“Because we saved her life,” Sam said, drawing out his words slowly. “On more than one occasion.” He was getting annoyed—good. Better to test whose side he’s on now. There was no telling if the Corruption followed him to this place.
Maybe a quick whack with my enchanted sword …
No. It was too risky—Sam would fall unconscious and there was no telling how long it would be before he woke up. And Seth and I needed his help. We needed all the help we could get.
“In here,” Seth said, grinning his big doofus grin as he opened the first door on the long house.
I narrowed my eyes, letting Sam and Flick take the lead. “You’re weirding me out, bro.”
He just shrugged.
I followed them inside. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the low lighting. Heavy red curtains hung over the windows, letting in only dim, bloody sunlight. The room was large, with two fabulous red couches and a red-brick fireplace on one end. On the other end were two massive desks, their glossy surfaces littered with pieces of paper and books stacked four and five high. Little towers of knowledge. A thin sword hung on the wall between two paintings of—surprise!—the Brothers Grimm. Jacob and Wilhelm, both in profile, staring at each other, frozen in a state of perpetual seriousness.
There were more paintings, too, each one depicting rolling hills and lush green forests. The walls were painted a dark brown, broken up every ten or so feet by thick wooden beams. Two bookshelves sat between two open doorways that led deeper inside the house.
Use all your senses, Alice!
I inhaled through my nose: dust, with just a hint of cooked meat. No doubt someone somewhere inside the massive house was preparing dinner. My ears picked up the tick-tock sound of a clock—I turned my head left, back toward the desks. There, sitting between them against the wall: a grandfather clock. Only it was no regular grandfather clock. It was half a grandfather clock. Half a clock face. Half a curved pediment on top. Half a pendulum, swinging first inside the glass case and then out. In, then out. In, then out.
“Mr. Mayor,” Seth said, bowing extravagantly to the empty desk to the left of the clock. “Good to see you again, sir.”
I stepped closer, unable to believe my eyes. There he was, standing in front of an open book, looking up at me with his little hands on his meaty hips.
The talking sausage.
“An interesting turn of events,” Sam murmured.
The sausage—the mayor—looked up at me approvingly. “Vell! A fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into, girl.”
I did a little bow. “Um … it’s good to see you.”
“Is it?” he narrowed one little black dot of an eye, hopping off a big book and onto the glossy desk surface, leaving little glistening greasy footsteps. “You should not be here.”
“I know, I know! But I am.”
“Indeed!” He leaned forward. “Those soldiers ve ambushed … they belong to the za vizard.”
I smiled. “I forgot how much I loved your accent.”
The mayor seemed taken aback. “Vat accent?” He did the equivalent of shaking his head, which amounted to him essentially shaking his entire sausage body. “Why are you here?”
“To rescue my best friend.”
“Ah yes, the boy.” He turned to Seth. “It seems I owe both of you a debt. The hero, for vanquishing me from the earthly realm. And this curious boy, who obviously does not belong here, and yet still he persisted in warning us of the vizard’s approaching minions.” He said the last word with such contempt that he spit out little greasy gobs of spittle from his tiny mouth.
Sam glanced at his brother. “I see no debt is owed to you.”
Flick shrugged. “I didn’t want to stick around and wait for Agnim’s idiots to arrive. But the boy challenged my manhood. Nearly bloodied his nose.”
I looked at Seth, raising an eyebrow. He grinned. “We couldn’t not help. We’d seen what Agnim’s people were capable of.”
“Yes! Quite capable,” the mayor spat. “Monsters, all of them! Under the spell of Agnim’s curse. Vielding veapons zat threaten to Corrupt us once again. And for vhat? Only to create more evil. In a place zat should be devoid of it.”
“Do you know why the Corruption is here?” Sam asked. “Or how it may be stopped?”
The mayor shook his sausage head. “I fear I have no answers and no spells to offer you here.”
“We’ll take whatever we can get,” I said. “We’re going to Castle White.”
“Ah, the White Kingdom.” The sausage nodded. “Not an easy journey. Keep to ze road as much as you can. Those who arrive in this place already Corrupted seek shelter and darkness first. I can provide supplies and perhaps a bite of my rump for a snack, but beyond that I am at a loss. I am sorry, but I cannot spare anyone. Our town must prepare in case more of Agnim’s minions arrive.””
“We’ll take pickaxes,” Sam said. “Two of them, if you can spare it.”
“Pickaxes and a bow for the boy.” The sausage narrowed one black eye. “He’s a bit too skinny to wield anything heavy. There is no fairy here to enchant them, vich means the girl’s sword is the only thing that can remove the Corruption from whatever you face. Remember zat.”
My hand moved to the hilt of the sword hanging loosely from the belt around my waist. Seth’s belt. He’d switched back to his dirty jeans and black t-shirt, but had let me use the belt so I didn’t have to carry the sword everywhere. Now it was just annoyingly bumping against my leg every step I took.
“We’ll need food, too,” Sam added. “Do we need food? Do we need to eat in this place?”
“Ah, new residents are always so confused.” The mayor chuckled. “You will have a desire to eat. If you eat too much, you will get fat. If you eat too little, you will get skinny. But you will never die. This place exists beyond such a thing.”
Sam, satisfied, gave his brother a nod. “We’ll travel light, then.”
“But,” the mayor said in a low voice, “you two … I cannot say of your fate.” He turned his gaze from me to Seth, then back to me. “Neither of you belong here. And where your dwarf companions will survive the touch of a blade … you most likely will not. Be careful.”
I took a deep breath. Well, there’s one answer for you, Alice. “Thank you, mayor.”
“I think,” the sausage said thoughtfully, “ve vill put Edward and his friends in a basement for the time being. Just to be safe.”
I smiled. “I really, really like that idea.”
We rode our horses hard for a few hours, stopping only once at a stream so they could get a drink. Above us, the sun gradually slid westward, growing more orange as it sank toward the hilly horizon. We kept the horses walking at a quick pace after crossing the stream, hoping to reach the forest toward the north before nightfall. I wasn’t too anxious to camp out under the stars—not with more of Agnim’s creatures hanging around.
“Blast you!” Sam shouted at his pony, tugging on the reigns to try and keep her from eating the tall golden brown grass beside dirt road. She paid him no mind, grabbing another mouthful and then shaking her head. Her white hair swished from side to side.
Flick laughed. “You used to be a master horseman, brother!”
“That was two hundred years ago,” Sam said. He finally succeeded in pulling her away, guiding her toward the center of the empty road. “The moment cars were invented, I relieved myself of the horrible burden of dealing with these insipid creatures.”
“I think mine’s pretty,” Seth said, patting his mare on the neck. She was a chestnut, with a white blaze on her head. My horse followed her obediently, as if accustomed to the arrangement.
“We might could push through the forest,” Flick offered, “and reach Snow White’s castle before morning.”
“At night? That sounds way too scary,” Seth said.
“He’s right.” I tugged on my horse’s rein so she moved to the left side of the road, giving Sam ample room to squeeze between me and Seth. I felt my body numb for a mo
ment—a leftover instinctual reaction to seeing Sam so close to Seth. I took a deep breath. “Let’s try not to go out of our way to find danger.”
“Bah!” Flick scoffed. “I want to use this pickaxe! Ever since our ambush of that little weasel Prince Charming I’ve had a hankering for some sensible punishment.”
“I don’t seem to recall you taking any part in the attack on Edward and his minions, brother.”
“I fell down the stairs.” When Seth snickered at that, Flick added heatedly: “I got excited!”
I smiled beside myself. “That’s a welcome change from your earthly role in things.”
The angry dwarf grunted. “The Corruption. Oh, if I could rightly explain what it was like, you’d think better of me, girl. Once that disease began to spread, I could feel it coursing through my body like ice water. And then it touched my mind, squeezing my brain like a ripe tomato. I was a prisoner in a dark cell, unable to escape. Helpless to watch.”
“She cares nothing about your plight, brother.” Sam’s little fingers tightened around the leather reins. “She’s a hero. To her, we are an evil that must be vanquished, pure and simple.”
“Were,” I said.
He looked at me, narrowing his eyes. What are you thinking now, Sam? Are you calculating whether I’ve let bygones be bygones? His eyes moved over my shoulder.
“Don’t turn,” he said. “Keep looking at me. To your left, on the hills to the west.”
“What is it?” I asked, willing my hand to not reach for the enchanted sword hanging from my belt.
“A fox.”
“Oh. Well. It could be worse.”
“Indeed?” Sam raised an eyebrow. “And does your magical hero’s intuition tell you if he’s friend or foe? Good or evil?”
“Point taken,” I said through barred teeth.
“We should camp along the road.” Sam pointed to the forest ahead. “Up there just a bit.”
“That’s insane.”
“It may sound insane, but it works well. Back in the eighteen-hundreds, my brothers and I learned from experience that camping along the road made escape a lot easier. If we camp in the forest or in the grass, the horses are at risk of injury should we need to make a quick escape.”
It still sounded insane. “We don’t know who else is using this road.”
Sam groaned in obvious annoyance. We passed sparse clusters of tall pine trees and a few maples and oaks with thick, ancient-looking branches. The forest ahead looked dark. The dirt road seemed to disappear inside, like an unlit tunnel through a mountain.
“Well?” Sam asked. “What say you, hero?”
“We camp inside the forest,” I answered quickly. “Away from the road. Whether the fox is a good guy or a meanie, he can make the first move.”
Sam looked at me. “A meanie?”
“Brother!” Flick called out. “Remember when we made camp outside of Berlin?” He guffawed loud enough that the sound seemed to echo in the dark forest ahead.
“What’s he talking about?” Seth asked Sam.
“He’s referring to a trip we made while our fairy tale was playing out. We’d traveled to Berlin to use our gold to buy more mining supplies. We purchased a quantity of beans and cooked them. Flatulence ensued.”
“Oh.” Seth laughed. “That’s awesome.”
“Flick certainly enjoyed himself.”
“You too, brother! Pretend to be serious if you like, but I know for a fact that you were ripping the loudest ones!”
“Let’s make camp,” I said. “Then you boys can tell all the fart stories you want.”
Forty minutes later, we were inside the edge of the forest, tucked in a little grove of pines with bare trunks that afforded us enough room to build a fire and arranged our wool blankets around it while still maintaining some personal space.
It was a profoundly disappointing experience.
“What’s wrong?” Seth asked, tossing another log on our fire. He sat down beside me, tossing his blanket over his legs.
“Oh nothing. Except I have no face wash, and I don’t have a toothbrush, and I don’t have a comfortable pillow. Oh, and there are probably bugs crawling all over the place.”
He gave my shoulder a little punch. “Open your eyes, dudette. You’re literally in another dimension composed entirely of magic camping out with two of the dwarves from Snow White’s fairy tale and you have an enchanted sword that can remove Agnim’s curse with one swipe.”
I smiled. “Gawd, I missed you pal.”
He smiled back and lay down on his sleeping bag. “Yeah … I do think the ground could be a little softer. But overall, this should prove to be a pretty exciting adventure.”
“Provided we don’t die.”
“No,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t think it’s our time just yet.”
“I wish I shared your enthusiasm,” Sam murmured. He was sitting near the fire, his knees tucked up to his chest. He stared into the orange flames. Calculating. He was definitely not happy about being inside the forest, and I was getting the feeling maybe he was just a little scared of this place. It was different and alien and he didn’t like it.
“Come on, you guys!” Seth said. “Our party rocks. We’ve got a hero, a businessman, a dwarf with a temper, and a cool dude. We’re favored against any enemy.”
“There are too many variables,” Sam said quietly. He narrowed his eyes. “Too much we don’t know about Agnim’s intentions. I crossed paths with his Order of the Golden Dragon on more than one occasion and learned the hard way that he was not to be trifled with. He knew men’s lust for gold and wealth could corrupt them and he played them like pawns, more cleverly than I ever could.”
“Not a good businessman, though,” Flick grumbled. He was lying on top of his sleeping bag, staring up at the forest canopy. “Didn’t play fair.”
“What he means,” Sam said, “is that our run-ins with Agnim had a tendency to end with him using his magic. And us fleeing whatever city in which we’d set up business. During World War II, one of his secret enterprises undermined my brothers’ mining operation by driving down the cost of lead. I sniffed Agnim out immediately and confronted him.”
“Let me guess: he threw one of his terrifying balls of energy at you?” I asked.
Sam nodded. “I’d never felt such pain. I thought I would die right then and there. But my brothers saved me.”
“Aye,” said Flick. “Didn’t have a chance to fight back, though. I’d have liked to pop him one.”
“It was my first taste of mortality,” Sam said. “Though I’d had run-ins with heroes, I’d always been confident in their failure. But Agnim … he reminded me that although we were born of magic and lacking the fragility of humans, we were not invincible.”
“And so now we’re here,” I finished, “and you’re not quite convinced you’re invincible yet.”
“Oh, I know we can’t die,” Sam said. “I worry more about what Agnim can do with his magic in a place like this. Who helps him? How much of his magic can he wield here?” He looked at Seth. “It would be nice if you told us how exactly the two of you ended up where you ended up.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Last check, you were in trouble, which was why Sam and I took the express elevator here.”
Seth sat up and crossed his legs excitedly. “OK, so get this: I woke up, right? And I was in this town somewhere northeast of White Castle.”
“Castle White.”
“Whatever. And that freaking lion with the scar and a couple of his henchmen showed up and started rounding everyone up and throwing them in these cages. And Flick was there, looking ticked-off like he usually does, and he was all squeezed into his cage with, like, fifty other people. One of the lions said they were taking us to the little castle on the north end of town cause they had a fairy who was going to Corrupt all of us.”
“So the moment Scar arrived in this place, he was Corrupted,” I said. “That figures.”
“Yeah, but get this. OK, this is really me
ssed up. Flick, go ahead. Tell them what happened next.”
Flick blinked a few times. “What? Well, it turned out this Scar fellow’s wife and daughter were in the town. They were both beautiful and good, not Corrupted at all. They tried to reason with him all passionate-like, and for a moment, as I was watching from between the bars of that stinking cell, I swear I could see humanity in the lion’s eyes. But then—”
“He bit them!” Seth shouted. “Seriously, he bit both of them right there in the middle of the road! Sparks flew! And oh man, now we were in some deep doo-doo. Scar started rounding up all of the maidens. He separated them and took them and escorted them into the castle. So then the fairy arrives and she’s all gross-looking, like my aunt who smokes a lot, you remember her?”
“A little,” I admitted.
“Yeah, so picture her having a bad hair day wearing a ridiculous black dress that shows waaaaay too much cleavage. And so the first thing she does is she taps the lion’s daughter and wife on the head. And they start changing.”
“Into what?” Sam asked.
“Sphinxes,” Seth said. “Half-human, half-lion. Now everyone is pretty scared, except for Flick. Flick had totally picked the lock while all this was going on! And so he opens the door and everybody else in his cell goes running back toward the town. The lions followed and so did the fairy …”
“Leaving Flick behind,” Sam finished. He smiled. “You’re smarter than you look, brother.”
“Thank you,” the dwarf grumbled.
“We escaped.” Seth shook his head. “But no one else in the town did. Man, I feel sorry for those people. They get here, they’re finally free of the Corruption, and then boom! Back to being evil and creepy.”
“And no doubt under the control of Agnim,” Sam said. “And with Scar’s help, he’s only more dangerous.”
“Enough of that talk,” Flick said, sitting up. He grabbed his pickaxe and stood. “Too dreary, I say! These thoughts are worse at night and not worth entertaining. Sleep. I’ll take first watch and then I’ll wake the hero for the second watch.”
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 4 Page 17