The forest grimm, p.16
The Forest Grimm, page 16
Some of the surrounding trees unearth their roots and shrink to the size of people, becoming humanlike. They step out onto the dance floor in pairs and begin to twirl with their branchy arms twined around each other.
The forest strikes up a symphony of chirping crickets, crooning nightingales, and woodwind breezes. My beating heart adds the percussion.
I weave about the dancing trees, my glass-slippered feet picking up the one-two-three rhythm of their mesmerizing waltz. All I need now is a partner. A handsome maple offers me his hand, but I politely decline with a shake of my head and a curtsy. I want someone else.
I find him under a red-spotted mushroom that is taller than my mother’s Grimm oak. He’s sitting propped against its white stem, his eyes glazed over. But once he sees me, those eyes focus and warm. He rises to his feet. His homespun shirt, vest, and trousers fade away into smoke, and I find him wearing a regal gold-and-ivory ensemble instead: a brocade high-collared frock coat, a silk waistcoat beneath, and velvet breeches tucked into tall, polished boots.
His hands take me by my waist, and he pulls me close so our bodies are touching. “Clara,” he whispers, and my name on his lips has a taste and smell, like every summer evening bottled up in a heady blend of black-cherry wine.
I lean into him. “Dance with me.”
His right hand drifts around my back, while his left hand clutches my right one and lifts our arms together. We start to spin and travel across the dance floor. The trees make way for us. The moon and stars keep us lit. They shine along our path and limn us in silver.
“Why are you crying?” Axel’s voice is a tender murmur.
I’m crying? Only then do I feel the tears slipping down my cheeks. “I suppose it’s happiness.” But if that’s true, why does a sharp pain slice through the center of my chest? “Don’t let me go. I don’t want it to end.” Pain is better than losing him.
His hand withdraws from my back, and the ache inside me intensifies. But then he brushes my tears away and kisses my forehead. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He folds me closer against him, and I lay my head on his shoulder. We sway to a slower rhythm and a purer melody, and then our feet lift off the ground. We float over the wild grass, the sparkling pond, the blooming water lilies. The trees in the meadow retreat to the borders of the ballroom and grow back into giants that frame us with boughs of pine needles and leaves of oak and maple.
“Do you have wings?” I ask Axel, dizzy from the beautiful weightlessness of how he holds me.
A soft chuckle vibrates through his torso. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
I stare at him and what I can see of myself. It’s true that no wings expand from our backs, but his frock coat and my dress have sprouted silky white feathers. Swan feathers.
More tears trickle down my face. They slip in rivulets beneath my jaw and slide down my neck. I’m not supposed to fall in love. The Pierced Swans card was never meant to be about me. How could it be when Grandmère also drew the Fanged Creature? It isn’t fair.
“What isn’t fair?” Axel asks, and I realize I’ve spoken aloud. I can’t keep my answer trapped inside me any longer. It’s been eating at me since he kissed my eyes beneath the sycamore. If I’m being truthful with myself, it’s been eating at me since he let me cry on his shoulder after we delivered the twin lambs.
“To love before death,” I say.
His gaze penetrates mine, and though his eyes are overly bright and his pupils are dilated, his river-blue irises are unbearably soft and filled with sympathy. “What kind of life would it be otherwise?”
“But it shouldn’t happen so soon.”
“Love?”
“Death.”
“We’re not going to die in this forest, Clara.”
He won’t, anyway. And while I’m glad of that, it doesn’t hold my heart together. “You will be so happy with Ella. You’ll be a part of a true family again, just like you’ve always wanted.”
He bows his head. “I don’t want to hurt Ella or her family.”
“Of course you don’t.”
“They’ve been so good to me.”
“I know.”
“I need to bring her back home. I promised myself I would do that.”
“You don’t have to explain.” If he does, I know what he’ll say next—that she won’t leave here unless he marries her. “I understand what has to happen tonight.”
“But you don’t understand how I feel about…” He shakes his head and lifts his eyes to mine. They seem to reflect the pain inside me. “Clara, how am I supposed to…?”
“Stop.” I push my hand against his chest.
“I can’t.” He takes my face in his hands and tilts my head up.
We’re no longer dancing, but we keep floating as the world spins around us. The stars zoom about and transform into fireflies. White feathers grow from the ends of my hair and climb Axel’s shirt to fringe his collar.
His gaze lowers to my lips, and my heartbeat quickens, an unrestrained pulse thrashing through my limbs, fingertips, and toes. He’s going to kiss me, and I’m going to let him, even if it’s a kiss of pity or apology. I can’t die without knowing how it feels.
My arms fold around the back of his neck, and I draw him closer. His breath heats my face. Our mouths are almost touching. I close my eyes. His lower lip catches the edge of mine, just a flutter of pressure. I shudder, murmuring, “Axel.”
“Axel?” Ella’s voice crashes into my awareness. Although it’s soft and airy, it booms unnaturally through my head.
I rip out of Axel’s arms and stumble backward, both feet planted on the meadow dance floor again. The world stops spinning. Ella and Henni have just emerged from the top of the stone stairs. They’re standing beneath the natural arch of two trees that lean against one another.
Ella is twenty feet away, yet she fills my vision completely. The feathers in my hair and skirt shrink and fade as I take in her ethereal appearance.
Her dress is entirely made of white feathers. They fan upward to cover her chest in a heart shape and spread out at her hips like wings. They cascade down her skirt in snowy puffs that sweep onto the wild grass.
Her pouted lips are petal pink, and her hair is pinned into a sleek bun with artfully arranged clusters of feathers that fasten above each ear.
Her bloodred veil is a striking contrast to all the white. It flows, hanging from the base of her bun down her bare back until it spills off her skirt and swirls in a long train that’s triple the length it used to be.
In a distant corner of my mind, I’m aware that I’m hallucinating, that Ella must still be in her worn cinder-blackened wedding gown. But that isn’t a comfort. She’s a beautiful bride no matter what she’s wearing, and she’s going to be Axel’s wife before midnight. It will cut me to the bone, but I have to let it be so. Otherwise she won’t come home, and Henni’s and Axel’s hearts will break forever. It’s better that mine does. My friends will be able to leave this forest once our journey is over, but my fate is destined to end here.
Ella glides toward Axel and me under the moonlight. Henni follows in her shadow, wearing a much simpler dress than her sister. It’s a bruised shade of purple, and the skirt’s length is juvenile in the way it only falls to her knees. Guilt nicks me when I catch Henni’s eye. Her frown is as sullen as the last time she spotted Axel and me almost kissing.
But Ella seems to have forgotten what she walked in on a moment ago. Either that or she’s an excellent actress. Her smile is serene, and her dancer-graceful arms are free from any tension. There’s only a hint of something darker and angrier in her slightly narrowed gaze.
She joins us where we stand at the edge of the pond, and her long-lashed eyes sweep over Axel. “You make a magnificent groom, my prince.”
And he does. The rending ache in my chest tears deeper as I absorb how he’s changed. He’s now clothed fully in white like Ella. A cloak of white feathers drapes over one of his shoulders, and a crown of gold rings his head.
Perhaps the Pierced Swans aren’t two people, but three, I realize. Axel and Ella are the pair who feel truest love for each other, and I’m the star-crossed bird floating above them with an arrow in my heart.
“Dance with me,” Ella says to Axel, the same words I spoke to him earlier. “One dance and then we will take our vows.”
He shifts on his feet. “Ella, I—”
“It’s almost midnight. I lost you once on the eve of our wedding. I refuse to let that happen again. I won’t be a tomorrow-bride any longer.” She draws back her slim shoulders and lifts her chin high. “We will marry before the clock strikes twelve.”
CHAPTER 21
There is no clock in this meadow, but Ella must hear its ticking the same way I do, the way we’ve both heard it tick for so long—me in my haste to save my mother, and her in her lost patience to wed the boy who was almost hers last summer.
“So many white feathers,” I murmur, watching Axel and Ella sweep across the meadow in a new waltz, only now the forest’s music is out of time. Ella is leading Axel faster than its tempo.
“White feathers?” Henni asks, coming to stand beside me.
“His clothes. Her dress.”
“But Ella is in a golden dress.” Henni stares at her sister with eyes that are glossy and wide, her pupils dilated just like Axel’s and Ella’s and also mine, I’m sure.
“Is that how you see her?” I wobble on my feet. Axel and Ella flip-flop in my vision. Where they were moving left to right, they’re now moving right to left.
Henni says something, but the words sound strangely muffled. Then she repeats herself, her voice suddenly amplified like it’s bouncing through a rocky canyon. “It’s almost midnight! Gather round for the lottery!”
I startle. “Is it Devotion Day? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I turn to Henni, but my friend’s sweet face is gone. It’s now the village clockmaker who stands beside me. He checks the hour on his pocket watch and clicks it shut. “How many times did you enter your name?” He cocks a thick brow at me.
Oh no. “You found out about that?” All the scraps of paper hidden inside my apron pocket?
His smile pierces through all my defenses. But it’s Axel’s smile now, not the clockmaker’s. Axel is standing beside me, while another Axel dances with Ella. And there’s a third Axel in the meadow—my Axel?—only this meadow is another meadow, the one on the outskirts of the Forest Grimm. The sun shines on his tanned skin. He’s chewing on a piece of straw, and he pulls it from his mouth as he leans his head closer to mine. “Hurry. If we’re quick, we can fix this.”
“Fix what?”
“All those extra names. They have to come out of the amber goblet.”
“But wait … I never put them in the goblet.” Or did I?
The Axel beside me disappears, and a replica of myself takes his place. “You’re hallucinating, Clara,” the second me says. She’s wearing my old faded dress and the cape dyed with red rampion. “It isn’t Devotion Day.”
“You’re wrong. I’ll show you.” I crouch and try to slide off my left slipper, the one made of amber glass. I need to make sure seven papers are still inside it. I didn’t count them when they fell in earlier. “I have to hurry,” I tell me as I tug on the slipper. Why won’t it come off? I fumble with a pair of laces I don’t see, but I can feel. They shouldn’t be there. My slippers have no laces. “I can’t wait for another time to be chosen. Axel needs me.”
“Don’t you mean Mother needs you?”
“I…” Isn’t that what I said? “Yes, of course.”
The second me steps closer, and her red cape brushes my arm. “Do you really imagine Ella will let Axel leave her hollow after they’re wed?”
My eyes turn to the pair of them dancing. Ella’s head is on Axel’s shoulder the way mine was earlier, but her fingers dig into his back like claws.
“She won’t abandon the place where she’s learned to feel control over her life,” second me adds. “She’ll keep him drugged, and she’ll harm anyone who tries to take him away.”
“Maybe she won’t have to drug him,” I counter. “Maybe he’ll want to remain here.” Axel doesn’t seem bothered by Ella’s desperate embrace. His gaze is riveted to her, his expression ardent and earnest. “He loves her.”
“You need him,” second me insists. “He’s necessary to your journey.”
“Only if he’s with Ella. Look at them. Could it be any more obvious that they’re the Pierced Swans?” They twirl and twirl, a dizzying haze of flocked white.
“You see what you want to see, Clara.”
I glare at the second me. “Then why are you here?”
“You want me to go?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.” The reflection of me transforms. She grows a few inches taller and several years older.
It’s my mother now beside me, wearing the cornflower-blue dress and red cape.
I suck in a sharp breath, more startled by her than anyone else I’ve seen. I thought I remembered her exactly, but I was mistaken. I forgot how her green eyes are slightly closer-set than mine, and how her sable hair has threads of gray.
I had preserved her in my mind as young, the way I saw her as a child, but she’s more like the Grimm oak she planted with her father, its leaves crisp and golden in the autumn once it had matured for many years.
“Did you keep the acorn I gave you?” she asks.
“Of course.” My voice is a reverent hush.
“But did you keep its meaning?”
I’m not sure I understand, though I remember the last words Mother said to me before journeying into the forest: The acorn was about your life, not mine. “Oaks live hundreds of years. You told me they’re almost eternal. The acorn reminds me that I can save you.” I have my own reasons for keeping it.
“But that’s not why I gave it to you, Clara. It was a gift meant to remind you to live. You haven’t been doing that, not truly. Why won’t you spread your wings?”
Is she really arguing with me about this? “You’re the one who made me the cape. You wanted me to find you in case you didn’t return home.”
“You see what you want to see.”
“I only want to see you.” My voice cracks.
“And what about him?” Mother tenderly takes me by the chin and turns my head toward Axel. He’s stopped dancing. Henni has ushered him to stand under the arched trees at the edge of the meadow where it meets the top of the stone stairs. Ella is standing fifty feet away, like a bride at the entrance of a chapel. The train of her feathered dress and her long red veil fan out behind her. “Do you think he really wants to marry Ella Dantzer? Or is he the sort of boy who would sacrifice his happiness just to bring her safely home?”
Flashes of memories play out before me like glimpses of a traveling troupe of actors, except the performers are people I know, and Axel—a copy of Axel—is the constant among them in their rapidly changing scenes.
First he’s twelve, the age he was when his father died in the avalanche. He’s plowing his uncle’s field while the man shouts at him and swings a jug of ale like he’s going to use it to beat him.
Now Axel’s a little older, maybe thirteen. He’s helping the young Trager couple who used to live near the Dantzer farm. They’re both sick with a fever, and he’s repairing the roof of their small cottage. They offer to pay, but he won’t accept their money.
The scene flashes, and now he’s carrying the small Eckhart boy on his shoulders as his parents walk beside them to the village square. The mother is pregnant and the father leans on a crutch, nursing a broken foot.
Axel is everywhere in Grimm’s Hollow, among everyone. Even reclusive Fiora Winther allows him to run an errand for her, passing him a sealed envelope to deliver.
And then Axel is with me. He’s throwing tufts of wool in my hair to get me to laugh while I’m learning to shear sheep. Then he’s racing me, each of us carrying pails of sheep milk. We’re playing a game to see who can run the fastest without spilling a drop. Next he’s teasing me. It’s the first time I’ve danced with a boy at the harvest festival. Axel sneaks up behind us and pulls the ribbons loose in my braids.
Now it’s the night I remember most, the night we helped the struggling ewe deliver her twin lambs. Axel keeps me anchored with his strength and buoys me with words of encouragement. There’s no teasing from him then, no poking fun. When I burst into tears as we finish saving the second lamb, Axel’s warm arms surround me and his hands smooth my hair.
“I think he’s a boy who deserves a girl that can outlive this forest,” I tell my mother.
“What if he is like you, and he doesn’t know what he deserves?” She tips her head at me knowingly. “What if he has also forgotten how to live?”
The younger Axel fades away, and the Axel under the arched trees remains. Ella is only five feet from him now, mere steps from completing her advance down the meadow.
“You can put blinders on, Clara,” Mother says, “but is it fair to allow Axel to make the same mistake?”
My jaw muscle tightens. “I shouldn’t listen to you.” It cuts me to say it, but it’s the truth. “You’re not my real mother. You’re my mind warped with mushrooms.”
I expect her to look offended, but she only lifts a dark brow and betrays a sliver of a smile, the way she did when I was little and tried to hide a pottery crock I had broken. “I’m still in your mind, Clara. I’m what you really want to hear deep inside you, otherwise you wouldn’t have chosen me to say it.” She starts to fade, growing transparent.
“Wait!” My heart slams faster. “Don’t go!”
“Wake up, dear heart,” she says, her voice firm but tender. “Fight. Live.”
She vanishes.
One dry sob chokes out of me. But I don’t allow another. I frantically search for a pocket I can’t see. Somewhere beneath this illusion of a ball gown is my old dress. I finally find the pocket. My fingers dig inside and wrap around the corked bottle of black powder. I pull it out. Dump a good portion in my mouth and wash it down with pond water.
“Axel!” I wipe my face and spring across the meadow. “Stop!”
