The Grimm Diaries Prequels Volume 15 - 18 (8 page)

“Nice to meet you,” Marmalade said, standing up.

The pumpkin piper greeted her back and started to take off his pumpkin
head.

Marmalade let out a shriek once she saw his real face.

“It’s you?” she held a hand on her mouth, her eyes wide open with
surprise.

“I wonder how you never guessed,” Peter Pan said.

“Why should I have guessed?”

“Well, for one, the Pumpkin Piper’s flute was a ‘pan’ flute,” Peter ate
another pickle, closing his eyes like he was taking a drug. “And I gave up growing
up to save the children and learn to fly.”

“So that’s why you never grow old,” she clicked two fingers together.

“She is very smart,” Jack whispered to Peter mockingly. “In fact, the
smartest of her sisters.”

“But I never knew you like pumpkins so much,” Marmalade said, ignoring
Jack.

“
Peter, Peter pumpkin eater
,” the children started to jump the
rope behind her. “
Had a girl but couldn't keep her. He put her in a pumpkin
shell, and there he kept her very well.
”

“See?” Peter shrugged his shoulders. “I am Peter Pan, but I am also Peter
Pumpkin.”

“And who is the girl in the nursery rhyme who you couldn’t keep?”
Marmalade asked.

“You should really know that one, babe,” Jack said picking up something
from the shelf, and spanking her lightly on her behind on the way.

“Wendy!” she tiptoed, figuring it out.

“And don’t ask me what happened exactly with Wendy,” Peter interrupted.

“If you say so.” Marmalade had a finger on her lips, thinking. “But if
you’re Peter Pan and Peter Pumpkin at the same time, then you must also be
Peter Piper,” she said the last words with glittering eyes.

“That’s right,” Peter said proudly, and let another pickle slide down his
throat.

“
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
” the children
started to sing. “
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
”

“
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
” Jack sang with
them. “
Where's the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?
” he
winked at Marmalade.

“My God! That’s why you loved pickles so much in the story. You’re basically
every Peter ever mentioned in nursery rhymes, right?”

“Not every one, but most of them,” Peter said. “There are too many
secrets in Sorrow. I don’t believe that knowing all of them is good for you. In
fact, I only approved of Jack telling you this one because he insisted to let
you know how we became friends.”

“On the top of a beanstalk,” Marmalade added. “Of course, he was on top
of it while you were gifted with flying, and what better place for you two to
meet, but on the top of the world.”

“We’re awesome,” Peter blinked.

“I’m awesome,” Jack raised a finger. “You’re kinda second-place awesome.
People have a word for it. They call it ‘great.’”

The children took Marmalade’s hands to play with her, and sing her more
songs about Peter.

“You’re amazing,” she told them. “You should make a band and keep
singing.”

“We have a band,” five of the children claimed proudly. “We call
ourselves the Piedpipers.”

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Marmalade said.

“And we call yourselves the Pickleheads,” another bunch of girls said.

“Don’t listen to any of those,” Jack shushed the children away. “Only one
band is the best. I called them the Pumpkin Warriors. They will be superstars,”
he pointed at a bunch of kids he liked.

But Marmalade still had more questions to ask, “So you basically save
kids before the Piper gets them?”

Peter nodded.

“And then?”

“And then I bring them to Jack,” Peter said. “Jack, in his own thievery
way, knows how to feed them, and bring them clothes and food. But one day, I
will find a great place for them and bring them all to it. A place where they
can play forever, with no parents or evil Pipers to hassle them. Maybe they’d
have great fun there, and never grow up, like me.”

“So you guys aren’t that bad, huh?” Marmalade said.

“Oh, we’re bad,” Peter said, slapping another snake like Jack. “You just
wait and see.”

Jack and Peter laughed, and Marmalade folded her hands in front of her.

“Boys will be boys,” she sighed.

“Believe me. Sometimes, it’s
good
to be bad,” Peter said, grabbing
a vine to pull him down. “There is a lot you still don’t know about us. Now if
you excuse me, I have a
bad
girlfriend to take care of,” Peter said with
a smirk. Marmalade thought that with all that bad boy attitude, Peter was a
hopeless romantic when it came to Wendy. She was not only bad, but viciously
evil, and he still loved her.

Before Peter descended, Marmalade had to ask him one last question. It
was the most important of all, “Peter, if you ever find that place to keep the
children away and never grow up, what will you call it?”

“What a silly question, that is,” Peter said and waved goodbye, sliding
down, saying, “Neverland, of course.”

End of Prequel #
16

The Grimm Diaries Prequels 17

as told by Pinocchio

By Cameron Jace

The Grimm Diaries Prequels 17

Prince of Puppets

as told by Pinocchio

Dear Diary,

I once asked a wise man if
he’d ever seen a dragon.

“Would I be here talking to
you if I did?” the wise man said. “A dragon would've already burned me with its
flaming fire.”

“Have you ever seen a dwarf,
then?” I inquired.

“I wouldn’t still be alive as
well,” the wise man said. “Because I would have died from laughter.”

“A troll?” I raised an
eyebrow.

“I would've had a heart attack
from staring at its hairy ugliness,” he said.

“How about a mermaid, maybe?”

“Again, I wouldn't be here
talking to you if I did,” he said. “Who’d find a mermaid and not make her his
lover, and escape with her to the big wide sea?”

“Are you saying that all those
fantastic fairy tale creatures don’t exist?” I wondered.

“Not necessarily,
Pinocchio," he answered. “But there is no way to know for sure. In order
to prove there are dragons, you need to survive one, or kill it. Then come back
and tell me, and show me evidence that supports your saying.”

“Good point,” I thought. “I
guess this means you’re not a believer. There is no evidence of most of things
we believe in.”

“Depends on what you ask me to
believe in,” the wise man said.

“Heaven maybe?” I thought I’d
finally cornered him with that question.

“You know what the problem
with Heaven is?” he told me, rubbing his beard.

“No,” I said, eager to know.

“That no one came back from
Heaven to confirm its existence,” he said. “A man travels to India, comes back
and tells about the wonders he’d seen. Brings spice and snakes along, so we start
believing he'd been there. No one's ever come back from Heaven and said, ‘you
wouldn’t believe this cool place I’d been to.' At least I haven't heard about
it.”

“According to this argument,
there is a problem with Hell, too,” I speculated, rubbing my wooden chin--it
needed to be smoothened, I discovered. “No one's ever come back from it as
well.”

“You got that wrong,” the man
leaned forward, amused with my naïveté. “We don’t need someone coming back from
Hell to tell us it existed.”

“Why is that?” I was
embarrassed I didn't know, but I didn't blush. Wood can't blush.

“Because you’re not supposed
to come back from it,” he laughed, nailing a hammer into one of his
puppets--just another victim like me, only none of them were inflamed with a
soul like me. And yes, the wise man was a carpenter. “You’re supposed to fry
and burn in Hell, so it makes sense you don't come back," he said
gloomily.

I raised the other eyebrow at
the illogical logic of this conversation--my eyebrows weren't made of wood by
the way; they were made of some kind of donkey hair, and it took me a long time
to master the art of moving them. What can I say? When you're trapped inside a
puppet, you've got nothing but time to waste.

"Don't frown at what I am
telling you, Pinocchio," the man said. "The world isn't as black and
white as it may seem. It's made of layers upon layers of lies, and we only see
the last, most recent layer. Scientists like to call that the 'truth,' until
another one comes along and proves them wrong. Actually that is what the
so-called truth is all about; as long you can't prove it's a lie, people
consider it true."

Every thing he said, I
couldn't argue with. For a boy made of wood, the world wasn't that complex. I
didn't need to eat, didn't need to shit, didn't need love, and eventually
didn't need to hate--if you don't have needs to love things, you don't have the
desire to hate things, too. I was just out there, like a yo-yo bouncing in my
Puppetmaster's threads. Bounce me to the left, bounce me to the right, have your
fun. Maybe clap your hands, call me cute, and then rest me on a shelf and turn
off the lights--don't even bother to position me probably, this twisted neck
shouldn't hurt. I am a piece of wood after all.

This is me, Pinocchio; a piece
of nothing, with a long nose and wooden arms and legs. I am happy with my
superficiality, happy not to be human with all the complexities that come
along, and I don't fear anything in the world--well, ahem, I do fear two
things, and two things only: a hammer and a nail. You have no idea how much
they hurt.

"So how about the
devil?" I asked out of nowhere. I had been always curious about the devil.

"Where did you hear about
him?" asked the wise man.

"You always mention him
when you swear," I said, rubbing my nose. "He lives in Hell,
right?"

"Not exactly," said
the man. "He wants us to think he lives in Hell, but the truth is that he
lives among us, pretending to be someone else."

"Is that for real?"
I faked my astonishment with my dead, pearl eyes.

"You're so naïve,
Pino," the man patted me. "Always know this: the greatest trick the
devil ever pulled was convincing the world he was someone else."

It was this moment in my
conversation with Ghepetto, my master, hat I knew I wanted to write my own
diary. Calling me naïve and pointing out that the devil's greatest trick was
being someone else wasn't something I took lightly. You will understand why in
a minute.

Ghepetto was a nice man, and I
owed him a lot. But he’d been through a rough life, and his mind was playing
tricks on him. This incident of him and I talking had been long ago. Before he
had married his lovely wife, who had died giving birth to his second child; a
cute and unusual girl named Gretel, younger sister of their boy Hansel.

I'm not going to talk about 
Ghepetto's story with his two kids after their mother died, or how he had to
remarry a vicious child-killing woman—or how she convinced him to send his
children to the forest when they had no money and couldn't afford two more open
mouths to feed, because these things happened later.

I met Ghepetto a long time
before that, so maybe you'll learn about the accurate incidents of his kids’
stories in someone else's diary.

Before marrying and having
children, Ghepetto was just a middle-aged lonely man in Sorrow, an invisible fella
who'd emigrated from Italy, a small island called Murano, to seek a new life in
the Kingdom of Sorrow.

He'd been beyond poor, working
as a woodcutter for some time. Even though people in Murano were masterful
glassblowers, he still preferred the art of wood over glass. He had tried to
work for the Queen and the King of Sorrow but they had enough woodcutters
already. Then one day, in his boredom and frustration sitting in the Black
Forest, he came upon a piece of wood fallen from one of those spying Juniper
Trees. He was starving and needed to occupy himself with doing something, so he
pulled out his rusty knife and carved the wood. He found himself shaping it
into a puppet. To his surprise, it looked great.

From that day on, Ghepetto
knew what he was meant to do. He wasn't destined to be a poor carpenter, but a
great puppet maker. It didn't cost him anything; chopping some Juniper Trees
off and carving them into numerous puppets in his poor cottage in the forest.

A while later, he was
approached by a mysterious Puppeteer--a profession that had been unheard of in
the kingdom before--and Ghepetto began selling him his puppets.

It didn't make Ghepetto rich,
but it didn't leave him poor either. Actually, if you ask me, that is what most
people want. They don't necessarily want to be rich, just not poor.

And so the middle-aged man
found a craft that occupied his free time, and helped him put food on he table.
Still, his new profession failed to grant him one last, and most precious,
wish: to have a child that would be the timber, I mean the light, of his life.

But let’s not talk about
Ghepetto now. I am going to get back to him in a while. For the moment, I’d
like to talk about me. It's crucial that we talk about me. I'm like no one you
have ever met. And before I tell you about my magnificent yet horrible
adventure, you need to be sure of one thing, and one thing only: I am not the
happy Pinocchio who wanted to become the good boy the Brothers Grimm told you
about. I don't have a cricket-looking conscience. That was really silly. Not in
a million years.

In fact, I am not exactly
Pinocchio. It's just the silly name given to me by Ghepetto.

So who am I, you ask?

Who would be as important and
dangerous as me and trapped in a puppet's body, and why?

Well, to tell you who I am, we
have to go back to somewhere around the beginning of time when I had been given
the silly name of...

Drum roll, please.

Another drum roll, and here is
my silly name...

Lucifer.

Now, don't panic. Hold on
tight. Don't run away. This is going to be a rough ride. Think of your favorite
roller coaster ride that made you pee in your pants. You know that one? The one
you fear, but keep coming back to?

That would probably best
describe me. What’s a devil, but a roller coaster ride to Hell?

My story would be best told
from a time I was a fallen angel, the Dreamhunter kind. I was one of the best,
having mastered the art of killing evil entities in their dreams. But then, due
to differences in point of views--you know that evil is a point of view, don't ya?--the
Fairy Gods kicked me out of their Fairy Heaven. They have some kickass boots,
them Gods.

I ended up falling onto this
horrible place called Earth--why here, Gods? It was a tough fall; I broke a leg
and couple of ribs that took a couple of centuries to heal, not to mention
those two bruises on my head which ended up becoming two permanent horns. Bear
in mind they hadn't invented parachutes yet, and they had cut off my wings
before kicking me out.

I'd like to spare you my story
about living among dinosaurs for decades. This little devil me was nothing but
an insect among Raptors and Hadrosaurs.

But no problems, I managed to
play my part. I even played it so well, making them loathe and kill each other,
I caused their extinction. My first job. I made mama proud.

On and on the ages went by,
and I had my share of victories and defeats. But then the Fairy Gods figured
out it was a mistake letting me live, as I had begun to turn this Earth into
Hell--as if it weren't already, before me.

So they sent the so-called
Dreamhunters after me, and I was a fork away from my own extinction.

Being the sneaky Immortal I
was, the only way to kill me was in my dreams. The one who once was the hunter,
eventually became the hunted.

I started running for my life.

Until I found a dark magic to
defend myself against the Dreamhunters, I needed to escape to another realm.
Preferably, a virgin one. A place that had just been created a while ago, so
I'd find enough people to seduce and recruit into an army.

Hell itself had been a messy
place. Going back there was like a serial killer going back home. He'd get
caught immediately.

I needed a trick. A devilish
trick. Ahem. And when I say devilish, the pun is intended.

I was in Europe at the time,
loving the chaos in Transylvania, Rome, and the Eastern Ottoman areas. There
was enough greed, sloth, and blood there; this really felt like home. I had
impregnated so many women there--Scottish women and Italian women -- gotta love
‘em. I bought so many souls that I could return in ten years time, and collect
my army of darkness in a blink of an eye.

But Europe had become a
dangerous place for me. I needed to find that virgin place to escape to.

I had to escape. Especially
since one of the best Immortal Dreamhunters was after me. A man named Abraham
Van Helsing.

I had no defense against being
killed in my sleep at the time. If that man had caught me, the world would have
been without me since about two hundred years ago now. That would have sucked,
wouldn't it? Who would you fight without me? Who would you blame for the things
you do? Oh, I forgot. People never needed a devil to whisper the magic word in
their ears so they'd do the horrible things they do. I was just a trick of
mankind, so no one admits they were the most stupid, evil, and heartless
creatures in the world.

So there I was, on a little
boat going nowhere through the big wide ocean--always loved the ocean; if there
was just a way I could light it on fire…that would have been marvelous.

I rowed and paddled for days
and nights, maybe years, until I finally found my sneaky way through the
Missing Mile, that part of the Fairyworld they didn't know I knew about. Then I
found Lady Shallot's tower, and climbed its walls for seven days until I
reached the top--the staircase rejected my demon soul, so I had to find my way
outside.

I eavesdropped--one of my
favorite sins by the way--and listened to Lady Shallot as she was granting a
new couple a new world. They were Carmilla Karnstein and Angel Von Sorrow. I
knew them of course, since I had worked for Night Sorrow for centuries ago--I'm
honored by the way.

After Carmilla and Angel had
left, I climbed in through the window and sat in front of Lady Shallot, eating
one of her tasty worm-penetrated apples.

"How dare come to this
holy place?" she shielded her face with her hands.

"I'm not that ugly,"
I frowned. "Just give my face a chance. I know many people who loved it
eventually," I took another bite.