The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2 (14 page)

The locks on the other side of the door clicked one after the other, drawing me out of my totally mental conflict. When the door opened, Briar whisked me inside quickly.

“Someone is upstairs,” he whispered. We were in the familiar foyer, with the grand staircase off to our right. The mansion was quiet, the lights in the foyer out so that only the lamps in the hallway ahead kept the place from complete darkness.

“Who?” I asked, wrinkling my nose. The mansion smelled like dust and mothballs.

The rabbit shrugged. “She was behind a closed door. She was … singing.”

Marleen. The one with the sweet voice. It had to be her. “We’ll finish her off first,” I said.

“Ah, divide and conquer.” The rabbit nodded approvingly. “An excellent strategy. No doubt gleaned from our training exercises.”

“Right. You stay here and keep an eye out.”

“I shall. Do be careful.”

I crept my way up the stairs, keeping the toes of my feet near the edge of each step to prevent the old wood underneath the carpet from creaking.

In the hallway upstairs, there were two lit lamps hanging on the walls between the doors where the children slept, giving me only a little light to see. I crept along the wall, following the sound of Marleen’s singing. My heart beat heavy in my ears. I could feel adrenaline running through my body. The saber switched hands so I could wipe the sweat on my pants.

She was singing, all right. As I crept closer to the room, her voice grew more clear:

“Flames to purify, flames to hide … flames to hide all of our lives …”

Definitely
not
a Top 40 hit.

She continued singing those words, and as I stalked closer, I had to fight the urge to barge through the door.

No.

Now I had to be patient. Let the situation present itself.

I could smell oil. I could hear it splashing onto the children’s beds. The floor. The walls.

“When children burn, they smell like bacon … oh dear tree, our love forsaken …”

The voice was getting closer to the door. I gripped the hilt of the saber, ready. My mind pictured Alex, caught in the flames. It was all I could do to keep myself steady.

The door opened. Marleen turned her head as she walked through the doorway; I saw her face and saw the glow beneath her fair skin. I stabbed but her eyes had already found me in my split second of hesitation. Her hand reached out, grabbing the blade. It cut deep into her hand and she cried out. Her hand began burning away.

“Oh you horrible little monster!” she said, her voice still sickly sweet. The burn was traveling slowly up her arm, and as I stabbed again she swatted the blade away with her good hand, then fell on top of me.

Her breath reeked of death. A hiss escaped her mouth. Her eyes were no longer soft and wide—they’d narrowed, her pupils slit the way a cat’s did in the noon hour.

“Get off!” I growled, pushing wildly. I could feel the heat traveling up her arm, slipping between my fingers and burning them hot enough that I had to release my grip. Marleen’s tongue lolled out, sharp as a nail, and cut across my cheek. Her other hand—her only hand at this point—clutched my wrist, making it impossible to strike at her with my saber.

“You’ll burn with me!” she sang as the bright orange flames licked at the skin around her neck. I felt an intense burning on my wrist—she was right! As the flame consumed her other hand and turned it black, I could feel the intense heat on my bare skin. I struggled with all my might, kicking wildly. Black ashes fell from the woman’s body, tickling my nose, irritating my eyes so that they began watering. More ashes fell onto my shirt, threatening to ignite it.

A black shadow slammed into the burning creature. With a poof, she burst apart.

I wiped the water from my eyes, sneezed twice, then sat up. Briar was sitting on the other end of the hall, brushing black ashes off his vest and pants. He shook his head like a dog shaking water.

“I didn’t expect quite so much ash,” he muttered. “I do hope we can have these clothes dry-cleaned at some point.”

“Count on it,” I said.

Briar’s whiskers twitched. He nodded over my shoulder. I turned. The boy—Alex—was standing at the top of the stairs.

“You’re the ghost girl,” he said.

I nodded, grabbing my saber and standing up. I sneezed more ashes out of my nose.

“Bless you.”

“Thanks.” I smiled, not wanting to step closer with my sword. He looked uneasy. Weak.
Tired
. “I need to rescue everyone downstairs. What can you tell me?”

He shrugged. “Who’s the rabbit?”

I turned to Briar. His ears drooped.

“Ah, heh heh. Just a minor invisibility malfunction.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, as long as he can see you, you might as well keep him safe.” I turned back to Alex. “How about that? Briar here is going to keep you safe.”

The boy nodded. He rubbed his eyes. “They have everyone feeding the furnaces now. Some are carting away rocks. The lizard is digging even faster than she usually does.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The tree.” Alex’s eyes widened. “She wants to find the tree. She wants to find her
son
.”

He pointed to my right. I turned, clutching my saber, expecting something terrible to be sneaking through one of the open doorways. But he was pointing to the wall, to the picture hanging there. A portrait. A portrait of a young boy dressed in a blue suit coat. He couldn’t have been much old
er than Alex.

“Her son …”

“The stepmother in the story of
The Juniper Tree
had a daughter
and
a stepson,” said Briar.

I turned back to Alex. “How will the Juniper Tree help the mistress find her son?”

He shrugged. “All she’s ever told us is that her son is gone. Taken by Death. She said once that her husband blamed her. He’d forgiven her once before. But the tree can take you to another place in another time. It can bring people back from Death’s embrace.”

A cold feeling crept through my body. “OK. You go with Briar now. Let him take care of you. I need to go save your brothers and sisters.”

Alex walked past me, giving me a satisfied nod. “I’m glad you’re not wearing your pajamas.”

“Me too,” I said with a smile.

“Come along,” Briar said as I made my way to the stairs. “We’re going to find the best possible hiding place in this entire mansion …”

Downstairs, I slipped down the hall to the heavy door near the kitchen, checking each room just to be safe. From somewhere below, I heard the same roar followed by children’s cries. The entire floor rumbled, shaking the glass lamps on the walls.

The basement stairs were just as I remembered them from my dreams: spiraling down, they changed from wooden planks to stone blocks after the first landing. The air grew colder. I could smell something burning. The deeper I went, the longer it took to come upon another lit lamp hanging from the stone wall. My eyes adjusted slowly. My body trembled. I didn’t like being in such a cramped space. I didn’t like the darkness.

The floor leveled out. I walked slowly, my ears picking up the sound of heavy clanging and the sharp voice of the head mistress as she shouted for everyone to shovel more, more, more. My free hand crept across the cold, slimy wall.

There. Just ahead, I could see firelight reflecting off the glossy wall where the tunnel made an abrupt turn right. Beyond that was the cavern.

And the children.

I took a deep breath, then stepped around the corner. The long rows of wooden crafting tables were empty, a stack of blue jeans sitting on one end. To my left was the giant coal pile, stacked high directly underneath a steel chute that had been built into the cavern walls.

Right where the garage was. Of course! That was how they were getting the coal inside. And the factory across the street … that was probably where the furnace pipes went. The factory was probably an empty building and nothing more. A cover.

Some of the kids shoveling coal stopped when they noticed me. Deeper in the cavern, where the furnaces lined the wall, the head mistress was using both hands to guide the children to the correct furnace.

“Keep them hot!” she shouted. “Faster now! This is our last night. Our last night of work! The furnaces at the far end are cooling. They must be kept
hot
!”

A grunt from deeper in the cavern, where the light of the furnaces seemed to be suffocated by the darkness. I could see the lizard’s thick tail well enough, though. Moments after the sound of its claws raking across the far end of the cavern hit my ears, a massive chunk of rock rolled toward us, nearly knocking the head mistress over.

“Well?” she asked the frightened kids standing beside her. “Get the pickaxes and break it apart! We must keep moving! Keep moving, children! Find the seed! Find the seed!”

“The seed,” I repeated.

Everyone stopped. The mistress slowly turned. In the light of the furnace flames I could see her lip curl into a snarl as her dark eyes landed on me. She raised her left hand, letting her fingers curl into a fist.

“Yes,” she said, her voice echoing in the cavern. “The Juniper seed.”

“Run,” I ordered. When the children didn’t move, I stomped one foot on the hard ground. “Run fast! Upstairs!”

The children dropped their shovels, pushing past the mistress and weaving their way around the wooden tables. The mistress watched them, her eyes narrowed.

“It has been a long time since I’ve seen a hero,” she said in a low voice. She was staring at me, her gaze so penetrating that I was having a hard time preventing myself from turning away. Behind her, beyond the farthest furnaces, there came a low bestial grunt.

“Why do you want the seed?” I asked.

The mistress cocked her head. A few strands of dry gray hair escaped from her tight bun, falling in front of her wrinkled face. “Why, don’t you know anything?” She laughed. “Oh, sweet little hero. All I want is to have my son back. Is that so much to ask for?”

“You hated your stepson,” I said. “Why would you want him back?”

The stepmother smiled wryly. “Can you not see that you stand before a tortured, grieving mother? I seek only my son. Nothing more.”

“And how many children are you willing to kill to get him back?” I asked.

“All of them!” she snapped. The last of the children scurried past me, making their way into the tunnel. The mistress’s voice continued echoing, as if trapped inside the cavern with no escape. I was beginning to feel the same way.

“These children have no families,” the mistress continued. “They have no parents. They are serving a greater purpose.”

“Not anymore. They’re going to be
kids
again from here on out.”

She glared at me, a look so sharp that I couldn’t stop myself from stepping back. That was all she needed—she stepped forward, then took another step, and with those two steps she’d already closed the distance between us, as if propelled forward by some magical wind. She grabbed one of the pairs of jeans as she passed the last table, and just as I brought down my saber, she wrapped the jeans around the blade, twisting me around.

“You dare to get between a mother and her child?” the mistress screamed, her voice stinging my ears. “Are you such a fool, hero?”

“You can’t stop me,” I said, using my free hand to try and pry the mistress’s hands from the pair of jeans. She had the denim wrapped tightly around the blade of the saber, her body weight pushing me backward with incredible force. I took another step back, then another, feeling the heel of my shoe rub up against the foot of the nearest wooden table.

From the darkness came another grunt. Then another massive jagged chunk of rock rolled out of the darkness, stopping beside us.

“Hilda!” the mistress called out. “Come eat this little fly!”

Another grunt. I felt my heart nearly thump its way through my rib cage, letting go of my saber so that I could maneuver myself away from the mistress. I stepped around the tables, feeling the mistress on my back.

Wham! We both went tumbling to the ground. I’d completely forgotten about her strange ability to move quickly. I realized then and there what was happening: she had the fiddler’s boots. The boots from his story that let him cover great distances in a short amount of time. Somewhere, over the course of two hundred years, those two had crossed paths and now the mistress was wearing the boots.

A handful of claws came at my face and I leaned back, feeling two fingers catch my hair and pull a few strands out. My eyes began to water from the pain. She was on top of me, her knees holding me in place. I risked a look left—the tail had disappeared deeper in the cavern, lost to the darkness. Either the lizard had run away … or it was turning around.

I had a feeling it was turning around.

“You could never understand!” the mistress screamed. Her mouth had spread across her face, wider now, stretching her papery skin. She swiped at me again and I clutched her wrist, keeping her sharp nails from digging into my face. “I lost my stepson twice! Once to my own schemes and then once to Death himself! And when I lost my stepson, I lost my husband!”