The Sisters Grimm

by Menna Van Praag

  Bea smiles as she steps over to the squalling man. She places her booted foot over his nonexistent heart, kicks down hard and crushes his chest. Then she takes hold of his feet and begins to rise into the air, higher and higher, until she’s grazing the tops of the trees. Then she drops him.

  When Bea alights again on moss and stone, she steps over the dead soldier’s broken body and walks out of the glade to find her sisters. Her father is quiet, but he’s inside her. And she knows that if she drew a blade across her thigh now, her blood would no longer be red but inky black.

  The suspended leaves again start to fall.

  Scarlet

  “I wish you’d run.”

  “No.” Scarlet is still thinking of Walt and how wrong she’d been. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” Her mother hesitates. “Your grandma . . . she doesn’t need you anymore.”

  “I’m not abandoning her now,” Scarlet says. She sits beside her mother on a blanket of white moss and stone, only inches from a little pile of ashes. “I . . . I can’t. Not till I’ve laid her to rest.”

  “I wish I had the strength or skills to fight your father. But I’ll come with you. I might be a momentary—”

  Scarlet strokes her neck, wincing slightly. She looks at her mother as if seeing her for the first time, again. “You’ve been running from him for nearly ten years, and now you’ll just let him kill you?”

  “I’d be a distraction; it might give you an early advantage.” Ruby plucks a leaf of ivy from its vine winding beneath her feet. “It’s the least I can do.”

  “No,” Scarlet says, her voice fierce as fire and immovable as stone.

  “I want—” her mother begins, but Scarlet shakes her head.

  They sit in silence for a while.

  “Are you sure you’ll be—?”

  Scarlet nods. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Then look, I . . .” With the aid of a nearby rock, Ruby pulls herself up from the ground to stand. It’s an effort, Scarlet sees. “I should go.”

  And even though Scarlet had said that she could go, she finds that she’d hoped her mother would choose to stay, despite the futility of it all. But the sacrificial and the selfish had fought within her mother and, ultimately, the latter had won. As it always had.

  “I mean, if you won’t come with me. If I can’t, if you don’t want me to . . .”

  “It’s okay,” Scarlet says. “Go.”

  Ruby reaches out, places a hand on her daughter’s shoulder—heat flushes Scarlet’s arm—then she turns and walks away.

  Liyana

  Liyana stands at the edge of the lake, face turned to the moon, allowing the water to evaporate. She has proved her strength, has killed her soldier; now she needs to go, to find her sisters, to face her father. Liyana glances down at the droplets still clinging to the backs of her hands. In the moonlight her black skin has the blue sheen of a raven’s wing. Liyana thinks of BlackBird. No longer her idol but her equal, her counterpart.

  It was her sister, Liyana realizes now. It was Bea she based BlackBird on, the sister she always aspired to be. As fierce and furious, as full of confidence and contempt, as brilliant and brave. A slow smile spreads across Liyana’s face. She aspires no longer. She has arrived. She is stronger now, more spectacular, than she has ever dreamed she could be.

  When she fought back, when she pulled Mazmo under, that was the moment Liyana reclaimed herself. She is no BlackBird, no raven either. She is greater even than her sister. She is a shark, a predator unparalleled.

  She is ready for anything.

  With a final shake of her head, flinging fresh droplets in every direction, Liyana turns to stride away from the lake. She isn’t lost anymore. She knows exactly which way to go.

  Goldie

  I close my eyes. Where are you?

  I’m coming.

  I’m walking along a path, not knowing which direction to take but continuing anyway. I have no idea how I’ll find Leo or my sisters, but I have no doubt I will. Still, I can’t wait until then to talk to him. So I meet him in my mind—I’m not remotely surprised that I can, not here.

  He’ll try to kill you, won’t he?

  Leo is silent.

  He’ll want to kill you, I persist. Because you didn’t kill me.

  It wasn’t a choice.

  If not for my brother, I wouldn’t have let you make it. I walk on. I’ll fight him.

  So will I.

  I pick a falling leaf from the air and hold on to it. I love you.

  He says nothing in return. He doesn’t need to.

  Bea

  “I thought—I came to meet my sisters.”

  “That can wait. First, we need to talk.”

  “But my sisters,” Bea persists. “Did they survive?”

  Wilhelm’s yellow eyes flash, gleeful. “Goldie did, naturally. It’d take much more than a soldier to vanquish her.” He’s unable to suppress the pride in his voice. “When I think of all the havoc she could wreak if she wants to . . . Scarlet and Ana both surprised me, rather spectacularly. They both got a taste for killing, so it’s certainly possible they’ll favour the dark.” A smile breaks onto her father’s face, a smile that Bea wishes would shine upon her. “But Goldie—by the Devil, but she’s glorious!”

  “And if they don’t?” Bea interrupts his eulogizing. The relief she’d felt hearing they lived has already evaporated. “Then what?”

  Her father falls silent and, for a moment, a dread breeze shivers through Bea. But then she sees he’s not about to scold her insolence, he’s contemplating the loss of his favourite daughter. He seems to summon the words with great reluctance. “Then it’ll be time for you to step in and do what your mother did.”

  Bea sees the sorrow that clouds his eyes. It pierces her, then is gone. Before it can seize hold, Bea suppresses her own love, her own sorrow—years of overriding her emotions, it’s easy. “And what do I do before that? What do I say when I see them?”

  “Lay the groundwork.” He fixes her with golden eyes. “Say whatever you like to sway them, to seduce them into the dark.”

  Bea nods, her heart lifting. Goldie may be the strongest, the most special. But she is the one her father trusts with his secrets. And that, perhaps, trumps her rival. Making Bea his favourite, by a whisper.

  Reunion

  I walk a path of stones scattered with leaves. I clamber over rocks and fallen trunks. Sometimes the clouds glide across the moon and the path slips away for a while, with no sign of which direction to take, but it doesn’t matter. I have no doubt which way to go.

  Then I’m no longer alone. I step into a clearing where ivy twists up the trunks of four gigantic willow trees and weaves across the ground, knitting itself into a carpet of white-veined leaves. I’ve been here before. A long time ago.

  Then I see my three sisters.

  As I step towards them I think of Teddy and his Macbeth. When shall we three meet again? I hear no clap of thunder, see no strike of lightning, but I feel it coming. The world is about to break apart. When the hurlyburly’s done, / When the battle’s lost and won . . . Who of us will live, I think, and who will die? I cut the thought like a weed.

  My sisters look spectacular. Mists swirl around them, as if their presence is agitating the air. They stand straight as spears and look thrice as sharp—their tongues forked, their fingers talons, their hair snakes—as if they’ve slain six soldiers before breakfast without a second thought. Their veins pulse with hate and their skins shimmer in the moonlight as if they radiate light. They’re as fierce as they are tender, as furious as they are calm, as evil as they are good. Just as I am. Fair is foul, and foul is fair; / Hover through the fog and—

  “Goldie!” Liyana shouts, gleeful. “You made it!”

  My sister. My sisters. I step forward to meet them.

  Sisters

  We’re sitting in our glade once more. In a circle, as we’d done a decade ago. I’m slightly surprised by how happy I feel to be with my sisters again. I
hadn’t realized how much I’d missed them. I feel that I’ve come home, to a home unlike any I ever had on Earth. With them I’m able, at last, to be exactly as I am.

  Soon, we’ve fallen back into old rhythms. Scarlet is setting light to twigs, Liyana juggles three dense balls of fog, and I am coaxing tight-curled shoots from the earth. Bea watches us, smiling. And, as usual, she is enlightening us with all the vital information of which we might be ignorant. Ever the fount of knowledge, ever the know-it-all.

  Scarlet sighs and the flame on her stick flares. She could, if her account of killing her soldier is anything to go by, set fire to a whole forest right now, just as Liyana could turn a lake into a tsunami and I could uproot every tree in Everwhere. Bea is the only one who hasn’t divulged any details of her own battle, hardly a surprise.

  “S-o.” Bea elongates the word. “Tonight we choose.”

  “Right.” Liyana nods. “What’s everyone thinking?”

  She isn’t, I note, assuming the decision is a foregone conclusion, that we’ll naturally favour the light. Of us all, Liyana has changed the most. As a child she was so timid, wanting to be liked by everyone, always eager to please, trying to keep the peace. Now she’s reckless, fearless, as if she doesn’t give a damn about anything at all.

  Silence falls over the glade, like the static before a storm. I shift, my skin irritated by the prickle of the air.

  “Well . . .” Liyana prompts.

  “You say it like we’re choosing what to have for dinner,” Scarlet says. “Not between good and evil, for the rest of our lives.”

  “And life and death,” Bea reminds us. “If we don’t choose in favour of our father, we won’t live to tell about it.”

  “So you keep saying, but we’re far stronger than we were.” Liyana slices a finger through a ball of fog and rain-tears fall like juice from an orange. “I say we fight him.”

  “Oh, you have no idea.” Bea lets out a wry laugh. “No idea at all.”

  “Don’t be so defeatist.” Liyana stands. “We’re like, I don’t know, the four horsemen of the apocalypse. If we combined forces, I bet we’d be powerful enough to kill him.”

  “Kill?” Bea’s tone is torn between mockery and praise. “I remember when you couldn’t even say that word.”

  “You seem to remember more than any of us.” Liyana eyes her. “But you’re the most secretive too.”

  “I don’t see we have another option,” I say. “If we don’t try, he’ll kill us anyway—so what do we have to lose?”

  I think of Leo and how he’ll have no choice but to fight for his life. I’d have a challenging time explaining Leo and who he really is, so I’m hoping he’ll arrive any moment and explain himself. He’s taking a degree at Cambridge, after all; he has more of a way with words than I do. Hardly surprising that Bea’s studying there too. She’d shoehorned that fact into the conversation pretty quick. But even though she still irritates me, I know I’d defend her to the death. She’s my sister, my blood, my spirit. Dare I say, even more so than my brother. I adore Teddy far more than Bea, but it’s . . . different. I can’t explain how, but it is.

  “We have another option,” Bea says. “We can go dark.”

  Her words hang in the air, like the white leaves, except they don’t fall.

  “Oh, come on.” She stands to face Liyana, who glares at her. “Don’t tell me you’re not tempted. Aren’t you fed up with being so . . . weak, so pathetic, so—”

  “Speak for yourself.” Scarlet expels sparks from her fingertips that singe the moss at Bea’s feet.

  “Careful, sis.” Bea steps back. “Killing a soldier is one thing, it gives you a taste for the dark. But killing your sister . . . Now, that’ll send you right over the edge.”

  Leo, where are you? I wait but hear nothing in return.

  “I don’t think going dark is the answer,” I say. “I mean, we don’t even know the consequences.”

  “Oh, please, what do we need to know?” Bea starts to pace across the glade, like a general corralling troops. “On Earth we’re virtually powerless. Plus we’re underestimated at every turn, undervalued, treated like sex objects, paid less, regarded as second fiddle by virtually—”

  “That may be true,” I interrupt. “But it’s hardly reason enough to turn evil.”

  Bea raises an eyebrow. “Don’t you want to know what it’s like to live your life without fear?” She gives a little shrug. “The only way you’ll ever be that powerful is if you go dark.”

  We’re silent. I don’t know what Ana and Scarlet are thinking, but I think of Leo’s words: predator or prey, kill or be killed. I think of Garrick, of my stepfather. I think of that soldier’s hands slowly taking the life from me. I can’t deny that it’d be a glorious thing, never to be scared again.

  “You’ll be impenetrable in every way. And not just physically.” Bea looks to Scarlet. “All that pain you feel, the grief—you won’t feel any of it anymore.”

  I think of Leo, of Teddy. “What about love? Will we still feel that?”

  Bea hesitates, almost imperceptibly. “Yes. You will.”

  Again, I think of Leo. I wonder if, if I went to my father’s side, I’d be able to make a bargain for Leo’s life.

  “How long do we have till he comes?” Scarlet asks, again deferring to our resident expert. “Shouldn’t he be here soon?”

  She sounds calm, but I can see that my sister is far more scared than she seems. Just like the rest of us, with the exception of Bea, who has quite clearly made her choice. I wonder if we’ll still know her afterwards—that is, if we survive. I wonder if our lives would be the same, on Earth at least, if we became dark. I realize how little I know about any of this, and I wish, even as I sense it’s too late now, that I hadn’t been too proud to ask. I notice then that Ana didn’t respond to Bea’s proposal. Indeed, she hasn’t spoken since.

  “I have a feeling”—Bea stops pacing—“That he’ll be here any moment now.”

  Wilhelm

  “The four victorious.”

  His voice is a rumble of thunder above the trees. Then he appears, stepping out of the mists and fog and into the glade. A chill wind picks up, churning the falling leaves. As he sets foot on the ivy and moss a tremor rumbles through the soil, shaking the ground beneath our feet.

  I feel my sisters beside me. I feel their hearts begin to beat faster, I feel my own. Our father is ancient and immovable as a redwood, at his core a force of unparalleled ferocity. I can see that there is nothing he wouldn’t do.

  “Congratulations, my dears.” Our father surveys us, his golden eyes glinting in the moonlight. He’s tall, thin, with white hair and a face so wrinkled he might be ten thousand years old. He steps towards us, his hands outstretched. When we make no move towards him, he stops in the middle of the glade and brings his hands together.

  “So my four favourite daughters have finally come of age. I feel as if I’ve been waiting two centuries for this moment.” He raises both hands. “Welcome home, my girls.”

  Dozens of shoots emerge from the soil, rapidly thickening and lengthening, fresh branches reaching out, growing leaves and blooms, until the rosebushes are sinking under the weight of hundreds of blood-red flowers that look almost black. He has turned our glade into his garden.

  “A little gift.” He smiles at us each in turn.

  We are a tense row—even Bea—standing as straight and stiff as if we’re balancing on a high wire and a single slip from anyone would mean the death of us all.

  “I must admit, I thought you might not all survive the initiation. Too few do. I’m afraid my daughters often disappoint me in their . . . willingness to surrender.” He brushes a fallen leaf from his lapel. “But moving on. How are you each feeling now?”

  We stare at him, silent, still.

  “Oh, come now.” He grins, the falcon eyeing the clutch of mice in its claws. “Don’t pretend to be passive females—you’re so much better than that. You’ve got darkness in you now, and you should b
e grateful for it.” He brings his hands together and another chill wind blows through the glade. “Look at your miserable little lives—they don’t even begin to reflect how magnificent you truly are. And I’m offering you an escape from drudgery, from the dullness of being second-class citizens. I’m offering you greatness and glory—carpe diem!”

  I want to look to my sisters but I can’t, I can’t pull my eyes from him. As if I’m watching the premonition of my own death made manifest. I’m seeing how my heart will be ripped from my chest and I can’t look away.

  “Look, my dears.” Wilhelm Grimm steps forward. “I want the chance to be a good father to you now. And isn’t it what every father wants, to see his daughter flourish to her full potential?” He stops. “But I won’t force it upon you. Ultimately the decision is yours.”

  I think of the soldier I killed, I think of my stepfather.

  “Oh, Goldie.” My father smiles, as if I’d spoken my thoughts aloud. “I’m afraid the murder of that mortal hardly counts. And the extermination of soldiers is immaterial. You’ll have to do better than that.”

  I stare at him, saying nothing. What can I say to the one who sets the rules?

  “So.” He starts to pace—a far more chilling general than Bea had been. “Given that you all have delicious amounts of death and darkness pulsing through your veins right now, I’m thinking you’re ready to embrace”—he brings his finger and thumb together, leaving a sliver of moonlight between them—“A soupçon of evil . . . What do you say?”

  I sneak a glance at my sisters. But they aren’t looking at me, they’re still fixed on him, terrified. Except for Bea, who’s gazing at our father as if he’s an angel, a prophet, the love of her damnable life.