A Grimm Curse: A Grimm Tales Novella (Volume 3) (8 page)

“It’s good to see you laugh,” Remi said, smiling at her.

“Come on,” she said, holding out a hand so she could transfer him back to her shoulder. “It’s going to be a long walk home.”

Chapter
10

“M
y love for him was lost when he tried to quarter me.
”

SHE TOOK OFF HER OTHER shoe and left it wedged in a nearby tree. She hoped someone would stumble on it someday and be puzzled. She tracked along the edge of the forest, keeping off the road until she was well away from the castle. Unused to going barefoot, her feet were torn up from walking over every pine needle and stick in the forest. She finally emerged from the trees to walk on the side of the road, telling herself everyone would still be at the castle for several hours.

The dusty road was a lot more forgiving
on
her feet
as
she limped along, emotionally and physical worn out while Remi worried in her ear.

“Enough!” she finally told him. “Unless you can figure out a way to carry me home, why don’t you just distract me.”

“I
could
have carried you home in my human form,” he grumbled.

“Really?” Cynthia asked, wondering for the first time what he really looked like. “How old are you anyway? I never asked.”

“About your age. I’ll be eighteen June eighteenth,” Remi said.

“Hunh. That’s next week. I wonder how you celebrate a frog’s birthday?” she mused.

“I love how you assume I’ll still be here next week.” They exchanged a smile, but Remi’s was tinged with sadness.

“Is it such a bad place to be?” Cynthia asked and then immediately wished she could take the question back.

“Of course not, it just means, if I’m still here, I’m still a frog.”

A beam of light silhouetted her from behind. She shaded her eyes against the headlights as she turned, regretting her decision to walk on the road. She prayed it was no one she knew and they would just drive past.

“Remi,” she whispered. “There are pockets in the apron.”

The little frog hopped into the apron covering her ripped skirt without complaint, but let out an odd sound when they both recognized the car. If he’d been a dog, Cynthia would have called it a growl.

An all too familiar Model T convertible pulled alongside her. Cynthia attempted to duck her head and shuffle past, but Todd still called out to her.

“Cynthia? Is that you?”

She sighed before turning to him and pasting on a smile. Christina was in the passenger’s seat, a gleeful look on her face. She’d
so thoroughly
delighted in Cynthia’s downfall after her father died, it felt like she should be an honorary stepsister. Cynthia wasn’t sure why, but they’d never gotten along, even as children. She had a distinct memory of Christina calling her stuck-up shortly after her mother died.

“Hey, Todd
.
,
Christina.”

“You—you want a ride?” Todd’s offer had a grin behind it, and his eye raked her up and down, taking in the torn dress, bare feet, tumbled hair—everything. It was still over two miles to her house and her feet felt like ground beef.

“No thanks.”

Todd put the car in park and opened his door. He snagged her hand before she could shy away. “There’s blood on your feet. Just get in the car.”

Cynthia allowed him to tug her to the car. He twitched his head at Christina, who pouted, but climbed into the backseat. He handed her into the passenger’s side and Cynthia was careful to scoot the apron to the side slightly so she didn’t squash Remi flat. Todd put the car in drive and they bumped down the road in uncomfortable silence.

Christina leaned her arms over the back of the front seat. “That was quite a concert you gave tonight.” Her words were nice enough, but the tone and the body language clearly said Cynthia should have died of embarrassment right up on the stage.

“Christina,” Todd said in an undertone.

“No, she’s right. It was a musical number to remember,” Cynthia said with a small laugh. She didn’t have much dignity at this point, but if she showed how much she was hurting right now, Christina would chew her up and spit her out. “Don’t you play, Christina? Maybe we could do
Fantasie
together
sometime.” If memory served, Christina had been abysmal at the piano, way worse than Coriander.

Christina sniffed and tossed a lock of hair over her shoulder. “I haven’t played lately. I’ve other projects to pursue.” Then she clamped her lips shut and wouldn’t say another word, which is exactly what Cynthia preferred.

They pulled up to the manor house and Todd hurried around to open Cynthia
’s door
. Normally she would have been horrified at his attentiveness, but she was too weary to argue. He walked her right up to the
front
door. She wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and turned to tell him thank you and good night, when he grabbed her hand and wouldn’t let it go.

“I could help, you know,” he said, his voice low and intense. “I know you’re not treated well here. I mean, look at what they did to you tonight.”

An unreasonable anger flared up in Cynthia. “Help how?
” she snatched her hand away.
“
My life’s been this way for over six years. Where were you when my father died? My mother?” she asked, shocked at his sudden concern.

“I was a kid, what could I do?” Todd asked.

“I could have used a friend,” she said. “Someone to talk to.”

“I tried a few times,” Todd said, digging a hole in the dirt with his toe, “but your stepmother always chased me away.”

Cynthia sighed. She didn’t really have energy for this conversation right now.

“Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you.” She slipped inside and bolted the door after her.

Remi immediately poked his head out of the apron pocket and resumed his seat on her shoulder. “Good riddance.”

“What, you don’t like Todd?” Cynthia asked, stealing into one of the bathrooms for a few supplies. She grabbed bandages and antiseptic before wobbling down the stairs to her room, dead on her feet.

“Really, my love for him was lost when
he
tried to quarter me. Do
you
like him?” Remi countered.

Cynthia shrugged. “I
don't
know. He
said he
tried to come over before. And he didn’t laugh at me tonight.”

“You
do
like him,” Remi accused.

Cynthia opened the door to her room and plopped him in his bowl of water, mostly to shut him up. She lit the fire, filled the kettle and put it over the flames.

“Why do you care so much?” she asked Remi, watching him float on his stomach.

“I don’t trust him.”

“I think all boys tease frogs. Didn’t you?” she asked with a ghost of a smile.

“Well
,
I won’t after this experience.”

Cynthia bathed, washed her hair, and did her best
to
banda
ge
her feet before she crawled onto her pallet. When she closed her eyes, she still hadn’t heard the Wellington’s come home. Maybe that meant she could sleep in tomorrow.

That night, Cynthia had a nightmare. She didn’t often dream, but after the day she’d had, even her dream self was resigned to being chased by an army of violins and showing up naked at the feast.

Then the dream—shifted. It became vivid and tangible in a way Cynthia couldn’t explain. People she didn’t know that had nothing to do with her awful day appeared. A smiling man with broad shoulders and dark hair and a woman—his wife—with curls like her own. Snatches of emotion she couldn’t pin down floated in her dream with their faces. And there was a girl, a miniature version of Cynthia. It was her family
—
,
but it wasn’t. A mother, father, and sister that clearly weren’t hers, except her brain seemed to think they were.

Cynthia woke confused and covered with sweat, Remi’s worried eyes on her.
She flashed briefly to
Rapunzel’s last letter describing her strange and
lucid dream
s,
but immediately disregarded it. Dreams were just dreams. There wasn’t a connection to her one nightmare and Rapunzel's.

“Just a dream,” she
told
Remi
, rising to get dressed.

It turned out that Cynthia did get to sleep in. And when she was finally dressed with Remi in his usual place in her pocket, she went upstairs and found out why. The only way out of the basement was locked. There was a keyhole on her side, but of course she had no key. She pounded on the door and called, but she knew she hadn’t been bolted in on accident.

She slumped back down to her room, her stomach growling audibly. She hadn’t eaten anything last night.

“I couldn’t expect to get away without any kind of punishment,” Cynthia said, standing on her tiptoes and unlatching her tiny window. She held Remi up to the opening. “No point in both of us being confined down here. I’m afraid you’re on your own for food today, though.”

Remi hopped out the window and looked back at her with his wide set, serious eyes. There were times when they were talking or laughing together
that
she would look up and be startled she was having a conversation with a frog instead of the tousle-headed boy with mischievous blue eyes that she felt like she knew.

“I’ll be back,” was all he said before hopping away.

Cynthia lowered the window and settled back on her mat, staring at the wall. She wasn’t used to being alone anymore, and the feeling didn’t sit as well with her as it used to. Her body had no practice holding still except to sleep. She didn’t even have her book to keep her company, it was still hidden out in the barn. She fidgeted on her blankets and finally started counting stones in the ceiling to distract from her gurgling stomach.

She had finished the stones in the ceiling (1,423) and was working on the ones that made up her fireplace (317) when Remi pounded on the window.

“Let me in, let me in!” he shouted.

Cynthia hurried to lift the window. Remi soared in and she barely caught him before he hit the floor. A huge heron flapped furiously behind him, it’s long legs getting in the way as it tried to fit through the window.

“Stop!” Cynthia said, putting out both hands like she was direction traffic. “Could you just give us a minute?” she asked the heron and lowered the glass so he couldn’t get at Remi. His heart was going a mile a minute but he grinned up at her proudly.

“We’re getting you out of here. I’ll go find the key and you can tell the heron to go get it,” Remi said in a rush.

“I thought herons ate frogs,” Cynthia asked.

“They do. How do you think I got him here?”

She shook her head at him, but couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

“Even if you could get me out, where would I go?”

He took one of her fingers in his padded hands and held on tightly. “I know you’re scared, but it’s time to leave.”

“Leave?”

“You don’t think you have options, but anything is better than this,” Remi said, locking eyes with her as the heron pecked at the glass. “They’ve locked you in a dungeon without food, Cindy.”

He said it unconsciously this time and it felt good to hear her nickname again.

“You could go to Madam Camilla, maybe she would hire you, or I’m sure they’d want you to work at the music store. You could probably support yourself playing the piano. You’re that good you know.”

She shook her head no at him, but he shook his right back. “I’m a prince. We’ve had all sorts of famous musicians play at the keep and you’re just as good.”

She laughed lightly at his earnestness, but she knew he wasn’t teasing her.

“And if you did have to clean for a while, well, it would be better than here. It would have to be. But you could always—I mean only if you wanted to
—”
—“
and he was doing that cute, embarrassed frog/boy thing again.

“Just spit it out, Remi.”

“You could always come home with me.”

A smile spread slowly across her face.

“Don’t laugh,” he almost whined. “I mean I don’t know how we’d get there—maybe rob a bank or steal some horses or something—but once we did my mom would be thrilled. The story is she cried when I was born and she saw I was another boy.”

“Okay, fine, fine.” She held up a hand in surrender. “I’ll leave, but only on one condition.”

“What?” he knew her well enough to be wary.

“You have to come with me to the feast tonight. And tomorrow night,” she said, crossing her arms and daring him to argue.