Which, of course, was followed by a melodramatic sigh on my part.
By the time we arrived at the aquarium in Chicago, it was time for lunch. Before we could actually go in, we had to find a Chicago-style hot dog in order to satisfy Dad’s bizarre craving.
“There’s gotta be a hot dog cart around here somewhere,” he said after we parked. Now, I’m not sure how your parents are, but mine get dead-set on something and follow through no matter what. Dad wanted a Chicago-style hot dog, and so Dad was going to get one come hell or high water. Even if I tripped on a curb and broke my leg, the Chicago-style hot dog was going to come first.
He took us away from the aquarium, toward the city. A strong, cool wind was blowing off Lake Michigan and I’d been stupid enough to leave the house without a jacket despite Mom’s constant nagging.
Maybe I could draw a coat, I thought as we made our way south along a city block lined with tall glass-filled skyscrapers. But I had no idea how even a simple spring jacket was put together—that was the trick with the magic pen. That was why my saber had broken during my fight with the Frog Prince: I needed the knowledge to make the magic work right.
“Dad,” I said as we passed onto the next street. There was a Starbucks on the corner, and beyond that a little restaurant with big glass windows. Not quite like the café in my dreams. “We’re getting farther and farther away from the aquarium. You know, that place that we were going to go to this afternoon?”
“Alice is right, dear,” said Mom. Her arm was locked in his and she tugged on it a little bit. She seemed to know it was a losing battle, though. “Maybe they have hot dogs at the aquarium.”
“This is Chicago,” he said. “There has to be a hot dog cart around here somewhere.”
I crossed my arms. “Says you.”
“Excuse me,” came a soft voice directly behind me. It caught me so off-guard that my legs pushed my body sideways. I pressed up against the big glass window of the restaurant.
There, standing right behind where I’d stood, were a young man and a young woman. Like, right behind where I’d been just a moment ago. They both had dark auburn hair, the man’s cut short and the woman’s pulled back behind her ears, with cute little bangs hanging over her forehead. They had pale skin and green eyes. The woman had dark, full lips that were cracked into a little smile. Both of them wore dark pants and white button-down collar shirts. The woman’s shirt was ruffled around the collar, but otherwise they could have nearly been twins.
Everyone was looking at me, eyebrows raised.
“Dear,” Mom said. “I don’t think the nice people eating there want to see your butt smushed up against the glass.”
I peeled myself away from the window, turning around in embarrassment. Yup, there was definitely a middle-aged couple sitting at the table next to the window, staring at me in shock.
The young man cleared his throat. “I couldn’t help but hear you discuss hot dogs,” he said to my dad.
Dad grabbed his stomach. “I’d kill for a dog right now. Especially one slathered in ketchup. No beans, though. Some hot dog fans love beans, but I love my family too much to put them through that, especially since we have a long car ride home tomorrow.”
“Dad!” I cried out. Oh. My. Gawd. Was he really saying this stuff?
The young man smiled warmly. “There’s a hot dog stand not one block away. West, dear sir.”
“Ah-ha!” Dad said, tugging on my mom’s arm as he headed for the end of the block. “I knew it! I just knew it. This is Chicago, after all.”
“Thank you,” my mom called over her shoulder. “Come on, Alice. Your father is on a mission.”
“The sooner I get a hot dog, the sooner we can get to the aquarium,” Dad added before disappearing behind the concrete business building on the corner.
I took a step away from the building, keeping my eyes on the two mysterious strangers. Something told me to keep my distance. Heck, even if I wasn’t the hero, I would still have kept my distance. They looked like they were headed to an opera, dressed up so snazzy.
“That’s amazing that you’re going to the aquarium!” said the young woman. She smiled and I felt my entire body grow cold. There was something wrong with that smile. It didn’t fit her, somehow. “My brother and I were thinking about going there this afternoon, too.”
“The pride of Chicago,” said the brother with a smile.
“Hot dogs are a close second,” I murmured, examining the skin of their smooth cheeks. It wasn’t glowing. So that meant they weren’t Corrupted, right? Right. Just a couple of weirdoes. I turned away, keeping my head cocked just a little bit to see if they would follow. They didn’t.
In fact, when I glanced back again, they were gone entirely.
Chapter 7: Br’er Rabbit
The next morning, Br’er Rabbit went down to where the two roads met. A horse was sleeping next to a fence, its tail slapping lazily at flies. “I hope you’re ready to have some fun!” Br’er Rabbit told the horse, chuckling just a bit.
[viii]
Howdy-doo! It’s about time Alice gave me a chance to take over the story. Boy, she’s a crazy one, isn’t she? Acting all jumpy all the time … and that mouth! She’s about as sarcastic as a mule in a cattle field, I tell you. And to be entirely honest, the whole reason she’s writing all of this down is so future generations can learn about it. Honestly, how many people are gonna want to read about what clothes she picked out in the morning?!
Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking Briar, just how in the heck can you even write in the first place? You’ve got paws!
Well friend, it ain’t easy. In fact, I dare say it’s one of the toughest things to master. But that’s neither here nor there, I think. After all, do you really want me to tell you the long, rambling tale of how I learned to write, or do you want me to tell you about what happened when I snuck into Grayle Incorporated and nearly got myself killed a dozen different times?
I thought so.
So there I was, sitting in front of an old desk, staring at the pencil. The year was 1947 and—oh, right … you’d rather hear about my spy mission.
Well, to start off, I think I should point out that as a giant talking rabbit, I have no means of transportation. Things were a lot easier back in the days before cars. Boy do I hate admitting how old I am! Nothing worse than listening to someone start off a sentence with “Back in my day …” That’s what grandpas do. And Br’er Rabbit is no grandpa.
Anywho! Back in the days before cars, I could just make myself invisible and hitch a ride on the rear of a carriage. Carriages are slow-moving and usually had a steel support bar you could stand on. But hitching a ride on a car? Hoo-boy, you can forget that!
Well what about a bus, you might ask. I admit, I do sometimes sneak on a bus. But you have to remember that just because I’m invisible doesn’t mean someone can’t bump into me. Happened one time just recently. There I was, trying to get from one side of Miami to the other after a nice long vacation by the beach with a couple tortoise friends, and I’d missed two buses already because no one else was waiting at the bus stop. So finally one stops because a sweet old lady is waiting on the corner with me. And it’s blistering hot, by the way. I’m dabbing my handkerchief on my furry forehead every ten seconds, I swear to you.
And so this old lady gets on the bus and before I can sneak on behind her, the door closes! Right on my cute little button nose.
So I wait some more. And wouldn’t you know it, another sweet old lady shuffles her way to the corner where I’m standing. Florida’s full of sweet old ladies, by the way. So the next bus comes by twenty minutes later, and darned if this time I didn’t go ahead and sneak my way on first. But guess what? Someone was getting off. We bumped into each other. Hard. The guy went tumbling back. I went tumbling back, falling right out of the bus.
By the time I gathered my bearings, the bus was already a block away.
So! There you have it. The dire circumstances of being an invi
sible rabbit in the modern world.
As it was, I traveled to downtown Milwaukee the old-fashioned way: I ran! Yup, old Br’er Rabbit is something of a star in his own right, thanks to a few carefully placed sentences in my creator’s story. Remember that magic page I told Alice about? The one my creator used to write the story about little old me and bring me to life? Well, two of the things he mentioned in that story were that I could disappear at will and I could run really, really fast. Fast enough to outrun all my animal friends.
In other words: pretty darned fast!
It wasn’t hard to find Grayle Incorporated’s building downtown. It was the tallest skyscraper in the city, just a few blocks away from Lake Michigan. A sight to behold, that’s for sure. Forty stories tall. Big, shiny windows like dragon scales. A bright white exterior and a pointy top like a dunce cap.
There were only two ways in: through the front door or through the underground parking structure. The parking structure required a pass code to get in and, seeing as how it was Saturday, no one was coming or going.
The front door was an option, of course. I could always sneak into a building while invisible by opening the door quickly and hurrying in; people just assumed the wind had blown the door open. Or it was ghosts. Lots of people believed in ghosts.
But here’s the problem: the Corrupted … they can see me. Always. I can’t make myself invisible to them. I don’t know why that is—believe me, I’d love to know!—but for some reason they can see me plain as day. So if this Sam Grayle was inside the building, then I needed to be real careful. The last thing I wanted to do was barge my way through the front doors and come face-to-face with one of the seven dwarfs.
The gears in my brain turned and turned. How to get in … how to get in … and then it hit me: I’ll just sneak in through the sewer!
Well. That turned out to be just about the worst idea ever. The sewer system underneath the street was cramped and dark and smelly as all heck. And to make things worse, I’d had to sneak in through an old manhole in the adjacent alley so I wouldn’t be seen … and a rat popped out from behind a big green dumpster and started yelling at me! Rats are so rude, I swear.
Anywho. There I was in the sewer, making my way toward the underground parking structure. Sure enough, it had an emergency entrance to the sewers and wouldn’t you know it, the door was locked. But I’m Br’er Rabbit, don’t you know! If I can weasel my way out of a tar trap set by Br’er Fox, you’d better believe an old locked door won’t stop me. I reached into my pocket for my lucky toothpick—this is what we literary characters call a deus ex machina … look it up on Wikipedia!—and picked the lock easy as pie.
Almost as easy as pie. I admit I used a couple curse words when it didn’t unlock right away.
The door opened into the very bottom level of the parking structure. There were no cars parked down here and half the little lights attached to the concrete pillars between the parking spaces were out. It looked as if this section was hardly ever used. Spider webs in the corners, dust on the ground, and as spooky as it gets.
I kept to the shadows like a good little spy, making my way up the ramp where all of the pillars were marked with a big green 2. There were cars parked on this level, and none of the lights were out. There was scaffolding, too—it looked like they were starting some much-needed renovation work. I moved from car to car, keeping a careful eye out for anyone of small stature.
I admit, I was a little scared. Especially when I made my way to the next level, where everything was marked with a big green 1. Here, just about every parking space was filled. Even though it was Saturday, there were a lot of people working. And how many of them were Corrupted? Sure, the Frog Prince couldn’t drive around in broad daylight, but there were plenty of others who could. Plenty who looked normal. I’d have to stay out of sight as much as possible just to be safe.
Which meant taking the staircase. Yup, forty floors of stair climbing for old Briar. Now, I may not age, necessarily, but I can tell you by floor twenty my knees were aching something fierce. A lot of cursing not fit for this story, that’s for sure.
At the top floor, I took a big risk opening the staircase door a crack and slipping through, but luckily there wasn’t anyone walking around the long hallway. And boy oh boy, was it a nice hallway! Beautiful mahogany wood trim along the walls. Paintings hanging between each of the three double office doors. Big, lush green plants sitting in heavy red clay pots near the elevator.
An air vent on the far end of the room was my ticket in. With the help of my lucky dime I unscrewed the screws and snuck inside—positively brilliant idea, no? Now, I admit the air vent was a bit snug, and a little cold, but it was the best option I had. And thanks to the light coming in through the vents ahead, I could see well enough ahead of me to know I was directly above the three offices.
Br’er Rabbit: master spy!
There were voices up ahead. I could hear them through one of the vents up ahead. I passed the first vent and glanced inside. The office below was huge! We’re talking big-as-a-mansion huge. It had dark green wallpaper and a big desk and behind that was a window overlooking Lake Michigan and the entire coastline. There was nothing on the desk. The dark gray carpeting looked freshly vacuumed. The paintings on the wall all looked old. If I had to guess, I’d say they were originals from the Cubist movement of the early 1900s. I’m no art historian by any means, but I know my Cubists when I see them.
“What do you mean he’s gone?” came a voice farther down. I shuffled through the tight tunnel, doing my best to not let the buttons of my handsome vest scrape against the metal. I suppose a master spy would have removed the buttons before entering the vent so as not to make noise … but this vest looked just so darned nice on me.
“He hasn’t come back,” came another voice. Both of the voices were gruff and manly.
I inched my way to the next vent, peering into the second room. It was much like the first, only with tall wooden bookshelves along either wall. The desk was cluttered with documents, along with a big white mug of coffee. Standing in front of the desk were three immaculately dressed dwarfs. Sam Grayle stood in the middle, running one hand along his glossy suit coat.
“Just calm down a moment, Flick,” said Sam. I have to say, I was quite impressed with his style of dress: a nice glossy gray suit coat and pants and a spiffy red tie. The others were dressed not so well. Oh, sure, they had suit coats too … but their suit coats were both tired and worn-looking. More than a little wrinkled, too.
“It would have been nice if someone would have told me,” said the man with the navy blue wrinkled suit coat. Flick. Why was that name familiar? Corrupted had a tendency to pick rather … interesting names, I’d noticed. They oftentimes picked a name that had some meaning to their original stories.
But Flick? That was a doozy of a brain teaser.
Now, I should tell you that my research skills are paramount. And now that I’ve mastered the Google device I’m even better than before. As it was, I knew a lot of about Sam Grayle but not his brothers. The dwarfs in the Grimms’ fairy tale don’t exactly have too much to say, but Sam Grayle—formerly Carl Grayle, and before that his name was Joseph Guttenheim—has been a man with a plan. In 1859 he purchased a small mining company in western Germany. In 1905 he resurfaced in America, digging for oil out west with a company called Virginia Standard. In 1935 he was known as Carl Grayle and conducted banking operations in New York City.
And so on and so forth.
“We all forget things from time to time,” said Sam. He shrugged. “And this is hardly the biggest problem we’re dealing with as of right now.”
“I just think Gilbert needs to keep us in the loop,” Flick growled through barred teeth. He had a long brownish beard with strings of gray. The brother currently on the receiving end of Flick’s ire—Gilbert, apparently—had a longish beard, too, only it was patchier and darker and unkempt.
“He’s always so reliable!” Gilbert protested. “We tell him to lur
k in the sewers and spy, he lurks in the sewers and spy. We tell him to sneak into a rival’s house and kill them, he sneaks into a rival’s house and kills them.”
“The hero is different!” shouted Flick. “She probably ate him for lunch!”
Gilbert coughed. Correction: he quite nearly hacked up a lung. My stomach churned at the sound. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s wet, phlegmy coughs.
When Gilbert was finished, he quietly mumbled, “I doubt the hero eats frog.”
“Frog legs, maybe,” said Sam with a thoughtful smile. He massaged his close-cut beard. “It’s a shame. He probably found out who she is.”
“Then he should have come back and told us,” Flick snapped. He flapped his arms about wildly, like a fish out of water. “I swear, sometimes I wonder exactly why we keep you around at all, Gilbert. Are you really sick again? You’re a walking bag of diseases and you have no good ideas!”
“Sam!” Gilbert said weakly, coughing again. He pulled a hankie from the pocket of his black suit coat and spit into it. My stomach lurched at the sight. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s mucus. I had no idea the Corrupted even got sick!
“Well,” Sam said, “you occasionally make a good business decision.”
“Once every thirty or so years,” Flick muttered, crossing his arms. “Hardly anything to write home about.”
“So what’s your plan, then?” Gilbert asked him. “Tell us what the master hero-killer Flick would do.”
“My plan is already in the works,” Flick said.
Sam raised his bushy eyebrows. “Oh? And what is that?”
“Edward had a girlfriend,” Flick explained. My heart thumped in my chest. “It’s a start. I have two of our best operatives keeping an eye on her right now.”
“Who?” Sam asked, narrowing his eyes.
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 1 Page 18
