“If you have two daughters, perhaps you can call one of them Ruby.”
This mention of her mother ignites a guttering flame in Scarlet’s heart. She snuffs out the flame. “I’m not a little girl anymore, Grandma.”
Esme leans forward to cup Scarlet’s chin in her palm and look her granddaughter straight in the eye.
“Oh, Scarlet,” she says. “Sometimes you say the silliest things.”
And all at once Scarlet knows that no matter how much it makes sense, she cannot sell the café.
11:59 p.m.—Goldie
“I don’t know how you function,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“You never seem to sleep.”
He shrugs. “I sleep more than I used to.”
I press my face into his chest. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re entirely human.”
“I’m not.”
I smile. “Neither am I.”
Leo kisses my forehead. “I know, it’s one of the things I love about you most of all.”
For a moment, I’m not sure I heard right. But then I’m sure I did, and I sit up so fast I almost fall back and hit my head on the headboard.
Leo smiles. “What?”
“I thought—did you just say what I think you said?”
Leo laughs, as if the declaration is as much of a surprise to him as it is to me. “Yes,” he says, still smiling. “I believe I did.”
A little less than a decade ago
Everwhere
This time it feels different. This time you’re scared.
You hesitate. You consider turning back. But you’ve waited so long that curiosity overcomes fear. Just enough to push you on, from one world and into another.
You walk the stone path, tentative at first, then faster as you start to forget the fear. What is there to fear, after all? Everything is exactly as you remember it: the misty bonfire air, the stillness, the shadows, the trees casting down a confetti of bright white leaves at your feet.
As you go deeper into the woods, falling leaves settling on your shoulders, the kinks of crooked branches at your fingertips, you find you’re no longer cold, no longer concerned about whatever it is you might have been worried about before. You hope to find that glade again, you hope to feel as you felt, you hope to hold on to that feeling longer this time.
You hear a noise behind you—the crack of a twig? the call of a bird? the scuff of a shoe on stone?—but when you turn there’s nothing to see. Your eyes have adjusted to the moonlight now and you watch the shadows as you pass, as you walk deeper and deeper into this place.
When you hear another sound, you stop. Leaves rustling. Someone is following you. You wait. And wait. But no one comes.
There it is again.
You hold your breath. But it’s not rustling, it’s whispering. Soft voices, low. You listen. The voices are not human. How do you know this? You’re not sure, but it’s as clear to you as your own name. Your name. The voices are saying your name. It’s a hook in your mouth, pulling you on. You stumble forward, towards the voices, towards the shadows. You’re a fish snagged on a line being slowly reeled in. Then the hook begins to twist. It tears into your cheek as the words darken, taunting you, mocking, saying things you never wanted to hear aloud, never wanted to believe to be true. Fear and despair surge in you, coursing through your blood, clogging your heart. You clutch your chest as it starts to constrict. You gulp, but the air is mustard gas. Your breath comes in gasps, until it doesn’t come at all. And you are falling through the mists and fog to the ground.
Goldie
My baby brother was born yesterday. My stepfather took me to the hospital with him that same afternoon, but I wasn’t excited. Truth be told, I didn’t even want to go. I would’ve made an excuse, if I’d been able to think of one.
When Ma offered to let me hold him, I shook my head. I’d never seen her so happy, so calm, so content, and I didn’t want to ruin it; I wanted to make it last as long as I possibly could. Only when she pressed, I relented. She placed him so carefully, so gently, into my arms.
“Watch his head,” my ma and stepfather said, in unison.
“Yes,” I said. “I know.” Though I didn’t.
I peered down at him. He didn’t look up or open his eyes. He had a puff of dandelion hair so light I thought it might blow away if I sneezed. I held my breath.
“He’s sleeping,” Ma said. “He sleeps a lot.”
“How long will they keep you in?” my stepfather asked, already with an edge to his voice.
“Five days at least,” she said.
My heart sank.
“Shit,” my stepfather said.
“Shush,” Ma said, since she never liked him swearing around me.
They started to bicker, and I tuned them out, nudging the baby in the hopes that he’d cry and provide a distraction. And then he opened his eyes. He didn’t look at me; he stared unblinking into the space between us, at something I couldn’t see. His eyes were tiny and round and bright, bright blue. And I discovered that I’d been wrong. I didn’t love my juniper tree more than anything else in the world. I loved my brother.
Liyana
Liyana was eight years old when she discovered she was a pluviophile. She learned the word during art class, while drawing a picture of her favourite sort of day: tucked into the sofa under a woollen blanket while the rain poured down outside, soaking the windows.
“That’s your favourite day?” Mr. Nash asked.
Liyana gave a half shrug, half nod.
“You don’t prefer the sunshine?” He cast a hand towards her classmates, all of whom had drawn pictures featuring a bright yellow sun, regardless of subject.
“No,” Liyana mumbled, anxious at incurring his disapproval but reluctant to lie. “I prefer the rain.”
She wanted to tell him that her name, in Zulu, meant “it’s raining” but didn’t want to bring attention to the fact that she wasn’t called Stella or Susie or Sarah, that she—her name, her colour, her origins—was different from the majority of her classmates.
Liyana was surprised when Mr. Nash smiled and winked. “Then you’re a pluviophile,” he said. “We’ve got to stick together, there aren’t too many of us about.”
Leaning over her, he wrote in his tiny, neat teacher-script at the top of her page: pluviophile (n.): a lover of rain, someone who finds joy and peace of mind during rainy days.
Liyana read the words, then returned to her drawing, feigning to have lost interest. She didn’t tell him that she also liked to take long walks in the rain without a coat, until her clothes were soaked and her skin slick. This, she imagined, was not something normal people did. She didn’t tell him that on returning home she didn’t dry herself off, didn’t take a hot bath. Instead, she sat in the kitchen and dripped onto the tile floor, enjoying the evaporation of every drop. She also didn’t mention that she’d taught herself to hold her breath underwater for twenty-four minutes and thirty-one seconds, beating the current world record holder by two minutes and nine seconds.
Liyana had found that such things prompted people to ask questions, to start probing into emotions that ought to remain untouched. Liyana liked Mr. Nash well enough and, upon discovering that they were both pluviophiles, wanted to tell him her secrets, since it was possible that he might share these traits and feats too—making them more similar than different. However, he was an adult and, worse still, a teacher. And adults, Liyana knew, were not to be trusted with secrets.
She’d learned that from Bea, the importance of concealing certain information from parents and other authorities. Sometimes, it seemed, it was worse to tell the truth than to lie. Especially when it came to Everwhere.
“They won’t understand,” Bea said. “And they won’t believe you, then you’ll just get into trouble. If they’ve never been, if they can’t get here, if they’ve got no Grimm blood at all, then they’ll think you’re mad and send you to a shrink.”
Liyana, who didn’t have Mr. Nash to expl
ain this last word, shuddered at the thought of being shrunk like Alice upon drinking the “drink me” bottle. She’d never be able to soak up the rain after that, since she might drown in a single drop.
“They sent my mamá to the loony bin,” Bea had said darkly. “For three months, until she told them what they wanted to hear, what they already believed was true.”
Bea’s mother, it seemed, was the only exception to the rule of untrustworthy adults. Liyana’s mother, however, being a mere mortal, a boring human from blood to bones, had to remain unenlightened. Liyana didn’t want to lie, but she didn’t want to be locked in a bin either. The choice then, when it came, proved a fairly easy one to make.
Bea
Bea had no such compunction about lying to her own mamá nor, indeed, any fears of being locked in a bin. She knew she would escape easily enough. She would succeed where her mamá had failed. While Cleo foolishly allowed herself to be contained by institutions like the dreaded Saint Dymphna’s, Bea would simply flee to Everwhere and fly away.
Lately, Bea had been spending much of her time watching birds take flight. She wanted to freeze-frame them, to study every movement, every moment, every feather. She was most attracted to ravens. Blackbirds too, but ravens more. She loved ravens for their size, their stature, the high battle cry of their call. Bea wanted to announce herself thus: swoop into rooms, arms splayed, chest forward, trumpeting her name with a throaty howl. Instead of stepping in softly with a shy smile.
Lately, Bea was finding herself angry. Why was it that in one place she could be so strong, so brave—could soar into the skies and scream up into the heavens—while in the other she was expected (by everyone but her mamá) to be sweet and small, to look pretty and act likewise?
Bea didn’t give a damn for prettiness now. She used to wear dresses with bows and frills, used to let her abuela, aunts, foster mothers lace her long brown hair into plaits and tie them with ribbons. No longer. Now she wanted to shred every ribbon unfortunate enough to curl across her path, wanted to rip holes in every sequinned dress, wanted to wear only black and pretend to be a raven. Lately, Bea had found herself wondering if it was possible to go to Everwhere one night and never return to Earth.
Scarlet
“You know what burns well?” Bea said to Scarlet, looking pointedly at the falling leaves.
Scarlet frowned. “What?”
Bea smiled. “You’ve got no secrets from me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Bea reached up to catch a falling leaf between finger and thumb. She twirled it slowly, this way and that. “Oh, I think you do.”
“What’s she talking about?” Liyana asked.
Scarlet was silent, but Bea’s smile widened.
“Our sister likes to burn things,” she said. “Don’t you, sis?”
Scarlet gave a slight shrug, as if this particular piece of information was of no importance at all, as if Bea might have remarked on the colour of her hair.
“It’s too wet here,” Liyana said. “A fire wouldn’t catch light.”
Bea slipped from the rock she was sitting on. “Oh, I don’t think a little thing like water could stop our Scarlet, do you?”
Liyana seemed slightly perturbed by this comment, though she also seemed to not entirely understand why.
“Scarlet could set this whole place alight,” Bea said, “if she wanted to.”
I glanced at Scarlet to see a flicker of a smile—of gratitude and pride—and felt proud of her too.
“But why?” Liyana protested. “Why would she want to do that?”
Bea laughed. “Oh, keep your knickers on. Not even our Scarlet is so supreme. Anyway, no one can destroy this place. Not even him.”
I glanced at each of my sisters in turn, wondering which one of them would be first to ask her who.
Leo
On nights when the sky was clear, when the clouds drifted to the edges of the Earth and the moon was bright, Leo curled onto the cold stone ledge of his dormitory window and gazed, unblinking, at the stars. As Christopher’s snores shifted the air, Leo reached up to press his palm to the glass, as if trying to reach into the sky and set himself among the stars. On these nights Leo felt drawn to them more strongly than anything he’d ever felt before. He couldn’t understand it, though he tried. But stranger than his attraction to the night sky was his sense that this attraction was reciprocated, that the stars longed for him as deeply as he longed for the stars.
17th October
Fifteen days . . .
3:33 a.m.—Goldie
A week into my dreams something starts to change. The scenery is still the same: the white willow trees, the white birds, the thousands of white roses . . . And though I can’t see him, I know Leo is there too.
Tonight, I feel more deeply connected to this place than before. As if the veins of the roses flow with my blood, as if the birds are lifted by my breath, as if the life of this place is powered by my heartbeat. I feel that if I flex my fingers the branches of the trees will shift in response, if I step through the grass the roses will pull up their roots and follow me, if I draw figures of eight in the air the birds’ flight will follow the pattern of my hands . . .
The feeling rises until my fingers start to fidget at my sides. Then, all at once, I have that power surging through me again, as if I’ve been struck by lightning and am conducting ten thousand volts of electricity. I can command armies. I can topple nations. I can . . .
I pick a willow tree and focus on the cascading leaves of a single hanging branch. I stretch out my hand, fingers long and flat. Imagining that my longest finger is the branch, I twitch it.
I watch and wait. But the branch doesn’t shift. The breeze has fallen and now even the leaves are still. I draw up a deep breath and try again.
Nothing.
Perhaps I’m not feeling anything at all. Perhaps it’s only my imagination, wishful thinking. I stand barefoot in the grass, wondering. Perhaps I’ve been too ambitious. A tree is too sturdy, too unyielding. I should start with something smaller. I glance about. A rose.
Scanning the bushes, I pick one of the hundreds within reach, a small, white, barely opened bud, curled petals beginning to unfurl. I focus, fixing my eyes, my breath, my body on that single flower until everything else in the garden is a blur, until I see only that rose. Then I reach out, stretching my palm flat, elongating my wrist, and, ever so slightly, lift my longest finger into the air.
I watch. I wait.
Nothing.
I lower my finger and, after a few minutes, I try again. And again. And again.
7:35 a.m.—Bea
When Bea steps through the gates of Trinity College, Vali is waiting for her on the wall. He stands when he sees her, holding two takeaway coffees and a brown paper bag. “They only had chocolate croissants today.”
“Thanks.” Bea takes the cup and the bag, then hands him an envelope. “A gift.”
“What is it?” Vali sets down his cup on the wall, having already eaten his croissant.
“That’s the point of opening it, so you can find out.”
Vali presses the envelope between his palms. “I’m cherishing the moment. I can’t remember the last time anyone gave me a gift.”
“You’re breaking my heart.” Bea sighs. “Just open the fucking thing, will you?”
“All right, all right—thank you.” Vali rips it open, pulling out a glimmering black card, embossed in silver lettering. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a voucher,” Bea says. “For a night at the Hotel Clamart.”
“Yes, I see that. But . . . why?”
“Because I’m not having sex with you in college,” Bea says. “God knows it’s embarrassing enough without having it witnessed by the entire student body.”
Vali stares at her.
“I know, I know,” Bea says. “You can thank me later.”
She starts walking, but Vali remains planted to the pavement.
“Come on.” Bea sig
hs again. “So, all right, maybe you and your expectations were right after all. Maybe you thinking I’m a nice person is starting to turn me into one, maybe I’m not as much of an evil bitch as Mamá claims.”
“I—I . . .” Vali tries to reply but finds himself unable to form words.
11:01 a.m.—Liyana
“But I didn’t think you had a sister,” Kumiko says.
“Neither did I.”
“Then how did you find her?”
“I, um, well . . .” Liyana stalls, fingering the edge of her toast. How should she put it? Can she admit that she dreamed of this unknown sister? Saw her face, heard her voice. Or will Kumiko think she’s truly unhinged? No, Liyana needs to channel BlackBird again and say it—to stop being this pale ghost of herself, to be brave and bold, without fear of the consequences.
“Was she illegitimate? Did your father have an affair? Did she contact you?”
“Yeah,” Liyana says. Melted butter drips onto her thumb. She licks it off. “That’s right. Exactly that.”
“What’s right?” Kumiko says. “Everything I just said?”
“No, I mean—I meant . . . Yes, she found me. I’m not sure about the rest. Not yet.”
“But didn’t she tell you?” Kumiko takes a bite of her own buttered toast. “Surely you asked.”
“Well, no . . . I . . . It was all very quick and, um . . . emotional.”
“Yeah, I suppose it would be.” Kumiko frowns. “But a sister. Seventeen—nearly eighteen—years of thinking you’ve got no siblings, then . . . Shit.”
The Sisters Grimm Page 21