The Grimm Diaries Prequels Volume 15 - 18 (5 page)

A fight between the black swans and the white swans began in the lake.

The once-beautiful creatures from both sides clashed into each other,
fluttering their edgy wings like steel upon the water, beak to beak and head to
head. They cawed like crows and slashed at each other. Black swans ripped out
the white’s feather and skin. The whites cried out in high pitches that were
agonizing to the ears. I had to clamp my hands over my ears against the noise.

Blood spattered in the air and on my own face. The white swans were
dropping like stones, splashing onto the water. The black ones were vicious,
killing mercilessly. And the three colors that shaped my life painted the night
in front of me: Black, White, and Red.

I wanted to scream and tell them to stop, to beg Brighid to make
them stop, but it was apparent that they wouldn’t and
that she had no control over their actions. They were pecking at each other,
pulling out chunks of flesh and letting out victorious eerie sounds, as if they
were the root of all evil.

Brighid hailed like a mad ringmaster in a circus, encouraging them in the
massacre and to leave no one alive.

Suddenly, it dawned on me that two of those were my daughters. I couldn’t
help but walk toward the dead swans floating on the water. This was insane.

Please God, don’t let this dead one be my unborn child. Not this, nor
this.

Eventually, when I reached them only two were left alive.

A black one and white one.

They snarled at each other as the moon disappeared above, probably scared
by their presence.

“You two killed my twins,” I cried, although I was afraid of both, cawing
with red blood on their feathers.

“They didn’t,” Brighid said. “They
are
your twins.”

“What?” I let out a shriek, even when I feared them, I stretched out my
arms to embrace them both. Unexpectedly, they complied and rested their heads
in my arms, in their
mother’s
arms.

As crazy as this was,
deep in my heart
I knew they were my unborn daughters. I embraced them, sharing the spattered
blood on our skins.

“The next time Angel makes love to you, these will transform into babies
in your womb,” Brighid said, disappearing in the dark, leaving me undone. “You
may have what you wished for.”

“But wait,” I said. “Who’s the evil one? Who is the good?” As a
mother-to-be, it was a silly question. All my daughters will be alike. How in
the world would I
favor one over the other?
It was impossible. Both of them were going to be born of my womb.

“Does it matter?” Brighid said. I could only hear her voice now, as she
disappeared in the dark.

In that instance, the black swan bit my arm. I screamed in pain, and let
go of them both. It was an almost poisonous bite. Dizzy, I fell back in the
water and fainted.

I woke up back in Lady Shallot’s tower. My dress and face spattered with
blood.

Lady Shallot advised me not to talk. It was obvious that she didn’t like
the sight of blood. She only demanded one thing of me before I went beck to the
Kingdom of Sorrow. It was a strange thing, but I had to obey her, or she said I
wouldn’t be granted the twins.

Lady Shallot demanded that Angel shouldn’t under any circumstance know
about me carrying twins.

“But he will know eventually when I give birth to them,” I said.

“No, he doesn’t have to know,” Lady Shallot explained. “Because one of
them will kill the other in your womb.”

“What?” I protested. “Why?”

“Either the good will kill the evil, or the other way around,” she said.
“It’s true they are twins, but there is only room for one of them in the world.
Your womb will decide if evil should prevail or good.”

“And what about all that talk about the universe desiring balance?” I
wondered.

“The balance will always be there, because whoever survives will have
both black evil and white good inside her,”
Lady
Shallot said. “Evil has goodness suppressed inside, and goodness has evil
suppressed inside. It’s up to us whether to choose black or white at the end of
the day.”

A week later, I was pregnant. Nine months later, I gave birth to one beautiful
daughter. Don’t ask me how I kept Angel from knowing there were twins. It was a
hard task, but I managed through witchcraft. And like Lady Shallot had
prevented him under oath not to tell me how, or who, the moon and the sun came
to be, I kept from him the secret of how I suddenly became pregnant.

Frederich Van Helsing, the Dutch doctor, was the only one who figured it
out—although it was concealed to the human eye by black magick. I think I had
mentioned having twins in one of my older diaries, Jawigi. He even told Angel
that one of my daughters killed the other in my womb. But Angel, overwhelmed by
the moment, didn’t give it much thought. He was consumed by fighting all evil
to bring his daughter into the world. Being told his daughter had a twin, and
that she was dead, didn’t concern him much at the moment. Later, he’d woke each
day reciting a prayer for his other unborn child, wishing that she had gone
to a better place than the Kingdom of Sorrow.

I had to live with the idea that one daughter fed on the other in my
womb.

Looking at it now, it’s hard to imagine what happened, how my eager
desire for having a child—part of it was the insane jealously of the sun and
moon babies—led me to sacrifice one.

To this day, guilt eats
me alive. Angel
and I
never talk about it. Maybe it’s
because Snow White’s birth led to unexpected and horrific consequences, maybe
because life won the best of us and we couldn’t look back anymore, and maybe,
just maybe, I convinced myself that Snow White was the white swan, and that she
killed her evil twin.

I know my story must not
make sense to
you, because
,
after all, Snow White isn’t a
purely good daughter, and I am not a good mother all the time.

I wish I could explain further. I wish I could clear that conflict you
sense in my personality right now, but I can’t. That would be revealing what I
am prohibited to tell—I have my reasons. All I’d beg of you is that you don’t
believe everything you’re told about me, even things I sometimes say aren’t
true, but there is a good reason for everything.

We are nearing the end of this particular diary, and to feel that I have
opened up with honestly, I should tell you about that night I woke up sweating
from the bad dreams I had in the castle. Snow White was only three months old,
sleeping in her cradle next to me. Angel was away, fighting demons at the
borders as usual.

I had dreamed of my other daughter swearing she’d take revenge on me for
giving up on her. She was scary in that dream. I feared her even more that I
feared Snow White some years later.

Sweating in my bed, I grabbed for a glass of water as I glimpsed the moon
shining bright in the midnight sky. Our lovely baby moon.

Then I dropped the glass, splintering it to pieces on the floor.

There was something outside staring at me behind the semi-open window
with the curtains fluttering in front of it.

It was a swan. A black one. It spread the blood-spattered wings against
the light of the shiny moon behind it, and its eyes gleamed red.

I was sure it was my other daughter, and it was also staring at baby Snow
White sleeping. I had no idea how this was possible. Maybe it was just an
incarnation of my unnamed, unborn daughter. Maybe I was only hallucinating, and
maybe I was still dreaming.

Puzzled, I didn’t know what to do. I pinched myself, trying to make sure
I wasn’t dreaming, and it hurt. I thought of reaching out for the black swan.
Maybe my motherly love would ease her pain. But I was frozen with fear.

Then my evil baby girl, the black swan, started singing. It wasn’t the
same tune that Lady Shallot sang, or the one the swans were singing at the
lake. It was a different tune. A sadder one, but it was also a tune I could
only hear but never memorize.

Only this time, I saw the black swan falling into sleep while singing it.
It—or she—was hypnotizing herself
to sleep
with that song. This was when I gathered my courage and walked toward her. By
the time I reached her, I saw she wasn’t sleeping. She was dying—for the second
time.

The song she was singing was a Swan Song, sung before saying goodbye to
this world. I held her in my arms, crying myself to death, for I didn’t
understand what was going on.

Was my daughter attending her own funeral, one that we hadn’t even
attended or cherished? Was she reminding me in some cosmic way that I killed
her, that I favored her sister? That however I tried, it was hard to know which
one of them was actually the good swan and which one was evil?

Her body turned into ashes in my hand, and the wind blew her remains
away toward the moon.

My pain was too hard to bear - I could hardly breathe. Not knowing was a
greater punishment than knowing that you have done wrong. I had to live with my
pain until many years later, when I understood what was really going on.

All I knew by then was that one daughter had survived on the pain and
death of the other. One was called Snow White. The other had no name. I called
her Black Swan, and she was someone you knew very well.

End of Prequel #1
5

The Grimm Diaries Prequel #16

The Pumpkin Piper

as told by Jack Madly

By Cameron Jace

The Grimm Diaries Prequel #16

as told by Jack
Madly

Dear Diary,

Even though I can’t get the mysterious moon girl out of my mind, I’m
having a good time with Marmalade. Something about her is comforting when she’s
nearby. I feel like I could lay back with her in my hammock in the beanstalk
and stop thinking about my demons—I’m not going to talk about my demons in this
diary. I want to tell you about something else. It has to do with who the
Pumpkin Piper is. Everyone I know is curious about him.

But first let me tell you about my last adventure with the ever-interesting
Marmalade.

Last week, she decided to show me how badass she was, and helped me steal
a Goblin Fruit. It’s not like I needed help—I’m Jack Madly; I can steal
anything, even hearts.

Still, stealing had always been a lonely quest for me. Sharing it with
her felt different. You could live in hell, but if it’s with someone you like
and share a lot of things with, it’s going to feel a lot like paradise. Who
wants to live in paradise alone?

Marmalade had this crazy idea of not only stealing from the Goblins, but
pissing them off. As lovely and baby-face as she looked, God didn’t create her
without some little quirks—did I tell you that there is nothing I like about a
girl like those mad quirks?

As usual, I stole the Goblin Fruit and ran out of the Goblin Market into
the Black Forest, the fat little goblins panting after me and swearing to kill
me. Instead of running farther, I stopped near the lake where I had first met
Marmalade. I pretended I had lost my hat. The goblins stopped suspiciously,
knowing that I always had tricks in store for them—they hadn’t forgotten the
fake devil’s necklace I had fooled them into wearing yet.

I knelt down and picked up my awesome hat—one day, I will tell you about
the story behind that hat. I put it on and made sure it was positioned the way
I liked it, plastering a welcoming smile on my face.

“Want your precious Goblin Fruit?” I took a bite, and moaned as I chewed
on the juicy ingredients.

“What’s the catch, Jack Madly,” the goblin’s leader growled at me, his
big hairy and dirty feet acting like breaks against gliding in the mud
surrounding the Swamp of Sorrow.

“Oh, you have no idea,” I smirked, taking another bite.

Before they could comprehend anything, Marmalade splashed big amounts of
water at them with her tail from the swamp where she was hiding.

Water to goblins was like holy water to some demonic creatures. They
hated it. Really hated it. Somewhere in the goblin gene they believe it to be
malevolent; that’s why they never washed, smelled like horse poop, and shivered
in pain when it rained.

Marmalade laughed and clapped her hands, watching the goblins kicking the
mud and rinsing the water from their stuffed short bodies.

You have to give it to her; sometimes she can be sweetly evil.

We ate the fruit together that day, and then I decided to show her one of
my many secrets. I ushered her to a secret grave in the forest where I had kept
someone’s body carefully intact in a coffin.

With curious eyes, she watched me dig it up and open it. There was a dead
man inside.

“Who’s that, Jack?” she said. “And why are you keeping a man in a coffin
nearby?
That’s not like you.”

“What do you mean it’s not like me?” I frowned. “I’m a thief. I stole the
coffin with the body in it. It was a very hard task actually, bringing it all
the way from Europe.”

“Europe?”

“Stratford-upon-Avon, to be precise,” I nodded proudly.

“Where is that?”

“England.”

“Still, you didn’t answer me. Who is the man in the coffin?”

“Shakespeare.” I took off my hat and bowed my head, proud of my achievement.
“William friggin’ Shakespeare—did you know that no one ever knew his middle
name? He is pretty much a mysterious man, like me. Gretel thinks he’s a
wizard.”

“What?” Marmalade’s face knotted. “Shakespeare is not a wizard. He is a
writer.”

“Semantics,” I shook my shoulder.

“What is Shakespeare’s body doing here? Why did you steal it?” Marmalade
looked furious. I didn’t expect her to be like that.

“I am going to wake him up,” I explained. “Gretel knows a good
resurrection spell.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Why do you think I want to resurrect Shakespeare, Marmalade?” I put my
hands in my waist. “So he could write a book about me, of course,” I said, as
if it was the most logical thing in the world. “An
awesome
book about
me, to be precise.”

“You’re out of your mind, Jack Madly,” Marmalade puffed.

“And you love it.”

“No, I don’t,” she said. “I think it’s an awful thing to do. I respect
the man. It’s not right to wake him up, and it’s not right to make him write a
book about you. This is so wrong.”

“Why? You don’t think I’m more interesting than that stupid story of
Hamlet?
The guy was a freak, and don’t get me
started about his mother.”

“Jack,” Marmalade pointed a finger at me. “Romeo and Juliet is my most
favorite story, so don’t even think of making fun of it.”

“I hate Romeo and Juliet; all that nonsense about her poisoning herself
to be with him. This girl was a nut.”

“And you’re not?” Marmalade said.

“Well,” I shrugged and scratched the back of my head. “I’m an awesome
nut.”

“Unbelievable,” she sighed.

“Seriously, if Shakespeare won’t write about me, then who will?” I said.
“I really regret telling you about one of my most precious secrets. Wake up,
Shakes!” I was about to give him the resurrecting kiss.

“Jack, please,” she said. “Don’t make me feel guilty now. It’s so sweet
of you to show me this,” she pointed at Shakespeare’s corpse, and I assumed
that “sweet” wasn’t the right word to use for the occasion—unless
Shakes
tasted like a Goblin Fruit. “Look, can’t we just delay this for a while? Gretel
isn’t going anywhere,” she said, “Also, you haven’t done enough awesome things
to be documented in a book. Shouldn’t you wait?”

Marmalade’s last words didn’t make sense to me—she knew nothing about the
things I had done and how crazy they were. But I had to admit it; she had that
unexplainable affect on me.

An owl came fluttering down, interrupting my thinking. It landed on my
palm with a scroll in its beak. I took the scroll, and let the owl fly back to
wherever it came from.

It was a letter. I read it while Marmalade watched me with her curious
eyes—she couldn’t stand not knowing.

I sighed after reading the letter, not telling her what was in it. It
amused me to see her like that, dying to know.

“You’re right about the coffin; let’s forget about it,” I said.
“Actually, there’s somewhere else I have to be now.”

“Where are you going?” she said. “What’s in the letter?”

“I have to take care of something, and I don’t have to tell you about
everything, Marmalade.”

“But I thought we share all things together,” she pouted.

“I thought so, too. But you keep disagreeing with me, and I don’t like
that, so I’ll see you later.”

“Wait,” she held me by the hand. “What if I don’t disagree?” she looked
into my eyes. It was that look that was the most mesmerizing about her. Every
time it happened, I felt like I had seen these eyes before I even met her. “I
promise I will only listen. I want to know about you, Jack.”

It’s a historical fact that I had never met anyone so interested in me
before. Not this way, willing to be with me at any price. I had met a lot of
girls, and although I was attractive to them, they had to leave me at some
point; especially when they watched me wake up screaming in the middle of the
night. Marmalade never left. She stayed, and I liked it.

“Alright,” I nodded. “You can come with me. But you have to wear
something on top first. You can’t walk around with your hair over your breasts
like that. It’s just not right.”

“But it’s my nature, Jack. I’m a mermaid.”

“Yeah, and I’m thief,” I snapped. “It’s not like I walk around with a
sack full of stolen stuff.”

“Actually, you do,” she laughed. “But I understand you’re jealous, and
you don’t want others to see me like that.”

“I’m not jealous,” I said. “It’s just that you can’t walk semi-naked
beside me everywhere. Come on, girl. Go get yourself a shawl from my beanstalk.
I have many stolen ones up there. Mostly they belong to the Queen of Sorrow, so
they’re fine stuff.”

“Alright,” she laced her hands together and swung her body like a shy
little girl. “So where are we going?”

“I’m going to take you out. Let’s sit by the fire somewhere.”

“Really? I thought you had something to take care of?”

“I do. We’re going to meet someone. But we could sit by the fire up on
that hill, waiting for that someone. I will tell you his story. It would make a
good bedtime story.”

“That sounds romantic,” she said. “Does that someone have a name?”

“The Pumpkin Piper,” I nodded with a smile on my face.

“I heard a lot about him,” she said, looking worried. “But some say he is
evil. Some even say he is the devil himself.”

“Really?” I frowned. The Pumpkin Piper was definitely mysterious to
others, and the fact that she’d heard he was the devil amused me. Let’s face
it, in many ways, he was.

“I’ll let you be the judge of that, after I tell you about him,” I said,
and walked her toward the hill. “But you have to promise me to keep it a
secret.”

Sitting by the hill next to the fire, I had Marmalade in my arms, and I
started to tell her the story as the fire flickered and lit the night. We were
going to wait here until dawn, watching the sunlight together, and then
something important was going to happen after.

Here is the story I told Marmalade about the Pumpkin Piper, and it’s no
ordinary story by any means…

Once upon a time, there was this town where everyone feared the piper.
They had been hearing stories from travelers about the dark man with skeleton
fingers and a magic flute, who devoted his life to wiping out towns and cities,
looking for the Lost Seven who'd escaped him when he took his revenge in the
town of Hamlin many centuries before. He’d lulled their children out of town,
and only seven of them dared to escape him.

Although the members of the seven families had died by now, the piper
went after their children's children, and whoever was related to them. He
sometimes went after the people who shook hands with them, just in case.

He searched the globe for them, walked on water for them, driven by the
hatred and anger of revenge. It was rumored that one of the seven families’
descendants lived in this town, but no one knew who it was.

Everyday they expected the piper to arrive. They played all possible scenarios
of their escape in their head, making sure they were prepared to save their
families and take the little things that mattered with them. The piper was inescapable—other
than the Lost Seven, no one ever fooled him.

They heard that when he arrived into a town and unleashed his rats, there
was no going back. Once the rats spread the Black Death, it would be apocalypse
in this town.

If the piper was considered the Black Death, there had also been this
rumor about a Red Death who was capable of confronting the piper. A girl of
sixteen, who was Death herself, but strong enough to save the town. Sadly, this
girl never showed up, and everyone thought she was a myth. The elders in this
town were tough with their children because children were every town's weak
spot. The piper knew his way to their hearts through his magic flute. He played
a tune that lulled the kids out of their houses toward the rats. A tune that
was unlike any other tune. It was said that however you tried to memorize it,
you couldn’t. It was a tune only he could play.

Sometimes, the piper didn’t just wipe out towns, but he stole their
children when they were of interest to him. It was said that he took them to a
faraway dark land, where they worked for him and became part of his dark army
that resided somewhere in Transylvania.

In this particular town, the elders themselves weren't quite the best
parents. Rumor had it that they treated their children badly, prohibited them
from reading or learning about the world outside. Children had to work at a
young age to grow up faster and take responsibilities. The elders thought that
this would grow them into adults before their time, adults who were stronger in
resisting the piper's melodies.

The children there wanted to escape this town because of their harsh parents.
They wanted to enjoy their childhood. They wanted to play the days away, and
never grow up. Secretly, some of them didn't mind the arrival of the piper, as
long as he was going to take them away to land where they could play. Anywhere
but here, they said.

One day, their dreams came true.

A magic flute played an enchanting song nearby. It was the early hours of
the morning and the sun had shone unexpectedly strong. The melody was tempting,
smooth, and it made the children dreamy. They hadn't been allowed to hear music
in their town, so the very first and few notes were like the smell of the freshly
baked sweet bread they loved—ever notices that smelling bread was half the
hunger?

The children’s hearts melted to the music the way their stomachs buzzed
when hungry.

Furious, the elders rushed out of their houses, looking for the piper.
They didn't think of escaping yet, because they couldn't find the rats that
were supposed to follow and spread the disease. The parents went out to the
edges of the forest surrounding their town while the children stayed by their doorsteps,
tiptoeing and looking forward to meeting the mysterious piper. While the elders
were out there looking, the piper had found his sneaky way into town to meet
them.