Out of the castle they rode, with Shew in her glass coffin, strapped upon two horses led by the Beast on a third.
But that seemed to be only the beginning of the madness. Fable knew she shouldn't have left, as she had to get Loki's Fleece. But she couldn't. The Lost Seven were her family, the one she'd never had. She had no way to reason it, as she had only met them recently. But it was a feeling, carved in the back of her, that they were one for all and all for one. A feeling two centuries old.
The six of them rode into the forest, wishing to hide beneath its curvy trees. It wasn't night yet, but the dense juniper trees blocked most of the sunlight.
"Where to?" Fable panted on her horse.
"The cottage, of course," Marmalade answered.
"But Loki knows the cottage," Fable complained, counting on Shew's story from the last Dreamory.
"Loki is injured," Marmalade argued.
"Thanks to me!" Ladle flashed her scythe in the air.
Fable still didn't like the idea. She wasn't convinced Loki was wounded badly enough to not follow them.
"What about the other huntsmen?" she asked.
"They seem to be weaker when Loki isn't there," Cerené said. "Maybe they draw their powers from him. I know they will follow us, but we can fight them."
Shew began to moan on the back of the Beast's horses. She was waking up. They continued riding along to nowhere.
Farther into the forest, they began hearing the huntsmen's horses behind them. Heavy thuds were pounding the ground.
They looked at each other in panic. Fable listened to Cerené say that the forest had always been darker than the castle. The forest always played games with them in favor of the Queen.
They sped toward the cottage, as planned. Then they heard the scariest sound of them all. It wasn't the voice Fable was used to hearing, or even the darkest sound she could imagine. It roared among the trees, forcing animals to skew away, and dimmed the faint light passing through the trees into a veil of darkness.
"Princess of Sorrow!" Loki roared from afar. His voice was tinged with pain and anger. "I am coming for you and all your friends!"
37
The Queen's Diary
Although I had given in for a fraction of a moment, no words came out of my mouth. Captain Hook didn't mind. He would have waited for me to sell him my soul for seven days and seven nights. My soul was that good.
But then I stared at him, my mind more alert now, as if I had been under Fate's spell, succumbing to its pressure, but then realizing I was my own fate. Why was I doing this? For what? Who said I couldn't find the Tower of Tales alone? It was unlikely, but I wasn't going to give up without a fight.
Hook's face began to dim, and his bad skin began to smell of rotten fish and ale. He could it read it in my eyes that I had changed my mind.
His wrath, as he could control almost anything in the sea, was beyond what I had imagined. It began to rain heavily, fish as much as water, as if some gates in the sky had opened all of a sudden. The ship swayed and shook violently. His eyes were still grey as the sea began to rage around us. The sea became so scary that his whales and mermaids vanished in the blink of an eye. Hook was a child with the power of Fate, after all. Not even a whale, however big, wanted to be in the face of a childish Fate right now.
Sailors began to die on their own, fainting to an invisible wind, circling the ship and choking on whatever swirled around, like flies in a spider's web.
Hook trotted near me, his big hands trying to reach for my neck. He'd decided if he wasn't going to have my soul, then he'd kill me.
Something unexplainable told me to stand tough, cemented to my spot. I could have run, tried my slim luck with swimming. But an inner feeling told me to stay. I'd die at the hands of Fate but wouldn't give in to his joy at witnessing my misery.
Hook approached. His hands were almost touching my neck when Angel finally appeared.
It was Angel's rage, with all his fangs and reddened eyes, against Fate. The winning hand was still Fate's. But Angel and I together were stronger than each of us alone. There was no time to blame him, talk to him, or even kiss him. I gripped my sack as he gripped my hand and pulled me away from Fate.
We fell to floor of the now-sinking ship and slid far away from Fate's hands.
"Angel!" I touched his face, our hands and legs tangled, half soaked in the water.
Angel stared at me for a short moment—though it felt rather long on my end—and I thought he wanted me to tell him I believed in him, which I was about to do when he shushed me.
"I believe in you, Carmilla," Angel said. "Now it's my turn."
I nodded as he pulled me impulsively into the sea. I couldn't believe we were jumping off the Pequod, but it looked like it was sinking anyway—and if you know Captain Ahab's story by now, and are asking about his leg being eaten by a whale, this happened a few years before that.