The Sisters Grimm

by Menna Van Praag

  Liyana sighs, turning her thoughts to less upsetting matters, musing on a problematic plot point in BlackBird’s latest escapade. Might she strip the leaves from the trees and stitch them together to—

  “I’m going to kill Cassie when I see her.”

  Surprised by the acidity of the statement, Liyana glances at the customer behind her. “I’m sorry, what?”

  A polished white woman, all linen and gold, regards Liyana with silent suspicion. Embarrassed, Liyana quickly turns back to her place in the queue.

  “Oh, Grandma, what are we going to do?”

  Confused, Liyana glances over her shoulder again. But the suspicious woman is still silent, and none of the chatter undulating along the lunch line is being directed at Liyana. However, those two sentences were, she’s sure. She heard them as clearly as if someone had spoken into her ear.

  The line shifts forward. An emaciated blond woman relays her intricate order to the patient blond girl behind the counter. Why is it that everyone—customers and staff—in these places is always so fucking pale? Liyana waits, alert. Then it’s her turn.

  “Can I help you?”

  Liyana fumbles for her list.

  “I said stop smiling—now you look like a constipated hamster.”

  Liyana frowns. Surely not. “Sorry, what did you say?”

  The blond girl frowns. “What?”

  Liyana feels a surge of frustration. “Why are you insulting me? What have I done to you?”

  The girl looks alarmed. “I didn’t insult you, I only asked what you wanted.”

  “But I heard you. I—”

  It’s then, seeing the utterly perplexed look on the girl’s face, that Liyana realizes that no one is speaking to her. At least, not in Ottolenghi. She’s hearing the voices in her head.

  Over a decade ago

  Goldie

  I knew I shouldn’t have said it almost as soon as the words left my mouth. But Mrs. Patel was looking at me, wanting more.

  “You think Arjuna shouldn’t go on his trip?”

  I glanced back at the lengthening queue of customers—a fat woman behind me was expelling impatient sighs—suddenly no longer at all sure what I’d meant. It was just a silly dream; I should have kept my mouth shut.

  “N-no . . .” I shook my head. I couldn’t tell Mrs. Patel to cancel her husband’s holiday, not because of something I’d dreamed. And yet, I couldn’t shake the image of him: face underwater, dead eyes staring up at me. “I d-don’t know,” I stalled. “M-maybe. Or maybe he could go another time. I—I . . .”

  Mrs. Patel leaned forward, her large breasts flattening on the counter. “What did you see? Tell me what you saw.”

  I opened my mouth again, trying to form the image into words. “I—I . . .”

  “Goldie!”

  I turned to see Ma pushing through the queue, eliciting further huffs and snorts from the irate customers. When she reached the counter, her eyes flitted from the pint of milk and fifty-pence coin to Mrs. Patel.

  “I’m sorry.” Ma took my hand. “Has Goldie been bothering you?”

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Patel said, shaking her head. “No, I was only asking—”

  I coughed and, mercifully, Mrs. Patel caught my pleading eyes and stopped.

  “Good.” Ma returned to me. “You’ve been gone half an hour. I thought you’d been run over or abducted or . . .”

  She grabbed the pint of milk and dragged me out of the shop.

  We hurried along the pavement together. Usually, you might mistake Ma for me, since she was so short and slight, but not with her being heavily pregnant.

  “S-sorry, Ma.” I squinted in the sunshine. “I—I didn’t realize I’d been—”

  “Then you should think, Goldie, instead of . . .” With a sigh she stopped walking, then hefted up her belly to half kneel, half squat on the pavement so we were eye to eye. “I just worry about you. You’re different, you’ve got to be careful what you . . .”

  I waited for Ma to finish, to tell me how I was different, what I had to be careful of, and why she worried about me so much. But instead she heaved herself back up, abandoning her sentence to take my hand again and usher me home.

  Scarlet

  Something was bothering Scarlet, a stone in her shoe she couldn’t quite shake out. Images flickered at the edges of her sight—sounds, smells, the sense of something teasing but never fully revealing itself. Sometimes she thought she saw someone she knew, girls her own age, each with curling hair of a different colour: blond, brown, black. But when she caught sight of their faces, Scarlet realized they were strangers.

  “Today’s the day,” Esme called, as soon as Scarlet stepped into the café, the bell above the door tinkling. “You’re late.”

  Scarlet glanced at her watch as she hurried across the creaky wooden floor towards the kitchen. She was early.

  “I am not,” she said, appearing at the door. Ella Fitzgerald filled the kitchen—“My Baby Just Cares for Me”—lifting into the air with the scent of cinnamon. “You said six o’clock.”

  “Well, it’s always best to arrive five or ten minutes earlier than the required time,” Esme said. “It demonstrates a pleasing keenness.”

  Scarlet rolled her eyes. “I’m not your staff, Grandma. That’s why I’m here at six o’clock. Those lazy bums wouldn’t be here now if you paid them double. And I’m here for free.”

  “True enough.” Esme laughed. “Now, where’s your mother?”

  Scarlet swallowed. “She told me to tell you she’s tired, she’ll come later.”

  Her grandmother frowned. “She let you come alone?”

  Scarlet shrugged and Esme muttered under her breath.

  “You’ve already started?” Scarlet frowned at the mixing bowl. “How many have you made?”

  Esme kept her head down. “Five trays.”

  “Five? But that’s . . .”

  “Sixty,” her grandmother finished. “I know, I’m—”

  Scarlet let out a small shriek. “You promised you’d wait for me, you—”

  “I know, my dear, I’m sorry.” Esme looked ashamed. “Excitement overcame me and I couldn’t wait.”

  Scarlet narrowed her eyes. “I’m the kid at Christmas, not you.”

  Esme laughed. “Yes, you’re quite right. Then let’s get on. No time to waste.”

  Three hours later they were stacking 168 choux buns (Scarlet having gobbled several during the baking process for necessary quality control checks) filled with cinnamon-nutmeg crème pâtissière into a croquembouche tower bound by caramel threads. Every bun was iced silver or gold, dusted with icing sugar, and sprinkled with glitter.

  Esme had dipped each bun in hot caramel, placing it with precision on the rising spire of sugar and spice. When the last bun was set atop the rest, Scarlet fixed gingerbread stars, crystallized snowdrops, and tiny chocolate owls to their tower. Finally, Esme pierced the syrupy steeple with six long sparklers to light on Christmas Eve.

  They stepped back to critique their creation.

  “It’s definitely taller than last year.” Scarlet folded her arms. “More stars too. I think it’s . . .” She searched her vocabulary for a suitable adjective and, failing to find one fitting, borrowed from her grandma’s. “. . . really rather splendid.”

  “I agree.” Esme smiled. “I do think we’ve outdone ourselves this year.”

  Already, a large crowd had gathered outside the café’s bay window, gazing up at the sugar sculpture with wide eyes and wet tongues. A few tested the door, hoping to warm their fingers on mugs of tea and fill their bellies with slices of cake, before they saw the sign, closed on mondays, and turned away.

  “Mum should be here.”

  Esme pulled her granddaughter into a hug. “I’m sure she’ll be here soon. She won’t miss this.”

  Scarlet nodded, allowing the lies to lift into the air and settle among the gingerbread stars.

  Liyana

  Everyone in the playground was laughing and pointing at
her. At least, that was how it seemed to Liyana. Even her so-called friends were joining in. Why had she said it? What was she thinking? Christine Bradley had never kept a secret in her life, despite being Liyana’s best friend. She’d told Olivia Greene, who’d told Rosie Bailey, who told the entire school. So now everyone thought that Liyana was delusional, claiming that she could fly. She wanted to disappear; she wanted to die. She wanted to unravel time, go back, and keep her mouth shut. It was such a monumentally stupid thing to do since she couldn’t fly, not here. Here she couldn’t do anything at all.

  If only Liyana could take them to Everwhere, then she’d show them. But she didn’t even know how she got there herself. And, if Bea was to be believed, most people weren’t able to get there anyway. Liyana had no idea why this might be so, but since Bea seemed to know everything else about Everwhere, there seemed no reason she wouldn’t be right about that too.

  Either way, Liyana was in intractable amounts of trouble. This story of humiliation would enter school lore. And the memory of a school was long. She would become the Girl Who Thought She Could Fly. She would never be allowed to forget. And the story would be passed down through the classes like the legend of the Boy Who Drowned Himself in the School Swimming Pool from twenty years ago.

  Then, as Liyana was descending into absolute despair, a miracle occurred. Someone started shouting from the top of the climbing frame and everyone turned to look. A boy, about Liyana’s age, stood astride the metal bars proclaiming in insistent tones that he too could fly. A snigger rippled through the crowd.

  “I can,” he shouted. “Watch and see!”

  The laughter ceased and the children held a collective breath, waiting, breath and hope suspended, to see if the boy would come good on his promise. Liyana watched with them, deeply grateful for the distraction and wondering how on earth he’d extricate himself gracefully from the situation.

  Instead, he did the unthinkable. He jumped.

  Liyana watched as the boy seemed to fall through the air in slow motion before hitting the tarmac with a thud. Nobody moved. Not the boy, not a single child in the crowd. Until, like a magician performing a trick, he stood and bowed. For a single, stretched second, the air was still. In the next, the crowd erupted in an arm-waving, whistle-whooping cacophony of cheers and applause.

  Liyana exhaled. She was safe. No one would remember her ridiculous claim now; they’d only remember the boy who said he could fly and then leapt from the climbing frame to prove it. She could fade into the background again.

  Liyana waited until the crowd dispersed to the four corners of the playground, then stepped forward to the boy.

  “How did you do that?”

  He smiled. “I’ve been practising for years.”

  “Thank you. I think you just saved my life.”

  Curiously, the following day no one was talking about the Boy Who Flew from the Climbing Frame. Instead, the school buzzed with an incident that had occurred at the same time. While class 4B was doing laps of the school swimming pool, the water had begun to boil like a kettle. Mercifully, no one died, though most of the class was being treated for second-and third-degree burns at Saint Thomas’s Hospital. One girl was in intensive care, though it was thought that she’d live. And Liyana, as shocked as everyone else, had no idea that the incident had anything to do with her at all.

  Bea

  I sat astride an enormous rotting tree trunk with Bea. The bark was so soft it peeled off in great strips; chunks fell off inside the hollow when I kicked it, like kicking a horse to gallop. At least, that’s what Bea said since, naturally, she’d ridden a horse. She’d done everything.

  A white leaf settled atop my head. I brushed it off. “She told you about this place? Really?”

  Bea shrugged. “Mamá tells me everything.”

  I stared at her, jealous but unwilling to admit it.

  “No one else believes her. But I do.”

  I was silent.

  “Your mamá probably doesn’t know anything. If she’s not a Grimm too, then she won’t have a clue.” Bea sighed, as if her familial brilliance was a burden. “Most people have zero imagination and even less intelligence, that’s what Mamá says.”

  “Oh.” I felt an urge to defend Ma but didn’t know how.

  “It’s rare.” Bea kicked the trunk so clumps of bark broke free, echoing in the cavity of the tree. “Having a mamá and daughter who are both pure Grimm.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t know?” But I suspected, from the flicker of frustration on her face, that she didn’t either. “Most mamás have some Grimm blood in them,” she said, as if that answered my question. “If they’ve only got a little they can come here, but they’ll think it was just a dream, like you did in the beginning. If they’ve got a lot, then they can walk through one of the gates, but that’s rare.” She gave a knowing nod. “Most of them don’t know about the gates.”

  I teased off a soft strip of bark, bending it into an arc. I didn’t want to ask, especially since Bea was goading me with this information, bait to distract from her prior ignorance. But it didn’t take long for curiosity to trump pride.

  “What gates?” I asked.

  Bea raised an eyebrow in mock surprise. “Oh, you don’t know about the gates either?” She sighed, as if burdened by the weight of my ignorance and her knowledge. “Seems like you’re as clueless as your mamá.”

  I snapped my bridge of bark.

  “The gates are the only other way of coming here.” She folded her arms. “It’s how non-Grimms can enter Everwhere.”

  I’d imagined having a sister would be a source of comfort, not competition. It made me worry about the baby in Ma’s belly, the sibling lying in wait.

  Bea grinned again, ridiculously beautiful, even when she was being mean. “That’s how the soldiers get here,” she said. “But only on nights of the first-quarter moon.”

  I dug a fingernail into the tree trunk, etching out a furrow. “Soldiers?” I said, without looking up.

  Bea laughed. “You don’t know about them either? Shit, you don’t know anything, do you?”

  I looked up, startled by her use of that word. I’d heard my parents use it, and worse, but never someone my own age. Bea looked at me, the edges of her beautiful mouth twitching with withheld information, waiting for me to admit to my ignorance, to publicly acknowledge her superiority.

  “No,” I said, as carelessly as if I’d just brushed a fallen leaf from my knee. “I don’t.”

  Bea sat up a little straighter. “Then aren’t you lucky that I do.”

  Leo

  Every month, when the moon reached its first quarter, Leo left his bed in the early morning hours to walk through the school gardens. He waited until everyone on the grounds had fallen asleep before he snuck out. Leo couldn’t remember when the urge for these walks had caught hold of him, nor did he know what he was looking for, but he was certainly looking for something.

  He walked across forbidden lawns, pressing bare toes into wet grass; he sauntered along stone corridors, his soft steps carrying no echo. He sat under the shadow of the school chapel, gazing up at the clock tower that spiked into a great bronze cross, and wondered at the significance of the time tonight. And, with every second that ticked by, Leo felt the tug of the moon pulling him on.

  No matter the route he took, Leo always ended in the same place in front of the school gates. The gates were tall and wide, the height of five boys standing on each other’s shoulders, the width of ten holding one another’s outstretched arms. The gates were 417 years old, forged when the first foundations were dug, welded when the first bricks were laid. The gates were fierce—thick pickets with sharp finials piercing the air like pitchforks—a stern deterrent to any aspiring escapees. The gates were ornate—posts engraved with Latin script and wrapped with long tendrils of delicate iron ivy that crept across the pickets and wound between elaborate curlicues. The gate was hand-wrought by King James I’s own blacksmith, or so school legend cla
imed.

  Leo gazed at the gates for hours, studying the veins of each leaf, drawing his fingers along every curl with such care that an ignorant onlooker might have thought he had been the one who’d burned his own skin in the fires of the gates’ creation.

  Whenever the moon slipped from behind clouds and cast the iron with a silver sheen, Leo was overcome with the sudden desire to push at the gates and step through, as if they weren’t locked and the way weren’t barred. But strange though this desire was, it wasn’t nearly so strange as the accompanying thought: the certain belief that if he did so, he wouldn’t step through onto gravel and concrete but into another world altogether.

  12th October

  Twenty days . . .

  6:33 a.m.—Leo

  He knows where to find her. She’s like a beacon to him now. He doesn’t even need to think. All he does is close his eyes and he sees her. The fading light in him flickers, spluttering, quickening, as he hurries towards the ever-brightening light of her.

  Outside room 13, Leo hesitates. If he goes to her now he’ll say things and do things that should be left unsaid and undone. Things that will lead only to greater pain and misery over what is already coming. He clenches his fists and tells himself to turn back. It’s too risky, too hard to navigate, too difficult to balance on that line between lust and love.

  When Leo finally steps through the door, Goldie looks up. She doesn’t seem surprised, as if she knew he was coming, as if she’d expected him, as if she’s been waiting. When he reaches her, when he cups her cheeks in his hands, she tips her head up to meet him, opens her mouth and lets him in.

  6:33 a.m.—Goldie

  I’m stealing two pairs of silk socks from the family in room 13 when I look up and see him standing in the doorway, watching me, smiling as if I’m doing something incredibly wonderful, instead of slightly immoral. He steps towards me and I stop, still holding the socks.