Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall (47 page)

"No," Cinderella uttered, backing away from the scene, for it was not the way things were supposed to go. They had succeeded. He could not just come back
for them. "Grimm!" she called. "Grimm! Grimmmmm! Come back here, you coward!"

"Cinderella." Caratasa rushed to her, catching her arms, her gaze too kind to endure. "It was not him."

"It was him," Cinderella countered. "People do not just..."

"Die?" Caratasa questioned. "Of course, they do. People live and they die. That is life. Oh, Love..." Her gaze was soft on Cinderella's face. "Did you
think you could save everyone?"

"He made the sorceress what she is," Cinderella argued.

"And you gave her choice," Caratasa replied, refusing to let Cinderella go. "You wanted freedom. Freedom is the right to follow one's heart. You cannot
expect every heart to be good."

"But..."

"Look at them," Caratasa instructed, directing Cinderella's eyes back to those gathered around the queen.

"They are in pain," Cinderella sobbed.

"The queen is not," Caratasa said. "She is at peace. And what you see now, Cinderella, it is real. Both the happiness and the sorrow. That is all any of us
can ask."

Looking to Christophe with his family, to Sawyer and Rhian, Cinderella at last saw Jack sitting alone, arms on his knees as he stared forlornly at the
ground. She knew then that he had held out hope, that, when he learned of the disappearances, he believed his mother taken by Grimm, that he believed she
was not in their cottage when the giant fell atop it.

Grieving his loss a second time, Jack looked irreparably alone. As she watched, though, Baby G sauntered away from the rest of the dwarves, approaching
Jack slowly, and plopped down in the grass beside him. Reaching out, Jack yanked Baby G's cap down over his eyes, grinning as Baby G pulled it back up with
a huff, and Cinderella realized Jack was not alone at all.

At a tug upon her dress, Cinderella turned to meet two familiar faces that were the last she expected to see. "Hansel and Gretel," she uttered."You are
free?"

Rushing into her with smiles, their arms clung tightly around her, and Cinderella clutched onto them, too numb to feel.

"Can you care for us now?" Gretel asked, glancing up at her, the happy tears in her eyes a striking contrast to those that still sounded across the
clearing.

"Yes," Cinderella whispered at once. "I can care for you."

"We will talk more on that later." Caratasa wrangled them away from Cinderella. "Now, let us leave this place."

Maneuvering Hansel and Gretel toward the others who remained, Caratasa called them to attention, and they followed her command, getting to their feet to
leave the Gulf and its haunted memories behind.

Trying to lift his wife and daughter as one, Snow White's father struggled, and Sawyer rushed to his aid, looking to the king for permission as he slipped
an arm beneath Snow White's knees and another behind her back, freeing the king to carry his wife.

Hand on her arm turning her, the numbness within receded as Cinderella met Rapunzel's eyes, wet with tears somewhere between those of Gretel and those of
Snow White, filled with both joy and grief.

"Let us go home, My Love," she said, and Cinderella's anger dissolved, all tears that fell only sadness and relief. For they had succeeded, but they had
succeeded at a cost, so both were due.

"I will go wherever you want me to go," she whispered, feeling that very truth of feeling Caratasa had talked about as Rapunzel stepped closer to her.

Arms sliding around Rapunzel's waist, only warmth remained, and Cinderella knew that she was right to want more, that she was right to yearn.

When Rapunzel's lips met hers, they felt so real Cinderella trembled, and then the ground itself trembled. Not the quake of the giant, Cinderella
recognized the feeling from one time before, when they waited in fear in Aulis.

With a crash all around them, the Gulf of Broken Dreams suddenly changed. The false daylight lifted, and the moon appeared bright and guiding overhead.

Night as night should be.

As real as Cinderella or Rapunzel.

F
eet pounding over the earth, the hunter followed the dog's bark, pulling his bow up before him as he rushed from the cover of the trees.

The anticipated buck nowhere in sight, he lowered his weapon again, watching the hound bark at a window that, cloaked in earliest sunlight, glistened a
rainbow of color.

"Come on, Duke," the hunter called the dog back to the task, but, giant paws resting upon the windowsill, the dog continued to stare into the cottage,
finding something of greater interest than the fresh meat the hunter always tossed him when he helped bag a deer.

Approaching the cottage slowly, the glint impaired the hunter's vision as he glanced through the window, his gaze skimming over books upon books, scattered
on shelves and in piles and on a large desk, before he at last spotted the man that hunched over the desk amidst them. Head resting on its side, the man
appeared to be asleep, or more than asleep.

At the hunter's hesitation, the dog barked again, making a noisy fuss in the early morning peace.

"All right, Duke," the hunter said, pulling him down from the window and rapping softly on the glass. "Hello?" he called when the knock failed to stir the
man inside.

Around the corner of the cottage, the dog barked again, and the hunter followed the scratch of claws as the hound tried to take down the door. Attempting
the handle, the door held fast, and the hunter slipped the hunting knife from the sheath as his belt, sliding its blade between the door and the frame,
popping the lock free.

The door swinging into silence, the dog rushed in at once, going to the man at the desk and licking the hand that hung limp at his side. Following with
greater reluctance, the hunter startled back when the man stared straight at him, eyes open, but unseeing, the smile upon his face affixed, as if he was
happy in death.

A quill fell so close to the hand that remained on the desk, the hunter thought the man must have died holding it, but the pages of the open book beneath
him were blank but for a single line that seemed to pause mid-thought, as if he ran out of time to finish it.

"And they lived...," it read.