The forest grimm, p.11
The Forest Grimm, page 11
Now, thanks to the river, both of our bread supplies have turned to mush. At least we have plenty of drinking water, though I haven’t taken a sip since we came ashore. I drank half the river trying to navigate the rapids.
“I think I’ll sleep over here tonight,” Henni announces. She’s twelve feet away and hiding behind a large shrub. “I’m not so c-cold.”
“You’ll do no such thing.” I stride to the campfire between her shrub and the ash, and set down my bundle of twigs beside it. “Your teeth are chattering so loudly, everyone in Grimm’s Hollow could hear you. Besides, the sun is setting. The air will get even cooler.”
“But I’m only wearing my chemise,” Henni hisses.
“Same as me.”
“You have your cape! I only have my kerchief. I’m indecent!”
“Don’t worry, Henni.” Axel ambles over to join me by the campfire. “I’ll keep my back turned for the rest of the night. You have my word.”
The shrub rustles as Henni deliberates. “What if you hear a sudden noise in the forest, and you accidentally peek?”
Her voice is wobbling now, and with Henni, a wobble is just short of a sob. She’s had a hard enough day as it is without having to worry about privacy. An idea pops to mind. “What was that?” I glance at Axel, who has said nothing. “That’s a wonderful idea!”
“What is?” he murmurs.
“Henni, Axel has just offered to wear his scarf as a blindfold.”
“He did?”
“I did?”
I clap a hand over his mouth. “Whatever makes you comfortable, he says.”
“Oh, thank you, Axel.” Her wobble fades away. “You’re a true and honorable friend.”
“The most honorable I know,” I whisper with a wink, and unclamp his mouth.
His eyelids narrow, and he shakes his head at me. “You’re an evil person, Clara Thurn.”
I grin, banishing his halfhearted insult with a wave of my hand. “I’m sure you would have offered her the same.” I reach for the scarf around his neck. “I just beat you to it.”
I untie his scarf, careful to keep it touching his body as I spin him around and wrap the wool around his eyes. He grumbles, but I don’t let it ruffle me. I see the curve at the corner of his mouth, a smile he’s fighting to tamp down. Besides, Axel truly is the most honorable person I know. I’m sure he’s happy to help Henni be at ease tonight.
I guide him to sit by the campfire and settle beside him. Reassured he’s blindfolded, Henni emerges from behind her shrub to join us. We share our mushy bread, nibble on wet cheese, and let the heat from the flames dry our undergarments and river-cold bones. I silently bless the waterproof pouch that kept my flint kit dry so we could light this fire in the first place.
When the stars freckle the sky and the horns of the waxing crescent moon point down at us, fatigue gets the better of me and loosens my tongue. “I could have killed her,” I murmur.
Axel stops sharpening his knife against a river stone, a dangerous activity for any other person who couldn’t see, although he makes the task look effortless. “Fiora?”
I nod, though I’m starting to think of her as Rapunzel. The Fiora I knew wasn’t anywhere to be found in the hostile woman we met in the tower. “My knife could have hit her heart or throat or—” I swallow and wrap my cape tighter around myself.
“She was trying to kill me, Clara,” Henni says, touching her neck with her fingertips. She’s sitting across the fire from me and Axel, still keeping a little distance from him. “You saved my life.”
I force a fleeting smile. She’s only trying to comfort me. I’m sure Henni is grateful to be alive, but I know her sensitive heart. If I had indeed killed Fiora, Henni would have cried for days. And when she had later returned to Grimm’s Hollow, she would have painted a portrait of Fiora and given it to her father. She would have spent the rest of her life feeling guilty that her life was spared because another person died.
“You did the right thing,” Axel says, also trying to reassure me. “And because you have a good soul, Fiora didn’t die. Your blade flew true and matched your intent.”
That sounds like a fabrication in children’s stories with dragons and warriors and good always triumphing over evil. I don’t know if I believe in it, but I like it. “So now I’m good and not evil?”
He cocks a grin. “You were never evil.”
“Even if I think you look ridiculous with that scarf over your eyes?”
“Perhaps a little evil.”
I laugh and bump his shoulder with mine.
Henni sits up taller and ties her kerchief around her wrist. Her hair has dried, and she starts braiding it into two plaits. “I think I’ve figured out why Fiora calls herself Rapunzel. Well, maybe not why she does, but I at least understand the connection.”
Axel turns his ear to her, and I lean forward, swatting away a snapping ember.
“Rapunzel is another name for rampion,” Henni goes on. “It was used in the old language. I read about it once in a book about herbs.”
Leave it to Henni to know all the unusual names for plants in her avid quest to find the perfect paint ingredients. “I suppose that makes sense. Fiora’s hair is the color of rampion—at least red rampion.”
“Perhaps rampion is what made it red to begin with.” Henni ties the end of her first braid.
“How do you mean?” Axel sets down his knife and stone.
“Well, the same midwife who delivered Fiora also delivered Ella and me, and she told Mother how Fiora’s mother saved her pregnancy. Mother later told me the story.”
“I’m already confused,” Axel says.
Unfazed, Henni continues, lost in the memory. “When Fiora’s mother was in danger of losing the baby, she went into the Forest Grimm and ate rampion. It helped the baby keep growing in her belly.”
“Red rampion?” I ask.
“It had to be, although the midwife didn’t say.”
I think about it for a moment. “That was about the time that Fiora’s mother made her one wish on Sortes Fortunae as well.”
Axel and Henni don’t comment, probably because they wouldn’t know either way. The only reason I do is because of my obsession with the Book of Fortunes, always the means I’ve counted on to save Mother.
The council chamber in Grimm’s Hollow holds a register of wish ceremonies, and I’ve visited there countless times to read it. It lists the villagers who have used their one wish on Sortes Fortunae, as well as the month and year of the occasion.
I used to dream of the day my own name would be written in the register, a kind of legacy I could leave behind after I died and Mother lived, my mark that my life meant something, even if I couldn’t share what it was that I wished for. Wishes themselves aren’t listed in the register. Everyone must abide by the rule that wishes remain secret.
“Maybe the wish Fiora’s mother made was how to save her baby,” I muse, “and the book told her to eat red rampion.” That makes sense. The Forest Grimm made the Book of Fortunes, and red rampion is also strongly connected to the forest’s magic.
Axel shakes his blindfolded head. “If Fiora’s mother told the midwife what she had wished for, the spell would have been broken. Sortes Fortunae would have reversed the wish, and Fiora would have died.”
“What if Fiora’s mother didn’t tell the midwife?” Henni combs her fingers through the other half of her hair. “What if the midwife just saw her do it—return from the forest with the rampion and eat it?” She lifts a shoulder. “Whatever the reason, Fiora lived, and her hair is the same shade of red as your scarf and my kerchief and Clara’s cape.”
I gaze at the hair Henni hasn’t started braiding yet. It looks so much longer when she wears it down, which she rarely does. “The rampion could have also made Fiora’s hair grow long in the forest, just like it helped her grow in her mother’s belly. The rampion’s magic must be stronger here.”
This is all speculation, of course, but for the most part, it adds up. I gnaw at my lip, still puzzled by one last mystery. “The only thing I don’t understand is that red rampion is supposed to be protective. So why hasn’t it protected Fiora now—as a woman? Here, in the forest? You saw her. She isn’t the same person.”
Fiora’s words echo through my mind: Rapunzel is my only name. It’s what I am.
Henni’s brows scrunch up. “Maybe the red rampion isn’t protective forever. Fiora has been in the forest for almost three years now. She’s a cursed villager just like the rest of us. The forest must have figured that out at some point.”
“You said it yourself last night, Clara,” Axel adds gently. The firelight catches the sculpted lines of his jaw and the soft divot of an almost dimple on his chin. “The red rampion can’t protect us from everything.”
A finger of ice slides up my spine, despite the heat from the campfire. I shiver and burrow deeper in my cape.
Our conversation dwindles. With nothing more than our worries left to keep us awake, we stoke the fire one last time and prepare to go to sleep. Since Axel lost his bedroll along with his pack, the three of us lie down crosswise on the two remaining bedrolls and let our legs drape onto the grass.
I position myself between my friends like I did in the tree net, but this time my reason is to spare Henni the mortification of sleeping beside a boy while she’s clothed only in her chemise, even if that boy is blindfolded.
I use a rope from my pack to tie our ankles together, my left one to Henni’s, and my right one to Axel’s. None of us wish to wake up in the morning separated from each other. We also consider tying our wrists together, but that seems excessive, and we’d like to be able to move at least some of our limbs in the night.
Axel and Henni fall asleep before I do. I fidget with the strings of my cape, unable to shut my eyes. The moon has shifted, and the dead ash tree blots out its light and paints eerie shadows in the forest beyond.
You’re running out of time, Clara, I feel the ash telling me, unwilling to let me find comfort within the reach of its bad omens. And the rampion can’t protect you forever.
CHAPTER 14
I wake up with my nose pressed to something soft and warm that smells of the breeze from the Forest Grimm when it wafts past the hedgerow of my family’s sheep pasture—air that is clean with green wood and sharp with mountain pine.
Eyes closed, I breathe in deeper and discover subtler notes, honeyed and musky like beeswax, but also earthy like cedar oil rubbed into leather.
I sigh and open my eyes … and find my face nuzzled against Axel’s bare chest.
I jerk upright and swipe the drool from the corner of my mouth.
Henni stirs, but not Axel. He’s stone-cold asleep and lying on his side, still wearing his blindfold. The ends of his scarf are tangled around his face like he had a fight with them in the night. My fingers itch to smooth them down and, while I’m at it, trace the strong line of his jaw. Is his skin as warm there as the rest of his body?
My eyes drift over the length of him and linger at the ligaments near his hip bones. They dip at an angle and slide under the low-slung waistband of his linen pants.
Henni stirs, and I flinch slightly, tearing my gaze from Axel’s torso. “Henni.” I nudge her fully awake. “You should change before Axel wakes up. We ought to give him back his eyes today.”
She doesn’t need to be told twice. I untie the rope binding our ankles, and she scurries off to grab her dress from one of the ash branches.
“Um, Clara?” she says after a few moments. “The shrub I undressed behind yesterday…”
“Mm-hmm?” I catch myself staring at Axel again. There’s a pink mark on his chest from where my cheek pressed against it. It’s shaped like half a heart.
“It’s gone.”
A good five seconds pass before I register what she said. I look to where the shrub was, on the other side of our campfire’s charred remains. But it’s no longer there.
A horrible sinking sensation trickles inside me like molten lead. I turn my head slowly and take in the rest of our surroundings. The dead ash tree and the river are still here, but nothing else looks the same. There’s no copse of aspens behind the ash, no lone willow across the riverbank, no purple marsh orchids peeking up from the wild grass.
Fiora was right. The forest moves.
Which means my map—the map that was soaked in my pack but remained miraculously legible, the map I spread out last night to dry and pinned down with rocks so the breeze wouldn’t steal it away—is completely obsolete.
No, no, no.
My breath goes shallow. I rub my hands down my face and rock back and forth. I thought I was close to finding our bearings. The river was a strong landmark. I hadn’t solved which river it was—the Forest Grimm has three—but now I never will.
How will I find you, Mother? How will I point the way home?
“What’s wrong?” Axel’s voice croaks, groggy with sleep. He’s peeking at me from a gap beneath his blindfold.
Henni gasps and darts behind the ash tree so she can continue changing in private.
I slide the scarf from Axel’s eyes, slipping it up off his forehead. “You don’t have to wear that anymore.”
He takes in my miserable expression and pulls himself up on one elbow. I imagine what I must look like, my green eyes rimmed in red, my dark hair wild and tangled, and all the glow of hope in me lost.
“Bad dream?” he asks gently.
I choke on a humorless laugh. “I wish. Give me a nightmare. Dreams end. I can’t wake up from this.” I wave a hand at the surrounding forest.
His mouth parts as he absorbs all that has changed in the night.
“This is how they became Lost.” I tuck my knees to my chest. “My mother, Ella, Fiora … every villager who disappeared here.” I shake my head as pain crushes my heart. “How did I think it wouldn’t happen to us?”
“Hey, now.” Axel sits up and shifts closer, wrapping a strong arm around me. “We found a river. That isn’t nothing. For one thing, it didn’t move while we slept. That means we can depend on it for navigation. Plus we can drink and fish from it, which will keep us alive.”
“I didn’t come here just to survive.”
He holds me tighter. “We’ll find your mother, Clara.”
I tuck my head sideways into the crook of his neck so he won’t see my gathering tears. “How?”
“Put yourself in her shoes. She would have eventually found one of the rivers, like we did, and she would have stuck by it for the same reasons we’re going to.”
I gently bite at my lip, thinking through what he’s saying. “Each of the rivers intersects with another at some point in the forest. In the northwest, Snow River feeds into Bremen River, and in the southeast, Bremen River feeds into Thrushbeard River.”
“Exactly. We’ll use the rivers as our new trail. If we stick to them, we’ll eventually find everyone we’re looking for.”
“But Fiora wasn’t by a river,” I point out.
He shrugs. “She was close enough to one. Anyway, we shouldn’t use her as an example. We all agreed she wasn’t herself.”
I give a small laugh, then immediately pinch my lips together. It isn’t Fiora’s fault that the forest drove her to insanity. Maybe I can still save her. Her strange hair and its magic must be somehow tied up in the curse. If I can find Sortes Fortunae and use my one wish to break it, perhaps Fiora’s hair will return to normal and she won’t be so violent.
“Finding the Lost Ones might not be the hard part,” I concede. “The bigger problem is that none of these rivers lead back to Grimm’s Hollow. How will you take everyone home?”
“We.”
I give him a blank look.
“How will we take everyone home, you mean.”
“That’s what I…” I shake my head. “Yes, of course.” I haven’t told him about all the cards in my fortune. He only knows about the Pierced Swans and the Red Card, not about the Midnight Forest and the Fanged Creature.
He doesn’t know I’ll have to die.
He presses a kiss to the top of my head, and a shower of warmth prickles over me. I curl my toes in the grass against the urge to nuzzle closer to him. I remind myself what I told Fiora about Axel: We’re both really, really good friends. Friends who love each other. I can’t let his charm deepen my feelings. He’s destined for Ella, and for reasons only fate knows, I need them as a pair to help me fulfill my journey.
“We’ve gotten this far,” he says. “We’ll figure out the rest when we get there.”
I close my eyes and pretend I have more than one wish, and that I don’t need the Book of Fortunes to grant it.
I wish that Axel is right.
CHAPTER 15
There are faces in the trees. They start to catch my attention toward the end of the second day as we continue following the river downstream. It’s that time of evening when the light is scattering to dusk and it’s easier to believe things I wouldn’t think possible if the sun were still shining.
At first I wonder if my eyes are deceiving me. I’m tired and hungry and worried that we haven’t seen another Lost One since Fiora. Maybe I’m inventing people out of sheer desperation. But why would I imagine their faces warped and their expressions twisted in agony? The knots and ridges on the trunks are their howling mouths, wrenched brows, and terror-stricken eyes.
Axel and Henni must not see them or they would have said something. I’m too afraid to speak about the faces myself for fear I’m descending into madness like Fiora.
When we go to sleep that night, we don’t light a campfire. We’re out of deadwood. “Deadwood” takes on a whole new meaning now that I wonder if dead people have become the trees. Ironic since those trees are alive, except for the ash struck by lightning. Or perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe the people in the trees are still living but trapped behind the bark.
Are any of them my mother?
The next day, my friends and I don’t speak as much. Until now, any silence between us has been comfortable, but now the quiet strains, tearing stitch by stitch at the seams holding my confidence together.
