"Then why do you think he never told you how you're not supposed to be together?"
"How do you know that?" I began to suspect they weren't benign mermaids. I looked to my left and right to make sure no one was listening. "We're descendants of two feuding families. That's why they don't want us to be together."
"That's all?" the leader said. She wasn't asking, but piquing my curiosity, enticing me to jump in.
"Do you know any other reason?" I found myself asking. I had always suspected things—why it really took Angel two years to come back to me, for instance.
"Come with us, beautiful," the mermaids chanted with open arms. "And we will tell you all you need to know."
I said nothing, but backed away. My curiosity wasn't strong enough to trust them.
"Don't you see how magnificent you are, Carmilla?" the leader continued. "You have stopped the plague of apples, which no one before was capable of. She is very proud of you."
"Who is proud of me?" I bowed forward again; the fumes coming from the sea were enchanting and cursing at the same time. Was I hallucinating these mermaids? I had heard about sailors going insane at sea.
"She who cursed your land in the first place," the mermaid said. "She wants to meet you." Her giggle didn't exude innocence this time, but some form of morbidity that I had never encountered before. The kind of smile that hurts, not mends.
I pushed the rail and stepped back immediately, stumbling backward on the ship's deck, and hoping this would be my last stand. Why had I been so hesitant? I didn't want to know about the nameless witch. And by no means did I want to meet her. Those mermaids were evil. The silver-toothed man was right.
Picking myself up from the floor, I ran to Angel's sleeping place, a small room at the bottom of the ship, surrounded by all the barrels of wine he lifted all day.
"Angel." I pounded his wooden door. It was fragile enough I could pound my way in, but I waited for Angel to answer me.
"Go away, Carmilla!" he said, shocking me. Never had he asked me to leave his proximity. He'd always felt stripped and naked without me near.
"Angel," I pleaded. "What are you saying? I need your help. I saw those mermaids, and they scared me."
"Go away!" He sounded like when I saw him in the dungeon, hurt and angry, and not quite himself.
"What's going on, Angel?" I pounded harder, the door almost giving way. "Are you hurt? Should I be calling someone?"
"For the love of all good things, please just go, Carmilla," he growled.
Then I heard the mermaids hum that unmemorable tune again. Angel ached harder. Of course. It was the same tune his father had used on him. I could tell that, but couldn't remember it. So unusual.
But I couldn't help myself. Angel was everything to me. I pounded through and broke the door open. Angel had his head buried between his knees, sweating and shivering.
"Angel." I meant to approach, but before I did, he raised his head, and I saw his reddened eyes and the thick veins sticking out his neck.
"Make them stop, Carmilla," he panted. "Please." He clapped his ears with his hands. His fingernails had strangely grown longer, as if he were changing into a beast.
"I don't know how to do that," I said, agonizing as much as he did.
"Then lock me in and go away," he growled. "I could hurt you, Carmilla. I could hurt you so bad, and I don't want to."
I was speechless, feeling foolish and naive. But my attraction for him cemented me nearby.
"As long as they play that tune, the urge to turn into a full vampire intensifies," he said. "My father must have sent them."
I wanted to tell him that they looked like they had been sent by the nameless witch, not his father, that they wanted me, not him. But then, how did they know about this tune?
Angel sprang to his feet. Faster than anything I had encountered, he grabbed me by my neck and snarled at me, my back to the ship's rail outside. How did he move so fast?
"I want to have your blood right now," he said, not sounding like Angel anymore. "You have no idea how this feels."
For a moment, I thought this was it. This was the end of our short-lived love story, where a beauty—supposedly me at the time, before the world got to me—was going to get bitten by the beast, Angel Von Sorrow. This was the moment when I was about to realize that my mother was right in not approving of our love. This was the moment when I realized that trying to break the rules by staring at my reflection in the Pond of Pearls was what brought me here. This…was the end of me.
Maybe the mermaids were right; there was a reason why me and Angel shouldn't have been together.
I closed my eyes, my vein pulsing and ready to be sliced open by the one I loved dearly. Was I going to turn into a vampire like him? Were we both going to be gifted—and cursed—with immortality? I had no idea. All I did was wait for his teeth to sink into my soul.
29
Fable's Dreamworld