“Come on,” I whispered. I kept thinking she should move slow, like Death was some kind of animal that might not take her as a threat as long as she didn’t make any jerky movements.
But Death had other ideas. He hovered closer and swung his scythe low, forcing Alice to move closer—she couldn’t duck, she couldn’t jump over it, and so the only way to avoid that rusted old crescent-shaped blade was to get right up in his face. She said something to him, something I couldn’t hear, and then she was spinning, both of her hands grabbing his cloak. She pulled him with her, throwing him toward the control panel before he could draw the blade of his scythe across her back.
In a split second, she was at her weapons, grabbing the shield and the foil in one smooth motion. She was talking to herself, her feet dancing on the platform. I wanted to shout at her to open her stance up a little bit—Death had swung his scythe from left to right and would probably do it again—but I kept quiet, clutching the cage and just hoping—praying—that she’d remember all the fencing lessons I’d given her.
Death moved closer. His hood had fallen forward, hiding his black eye sockets. Just his lower jaw was visible. God, he was so close to the cage that I could see his crooked teeth. I drew in a deep breath, stifling a hot cough. Alice needed her concentration.
A bead of sweat landed on her eyebrow. Her eyes were wide, watching Death approach. Watching his scythe. Good girl, I thought; watch his weapon and don’t look at his terrifying skull face.
I thought she would wait for him to attack again. But I was wrong—instead, she was the one who closed the distance between them. She attacked high, stabbing at Death’s head, but he swung his scythe up, deflecting the flimsy blade.
She turned so her back was to me, limping just a bit on her left foot. She attacked again, aiming for his torso. He let the blade pierce his cloak. It went right between his ribs, out the other end. He turned, taking Alice and the blade with him. She looked scared now, not sure whether she should pull the blade out or … crap, I don’t know. He was all rotten bones. She had to pierce one of the bones.
He lifted his scythe, pushing Alice away with the staff. She fell back, limping on her left foot. My throat tightened. I pulled at the wet collar of my shirt, terrified. “She’s hurt,” I whispered. “She’s seriously hurt.”
Alice put her weight on her right foot and advanced again, shield held high. She thrust the foil at Death’s neck, then his head, then his head again but he floated out of range of her blade. She refused to keep any distance between them, limping closer and aiming low, driving her blade upward like an uppercut. Death deflected the blow with his scythe; Alice reached out with her shield hand, letting the shield’s straps slip up her forearm so she could grab the scythe.
A cold force pushed toward me, rattling the cage. Alice let go of the scythe and attacked high again. This time Death parried and the nicked blade of the scythe crashed against her foil. Even a foil designed by a hero wasn’t going to last long against Death’s heavy weapon. She needed a quick kill. She couldn’t draw this out or eventually her blade would snap.
She stabbed at his head again, keeping her shield high. Death flew back, countering with a swing of his scythe that bounced off the surface of her shield, shearing away slivers of wood. She closed in and stabbed again.
His eyes, I thought. She’s aiming for his eye sockets.
Death whirled around, swinging the scythe like a madman. Again, Alice deflected with her shield but the blade just sliced off more pieces of wood. They moved around the center of the platform, Alice hopping over the spring trap while Death simply hovered over it. His cloak had opened a bit and inside the darkness I could see why his feet never touched the ground: he didn’t have any. His body was nothing more than a dangling spine and spindly cracked ribs crawling with little black beetles.
They moved close and it became another intense struggle, Alice doing her best to shield herself from the scythe’s blade while she tried to stab at Death; he kept moving and she kept following, ignoring every good piece of advice she’d ever gotten about planting her feet. She lost her footing, nearly falling, dropping her foil.
Finally, she pulled away, reaching down for the foil with her fingers outstretched. Death raised his scythe and brought it down like he was chopping a log. Alice held up the shield. The blade tore through the shield, stuck, the tip nearly cutting Alice’s face. She let go of the shield and somersaulted back to the center of the platform, grabbing one of the knives and the fat chain that was attached to the spring trap.
“Lob it like a softball,” I said in a low voice. “Aim right for his head.”
Death swung his scythe at the floor. The shield broke in two. Alice waited for him to turn, then threw the spring trap right at him. It disappeared inside his cloak.
The sound of the teeth snapping into bone hit my ears. My heart nearly burst from my chest. His spine … the metal jaws had closed around his spine.
“Strike three,” I whispered.
Death’s bony fingers pulled back his cloak. The trap was closed around the bottom half of his spine, right under his ribcage. He tugged; the metal teeth refused to budge.
“Alice …”
She ignored me, stepping left. Moving closer once again and giving up her distance. Maybe she was trying to get behind him. Maybe she didn’t know what to do. Maybe she’d been sure that the spring trap would be enough.
Death turned. His back was to me now. I could almost reach out and grab his cloak. If I could just move the cage a little closer …
Alice held out her knife, limping closer, reaching out with her free hand as if she was going to grab for him.
Death lifted his scythe. The sleeve of his cloak pulled back, revealing his bony arm.
I felt it coming. It was as if a jet engine was flying right underneath me, passing through Death and crashing right into Alice. The force pushed her off her feet. She skidded across the platform, the tip of her dagger scraping along the concrete.
She reached the edge of the platform. Her legs spilled over and then she was just hanging there, clutching the edge with both arms, her head peering over the top like a swimmer on the verge of drowning.
“Alice!” I screamed. I pulled on the bars, straining the muscles in my arms and begging for a superhero moment. The bars didn’t budge. Alice’s wide eyes met mine. All I saw was fear. Nothing else. Just fear.
“Chase,” she said. Her fingers clutched at the concrete, each knuckle white.
And then she was gone.
Chapter 7: Alice
I could feel the heat. It bubbled up from below with such intensity that the slick wet coating on my eyeballs dried out. I could taste the metal. I could smell it so clearly that I felt dizzy. I could feel the heat in my toes, as if my shoes might catch on fire at any moment.
I clung for dear life.
The dagger was dug into the topmost edge of one of the air vents along the side of the platform. My sweaty hands held onto the leather hilt for dear life.
Carefully, I let go with one hand and reached for the edge of the platform. My fingers squeezed the concrete. The muscles in my arm ached as I tried to pull my body up.
It was no use.
Come on, hero!
Briar’s nagging voice. But he was too late. There was no way to pull myself up. I didn’t have enough strength left in my arms. My triceps were sore from parrying Death’s attacks. My forearms burned, and it had nothing to do with the intense heat below.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, hero.
I took a shaky breath. My lungs convulsed, rejecting the molten heat rising up from below. My finger muscles stung. My grip on the dagger’s hilt was slipping. I lifted my right leg. My butt muscle screamed. My hamstring throbbed.
The toe of my shoe found the edge.
I pulled on the knife with my right hand. I pulled on the edge of the platform with my left hand. I pushed with my foot. The metal grate rattled, loosening. I was horizontal now. I could feel the ed
ge of the platform along my leg. I pushed on the knife as hard I could, rolling over and wrenching the dagger from the grate.
In an instant, I was on my feet. My body went into cruise control while my mind processed the image in front of me: Death, driving his scythe blade into the spring trap’s fat chain, trying to free himself; Chase, staring at me, eyes wide; my parents, stirring, trying to sit up in the cage and causing it to swing back and forth.
“Hey!” Chase shouted at Death, pounding the cage. “Hey, I’m not done with you yet!”
Death turned to Chase, his hood falling back to reveal a bony white skull with a single hairline crack down the center.
The ball of my left foot ached with each step. The muscles in my right leg burned. My dry mouth tasted like metal. The skin of my cheeks tingled. My body knew.
There would be only one chance. One chance.
I pushed off with both feet, reaching out and grabbing Death around his shoulders. His body fell back under my weight but he remained upright, a strange whistling groan escaping between his clenched teeth. I could feel the bones underneath the cloak. My left hand found his ribs and clutched one, preventing me from falling off.
His free hand reached back. The finger bones found my shoulder, digging into the chainmail. His other hand spun the scythe around, aiming the rusted point of the blade at my face.
I drove the knife into his right eye socket, feeling the tip of the blade pierce the bone. His jaw dropped and an inhuman, bird-like scream pierced my eardrums. I let go, reaching out for his scythe and grabbing it with both hands.
I wrenched it free, pulling his bony arm along with. The fingers refused to let go.
Death’s robe fluttered to the floor. He screamed louder and his jaw fell off, bouncing on the floor beside my duffel bag.
I lifted the scythe over his head. He tried to crawl away but the trap was still locked around his spine. There he was, just a heap of bones. A fragile creature that should never have existed in the first place. It was time to end things once and for all.
I brought the scythe down, shattering the ribcage. The bones burned away. A terrible cold wind swirled all around me. I clutched the scythe in both hands, holding it over my head.
Screams. I could hear screams, growing louder and louder, dozens and dozens of them. Children’s screams. Men’s screams. Women’s screams. Monstrous screams, swirling around me as if they were draining in a whirlpool. Then I saw them: the Corrupted. Fairy tale characters. First a wolf and then a fine-dressed man with terrible gray skin and then a lion and a feral-looking rat and dozens more, their ghost-like bodies stretched and pulled by the whirlwind. They spun faster all around me, screaming, crying out, the black Corruption being wrenched from them. They swirled around the blackness of the robe.
I shut my eyes, clutching the scythe for dear life.
And then: silence.
Emptiness.
I brought my hands down, watching the scythe burn away. I looked at Chase. He smiled weakly. I smiled back.
“Is it over? Are they all gone?”
“It’s over,” I said. I put the pen and the weapons in the duffel bag, then kicked all of them off the edge, into the molten steel.
Epilogue
12 years have passed. 12 years since I’ve touched my diaries. Where do I start? Well, I’m 31 years old now, but I usually tell people I’m 29. I’m going to keep doing that for a few more years, I think.
Chase is doing well. He coaches baseball and teaches literature in high school. He still uses one crutch, and he probably always will. We’re married now, but let that fool you: we didn’t exactly live “happily ever after” once the magic pen was destroyed. We went to college together, and then we just sort of … drifted. Classes got in the way. Life got in the way. We met other people, transferred to different colleges, dated, had our hearts broken. We never lost touch, though. There was this connection between us … I guess fighting monsters does that.
But then, two years after we finished college, we both found ourselves back in Milwaukee. And we just got together and it felt so right this time, like we were finally ready to spend the rest of our lives together. And since then, things have been good. We have our ups and downs—I get grumpy over work and he gets stressed during baseball season—but that’s not unusual in a real relationship.
As opposed to a fairy tale relationship.
No, what’s unusual is that sometimes I wake up next to him and fall in love with him all over again.
Me? I guess you could say I never fully realized my dream. I thought I wanted to be a nurse. I thought I could be happy doing that forever. But then something happened during my second year while working at one of the hospitals in downtown Milwaukee …
I got promoted. And then two years later, I got promoted again. And again.
Don’t get me wrong: working in the ER is enjoyable and meaningful. But being Vice President of emergency care? Well! How could I turn down the chance to make an even bigger difference? I did more or less save the world a couple times, in case you forgot. That kind of stays with a person.
But that’s not why I’m writing in this old journal. I’m writing this at my parents’ place. I’m in my old room, sitting at my old desk. I can look out the window and see the young Juniper tree in my parents’ front yard. It still has four bricks around its thin little trunk. It’s tall, too—almost as tall as Chase. And it sprouted its first seed.
Well … “seed” isn’t exactly accurate.
You see, I could have sworn yesterday morning its little branches were bare. But when I woke up this morning, there was something resting among the little needles. I went outside in the cold, my bare feet padding on the snow, sure it was a trick of the eye. The moment I saw the handwriting, a flood of memories hit me so hard that I burst into tears. I grabbed the note and unfolded it:
Dear Alice,
I hope this letter finds you well. I would have written sooner, but Alexander had the darndest time figuring out a spell that would allow us to communicate. The specifics are hardly important—needless to say, it was a difficult task but Alexander felt he owed me one for nearly killing me that night in the old movie theater.
One! He owes me more than one, and I’ll gladly collect at some point.
In the meantime, you can rest assured that the briar patch is as wonderful as you remember it. A few years ago, I entered into an agreement with Sam Grayle and his brothers to form a mining company and leased part of my land for gold mining purposes. What the brothers expect to use the gold for remains to be seen, but Sam is especially concerned with ensuring this wonderful world of ours has an ample supply of tailors who can provide him with fine suits, which he dearly misses.
You may also rest assured that I do not partake in the mining process. No, Br’er Rabbit has always been more of a “supervisor” than anything, and from the safety of my hammock I provide various suggestions to the hard-working dwarfs.
The Corruption is nearly gone. Alexander leads the charge, with the help of Snow White and her intimidating princesses. There is still much of this world to explore—it seems the Brothers Grimm had limitless imaginations.
I am also in love. Her name is Adele and she’s quite the fox. Literally, she is a fox. We are getting married at Snow White’s castle, and the Musicians of Bremen will be playing into the wee hours of the night. They’re quite good, although the screeching cat sounds a bit flat to me.
Is this a happy ending, I wonder? Close enough, I suppose. At times I miss you and Chase and Seth and all of the others I had the wonderful experience of knowing on earth. But that’s part of life, isn’t it? Good times, bad times, as the song goes. I’ve learned that life is what we make of it, and while “happily ever after” may be an impossible dream, I do hope you strive for it anyway. Perhaps you will find happiness along the way. Perhaps that will be enough.
Goodbye, my friend.
Briar
* * *
[i] The Gold-Children
by t
he Brothers Grimm
There was once a poor man and a poor woman who had nothing but a little cottage, and who earned their bread by fishing, and always lived from hand to mouth. But it came to pass one day when the man was sitting by the water-side, and casting his net, that he drew out a fish entirely of gold. As he was looking at the fish, full of astonishment, it began to speak and said, “Hark you, fisherman, if you will throw me back again into the water, I will change your little hut into a splendid castle.”
Then the fisherman answered, “Of what use is a castle to me, if I have nothing to eat?”
The gold fish continued, “That shall be taken care of, there will be a cupboard in the castle in which, when you open it, shall be dishes of the most delicate meats, and as many of them as you can desire.”
“If that be true,” said the man, “then I can well do you a favour.”
“Yes,” said the fish, “there is, however, the condition that you shall disclose to no one in the world, whosoever he may be, whence your good luck has come, if you speak but one single word, all will be over.”
Then the man threw the wonderful fish back again into the water, and went home. But where his hovel had formerly stood, now stood a great castle. He opened wide his eyes, entered, and saw his wife dressed in beautiful clothes, sitting in a splendid room, and she was quite delighted, and said, “Husband, how has all this come to pass? It suits me very well.”
“Yes,” said the man, “it suits me too, but I am frightfully hungry, just give me something to eat.”
Said the wife, “But I have got nothing and don't know where to find anything in this new house.”
“There is no need of your knowing,” said the man, “for I see yonder a great cupboard, just unlock it.” When she opened it, there stood cakes, meat, fruit, wine, quite a bright prospect.
Then the woman cried joyfully, “What more can you want, my dear?” and they sat down, and ate and drank together. When they had had enough, the woman said, “But husband, whence come all these riches?”
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 4 Page 36
