***
The Beast had been the first to put his cloak on. Fable still couldn't see his face. She realized he almost never showed his face to anyone, thinking he was the "ugliest of them all." The rest of them wore their cloaks, except Fable, who was too small for hers. She looked silly in it.
Jack told them that he had heard the Queen was performing a new Weighing of the Heart ceremony for Shew and all the other girls whose blood she'd bathe in today. Fable understood that the Queen couldn't bathe in the girls' blood unless their hearts weighed twenty-one grams—the same reason she couldn't consume Shew's heart.
"So why twenty-one grams?" Fable thought she'd take advantage of them considering her young and naive, and ask as many questions she could.
"Once you we turn sixteen, all of our hearts weigh twenty-one grams," Marmalade said. "Right, Jack?" She was trying to be playful.
"Not mine." Jack bit on his white feather. "I'm too awesome for it to only weigh that much." He smirked, and threw a rock at the moon in the sky. He seemed obsessed with it, paying it more attention than Marmalade.
"Awesome." Fable giggled. Did they say awesome in 1812?
"Don't you know I am so awesome someone will write a book about me one day?"
"When the soul leaves the body it has to be one of twenty-one grams," Ladle elaborated, neglecting Jack's conceit. "If not, it won't do good in the afterlife."
"And you know that because?" Marmalade seemed jealous of Ladle, maybe noticing how she and Jack always got along.
"She is Death, splashy." Jack had called her "splashy" a couple of times. "I'd not argue with her if I were you." He shared a long gaze with Ladle.
"It's something that appealed to the creators." Ladle broke off Jack's gaze to explain further. "Twenty-one grams is the weight of balance and maturity. Less and you haven't grown enough to face the world yet."
"And heavier?" I asked.
"Heavier has always been an arguable case," Ladle said, pulling a squirrel off her back. Squirrels and scythes didn't match at all, Fable thought. "A heavier heart either endures great hardships, is stained by evil, or has been compromised by magic."
"Magic? How?" Fable was interested.
"Magic isn't always good, Fable," Ladle said. "Some dark magic has dire consequences."
Fable shrugged when she said that, then she saw Cerené gazing silently at her. Again, it was as if they shared a secret—but Fable had no idea what it was. It probably had to do with where she was supposed to have been for the past few months.
"So we're just going to walk among the huntsmen?" Fable said. "Do you think our disguises are good enough?"
"It's not the disguises," Jack said. "There is a rule among huntsmen that prevents anyone from seeing another's face. Even the Queen herself is denied the pleasure of uncovering any of their faces. Only Loki, the head of huntsmen, can reveal his face."
"That's a strange rule," Fable said. "Why?"
"Angel Von Sorrow was the one who hired the huntsmen, before the Queen of Sorrow turned them to serve her while he was away," Cerené explained. "All huntsmen are boys. Only boys. It's said that they're all orphans who escaped from all corners of the world to Sorrow. A myth says they have all crossed something called the Seven Seas, reaching a Tower of Tales, where they were ushered to Sorrow as an escape from their pasts. Angel wanted to protect them from their evil fathers. He used magic to conceal their identities so they wouldn't be hurt."
"But they serve the Queen of Sorrow now," Marmalade said.
"She managed to bind them to her side by dark magic," Ladle explained. "But she couldn't break the spell so they'd show her their faces. She compromised their loyalty but not their faces."
"And I suppose we're going to use that to hide among them," Fable said. "We'll use that to our advantage since no one dares ask us to show our faces?"
"You're getting better by the minute." Jack winked and turned his horse the other way. "Does my hat look good on me?" he asked Marmalade while adjusting it, then rode away before she gave an answer.
Fable laughed at his easiness, and watched Marmalade chase him before Ladle did. Cerené nodded at Fable and said, "Let's go save Shew."
Let's see when and how Shew and Loki fell in love, Fable thought, and rode after the Lost Seven, all of them disguised as huntsmen, to the Schloss. She hoped she'd succeed in getting Loki's Fleece back.
***