In a Glass Grimmly

by Adam Gidwitz

  As if in answer, the mermaid sang, Never cry no more again, and her song caught on the word never. The mermaid held it long and low and so sad, and then let it fall and gutter like waves in a rocky shoal. The song ended. She did not pick it up again. Carefully, Jill walked back over the slick rocks, and then up the path and into the tavern. She closed the door behind her. She waited. Ten minutes later, she opened the door just a crack and peeked out. The bearded man’s door was tightly shut.

  * * *

  Jack was sitting up when Jill awoke the next morning. “Hi!” he said. “I feel a lot better. I think I can help you with your work today.”

  Jill’s hands instantly became clammy. She sat up and stared at him.

  Then, as if deciding something, she got out of bed and came to his side. “Let me feel your head.” The frog crawled out of the blankets and yawned sleepily. She put her hand on Jack’s forehead. Compared to her clammy, sweating hands, Jack’s forehead was smooth and dry and cool. “Take one more day,” Jill said firmly. “One more day, and then you can come downstairs and help me.”

  “At least let me sit down there—” Jack began.

  “No,” said Jill, and her voice was sharp when she said it.

  “I don’t think sitting downstairs would be bad for Jack,” the frog replied, surprised by her abruptness.

  Jill thought for a moment. Then she said, “Not for Jack, no. But I don’t think the innkeeper would like him sitting in tavern, staring at the customers, do you? With a bandage on his head?” And without waiting for a response she got up, left the room, and closed the door behind her. Once in the corridor, she took a deep breath and went downstairs.

  The lunch service in the tavern was always quiet, because the fishermen did not return with their boats until midafternoon. As soon as the last patron had left, Jill slipped out the tavern door and hurried down to the hut by the sea. The door was closed and no light came from within. The bearded man would, like the rest of the fishermen, be out on the sea for a couple of hours yet.

  Jill went around to the back of the house. There, she tried the door of the shed. It wasn’t locked. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her.

  Within, she scanned the walls. Rusty instruments of death hung from every hook. She studied the hooked blade for opening a fish’s belly, the sideways-bending knife for separating meat from bone, the harpoon points with their barbs that caught and tore the flesh. She found a coil of rope and set to work.

  * * *

  Now, my dear reader, you are probably feeling a little tense right now. If I’ve told this story well at all, in fact, you should be feeling a tightness in your shoulders, and a lightness in your head, and your breath should be coming a little quicker.

  And when I describe Jill hiding in the hut with all the “instruments of death,” as I think I called them—well, you are probably expecting something horrible and bloody to transpire.

  Good. At least you’re expecting it. That should help a little.

  * * *

  The bearded man came home exhausted and stinking of fish. He walked into his little house and peeled off his great oilskin coat and changed his heavy boots for some lighter shoes. Then, sighing from the day’s work, he went out back and trudged heavily to his toolshed.

  He pulled the door open and stepped inside—and found himself tumbling to the floor. His great frame crashed into the back wall, sending knives and knots and awls clattering down upon him. He looked back at the door. There was a rope tied tightly across the frame. He looked up.

  Jill stood above him. Her face was furious and black. Her eyes were wide. Her nostrils flared. Her lips were pulled back around her teeth. Above her head hovered the largest, sharpest fish ax the man possessed.

  “Leave the mermaid alone!” Jill bellowed.

  And she brought the blade down as hard and as fast as she could. The man raised his arm to protect himself. The rusty blade hit his flesh with a thwack and buried itself in his bone. The man howled. Jill tried to pull the ax out, but it seemed to have become lodged there. Jill turned and grabbed the long, curving knife from the wall. She raised it and brought it down—but before it could enter the man’s flesh, she was flung back by a kick to the chest. She tumbled over the rope and out into the daylight.

  The man lay amid the fallen tools in the tiny shed, blood pouring from his arm onto the ground. He was staring at Jill.

  “You leave her alone!” Jill snarled again, and then she ran.

  * * *

  Jill passed the tavern so quickly she did not see Jack looking out the window, watching her run up the road. Not that seeing him would have stopped her now. She kept going, up, up into the steep and misty hills. The wet grass was like a sponge beneath her feet. She could smell the peat smoke rising from the fires in the houses of the village. It was a sweet, musty smell. She passed a flock of sheep, lying on the green wet hillside. They bleated at her.

  At the edge of the little valley behind the first hill, there stood a small sheepfold—just a wooden structure with three walls and a roof, where the sheep could gather if they wanted to get out of the rain. Jill made her way to that. She sat down in it. She looked at herself. Her clothing was splattered with the man’s blood.

  She was sorry she hadn’t killed him, but she thought that maybe, lying there, he might just bleed to death on his own. She thought of the beautiful mermaid—how perfect she was. And how she loved Jill. She loved her, Jill knew it. And to think that there had been six more of them, and that the bearded man had killed them all. It made her sick. And then, to think of his little daughter, who had died from grief because of him. Oh, what he had done to his little daughter.

  Perhaps, she thought, she would return to his hut that night and be sure the job was done.

  * * *

  When the night was black, and Jill was certain that the people would have left the tavern and gone to their homes to sleep, Jill hurried back across the field of sheep, skirted around the edge of the silent fishing village, and made her way down to her little harbor. The mermaid was singing again. The song seemed to penetrate Jill’s soul. It was intoxicating. It was unbearably beautiful.

  * * *

  Come, come, where heartache’s never been.

  And where you’re seen as you want to be seen.

  Come, come, the place of shadow and green,

  Where you’ll never cry no more, dear lass,

  Where you’ll never cry no more.

  Jill’s vision became blurred. She couldn’t see the houses of the village, nor the sky above it. All she could see was the black, heaving ocean and the craterous, craggy rocks that rose up around it, like teeth around a great mouth. The mermaid was singing more sweetly and sadly than she ever had before. Jill came to the water’s edge. She looked out at the mermaid’s rock, surrounded by the spuming, frothing ocean, but the mermaid was not there.

  “Here,” she heard. Jill looked down. There, directly below Jill, just beneath the surface of the sea, the mermaid floated. Jill bent over and, staring down at the mermaid, it felt like she was staring into a mirror of obsidian, and the mermaid was her beautiful, perfected reflection. If only the mermaid really were Jill’s reflection, she thought. If only. She wanted it so badly it made her heart ache.

  The mermaid’s eyes were wider and blacker and greener than Jill had remembered, and her hair that looked like the shining of the moon on the water at night blew every which way under the waves. And she was smiling at Jill.

  “Beautiful girl,” she said from under the water. “Beautiful, brave girl. You have done something to defend me, and to avenge my sisters. I can feel it.”

  Jill sat down on the edge of the rocks. She folded her feet behind her and dangled her fingers in the cold, wild water. “I tried,” Jill said. “I tried to.”

  The mermaid beamed at her. “You beautiful, brave girl. Here,” she said, “let me kiss you.” And then she was rising up out of the water, her white body shining in the moonlight, her green and black scales shimme
ring darkly below. She raised her face to Jill’s face and brought her foamy lips to Jill’s left cheek. Jill felt them brush against her skin, and it was the softest, sweetest feeling she had ever felt. She closed her eyes. Above her, a great black wave rose into the night.

  The great wave rose, and then paused.

  And then it came crashing down upon the mermaid and little girl. It slammed Jill’s body into the sharp rocks. It dragged her, with an irresistible pull, down, down, down. Jill tried kicking, fighting it, but she just sank deeper beneath the waves. She opened her mouth to scream, and water rushed into her lungs. She opened her eyes and they burned from the salt. But she could see. She could see the beautiful mermaid, holding on to her wrists, her face contorted, demented. And behind the mermaid, Jill could see six other mermaids, rushing toward her, their faces twisted, warped. And they sang as their hands grabbed at Jill’s arms, Jill’s legs, Jill’s hair. They sang:

  Come, come, where heartache’s never been.

  And where you’re seen as you want to be seen.

  Come, come, the place of shadow and green,

  Where you’ll never cry no more, dear lass,

  Where you’ll never cry no more.

  And finally, Jill saw the body of a little girl, tangled among the seaweed at the rocky bottom of the harbor. The body was pale, and it floated lifelessly, its eyes staring up unseeing toward the surface.

  It was a lie. The mermaid had lied.

  The last breath left Jill, the last fight died in her arms and legs and lungs. She went limp. The sea grew dark.

  * * *

  And then, falling through the darkling sea, there was a net. It fell and fell, sliding over the mermaids as if they were not there, as if they were no more than beams of the moon. But it fell around Jill and cradled her, and it pulled her up, up, away from the mermaids’ grasping hands, up to the surface of the water, up above the obsidian waves and into the moonlight and the freezing, bracing air.

  Jill was placed gently on the rocks and the net was opened. She coughed and coughed, seawater pouring out of her mouth. She held herself up with her hands and wretched until every last drop of brine was purged. Then, drained, Jill sat back.

  A pair of arms draped themselves over her. Small, thin arms. Jill opened her eyes. She could see only a white bandage. Then she felt amphibian skin on her neck.

  She looked up, over the bandage that was nestled under her chin, and saw that the big-bellied man with the red beard was staring at her, shaking his head. He looked like he was crying. “I got ya this time,” he whispered, as if to himself. “This time, I got ya.”

  The bandage pulled back. It was Jack, holding the frog in his hands. Little Jack was smiling tearfully. The red-bearded man approached and picked Jill up, cradling her, with his one good arm, away from the bandaged one, and carried her back toward the tavern. “I told ya,” he said to her as he walked, Jack following just a pace behind. “No man can cast such a net as can catch a mermaid. But a mermaid can surely cast such a net as can catch a little girl.”

  * * *

  The man with the red beard was all better now. His arm had been in a sling for a few weeks, and each night he removed his bandages and rubbed it with a local whisky. He said that was better than any doctor could do.

  His heart was better, too. But he didn’t need any whisky for that. The innkeeper told Jill that, for the first time since his daughter had died, the man with the red beard was his old self again. “I got her,” you could hear him say to himself. “This time, I got her.”

  The man treated Jack like a son. Jack, who had watched Jill go down to the little hut, who had seen the man come home from the fishing boats, who had wondered at Jill sprinting away past the inn. Jack had tried running out of the inn after her, but he hadn’t seen where she had gone. All that had been left to do was go down to the little hut. He had found the bearded man, unconscious in the shed, still bleeding. “He saved m’ life,” the bearded man said after they’d told Jill the story. “And yours, too.”

  The days were fine, there in the little village by the sea, and the people had grown to love Jack and Jill. But the children had to move on, for they were no closer to the Seeing Glass.

  And besides, the mermaid still sang at night, tormenting Jill with her beautiful song.

  So the children asked the red-bearded man if he knew where they could find goblins.

  The man’s face grew dark. “Why would you want to see the goblins? It’s an evil race, the goblins are.”

  “We’re looking for a mirror,” said Jill. “The Seeing Glass. It’s in the deepest part of the earth.”

  The man smoothed his red beard with his meaty hand. He shook his head. “If it’s the belly of the earth you want—ay, the goblins could show you there. But they’re more likely to trap you, and kill you, and sell you for parts.”

  Jack started, but Jill just set her jaw and said, “Where are they?”

  The man heaved himself to his feet and walked with the children out of the tavern. Through the morning mist, he pointed out into the hills. “The Goblin Market is that way.”

  The children embraced the big man with the red beard, and then set out into the steep green hills behind the village. They walked away from the small seaside village, away from the sea, away from the tall green hill, and if their sense of direction deceived them not, far, far away from home.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The

  Gray Valley

  Once upon a time, a boy named Jack, a girl named Jill, and a frog named Frog stumbled through high mountains and rocky valleys in a land very far away from the kingdom of Märchen. They were tired; they were hungry; they were thirsty; and they were sick to death of walking.

  The sky was as gray as the loose stones that lay on the sides of the mountains, which was as gray as the sodden sod in the shallow valleys. The wind blew cold and wet, and would have been gray, too, if wind had a color.

  At last, Jack, Jill, and the frog collapsed on their backs on a wide, smooth stone, and wondered if they were dead yet.

  “So hungry,” Jill moaned.

  “So thirsty,” Jack groaned.

  “So worried,” said the frog. “I hope we don’t starve to death.”

  “Yes,” said Jill, “not starving to death would be nice.”

  “So would not thirsting to death,” said Jack.

  “Thirsting isn’t even a word,” said Jill.

  “It isn’t?”

  “No.”

  “Then what’s the word?”

  “I don’t know. Dying of thirst.”

  “You can starve to death. Why can’t you thirst to death?”

  “I don’t know. You just can’t.”

  “Oh.”

  This is, of course, the kind of inane conversation that occurs when people are slowly losing their minds.

  Through it, the frog was staring up at the sky, as he used to do when he lived in his well. For not the first time in that frog’s long life, he was wishing he were back in it, salamanders and all. He could hear them now: “What is smelly?” “When is smelly?” “Why is smelly?” “Who is smelly?” “Am I smelly?” “Who’s smellier, me or Fred? Is it me? It’s me, right? Me?” He sort of missed them.

  “Frog, I have a question,” said Jack, who was now lying on his back, staring at the sky.

  “Shoot.”

  “How do you talk?”

  Jill looked over at Jack, and then at the frog. “Yeah,” she said.

  The frog sighed. He purposely did not look at Jill. “It’s kind of a long story.”

  “Okay,” said Jack.

  “Okay,” said Jill.

  “Okay what?” said the frog.

  “Okay, tell us the story,” Jack answered.

  The frog thought about it for a minute. He continued to purposely not look at Jill. And then, at last, he said, “All right...”

  So the frog told them the story of how he came to talk. He started with the very smelly well, moved on to the very annoying sal
amanders, then described the princess with her ball, and so on, all the way through him trailing his froggy blood after him, all the way back to his well.

  When he’d finished, Jack said. “That’s a good story.”

  “Thank you,” said the frog.

  “My favorite part was when your leg got eaten by the weasel,” Jack added.

  The frog did not thank him again.

  But Jill was silent. She stared into the great gray sky. After a long time, she said, “I think that was my mother.”

  The frog watched her. Jill said nothing more. But the frog could tell she was thinking. Thinking hard.

  The frog glanced up. Three black specks had appeared through the heavy cloud. He watched them as the specks grew into dots, and the dots into blots, and the blots into splotches, and the splotches into birds, and the birds, at last, into ravens.

  The frog catapulted himself out of Jack’s pocket and dove for a dark crevice beneath a stone. Jack and Jill gazed at him like he was crazy. Then they heard the wings.

  They looked up in time to see three black shapes fluttering down and landing on the stone beside them. The children stared. Three large and stately ravens shook their plumage and stood, dark and imperious, before them.

  A vague sense of dread took hold of the children.

  “What do you think they want?” Jack whispered.

  “I know what they want,” Jill whispered back. “They’re scavengers. They’re here to eat us after we die.”

  “What?” cried one of the ravens.

  Jill toppled over backward.