The Sisters Grimm

by Menna Van Praag

  Liyana laughs. “You have not.”

  “Well, perhaps not in actuality,” Mazmo admits. “But I’ve certainly considered it several times.”

  Liyana takes a bite of soufflé. “Why is it that men, even pansexual men, it seems, so hate to be called sweet? It’s a compliment.”

  Mazmo picks a stray salted caramel crumb from the tablecloth, setting it on the tip of his tongue. “Perhaps because it’s like being compared to a squirrel, when I’d prefer to be thought of as a . . . lion, or a bear. Or”—he lights upon an even more attractive image—“A silverback gorilla.”

  Liyana regards him over her wineglass. “Is that your favourite fantasy?”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, all right then. You’re a strong, dark silverback gorilla. Is that better?” Sipping the sweet dessert wine, Liyana realizes that she’s flirting and should stop. She should probably stop drinking too. She’s had—how much?—too much if she can’t remember. Then Liyana has a thought that makes her feel guiltier still, the thought that perhaps being married to Mazmo Owethu Muzenda-Kasteni, with all its affiliated benefits, might not be quite so frightful after all.

  “Yes,” he says. That smile again. The sliver of an unwavering moon in a midnight sky. “That’s much better.”

  11:39 p.m.—Liyana

  Later that night Liyana, still slightly drunk and overstuffed, sits on her bed shuffling her tarot cards. Every time she glances down, the Devil has come to the front. She slices him back into the deck, again and again. But when Liyana deals out five cards onto her duvet, he’s the first to appear, followed by the Four of Wands: a fairy picks a rose from her flowered garden, the turrets of her castle rise up into the sky. Prosperity, celebration, romance. The Four of Swords: a female warrior emerges from a dark wood into the sunshine, seeking out a cave in which to rest and recuperate. Retreat, solitude, preparation for conflict. The Empress: clothed in a grass-green dress, the empress dances with all of nature at her feet and a crown of stars on her head. Sexuality, pleasure, abundance. And the Star: an en pointe ballerina floats on a lily leaf on a lake, a frog leaps towards her, and a bird flies into her open hand. Healing, strength, trust.

  At first, the pictures make no sense. Then, gradually, they seem to rearrange themselves into a story. For a split second, Liyana feels her mother sitting on the bed beside her, reading the tale the cards are telling. A tale of four sisters, their childhood adventures, their family secrets, their hidden strengths, their unclaimed powers, their far-off father watching it all . . .

  “What does it mean, Dadá?”

  Still the desire for reassurance, for approval, lingers. But her mother is no longer there.

  Echoes of expensive champagne tug at her eyelids, and Liyana lays down her head, curling up around the cards still spread across the duvet. Just before she tumbles into sleep, Liyana thinks she spots something on the carpet: a tiny black fluff of a feather. But when she cranes her neck to be sure, it’s only a smudge on her sightline. Liyana thinks of BlackBird, but the last thought she has before closing her eyes is of her sisters.

  11:59 p.m.—Bea

  “That wasn’t bad. That was, surprisingly, all right.”

  “All right?” Vali virtually squeals, before letting out a long, deep sigh. “It was absolutely fucking phenomenal.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.” Bea lies back on the bed beside him. “But it was quite good, especially for your first time.”

  “Thanks, but I think that was mostly down to you. You give excellent direction.”

  Bea nods, as if this is self-evident. She props herself up on her elbow. “You know, you’re quite large.”

  Vali grins. “Really? Well, I’m glad you were sat—”

  Bea rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t talking about your penis.”

  “Oh.” Vali’s euphoria collapses into dejection. “Yeah, I—”

  “I’m talking about”—Bea gestures at him—“The whole of you. You’re large.”

  “You mean fat.”

  “No, I say what I mean. I don’t fuck about with euphemisms. Yes, you’re fat and I say you’re fat. But you’re large too. Sturdy. Strong. I hadn’t noticed that before.”

  Vali brightens.

  “Yeah,” Bea continues, as if she’s debating a particular philosophical theory. “It feels good, being held by you.” She pauses, while Vali looks as happy as he might if she’d just proposed marriage. “So, want to try again?”

  Vali sits up, as if propelled from an ejector seat. “What? Is that on the cards? Really? I thought this was a one-time thing.”

  “Why not?” Bea shrugs, as if she doesn’t care one way or the other. “We’ve got the room for the night—might as well make the most of it.”

  A little less than a decade ago

  Everwhere

  When you awake, you’re looking into the face of a man with golden eyes, white hair, and skin so creased with wrinkles he might be ten thousand years old. You wonder if you’ve died and this is the Devil, for he fixes you with a look such as you’ve never seen before and wish never to see again, though you find you’re unable to look away. It’s a look of such undiluted malice that you start to shiver, as if you were suddenly freezing cold.

  When you’re able to turn away, the relief is palpable. You want to run but you’re frozen. You tell your legs to move but they seem detached, separate, as if owned by someone else altogether.

  When you look at him again you realize that in fact he wasn’t looking at you in any particular way, this is simply the carving of his features. When he smiles a spasm shoots up your spine, a red-hot scarring, a rage of pain. His smile drops and the pain subsides. You realize that he’s assessing you, deciding, weighing up unspecified options. Do his eyes glow a little brighter, or are you imagining it? It seems he is pleased, though you don’t know why. Perhaps he sees something in you: promise, potential, possibility . . .

  He steps back, lifting his chin: a nudge, an instruction, an offer. Slowly, you pull yourself up from the ground. Your legs are so weak that you stumble. You stagger forward as he watches you, falling once, twice. You drag yourself up again, then start to topple but find balance. Then, with every ounce of everything you have, you run.

  This time, he lets you go.

  Goldie

  He told me it was my fault. My fault for being pretty. My fault for being there. As if he’d simply been walking along and—oops—slipped on a banana skin and fallen into my bed. It started after Teddy was born. Ma slept with him in their bed, and my stepfather complained he couldn’t sleep with “that bloody thing squawking all the time.” His affection for his son always diminished at night. During the day he doted on Teddy almost as much as Ma did, rocking and cooing and all that. But when Teddy kept him awake, he wasn’t so keen. Still, at some point, I suppose he decided to make the most of those interruptions.

  The first night he lay beside me. The second, his hand rested atop my nightdress. The third, it found its way underneath. By the end of the month there was no part of me he hadn’t found.

  Liyana

  Liyana lay belly up, floating. She could float for hours, capsizing herself now and then, rolling over like a seal, skin slick with water. And although Liyana wasn’t swimming in the sea but resting on her bed, buoyed only by three hot-water bottles, her sense of the ocean was so strong she could taste the salt on her tongue. When at last Liyana closed her eyes, it was on the lapping waves of this sea that she was borne from her dreams and into Everwhere.

  Tonight, she followed her sisters on the stone paths, winding alongside rivers and trees, cutting through clearings of ivy and moss. Bea led the line of four sisters, as always. Though, every so often, Scarlet managed to sneak out in front. Liyana was always last in line. Which meant that when she suddenly stopped, no one noticed.

  “Wait!” Liyana called out. We turned to see her pointing to a dark snake of water under a bank of willow trees. “Let’s go swimming.”

  “But we don’t have our costume
s,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Liyana threw the words over her shoulder as she tugged at the sleeve of her nightgown, pulling it over her head.

  “Great idea,” Scarlet said, unbuttoning her shirt as she darted across moss and stone. “I’ll race you.”

  I looked to Bea, hoping she wouldn’t want to join in. Behind my back, I crossed my fingers. Bea regarded the river, then, with a shrug, crossed her legs and sat in a patch of moss. “Go ahead. I don’t want to get wet, it’s too cold.”

  Bea affected a shiver, though it wasn’t even chilly. I wanted to hug her, my sudden, unexpected ally. Instead, afraid she might slap me if I tried, I sat down beside her.

  “Me neither,” I said, as Scarlet slid down the mossy bank to join Ana.

  Together, we watched them.

  “It’s okay.” Bea leaned over to me, speaking in an amplified whisper. “There’s a girl in my class who can’t swim either. You shouldn’t be ashamed.”

  I stiffened, all feelings of affection draining away, praying my other sisters hadn’t heard.

  “What are you talking about?” Scarlet dropped into the water. “Goldie never said she couldn’t swim.” She looked back at me. “You can, can’t you?”

  I nodded. “Of course. I just . . . don’t like it.”

  “Go on then,” Bea said. “Show us.”

  “Stop it.” Scarlet sank into the water until her hair pooled around her head. “She doesn’t have to prove it.”

  I pressed a finger into the soil. I felt Bea’s self-satisfied smile.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  I dug my finger deeper into the dirt, feeling slightly soothed by the damp earth, but only for a moment.

  “Leave her alone.” Scarlet, stretching her arms, brought her hands together into an arrow pointing at the treetops, then dived under the water.

  I watched the silvery ripple of her body gliding away, thinking a silent thank you, suddenly loving Scarlet as much as I now hated Bea.

  “I’ll teach you, if you like,” Bea said. “You just have to admit—”

  “Stop it!”

  We both turned in the direction of the river. I thought Scarlet must have surfaced, but it was Liyana shouting. I looked at her, pulled suddenly from the water, standing tall, dark skin glistening almost blue, black dandelion hair heavy with droplets.

  “Stop!” She slapped her palms down onto the surface with such force that we were splashed on the bank. “Stop fighting!”

  “Oh, Sis, you’re so sensitive.” Bea grinned. “This isn’t fighting, this isn’t even close.”

  Liyana mumbled something I couldn’t hear but, as she spoke, the water started to ripple. The wave gathered so fast that we didn’t even see it coming, didn’t have a chance to shift, before Bea was struck with a great sheet of water and soaked through.

  Scarlet surfaced, as if sensing something exciting had happened above her. We all stared at Bea. I glanced at Liyana, who seemed as shocked as the rest of us. I wanted to kiss her. The sister I’d always thought of as the baby, the one who needed protecting, was now protecting me. We waited for Bea to scream, to lift the largest stone within reach and hurl it into the river. But she didn’t move. Then she started to laugh.

  “My, my, Sis. Well, aren’t you a surprise?” Bea regarded Liyana as she might a thrillingly volatile science experiment. “I’ve underestimated you. You’re much stronger, much more interesting, than I thought.”

  Bea

  Bea ran faster than she’d ever run before, hurtling through the fog, her feet darting across moss and stone and logs so swiftly they seemed never to touch the ground. She grinned into the wind, hair whipping back, heart pounding, lungs stinging.

  On she ran and on.

  As seconds flicked by, minutes gulped down, Bea picked up such speed that soon she was no longer simply taking great steps over the stones, she was leaping over fallen tree trunks, legs stretched out straight in the perfect parallel line of a prima ballerina. And then, in another leap, she lifted into the air. Higher and higher, above the rivers and rocks, up through the falling leaves, up beyond the thinnest branches of the tallest trees, soaring out into the moonlight.

  At last she was flying, she was free.

  Leo

  “All right, all right, I’ll give you a clue if you stop nagging,” Christopher said. “Hell, you’re worse than my mother.”

  Leo smiled, sitting back in his chair. “Go on then, spill it.”

  But Christopher shook his head. “Not here.” He stood. “Come with me.”

  Ten minutes later they’d abandoned the school library for the school gates.

  “Why here?” Leo asked. “Do you know a secret tunnel? Are we making a break for freedom?”

  Christopher laughed. “Not exactly. At least, not yet and not in the way you think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You come here sometimes, don’t you?” Christopher reached up to rub his thumb across an iron ivy leaf. “On a night when the first half-moon is showing in the sky. You don’t know why, but you do. Don’t you?”

  Leo frowned. “How do you know that?”

  “Because I do the same thing.”

  “No, you don’t.” Leo’s frown deepened. “I’ve never seen you.”

  “That’s because you’ve always left before I arrive. I come at half past three in the morning. Three thirty-three, to be exact.”

  “Why?”

  Christopher dropped his hand to gaze through the gate’s thick iron pickets. “Because when you go through these gates then, you step into another world.”

  Leo laughed. “Stop messing about.”

  “It’s true.”

  “You’re having me on.”

  “You know it. If you think about it, you know I’m telling the truth.”

  “Shut up.”

  Christopher didn’t reply, didn’t deny anything or defend himself. And in the silence, Leo was forced to do as his friend suggested. He thought. He thought about all the strange and unexplained things: his desire for the stars, his nocturnal walks, his midnight vigils at this gate, his notion that perhaps something unearthly lay beyond it . . .

  “Go on then,” he said at last.

  “It’s Everwhere,” Christopher said. “It’s where a war is being fought between good and evil. You and me, we’re both soldiers in that war.”

  Leo’s brow furrowed. “We’re not soldiers, we’re kids.”

  “Only on Earth. Up there”—he nodded at the sky—“We were stars once. And in there”—he nodded beyond the gates—“We’re soldiers.”

  “What? But I . . . If that’s true, and it makes no sense at all, then which side are we fighting for? Good or evil?”

  Christopher laughed. “What do you think? Good, of course. But I bet, if you asked the other side, they’d say the same thing. Anyway, you don’t need to think about that yet. First you need to learn how to protect yourself, how to fight, how to kill. Then you can get to the rest of it.”

  Leo thought of his uncontrollable rages, of Jekyll and Hyde, and wondered if this was the reason. “But . . . how? How can I do that?”

  “I can teach you a few things,” Christopher said. “But the first time you go to Everwhere, the night you turn thirteen—”

  “Why thirteen?” Leo interrupted. “Why do we have to wait so long? Why can’t we go now?”

  “Because that’s when we become men,” Christopher said, as if this was a self-evident fact. “And that’s when the Grimm girls can’t get into Everwhere anymore.” He grinned. “They lose their power when we gain ours. Which just shows how much better we are.”

  Though he still didn’t really understand, Leo grinned back to show that he did.

  “That’s when you’ll meet our father. And he’ll—”

  “Father?” Leo interrupted again. “Our father?”

  “Yeah. I mean, not physically, but in every other way that matters. He’s our leader, our captain, he . . .”

  But Leo h
ad stopped listening. He’d been right all along. Charles Penry-Jones wasn’t his real father. He was adopted. And Christopher, this boy he loved as much as himself, was his brother.

  19th October

  Thirteen days . . .

  3:03 a.m.—Leo

  Leo didn’t discover his fate until he was thirteen and stepped through a Grimm gate for the first time. By then he knew the full truth of who he and Christopher were: lumen latros, fallen stars, soldiers.

  The cascading leaves, the mists and fog, the moonlight, had mesmerized Leo, captivating him so that he’d almost fallen foul of the same fate as his dearest friend. Except it turned out he had a sixth sense that Christopher didn’t, at least not that night. The friends had temporarily lost sight of each other and reunited only when the Grimm girl—perhaps twenty, though she seemed so old to him then—was wrapping her hands around Christopher’s neck.

  Leo reached him as he fell. But he was already dust and ash before Leo had a chance to touch him, to hold him tight.

  That night, Leo acquired the first scar on his back. A tiny crescent moon at the tip of his left shoulder blade. She wasn’t the one he wanted to kill, but he knew she would have to do. And as the Grimm girl’s final breath etched itself onto his skin, as the mists engulfed her spirit and the ground soaked up her soul, Leo’s spirits had soared and his chest swelled with pride.

  And in the echo of the girl’s death, in the shifting air, in the momentary opening of heaven and hell, Leo had felt his friend: the sound of his laugh on the winds, his smile illuminated in the moonlight, his touch carried by the fog.