The Sisters Grimm

by Menna Van Praag

  I smile.

  Even now, I can’t quite believe it worked. I summoned him, I commanded him. Just as I’d done the first time. Through sheer force of will I’ve conjured him to my side. Stop, I thought. Walk up the stairs, turn left. Open the door to room 13. Come in and kiss me.

  I’ve spent so long imagining this moment that now it feels entirely natural, normal, not at all new. I know every inch of him, I fit into his embrace, I anticipate what he’ll say next. And yet, there’s a feeling about being with Leo now that I’ve never felt before. Not in all my life, not with anyone else. It takes a few hours for me to realize what it is. Right. It feels right. Nothing about my life has ever felt right before. I’ve always struggled to make things fit, to patch holes, ignore cracks, press mismatched puzzle pieces into place. But with Leo I don’t have to be what I don’t want to be or do what I don’t want to do. I don’t need to do anything different, anything special. I don’t have to do anything at all. Just breathe. Just be. And that is enough.

  3:03 p.m.—Scarlet

  Scarlet meets Ezekiel Wolfe in Fitzbillies, one of the few cafés in Cambridge that isn’t a Starbucks or similar chain. Ezekiel is already sitting when Scarlet arrives, though she’s ten minutes early. She wants to buy a slice of Bakewell tart but feels it might undermine her professionalism, so orders a black coffee.

  He looks up when she reaches his table. “You came.”

  She looks down at him.

  “Won’t you sit?” he asks.

  Scarlet sits, annoyed that it’s now at his invitation. She sets her coffee cup on the table and eyes his half-devoured crumpets and jam.

  Ezekiel leans forward. “I wanted to apologize for—”

  “Ruining my life?” Scarlet snatches up the sugar pot, tipping a good amount of it into her coffee. “Destroying my livelihood?”

  “That’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t. If your bloody Starbucks didn’t spring up on every corner, if they gave independent cafés a fighting chance . . .” Scarlet stirs the sugar into her coffee, trying to calm herself. “You go from café to café shutting them down, not giving a shit about the owners who’ve invested their whole lives—everything they own, all their time, all their hopes, into . . .”

  Ezekiel waits to see if she’s going to finish her sentence, then pushes the crumpets aside. “You don’t have to sell, no one’s forcing you.” He meets her eye. “But if you’re thinking about it, even a little, I recommend you do it sooner rather than later. I’ve looked at your accounts and my company’s offering you more than the market value. That figure will drop, the longer you wait to make a decision.”

  He sits back and Scarlet leans forward. “Have you ever had something you wanted, something you cared so deeply about that—that . . . you feel incomplete without it, like a piece of you is missing?”

  “No,” Ezekiel says. “I can’t say that I have. It must be quite something.”

  “Not if you lose it.”

  He hesitates, as if contemplating the wisdom of what he might say. “But the café isn’t your something, is it? It’s your grandmother’s.”

  Scarlet is silent. Under the table her left knee starts to shake. Her fingers twitch. She glares at the sugar bowl, then Ezekiel’s untouched coffee cup.

  “You’re not drinking,” Scarlet says, still not meeting his eye.

  “It’s too hot. I think the barista wanted to burn my tongue.”

  “She probably had her reasons.”

  Ezekiel grins, licking his spoon. “You’ve been telling tales about me?”

  “It’s a small city.” Scarlet shrugs. “I can’t help it if word gets round.”

  Her fingers twitch again, and suddenly Scarlet feels as if she has a secret, hidden like a chocolate in her pocket. She’s looking at his cup when it unbalances, tipping its scalding sweetness over Ezekiel’s hand.

  He snatches his hand away. “Damn.”

  Scarlet rights the cup, plucking wads of tissues to dam the expanding lake of coffee. “Sorry, I don’t know, I didn’t mean—”

  He’s already standing. “You’re a liability,” he says, half smiling despite the pain. “At this rate, I’ll be hospitalized again before sundown.”

  “Quick, run it under cold water.”

  Ezekiel disappears and Scarlet stuffs the sodden tissues into the empty coffee cup. Surely the cup hadn’t tipped of its own accord? She’d brushed against the saucer and knocked it over. That’s the only sensible explanation. And Scarlet is a stickler for sense. Bread won’t rise without yeast and cups don’t fall unless they’re pushed. Likewise, she explained the incinerated moth and the sparks (static) and the light fixture falling onto Ezekiel Wolfe’s head (faulty wiring). But what Scarlet can’t deny is the surge of power she felt just before the cup tipped. As if her veins were copper wires humming with electric currents.

  “Oh, don’t worry about me, I’m fine.”

  Scarlet looks up. She’d entirely forgotten about Ezekiel, who’s now standing beside the table holding out his hand, a splash of scorching red flared across his pale skin.

  “I’m sorry,” Scarlet says. “It was an accident.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Ezekiel says. “But given the number of accidents that keep happening around you, I’m starting to worry for my safety.”

  “I—I didn’t mean to.”

  “Are you sure? You probably hate me enough to . . .”

  Scarlet frowns. She certainly thought she hated him. But now that she hears the words out loud, and from his own mouth, she’s no longer sure. “I don’t hate you.”

  Ezekiel smiles. “Look, do you fancy a walk? I think I need to stay away from hot beverages for a little while. We can talk about everything but with a view.”

  Scarlet half shrugs, half nods. “I suppose so.”

  “Well, try to contain your enthusiasm.” Ezekiel laughs. “Or I might get the wrong idea.”

  The wrong idea? Scarlet thinks of how she felt the first time she saw him, of how she’s been feeling ever since, though she’s tried to deny it to herself. Run. She should run. No good can come of this. Only very ill-advised, hideously complicated things. Instead, she stands and follows Ezekiel Wolfe outside. In the street, he stops too quickly so she bumps into him, stumbling as he turns to steady her. The same smile twitches his lips.

  “You’re looking at me,” he says, “like I’m that slice of Bakewell tart.”

  Scarlet frowns. “I . . . ?”

  “You wanted it,” he says. “When you first walked in.”

  Scarlet wants to say something but can only look at him, can only will him to walk away, can only try to channel her burgeoning powers into the banishment of this man from her immediate vicinity and life. But Ezekiel doesn’t move. Instead he leans down to press his mouth to her ear.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he whispers. “And I want you too.”

  Run.

  Instead, she kisses him.

  3:31 p.m.—Liyana

  Liyana sits on the train, tapping her knees, waiting for the eleventh stop on the Northern line, counting each station as the train judders alongside the platform then trundles out again. She’s trying not to dwell on the voice she heard in Ottolenghi, trying not to think: schizophrenia. She’s on her way home, though it won’t be home for much longer, not unless she can convince Kumiko, not unless she can negotiate with Mazmo, who turned out to be far nicer than she’d feared. She could, possibly, countenance being married to him. So long as it was an open—a very, very open—marriage.

  When the train pulls into Kennington station, Liyana stands. It’s not her stop, she still has three to go. So, when the doors slide open, why does she walk out onto the platform? Among the churning throng of commuters, Liyana is still, wondering what to do next. She’s never been to Kennington before, doesn’t know anyone who lives here, doesn’t know her way around. The neighbourhood might not be a friendly one—too many white faces tended to mean too many small minds—she s
hould probably get back on the train.

  Then Liyana sees, behind the yellow line, a feather. She bends and picks it up. A blackbird feather. Brushing it across her cheek, she smiles. Perhaps she is going mad but, right now, Liyana doesn’t care. She has, at last, been given a sign.

  Still clutching the feather, Liyana steps onto the escalator, standing until it spills her out in front of the ticket machines. Then she walks outside and waits on the pavement for another sign. When no answer presents itself, Liyana turns left and walks on.

  Ten minutes and four left turns later, Liyana finds herself standing at the foot of a church: Great Saint Mary’s. In a birch tree beside the church a blackbird is perched on the lowest branch. Liyana smiles and starts to climb the stone steps.

  She pushes open the heavy wooden door and walks up the aisle. About to slide into a pew, Liyana spots the confessional. Then it dawns on her. She’s here to confess, to tell the events of the past few weeks to someone who doesn’t know her, can’t see her, and isn’t allowed to judge her.

  So, when a few minutes later a diminutive woman shuffles out of the confessional, Liyana steps in. She sits in silence for a while, before realizing that the priest is waiting for her to speak.

  “Confess me, Father—I mean, forgive me, Father, for I have, um, sinned,” Liyana says. “Well, I wouldn’t really call it sinning, but I—”

  “How long has it been since your last confession?”

  Liyana wonders what a reasonable length of time would be. “Er, two . . . weeks.”

  “Go on.”

  “Okay, right, well, there’s a lot going on at home. My aunt’s bankrupted us and now she wants me to get married for money to save us—which is what she’s always done—but my girlfriend isn’t keen and I certainly wasn’t at first, but now I think it could solve a lot of problems, but—”

  The priest coughs. “That certainly is a lot to unpack,” he says. “Shall we start from the beginning? Remind me—”

  “Oh, and I’ve also started—at least it’s only happened once, well, three times in one day—but, yes, I’m also hearing voices.”

  Liyana braces herself for censure, laughter, instant dismissal.

  “And you say this is the first time you’ve heard voices?”

  Liyana nods. “Yes.”

  “Are you currently taking medication for any . . . ?”

  “No, no, I . . .”

  “And what are the voices saying?”

  “Well, um,” Liyana says, reluctant to get into specifics. “It’s a bit like overhearing only half of someone else’s conversation.”

  The priest is silent for several minutes. Twisting her hands in her lap, Liyana waits for the verdict.

  “Well,” he says at last, “so long as they aren’t telling you to kill kittens or push old ladies from their bicycles, I wouldn’t worry too much. You might want to tell your doctor, see what he says. But, you know, you aren’t in bad company. Joan of Arc heard voices; Francis of Assisi too.” He pauses. “But why can’t I stop thinking about Ezekiel Wolfe in bed eating cinnamon buns?”

  “I’m sorry? Who’s E-zekiel Wolfe?” Liyana asks, wondering if he’s an obscure Catholic saint—the patron saint of baking perhaps.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “E-ze-kiel Wolfe?” Liyana repeats, thinking maybe she’d pronounced it incorrectly. “You were wondering what he looked like, um . . . naked.”

  “Excuse me?” The priest sounds amused. “I certainly don’t think I was. And, given the Church’s intractable position on homosexuality, if I were I’d most certainly be keeping any such thoughts to myself.”

  “Oh, no,” Liyana backtracks. “No, of course not, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Might I suggest,” the priest interrupts, “that you seek support of a less spiritual and more . . . corporeal”—he coughs again—“Psychiatric nature.”

  When Liyana steps outside again, the blackbird is singing. She’s stopped to look up into the birch tree when she hears the voice again: It’s time to find your sisters.

  4:57 p.m.—Bea

  “You’re lovely.”

  Bea thinks of the massacre of birds, of the ink pulsing through her veins, of the smashing of defenceless snails. “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  Bea eyes Vali over the rim of the coffee she has allowed him, after persistent requests, to buy her. “If you think that, then I don’t think you should be studying here, because you’re clearly an idiot.”

  “On the contrary.” Vali adds three sugars to his tea. “I see you—you—not all that smoke-and-mirrors bullshit you throw at everyone—”

  “‘Bullshit’?” Bea arches an eyebrow. “It didn’t take too long for you to get cocky, did it?”

  “You’re hardly a paragon of politeness.” Vali takes a tentative sip of tea. Tutting, he adds two more spoonfuls of sugar. “But all right, let me rephrase. Your id, or your superego, if you prefer”—he takes another sip of tea and nods—“Is fighting hard to present—”

  “Oh, Christ, you’re a psychology student.” Bea gulps down her coffee as if it were gin and she dearly needed to get drunk. “I should—you got me here under false pretences. You said you were studying philosophy.”

  “I didn’t, I never said that.” Vali reaches for the plate of scones that sits between them. He takes a bite of one, brushing the crumbs from his beard. “You assumed and I—anyway I am studying philosophy, just not officially.”

  Bea regards him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Scones should be served warm, don’t you think? And with butter that’ll melt and drip down your chin.” Vali sighs, then gives a slight shrug. “Oh well. Anyway, the point is, I sit in on philosophy lectures for fun and read up on various topics whenever I can.”

  “Jesus, you’re even more pathetic than I thought.” Bea swigs down the dregs of her coffee. “Who reads Principia Mathematica for fun? You don’t dabble in that stuff, you have to . . .” She flicks her fingers, as if flicking away cigarette smoke, but is unable to keep the note of admiration from her voice. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “Studying philosophy is as good a way to pass the time as any,” Vali says, finishing off the scone and reaching for another. “Far better than drinking till you pass out or playing video games till four a.m.”

  Bea twists a raisin from a scone. “Some people find those things fun.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Then perhaps I’m compensating for . . .” Vali shrugs again. “I don’t know. Maybe if my mother hadn’t thought me so fucking ugly then maybe I wouldn’t study so hard.”

  Bea chews on the raisin. “You’re not so fucking ugly.”

  Vali tugs at his beard. “Thanks.”

  Bea shrugs. They sit in silence.

  “Don’t get the wrong idea,” she says. “I still wouldn’t shag you.”

  13th October

  Nineteen days . . .

  3:33 a.m.—Goldie

  “It’s strange,” I say, running my finger along his face, following the shape of his eyebrows, nose, lips.

  “What’s strange?”

  “All I want to do is touch you.”

  Leo smiles. “Ditto.”

  “Yeah, I know, you’re insatiable,” I say, resting on his cheek. “I’d think you hadn’t been with a woman in a hundred years.”

  “I haven’t been with you,” he says. “Which is much the same thing.”

  I laugh. “I bet you’re with a different woman every night of the week.”

  A look passes across Leo’s face that I don’t recognize, and I realize, despite how I feel, how little I really know him. I can tell how Teddy is feeling, often what he’s thinking, by the look in his eyes or the tone of his voice. By this standard, Leo is still a stranger to me.

  “Did I offend you?” I ask.

  He smiles. “In suggesting I’m something of a slut?”

  “I don’t think I used that particular word, did I?” I say. “A slight ins
inuation, perhaps. But then you’re a man, aren’t you, so—”

  “We wouldn’t have been able to do everything we’ve just done if I wasn’t—”

  I pinch his nose and he laughs. “I meant, as a man, the more women you sleep with the more of a stud you are, as opposed to—”

  “If I’d known you felt that way about promiscuity,” Leo says, “I’d have put more effort into it before I met you.”

  “Shut up.” I give him a playful nudge. “You know what I mean.” But I’m touched by his use of “before.” I can’t talk about love yet—I know it’s far too soon. Still, I can’t help wondering if there’s a chance he feels even remotely for me as I do for him.

  “But why is it strange?” Leo says.

  “What?”

  “That you want to touch me. I’d have thought that was the natural thing”—he gives me a coy smile—“In the circumstances.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” I shrug, not ready to tell him yet. “I don’t know.”

  “You say that a lot.”

  “Do I?”

  Leo nods. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he says. “It’s nothing to be sorry for.”

  3:33 a.m.—Scarlet

  Scarlet hurls Rebecca across the room. It hits the wall with a satisfying thud. Then she feels guilty. It’s her favourite book and had been her mother’s too. Although that copy, the one she’d first read as a little girl, had burned in the fire.

  Scarlet hurries out of bed to recover the novel, gives the cover an apologetic stroke, and hops back into bed. She sighs. She wants to be unconscious. Awake leaves her vulnerable to thoughts she shouldn’t be thinking. Thoughts about failing cafés and ill-advised kisses. Scarlet opens Rebecca again. She blinks at the page, trying to get a foothold in a sentence. But it’s no good. She shuts it again and switches off her bedside lamp.