by Cameron Jace
“Why are your eyes so big and yellow?”
“It’s also the illness. I am sorry for that.” She coughed.
“And your teeth,” I said. “They look awful and sharp.” Maybe that was the way she looked like, but I didn’t remember.
“You silly girl. Come into my arms.”
“I will, but I left my basket at the door,” I took a step back, knowing that this wasn’t my granma. “I brought you lovely cakes.”
As I walked back to pick up the scythe, I knew it was the wolf. I knew that he had eaten my poor granma, pretending to be her, lying on the bed. I picked up the scythe and hurried back at him.
“You bastard,” I screamed. “You ate my granma!”
The wolf looked appalled, shivering again to the sight of the scythe, but he didn’t run. What kept him in place?
“Please, don’t kill me.” He pleaded, showing me his paws.
“If you don’t run away, I will kill you.” I said, holding the scythe up, fear creeping up his eyes.
“I can’t.” He said, pointing at the blanket.
Pulling it away, I saw the wolf was bound with barbwire to the bed. It was bleeding, and it couldn’t move.
“Who did that to you?”
“It’s her.” He whispered.
“Her?” I asked. “Do you mean—“
“It’s your grandmother,” The wolf said. “You should leave, before she wakes up.” He pointed behind me, toward the sound of the boiling oven.
I turned around and stepped forward with the scythe my hand. There was an old, ugly woman snoring on a rocking chair next to a boiling pot. She wore black, and had a long curving nose like a hawk. Her eyelids were puffy and wrinkled. Her stomach was big as if she had just eaten an elephant. When she rocked the chair, it squeaked in pain underneath her weight.
It was my granma.
Suddenly, I started remembering how awful she was when I was a kid, and how evil she was. Everyone hated her. She was a malevolent witch. I remember now, seeing her when I was ten, walking around our house. That’s why she was banned to live alone in the forest.
“She just ate two children alive,” The wolf warned me. “She wanted to cook them, but then she decided to just eat them alive.”
My witch granma opened her eyes to the wolf’s voice. When she saw me, she looked appalled, the same as me. It seemed as if we were both afraid of each other. I did know why I was afraid of her. But why was she afraid of me?
“What brings you here you—“ She stood up, a little dizzy from the big meal she had.
“My mother sent me to bring you cake and wine,” I began but couldn’t finish my sentence.
“No,” The witch screamed, and the candy house started shaking, cakes falling down from it. “It’s not my time yet.”
Holding the scythe up high, I was puzzled. What did she mean?
“That damn Tree of Life!” She screamed.
“What?” I said, trying to keep balance on the shaking floor. “What do you know about the Tree of Life?”
“I know everything, and I will not let you kill me.”
“Ladle?” Granma estranged. “That’s not her name. Her name is—“
The house shook harder to her spell. Its walls started to come closer. I didn’t know if I should fear being squeezed between walls made of cake, but I was worried.
But that wasn’t the point. The point was that my granma knew my real name. The one I hated, but it seemed the time had come to live with it.
“Her name is Death,” My granma yelled. “Her mother is Death. The whole family is Death. They answer to a Tree of Life that produces a fortune cookie with a name everyday. Her mother’s job was to kill the one person with that name because his time has come.”
“So it’s her mother who is Death. Not her, right?” The wolf asked, shaking in his bed.
“On Christmas Eve, when her daughter turns sixteen, she takes over. It’s the prophecy.”
I raised the scythe and chopped the witch’s head off.
Chop. Chop. Chop. I liked the sound of that.
Her blood spattered all over my white hood. It was a fountain of blood, one of those gory scenes your mind can’t comprehend.
Wiping the blood from my face, I went to free the wolf. He was shivering again as I did.
“I am not going to hurt you,” I said. “I am not a bad person. I am just Death. It’s a job.” It was funny how I had to explain myself to a wolf who was bad and mean to others. “Come on. We have to save the kids.” I said.
I went back to my headless granma and sliced her huge stomach open. Two kids, a boy and girl, came out of her, chocking, removing the sticky insides of the witch off their faces. Yuck.
“Thank you,” The girl came running to me. “We owe you our lives. We were lured by the candy house, and my brother, Hansel, kept nibbling on it. She invited us to eat more candy inside. We didn’t know she wanted to cook us in this hot boiling oven.”
As I hugged her back, I discovered she was the sweet giggly girl I met in the market with her brother. But before I could remind her, I saw her brother standing appalled, staring at me.
“Come back here, Gretel,” He pulled his sister away. “Can’t you see who she is?”
The coward wolf joined them, and stood next to them.
“She is Death.” Hansel said.
“Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.” The wolf mumbled, having now turned back into a boy.
“Little Red Riding Hood.” I said softly, still checking myself out in the mirror. It was my destiny; to kill those whose name came out of the fortune cookie. My mother sent me into the woods to discover who I really was, to learn about my destiny, and to take over. Nothing strange about that. We live in the Kingdom of Sorrow, where strange was just about the norm.
“I don’t care what she does,” Gretel said, running back to me. “She saved us.”
“She did.” The wolf-boy, or boy-wolf, agreed.
“She is actually our friend.” Gretel declared, and I was so happy. All I wanted was friends.
“I guess she is,” Hansel said reluctantly. “As long as she doesn’t chop off our heads.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I only do it if your name shows in the fortune cookie.”
“And how do we know our names won’t show up.” Hansel asked.
“Because you’re twelve years old. The fortune cookie is not that fond of young ones.” I said.
Suddenly, I knew why older people in the market avoided me. They knew I was Death, and they knew that their names were more likely to show up in the fortune cookie. Younger people didn’t fear me like they did. “Besides, you two are immortal,” I added, not knowing how I knew this. Since I surrendered to the fact that I was Death, I felt like a portal opening in my brain, looking into the unknown. “You will do some great things when you grow up. You’ll be part of the Lost Seven.”
“The lost seven?” Gretel wondered.
“We’re certainly lost,” Hansel interrupted. “We have to find our way back to our parents.”
“Not before we bury the body of my granma a proper burial, and leave the basket of cake and wine on the grave. It’s tradition, and have to follow it.”
“Oh,” The wolf said. “That’s why Death walks around with a basket of cakes and wine, to place it on the grave like the Roman ritual, to pay respect to the dead.”
“You got that right,” I said. “But you better not eat the cakes,” I hesitated for a moment before saying, “And I will have to fill the empty wine bottle with granma’s blood.”
“Why?” Asked the wolf.
“To feed the Tree of Life. It’s the only way it gets watered. I have to follow my mom’s footsteps.”
After we buried the body, Hansel and Gretel took some cakes with them and left, following the trail of breadcrumbs back home. We agreed we will meet tomorrow in the market and play Anguish Language together.
I opened the door and walked back to the forest, wearing my red hood and scythe. There was no po
int in hiding who I was anymore.
“Let’s go, Little Riding Hood,” I talked to myself. “We got a lot of work to do.”
“Wait,” The wolf said. “Can I come with you?”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well,” He scratched his head. “I could teach you Anguish Language.” He looked embarrassed, not saying what he really wanted.
“Why would you do that?”
“You see,” He started fidgeting. “The truth is…I… like you.”
I blushed when he said that. “You do?”
“I do. Very much.” He smiled.
“But you’re not trustable. You tried to eat me. I only saved you because you told me about the kids.”
“Well. It’s true you can’t trust me, but that’s because I get hungry. And it’s not like I want to hurt somebody. I just want to eat them. It's my nature, the same way it's your nature to kill people.”
“What kind of excuse is that?”
“It’s not an excuse. I promise I will not eat anyone. Please. I really, really want to be with you. Consider me a friend...for now...later, I wish we'de be more than that. Besides, you’re Death. I can’t eat you. You will punish me.”
“I only kill those whose name appears in the fortune cookie.”
“Ok,” I said. “Here is the deal. As long as you don't try to eat me, I will not chop your head off. Deal?”
“The best deal ever. I guess this is how all relationships work. You don’t eat a piece of me, I won’t grab a piece of you.”
“But I don’t promise you love, Wolfy.”
“You can’t promise love, Ladle. Love just happens.” He winked.
Ok. Follow me.” I said, putting the scythe on my shoulder like soldiers did with their rifles.
A while later, we held hands. I liked it, still gripping my scythe in the other hand. Like the wolf said, maybe that was how relationship worked. A girl has to have her scythe behind her back, and a boy had his moments of uncontrollable hunger. Still, I believed we could make it work. We both shared blood on our hands. My squirrel friends arrived and walked next to us. We played with a couple of butterflies on our way, and we saved a rabbit stuck in a bush. The wolf told me jokes, and made me laugh.
Everything that was mystery in the morning was solved by evening. All but one thing: Who was that pale girl with black hair that knocked on my door?
END OF The Grimm Prequels book 4,
a prelude toThe Grimm Diaries Series coming out soon
List of the Grimm Diaries Prequels available so far:
1 Snow White Blood Red
narrated by Snow White Queen
available HERE
2 Cinder to Cinder & Ashes to Ashes
narrated by Alice Grimm
available HERE
3 Beauty Never Dies
narrated by Peter Pan
available HERE
4 Ladle Rat Rotten Hut
narrated by Little Red Riding Hood
5 Blood Apples
narrated by Prince Charming
Other Tiles by Cameron Jace
I Am Alive ( I Am Alive Series book #1)
A YA Dystopian novel
available HERE
To know more about the first full-length book of the Grimm Diaries book 1: Snow White Sorrow, coming out 2012,
please follow the link below:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13557166-snow-white-sorrow
You can contact me at
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/995289.Cameron_Jace
or
http://cameronjace.blogspot.com/
or
[email protected]
or follow me on twitter
@cameronjace
