by Cameron Jace
The pumpkin piper thought these children were too young to utter words like these. Still, he was confused if he should agree.
Then a magpie pecked at his head, and he bled some kind of orange juice, which was as thick as human blood.
“I agree,” he yelled at Justina. “Let me fly, and never grow up again.”
“As you wish,” she said, and disappeared.
“Wait,” he pleaded. “Where are you going? You promised to make me fly.”
The piper’s rats and magpies were closing in, so the pumpkin piper whipped the ostrich harder. This time, the ostrich flew a bit higher in the air.
“Hooray!” the children hailed.
The pumpkin piper whipped the ostrich again, and it flew even higher, pulling the coach in the air with it. Maybe Justina didn’t exactly make him fly, but made him capable of conjuring others to fly. He didn’t mind, as long as he was able to save the children.
Higher and higher, the pumpkin piper saved the children from the piper who could not reach that high, nor could his magpies. The coach was flying so high that it rested on a beanstalk in the end, one that had its huge leaves acting like spiral roads leading to the clouds. The coach landed on those spiral roads with its wheels. The pumpkin piper drove it to the top, where they met with a super cool boy called Jack …
“So you and the pumpkin piper are friends,” Marmalade jumped from her place. “You know him?”
“Very well,” Jack said, standing up.
“But what happened next?” Marmalade asked. “I still can’t figure out who the pumpkin piper is. Do I know him?”
“You know him very well,” Jack said, seeding the earth with beans.
“Are you the pumpkin piper, Jack?” Marmalade suspected.
“I’m awesome Jack Madly. Why would I want to wear a pumpkin on my head?” Jack watched the beanstalk grow high. He pulled Marmalade near and looked up.
“Why are we climbing the beanstalk now?” she wondered.
“To meet the pumpkin piper,” Jack smiled, and grabbed one of the beanstalk leaves to pull him up. “Even Tarzan can’t do this,” he added.
At the top of the beanstalk, Marmalade saw tens of children playing happily, trying to tiptoe and catch the clouds with their hands. Once they saw Marmalade, they hurried to play with her. She knelt down to play with them as well, her eyes darting away, curious if she’d finally meet the pumpkin piper.
There, in the middle of Jack’s pumpkins, he sat playing his flute and eating from a plate full of pumpkin and pickles. He stood up when he saw Jack, and high-fived him as Jack slapped one of the snakes holding a pumpkin just for the fun of it.
“Nice to meet you,” Marmalade said, standing up.
The pumpkin piper greeted her back and started to take off his pumpkin head.
Marmalade let out a shriek once she saw his real face.
“It’s you?” she held a hand on her mouth, her eyes wide open with surprise.
“I wonder how you never guessed,” Peter Pan said.
“Why should I have guessed?”
“Well, for one, the Pumpkin Piper’s flute was a ‘pan’ flute,” Peter ate another pickle, closing his eyes like he was taking a drug. “And I gave up growing up to save the children and learn to fly.”
“So that’s why you never grow old,” she clicked two fingers together.
“She is very smart,” Jack whispered to Peter mockingly. “In fact, the smartest of her sisters.”
“But I never knew you like pumpkins so much,” Marmalade said, ignoring Jack.
“Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,” the children started to jump the rope behind her. “Had a girl but couldn't keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well.”
“See?” Peter shrugged his shoulders. “I am Peter Pan, but I am also Peter Pumpkin.”
“And who is the girl in the nursery rhyme who you couldn’t keep?” Marmalade asked.
“You should really know that one, babe,” Jack said picking up something from the shelf, and spanking her lightly on her behind on the way.
“Wendy!” she tiptoed, figuring it out.
“And don’t ask me what happened exactly with Wendy,” Peter interrupted.
“If you say so.” Marmalade had a finger on her lips, thinking. “But if you’re Peter Pan and Peter Pumpkin at the same time, then you must also be Peter Piper,” she said the last words with glittering eyes.
“That’s right,” Peter said proudly, and let another pickle slide down his throat.
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” the children started to sing. “A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.”
“If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” Jack sang with them. “Where's the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?” he winked at Marmalade.
“My God! That’s why you loved pickles so much in the story. You’re basically every Peter ever mentioned in nursery rhymes, right?”
“Not every one, but most of them,” Peter said. “There are too many secrets in Sorrow. I don’t believe that knowing all of them is good for you. In fact, I only approved of Jack telling you this one because he insisted to let you know how we became friends.”
“On the top of a beanstalk,” Marmalade added. “Of course, he was on top of it while you were gifted with flying, and what better place for you two to meet, but on the top of the world.”
“We’re awesome,” Peter blinked.
“I’m awesome,” Jack raised a finger. “You’re kinda second-place awesome. People have a word for it. They call it ‘great.’”
The children took Marmalade’s hands to play with her, and sing her more songs about Peter.
“You’re amazing,” she told them. “You should make a band and keep singing.”
“We have a band,” five of the children claimed proudly. “We call ourselves the Piedpipers.”
“Oh, that’s lovely,” Marmalade said.
“And we call yourselves the Pickleheads,” another bunch of girls said.
“Don’t listen to any of those,” Jack shushed the children away. “Only one band is the best. I called them the Pumpkin Warriors. They will be superstars,” he pointed at a bunch of kids he liked.
But Marmalade still had more questions to ask, “So you basically save kids before the Piper gets them?”
Peter nodded.
“And then?”
“And then I bring them to Jack,” Peter said. “Jack, in his own thievery way, knows how to feed them, and bring them clothes and food. But one day, I will find a great place for them and bring them all to it. A place where they can play forever, with no parents or evil Pipers to hassle them. Maybe they’d have great fun there, and never grow up, like me.”
“So you guys aren’t that bad, huh?” Marmalade said.
“Oh, we’re bad,” Peter said, slapping another snake like Jack. “You just wait and see.”
Jack and Peter laughed, and Marmalade folded her hands in front of her.
“Boys will be boys,” she sighed.
“Believe me. Sometimes, it’s good to be bad,” Peter said, grabbing a vine to pull him down. “There is a lot you still don’t know about us. Now if you excuse me, I have a bad girlfriend to take care of,” Peter said with a smirk. Marmalade thought that with all that bad boy attitude, Peter was a hopeless romantic when it came to Wendy. She was not only bad, but viciously evil, and he still loved her.
Before Peter descended, Marmalade had to ask him one last question. It was the most important of all, “Peter, if you ever find that place to keep the children away and never grow up, what will you call it?”
“What a silly question, that is,” Peter said and waved goodbye, sliding down, saying, “Neverland, of course.”
End of Prequel # 16
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 17
Prince of Puppets
as told by Pinocchio
By Cameron Jace
The Grimm Diaries Prequels 17
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p; Prince of Puppets
as told by Pinocchio
Dear Diary,
I once asked a wise man if he’d ever seen a dragon.
“Would I be here talking to you if I did?” the wise man said. “A dragon would've already burned me with its flaming fire.”
“Have you ever seen a dwarf, then?” I inquired.
“I wouldn’t still be alive as well,” the wise man said. “Because I would have died from laughter.”
“A troll?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I would've had a heart attack from staring at its hairy ugliness,” he said.
“How about a mermaid, maybe?”
“Again, I wouldn't be here talking to you if I did,” he said. “Who’d find a mermaid and not make her his lover, and escape with her to the big wide sea?”
“Are you saying that all those fantastic fairy tale creatures don’t exist?” I wondered.
“Not necessarily, Pinocchio," he answered. “But there is no way to know for sure. In order to prove there are dragons, you need to survive one, or kill it. Then come back and tell me, and show me evidence that supports your saying.”
“Good point,” I thought. “I guess this means you’re not a believer. There is no evidence of most of things we believe in.”
“Depends on what you ask me to believe in,” the wise man said.
“Heaven maybe?” I thought I’d finally cornered him with that question.
“You know what the problem with Heaven is?” he told me, rubbing his beard.
“No,” I said, eager to know.
“That no one came back from Heaven to confirm its existence,” he said. “A man travels to India, comes back and tells about the wonders he’d seen. Brings spice and snakes along, so we start believing he'd been there. No one's ever come back from Heaven and said, ‘you wouldn’t believe this cool place I’d been to.' At least I haven't heard about it.”
“According to this argument, there is a problem with Hell, too,” I speculated, rubbing my wooden chin--it needed to be smoothened, I discovered. “No one's ever come back from it as well.”
“You got that wrong,” the man leaned forward, amused with my naïveté. “We don’t need someone coming back from Hell to tell us it existed.”
“Why is that?” I was embarrassed I didn't know, but I didn't blush. Wood can't blush.
“Because you’re not supposed to come back from it,” he laughed, nailing a hammer into one of his puppets--just another victim like me, only none of them were inflamed with a soul like me. And yes, the wise man was a carpenter. “You’re supposed to fry and burn in Hell, so it makes sense you don't come back," he said gloomily.
I raised the other eyebrow at the illogical logic of this conversation--my eyebrows weren't made of wood by the way; they were made of some kind of donkey hair, and it took me a long time to master the art of moving them. What can I say? When you're trapped inside a puppet, you've got nothing but time to waste.
"Don't frown at what I am telling you, Pinocchio," the man said. "The world isn't as black and white as it may seem. It's made of layers upon layers of lies, and we only see the last, most recent layer. Scientists like to call that the 'truth,' until another one comes along and proves them wrong. Actually that is what the so-called truth is all about; as long you can't prove it's a lie, people consider it true."
Every thing he said, I couldn't argue with. For a boy made of wood, the world wasn't that complex. I didn't need to eat, didn't need to shit, didn't need love, and eventually didn't need to hate--if you don't have needs to love things, you don't have the desire to hate things, too. I was just out there, like a yo-yo bouncing in my Puppetmaster's threads. Bounce me to the left, bounce me to the right, have your fun. Maybe clap your hands, call me cute, and then rest me on a shelf and turn off the lights--don't even bother to position me probably, this twisted neck shouldn't hurt. I am a piece of wood after all.
This is me, Pinocchio; a piece of nothing, with a long nose and wooden arms and legs. I am happy with my superficiality, happy not to be human with all the complexities that come along, and I don't fear anything in the world--well, ahem, I do fear two things, and two things only: a hammer and a nail. You have no idea how much they hurt.
"So how about the devil?" I asked out of nowhere. I had been always curious about the devil.
"Where did you hear about him?" asked the wise man.
"You always mention him when you swear," I said, rubbing my nose. "He lives in Hell, right?"
"Not exactly," said the man. "He wants us to think he lives in Hell, but the truth is that he lives among us, pretending to be someone else."
"Is that for real?" I faked my astonishment with my dead, pearl eyes.
"You're so naïve, Pino," the man patted me. "Always know this: the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he was someone else."
It was this moment in my conversation with Ghepetto, my master, hat I knew I wanted to write my own diary. Calling me naïve and pointing out that the devil's greatest trick was being someone else wasn't something I took lightly. You will understand why in a minute.
Ghepetto was a nice man, and I owed him a lot. But he’d been through a rough life, and his mind was playing tricks on him. This incident of him and I talking had been long ago. Before he had married his lovely wife, who had died giving birth to his second child; a cute and unusual girl named Gretel, younger sister of their boy Hansel.
I'm not going to talk about Ghepetto's story with his two kids after their mother died, or how he had to remarry a vicious child-killing woman—or how she convinced him to send his children to the forest when they had no money and couldn't afford two more open mouths to feed, because these things happened later.
I met Ghepetto a long time before that, so maybe you'll learn about the accurate incidents of his kids’ stories in someone else's diary.
Before marrying and having children, Ghepetto was just a middle-aged lonely man in Sorrow, an invisible fella who'd emigrated from Italy, a small island called Murano, to seek a new life in the Kingdom of Sorrow.
He'd been beyond poor, working as a woodcutter for some time. Even though people in Murano were masterful glassblowers, he still preferred the art of wood over glass. He had tried to work for the Queen and the King of Sorrow but they had enough woodcutters already. Then one day, in his boredom and frustration sitting in the Black Forest, he came upon a piece of wood fallen from one of those spying Juniper Trees. He was starving and needed to occupy himself with doing something, so he pulled out his rusty knife and carved the wood. He found himself shaping it into a puppet. To his surprise, it looked great.
From that day on, Ghepetto knew what he was meant to do. He wasn't destined to be a poor carpenter, but a great puppet maker. It didn't cost him anything; chopping some Juniper Trees off and carving them into numerous puppets in his poor cottage in the forest.
A while later, he was approached by a mysterious Puppeteer--a profession that had been unheard of in the kingdom before--and Ghepetto began selling him his puppets.
It didn't make Ghepetto rich, but it didn't leave him poor either. Actually, if you ask me, that is what most people want. They don't necessarily want to be rich, just not poor.
And so the middle-aged man found a craft that occupied his free time, and helped him put food on he table. Still, his new profession failed to grant him one last, and most precious, wish: to have a child that would be the timber, I mean the light, of his life.
But let’s not talk about Ghepetto now. I am going to get back to him in a while. For the moment, I’d like to talk about me. It's crucial that we talk about me. I'm like no one you have ever met. And before I tell you about my magnificent yet horrible adventure, you need to be sure of one thing, and one thing only: I am not the happy Pinocchio who wanted to become the good boy the Brothers Grimm told you about. I don't have a cricket-looking conscience. That was really silly. Not in a million years.
In fact, I am not exactly Pinocchio. It
's just the silly name given to me by Ghepetto.
So who am I, you ask?
Who would be as important and dangerous as me and trapped in a puppet's body, and why?
Well, to tell you who I am, we have to go back to somewhere around the beginning of time when I had been given the silly name of...
Drum roll, please.
Another drum roll, and here is my silly name...
Lucifer.
Now, don't panic. Hold on tight. Don't run away. This is going to be a rough ride. Think of your favorite roller coaster ride that made you pee in your pants. You know that one? The one you fear, but keep coming back to?
That would probably best describe me. What’s a devil, but a roller coaster ride to Hell?
My story would be best told from a time I was a fallen angel, the Dreamhunter kind. I was one of the best, having mastered the art of killing evil entities in their dreams. But then, due to differences in point of views--you know that evil is a point of view, don't ya?--the Fairy Gods kicked me out of their Fairy Heaven. They have some kickass boots, them Gods.
I ended up falling onto this horrible place called Earth--why here, Gods? It was a tough fall; I broke a leg and couple of ribs that took a couple of centuries to heal, not to mention those two bruises on my head which ended up becoming two permanent horns. Bear in mind they hadn't invented parachutes yet, and they had cut off my wings before kicking me out.
I'd like to spare you my story about living among dinosaurs for decades. This little devil me was nothing but an insect among Raptors and Hadrosaurs.
But no problems, I managed to play my part. I even played it so well, making them loathe and kill each other, I caused their extinction. My first job. I made mama proud.
On and on the ages went by, and I had my share of victories and defeats. But then the Fairy Gods figured out it was a mistake letting me live, as I had begun to turn this Earth into Hell--as if it weren't already, before me.