Hairs on the back of her neck on end and Grimm on her mind, when Cinderella stepped into a ray of moonlight and heard the sudden racket behind her, she swiveled at once, sponging her tears with the back of her hand, uncertain if they fell in sadness or fury.
"Who is there?" she called out.
Whispers sounded amongst the trees at the question, but not a single specter showed itself.
"Do not make me come in after you," she warned, scooping a large rock from the forest floor and brandishing it next to her shoulder.
"Do not throw that!" a familiar voice cried. "You have such a good throw, you will knock us back to the next kingdom."
"Norco?" Cinderella muttered in disbelief, watching his ears appear long before the rest of him as he rose from the brush.
"Hello."
"Togo," Cinderella breathed as he flew up next to his twin, the rock in her hand falling to the ground with a dull thud. "What are you doing here?"
"We took a vote," Norco explained. "It was agreed Norco and Togo would be better put to use helping you."
"You agreed to help Christophe, Sawyer and Jack find Snow White and tell others about Grimm," Cinderella responded, turning to walk again, having no time to waste.
"To be precise," Norco added, easily catching up with her. "You did not tell us specifically to do those things."
"He is quite right," Togo agreed at Cinderella's opposite side. "You asked Christophe and Sawyer and Jack to help Snow White and tell the others of Grimm."
"But I do recall asking you to make sure they made it there safely," Cinderella reminded them. "And you did not refuse. That is a gentlemen's agreement."
"We are not gentlemen." Norco shook his head, pointing to himself. "Nor-co," he said. "To-go." He pointed to his twin.
Letting out a breath she did not realize had been trapped in her chest since she left Jack's clearing, Cinderella nearly smiled. "Oh, why do you two make me feel better even in the worst of moments?"
"We are very helpful," Togo said, and Norco nodded.
"The other humans assured us they would be fine," Norco went on. "And they carry many pointy sticks amongst them."
"So, the five of you made your own accord that they would go on to Aulis and the two of you would come back here to journey with me?"
When they gave uneasy nods in response, Cinderella came to a sudden stop, and they looked upon her with some distress, as if they expected the rock-wielding ruffian to reappear at any moment.
"Thank you," she uttered softly.
"Is that what you meant to say?" Togo asked, and a laugh escaped Cinderella's lips, but fell horribly flat and trailed mercifully away as she started walking again.
After a time, the whooshes and cackles of spirits ceased around them, and the heavy silence of the forest was disrupted only by the steps and flutters that carried Cinderella, Norco, and Togo toward the center of the world. At least as the map showed it.
"Goodness," Norco muttered, as at last they pushed through dense undergrowth and came out onto a ring of land that separated the edge of the trees from a black wall that stretched from ground to sky before them.
At first, the wall appeared an immovable barrier, but staring at it with fright, Cinderella saw its movement. Small waves rippled against its surface, a waterfall of a black syrupy substance, like the oil used for fueling lamps, though Cinderella could not tell if the substance moved from top to bottom or bottom to top or perhaps both at the same time. Arching away from them on either side, the wall looked to curve and bend as needed, and Cinderella knew it stretched leagues in either direction, too far to go around, a raging river with no bridge in sight.
Allowing herself only the trepidation she could afford, she reached out, small footsteps carrying her forward until she felt the black pour like ice over her fingertips. Pushing through, her hand went instantly numb as it disappeared into the black, but it came back in one piece as she retracted it.
"Thank you for walking me," she uttered, eyes locked on the strange wall, the path she would take no matter what stood on the other side. "I will take it from here."
"That was not in our accord," Norco returned.
"Do you not want to get home?" Cinderella quietly questioned.
"Certainly," Norco replied. "One day. Today is not that day."
"We choose to go with you," Togo murmured, and Cinderella knew she could order them away, but could not stop them from following. Dread pushing down upon her shoulders, she did not know that she wanted to stop them.
"All right," she returned wearily, pulling the dagger from her sack and slinging it back onto her shoulder. "Let us go then."
Then, with Norco and Togo at her sides, like guardians, Cinderella took a deep breath and stepped into Grimm's hell.
If it truly was hell, she realized, moving through the thickness of the wall, it was not at all what she had been told. Chilling sensation spreading rapidly through her, she shivered violently by the time she stumbled out of the thick and into the heart of the Gulf, which looked just like any other clearing of the Black Forest. Angry, shadowy, and unforgiving.
The bitter ice taking over her body, she discovered it the more satisfactory of the sensations, as another swept her with a force that rendered her paralyzed where she stood.
Fear. Immeasurable, undiluted, debilitating fear. Not the creepy sort of surprise she felt as a child when the mice knocked something over with a clatter, waking her with a jolt from bad dreams. If the two were to meet, the fear Cinderella felt would laugh at her childhood fears. The blood-curdling terror was all around her, and, yet, came from somewhere so deep, she felt that something evil had climbed inside of her and pulled every terrible thought she had ever had from her subconscious.
Grinding her teeth with such ferocity she thought they might break, she tried to dispel the barrage of images as they came at her, but they only grew stronger. In number. In gore. In pain. In heartbreak.
"Cinderella?" Togo approached her apprehensively.
"I cannot do this." She could barely speak for shaking.
"What of Rapunzel?" Norco questioned.
Teeth clacking painfully, Cinderella tried to nod, but the name drew a horrifying image at once to her mind, and she felt nothing of courage or loyalty or even love.
"Rapunzel," Cinderella whispered, sob flowing past her lips, trying to find those feelings.
"Yes, that is it," Togo encouraged. "Think of Rapunzel."
"Rapunzel," Cinderella said again.
Closing her eyes, Rapunzel was all Cinderella thought about, all she chose to see, all she chose to feel. Willful memories easing the unwelcome thoughts, warming the cold, Cinderella realized Grimm could know her motivation, he could force her to act, he could torment her, but he could never truly know her heart. He could never fully understand what drove her to enter the Gulf, for he had not lived her past. He had only molded it. He could never make her feel the same for another. He did not have that kind of power.
Eyes opening, Cinderella was met with a vision that was not inside her head. Across the clearing, Rapunzel stood, light hair touching her shoulders, frightened cries racking her body, and Cinderella drifted toward her, until at last Rapunzel looked up. Catching sight of her, the tears in Rapunzel's eyes dried and she smiled in relief, as happy to see Cinderella as Cinderella was to see her.
"Rapunzel," Cinderella whispered.
The unmistakable roar of a wildcat tearing out of the trees, its hulking shape pounced, knocking Rapunzel to the ground. Pinned to the earth, Rapunzel's scream rocked the entire Gulf as the cat snapped its massive jaws around her head.
Eyes clamping shut, dagger falling from her hand as she covered her ears, Cinderella turned from the blood and the horror, but the feeling clung to her. Falling to the forest floor, she could feel something work its way up her throat and swallowed it down as the fear wrapped her in its web, leaving her unable to stand, unable to think. When something touched her shoulder, she threw her arms about to bat the terror away.
"Cinderella, it is me!" Norco cried. "I do not know what you see, but it is not real!"
But, ears uncovered, Cinderella heard nothing but flesh ripping and bones breaking, the wildcat's satisfied purr as it pulled apart her truest reason to get up.
"What about Rapunzel?" Norco asked, but slaughter fresh in Cinderella's mind, it was the only image she could conjure, and she sobbed into her hands.
"This is not you." Togo came closer. "This is what Grimm meant when he said your bravado would not serve you well. It turns opposite. Courage turns to fear. He knew your strength would work against you. You must fight it."
"I cannot!" Cinderella screamed.
"Then you shall die in here." An unfamiliar voice spoke from the darkness, and Cinderella whirled upon her knees to watch a striking woman appear from the trees. Not exactly in hiding, she suspected the woman had been there the entire time, watching her fall apart under Grimm's illusions.
Then, it occurred to Cinderella the thought was lucid and of her own making, and she focused solely on the woman, her head clearing somewhat as other thoughts were pushed to the sides of her mind.
Unknown to her, the woman seemed somehow familiar, and Cinderella's fear multiplied and softened at the same time.
"It is lovely to see you again, Cinderella. I have been looking for you."
"Who are you?" Cinderella feebly queried.
"Queen Ino," the woman responded, and Cinderella remembered the name from the mouth of the huntsman.
"You are Snow White's stepmother," she whispered. "Why are you here?"
"She has come to take part in a long-standing ritual, Child," a creaking voice sounded, as the sorceress Cinderella had known only from a distance appeared across the clearing. "The due dispatch of an unrepentant troublemaker. Though, whatever your act against her..." The sorceress cast the queen a fleeting glare. "I do think my vengeance a little more due, since it was my Rapunzel whom you stole away in the night."
Swooping down before Cinderella, Norco and Togo looked to put up a fight, but, with a wave of her hand, the sorceress scooped them up in a cocoon that appeared from nowhere and left them bound mid-air.
"I could not steal her," Cinderella returned, mind suddenly sharp again, as if she had never suffered the Gulf's effects. "She is a person. She can belong to no one."
"Listen to her," a voice Cinderella reluctantly recognized uttered behind her, and she glanced toward the darkness as her own unbearable stepmother appeared with her two equally wretched daughters. "Such ideas the girl speaks."
"Always has, Mother," her stepsister Tilly chimed in. "That was why she could not fit in."
"I did not want to fit in with you!" Cinderella yelled. "And you," she turned to the sorceress. "She is your daughter. How could you do such a thing to her?"
Laughing with great glee, as if she had gotten one over on her, the sorceress pounded her wooden staff upon the ground. "She was not my daughter, Child. That which I never told her is that I took her from her parents as a baby, as they owed me for what they stole from me. She was never my blood-child, but she did belong to me for a time. Until you filched her, you naughty little thief. And now, I shall get to kill you."
As the sorceress raised the staff, Cinderella recoiled on instinct.
"I was told I would get to kill her," her stepmother interrupted, and Cinderella widened her gaze as the sorceress laughed once more.
"With what shall you do that?" the sorceress snarled. "A hairpin?"
"She has suffered at my hands before," Cinderella's stepmother argued, and Cinderella felt the scars upon her body rage, even as the sorceress lowered her staff, seemingly impressed by the claim.
Going slack as the immediate threat appeared to diminish, Cinderella was taken by surprise by the hands upon her arms that yanked her suddenly to her feet. Eye to eye with Snow White's stepmother, who apparently needed no permission or discussion to take her revenge, the fear crept back in and Cinderella whimpered at the tight hold of the hands upon her.
"Shhh," Queen Ino breathed. One hand releasing her arm, long fingers gathered the fresh tears that fell to Cinderella's cheeks. An errant thumb brushing against her lower lip, Cinderella knew she could pull away, but felt held in place by the queen's will alone. "My, you really are quite beautiful. You should have minded your own life, Cinderella. If you had not meddled, I would not want to kill you."
"Nor would I," the sorceress interrupted.
"I still would," Cinderella's stepsisters said in unison, giggling at each other.
"Quiet," their mother demanded, before resuming her squabble with the sorceress over who had the most right to Cinderella's life.
Sighing, as if she was bored with their fight, Queen Ino stepped closer. Despite the deep chill of the Gulf, her body was warming. Even the expression on her face showed something other than cold as she glanced toward the argument across the clearing.
"They do have their ideas," she whispered. "The sorceress says you stole her daughter. Did you do such a thing?" When Cinderella chose not to respond, the queen's lips canted upward. "Perhaps, you stole only her heart. After that, I imagine the rest was easy."
"It was hardly easy," Cinderella uttered, glancing toward the dagger at her feet, wondering what her chances would be if she reached for it.
"The truest things never are," the queen returned, eyes moving off to the sorceress with amusement. "She does not like you. She wants to turn you into a distant moon or a mighty buck to be shot in the next hunt. Your stepmother and stepsisters, they have some... interesting... ideas about how to reprimand you for your disobedience."
"And you?" Cinderella questioned, more tears falling, though she felt stronger, not weaker, with every moment she continued to exist. "Why do you want to kill me? I have done nothing to you."
"Oh, I think we both know that is not true." Queen Ino's eyes returned to her. "As for your death, though, it is not my desire. It is the universe that demands it. I have a chance, you see, to know true beauty, to have what you, Snow White and Rapunzel possess."
"Not one of us surpasses you in beauty," Cinderella whispered, and it was sincere enough that the queen smiled, the hand on Cinderella's arm gentling as it skimmed up to her shoulder.
"There are different types of beauty, Love," Queen Ino replied, hand smoothing down Cinderella's face. "I fear I have but one of them."
"And if you kill me, you get whatever beauty it is you believe I have?" Cinderella questioned. "Is that what you believe?"
"That is what I know," Queen Ino declared, hand falling to Cinderella's throat, closing slowly around it. "I will take your beauty, I will take Rapunzel's, and then I shall return to take Snow White's."
"Why?" Cinderella refused to show her fear.
"Because I am cursed," Queen Ino softly replied, eyes moving over Cinderella's skin in sad acceptance. "I will never have more than the beauty you see on my own. For I am afflicted. Whom I love, I crave."
"That is everyone's curse," Cinderella argued.
"Not like this," the queen returned in a throaty murmur, gaze locking on Cinderella's. "You crave the look in Rapunzel's eyes, I imagine. The sound of her voice." Moving forward, the queen's body pressed into Cinderella as a smooth cheek slid against her own. "You crave her smell? Her touch? I crave..." The words were soft over Cinderella's ear, before the queen sunk her teeth sharply into her earlobe, and Cinderella cried out, reaching to the tear in her skin as the queen pulled back with blood on her lips. "That is my curse."
Fear sliding back over her as she watched the queen lick her lips clean, a broken breath escaped Cinderella's lips. "And you will undo it by killing three innocent girls?"
"It cannot be undone," Queen Ino said. "It is who I am, spoiled from birth, born to a people of weak soul. My own conscience was so delicate, I knew it would one day shrivel and die within me, as was the fate of all those who came in my line before. So, I thought to protect it. I removed it from my fragile body and housed it inside a mirror, where it would
live forever, and I could consult it when I needed it."
"You could use it now," Cinderella uttered.
"Mmm," Queen Ino hummed. "That is just it. The mirror, it is destroyed, you see. My conscience, it is gone."
"I do not believe that," Cinderella whispered.
"You should." The queen's hand tightened around her neck, but it felt like embrace. "For my hand is at your throat."
"Yes," Cinderella acknowledged in a whisper. "And it could not be more gentle in its threat."
It was the wrong thing to say, or perhaps the right thing, Cinderella discovered, when she was thrown suddenly backward with greater strength than the queen's form should possess. Skidding over the forest floor, the demons came pouring back into her head, and the sudden approach of the sorceress struck terror through her.
"Stay back!" Queen Ino held up a hand, and the sorceress went instantly still. "I am not finished."
Stalking toward her, Queen Ino fell down upon Cinderella, pulling a dagger from beneath her dress and thrusting it to Cinderella's throat. Tip sharp where it pierced her skin, Cinderella could still see the hesitation in dark eyes, and, against all sense, she laughed at the feel of the dagger.
"Why do you laugh?" The queen shook her head.
"I know a girl who had a dream like this once," Cinderella said, and, thoughts returning to Rapunzel, her eyes filled as the queen pressed the blade more firmly against her skin. "I do not know what you destroyed in that mirror." Her voice shook as she went on. "But I see your conscience. So did Snow White."
"How do you know what Snow White saw?" the queen asked, and it was only then that Cinderella noticed she too trembled.
"She told me," Cinderella returned. "She believed you were trying to protect her."
When the queen laughed, more in disbelief than amusement, it rumbled through both their bodies. "Why would she think such nonsense?"
"She said it was what her heart told her," Cinderella replied, and the queen flinched. Slight enough she never would have seen it with her eye, Cinderella felt it just the same.
Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall (Black Forest Trilogy) Page 29