Grimm's Last Fairy Tale (3 page)
Read Grimm's Last Fairy Tale Online
Authors: Becky Lyn Rickman
As she returned from the stacks with the last of the previous night’s sales, she approached her desk with a sincere hope that there would be no message today. It would not be received well in her hateful state. Unfortunately, not only did her admirer ignore her wishes, but, like all men, felt that he could somehow fix her. She had no way of knowing that he believed that he had it within himself to counteract all the pain that was eroding her core.
She closed her eyes just before she got to her desk and gingerly set the books down. Then, slowly, painfully, she opened her eyes to find this passage:
"How beautiful you are! You are more beautiful in anger than in repose. I don't ask you for your love; give me yourself and your hatred; give me yourself and that pretty rage; give me yourself and that enchanting scorn; it will be enough for me."
She loved this passage. This was from Dickens’
The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Now Maggie was really beside herself. Whoever this was, he was able to know how she felt in her heart. She was an uncomfortable blend of indignant, afraid and angry, though she could not discern which one held the controlling share.
These feelings, with painful rapidity, morphed into a bitterness that love was once again either mocking her or attempting to intrude into her life. She also felt that it was more than likely doing so with a hope that it could not only impose, but would also find the accommodations appealing and decide to stay. She screamed out, completely unaware beforehand that she would even do so, “Enough of this! I can’t handle it! I demand that you show yourself now! Who are you? I need to know!”
Hemingway made her way to the front of the store and plopped herself down at Maggie’s feet, sensing her anguish and wanting somehow to make it better. She purred and writhed in an attempt to distract Maggie from her suffering. It worked, but only temporarily.
“Oh, Hemingway, is it you? Are you somehow doing this? I can’t imagine how without opposable thumbs.” Maggie was momentarily relieved of her dark thoughts. Once Hemingway saw the fruition of her efforts, she jumped up and onto the science fiction shelf and licked herself into another nap.
“O.K., I am calm now. Who is doing this? Is there anyone there? Please show yourself.”
The thought came to her that she should try communicating in like manner. She remembered a passage that she deemed an appropriate response and scrambled to find the book. She blew off the dust, opened it up, lightly drew a pencil box around the sentence and left it on the desk. She went to the restroom and waited for her phantom to read from John Gilberts’
The Trespasser
:
“
Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love.”
She was not sure how long she spent in there with the door closed tight. Time no longer seemed to exist. When she felt prompted, she opened the door and tip-toed to the desk. There, she found:
“
I did not know the woman soul, that crowning gift of Providence to man, which, if we do not ourselves degrade it, will set an edge to all that is good in us. I did not know how the love of a woman will tinge a man's whole life and every action with unselfishness. I did not know how easy it is to be noble when some one else takes it for granted that one will be so; or how wide and interesting life becomes when viewed by four eyes instead of two.”
It was
The Stark Munro Letters
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Now Maggie was filled with righteous indignation. She would rid herself of this torment. She could come up with as many negatives about love as he could positives. The game was on. She found a copy of
Adam Bede
by George Eliot and opened the page and pointed to it with a highlighter:
“
. . . people who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.”
This time, she put her hands over her eyes and began to count to 100, but only got to 36 before she heard pages flip and when she spread her fingers and looked, he had marked a different passage in that same book. Oh, he was good.
“
These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people--amongst whom your life is passed—that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is
these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire—for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.”
“Stop this now! Enough! Please, whoever you are, present yourself. Put an end to this madness!”
She ran back to the far end of the building, to make sure the back door was not open and that someone had not sneaked in. When she arrived back at her desk, there was one more book than when she left, but it had not been opened. The mere sight of it took her breath away. Could this be? Could the silly speculation she had made in complete and utter jest actually be true?
The book was a 1932 edition of
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
. Then her eyes caught a glimpse of the computer screen and when she caught full vision of it, she saw that a Wikipedia page was open for Jacob Grimm. She plopped into her chair without thought and sat and read and wept without inhibition.
in which some very interesting background information is offered to you, the readers, and in which Maggie declines a very special offer
This is what Maggie read:
Jacob Grimm was the brother of Wilhelm Grimm and together they wrote dictionaries and more dark and graphic “fairy tales” than the diluted versions we read today. Wilhelm married and had children. Jacob remained unmarried.
Maggie read on for a few minutes, learning more than she had ever bothered to before about these men, and then spun around in her chair and scanned the area with the irrational thought of actually looking into the eyes of someone who had been dead for nearly a century and a half. She had always believed in ghosts or spirits or whatever they were. She had experienced a few inexplicable occurrences. Nothing extraordinary, just objects moving in front of her. But now she was being challenged with the idea that someone was actually trying to communicate with her and it was testing everything she believed in.
“Jacob Grimm? Is it you? Are you here with me?
The door chimed and someone entered the bookstore, sending Maggie into a startled frenzy.
“Oh, my word, you nearly scared me to death!”
“Sorry, Miss, I thought I heard you talking to someone. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“No, it’s O.K., I was actually just thinking out loud. What can I do for you?”
“These flowers are for a Margaret Austen. Is that you?”
He lifted the most exquisite bouquet she had ever seen and placed it on the counter in front of her.
“Yes, it is me. I’m Margaret. Who in the world sent them?”
“I can’t say, ma’am. But I can tell you the order was phoned in. There’s a card.”
Maggie buried her face and breathed in deeply the fragrance which was just as overwhelming as the beauty of the blooms. She reached for the tiny envelope and it read:
43076, page 93, with all my love, JG
“Thank you, sir. Here, let me give you a tip.”
She handed him a few dollars and he took his leave. She studied the bouquet and then studied the card. What in the world could it mean? She guessed that the number was an inventory number and she looked it up in their database; she found that it was the very book that they had been sharing by George Eliot. She turned to page 93 and read:
“
How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections?”
“How do you know me? Why are you here? Am I supposed to do something for you so that you can move on? I’ve seen movies like that—with people who need someone living to help them finish some sort of work they didn’t have the chance to complete. Is that what this is? Can you find a way to let me know?”
Maggie looked on in astonishment as her favorite ink pen wrote on a scrap of paper, seemingly by itself.
“
I have been observing you for some time now.”
“How do you even know who I am? Isn’t there some way you can appear to me or communicate with me?”
Once again, the pen wrote:
“
Only if you agree to it.”
“I agree. Please. Show yourself. I want to talk to you. I have questions, none of the least of which is, ‘Have I finally lost my mind?’”
“Hello, Miss Austen.”
Maggie gasped and turned to see the apparition. It looked remarkably like the portrait of Jacob Grimm that was on the computer screen and she did a few double takes to verify the resemblance.
“What are you doing here? Why me? Is this real? Why have you been watching me? What do you want?”
“Miss Austen, please try to relax a bit and allow me to explain.”
“Wait, wait, wait! First things first. Why are you speaking in contemporary English vernacular?”
“There is an explanation for that. May I speak now?”
“Yes, please, I’ll just sit here and entertain this whole delusion I am suffering through, but, really, I’m not suffering through. I’m actually kind of enjoying it. I use the word suffering because I think most people suffer through mental illness. Not me, though. I am remarkably calm considering I’m speaking in a reasonably rational way to something that may or may not actually exist. I mean . . .”
“Margaret? May I call you Margaret? Please. Hold your tongue for just a few moments and I’ll attempt to help you understand. First of all, I have been with you since you were 3. Do you remember your grandmother reading to you from my book of fairy tales? She bought you the book for your third Christmas, as I recall.”
“How do you know . . . ?”
“Woman, please!”
“I’m so sorry. How rude of me to keep interrupting you! Please continue.” There was the slightest tone of sarcasm in her apology.
“I am going to share something with you that is little known in your world. As authors of the most beloved books, we are allowed, in the afterlife, to visit those who are reading our books. It is a little loophole. Because of our contribution to the world, we are allowed to witness the impact of our works on those who enjoy them. It's the same with composers, artists, and the like. Anyone who leaves something of lasting beauty to the world when they leave enjoys this privilege.
“So I came to you when you were a child, and I must tell you that your love of our stories was the most fulfilling thing in my afterlife. I have witnessed the reactions of many, many fans, but yours were the most precious to me. I became your devoted servant from those initial moments on.”
“Really?”
Maggie was spellbound. This was so much to take in. Not only that she was conversing with a spirit of some sort and beginning to make sense of it all, but also with the fact that someone had noticed and appreciated something that she had done. Maggie was a little overcome and began to leak tears.
“Yes, my dear. You were my most dedicated fan and your love of my stories, as you know, spurred in you a love of literature in general. Wouldn’t you say that was accurate?”
“Yes.”
“Now, to continue, that should answer the question as to my vernacular. I have been with you for 50 years and have picked up the language, most of which, I must confess, I find to be rubbish.”
“Yes.”
“I have watched painfully as others have used and abused you and left you for dead, figuratively speaking. I have seen you climb out of holes that others would gladly have occupied and might have even pulled the soil in over themselves. I have adored you for so long, but had to hold my tongue until it was time.”
Finally, Maggie was able to utter something other than “yes.”
“Until it was time?”
“Yes, dearest one, until you were ready for me and the possibility of what I have to offer.”
“And what would that be?”
“Love.”
“I am afraid you are a little late. I no longer believe in love. Not in the sense that a middle-school girl with her first broken heart gives up on love before she actually knows what it is. It doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in love at all. I love my children and they love me and I have love for my fellow man, but not romantic love. I don’t believe in romantic love. Not for me, anyway. No. Absolutely not!”
Maggie spoke this not as a powerful statement, but rather as an exhausted resignation from a life filled with romantic failure.
Jacob looked at her. The magnitude of his stare caused a stirring inside her that made her feel as though she were reuniting with him rather than meeting him for the first time. It was at the same time familiar and uncomfortable. He waited for her to say something else until the pause became a near estrangement. Finally he broke the silence with quiet assertion.
“Margaret Naomi Austen, I adore you. I hold you in the highest regard. I esteem you to be a beautiful woman of strength and integrity. I have been waiting for a very long time to manifest myself to you. Please give me some inkling that there is hope; that I have not waited in futility.”