Shew watched as Dame Gothel laid a peasant girl on a special table with a scale underneath. The girl resisted for a moment but gave up eventually, intimidated by Bloody Mary’s voice, cursing her from the mirror.
“Could you explain out loud how the weighing process goes, Dame Gothel,” Carmilla demanded. “We’ve never told Shew about the process before,” Carmilla followed.
She wondered if they had sedated her before they weighed her heart in the past.
“But of course, majesty,” Dame Gothel sounded neutral. She didn’t sneer or try to look evil. She was doing her job. “First, we let the girl eat the Sanguinaccio cake,” Dame Gothel pulled a cake heavily topped with white cream and showed it to Shew. “It’s a rare recipe from Italy, an exotic land beyond the Missing Mile.”
“Shew already knows about the shoe-shaped island,” Carmilla nodded at her daughter. “Continue, please.”
“Before we feed the cake to the girl, we have to cut her arm slightly,” Dame Gothel made one of her servants cut the girl’s arm with small knife, collecting the drops of blood into a cup, which looked a little bit like Cerené’s, only it wasn’t glass. Dame Gothel took the blood and spattered it upon the Sanguinaccio cake as if pouring sugar on a pie. “Now the cake is ready for the girl to eat,” Dame Gothel said. “But first we have to check the girl’s weight on the scale underneath the table,” she explained. “And then I will feed her the Sanguinaccio cake,” she let the girl only take a bite from it. The girl fell asleep instantly.
“And what happens when she eats the cake?” Carmilla said.
“She dies,” Dame Gothel said bluntly, pulling out a snake from somewhere under the table.
“What?” Shew took a step forward but stopped when Dame Gothel waved the snake at her. “You can’t do that!” Shew grunted.
“Don’t mind my daughter, Dame Gothel. Continue,” Carmilla waved her hand as permission to proceed.
“Now, we check the weight of the scale underneath the bed,” Dame Gothel said.
“Explain why to my daughter,” Carmilla said.
“The weighing of the heart is actually the weighing of the soul,” Dame Gothel began. “The soul, or the Ka, how ancients like to call it, is a mystery even to the greatest wizards and mentors. We don’t know how it looks like, how it smells, or even what it really does. But we knows that it’s somewhere in the heart. The soul leaves the body when it dies, and thus the body ways less. The difference between the weight of the body before and after death equals the weight of the soul. If it’s twenty one grams, then the girl is ready for sacrifice. I see the difference isn’t twenty one grams yet for this one, majesty,” Dame Gothel pointed at the poor girl on the bed.
“This is crazy,” Shew protested. “She’s dead. What good is it if you know how much her heart weighs?”
“Within forty two minutes after she dies from biting the cake, she still can be resurrected,” Dame Gothel said. “Do you want me to resurrect her, majesty?”
“Please do,” Carmilla authorized.
Dame Gothel tapped her snake’s head before it spat poison into the girl’s face. Unlike the usually deadly poison, this one brought the girl back to life.
The servants helped the girl sit back up and leave the room.
Carmilla gazed back at Shew with a slight smug smile on her face. Shew got the message. Carmilla was giving her a choice. Either swim in the girls’ blood or fully turn into a vicious vampire, part of the Sorrow’s family, or Carmilla would have to rip out her heart. Of course, she couldn’t rip Shew’s heart out unless it was twenty one grams, which meant she had to have her heart weighed now.
Shew glanced back briefly. The chamber was a huge ambush. A couple of huntsmen stood by the door behind her, and she guessed others waited for her outside if she managed to escape. She had nowhere to go.
“What do you say, princess?” Carmilla said. “You could stay one of the Sorrows, surrender to your nature and family ties, or you could be stupid enough to think you’re the Chosen One.”
Shew’s only hope was to allow Dame Gothel to weigh her soul and hope it weighed less than twenty-one grams. What would happen if it weighed enough? All Carmilla had to do was prevent Dame Gothel from bringing her back with the snake’s bite.
Stay strong Shew. If you have really managed to split your heart in the past, then you found a way out of this chamber.
It crossed her mind that maybe Charmwill would interfere and save her from this room. He was there for Loki, and she thought he might do the same for her. In her heart, she knew Charmwill was dead, and she didn’t know if the dead still appeared in the memories of the Dreamers.
As all of these thoughts were spinning in her head, the Queen was becoming impatient.
Two huntsmen grabbed Shew from the back and pulled her toward the weighing table. Carmilla had decided Shew was never going to submit.