The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 4

by Isabella Fontaine

  The Grimm Chronicles

  Vol. 4

  By Isabella Fontaine

  -and-

  Ken Brosky

  Cover art by Chris Smith. Edited by Dagny Holt, D.S. Atkinson and Emil Gardin.

  Published by Brew City Press.

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  Table of Contents (click!)

  Introduction!

  Book 10: The Black Towers

  The Lost Diary of Juliette Rosa Ramirez

  Book 11: A Dance With Death, Part 1

  Book 12: A Dance With Death, Part 2

  Introduction!

  Well, here we are, dear reader. The end of the road. We stand on hallowed ground, in case you weren’t aware. This marks and end to things, but maybe not the ending you were expecting. After all, “happily ever after” only happens in fairy tales, right?

  Right?

  If there’s one thing your authors have been careful about, it’s the ending. You may find this hard to believe, but endings can literally destroy a writer’s mind. Endings are so easy to overthink … but they’re also very easy to underthink. Think we’re wrong? Consider all of the books and movies you’ve experienced that have had less-than-satisfactory endings.

  So you see our conundrum.

  This series by now has become an investment. It’s not just a TV program you can turn off. It’s something so much more. Your brain has been thinking about this series for hours and hours and hours, dedicated a heckuva lot of its time and energy to visualizing the world of Alice and Br’er Rabbit and the Corrupted.

  And so we’ve tried to be conscious of that. We knew going in that things had to change up a little bit, if only to ensure that we deviated a bit from the past episodes. And we knew that the story had to come full-circle. Things needed to be addressed. Loose ends tied up.

  Monsters slain.

  Heroes born.

  Not “heroes” in the sense of Alice or Grace or Eugene or Juliette … no, if there’s one thing we’ve learned while writing this, it’s that anyone can be a hero. It’s a choice you make in your everyday actions that sets you apart.

  And so, with that said, let’s close out this series with a bang. Let’s dance with Death in the pale moonlight and draw one more fencing sword for good old times. No point in putting a fancy bow on this one … instead, let’s turn up the volume and go out swinging.

  …

  … Hmmmmm.

  We’re forgetting something.

  Oh, that’s right …

  Thank you.

  Thank you thank you thank you.

  This series has been a blast. Writing it was fun. Editing it was hard. Putting it out was challenging and weird and stressful. But it was all worth it.

  It was worth it because of you.

  Book 10: The Black Towers

  Chapter 1: Alice

  So the gold-child rode joyfully through the forest, and no evil befell him. One day he entered a village wherein he saw a maiden, who was so beautiful that he did not believe that any more beautiful than she existed in the world.[i]

  Darkness. Swirling darkness. Cold. Magnetic. It draws me in night after night. I swim from it but the more my legs kick, the more I churn the darkness. It grows thicker. It wants to suffocate me.

  A young boy. He’s lost and alone, standing amidst hundreds of faceless men and women who walk past him on the street. A city. Tall buildings with dirt-stained windows and red graffiti on the gray brick. A gray sky that threatens rain.

  The young boy coughs as an old car speeds by on the busy street, leaving a wake of black exhaust. He’s wearing a heavy gray sweatshirt with the hood drawn up. A little cup filled with coins sitting next to him. And a flower. A flower with yellow petals sitting in a little red clay pot.

  More cars pass. The black exhaust seems to hang in the air, growing thicker and thicker. It chokes the light.

  DON’T LET THE DARKNESS TAKE ME

  It creeps across the bare skin of my neck. The people on the sidewalk disappear. The cars disappear. The boy looks up. He has glowing eyes and golden skin that looks callous and hard.

  DON’T LET THE DARKNESS TAKE ME

  The black smoke grows thicker. The boy disappears. I can’t breathe. I can’t see. It’s so dark now that I can’t see anything except the swirling black. It wants me. It wants to destroy me.

  Chapter 2: Briar

  I suppose a recap is in order.

  There was no shortage of spectacle and pandemonium following Seth’s death. Once the townsfolk understood that the prince—that is to say, the Malevolence—was truly gone, they all seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. We’d found ourselves at the train station in the dead of night, occupying the old concrete structure with a handful of others waiting for the westbound midnight express. They were definitely not their usual talkative selves.

  The police attempted an investigation of Seth’s death, but with Alice and Sanda both in a state of shock, unable to remember much of anything, the case was left open and Seth’s body was eventually transported home.

  For the fencing team, getting home wasn’t so simple. With Grayle having fled, and taken his private jet with him, it was up to Mr. Whitmann and Mrs. Satrapi to negotiate safe passage back to the U.S. I wish I could provide the details of this stressful endeavor, but I was not part of their planning. Sneaking aboard a flight was out of the question, and so once again I found myself traveling through Europe to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in search of a vessel that could return me to what was now “home.”

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

  I suppose this all sounds very clinical, and I apologize. The truth is Seth’s death touched us all in different ways. It was hardest for Alice, no doubt, but I found myself grieving more than I had for many heroes I’d served over the years. Death is a surety of life, and with it comes pain. Loneliness. Regret.

  I felt all of these things in no consequential order. And I had plenty of time to think about it, too, stowed away in the cramped cargo hold of a ship bound for New York. Alone. In the darkness, grief finds you like a moth drawn to light. And it wraps itself around you like a wet blanket, chilling you to the bone and choking your breath. The feelings grew so strong that after the first day, I left the cargo hold and risked detection on the deck of the ship just so I could feel the sun on my fur.

  Seth. What can I say about him? If I had been in charge of his memorial service—and I daresay I wish such a responsibility on no human being—I’d have said that Seth was indeed one of the bravest young men I’d ever met. He had a heart of gold, and I was most impressed by this quality. It’s one thing to be nice, but a fellow who is capable of radiating love is quite rare. That quality spread out and touched everyone who knew him. It was like a bubble … outside was a cold place and inside Seth’s bubble was warmth so powerful that you felt it deep inside your bones.

  And it didn’t stop at metaphors. Let me give an example, if I may. When Alice wasn’t having Corrupted dreams, Seth and I oftentimes found ourselves playing Risk until late at night. Too late, perhaps, for a studious schoolboy … but that’s neither here nor there. My point with this tale is this: early on, I gave him opportunities to cheat. I was testing his character, wondering if—now that he knew Alice’s secret double-life—he could become something of a liability. It sounds horrible, I know, but I’ll have you know I had my reasons.

  And regardless, Seth never cheated. It wasn’t in him. I would later learn that this quality was not quite so inherent in Alice’s love, Chase. Chase, after all, was willing to make a deal with a magic fish if it meant retaining something he lost. He was a liability, and after that whole fiasco with the sea c
aptain and the whale, I began watching Chase closely to ensure he wouldn’t succumb in another moment of weakness.

  But the more Chase and Seth got to know each other, the more they fed off each other’s good qualities. Seth’s good nature and Chase’s courage were exchanged fairly and equally. It reached a point where I was sufficiently satisfied with Chase as a compatriot.

  Did I test Chase as well? Yes, of course I did. Perhaps that sounds harsh—after all, he was in love with Alice, so why would he ever do anything to hurt her? Well, if you believe in happily ever after, perhaps you might say such a thing. But the truth of the matter is that people hurt the ones they love all the time, and everyone makes mistakes, and everyone thinks they’re always right. It’s a pesky human condition, but complaining about it won’t help.

  But you’re complaining now, Br’er Rabbit (and you’re also digressing a considerable amount)! Yes, I suppose I am. Quite frankly, I have always despised this part of the job. It always feels so slimy, spying on people and rooting through their things and testing them in all manners. I cannot avoid it, though. It is clearly stated in my story that I must help the hero. And part of that means ensuring that the hero’s mission is protected from outside forces.

  Perhaps I do it for another reason, too. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that I grow close to the heroes—well, those who last longer than a few days, that is. The magic pen has the foresight to choose relatively good human beings, meaning getting along is an easy task. After a while. Most of the time. Some take a little longer to come around, like Grace Cohen for example. Hoo-boy, she was a fiery one! I can’t count on both paws the number of times she lost her temper with me.

  “Br’er Rabbit, I don’t want this pen anymore!”

  “Br’er Rabbit, I don’t care who sees me! Let the whole world see what I’m doing and maybe we can wipe all the Corrupted out once and for all!”

  “Br’er Rabbit, why don’t you go soak your head in that water trough?”

  Ha-ha-ha. Later, we would look back on those moments and chuckle something fierce.

  I miss her. I miss many of the heroes whom I could call “friend.” And what always made it worse were the endings. No time for goodbyes. No graceful exits. The hero’s life has from the beginning resembled something far more abrupt and unjust, like a scissors ready to snip a taut piece of string at any moment. Snip.

  Take Eugene Washington, who often went under the alias “Bernard Jefferson” because he was so afraid of a Corrupted hunting him down. My creator. My first and best friend. Hot dang, we used to get in all manner of trouble chasing down those Corrupted. We thought we were invincible. But then Eugene’s back gave out. And he broke his arm and had it set by a doctor who was just a step above a “quack.” And he got hit on the head pretty bad once. Never much talked about it, but I could tell it was hurting him.

  We’d escaped the south after hunting down a terrible Medusa-like creature, after Eugene had nearly been killed for talking to a white schoolteacher (the rest is history, so to speak). But we’d made it, and it seemed as if things were finally going to settle down for a while. Eugene was ready to hang it up and spend time with the love of his life, which meant—I assumed—that a new hero would arrive to take things over.

  And so I went to the library and put the pen in a secret place and waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Finally, reality dawned on me: I’d already said good-bye, albeit unknowingly. It had been a casual moment—at one point, we were passing through an alley, and in the next moment he was giving me instructions to stash the pen away. I’d responded with my trademark “Of course!” and that had been the end of it. I’d had to no opportunity to thank him for the adventures. No opportunity to tell him how much his friendship had meant to me.

  He was just gone.

  Juliette was a different story. With Juliette, I saw the writing on the wall. The poor gal reached a point toward the end where her dreams were plagued with visions of her own death. And she told me little, which hurt. She assured me it was not because she didn’t trust me, but of course that was part of the truth. For you see, I am at my core a creation of the imagination, a character who does not belong in this world. Juliette feared the Corruption would take me—she never said it, bless her heart, but it was clear my existence troubled her. It took a while to accept that.

  It took much longer to get over her disappearance. At least she’d said good-bye to me before it happened. But if only she’d told me more, perhaps I could have helped. Perhaps I could have saved her from that terrible fate she endured at the hands of Edward, the so-called “Prince Charming.”

  Sigh. The feelings returned when Alice recounted her experience inside Edward’s house, where Juliette had met her doom. Hit like a sack of bricks. She’d been so close. If only I’d done a more thorough search for her. If only … if only … the thoughts swirl about my head with the passing of each hero. What could I have done differently? Have I failed? Will it ever end?

  But of course it will. The Malevolence is dead, and the Corrupted are finite in number.

  And Seth is gone. Seth, whom I mourn just I mourn the heroes because Seth was a hero in his own special way. And he was a friend.

  Chapter 3: Alice

  A boy. Sitting at a wooden bench in a dark room with concrete walls. The little yellow flower is sitting in its pot on one side of the bench. A single lantern sits on the other side, next to an arm. An arm made of stone. The boy is very delicately chiseling away at the arm’s triceps, little flecks of dust gathering in a little gray pile on the bench’s surface.

  Every night, he’s working on something. An arm. A leg. A face. Sometimes, he’s carving it out of stone. Sometimes, it’s marble. Sometimes, he’s piecing it together with iron bolts and chunks of rusted scrap metal. The boy’s skin is gold. His head is bald, his ears pointed slightly at the tips. He sets down his chisel and grabs a much smaller one, and when his fingers touch the little piece of metal, they make a dull clinking noise.

  He leans in and begins chiseling again, tap tap tap. He frowns; the golden skin on his forehead wrinkles. Then the boy releases the frown but the lines on his forehead remain, refusing to fade. The skin is hard and bright yellow. His fingers bend a few times, then drop the little chisel. The boy curses, staring at his shiny yellow fingers. They bend awkwardly and with difficulty.

  Darkness bubbles up from the floor.

  NO YOU CAN’T HAVE ME THE DARKNESS IS GONE

  The boy sees it. He kicks aside his stool, bending down and pressing his lips.

  Sucking up the darkness.

  Chapter 4: Chase

  Briar says we need to keep up this diary to make sure there’s some kind of historical record of everything. He says it’s important for Alice to keep up her diary. He doesn’t say why but I know: someday, a new hero is going to take her place.

  I moved in with Alice. Her parents were cool with it. In fact, her mom was pretty adamant that I stick around indefinitely (I had to look up that word), and maybe into college depending on where we choose to go. It was an easy “yes” … haven’t been thinking much about college, though. Just too much other crap on my mind.

  I took the pullout couch in their living room, and Alice’s dad fixed the plumbing in the first-floor bathroom so I wouldn’t have to drag myself up the stairs. Not that I wouldn’t if that was what it took to be with Alice.

  She stopped functioning the moment we got back. It’s hard to explain. It’s like she went on autopilot once school started up again. First she was sad and then her eyes kind of glazed over and then she just went into zombie mode, going through the motions every day. She did stuff, but she didn’t do stuff—does that sound crazy? Ya, that probably does. But that’s what she did. She’d come home and we’d watch some TV, or study, or sometimes she’d just sit on her end of the couch and read.

  Anything but Grimms’ Fairy Tales.

  It was hard in school. Everyone knew something had happened in Europ
e, but no one could agree on what. No one on the fencing team could really make sense of the “events” at Castle Vontescue, and so many of them had been in shock that the ones who did trust their eyes second-guessed themselves constantly. There were whispers, though. Scott remembered the lions turning into men, and so did Jasmine. They tried convincing other students. For three straight weeks, it was all they could talk about, and they talked earnestly enough that the rumors started swirling.

  I got caught up in it, too, but I’m not gonna sit here and write about that. Alice was the one who got most of the crap from everyone. It was like on one hand, she’d become this strange mystery that needed to be stared at in the hall … but on the other hand, she had to be avoided at all costs, too.

  So she got marginalized pretty quick. It was a load of crap, if you ask me. That was the kind of thing underclassmen did to each other, not juniors and seniors. By the time you reach senior year, you’ve got a pretty good idea of the kind of person each student is. Especially in a school like ours that wasn’t very big.

  Maybe I’m wrong. Ya, I’m definitely wrong. You think you know everyone, but then one kid comes along and does something absolutely out of character. Totally crazy. Either it’s a freak-out or a really bad break-up or something involving drugs and then that kid is just gone. Usually kicked out of school or arrested or some crazy stuff like that. Maybe in the eyes of everyone else, Alice was kind of like that. She was supposed to disappear but instead she came back to finish her last semester.

  Jasmine was the worst. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She seemed downright offended that Alice had dared to come back to school, as if Alice didn’t belong anymore. There was a lot going on with Jasmine. She remembered more than everyone else—including her mom—and she couldn’t make sense of it. She spread different rumors every single week, and it was up to yours truly to dispel everything before Alice’s classmates could get any more freaked out.