The Grimm Prequels Book 5: (Prequels 19-24)

by Cameron Jace

  For the first — and last time — in my so long life, I surprised myself. I found myself nodding and saying yes, recklessly, addictively, and irrationally. In the end I said, “What do you want me to weave?”

  “I will tell you once you cross over.”

  This sounded like one of his tricks and I didn’t trust him. My mother crossed over, like many others, and they ended up being stuck in this Gap. Why would I be different, even if the Piper himself promised me so much?

  “I won’t,” I said.

  The Piper said nothing so I elaborated. “I imagine your fleece is long enough that you can roll it over The Between.”

  “It is that long, but you know The Between is an illusion the universe created. It’s only water.”

  I wondered about the power of The Between’s magic. The Piper knew it was an illusion, yet he could not sail through it. What kind of magic was so strong it damaged one’s perceptions and decisions like that? But it wasn’t the right time to ask. The Piper still could not cross, thinking the icy ground separated him from my island. He probably thought he’d fall into thin cracks of ice if he attempted to walk over. Not to mention the rumors of the mermaids underneath, who wished to eat you alive once you fell beneath the cracks.

  It was mind bending. All of it was just magic and not real, yet no one dared to cross over, even the Piper himself.

  “We have to take our chances,” I told him. “Because I’m not crossing over.”

  Without answering back, the Piper rolled the fleece over, holding tight to its end.

  I watched it snake its way across the icy snow at a ferocious speed. The Between didn’t object or fight it one bit. Sooner than I’d expected, I gripped the fleece’s end in my hand.

  The tinge I felt worried me, but my addiction urged me to hold tight to it. For a moment, I almost felt I could read the Piper’s mind. A brief flash of him playing music in a town called Hamelin, rats and children following him up a hill. He was much younger then, secretly followed by a Magpie in the distance.

  But that was it. I couldn’t read more of his mind. I guess mind-reading wasn’t my gift. Weaving was.

  “You will have to let go on your end,” I told the Piper. “or I will not be able to weave whatever you need.”

  “Not before you assure me you can weave what I want,” he said in a weaker voice. Whatever he wanted me to weave meant a lot to him.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  The Between’s drone escalated all of a sudden, and I could hear the screams of mermaids trapped under the ice. Illusion or not, it felt incredibly real.

  “They’re warning you,” the Piper said.

  “I can sense that,” I said, blinded by my addiction. “But I don’t care. I will weave you whatever you want, and in return you will show me that trick to an abundance of red fleece.”

  “That’s our deal,” he called, as snowflakes rose half way through the air, like army of bees waiting to attack and stop the deal. A deal that later shaped worlds I didn’t know about then.

  “Hurry.” I hung tighter to the thread. “What do you want me to weave for you.”

  THE Piper’s answer struck like lightning in the sky. “Weave me a sun.”

  The Piper’s words were followed with an electrifying emotion running from the thread into my hands. I realized he’d let go from his side, and I saw The Between’s drone was escalating. A whirlwind of snowflakes, accompanied by the mermaid’s screams, shook the world around me.

  The feeling of the thread in my hand, ready to be woven overwhelmed me, so much that I didn’t hear the Piper’s faint shout over The Between. The drones were so loud I couldn’t hear him anymore.

  And my addiction, and vanity, shot to the roof of my soul. My mind was burning with the need to weave. Without my permission it began to imagine a sun.

  The Piper wanted a sun?

  I didn’t care. All that fascinated me was that I had never thought of it. Did I possess a gift so wondrous I could weave a sun? A moon? A whole world?

  It had never crossed my mind, for it was absurd to have a girl like me possess such capabilities. Why would the universe ever grant me this?

  The thread snaked around my hands, bending to my needs, begging for me to design with it. I closed my eyes, giving in to my brain’s depiction of a sun. And though the sun on my island rarely shone through the gloomy sky, I seemed to envision another sun perfectly. A red one. Large and fiery it could burn for years and years and never sink.

  The image was so strong I began to sweat, feeling its heat on my body. But how would I turn a fleece the size of a big apple into the sun?

  The Between’s rage and the whirling snow seemed to help in the most unexpected of ways. Its desire to stop me only intensified my gift. I suddenly felt stronger, larger than life itself. If I had wings, I’d be flying. The heat in my body was not from the sun I’d imagined in my head, but from the energy I never knew I had inside me.

  “What are you doing?” I think I heard the Piper shout.

  But I didn’t care. The addiction was so strong in me, and I honored it with all I could give. The red fleece began to expand in my hand. I could feel it doing so, and I opened my eyes.

  Twice its size.

  Thrice.

  Lightning struck in the sky and the earth shook and the mermaids wailed.

  Don’t do it. Don’t do it. You got it wrong!

  Whether those were the voices of The Piper or the mermaids, I had become unstoppable. I’d need so many lifetimes to explain the feeling to you. The feeling of being inhuman, bigger than everything else, the feeling of being a god.

  The fleece floated off of my hands, expanding like a balloon — I learned about balloons later in life, of course. I watched it rise higher and grow bigger and bigger, taking its space in the night sky. Light shone from it, so strongly I had to shield my eyes a little.

  I envied it. How I wished I was the sun itself. How I wished I was that powerful. That high, cut from a different cloth than the rest of the human race.

  But I reasoned it was my design, my creation. Like every foolish human, I made the mistake of thinking I controlled the world while still standing on my feet, unable to even flap my hands and fly like tiny birds. I’d witness that foolishness later in life, so many times. Men building rockets and reaching for the moon, thinking they’ve conquered the world. Only to realize how small and fragile we all are.

  It wasn’t long before the sky had been invaded by the sun. My sun. The island was lit from corner to corner, and suddenly what we’d all perceived as night had turned into day.

  I could literally knit anything in this world.

  My hands raised from my sides, feeling powerful as no human should ever feel, I let out a prolonged laugh, enjoying the sunshine on my face.

  Somewhere in the distance I heard the islanders arrive, astonished by my creation. I was invincible.

  But only for a few minutes, and then darkness came. Not the kind of visual darkness you’d expect. The world was still lit up, but it was The Between that shrunk, stride by stride.

  It was melting because of the sun I’d created.

  And suddenly the island it protected wasn’t only part of the endless seas before us.

  The Piper had fooled me. The barrier between him and us had been dissolved.

  Until this day, what followed is still vague and half-remembered by me. All I know is that I disrupted the balance in the universe by creating a sun that had never been there.

  “You need to balance it now!” The Piper was suddenly standing before me, which confused me even more.

  “You want me to balance it? I thought you tricked me into creating a sun that would dissolve The Between.”

  The ground shook again, but this time the sea raged behind the Piper, splashing enormous waves at us. The Piper seemed to be trying to tell me something again, but I failed to hear most of it.

  All I made out before falling back to the splashing wave was, “Moon!”

  And
he threw two other fleeces toward me. Magically I caught them while on the ground. I hugged them dearly while resisting the wave kicking me away. As for the Piper, I couldn’t believe he had been struggling with the sea like this.

  I floated away from him, wishing for a way back to shore, still clinging to the balls of thread and guarding them with my life.

  But there was no way out.

  All I found was a wooden log. I clung to it and climbed up, hardly breathing. The sea had turned into eruption of anger all around me. I must have answered the universe in the most sinful of ways by weaving a sun.

  “Moon!” The Piper’s words rang in my ears again.

  Why would he say that? Why, when he’d seemed not to have wanted me to weave a sun — minutes after he’d asked me to?

  In my confusion, realizing I could drown in any moment, I concluded that the only way to redeem myself was to weave a moon. That must have been what he had meant.

  The universe demands balance, doesn’t it?

  I started weaving, rocking upon the log and risking falling in at any moment. I didn’t need a pin. At this point I could weave telepathically, sewing the threads into whatever I chose.

  The hardest part wasn’t the weaving, but imagining a moon in my head with all the chaos around me.

  The red fleece shaped into my palm, and like the sun it began to double in size. But it was still red.

  I had to focus hard to turn it into a white ball expanding and floating up in the air before me. It only began working when I began freezing because of a sudden cold in my limbs. At first, it looked as if it were a snowball, fluffy and uneven at the edges, but soon it hardened and rose up to the limitless sky.

  Exhausted, I lay back on the log, watching my creations colliding in the sky above me. The sun’s fire and the moon’s eternal cold. Half of the world around me had turned dark to the moon’s demands, the rest was still day, honoring the red sun.

  “What now?” I screamed out at the universe, wherever, or whatever it was. “I made a mistake, and tried to balance it. What else should I do?”

  There was no answer from the universe. No man heard my complaint. Not even the Piper. Only one person answered me through her wailings across what had once been The Between. My mother.

  “He never asked you to weave a sun,” I could hear her say to me. “You misheard, my little one.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, unable to locate her. “I heard him tell me to weave a sun in exchange for the eternal supply of fleece.”

  “He didn’t, but it’s too late now. You need to help the universe create balance to what you have disrupted by weaving a sun.”

  “But I have created a moon,” I said. “Shouldn’t that create balance?”

  “A red sun against a white moon isn’t enough of a balance,” she said. “Balances don’t come in two. It’s not a farmer’s scale. It’s the balance of the universe’s soul.”

  “Don’t lecture me, Mother. Tell me what to do.” I desperately said gripping the log’s edge as it threatened to throw me off.

  “Weave a third thing with your fleece,” she advised.

  I gripped that last ball of thread I had and asked her, “What should I weave, Mother?”

  “Darkness, dear,” she said. “Balance comes in threes. Red, White, and Black.”

  In spite of the flawed and melancholic logic — which I learned much more about in the years to come — I didn’t know how the hell to weave darkness.

  I uttered my concerned to her, and she replied, “Weave sorrow, my little one.”

  “How can I imagine sorrow, mother?”

  “That’s what the Piper wanted to cross over for,” she said. “Only you can weave sorrow. It’s a gift that the universe chose you for.”

  “Why would the universe choose me to weave sorrow? Why me?”

  “You’ll understand, but not now, little one.”

  Tired of asking I closed my eyes and began weaving…

  It would take me a million diaries to explain what I had seen with my eyes closed. All you need to know is that in me I found the secret that later made the Brothers Grimm do what they’d done many years later.

  The sorrow I weaved turned into a black wave floating before me, higher and higher, all the way up to the sun and moon. It turned into an endless veil, covering both the sun and moon. I had basically woven a blackened sky that encompassed us all inside, without ever knowing what I’d done — at the time.

  Soon the sea’s rage subsided and the world calmed again. The sun gave in and sank into the depths of the sea, giving way to the night with my moon shining full and bright — later the sun and moon would exchange appearances every few hours, creating a cycle of night and day for the first time.

  I let out a long sigh and permitted myself to faint.

  A day or two later, I woke up in a tower in the middle of the sea, not the Camelot tower and not the island where I originated from. I sat on a chair, facing my mother’s mirror again. In its reflection I saw I had one red fleece behind me. When I turned to grab it, my mother’s voice echoed in the room.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t turn.”

  “Why, Mother?”

  “It’s part of the deal,” she said. “You’re bound to never leave this room, let alone turn away from the mirror.”

  “What are you talking about? I never asked for this in my deal with the Piper.”

  “But you asked for an endless supply of fleece to feed your addiction.”

  “So?” I squinted in the mirror. “I only see one ball of fleece behind me.”

  “It’s the one that will help your endless supply.”

  “How so?”

  “Reach for the mirror,” she said.

  “Reach for the mirror?”

  “Don’t worry, your hand will slice through it.

  The idea fascinated me, so I gave it a try. My hand slid through smoothly.

  “Now reach for the fleece you see in the mirror,” she said.

  I did, and to my surprise, I grabbed it and pulled it back.

  “See?” my mother said. “Here is your endless supply.” She pointed at the mirror still showing a fleece behind me.

  “Then what’s the ball of fleece in my hand?”

  “As long as you face the mirror and never turn, the one ball of fleece will always reflect in the mirror,” she explained. “It doesn’t matter how much you pull; the supply never ends.”

  “As long as I am a prisoner of the mirror.” I lowered my head in regret.

  “As long you’re prisoner to your addiction,” my mother insisted.

  “What happens if I turn and break the deal?”

  “Who knows?” she said. “But will you ever do it?”

  Her voice was punishment to my actions. She knew I could never give up on creating things. Who would?

  “So this is it?” I said. “The Piper fooled me?”

  “The Piper just showed you the way to your darkest desires. The desire in all of us humans; to pretend we’re gods.”

  Her words almost killed me. I had never even thought about it this way. I was just a lonely girl, enjoying her gifts. If the universe didn’t want me to mess things up that bad, why had it granted me such powers?

  “But I never really made the deal with the Piper,” I argued.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said he never asked me to weave a sun. You said I misheard.”

  “You did, little one. But mishearing doesn’t mean you didn’t make the deal. The universe works with intentions. Your intention was to give him whatever he wanted to have your endless supply of thread.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  “The universe isn’t fair. It only demands balance.”

  “I don’t understand what this means. Frankly, I don’t like this universe at all.”

  My mother took a longer moment to answer. “I believe it’s best not to react so soon,” she said. “I raised you to be a good girl. You just made a mi
stake. It happens to all of us, but it doesn’t mean we have to pay for the mistake forever.”

  “You’re contradicting yourself, Mother.” I pointed at the mirror. “I will pay for this forever.”

  “You don’t have to. No, if you use your gift of weaving for the good things in life. Weave flowers. Rivers. Birds. Babies. All the things that mean something to someone. Use your addiction to give, not to take. To birth not to kill. If I were you, I’d weave a whole world where good people could live in, maybe escape villains hunting them and wanting to harm them. There is always a way to do good, if you want to.”

  This time she’d stolen the words out of my mouth. Maybe this is what the universe had in store for me — though the story never ended there; my life in the tower was incredibly interesting.

  I watched my mother’s wraith walk away toward the wall, preparing to leave, but I had to stop her. One more question bothered me. “Mother?”

  “Yes?”

  “You said I misheard the Piper.”

  “You did?”

  “But I’m sure he wanted me to weave a sun.”

  “Trust me, you misheard.”

  “Then correct me and tell me what it was.”

  “What do you think is most precious thing a weaver can weave, Elaine?”

  I didn’t know the answer. Not right away. I was in too much shock to think straight.

  “A person,” she answered me. “Like you did with your cat in the Camelot castle. Remember when you almost wove a prince charming?”

  “I do. Are you telling me the Piper wanted me to wave a person? But I’m sure he said…”

  “Son,” my mother said. “He never wanted a sun shining in the sky. The Piper has no use for light. He loves darkness and sorrow.”

  “He wanted me to weave a son?” I repeated the words on my lips for no other reason but to remind myself of my stupidity. Why had I assumed he asked for a sun? Probably because of my ego, wanting to explore what I can do with my gift. My selfishness denied me the blessing of listening tentatively and carefully.

  “The Piper is weary from the cycles of repeated life he’s taken to find the Lost Seven,” my mother said. “It’s true that he is probably immortal, but it doesn’t mean he is not exhausted. He needs someone to pass the torch to.”