about the captain's previous voyages and his ungodly craziness were told over and over again while we worked each day. Some admired him greatly, and others feared if he came out they'd be looking the devil in the eyes. I had to swallow my chuckles when I heard that, as I had met the devil and saw he was nothing but a poor impostor in a funny suit. I was also surprised when another worker on the boat confirmed what I had seen.
"The devil is nothing compared to Captain Ahab," the silver-toothed man with a tattoo on his face said. "You know what they say you have to do to sail along with Captain Ahab?" He was talking to all of us, including me and Angel, who preferred to act low key and pretend he was limping. Angel was a very strong man and didn't look meek like other workers, so he had to show a weak spot to camouflage his real identity. Still, they made him move the heavy barrels from deck to deck all day long.
"What do they say?" I asked the silver-toothed man. Angel shot me a brief look, worried about me mingling with the workers.
"That you have to sell your soul to him to stay on the ship," the man said. "Out on land they rarely call him Captain Ahab. They refer to him as 'Him,' the one and only."
"I heard he is a descendant of the Piper," another man said.
"You know the Piper?" I asked.
"But of course," an eye-patched man said. "Who doesn't know the man who plagued the world with his rats?"
"They say he is the Antichrist, and that he will end our world as we know it one day," a young boy said as he smoked some strange tobacco. "I think I like him."
"Why do you think he is a descendant of the Piper?" I said.
"The pipe, girl, the pipe in his mouth all day," the silver-toothed man said. I winced a little at his aggressiveness. Angel was silently observing from afar.