The Everafter War (2 page)

Sabrina sat uncomfortably in a loveseat across from the group. Her sister, Daphne, sat next to her, chewing on her palm—a quirky habit she had when she was very excited or happy. The only other witness to Sabrina’s strange company was the family’s two-hundred-pound Great Dane, Elvis. He seemed just as nervous as Sabrina; the dog’s head swung back and forth from Goldilocks to the bears and then to Sabrina. He let out a soft, confused whine.

Sabrina shrugged at him. “Welcome to Ferryport Landing, Elvis.” The dog let out a soft bark.

“How long are we going to wait?” Sabrina whispered to her sister.

“Granny said she’d come and get us,” Daphne whispered back. “Maybe we should offer them something to drink, to be polite.”

Sabrina nodded. “Would anyone like anything to drink?”

The bears grunted and huffed and the blond woman responded in a series of short grunts. When they had finished chatting, Goldilocks turned to Sabrina and informed her that the biggest of the bears liked Earl Grey tea, very hot. The second biggest would prefer hers iced. The littlest of the bears would love some chocolate milk if it wasn’t too much trouble. Being from New York City, Sabrina had seen many crazy people talking to animals: She’d once seen a man discuss Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo with a one-eyed mutt and its filthy rubber chew toy. In this case, however, the woman talking to the animals wasn’t crazy. Animals really did talk to her.

The girls excused themselves and went into the kitchen with Elvis in tow. There they found a little girl in red pajamas huddling in the corner. She had a sad face framed by amber curls that fell across her shoulders. Her name was Red Riding Hood. Sabrina immediately wished she had stayed in the living room with the bears. Red had been a homicidal lunatic the day before, but when she was cured Granny had invited the child to live with the Grimms.

“Are they gone yet?” Red asked. She was extremely shy.

“No,” Daphne said. “But they’re friends. You don’t have to hide in the kitchen.”

Red didn’t look convinced.

Daphne went to work preparing the drinks while Sabrina spied on Goldilocks through a crack in the kitchen door. Goldilocks was still rushing around the room reorganizing the Grimms’ possessions.

“She’s giving me a headache,” Sabrina said.

“Don’t spy,” Daphne scolded. “It’s rude.”

“I can’t help myself. Aren’t you curious about her? I mean, what did Dad see in her?” She studied the woman’s features. Goldilocks was pretty and she seemed nice in a ditzy kind of way, but she was no Veronica Grimm. Sabrina’s mother was a knockout.

“Love is weird,” Daphne said. “We can’t know why Dad was in love with her.”

Sabrina laughed. “What do you know? You’re only—” She stopped herself when her sister flashed her an angry look. She was already treading on thin ice with Daphne. She didn’t need to make their relationship any worse. “Yeah, that’s true. We can’t know.”

“Red, are you going to join us?” Daphne asked the little girl.

Red shook her head vigorously and sank back into her hiding space.

The girls left her there and returned to the living room with the drinks. Sabrina found the three bears sitting on the couch, shaking the last few gumdrops out of a jar Granny Relda kept on a coffee table for guests. The biggest bear gestured toward the jar as if to say “MORE!” It made Sabrina uncomfortable. She hated when she saw animals behaving like people. Animals shouldn’t eat gumdrops! They shouldn’t drink tea or chocolate milk, either.

“This is a bad idea,” Goldilocks fretted, sitting on an ottoman, then jumping back up to move a vase. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“No, you did the right thing. We’ve tried everything to wake them up. You’re our last hope,” Sabrina said, nearly panicked that the woman might turn and walk out of their lives. They had been searching for her for so long.

“Have some tea,” Daphne said.

Goldilocks ignored the offer and went to work rearranging the books in the family’s huge bookshelf. “Your dad told me he didn’t want to see me anymore and I tried to respect that. I moved to New York City and lived there for a long time. I had a nice little apartment in the East Village close to where CBGB’s used to be. Then I heard he and Veronica had moved to Manhattan. I never went to see him. It was the only way I could say I was sorry, and now, here I am. I know you need me to help him now, but when he opens his eyes and sees me standing over him I don’t think he’s going to be happy. And your mother! She’s going to think I’m … I’m a harlot.”

“What’s
harlot
mean?” Daphne asked.

Sabrina knew and thought Goldilocks might be right. “A harlot is—”

“I asked Goldilocks, not you,” Daphne snapped.

Sabrina frowned. Daphne always turned to her whenever she didn’t understand a word.

“A harlot is a woman with a bad reputation,” the woman explained. “A harlot is a woman who kisses another woman’s husband.”

“My mom will get over it,” Daphne said matter-of-factly.

Goldi turned to the three musky-smelling bears. “What do you think I should do?”

They stared into the woman’s eyes and shrugged at the same time.

“A lot of help the three of you are!” Goldi scolded then turned back to Daphne. “What is keeping your grandmother?”

“Same old Goldi,” a voice said from across the room. Everyone turned to find a tall, handsome man with a mop of blond hair and a nose that had seen the knuckles of one too many fists. He wore a trench coat with hundreds of extra pockets sewn into it. Uncle Jake smiled at everyone. “Just as impatient as ever.”

Goldilocks frowned. “Jake Grimm!”

“You ready to get this show on the road?” he asked her.

The blond beauty bit her lower lip. “Just a second,” she said, then snatched a paperweight from the coffee table and set it on the bureau. She stood back and admired it, then smiled with satisfaction. “OK, let’s do this.”

She followed Jake up the stairs with the bears lumbering behind her. Sabrina and Daphne followed them, unfortunately downwind of the bears’ special brand of funk. Elvis followed reluctantly.

“Are you coming?” Daphne said to Red, who had crept back to the couch now that everyone was leaving.

Red shook her head. “This is your family. I don’t belong.”

Daphne rushed back down the stairs and took the little girl’s hand in her own, then pulled her to her feet. “C’mon.”

At the top of the stairs, they met Granny Relda, a chubby, stout little woman with wrinkles lining most of her face. She had white hair streaked with faint traces of her old fire-engine red. These days she rolled it all into a bun on the top of her head, though wisps of it escaped through the course of a day. She had changed from her nightgown into a bright white dress and a matching hat with a sunflower appliqué in its center. She smiled and hugged Goldilocks as if she were one of her own children.

“It’s good to see you, Goldi,” she said in her light German accent. Granny had grown up in Berlin and moved to America when she married the girls’ late grandfather, Basil.

Goldilocks smiled. “It’s been a long time.”

Granny led everyone into a spare bedroom furnished with a full-length mirror and a queen-size bed. Lying comfortably on the mattress were Sabrina and Daphne’s parents, Henry and Veronica Grimm. Both were deeply asleep. Granny Relda sat down next to her slumbering son and took his hand in hers. For the first time since Sabrina had met her grandmother the old woman’s shoulders didn’t look as if they were carrying the weight of the world.

Goldi stepped over to the bed and looked down at Sabrina’s parents. “Relda, I—”

Granny Relda stopped her. “I know what you’re going to say and it’s nonsense. There was never a need for an apology. What happened to Basil was not your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

Sabrina watched Uncle Jake’s eyes drift to the ground.

“I’m not sure Henry feels the same way,” Goldi said. Sabrina saw the expression the odd woman gave her father. It was clear that even after all the years they had been apart Goldilocks still loved him. “How long have they been like this?”

“They disappeared two years ago,” Daphne explained. “They were like this when we found them about three months ago.”

“We’ve tried everything to wake them up,” Sabrina added.

“What about Prince Charming?” Goldilocks said. “He seems to have a knack for this kind of thing.”

“He also has a habit of marrying the women he wakes up,” Granny said. “Might be coincidence, but his kiss seems to have a power all its own. I’d rather not chance it.”

“I don’t want William Charming for a stepfather,” Sabrina grumbled.

Uncle Jake crossed the room and patted Poppa Bear on his furry arm. “Good to see you again, old man,” he said. “And the boy. He’s getting big.”

“You know the bears?” Goldilocks asked.

“Oh yes, Poppa and Baby Bear helped me retrieve a phantom scroll from a Romanian constable a few years back,” Uncle Jake explained.

Poppa Bear let out a low grunt.

“Retrieve or steal, Jacob?” Goldilocks asked disapprovingly.

“To-may-to, to-mah-to,” he replied with a sly grin. “Goldi, you and the bears have given up a lot to come here. You do realize you’re trapped in Ferryport Landing? The barrier won’t let you out.”

Poppa Bear gave a long bark.

“He says it was time to reunite his family,” Goldilocks explained. “Momma Bear was here, and Poppa and Baby Bear were not. They had all hoped the magical barrier would eventually fall down and they would be reunited, but no such luck. He says it’s better to be trapped together than apart for another day.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Sabrina interrupted. “But we’ve been waiting a long time for this. Could we get started?”

Goldilocks nodded and turned to Uncle Jake. “So, Jake, you’re the expert on magic as far as I can tell. I just plant a kiss on Henry and he’ll wake up?”

“That’s the word on the street,” Uncle Jake said. “Snow White and Briar Rose both explained what happened with them. Briar said there’s no special trick to it. Just pucker up and lay one on him.”

“Briar Rose said ‘pucker up and lay one on him’?” Sabrina asked. She couldn’t imagine such a demure woman being so … vulgar.

“I’m paraphrasing,” Uncle Jake said sheepishly, then turned back to Goldilocks. “Just kiss him.”

“What about Veronica?” Goldilocks said. “She needs a kiss from someone who loves her. I can’t wake her up.”

Daphne took her by the hand. “Your kiss will wake up Dad and then he’ll kiss Mom.”

“And all of this will be over,” Sabrina added.

Just then, the full-length mirror leaning against the far wall began to shimmer and shake. Its reflective surface rippled like a bubbling brook and when it calmed, a big, bulbous head materialized in the reflection. He had deep-set eyes, thick lips, and a heavy brow. A crackling thunderstorm ignited the sky behind him.

“WHO INVADES MY SANCTUARY?” he bellowed. Red Riding Hood jumped and tried to run from the room, but Daphne held her hand tight.

“It’s us, Mirror,” Granny said. “No enemies here.”

The lightning faded and the face brightened. “Oh, am I missing something?”

“Sorry, Mirror,” Daphne said. “We were just about to call for you. Goldilocks is here. She’s going to smooch my dad. We think it will wake him up!”

Mirror glanced around the room at the many guests and smiled. “Hello, Ms. G. It’s nice to see you again.”

Goldilocks returned the smile. “Still looking great, Mirror.”

Mirror smiled. “Thanks. I owe it all to Botox and my trainer.”

“Again, folks, can we do this?” Sabrina said.

“OK, here goes,” Goldilocks said. She tucked her blond curls back behind her ear and leaned in close. Sabrina held her breath in all the excitement and realized everyone else was doing the same. They had all waited so long for this moment. There had been many nights when Sabrina was convinced it would never happen. But, now, finally, her family would be reunited. Things might go back to normal.

And then someone farted. Everyone turned in the direction of the horrible noise. There, standing in the doorway, was Puck, a shaggy-haired boy who, like Red Riding Hood, had been adopted by Granny Relda. He was somewhere in the range of four thousand years old, though he looked like he might be twelve. He was wearing pajamas with robots fighting monkeys all over them and had on a sleeping cap so long that the end dragged a herd of dust bunnies behind him. He scratched his backside with a wooden sword and scowled.

“You people have woken me up. I was going to come out here and complain that it sounded like there was a pack of bears running through the house and look what I find! A pack of bears!” Puck turned to Granny Relda. “I suppose you have invited them to move in, as well. You’ve never met anyone you didn’t hand a set of keys to. I mean, after all, you’ve invited a murderous lunatic who only wears one color.”

“I’m sorry,” Red Riding Hood squeaked.

Then Puck turned to Daphne. “A chunky little monkey who eats us out of house and home.”

“Hey! I’m not chunky. I’m big-boned.”

“Yeah, like a brontosaurus!” Puck snorted and turned to Sabrina. “And then there’s this one. A girl so ugly burn victims stare and point at her. So let’s have some bears move in, too. Why not? Maybe we could invite a couple of giants while we’re at it, or maybe a bunch of those idiot Munchkins from across town. We’ve got plenty of room! Why not turn this place into a bed-and-breakfast for every second-rate Everafter with a hard-luck story?”