The Sisters Grimm

by Menna Van Praag

  And even though she’s the enemy, Leo still feels a twitch of sorrow at Goldie’s ignorance. She’s like a firework never lit, a flower that never blooms, a baby that’s never born. He feels the desire to tell her, to teach her, to be the one to unlock her potential, the first to see the firework ignite, the flower bloom, the baby born. Despite himself, Leo wants to say, You’re a Grimm unparalleled, the most powerful I’ve ever seen. You could be phenomenal, invincible, if only you knew.

  Of course, he won’t.

  Such a thing would be stupid. Such a thing would be suicide.

  11:59 p.m.—Goldie

  I lie on the sofa, staring up at the cracked ceiling with its patches of damp, listening to Teddy’s snores drifting across the room. Soon he’s going to need more than I’ll be able to provide. As he gets older the expenses will grow. Three hundred and forty-five quid will seem like nothing. How much longer will we be able to share a single room? Soon he’ll want one of his own. He won’t ask, but he’ll need it all the same, especially when he starts doing teenage-boy-type things.

  I’m going to need a bigger, better plan. A heist. A big score. I start to ponder banks, and then I wonder how much Garrick keeps in the hotel safe.

  6th October

  Twenty-six days . . .

  7:08 a.m.—Goldie

  On my way to the staff room, I peek into the restaurant. There, eating a full English breakfast of the finest quality, is the French family. The mother pokes at the black pudding with distaste, but the father and son gobble it up. This is their last morning, their bags will be packed upstairs. I can’t explain how I know this. It’s an air they have—an air of preparation, expectation—as if their minds have left ahead of their bodies and they’re already halfway to France. Which means I must hustle.

  Ten minutes later I’m on the third floor, pushing open the door to room 38. And, sure enough, it has that empty, vacated feel before I even step inside. Their bags are lined up in a neat row against the king-sized bed: one large, one medium, one small. I plug in the hoover and pull out the cord. I don’t switch it on, because the noise would mask anyone returning to the room. Instead, I bite my feather duster between my teeth. Now, if I’m caught in the act of stealing, I can pretend I’m in the act of cleaning. It’s happened before and it’s always worked.

  I go for the rucksack next to the gilded mirror first, the sort of bag people keep with them while travelling, containing essentials such as passports, tickets, itineraries, and cash. Here’s the tricky part. If I move the bag into the bathroom, say, I get privacy to search it. But if anyone returns to the room and finds me, I have no defence, no story. I’m caught red-handed. But if I leave the bag where it is, then I’m in full view of the open door. And there’s no plausible excuse there. However, it’s quicker and I’ll be able to hear anyone approaching from the corridor.

  So I search the rucksack in the room, heart thumping, eyes flitting to and from the bag to the open door. I find the cash, a clutch of fifties and twenties, quickly. Over £1,000. I hold it, taking a potentially fatal pause to soak in the fantasy, then pocket six fifty-pound notes. Guilt and relief entwine as I cross the room to the suitcases. As a rule, I limit myself to one note per person/room. But this time I couldn’t help it, since I now need only another forty-five quid by Friday.

  Relief soon eclipses guilt—it’s funny how fast that fades, once the deed is done—as I reach the suitcases. Happily, these are away from the sightline of the door, though they’re harder to open, and if I’m caught rummaging through one of these, my fate will be the same. I set my feather duster down on the bed, seize the smallest suitcase, flip it onto the floor, and pull at the zip. I yank too hard and it sticks.

  I force myself to slow down—listening for the ping of the lift, for footsteps on the carpeted corridor—easing the zip along its path, watching the plastic teeth release as the mouth of the suitcase opens and the suppressed contents spring free.

  I start rummaging but can’t immediately see the damn jacket. I lift piles of clothes, fingers skirting toys. Then I hear the unmistakable ping. I have about thirty seconds, depending on the speed of the lift’s occupants, until I’m seen. I must close the suitcase. It’s too late. I’ve no time. I’ve failed.

  But I’m so close. My fingers sweep the suitcase again. Nothing. Wait. My thumb snags on a strip of silk. I tug. The linen jacket unfurls in a bloom of fabric on the floor, bringing with it several pairs of socks.

  I feel a shift in the air. I stuff the jacket and the socks into my apron, while kneeling on the suitcase, zipping it shut.

  “Que faites-vous?”

  I stand, flattening the bulge in my apron, righting the suitcase. I don’t know for certain what the French father is saying, but I can guess. I dip my head, assuming a deferential, innocent stance.

  “I’m sorry, s-sir. Your s-suitcase fell while I was cleaning.” I pause, biting my tongue and the urge to continue. It takes guts to give short answers to tricky questions, but lengthy explanations are a definite giveaway of guilt. I reclaim my feather duster. “Sh-shall I leave the room while you pack?”

  He hesitates, narrowed eyes flitting from me to his suitcase.

  “Non,” he says, with a flick of his wrist. “Nous partons maintenant.”

  I nod, resisting the sudden urge to curtsy. “V-very good, s-sir.” I walk to the mirror and begin dusting it with great vigour, until the French family has departed, taking (nearly) all their possessions with them, until room 38 is silent and empty again.

  Then I sit down on the bed and exhale.

  During my negligible lunch break, I hide the contraband in my staff locker, stuffing the three hundred quid into my bra. I’ll have to take extra efforts to avoid grubby Garrick today, or at least keep him away from my left breast.

  7:58 a.m.—Scarlet

  Since the scalp-maiming incident with “the dastardly Mr. Wolfe,” as Scarlet has come, unaffectionately, to know him, she finds herself distracted. Both by the fact that he wants to rip her life apart and by the fact that she may have the power to psychically cause harm. She’d reluctantly driven him to the hospital to be treated for the head wound she may or may not have inflicted, wishing she could have let him bleed to death on the floor instead. Except that it really wouldn’t do to have a death on the premises—bad for business—and she’d be the one to scrub all the blood from her floorboards afterwards. So she’d driven Wolfe to Addenbrooke’s A&E, breaking the speed limit, skipping several red lights, and ejected the capitalist pig unceremoniously onto the pavement and sped off, vowing to banish all further thoughts of him. So far, she’s failing rather spectacularly on that account.

  8:08 a.m.—Bea

  “What are you doing here?” Bea steps through the archway of Trinity College and onto the cobbled paving stones. The chubby bearded student whose name she can’t recall is sitting on the low stone wall enclosing the college’s front gardens. “Because this isn’t fate, it’s stalking.”

  The student stands. “No, no,” he says, looking mortified. “Well, yes, I see it might seem that way, but . . . I was hoping you might help me with my homework. The, um, finer points of Principia Mathematica are eluding me.”

  Bea hugs her books to her chest and scowls. “Your homework? What are you, twelve?”

  “You’re funny.” He grins. “That’s why I like you.”

  “You don’t like me,” Bea says, contempt curling her top lip. “You don’t even know me.” She starts walking.

  “You’re beautiful too—stunning.” He hurries after her. “But that’s by the by. Funny tops beauty every time.”

  Bea stops walking. “What do you want?”

  “I told you—”

  “No, not your cheesy pick-up lines,” Bea says. “I mean, what do you hope to gain with this routine—you’re hoping for a quick shag?”

  At this, he looks both startled and slightly horrified. He pulls nervously at his beard. “No, no . . . I didn’t imagine, not in my wildest—well, perhaps in my wildes
t—but not in this world. No, I just wanted to know you.”

  “Know me?” Bea narrows her eyes. “So you can try to—?”

  “No, no, no.” He holds up both hands, stepping back. “No, not at all. I—there’s something about you. I’m . . . drawn to you. But not—not in a creepy way. I only want to, um, spend a little time with you, if you’ll let me. I want to know you, even a tiny bit better, that’s all.”

  Bea regards him as if she couldn’t have imagined a more pathetic answer. She starts walking. “Well, I don’t want to know you,” she says, throwing the words behind her. “So please piss off.”

  Only when she’s sure he isn’t following does Bea relax. Her shoulders drop and her view drifts up to the timbered Tudor buildings lining Trinity Street and the congregations of pigeons gathered on window ledges atop the elevated gargoyles and sculptures of eminent historical figures—every one of them, from their foppish stone hats to their stockinged stone feet, male.

  For a moment, Bea imagines that she can hear the language of birds, that she need only listen closer to decipher their meaning: a bright twitter of delight, a low mournful caw, a twinkling flirtatious chirrup . . . But then tells herself to stop being so fanciful and hurries on.

  4:31 p.m.—Liyana

  “Married? She wants you to get married?” Kumiko slides to the edge of the bed. “To a man? That’s insane.”

  “Well . . .” Liyana says, feeling defensive though she’s thought the same thing herself many times. “After all, arranged marriage is typical in lots of cultures, isn’t it? In Ghana it’s not uncommon, at least it used to—”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Kumiko kicks her heels against the wood. “I wasn’t questioning the institution in general, just specifically, in . . .” She regards Liyana. “You did tell her about us, didn’t you?”

  Liyana, sitting on the floor, fiddles with the hem on Kumiko’s rug, starting to plait the thin strands of black wool.

  Kumiko narrows her eyes. “You didn’t.”

  Liyana doesn’t look up. “Of course I did. And I told her I’d work night shifts in Tesco rather than seduce some gullible old duffer into bequeathing me half his kingdom.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She said I wouldn’t last a week. She said she’d do the seducing herself, if she could. But . . .”

  Kumiko slides to the floor. “But what?”

  “Something about farts and tarts . . .” Liyana shrugs. “I don’t remember.”

  “Yes, you do,” Kumiko says, shifting closer, extending a leg and wrapping it half around Liyana’s back, so she’s almost sitting in Liyana’s lap.

  Liyana sighs. “She says a rich old fart doesn’t want a pretty old tart, he wants . . .”

  Kumiko raises an eyebrow so it disappears into a fringe of silky black hair. “You.”

  Liyana wraps her hands around Kumiko’s ankles. “I suppose. She was fairly drunk. Anyway, I told her I’d pick up the application to Tesco tomorrow.”

  Kumiko laces her fingers in Liyana’s. “I’m afraid I have to agree with the senile old tart on that. You won’t last a week.”

  “Hey,” Liyana protests, removing her hands, folding her arms across her chest. “What the—?”

  “Oh, Ana, I love you, but you can’t work at Tesco.”

  “Why not?”

  “Come on, have you ever done a day’s hard graft in your life?”

  “What? I trained to be an Olympic swimmer,” Liyana says. “It doesn’t get much harder than that, does it?”

  “Yes, but that sort of thing is exhilarating. This would be utterly tedious.” Kumiko leans forward, stopping an inch from Liyana’s mouth. “I’m afraid you’re only good for two things, my darling. The first is drawing, the second . . .”

  “Yes?”

  Kumiko fixes her eyes on Liyana’s lips.

  “You’re such a tease.” Liyana closes the gap to kiss her. “You—”

  The phone in Liyana’s pocket vibrates and pings. She scrambles to pull it out, capsizing them both and nearly knocking her head against the bed.

  “Shit, shit.” Liyana types her passcode, opens her email.

  There it is. The first and only unread message in her inbox. The answer. She can see the beginning of the first sentence but not how it ends. Liyana takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, whispers a prayer, then clicks on it.

  From: Dr. Martin Conway, admissions@ucl.co.uk

  To: Liyana Miriro Chiweshe, liyanamc333@gmail.com

  Dear Ms. Chiweshe,

  Thank you for your enquiry re the deferment of your place to study fine art at The Slade School of Art. We appreciate that your circumstances have suddenly and unexpectedly changed, but we regret to inform you that we are unable to . . .

  Liyana closes her eyes. The ever-rising wave of anxiety finally crashes down.

  11:59 p.m.—Leo

  The fact that Leo is still dreaming continues to startle him. But perhaps he’s been dreaming every night of his life and simply hasn’t remembered in the morning. Is that possible? Surely not, given that neither his body nor his mind is entirely human. But then, Leo thinks, There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio . . . So, perhaps.

  That he dreams of Goldie and always wakes the moment before they touch is a source of both frustration and relief. Frustration, naturally. Relief, because he knows what’d happen after the kiss and no longer wants to see that.

  In his short lifetime, Leo has murdered more women in Everwhere than he cares to remember. Some years more, some less, depending on the circumstances. In the months after Christopher’s death, he’d embarked on a killing spree. He prepared for every first-quarter moon as if training for the world heavyweight boxing championship. Every morning he meditated for hours, honing the precision and strength of his senses. Every evening he ran for miles, pausing now and then to annihilate random obstacles in his path—kicking down bins, bashing in bikes, chasing cows across fields. Every night he stalked the streets, skin itching with the urgent need to torture and maim, to inflict as many elaborately violent deaths as his imagination and skill would allow.

  That Leo could reach Everwhere only once every twenty-nine days or so (depending on the lunar cycle) was a source of distress that sharpened his grief into a white-hot rage that speared a great many Grimm girls’ hearts. In the year following his best friend’s death, Leo tore his way through the place of falling leaves, parting mists and fogs as he careened along stone paths, leaping over decaying trunks and turbulent rivers, in his furious determination to single-handedly transform Everwhere into a graveyard greater than any on Earth. And so exact his revenge.

  At the end of every night, no matter how many Leo had killed, it was never enough. And no matter how violent or vocal the deaths, the satisfaction of each quickly dissipated with the fog that rolled in to engulf the spirit of the dead girl. That the ever-increasing death toll didn’t decrease Leo’s grief in the slightest didn’t serve to soften his zeal or quell his bloodlust. Indeed, it only fuelled his rage and drove him on, harder and faster, to kill ever more with every month that passed.

  Over a decade ago

  Goldie

  I stared at my textbook; the numbers floated on the page and I tried to rein them in, put them in order. I didn’t try hard. I couldn’t make much sense of numbers at the best of times, unlike letters, which have always made sense to me. I love to read. I taught myself. Ma, who read nothing but the local rag, gave me a copy of The Guinness Book of World Records, the only book in the flat, and let me teach myself. She didn’t encourage reading beyond that, maybe thinking it might give me dangerous, adventurous ideas.

  But I couldn’t concentrate on fractions when I kept remembering that place, how it looked, how it felt. How I had felt. I’d been having the same dream for several nights. Every night I saw more, knew more. I started calling this other place Everwhere, since it was where I always wanted to be, instead of wherever I was. Frustratingly, I found that I couldn’t control my dreams of E
verwhere; I couldn’t work out how I got there or how to get back. So, every night before I fell asleep, I imagined every moonlit stone, every shifting shadow, every river, every tree. Inch by inch, breath by breath, I tried to conjure myself there by simple force of will. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

  I didn’t always find my sisters in Everwhere, not every time I went. But that was all right, since I sometimes preferred to be alone. I always felt their presence, though: their touch on the falling leaves, their voices on the winds and the river currents. I felt them while I was awake too, while I ate my lunch at the edge of the cafeteria, while I walked home from school, while I watched TV before Ma got home to interrogate me about my day while making chips and egg for tea. Indeed, my dream sisters started to feel so real that when I talked to them out loud I heard their answers in my head.

  Liyana

  “Stop squirming, Ana.” Her mother held a spatula in one hand while leaning on her daughter’s shoulders, pressing her down into the chair. “I’m nearly finished.”

  “It’s burning, Dadá,” Liyana protested. “Please stop, it hurts.”

  Isisa bent to her daughter’s ear. “Mummy,” she hissed. “Call me Mummy. How many times do I tell you?”

  Liyana said nothing, not daring to challenge her mummy, who was fluid and gentle only until pushed, when she had all the force of a gathering wave. Instead Liyana scowled into the bathroom mirror, at the bottle beside the sink. Dr. Miracle’s No-Lye Relaxer. No lie? It was nothing but lies, like her Judas mummy who claimed it would take only a minute and she wouldn’t feel a thing. It’d already taken thirty minutes and was burning her scalp as if Isisa had poured a bottle of acid over her head.