The forest grimm, p.2
The Forest Grimm, page 2
The murderer’s identity still remains unknown. All we can be sure of is that on the day the victim’s body was discovered, the Book of Fortunes vanished.
Just as mysteriously as it had first appeared in Grimm’s Hollow, the book disappeared from the pavilion where the villagers kept it in this very meadow. Many believe that a large willow uprooted itself and stole the book away with weeping branches. However it happened, the willow also went missing, and a trail of root-like footprints remained, leading to and from the pavilion.
Without the book—without a wish that so many others were able to obtain before me—I hoped the forest would compensate with kindness when my name was drawn in the lottery. But it didn’t grant me any favors. To be fair, it never welcomes anyone chosen from the amber goblet. None of us make it more than a few yards inside the forest before we’re spit back out again. I certainly didn’t.
So far this ritual is just as cursed as our village.
But today will be different. Today I’m determined to succeed. I’ve made a detailed map of the forest, gleaned from the knowledge of what the villagers remember from days before the curse when they could come and go freely. And I won’t wait another month for the lottery year to end, when the names will be reshuffled, to test my luck with it.
All I have to do is be chosen again. And for that I have a strategy.
I’m alone at the table, but I glance over my shoulder to make sure no villagers are watching. Those who are missing Lost Ones like I am are busy presenting gifts at the carved altar, just shy of the trailhead. One foot beyond it is the stark line of ashes that marks the forest border, and no one so much as lets a bootlace slip past it.
The forest doesn’t allow anyone to enter anymore, not unless they’re destined to become Lost—and no one willfully chooses that. Our offerings are given in hopes to pacify the forest to yield to our attempt on every Devotion Day.
Ingrid Struppin, who lost her husband, drags her patched skirt away from the line and sets a bowl of porridge on the altar. Gretchen Ottel, who lost her brother, bends her willowy frame to rest a bouquet of wildflowers beside it, then sneezes. She claps a hand over her mouth and stares ahead wide-eyed. That sneeze surely crossed the line, but thankfully the forest doesn’t stir.
“Gesundheit,” Hans Muller tells her, steadying a cup of ale by Gretchen’s wildflowers—weak ale if it’s anything like the jug I bartered a skein of yarn for five days ago. Once the cup is placed, he scampers back from the line of ashes. As he removes his straw hat and bows his head, he murmurs something. I think it’s the name of his Lost mother, Rilla.
The villagers’ offerings are more meager than they once were, but they’re the best anyone can afford nowadays. The curse that fell upon us three years ago takes a harder toll with every passing month. This meadow is proof. No flowers bloom here anymore. The parched wild grass is too choked by thorny drought-tolerant weeds.
As futile as Devotion Day always is, our desperation to save the Lost Ones drives us to play out this ritual month after month. No one, including me, knows what else to do to regain the forest’s good graces, cross its border, and be permitted to make the dangerous journey to recover the Lost.
And finding the Lost is only half the task. The lottery winner is also expected to obtain the Book of Fortunes, wherever it’s hidden in the Forest Grimm. If the woods allow it to be retrieved, we believe the curse will be lifted. The land will be healed, and the Lost will find their way back home.
This much we’ve learned from a riddle that the book left behind. Not all of Sortes Fortunae went missing. A single page remained in the pavilion on a pedestal, and on that page were the following green-inked, magicked words:
A murderous wish
An end of peace
The curse is wrought
My blessings cease.
Falling water
Lost words found
A selfless wish
The curse unbound.
The first half of the riddle explained what set the curse in motion—a wish on the book that resulted in murder—and the last half revealed how to break the curse. The riddle also gave the only clue to how to find the book: near “falling water.” A waterfall seems the obvious conclusion, but if it were that simple, the Lost Ones would have already found the book and returned home. None have.
No matter the difficulty, I vow to find Sortes Fortunae. It feels just as much my destiny as the one Grandmère foretold for me. The Fanged Creature card may have spelled my untimely death, but I won’t let it happen before I save my mother from her death. Ending the curse and saving her—they’re both intertwined. I need the book to make a wish to rescue her from the forest, as well as her fate.
When I’m sure no one has eyes on me, I refocus on my task. Quick as a falcon, I pluck a handful of folded papers from my apron pocket, cast them into the amber goblet, and rush away.
Seconds later, a youthful baritone voice calls from a few yards behind me, “Where are you running off to, Clara?” I know he’s smiling from the teasing lilt of his tone. “I can’t remember a time you missed the lottery, even when you weren’t old enough to enter.”
I fight an eye roll as I slowly spin to face Axel. Of course he had to rub in our age difference, as if the two years between us mean he’s gleaned that much more experience in the lottery. He’s only ever had his name drawn once, same as me.
Every year more than thirty villagers place their names in the amber goblet, of their own free will, but only one name is drawn monthly, when the dark of the moon has passed and then waxed to a crescent. A sign of good luck for travelers. The people of Grimm’s Hollow cling to any superstition that might help bring back the Lost Ones and break the curse on our village.
I haven’t answered Axel yet. I’m still scavenging my brain for an excuse as he walks toward me with that easy swagger of his, confident yet unaffected. Like everything else about him, it exudes a natural charm he’s oblivious to, which makes the village girls bat their lashes in such a flutter you’d think they’d developed tics.
They’d need to bat him over the head with a cudgel to get him to notice. He’s only ever had eyes for one girl, and she’s Lost just like my mother.
“Well?” He leans his weight on one leg, hands stuffed in his homespun trouser pockets. His casual air carries over to the rest of his appearance. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled back to reveal corded tawny arms, and his spruce-blue vest is unbuttoned, flapping in the breeze like bed linens on a clothesline. He chews on the end of a long piece of straw that glints as golden as his perfectly imperfect tousled hair. “What’s the rush?”
I fold my arms at his smirk. “I forgot my hat. If I’m chosen today, I’ll need it.”
“You never wear a hat. Not here, not anywhere.” His river-blue eyes lower to my nose. “All those freckles say the same.”
I shrug. “Today they begged for shade.”
Silent laughter ripples across his broad shoulders. “C’mon, Clara. I saw you throw something into the amber goblet just now.”
Heat surges into my cheeks. “It was only clover for good luck.”
“Clover isn’t white.”
“It is when it’s in bloom.”
His smile deepens, and he nods, humoring me. He pulls the straw from his mouth, dips his head nearer, and whispers conspiratorially, “How many papers were in your hand, hmm? How many times did you enter your name?”
I whirl to bolt, but he catches my arm and turns me back around. He’s a full head taller than I am, and standing this close, I have to tilt up my face to meet his gaze. I do so begrudgingly.
“Do you really think I’ll snitch on you?” He gives my arm a playful rattle. “You know me better than that.”
I suppose I do. When my father was alive, Axel used to help him during the lambing season. I helped Father too, as often as Mother and Grandmère could spare me.
One night, when I was thirteen and Axel was fifteen, two ewes went into labor. Father assisted the first one, and Axel and I worked together to deliver twins from the second—a nerve-racking endeavor. Neither of us had ever helped a ewe give birth without Father at our side.
Matters grew precarious when the second lamb was born and not breathing. Axel and I did our best to rouse him. We shook him by his hind legs and rubbed his body down with straw. When the lamb’s tiny lungs finally released a strong bleat, I burst into tears. Axel pulled me close and let me sob against his shoulder.
“How many papers were in your hand?” he prods again.
I stand taller and lock my knees. “Seven.”
“Seven!” He buckles with laughter. I smack his arm and bite down on a smile of my own. When he laughs, he wheezes, and it’s infuriatingly infectious.
I peek at the villagers. Several of them, including Herr Oswald, chairman of the village’s governing council, stare at us with eyebrows so angled they rival the slanted tufts of great horned owls. Eventually the villagers lose interest, and once they look away, Axel nudges me with his elbow.
“Hurry. If we’re quick, we can fix this.”
“Fix what?”
“All those extra names. They have to come out of the goblet.”
I dig my heels into the dead wild grass. “No.”
“People will realize you’ve fiddled with the order of things. Your name has already been drawn this year.”
“Who’s counting back as far as eleven months? I’m seventeen now and—”
“Clara—”
“The hour has come!” the village clockmaker calls. His voice rings loudly, but holds the weight of a death knell. “Gather round for the lottery.”
Any chatter on the air hushes in an instant. The only sound now is the whisper of the grass as the villagers pad through it, silent like mourners at a funeral. For many, hope that this month’s ritual will produce a favorable result hangs upon a thread spun thinner than spider silk.
Axel’s easygoing manner falters. He rubs the back of his neck and bends close to my ear. “You could still talk to Herr Oswald,” he says quietly. “It isn’t too late to tell him what you’ve done.”
I pull away and cross my arms. Why doesn’t Axel want me to be chosen? “Do you doubt my capability?” I keep my voice as low as his.
“It isn’t that.”
“You’ve seen my map. I’m more prepared than anyone.”
“I believe you, but the forest…” His eyes slide to the towering trees past the meadow, and his shoulders twitch. “You shouldn’t tempt fate.”
I cock a brow. “Isn’t it about time someone did?” I chance a smile. Hopefully it will spark one of his own. I’d rather be teased than worried over.
He shakes his head and finally cracks a small grin. “Fair enough.”
Satisfaction flits through me, but then my chest tightens. I got the smile I wanted, but I see past it to the ache Axel’s so good at hiding behind his mask of effortless charm.
He peeks around us at the other villagers. We’re still out of earshot, if that’s what he’s worried about. “If you’re chosen—”
“I’ll find her for you. I promise.”
His throat contracts with a hard swallow. “Then you’ll be the first lottery winner to be welcomed by the forest.”
“I will be.” I lift my chin. I’ve already placed my offering on the altar, the acorn Mother gave me seven years ago. If the Forest Grimm doesn’t accept it as the most precious thing I can sacrifice to gain its good graces, I don’t know what it ever will.
Axel searches my face for a long moment, like he’s going to say something more, but he doesn’t. He only nods, turns away abruptly, and meanders over to the parents of Ella, the girl he Lost last summer.
Her mother clasps Axel’s hand, and her father squeezes his shoulder. The Dantzers have taken him in like the son they never had but always wanted.
Herr Oswald steps up to the lottery table and clears his throat, slicking back his thinning hair with spindly fingers. He meets the eyes of everyone present, maybe thirty people, and when his gaze settles on me, I school my features, trying not to rouse any suspicion. I can’t appear overconfident at my odds.
“Never was a people more blessed by magic than we simple folk of Grimm’s Hollow,” he says, addressing the crowd as I slip in at the back of them. “Never was magic of this kind ever heard of among the forested mountain lands, or indeed anywhere that traveling merchants could bring tale of. But our ancestors sensed it. It’s what drew them to this place and helped them thrive here, favored with bountiful crops and healing well water.”
I know this story by heart. It’s the same one Herr Oswald shares every Devotion Day. If only I could be the one to tell it. His tone is reverent, but it’s lost all its fervor and hope.
“Our people respected the forest and lived in harmony among each other, ever generous, gentle, and kind. The Forest Grimm loved us in return—a love so strong that its magic culminated over a century ago to create Sortes Fortunae.”
I remember seeing the Book of Fortunes from a distance. The pedestal it was kept on still remains in this meadow, as well as the small pavilion that sheltered it. I wasn’t allowed to touch the book. No one was, not unless they had decided to use their one wish.
“When the villagers whispered their deepest desires to Sortes Fortunae, the book revealed how to obtain them,” Herr Oswald continues. “Each villager was given that chance when they came of age, and one chance was all. The book never answered a second wish.”
Sortes Fortunae doesn’t reward greedy hearts. Over the years, the people of Grimm’s Hollow came to realize that. Not only did the Book of Fortunes never grant anyone an additional wish, it also reversed the wishes of those who revealed them.
Gilly Himmel wished for beauty, but when she boasted of how Sortes Fortunae taught her how to achieve the most flawless skin in the mountain regions, she caught a pox that scarred her face with deep gouges.
Friedrich Brandt wished for wealth. But when the Book of Fortunes instructed him to mine his farmland and he struck a vein of silver, he celebrated with one too many cups of tavern ale. Tongue loosened, he spilled the secret of how he came by his riches. The next day, the tunnel with the silver vein collapsed, and every tunnel he dug afterward also caved in.
In time, the villagers came to appreciate the limitations of the Book of Fortunes, which helped keep Sortes Fortunae a secret unto itself. After all, if knowledge of its existence ever became widespread, people from all corners of the world would flock here, overrun this place, and abuse its resources. Grimm’s Hollow would no longer be the small haven that it is. Or once was.
“All was well for a time,” Herr Oswald continues, bringing my thoughts back to life before the curse, “until someone used Sortes Fortunae for an evil purpose—to kill another person.”
Shifty gazes turn on each other in the crowd. No one knows who it was that murdered Bren Zimmer, and if they did, what good would it do now? The blacksmith would still be in his grave. Even the magic of the forest doesn’t have the power to bring the dead back to life. If it did, the villagers would have tested it. They would have used their wishes to resurrect loved ones.
“Afterward, the Forest Grimm took the book away,” Herr Oswald says. “The well water turned rancid, and our crops died from disease.”
The villagers bow their heads. Sortes Fortunae vanished the day Bren Zimmer’s body was discovered, lying facedown in a stream with a kitchen knife stuck in his back.
“Many of us have tried to make amends with the forest to restore the book to our village, but every time someone crossed its border to find it, they never returned.”
That was back before monthly Devotion Days were held, back when people could still enter the forest without immediately being rejected. Over time, the forest started to cast out anyone who made an attempt. Devotion Days remain our last hope to regain the forest’s good will. If these woods can sense how much we still hold them in honor, even in the depths of our humbled circumstances, will they finally let us enter, find the book, break the curse, and bring back our Lost Ones?
I glance at the Tree of the Lost and the fluttering strip of rose-red wool. My chest pinches in the center of my rib cage, a spot that never loosens.
Mother was the first villager to venture into the forest after Sortes Fortunae was taken. Father had been missing for four days, and she was wrought with worry. I tried to placate her. Father had to be searching for a lost lamb, I had said. He’d been absent this long before. But she had insisted this time was different.
It was only when Grandmère explained on the fourth night that I finally understood why. Relaxed by her valerian tincture, she confessed that Father had asked her to read his fortune a few days prior, and she’d drawn for him three cards: the Moonless Night, Love Lost, and Water Wild.
The Moonless Night represented the night of the new moon—which was when Father disappeared.
Love Lost foretold lovers parted by a tragedy—anything from a heated argument to a grievous death. Mother feared death, as no harsh words had come between them.
And Water Wild symbolized an eventful circumstance in or around a moving body of water, such as a stormy sea or a turbulent river. As Grimm’s Hollow was a month’s travel from the sea, Mother feared Water Wild meant an occurrence in one of the raging rivers in the Forest Grimm.
On the morning of the fifth day, she refused to wait any longer for Father’s return. She set off after him, heading for the stream that divides our sheep farm from the forest.
“Don’t go!” I’d cried, clutching her sleeve. I couldn’t lose two parents. Father may have had a formidable card reading, but Mother’s fortune was more direct, more bleak. The Fanged Creature meant her untimely death, and the Midnight Forest her forbidden choice. I knew deep in my bones that she was making that choice right then. The choice that would ultimately kill her. “Grandmère needs you! I need you!”
She tugged her arm away, which only made me sob harder, but then she stooped to cup my chin with her hand. “Never doubt your own strength, Clara. You were made to weather fiercer trials than this.”
