Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales (6 page)

“If she must turn back, she must choose it now,” Poplar said. But she sounded like a child who was required to return a puppy to the pound.

“Indeed,” Myrtle said. She walked to a window and looked out into the night. The chair that held Briar changed back to its old form. Its arms and legs freeing her. She stood up, rubbing her sore arms, and backed toward the door.

Myrtle was still turned away from Briar when she spoke— now slowly, calmly, as if there was nothing left to lose. “Yes we knew your mother. She came from a humble birth, but she had a high and noble rebirth.”

“Oh yes,” Poplar said. “Quite the noble rebirth. It happened spontaneously—well, like they all do—when she turned sixteen. You know, one day you're shoveling the fireplace ashes, the next you're riding in a coach to the king's ball.”

Briar held the key in her fingers and found courage again to speak. “This. What does it open?”

Myrtle shrugged. “How should we know? All we can tell you is that it was once your mother's.” She turned back around to face Briar. “And now it is yours.”

Poplar scurried close to Briar and fussed with her hair. “Oh, my dear, your mother was such a beautiful woman; a woman of high rank and influence, and beloved—she was so beloved. You came along sometime after she was already well into her power,
which is why the seers all believe that your mother's same power may have, well, transferred to you.”

Myrtle then spoke, her words like icicles. “Sister, say no more. She must choose by her own wit and her own knowing. You'll only confuse the situation. And time has run out.”

“Don't be so certain, Myrtle,” Ash said. His voice was deep and resonant, sudden and halting. The words carried weight. “After all, she knows nothing of us—of our world. I'd wager that a girl plucked from her home would more likely choose from fear than she would because of some humbug omen that she's never even heard about. We hadn't thought this through before we barged into her life. And now, though I'll admit her eyes are familiar, it seems that nothing less than a test would be in order before we could know with certainty.”

“A test!” Poplar seemed to perk up now. She patted Briar's hands and Briar pulled away.

“No. I'm not doing any tests,” Briar said. She backed up toward the parlor door. “I'm outta here.”

She bolted through the door and clomped down the narrow hallway past the towering clock, which practically went into tick-tock convulsions. The stitched flowers in the tapestry bowed in her wake. She grabbed indiscriminately at doorknobs as she rushed down the hall, but each was locked.

Finally one miraculously swung open. Not caring if there was another giant bird, or a singing crocodile on the other side, she flung herself through and slammed the door shut.

Chapter 9

Briar pressed her back to the door and huffed, then doubled over, dizzy and nauseous. It was several minutes before she could stand without feeling as though she might topple over or spew all over herself.

When she could focus on her surroundings, she found that she was standing in a somber stone chamber. A bassinet covered in cobwebs stood at the far end of the room, standing across a gray expanse of interlocking flagstone blocks.

A swag of purple velvet pulled back with a tasseled rope hung solemnly against a wall from a high bracket that was placed at least three stories above her head. Behind the drapery, she saw part of a tall slim window of deep jewel-tone purple and lavender stained glass. But there was nothing else in the chamber except a short object, the size of a tricycle, covered with a sheet near the window.

She checked the door and found that it could not lock from the inside. She felt heat forming in her stomach and she wanted to scream to do something other than hide behind the door in some weird chamber.

But she was beginning to think she might be safe. They would never know into which of the million doors she had wandered. She released the knob and took a step back. She waited and waited, but still, no one tried the door. When it seemed like she wasn't being followed, she ambled across the room to the crumbling bassinet. It stood below long dramatic swags of threadbare cloth hung like decaying boat sails from the grand ceiling.

It seemed to Briar that the cradle was once magnificent—for a child of royalty she supposed. Scrolls of elaborately entwined carved wood looked like vines surrounding the top of the cradle. And into the headboard, there was a dragon gracefully whittled
and trimmed with gold leaf that was now rubbed off in places and disintegrated.

As she had suspected, the cradle was empty. Thick webs covered the strewn bed sheets and flecks of something white and powdery speckled the bedding. Her eyes were drawn to the floor where she noticed more of the fine powder smudged and scattered by shoe and—could it be?—canine paw prints.

Daring not to disturb this arrangement, she backed away toward the sheet-covered object near the window. She couldn't understand why the bassinet was left to deteriorate, while some other object in the room was carefully protected.

First she kicked it lightly with her boot just in case something living was unseen beneath the cloth. But this only served to pull a portion of the cloth away to reveal what looked like an old spoked bicycle wheel—if, that is, bicycles were made of wood.

Not wanting to touch anything with her hands, she used her boot to pull aside the rest of the cloth. It was an old spinning wheel. Although it looked antique, it also seemed to be well cared for; it was oiled and gleaming as though in regular use. It had a shapely grooved and spoked wheel that looked like the captain's wheel of a pirate ship. A fattened spool of gray wool was perched prominently on the device and wrapped about a slim, gleaming spike.

She also spotted a crudely hewn doll tied with black cord to the horizontal flat board of the spinning wheel. It was made from brown sackcloth, dressed in a poorly sewn, cinched-up, Victorian gown and calf-high boots. Two large Xs were sewn in the place of the doll's eyes; the mouth was sutured with coarse zigzag stitches and stuffed with something dried, green and noxious smelling. The herbal stuffing protruded between the rudimentary stitches. Long black yarn hair hung limply around its cheeks.

Briar would have been alarmed by her appalling lookalike poppet, but the glinting spindle of the spinning wheel immediately absorbed her full attention. She was overcome by an urge to
feel its sharpness, to even feel it pierce her skin, and see blood run from her finger. Her mind emptied of all other thought, so mesmerized was she by the spinning wheel and its intoxicating spindle. Oddly alert and focused, she stretched her hand out, craving the prick of steel much like she had felt before with her piercings of ear, tongue, and brow, the sharp satisfaction once metal lanced flesh. And now, wonderfully, deliciously, she would feel it again. It was just within reach.

The door behind her burst open, just as her finger hovered above the spindle. Two wolf creatures, like those that had attacked Leon's car, stood on their hind feet staring with their muzzles open. They both wore strapping thick, black leather and shining metal armor, spiked rivets gleaming at their shoulders, and they carried long spears.

“Stop!” One of the creatures growled in a canine perversion of a human voice. Its growl-words sounded sickening to Briar. She faced the two abominations with an indrawn breath, yet their grotesqueness, their ferocity, did not derail the unrelenting inclination to prick her hand—to even pierce her whole body through with the spike. But she had to address this interruption.

The two wolfguard rushed upon her, spears forward, gray fur on their hunched backs bristled. The second wolf's amber eyes widened in recognition and he stopped mid-stride. He tried to form words, but was not as successful as his comrade. His utterings were simple whining and animal grunts. He grabbed his fellow guard by the shoulder. They dropped their spears and lay with their bellies low to the floor, ears tucked back, as though in fear of Briar. They looked down, averting their gaze from her. “For-give.” The growl-voiced wolf tried to form the words in its tartared, fangy mouth.

Briar stood, pulled by both fear and an ungovernable longing for the spindle. The wolves had spears, but they would not satisfy like the prick from a spindle of a spinning wheel. She had to touch it.

The whining wolf dared a quick glance from where he lay, then suspiciously eyed Briar. “Not
her,”
he rasped. His version of a mock human voice was eerier than the first wolf's. Then he crouched as though he might spring to her throat. He curled his lips and bore his sharp teeth.

Perhaps he wanted to touch the spindle too, Briar thought. But it belonged to her now. She felt a surge of ferocity, like a protecting lioness.

“Get out,” she heard herself say in a commanding whisper. The growling wolf narrowed his yellow-slitted eyes and dove forward. Briar put her arms out to protect the spinning wheel. The wolf that was left cowering on the ground, suddenly growled wildly and leapt at the first wolf, sinking his teeth savagely into his side.

The two wolves brawled, barking, growling angrily at one another. Finally the whining wolf caught the first one by the throat and clamped down. His muzzle became drenched with blood as he pinned the first wolf to the floor. The pinned wolf cried and wildly attempted to get free, his limbs helplessly flailing. But eventually he became still and his tongue lolled from his open mouth.

“Get out!” Briar's imperious energy filled the chamber. The victorious wolf, huffing in the cold chamber air, bared his fangs again. He looked away from Briar, almost deferentially. He bit the dead wolf by his blood-drenched pelt and carried his slack carcass from the chamber.

Briar followed the creature to the door and once it was gone, she slammed the door shut. She turned back now to the spinning wheel and outstretched her shaking hand.
It's mine
, she thought, stepping slowly, allowing the moment to linger before she savored the sharp bite. Not knowing any longer who or where she was, Briar inched forward. Just one more step—

“Stop!” Briar heard a resonant voice from behind her. A rope swooped around her waist. Quick as a striking rattlesnake, she
felt herself jerked away from the spinning wheel and she fell on her backside to the floor. She squirmed to free herself, but the lasso only tightened.

“Leave me alone. Let me go! It's mine!” she shouted as she struggled to her feet to face the man who was holding her captive.

There at the far end of the room, holding the end of the rope, was Ash dressed now as a cowboy. “There's nothing in this place for you, Briar. Nothing that you want.”

“I found the spinning wheel. It belongs to me,” Briar protested as Ash pulled her away.

“This was a trap,” Ash said. “One touch of that spindle and you would have been infected with the sleepdeath.”

“I don't care! I don't…I…” Briar couldn't finish. She felt conflicted, dizzy, disoriented. Ash noticed that the key on Briar's necklace was outside her outfit. He flicked it with a finger until it made contact with the delicate skin at her throat. At once Briar felt as though a haze was lifting. She began to realize how strangely she was behaving. It felt as though she were waking from a deep sleep, a distorted dream.

“What happened?” she asked. “How did you get here?”

“I got here the same way you did,” Ash said. Then he pulled Briar close enough to untie her. “You were under the influence of something very dark and powerful. And we would have lost you forever had you touched that spindle.”

“What do you mean?” Briar looked over her shoulder at the spinning wheel standing near the window, contrasting so simply with its surroundings: wood, stone, metal. It seemed so small and unimportant. “It was—it was poisoned?”

Ash began untying her and he helped her to stand. “It was more than poisoned,” he said. His face was now long, his eyes filled with an understanding tempered by some unspoken pain. “Your arrival in these Realms has been anticipated from a time before remembering.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Many await you, Briar. But to some who hold power, you are a threat. And the only protection you have right now is that
trinket,”
he said. He eyed the iron key pendant.

She touched it with one hand. “This thing?” she asked.

“Yes, that thing, as you call it, isn't simply a necklace. It is a
trinket
, a link to power and protection. It is the only thing as potent as the dark magic on that spinning wheel.”

Briar held the key in one hand and silently regarded it.

“Myrtle, Poplar and I forged it in this very chamber against great odds and at great peril.”

“Look, I don't want—wait, what I mean is that I
never
wanted any part of this—whatever all of this is with your trinkets and spinning wheels and freaked-out wolves—”

“I know that this may all be difficult to believe, raised by commons as you were. But to ignore or to believe that this is some sort of delusion is a dangerous mistake.” He looked at the floor, tipping up the brim of his cowboy hat with a leather-gloved hand.

For the first time, Briar had no response.

“Terrible things, unspeakable things will happen to innocent lives should you pretend that this world does not exist. Very real beings, as real as your mother, are at stake.”

“What do you know about my mother—?”

“I know that my people—no,
your
people—die every day at the hands of a dangerous tyrant.”

Briar had sensed it from an early age. Her mother was never missing, as she had been led to believe. As hard as it was for Briar to hear this said aloud, she had known it all along in her heart. Briar couldn't remember anything about her mother. Not her face, her smell, her touch. Nothing. And for Ash—this peculiar man who felt more like a dream than anything else—to confirm what she suspected seemed cruel and unfair.

“What?” Briar's voice was almost a whisper, but she shook
shaking her reddening face. “How dare you drag my mother into this! You don't know anything about her!”

Ash looked down again and waited for Briar's pain, her fury, to subside before he spoke. “I know that she loved you very much, and she would have wanted you to do what was right.”

“How do you know that?” Briar fought back tears. “Anyway, I can't. This is too much for me. I'm just some random high school kid. I'm not whoever it is you think I am. It's just a big mistake,” Briar said. She hoped that she was right.

“Yes. A mistake,” Ash said. He nodded sadly. “Have you looked in the bassinet?” he asked her. He tipped his head to one side, gesturing toward the cradle.

“What?”

“Beneath cobwebs, the headboard. Have you seen it?” Ash looked up from the floor and nodded toward the bassinet.

Briar's heart thumped louder and harder than it ever had before. “No,” she said. She felt like something was stabbing her in the gut. Then she stood and paced the stone floor to the dust-covered crib. She pierced the thick webbing, pulling it apart. And there, chiseled into the headboard below the dragon carving, painted with crumbling blood-red paint, was her name.

Briar reeled back and covered her mouth with a hand. “How can this be?” she asked, but not to Ash. “I was raised by my—my foster mother, Matilda.” Briar finally backed up to the wall and slid down to a crouch. She covered her face with her hands.

Ash approached and lightly placed a hand on her shoulder. “We hid you where the Lady Orpion would never find you. It was our only hope to save you, to save the people of our Realms.”

“Don't lay this on me,” Briar snapped. She shook off his hand.
“My people
are at home. My foster mother, her girls, my friend— and for the first time ever I have a boy that just might be interested in me. Those are
my people—not
a bunch of weirdos doing fantasy role-playing games. Don't you have some kind of
convention to get to?”

Ash stood watching her, but didn't move. Briar looked up and he locked his crystal blue eyes with hers. “I understand,” he said. “You do not know this world or its people. And I should know that hoping and waiting are fools' games.” He looked down at the floor. “As are holding fast to the tongue-waggings of old wives and soothsayers.”

He leaned against the stone wall next to Briar. Exhaling quietly, deliberately, he shut his eyes tight with unmasked pain. “There is but one thing more for you to see.”

He took Briar by the hand. Looking up at him with pleading eyes, she stood. Together they walked to the chamber door and Ash opened it. There, on the other side, was Briar's basement bedroom.