The Sisters Grimm

by Menna Van Praag

  “Can’t it wait till morning?” Liyana asks. “It’s freezing.”

  “So put on a dressing gown and slippers. It’ll be worth every toe lost to frostbite, I promise.”

  Liyana rolls her eyes. Mazmo Owethu Muzenda-Kasteni is one of the more persistent suitors she’s ever encountered, but he’s harmless enough and, now that Liyana is slightly more awake, she’s curious.

  “Give me five minutes,” she says, pulling the window shut.

  Scarlet

  Scarlet is locking the café door when, through the glass, she sees the woman. She hasn’t opened today, has barely left her bed since returning from the morgue—except when Walt paid a brief surprise visit. Scarlet squints at the woman, lingering in the shadows cast by King’s College across the street. She holds a cigarette between her lips, exhaling long puffs of smoke. Scarlet stares as the woman throws down her cigarette, steps out of the shadows, and walks across the street. As she steps under a streetlamp, Scarlet sees that the woman has cropped her hair and dyed the red to black, but her wood-brown eyes are surely the same, as is the way she walks: ready to pierce anything daring to come between her and her destination.

  The recognition is instant, but the confusion takes longer to clear. How can this woman who was once her mother be striding across the street? Her mother is dead.

  Scarlet isn’t certain how Ruby Thorne enters the café, since she doesn’t recall unlocking and opening the door, but she is still so dazed, so disorientated, that it might have happened in the usual fashion. All Scarlet knows is that her not-dead mother is now standing within touching distance, although still feeling as untouchable, as unreachable, as she ever did.

  “You’re . . . alive,” Scarlet says at last, when it becomes clear that her once-was-mother won’t be the first to speak. “But you’re . . .”

  Her dead mother nods. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s not . . . I don’t understand. How are you here? I don’t—I don’t . . .”

  “I can’t make excuses,” Ruby says. “I know what I did was unforgivable. I—”

  “You. Died.” Scarlet sounds out the words. “You died in a fire that burned down our home, a fire that I . . .”

  “Perhaps you should sit down.” Ruby nods towards a table surrounded by chairs.

  Scarlet does not. “How . . . what . . . ?”

  The woman takes a deep breath. “I need a cigarette. Do you mind if I smoke in here?”

  Scarlet stares at her. “It’s illegal.”

  “Oh, yes.” Ruby Thorne sighs. “I’ve been away too long, I keep forgetting. But I don’t think anyone will notice, do you? Not at this time of night.”

  Scarlet narrows her eyes, the shock starting to thin a little. “Tell me why you’re here. Tell me why you’re not dead.”

  Her resurrected mother takes a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket and fiddles with the plastic wrap. “We . . . Your grandma thought it would be better for you not to know. She thought it would be less traumatizing—that death was better than desertion.”

  “What?” Scarlet stumbles into a chair and sits. “But—no, that’s not—no.”

  Ruby Thorne nods.

  “Grandma knew?” Sparks fire from Scarlet’s fingertips. “No. You’re lying. She wouldn’t, she . . .” And then Scarlet remembers her grandmother’s dream. Esme knew.

  “She thought it would be better—”

  “You keep telling me what she thought,” Scarlet snaps. “And I can forgive her. What’s so cruel is your timing—why the fuck are you telling me this now?”

  “Because I had to—”

  “Why didn’t you just stay dead?” Scarlet’s hands burn by her sides. “After all this time, it would’ve been better.”

  Ruby is silent.

  “But I still don’t—why now? I’m guessing you know about Grandma—so why taint my memory of her? Are you really so cruel?”

  Ruby sighs. “I’m sorry for the timing, truly, but I couldn’t come before and I couldn’t wait any longer—”

  “Why?” Scarlet interrupts. “You’ve come to say what? That you’ve been watching us all these years and you didn’t want to turn up at Grandma’s funeral—you thought that’d be in poor taste?”

  “Look, I know you’re furious, you have every right to be. And you can scream at me all you want, as you should. But right now, I need you to listen.”

  “Thanks for your permission, ‘Mum,’” Scarlet snaps. “But I don’t exactly need it, you know. I—”

  “Your father,” Ruby interrupts. “You need to know—He tried to kill me once; I escaped.” She meets her daughter’s eye. “I didn’t realize then that you were in even more danger than I was.”

  Scarlet glares at the woman who used to be her mother. For a moment, shock trumps fury, and she must know. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your father is . . .” The fear in Ruby’s voice cools even the fire at Scarlet’s fingertips. “He’s extremely dangerous.”

  “So you say. And why should I believe you? Surely you’ve now proved yourself to be the most deceitful, most deceptive”—Scarlet’s hands begin to heat again—“Most untrustworthy bitch who ever—”

  “Did you read my letter?”

  “What letter?”

  “The story. ‘Red Riding Hood,’” Ruby says. “I read it to you when you were a little girl. I hoped it’d help you remember happier—”

  “No,” Scarlet says, not wanting to believe it, not wanting to credit Ruby Thorne with something so touching. “You didn’t—I don’t believe you.”

  “I hoped you’d know it was me.”

  “I didn’t, I don’t.”

  “I read it every night for years.”

  Scarlet shakes her head. Blue sparks fire from her fingertips.

  “I thought, if you remembered you trusted me once, that it’d help you now.”

  “Help me?” Scarlet snaps. “You mean help you.”

  Ruby meets her daughter’s scowl and holds her gaze. Scarlet looks into the only eyes in the world that exactly reflect her own. And then she remembers: curling into her mother’s arms, listening to the words she knew so well, lulled to sleep by the same story again and again.

  “You need to come with me.”

  “Why?” A moment ago, Scarlet would have told her to go to hell. Now she’ll at least allow an explanation.

  “Because if you don’t, your father will try to seduce you. And if you resist him, he’ll kill you.”

  Scarlet frowns. “If he’s that dangerous, then I’ll go to the police—”

  “You can’t,” Ruby says. “It’s not here he’ll get you. It’s in Everwhere.”

  “Everwhere?” Scarlet looks at her mother as if she’s lost her last tenuous grip on reality. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I know you hate me, Scarlet. And you should. But I’m only asking that you at least let me help you, let me take you to this place, let me show you what you can do, so you stand a chance of surviving your father. Please.”

  It is this last word that does it. Her mother has never begged.

  “All right,” Scarlet concedes. “You can show me, then you can leave.”

  Goldie

  “You should be wearing your shoes,” Leo says. “You don’t know when you might need to run.”

  We’re walking alongside a river. I’ve taken off my shoes and am carrying them, so I can feel the wet moss on the soles of my feet. I’d like to step into the stream, to feel the current rushing between my toes, but I suspect Leo wouldn’t allow it.

  “Where are we going?” I ask. “I’ll put them on when we get there.”

  “To a place where you can practise your skills,” Leo says. “So when you fight you stand a chance of—”

  “Survival,” I say.

  Leo says nothing.

  “But I don’t have any skills.” I’m worried by his raised expectations. He clearly has misguided notions as to my potential, and I’m reluctant to disappoint him. I bru
sh my fingers along a tree trunk, peeling off a long strip of bark. I crumble it with one hand as I walk, watching the woody flakes fall and settle on the stones beneath my feet.

  I know Leo keeps warning me of what’s to come, telling me to be on my guard, trying to scare me into alertness. But it’s difficult to believe him because I don’t feel fearful here. Indeed, with every step I feel stronger and safer than I’ve ever felt before.

  Bea

  “Dr. Finch?” Bea frowns when she sees him, lingering in the shadows. She has the feeling he’s been here awhile, watching her absorbed by the infinitely falling leaves and towering willow trees reaching for the moon. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be here?” He steps forward onto the moss. “I’ve as much right as you.”

  Bea shrugs and starts walking. “I wouldn’t have credited you with any Grimm blood in your veins. You’re not much of a man, let alone . . .”

  But she still can’t entirely remember the rules, the physical laws governing this place. She doesn’t know who’s allowed and able to be here and who is not. All she remembers now is that she’s here to meet her sisters, for which she is curious and keen, and her father, for which she is not.

  “Wait.” Dr. Finch hurries to catch up.

  “Shouldn’t you be at home with your wife?” Bea asks, wishing he was.

  “She’s asleep,” he says. “She’s not missing me.”

  “Yeah, well, nor was I. So why don’t you take a different path?” Bea nods in the direction of a river that winds away from them.

  Dr. Finch says nothing but continues walking beside her. And, because he’s silent, she allows him to stay. The moon disappears behind clouds. A dense, dark thing swoops down between them, before soaring up again into the pitch-black sky.

  A blackbird. Bea thinks of the illustration she found in Fitzbillies. A memory tugs at her.

  “A bat,” Dr. Finch says.

  Bea ignores him.

  The memory rises.

  I could fly. Once upon a time I could fly.

  The moon breaks away from a bank of clouds, illuminating the path. Bea picks up her pace, walking faster and faster until she breaks into a run, legs lifting over the stones in great, swift strides. As she runs, Bea lets out shrieks of delight carried on the fog that rolls back to Dr. Finch, who walks in her wake.

  Scarlet

  “Where the hell are we?” Scarlet stands on a patch of moss, refusing to move. “How—I don’t understand . . . How did we get here?”

  “You’ve been here before.”

  “I have?”

  “And you’ve been dreaming about it.”

  This isn’t a question. Scarlet gives a single reluctant nod.

  “You came here as a child,” Ruby says. “And you’ve been readying yourself to return.”

  “I—I . . .” Scarlet wants to defy her mother, deny it all, except she can’t.

  “It’s a place for you to realize your strengths, to hone your skills,” Ruby says, “to become dominant enough that you might actually stand a chance of winning the fight.”

  “What fight?” Scarlet frowns. “And I don’t have any—”

  “Stop that,” Ruby snaps. “Enough. Modesty, self-doubt, those things might get you approval at home, but here they’ll get you killed.”

  “I’m not being modest.” Scarlet shakes a white leaf free from her head. “I simply don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, please.” Ruby rolls her eyes. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed anything strange, anything—”

  “What?”

  “That look—you just thought of something, didn’t you? I know that look.”

  “No, you don’t.” Scarlet curls her warming fingers into fists.

  “I do. I’m your mother, I—”

  Scarlet gives a wry laugh. “Are you? I hadn’t noticed.”

  Ruby sighs. “Scarlet, I’m sorry, but we don’t have time for this. What I did was awful. I abandoned you. You hate me. I know, I deserve it. But now I’m risking my life to try and save yours. And if you don’t at least stop punishing me long enough to let me help, then we’ll both be dead before—”

  “All right, all right.” Sparks of frustration fire from Scarlet’s fingertips. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about, but I’ll pretend I don’t hate you, just for tonight. Okay?”

  Truthfully, hate is already softening into dislike, not that Scarlet will admit it. She’s still far from ready to let her mother off the hook. Love weighs less than fury—silver against lead on the chemical scale—but they might yet balance. One day.

  “Thank you. Now, come on.” Ruby walks along the stone path, stepping over the snaking ivy, sinking into the moss. She stops and turns. “Come on.”

  Scarlet takes a tentative step. She snatches a leaf out of the air, watching its edges singe and curl in her palm before scrunching it to dust. “What is it with all these bloody leaves? Where the hell are they falling from?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruby admits. “I’ve never found anyone who knew.”

  “I don’t have you to thank for my sparkling mind then? I suppose my father is the one with the brains.”

  Ruby stops so sharply that Scarlet almost falls against her. When she turns, the fear in her eyes again cools the fire at Scarlet’s fingertips.

  “Watch what you say about him.”

  “Why?” Scarlet frowns. “He can’t hear me.”

  “That’s what you think?” Ruby says, incredulous now. “He doesn’t need to be here, he only has to think of you to hear your thoughts. I stand some chance of concealment, but you—he created you. So long as you’re alive, you’ll never escape him.”

  Liyana

  “I’m impressed, Maz,” Liyana says, a little breathless. “I am.”

  Mazmo, having ditched his guitar at the gate, gives a courtly bow with a flourish of his outstretched hand. “I aim to please, my lady.”

  “I don’t know how the hell you did it, or even what you’ve done.” Liyana spins in circles, her face upturned to the stars. “But it’s—I’ve never seen stars so bright, and everything as white as if it’s covered in snow—honestly, I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  Grinning, Mazmo steps towards Liyana with an open hand. With a shrug, she rests her hand in his. “You’re so beautiful, Ana. You make me forget every woman, man, being, I’ve ever—”

  “Maz, don’t,” Liyana warns. “This is all . . . astonishing, but it doesn’t change anything. You know how I feel about . . .”

  “I know, I know.” Mazmo plucks a leaf from the air, twirling it between finger and thumb. “But you can’t blame a boy for trying, now can you?”

  Liyana sighs. “I don’t understand men. I’d never—you don’t mind seducing a woman by a process of wearing down her defences until—what?—she finally gives in and marries you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But why would you want anyone who’s not wild about you?”

  Mazmo shrugs. “It doesn’t much matter how they feel in the beginning, it’s how they feel at the end that counts. Anyway—”

  “And there you go, the patriarchy summed up in a single sentence. God, if I had only a drop of your confidence.”

  “Unfair. It’s more animalistic than that. It’s about the thrill of the chase.”

  Liyana sighs. “Courtship isn’t a foxhunt.” She drops his hand and walks on alone, feeling a sudden longing for Kumiko. If only Liyana could bring her here. It’d be the grandest of grand gestures. Although she’s a little fuzzy on the particulars of how they actually arrived, so she must make sure Mazmo explains everything before they leave. “Where exactly—are we still in London? Is this place like Winter Wonderland? It all feels so real, but—Oh!”

  “Sorry, did I startle you?”

  “N-no, I didn’t realize you were so close behind, that’s all . . .” Liyana distances herself again. “But perhaps we should be going. It’s late. I’ve never bee
n out all night before. If my aunt—”

  “Liar.”

  Liyana frowns.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never been out all night before. I bet some weekends you don’t even go to bed.” Mazmo grins. “Not to sleep, anyway.”

  Liyana meets his eye, about to deny it. But the way he’s looking at her now—as if he’s a mackerel and she’s a minnow—is so disquieting that she doesn’t want to disagree, doesn’t want to rile him. She feels the strength of him beside her. What did he call her once—athletic? Even so, she’s no match.

  “Well, I suppose . . .” Liyana turns to walk back the way they’d come. At least, she thinks it is, but she can’t be sure. All at once every towering tree looks exactly like every other, their trunks enveloped in tendrils of ivy, their pale leaves blown by a crosshatch breeze. And the stones seem to have rescattered themselves so that the path forks when it hadn’t forked before, and the confetti of leaves is falling faster, threatening to blanket everything in white in a matter of minutes, rendering the land unnavigable. “Maybe I have, I can’t remember.”

  “We’re not leaving yet,” Mazmo says, his voice smooth as water over rocks. “Not until I’ve shown you something. You can’t leave without seeing it, since it’s the reason I brought you here.”

  Liyana stiffens as he takes hold of her hand again. “What is it?”

  “It’s a surprise.” He tugs her forward so sharply that she stumbles, slipping on a stone. “Come on. We’ll have to walk awhile, but it’ll be worth the wait, I promise.”

  Liyana blinks as raindrops settle on her lashes—when did it start raining? Between one second and the next a thick fog has rolled in, and Liyana realizes that she has no choice but to go with Mazmo now because, if she ran, which way would she go?

  Goldie

  “So, what is it you think I can do?” I’m scrambling up a fallen tree trunk, realizing too late that, since it’s wider than I am tall, it won’t be as easy as I’d anticipated. I reach out to Leo. “A little help over here . . .”