"Don't you remember?" Cerené gritted her teeth. "It's the Art."
"What art?" Fable asked, her legs wobbly. She knew the Queen of Sorrow was watching everything from afar, waiting for the right moment to expose them. Fable hated to be the one to expose them, but she couldn't resist the breadcrumbs. How was that possible?
"The Black Art," Cerené hissed, trying to hold straight among the huntsmen. "You told me you learned it in…"
The Queen threw more breadcrumbs on the floor.
"I learned Black Arts?" Fable held her stomach, a step away from exposing everyone else. She threw a look at the Queen. Carmilla Karnstein was smiling, smirking, and waiting for her final touch to expose them. "What does this have to do with the breadcrumbs?"
"You can't resist the Queen's enchanted breadcrumbs," Cerené said. "Don't you remember? Don't you remember the darkness you have been through the last three months?"
But whatever Fable wanted to understand, or save, was beyond her. She sank to her knees, and then hurtled on all fours like an animal toward the breadcrumbs, collecting them from the floor. She definitely was addicted to them, and didn't know why or how.
"Don't mess this up," Marmalade hissed at her.
But it was too late.
Gasps filled the chamber. The Queen must have smiled vigorously at the sight of Fable giving in to her trick. Fable's cloak fell back and showed her pigtails, as she sniffed, collecting the breadcrumbs in the hem of her tattered dress from the castle's floor.
"Interesting," the Queen of Sorrow said. She sounded delighted. "A girl with pigtails doesn't strike me as a rebel."
"She is one of them," Bloody Mary growled, her hands reaching out of the mirror, wanting to hurt Fable.
"One of who?" the Queen demanded.
"The Lost Seven," Mary said. "They're here to kidnap Snow White so—"
"So you can't eat her heart." Jack pulled his cloak back and stepped up, raising his sword. "Can we skip the introductions and start killing each other?"
35
The Queen's Diary
I didn't know who Captain Hook was then. But the man whom everyone feared, the man who walked among whales, trudged onto our ship's deck, a huge bottle of ale in one hand. He could barely walk straight, his watery boots thumping on the floor, slightly swaying among the sailors and misfits of the Pequod.
Captain Hook was drunk.
His huge figure still swayed like a lost ship in the ocean. His bushy beard swayed along, too. It was made of strings of red, of black, and a much lesser part was white, all tangled together with a straight single pigtail hanging like an animal's tail from his chin. He didn't look absurdly fashionable like the devil. He looked disgusting. His whole complexion was dim. Focusing, I realized his beard covered bad skin underneath. It was rough and bumpy, like the surface of a crusted pie.
Still, he scared everyone next to me.
But I wasn't that sure if it was fear he exuded. In my mind, I was only studying the man who might be an obstacle for me to reach the Tower of Tales. I needed to find a way to survive him.
Hook's eyelashes were full of mascara, probably to take the attention away from his bad skin. His eyes were bulgy, beady, and grey, an almost colorless kind of grey. He wore a toque for a hat, a lot of silvery accessories on his hands. The rest of his cloths screamed "pirate." Who would want to sell their souls to a pirate?
Hook stopped before Captain Ahab's open door, and peeked in for a long time, enough to realize the ship's captain was gone. Hook gulped on his ale, fluid trickling down his beard as if watering it, dripping from the end of his pigtailed beard. "So Long John Silver fled again." Hook smirked at us. "What a pity." He brushed his eyebrow with gruff hands full of rings. "He must still be looking for that whale." Hook shook his head, almost pitying Captain Ahab. He turned and faced his men, who dressed and smelled like him—of crocodiles? At least, that was what I thought. "Don't look down, goddammit," Hook snarled, annoyed by the utter obedience oozing out of their eyes. "Can't you read my face?" None of them dared to look back. His face was definitely unreadable. "You're supposed to laugh with me." He gulped one more time, lifted his head up at the sky, and laughed like a roaring lion. I couldn't decide whether it was an evil laugh or dark one. His sailors nudged each other and complied, faking laughs with him.
Soon, when he stopped, they stopped too.
"Not good enough!" Hook wasn't satisfied with their laughs. "Each fool of you grab his bottle of ale." He pointed. "Gulp some until your mouth is full. Feel it burning in your throat, and then laugh at the moon in the sky with me."
Sailors and misfits watched Hook and his men drink and then laugh at the moon again. This time I was sure they looked like amateur evil men, trying their best to scare someone. How was this "Him"?