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

by Cameron Jace

  “But why wouldn’t he marry?”

  “The Piper can’t love. The cycle has blackened his heart. He can’t give. He can’t create a child.”

  “So he wanted me to weave a son for him. I’m thankful I misheard,” I sighed. “Imagine the world with another Piper.”

  “Who said he will give up? He will get his son, sooner or later,” she said. “Maybe that’s what the universe is preparing you for. To stand up to him when his son arrives and weave worlds that will defy him.”

  “Maybe,” I said thoughtfully, and then waved goodbye to my mother.

  And so the centuries passed with my lonely self trapped in the tower. Things were slow and boring, but I wove beautiful things on the way. All until something happened that changed me from Elaine of Astolat to Lady Shallot. Something that helped me give birth to a girl who could weave like me. But instead of weaving life, she could weave something much more beautiful. She could weave dreams.

  And that my friend is a diary for another time.

  End of Diary

  MY NOTES

  Written by the Beast

  I am baffled at how everyone has an origin story. Frankly, I’d never thought of Lady Shallot’s, but what a story.

  It makes me wonder if some prequels tackle the inception of Sorrow – or even the world. Does Lady Shallot know about this?

  I’m only disappointed I didn’t get to know more about the Sun and the Moon, but I’m sure their turn will come, and that they’ll answer a lot of my questions.

  What I’m really curious about is the Piper’s need to have a son, and whether there is a good reason behind it. Even better, is it possible that he succeeded? Is the Piper’s son secretly living among us?

  I picked up the last prequel on this shelf and read its title. It’s an interesting title. I’m ready for the last prequel in this set. Something tells me it has a hell of a revelation.

  Grimm Prequel #24

  SPINDLE, SPINDLE LITTLE STAR

  as told by Grandmother Madly

  Dear reader,

  It would be a good idea to walk away from this diary now and let its pages dissolve into sand, leaving its secrets unveiled forever. The story you’re about to hear is going to break your heart, as it has broken mine and Jack’s, a million times before. Trust me child, walk away, don’t read any further. Some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved.

  Yet here you are. You haven’t left. I knew it. You just can’t walk away. Who can? We’re all addicted to stories, the more miserable the better. Funny how this would come from someone like me. Mother Goose herself.

  Telling you my own story is for another time and another place. You’ll probably hear about me from someone else. Right now, I want to tell you about Jack Madly.

  Remember how he wakes up screaming sometimes at night? That nightmare which has haunted him forever? That nightmare which he has never even told Marmalade about?

  I’m going to tell you about now. Read on your own risk…

  At almost fourteen years old, Jack had been living with me for some time. A year or so. Before this, he lived with his parents in the middle of a perpetual snow, in a town I wouldn’t want to remember the name of. Not because it scared me, not the town, oh no, but the people who lived there. In particular, Jack’s father.

  God help me not have his name touch my lips or stain my memories. That evil man.

  It would be a long, long story telling you what Jack’s father did to him, and others. Now, sitting here and thinking of Jack’s childhood before I met him, I realize he’d lived two nightmares at such a young age.

  The first, with his father. The second, with me.

  Don’t think I am evil. Far from it. I’ve loved Jack with all of my being. I’ve always treated him as my grandson. Or else why would I have picked him from that cave in the barren snow mountain, crying his heart out.

  The first time I’d tried to talk to him, he didn’t even move, it was as if I didn’t exist. He sat by the fire, hands cupped over his bents knees, sobbing.

  “J…” He sniffed. “J…”

  “Is that your name?” I knelt down beside him.

  “J…” Jack stuttered, watching me with his moist eyes.

  I was just an elderly country woman, wearing a bonnet the shape of a sunflower, and Persian shawl on my shoulders. I looked more like a peasant, and was known to have small geese following me wherever I went.

  “Oh,” I said. “Your name starts with a J?”

  Jack responded by stuttering the same letter on and on.

  My geese, as if sympathizing with him, surrounded him. One brushed its face against his feet.

  “G…geese?” Jack said, patting the one at his feet.

  I nodded. “They’re strong, just like you.”

  “I’m not strong. I’m afraid.”

  “You don’t have to be,” I said. “See those geese? They look weak and helpless, dumb sometimes,” I chuckled, teasing them. “But you know what? They fly as steady as any powerful bird in the sky. They migrate a lot, undertaking journeys to new destinations. Always curious about life.”

  “They do?”

  “Some journeys are hard and may take long, but they always get there. That’s why they can help people find the perseverance needed to go on with their quests,” I said. “In earlier times, shamans were aided by the ‘spirit geese’ on their journeys to the other worlds.”

  “Shamans? Other worlds?” Jack’s eyes opened wide, and I could see a fine curious young man behind them.

  “Even in ancient Egypt and ancient China the goose is considered a messenger between Heaven and the Earth.”

  Jack’s mouth hung open. I knew he couldn’t comprehend half of what I had told him, and I didn’t need him to. I wanted to take his mind off whatever bothered him. I always said this with children, telling them fantastic stories to take their minds off their worries.

  “Do you have a place you call home?” I asked, now that he stopped sobbing.

  “I don’t want to go home.” He lowered his head. “I fear my father.”

  I didn’t ask, and respected his wish. “Do you have a place to stay then?”

  “Only in this cave. I eat beans from a nearby tree. I am a good climber.”

  “But you can’t stay here forever,” I offered. “Come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “I have a small cottage in the forest.” I smiled. “You will get to eat and sleep, and play with my geese.”

  Jack’s reluctance took some time. I could tell he’d never left his house before. But he finally gripped my offered hand.

  “What do I call you?” he asked.

  “Grandmother Madly,” I said, as I had never been called Mother Goose until after an incident in the near future. “How about you? What is your name?”

  “Jack.”

  “Nice name, Jack. I guess that’s what you’d been trying to tell me earlier, repeating the J letter over and over.”

  “No.” His faced dimmed again. “I was reciting my sister’s name.”

  “Sister?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Her name is Jill.”

  Only weeks later did Jack tell me about Jill. They had both feared their cruel father after a terrible and shocking incident when intended to see them for a hefty price in the Goblin Market — not only for money but also to avenge their mother for cheating on him.

  That day, Jack had managed to escape, pulling away from the goblins and throwing cold snow into their crotches. He grabbed his sister’s hand and guided her toward a hill they used to climb for fun.

  Jack and Jill went up a hill.

  The hill led to the other side of the island they inhabited, toward a small town where they could’ve escaped forever. Except that Jack accidentally fell back and Jill tumbled after.

  Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.

  Instantly the goblins captured Jill again. But Jack instinctually, and without thinking, ran up again.

  If I can save m
yself, I can come back for her and save her. He’d told himself.

  Jack ran even further, torn between his freedom and saving his sister. All he could think about was he’d come back for her, maybe when he’d found help on the other side, which was the Kingdom of Sorrow, where I lived.

  So for many months, Jack, instead of appreciating his life with me, he hated me the most. Why? Because I wouldn’t let him go back to save his sister.

  I knew what kind of man her father was, and had no means of helping her. In truth, I believed Jill had been sold long ago and we were never to see her again.

  Then was the matter of not knowing how to find the uncharted island where they lived. It hadn’t even been known in Sorrow, as if it was a portal to another place in time. Saving Jill was simply impossible.

  And that’s where the poor boy’s nightmares began.

  Every night, he’d be sweating in this bed, waking up with a shuddering scream and saying, “J..”, over and over.

  We hadn’t moved to live in a tree by then. My cottage was small and his screams worried my geese, though I tried my best spells to help him forget her, but Jack just couldn’t.

  He was caught living in Sorrow without his sister, and it tore his heart out.

  One day, Jack couldn’t take anymore. We’d fought too long about Jill, and I confessed my inability to help him find his way back home. So Jack shouted and cursed like he’d never done and left the house. What happened next I only learned much later, but I’ll be happy to write about it now

  “Where’d you go?” I asked.

  “Anywhere far from you.”

  “But I love you, Jack.”

  “I hate you,” he said. “I will climb a tree in the middle of the forest and stay there forever.”

  “How can you stay in a tree forever?”

  “I don’t know but I will do it, so you’ll never find me again. I want to be alone!”

  And so Jack left…

  Jack spent his days and nights in that tree. He wasn’t joking about it. It was a certain tree in the forest that had attracted him in strange ways. Maybe because it had been rumored to have erupted out of the earth all of a sudden. Someone had planted a few beans and there it was, that mysterious tree.

  I didn’t know how Jack climbed up then, but later I realized the tree spiraled forever upward. So much it seemed like a road to the Heavens. Jack enjoyed it immensely. It helped him forget about Jill, me, and reinforced his idea of spending his life in a tree.

  One thing that worried him were the owners of the house nearby. The tree seemed to be part of a vast garden behind a small cottage in the forest. An isolated cottage that looked as if abandoned.

  But Jack didn’t give it much thought. He’d never seen the house’s occupants, if there were any. And he’d known so much about the tree that he knew where to hide if someone caught him.

  His first discovery was jumping from one tree to another using the vines dangling from high above. It wasn’t an easy task, but he mastered it after almost breaking his neck twice. When he fell on his back, the monkeys laughed at him and continued their own self amusing circus of vine jumping.

  But Jack was stubborn. No monkey was better than him. A few weeks in and he could jump as good as them, if not better. He was getting stronger as a boy.

  One day a monkey stole Jack’s food, snatched it from his hand while he was about to bite into it. An apple, one he’d found lost in the forest. Golden apples were his favorite.

  “Give it back, you thief!” Jack protested.

  The monkey smirk and said, “Catch me if you can.”

  Jack winced. “You can talk?”

  “No, I can’t,” the monkey cooed. “I’m only messing with you!”

  It took Jack a whole day of jumping to catch the monkey. His hands were weak from holding onto the ropes, and his vision blurred out of hunger, but he learned so much that day.

  He learned that he’d taken advantage of the food I, Grandmother Madly, had offered him. I did all the hunting, slicing and cooking, and he just ate. Now, to eat and survive, he had to fight for it.

  Jack located the monkey’s den in one of the trees and hid somewhere between the branches. The apple the monkey had stolen didn’t entice him anymore. He saw the monkey eat another brilliant fruit.

  It was yellow, and looked so delicious. He watched them peel the yellow layer off and bit into the juicy whites.

  The monkeys chewed. Jack drooled.

  What was that fruit, and why did they love it so much?

  “Ba-na-na!” the talking monkey who didn’t talk, told him.

  “Ba?” Jack grimaced.

  “Na!” the monkey helped.

  “Na?” Jack jumped. The fruit wasn’t only delicious but had an incredibly cool name.

  “Here is a Ba.” The monkey offered a piece to another companion monkey nearby. “I get the Na.” He spoiled himself with the second chunk of the banana. “And you, Jack, get the other Na.”

  “I want the Ba, not the Na!” Jack joked.

  “Don’t be greedy,” the monkey said. “The first rule of thievery is to steal what you need, not what you want, or you’d be a bad thief.”

  “I didn’t know there was a good thief.”

  “Of course there is.” The monkey drummed his chest. “Us.”

  And so the monkey showed Jack how they stole the bananas from the farmers in the market. It was another daunting task; stealing, hanging from the roof with their lanky arms. But Jack learned fast. He felt as if he were born to become a thief.

  A good one.

  Jack watched the monkeys bring back food to their children, enough food to survive, but not too much to spoil them.

  “Guard your oath of good thievery with your life,” the monkey said. “Or you’ll be tempted to become a bad thief.”

  “I will,” Jack thanked it. “Are you really a talking monkey?” He had to ask again.

  “No,” the monkey said. “I am a figment of the imagination of a lonely boy on a tree.”

  Whether that was true or not, Jack jumped back to his favorite tree. That night he ate what he needed, not what he wanted, not too much, and saved the rest for tomorrow.

  Lying on his back, hands behind his head, he watched the moon floating up in the sky. The moon had fascinated Jack ever since he’d set foot in the tree.

  Then it came. The thud. The loud hump that shook all trees and the earth around him. It wasn’t the first time Jack had heard it. What was it? An earthquake up in the trees?

  The thud rarely happened again.

  What occupied Jack’s mind was the immense possibilities of the world in the trees. Each tree was a country of its own. Some were occupied with squirrels, sometime insects, birds, and other animals. Some trees were abandoned and felt like a haunted house. Jack avoided those at all cost.

  Then one day, he came upon a tree full of pumpkins. Orange and juicy-looking pumpkins. They were big. Much bigger than the ones he’d seen before. And they were rather organized, each five were in a semi-circle.

  “Who brought them here?” Jack itched his temples and bit on a white rose he’d picked from one of the trees. He loved having it between his lips.

  “I didn’t know pumpkins grew on trees,” he said to himself. “Somebody must love pumpkins very much. But would he eat all of them?”

  Jack attempted to sit on one when he heard a faint shriek.

  “Who’s there!” he demanded.

  Nothing. The shriek was brief and only happened once.

  “Okay,” he told himself. “I must be imagining them, like the monkeys.”

  Then he sat again on the pumpkin.

  Another shriek.

  This one was longer, more of a moan.

  “I can’t be imagining this,” he said.

  Then an idea occurred to him. He began leaning towards the pumpkin with his buttocks again, and he could sense the shriek about to happen. What was that? Did it come from the pumpkin?

  “Are you screaming, pumpkin?”
Jack didn’t like he was talking to a pumpkin, but he just did it.

  “I don’t like to be sat upon,” the pumpkin said. “You will crush me.”

  Jack’s eyes widened. There was no point in responding quickly. He still could have been imagining a talking pumpkin.

  “Are you really talking to me?” he asked reluctantly.

  “Of course, I am,” the pumpkin said. It even shook a little. Jack’s winced back. “Go away. This is a pumpkin tree. You’re not a pumpkin.”

  “I sure am not,” Jack rolled his eyes. “But there can’t be a talking tree either.”

  Then the thud occurred in the distance again.

  Jack winced, balancing on one foot as the tree bent and the pumpkins rolled to the edges, none of them falling though. Those pumpkins have some great self-control not to fall like that.

  But then he saw what it was.

  The top of one of the pumpkins fell apart. Jack realized it had been cut in half but hadn’t noticed earlier. And it actually was a hollow pumpkin.

  Jack lowered his other foot and stood alert.

  Hair dangled out of the pumpkin and then a tiny figure of a girl rolled out. She was six years old, Jack thought. He watched her sigh then ruffle her hair, spewing out pumpkin seeds. Jack had to bend over to inspect the pumpkin. It was hollow from inside. The girl was hiding in it.

  “I didn’t know pumpkins were humans,” Jack leaned against the tree, smirking and biting on his white flower.

  “I am not a pumpkin you fool,” the girl lisped. He noticed she had a missing tooth. “I’m a child.”

  “Like I haven’t noticed,” Jack said. “Nice little home you have in there.”

  “Don’t make fun of me. I had to or I would be sold in the Goblin Market.”

  “The goblins have a market?”

  “How can you not know about it? They steal children and sell them to the highest buyer in there. It’s right next to the Swamp of Sorrow.”

  “Now I know why I haven’t seen it,” Jack said. “The swamp reeks of frogs. I hate frogs.”