A Grimm Legacy

by Janna Jennings

  The truly impressive part of the house was the surrounding gardens. Sand and dune grass gradually gave way to cultivated lawn with a cobblestone path. Ribbed palms, birches, oaks, and dripping willows accented the forest of flowers in beds of all shapes and sizes. He couldn't name most of the plants, but some he was sure weren't supposed to grow this close to the ocean.

  The path led him under one of the numerous trees and a glint above his head caught his eye. He thought a light hung from the branch, but, twisting his head, he saw an apple with a shiny gold finish dangling from the tree. Who would hang such on odd decoration out here? His reach was intercepted by Cob clasping his wrist.

  "Do not touch, Mr. Peterson,” he said, before resuming his trek to the house and leaving Dylan to squint at the apple.

  The feeling of unease in his stomach doubled when he noticed the apple was growing out of the tree. He peered at the normal-looking trunk and saw flecks the same color of the apple there. Backing away, he hurried after Cob.

  Slipping into the shade of the covered porch which wrapped around the back of the house, Dylan’s skin sighed in relief.

  Cob approached a small bird feeder in the corner of the porch and addressed the bluebird preening there. "Can you inform Mr. Jackson that Mr. Peterson has arrived?"

  The bluebird chirped a short note and flew off.

  Dylan blinked. On the scale of weirdness for the day, this was par for the course.

  "Have a seat, and I'll fetch refreshments. We are waiting on the others to join us, and then your questions will be answered." Cob gestured to a collection of overstuffed wicker furniture scattered in the shadows and whisked through an open arch and into the house.

  Dylan stared at the furniture, half expecting it to get up and dance. He turned a suspicious eye to the golden apple tree, and then at an innocent-looking finch that took the bluebird's place at the feeder.

  “Please don’t start talking to me,” Dylan addressed the bird in a hushed whisper. The finch preened a wing in an unconcerned way and took a short hop in Dylan’s direction. He flinched as the bird flew away, trilling as it went. Dylan swore the bird was laughing as it disappeared from view.

  Chapter 6

  "Were you…talking to the—to the bird?"

  Andi tipped backward in surprise and landed in an ungraceful sprawl. She froze, arms bracing her from behind, cloak tangled beneath her body. One shoe had fallen completely off and she was breathing in short gasps. She feared if she moved she might relocate again. Feeling like a mouse tracked by an owl, she crouched and took in her surroundings.

  She was sitting on a damp carpet of needles and dirt. Pines scraped the sky and filtered the sun around her. A rotting log with deformed limbs lay close behind her, filling the area with a loamy smell. She could see one bird in the gloom and heard several more chirping nearby. An ant waved its antenna at her from her knee. The air held a trace of the same briskness of summer’s end that was happening back home.

  A muffled thud and a grunt sped up heart rate all over again. Pulling herself to her feet, she kicked off her lone shoe, located the other one, and clutched them to her chest protectively.

  An abnormal fear of being chased while wearing impractical shoes plagued Andi. The irrational terror stemmed from a horror movie she had snuck downstairs and watched from behind the couch at the age of five. The girl in the movie was caught and cut to pieces by a masked man with a chainsaw. Five-year-old Andi was convinced it was the fault of the high heels the girl tried to run in. At sixteen, she hadn’t quite been able to shake that reasoning.

  Straightening her cloak around her shoulders, Andi braced one hand on the rotten log, stepped over, and headed toward the thump.

  The dead needles and pinecones poked her tender soles and she pulled herself along from trunk to trunk. The tree trunks were riddled with ridges and holes, forming a jigsaw pattern. The closest branch seemed miles away, giving the entire forest the impression of something ancient.

  She ducked under two trees that had fallen against each other and formed an X, probably sometime before she was born. Out of the gloom, a boulder emerged directly in front of her. The steady rhythm of water grew, along with a sucking, slapping sound Andi couldn’t identify. It was close now, and came from the same direction as the earlier thud, just on the other side of the rock. Going over the boulder was out of the question and to both left and right, the forest pressed tight against the rock, like it encroached on its space.

  Choosing to go left, she squirmed through the brush. Her shoes and cape hampered her progress but she wasn't leaving them behind. She was forced to shimmy, climb, jump, and even crawl at one point, which left dirt stains on her knees, a scraped elbow, and she was sure pine needles threaded through her hair. Once she broke free of the underbrush, she found the source of the water and the squelching.

  Water dripped steadily from the rock and formed a pool at its base. It had, at one time, been a small pond, though most of it had dried, leaving a very large mud hole with a small puddle in the center. Frozen a few feet from the edge of the mire, a girl about Andi’s age watched her with wide eyes.

  She was beautiful and exotic, with black hair pinned up in the back, olive skin, and far set dark eyes under heavy brows. She was dressed in cutoff jeans and a black tank top, showing arm muscles far more defined than her own. From the chest down, the girl was covered in thick black mud. It stuck to her frame in great clumps, making her lumpy and half-formed. A smear of it accented her forehead.

  The girl broke eye contact and instead turned her focus to the edge of the muck, popping a bare foot free of the ooze. She staggered slightly on her feet and squished forward a step. Andi felt a flash of gratitude that whatever force brought her here had deposited her outside the mud hole.

  Two more staggers and the girl was almost there. Moving along the edge of the mud to intercept her, Andi leaned over as far as she could and stuck out her free hand. The girl looked at her own globby hand, met Andi's gray eyes, and grabbed onto her. Heaving the girl free, she dropped to the ground at the edge of the pit and took in the state of her body with dismay. Andi wiped her dirty hand on a nearby rock, hugged her shoes to her chest, and crouched on her heels. The girl attempted to scoop muck off with her hands but gave up after smearing it further.

  "Thanks," she said, holding her arms awkwardly to her side.

  "Didn't do much." Andi bunched her shoulders. She would have been freezing covered in that damp filth. "But, what—”

  "Was I doing in that mud bath?" She glanced behind her. "I don't know. I know it sounds crazy, but I was just weeding the garden, and now I'm here." She peered around the woods as if she was waiting to see if it would shimmer and change into something else.

  Her answer didn’t surprise Andi. "Me too. Not the weeding, just the vanishing. I was standing in my kitchen."

  “In Napa?” the girl asked.

  “No, in Utah. Is that where you were?”

  “Yeah.” The girl leveraged herself to her feet, her arms still spread awkwardly away from her body. "I don't suppose you know where we are?"

  Andi shook her head. "No idea."

  "Then pick a direction. It won't do us any good to stand around here." She waved a muddy arm.

  Andi squinted into the dark woods. She headed off, going the opposite way she had come from. It was as good a direction as any.

  “It's Andi, by the way,” she grinned over her shoulder. “We should probably know what names to yell when one of us gets attacked by a bear."

  "Quinn," the girl returned giving a halfhearted wave of her filthy hand and a tired smile. "And I can run pretty fast, so for your sake, I hope we don't run into any bears.”

  Making her way between the trees with Quinn, Andi tried to keep the sun at her left shoulder. She remembered reading somewhere that was how you avoided walking in circles.

  It took several minutes for her to hear the voice. At first it sounded like the constant chatter of a chickadee dogging their footsteps, which Andi wa
s accustomed to and Quinn hadn't seemed to notice. When she stopped and concentrated, though, the high-pitched whistle and staccato laugh seemed to have syllables in them, even words.

  That couldn’t be possible.

  A long forgotten memory emerged. The shock on her mother's face when she found Andi portioning out her lunch in the backyard to a row of birds sitting like stones on the fence. Robins, blackbirds, sparrows, and finches would open their beaks at her two-year-old command and Andi would pass them breadcrumbs one by one down the row.

  High on a branch, the bird hopped in place like something was urgent. It flew to the path in front of her and repeated its song over and over.

  "Help?” Andi whispered. She bent down and stared intently at the bird. The little chickadee doubled its bouncing and flew straight at her, landing at her feet to repeat the song again.

  "Help, help, help. Up, up, here?" Andi repeated, uncertain.

  The tiny bird gave one short, shrill whistle and flew several yards to a tree. It trilled again. Andi turned to find Quinn a frozen mud statue with her eyes wide and mouth slightly agape. Andi felt she’d been trying to get her attention for several minutes and finally just stood speechless to watch.

  "Were you…talking to the—to the bird?" Quinn shoved the last word out and it didn’t really sound like much of a question.

  "Possibly." Andi wasn't as weirded out as she should have been. Was that a good thing? All she knew was that she felt a burning curiosity and vague satisfaction. "Feel like a detour? Especially since we didn't know where we’re headed to begin with?"

  Quinn raised a heavy eyebrow and dry swallowed several times. "What did it say?"

  Andi got the distinct impression Quinn was just playing along. That was okay, Andi hardly believed it herself.

  "Someone needs help, I think,” Andi said, the bird urgently hopping up ahead.

  Quinn nodded at Andi, and kept nodding, as if trying to convince herself of something. "Lead the way."

  They set off chasing down the bird, only to have it flutter almost out of sight to the next tree.

  Chapter 7

  “We can't leave him up there and we don't exactly have phones to call for help.”

  Quinn noticed the silence of their guide only when Andi grabbed her arm and forced her to a halt.

  Creaking and groaning floated down from the trees. Normally, Quinn would attribute it to the wind shoving at the tops of the pines, but the woods were unnaturally calm. Pacing deliberately in the direction of the sound, a flash of red caught her eye, showing unnaturally bright against the dark greens and browns of the trees. It was some kind of cloth caught on a tree branch, stopping about four feet above their heads.

  "What is it?" Andi tipped her head back as she circled the tree, trying not to fall over anything.

  "It’s the material tents are made of, but the color isn't right and it's way too big,” Quinn said, adopting Andi’s posture.

  Another moan and scrape combination hit Quinn, followed by a muffled curse. Catching Andi’s eye, she continued toward the sound. Following it up into the trees, Andi gasped and Quinn shook her head beside her.

  "This is absurd. How many more people are we going to find in these woods?" Quinn huffed.

  Maybe she really could talk to birds.

  What was left of a balloon basket was lodged precariously high between two pines. The remaining corner of the basket created a hammock where a boy clutched to the shambles of the wicker, trying not to move.

  "Hey!” Andi cupped her hands and yelled. "You all right?"

  "Not so much," drifted down a tight male voice. From Quinn’s angle, she could only make out the top of his head and a heavy boot hanging from the edge of the torn basket.

  "What are we going to do? We can't leave him up there, and we don't exactly have phones to call for help,” Andi said.

  Gingerly reaching a filthy hand into her back pocket, Quinn lifted her phone out between two fingers. Quinn didn’t even bother flipping open the ruined phone, watching as muddy water dripped slowly from it. She lobbed it into the bushes and startled a squirrel that bolted up a tree and scolded her from a safe distance.

  “I’m pretty sure mine’s sitting on my desk at home,” Andi apologized.

  Squinting up at the basket, Quinn studied it intently. They were just going to have to get him down themselves. She called up, "Is there any rope?"

  "No." The basket shifted in its perch, crumbling wicker down on her head. "It fell out when the envelope tore free of the uprights,” he called, his voice stretching out in some kind of southern accent.

  She waited a second for a further explanation. When none came, Quinn raised an eyebrow at Andi and she shrugged in response. What was he was talking about?

  “What?” Quinn called up.

  They heard a faint sigh and an overly patient drawl drifted down, “When the balloon ripped away from the basket.”

  “Why didn’t he just say that?” Andi grumbled, too low for him to hear.

  "We'll be back!” Quinn called up to the boy. She ran back to where they had seen what was now obviously the hot air balloon caught in the trees.

  Andi set her shoes carefully at the base of the tree and scrambled after her. "Don't move," she called.

  When Quinn reached the balloon, she quickly scanned the ground. Andi joined her and clarified. "We're looking for rope, right?"

  "Yeah, maybe in some kind of canvas bag."

  "What if it’s not on the ground?" Andi considered the depressing banner in the trees. "What if it's up there?"

  Pausing in her search, Quinn’s worried eyes found Andi’s. "Let's hope it's not."

  Quinn passed over the same bit of ground for the third time, circling the tree in wider and wider rings with Andi doing the same thing nearby, when she heard her call out, "No rope, but I did find this." Andi held out a wooden toggle with a piece of basket still attached.

  Quinn stopped, sighed, and tried to run her hand through her hair. When she found it still bound, she pulled it free of its braid and finished the gesture, realizing too late her hands were still filthy. She focused on the toggle in Andi's hand.

  "Where did you pick it up?" Quinn asked.

  "That way," Andi said, pointing several hundred yards away from the balloon.

  "Show me."

  Following her to the spot, Quinn turned, looked at the tree draped with the balloon, and then straight ahead again. "Stay to my right about 20 yards and try to keep in a straight line. Yell if you find anything."

  With her head ducked, she scanned the ground as fast as she could without the risk of missing something. She spied something on top of a low shrub. Hope bubbled up in her. It was a dull red canvas bag about the size of a small backpack. She flopped it onto the ground, it was heavier than she expected.

  "Andi!" she called, excited. Struggling to open the cinched top, she wiggled her fingers into the small hole in the top and spread them, forcing the neck open. Neatly coiled thick, nylon cord lay inside and she let out sigh of relief as Andi looked over her shoulder. "We have to hurry,” Quinn said.

  Clutching the bag to her chest, Quinn jogged with Andi back to the crash site. She assumed they weren't too late—she would have heard the basket fall—but she didn’t know what kind of time she had left. Andi gasped for air, but Quinn was only slightly out of breath when they skidded to a stop at the base of the tree.

  "We're here. We're coming," Andi called up.

  Dumping the bag on the ground, Quinn shouted at Andi, "Cloak off."

  Andi quickly undid the clasp and threw it on top of her shoes as Quinn practically tackled her with the end of the cord. "You're going to belay me. Hold still and don't let me fall."

  Quinn wound the rope around Andi’s waist and through her legs. When she tried to help and made Quinn fumble the rope twice, Andi decided to just stand still with her arms out of the way.

  "Why am I the belayer?" Andi asked.

  Almost smiling at her slightly petulant tone, Quinn paused
long enough to ask, "Do you know how to climb?"

  Andi, realizing her weight was not the issue, shook her head.

  "Then you're the belayer."

  Checking the final knot at Andi's waist, Quinn yanked the shorter girl forward several inches. Quinn tossed her an elastic and pulled another out of her pocket. "Tie your hair back."

  She grabbed the cord now tied to Andi and heaved it in the direction of the lowest branch of the tree, a good fifteen feet off the ground. It bounced off the side of the tree and fell back toward her. Quinn quickly wound it up a second time and, with a grunt, tossed again. This time, the rope sailed over the branch before tumbling back down.

  Placing both of Andi's hands on the rope now stretching skyward from her waist, Quinn instructed, "Lean into my weight.” She hoped she wasn’t making a monumental mistake trusting herself to someone who’d probably never belayed a climber before and couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. She didn’t feel comfortable climbing with an inexperienced belayer, but what choice did she have?

  Hands on the rope and bare feet on the trunk, she hauled herself hand over hand, inching up the tree. Quinn felt her line give and she slid down the tree a foot before Andi scrambled backward and figured out how to keep them balanced. Quinn looked down and saw Andi staring back intently, her knuckles white and her eyes wide.

  "You're doing fine,” Quinn called.

  Andi being inexperienced and terrified wasn’t a good combination. She tried to concentrate on the climb. Her mind still tumbled with everything that happened over the last hour, but she filed it away for later.

  The boy in the basket was silent the entire time.

  Those first few feet felt like the longest Quinn had ever climbed. When the lowest tree branch was in arm’s length, she curled her fingers over it. She scrabbled with her feet a few times before she hooked one arm over, and then the other, creating deep gouges in her skin in the process. Pausing a moment to catch her breath, Quinn kicked and leveraged herself up, her whole body suspended fifteen feet above the ground.