The Sisters Grimm

by Menna Van Praag

  In our tiny flat I had only one thing of my own I truly loved: a bonsai, a miniature juniper tree. I found it abandoned on the street, branches bare, roots dry, spirit broken. It took months of care, but I brought it back to life, leafy and happy again. It sat on the coffee table, so it was the last thing I saw every night before I fell asleep. I loved that we shared the same air while I slept, that I inhaled Juniper’s oxygen and Juniper my carbon dioxide—out and in, in and out, in a perfect balance of breath.

  One day my stepfather started moving Juniper, taking her from the table and leaving her in random spots for me to retrieve. I didn’t understand why, probably just another way he enjoyed tormenting me. Too often I found her in the bathroom or next to his side of the bed. I always moved her back without comment, refusing to play his silly games, whatever they were. My only fear was that one day I’d come home from school to find her missing, flushed down the toilet, or blitzed in the blender. I wouldn’t have put it past him. He had a history of similarly stupid things.

  Before Juniper, I’d had a teddy bear called Teddy. I don’t know when Ma gave him to me; he was simply always there. And then, one day, he wasn’t. I never found him. Ma maintained I must have lost him—dropped him in a park, left him on a bus—but I hadn’t. I’d never been careless. My stepfather took him. I could never prove it but I knew that, whatever had happened to Teddy, he was responsible.

  I wished I could protect Juniper. I wished I had somewhere else to keep her safe, but I didn’t. There were no hiding places in the flat. I could only wait as my stepfather circled us, day by day, closing in.

  Scarlet

  Scarlet bit her lip and narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing the sparkling sugar tower for imperfections. Over the week the magnificent croquembouche creation had held well, dropping only a few gingerbread stars—quickly snaffled up by the No. 33 Café’s more observant patrons. The lies her grandmother had told about her mother—I’m sure she’ll be here soon. She won’t miss this—had endured too, proving as sturdy as the rest of the creation, despite being fashioned from hot air instead of sugar. Indeed, they seemed to have solidified over time, taking shape as the days passed, becoming crisper, harder, with each instance Ruby Thorne let her down, becoming such a part of the structure they might have been sprinkled with glitter too.

  That evening Scarlet and Esme planned to put up the tree. Ruby had promised to come to the café to meet them, after she’d “run a few errands.” It wouldn’t take too long; she’d be so quick they wouldn’t even notice she’d been gone. But an hour had already passed and still there was no sign of her.

  “Perhaps we should just make a start,” Esme suggested.

  The battered cardboard box, containing tissue-wrapped silver baubles and glass angels and the fairy, sat at her feet like a patient dog.

  Scarlet shook her head. “She promised this time.”

  “She’s probably been stalled by the throngs of Christmas shoppers,” Esme agreed. “I expect she’s on her way.”

  Scarlet nodded while Esme pulled out a chair. They watched the window in silence as the sky darkened and the shoppers dwindled.

  Finally, Scarlet slid over to the box and started plucking at a strip of crisp Sellotape, new layers taped over old. Absently, she teased at a raised edge of Sellotape, digging her fingernail into the soft cardboard, prising it open. Esme watched her granddaughter, sniffing as if she might have a cold coming on, pinching the bridge of her nose.

  “Oh!”

  Scarlet snapped her head up to check that her grandma was okay. Then, seeing her staring at the window, turned to see her mother at the door. Springing to her feet, Scarlet ran to meet her.

  “You made it,” Esme said, relaxing back into her chair.

  “You made it!” Scarlet squealed.

  “Of course,” Ruby said, fire in her voice and ice in her eyes. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  She didn’t look happy, but she was there, and that was enough for Scarlet. The crystallized lies atop the croquembouche tower finally shattered, decorating the pastry with yet more glittering shards.

  “We waited for you, Mum,” Scarlet said. “We didn’t do anything without you.” She gave her mother’s skirted legs a quick, insistent squeeze.

  “Let me put down these bags,” Ruby said, stepping towards the nearest table and setting them down, though she didn’t pick up her daughter afterwards. Her gaze alighted on the box. “Ah! The box of delights.”

  She swooped down to the floor, skirt billowing like a parachute, before opening the cardboard flaps with one swift rip of the freshest strip of Sellotape. She lifted out fistfuls of tissue paper, deftly unwrapping and setting each ornament among the silken folds of her skirt. Looking on, Scarlet wished she could elongate time and store up every moment, rations of memory to nibble at night.

  “You should set the fairy on top of the tree this year,” Ruby said, passing her daughter the tiny doll of china and lace.

  “Really?” Scarlet took the doll as if it were a newborn kitten. “I can?”

  “Oh, yes,” Esme echoed. “You’ve waited long enough. Your mother was eight, I think, the first time she was given the job.”

  Scarlet grinned. She’d been waiting forever for this opportunity. The fairy had been in the family since her grandmother was a little girl, and setting it atop the tree every Christmas was a much-coveted task.

  For the next hour, the three generations of Thorne women decorated the tree. Scarlet hung the silver baubles, thinking of the Everwhere moon whenever a silvery shadow was cast across the back of her hand. She wondered if she’d meet her sisters tonight. Recently, Bea had taught Scarlet how to will herself there, setting the intention before she fell asleep, instead of simply hoping her dreams would take her along for the ride.

  Esme twisted twinkling lights through the piney branches, while Ruby carefully placed all the trinkets collected over the years: a tiny Victorian rocking horse, a clutch of hand-painted Russian dolls, a dozen miniature stars, a coterie of carved woodland animals: a deer, an owl, a fox, a hare. When every ball, trinket, and bell had been set in its place, Esme lifted the fairy from her bed of tissue paper.

  “It’s time,” Esme said, placing the fairy in her granddaughter’s open hands.

  Scarlet held the doll, who gazed glassy-eyed up at the tree as if anticipating her ascent. “How will I do it?”

  “Stand on the table,” Ruby instructed. “You’ll be able to reach from there.”

  Scarlet hesitated.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” Esme said. “You can do it.”

  “Of course you can,” her mother said. “Don’t be such a scaredy-cat.”

  “Here”—her grandma stepped over to Scarlet—“I’ll give you a hand.”

  When Scarlet was standing on the table, she stretched up and set the fairy in the crook of a high branch.

  “Not there, the very top,” Ruby said. “Come on, you’re not going to fall.”

  Scarlet rose onto the tips of her toes. “Hold me.”

  “I’ve got you.”

  Scarlet reached again, elongating her body until her fingertips grazed the top of the tree, then wiggled the tiny china doll astride the highest branch.

  “There you go.” Her mother clapped. “I told you—”

  As the fairy fell, three pairs of eyes followed her swift descent. The crack of china on the wooden floor was like the snap of a whip.

  “Scarlet!” Ruby’s anger spat like logs on a fire.

  Esme scooped Scarlet off the table. “Hush, Rube, it wasn’t her fault.”

  Scarlet’s mother was already picking up fragments of the china face: the painted red lips, the black-lashed blue eyes, the curve of a nose—each feature parted from the others, scattered across the floorboards.

  Scarlet stared at the broken doll, tears sliding down her cheeks.

  “Scarlet, you’re so careless,” her mother snapped. “No one’s dropped her in over a century and the first time you touch—”

  “Calm down,
Rube, it wasn’t her fault. It could have been any of us.”

  “But it wasn’t, was it? It was her.”

  Scarlet stared at her mother, who stared back until the flare of fury slowly cooled into a chip of ice in her eye that spread until it had frozen her face into contempt. Scarlet turned to the tree, reaching out to hold a branch, taking one of the twinkling lights between finger and thumb.

  Later, Esme insisted a blown fuse had started the fire. Ruby said nothing. Scarlet never forgot how each light exploded, popping one by one in a shower of sparks, before the whole tree went up in flames.

  Bea

  Unlike her sisters, Bea liked to listen to the shadows, to the unseen creatures that whispered unknown things. She often didn’t understand exactly what they were saying, but she knew how to channel the dark. She was her mamá’s daughter, after all. And, she hoped, her father’s.

  Cleo, also a beauty, fell in love with a beast. Though this beast wasn’t a handsome prince under a spell. He was handsome, certainly, but he was also demonic, in the truest sense of the word. Bea’s mother loved him before she realized it, and she loved him after. Indeed, she loves him still. They met in Everwhere the night Cleo turned eighteen and Wilhelm Grimm was, well, he’d existed so long by then he’d long lost count. It was love at first sight.

  It was also the night of her Choosing, the night she’d pick dark or light, life or death. And since Cleo was in love the choice was quite clear. Her sisters, however, didn’t choose likewise. Perhaps their father’s charisma had worn thin once he’d picked his favourite. So they eschewed his offer and died for their cause. Cleo watched them die. Indeed, she was the one who killed them. Usually, her father would have done it, but that night, in an act of generosity, he allowed his daughter the honour. Cleo took the gift and returned it in full force. And although she was new to murder, Cleo discovered she had a knack for it.

  Bea was conceived that night, on a blanket of crushed roses wet with the blood of Cleo’s sisters’.

  The shadows will try to trick you, niña, Cleo told Bea, they’ll try to catch you unawares. If they do, they can floor you. ¿Entiendes? But if you’re prepared you can trick them in turn, harness their power and use it to soar as far and high as you wish.

  So Bea lingered in the shadows, waiting for the whispers. She closed her eyes and steeled herself. In the silence Bea mumbled an incantation, imagining her ribs stretching and thickening across her chest, enclosing her heart until the bone was solid enough to withstand any bullet, yet supple enough to swallow any strike. Bea strengthened herself until she could filter the whispers—spit out their intent and soak up their power—until she found that she was indeed able to do anything, both in that world and this.

  When Bea returned home to her mamá, she recounted stories of what she’d done, then always asked for a story in return.

  “Tell me,” Bea said, though she’d heard it a thousand times before; though she could speak every word in her sleep, still she asked. “Tell me my story.”

  “Strictly speaking it should be your sister’s story,” Cleo said, as she always did. “Since this Beauty is a water spirit, like Liyana. But I believe one day she’ll write you a story—she’ll think is her own until she’ll realize it’s not—so everything will even out.”

  “I don’t care,” Bea said. “I love this one most and so it’s mine.”

  “¡Bien! Close your eyes, niña,” Cleo said. “And I’ll begin.”

  Bea smiled and did as she was told.

  “There was once a baby girl born so uncommonly beautiful that her mamá named her Beauty,” Cleo began. “As Beauty grew, it became clear that her temperament matched her name, for she was as kind and true as she was beautiful. As she grew, her sweetness and loveliness only grew too. Long before she came of age, every prince wanted her for his wife. At sixteen, Beauty was keen to marry, for, though she was loved by everyone, still she felt consumed by a sense of longing, though she didn’t know for what.

  “‘True love is what you want,’ her mamá said. ‘For, while it is pleasing to be loved by a great many people, true happiness lies in being loved completely by only one.’

  “Being a dutiful daughter, Beauty heeded her mamá’s words and married the prince who seemed to love her more than any other. She knew she would come to love him in turn because it would surely be easy to love someone who adored you so completely. Fortunately, Beauty found that, in this at least, she was right. She delighted in being a wife, mother, and queen.

  “She helped her newly crowned husband rule his people with a firm and fair hand and their kingdom prospered. Their children grew, married, and had children of their own. However, as the years passed, Beauty again began to feel the longing for something she couldn’t quite place. And she noticed that strangers no longer gazed upon her open-mouthed or spoke of her radiance in reverent tones.

  “So Beauty had every mirror in the castle covered with thick velvet cloths and forbade the servants to polish any window or silver plate too well, so she’d never again have to catch sight of her reflection.

  “The following year, on her seventieth birthday, a wizard arrived uninvited to the palace celebrations, demanding to meet the queen. At first, Beauty was scared since the wizard had a fearsome reputation, being known throughout the kingdom as the Beast. But she found, once they began talking, that she rather liked him.

  “‘I have a gift for you, my queen,’ he said. ‘An invitation.’

  “‘Yes?’ Beauty asked, no longer fearful but intrigued.

  “‘I invite you,’ the wizard said, ‘to pretend, for a year, that you are me.’

  “The queen frowned. ‘What sort of a gift is that?’ she said. ‘I think I’d prefer everlasting happiness or eternal youth, please, since I suspect you’re in a position to afford me both those things.’

  “‘Oh, but, Your Majesty, the gift I’m offering is far better than either,’ the wizard promised. ‘Trust me.’

  “The queen did not believe him for an instant but found, curiously, that she did indeed trust him, though she couldn’t say why. So she accepted the wizard’s invitation and began to act as he did, with a few minor modifications.

  “Beauty stopped saying yes when she wanted to say no, stopped smiling at someone when she wanted to slap them, stopped staying silent when she needed to shout. She stood on parapets and screamed into the wind, so loud and long that the villagers began fearing dragons. Sometimes the strength of her voice brought the rain from the clouds and, with it, the ravens, whose high cries dropped into the chorus of her screaming song. Beauty shot arrows into the air and set off cannons. She swam naked in the rivers on moonless nights, bringing waves crashing down on the spies she caught, drowning a man who dared to thrust himself upon her. Beauty ran along stone passageways wielding an enormous sword, terrifying the servants and even the king, who leapt out of the way once he saw his wife wasn’t going to do the same.

  “In short, Beauty began, for the first time in her life, to please herself and act as she wished. And she found, much to her surprise, that the wizard had been right: his gift was far better than the everlasting happiness and eternal youth she’d asked for.

  “One evening the queen was striding through the banquet hall, on her way to a parapet, when she saw a mirror draped in thick velvet cloth. Having entirely forgotten her decree, and no longer fearing her reflection, she tore off the cloth. Upon seeing herself again, the bright light in her eyes and the deep lines on her face, Beauty realized that the wizard’s gift hadn’t simply been better than the gifts she’d asked for but had indeed given her those things too.

  “From that day, and for the rest of her life, the queen never again felt a longing for something she couldn’t quite place. Or, indeed, for anything else at all.”

  Liyana

  Liyana had lied to her mummy. And now she was scared, both of the lie and of being alone on the streets of London in the middle of the night, and excited too. She’d never done anything so reckless before, so d
angerous. Not even close. She’d never lied to her mother before. Still, Liyana had to find out if what Bea said about the gates was true. She’d been waiting nearly a full month for the next first-quarter moon, and now it was here.

  A few months ago, Liyana would never, not in a hundred thousand years, have dreamed of doing something so wild. She’d have been too scared of disobeying her mother and, frankly, too scared of death or dismemberment or whatever dreadful consequences might result from actions of such stupidity. But since finding Everwhere, since discovering that she hadn’t been dreaming, Liyana had felt different: gifted, special, brave.

  Bea had told her the timing, the precise moment she must open a gate into Everwhere, but hadn’t told Liyana the precise, or even general, locations of any of these gates. It’d be a test, she’d said, of Liyana’s skills. At first, Liyana thought her sister had been mocking her.

  But Bea hadn’t made this declaration in her usual derisive tones. It was as if she really did want to teach Liyana how to reach her full potential. And not in the way her mother did, by trying to make Liyana less of herself. Bea wanted Liyana to be more herself, not less. And for that, Liyana was deeply grateful. So grateful that it had made Bea her new favourite sister, shifting Goldie off the top spot. The positions of Bea and Scarlet had shifted on an almost nightly basis. But quiet, thoughtful Goldie had always been Liyana’s favourite. Until now.

  Being unused to the business of trusting her instincts, Liyana had assumed that the night would be an exercise in fruitless courage. She’d readied herself against the anticipated barrage of rapists and murderers, arming herself with various alarms and defences. But the streets of Islington were quiet during the early hours of that Wednesday morning, not a person of ominous intent in sight.