The Forest Grimm, page 1
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For Isabelle and Ivy,
who represent everything fierce and enchanting
PROLOGUE
BEFORE THE CURSE
“Tell me again, Grandmère, the story of how I die.”
The girl had waited until twilight to approach her grandmother, when the work of the day was done and the old woman sat close to the warmth of the hearth, her violet eyes half-closed and the valerian tincture bottle propped on the small table beside her, its cork removed.
The girl stepped closer. Clara was a rarity in Grimm’s Hollow to dwell on death instead of life, and all that life could become for her. The other children in the village dreamed of the happiness that awaited them when they came of age at sixteen. But with a fortune such as Clara’s, she doubted she would even live another seven years.
A deep wrinkle puckered the skin between Grandmère’s slender brows. “Ma petite chérie,” she said in a language no one else spoke in their village, not even Clara’s grandfather, though he had long since passed away. “I do not like that story.”
Clara slid the tincture bottle to the edge of the table to make room for a deck of painted fortune-telling cards that she held behind her back. She squared her thin shoulders and stood as tall as her nine-year-old frame would stretch. “Then tell me a new story,” she said, and presented the cards.
Grandmère’s gaze fell to the deck. Embers snapped in the fireplace, reflecting in the old woman’s pupils like startled fireflies. She was the only person Clara knew who had a little magic of her own, though it wasn’t the strongest magic known to Grimm’s Hollow. While the villagers respected Grandmère’s gift to read the future, what they truly revered was a separate magic entirely unrelated—the magic of the Forest Grimm. It held the power to grant wishes and make dreams come true.
That power was bound up in a book, a remarkable gift from the forest, which was said to have appeared in the village over one hundred years ago. In a bordering meadow, the volume arrived fully formed on a bed of red-spotted mushrooms and four-leaf clovers. Wood from the trees formed the paper, leaves dyed the ink, and fine roots threaded the binding. Sortes Fortunae was engraved on the cover, which in the common tongue meant “Book of Fortunes.”
The book’s magic could be called upon only once in a person’s lifetime, so long as they had come of age. Grandmère had come of age decades ago, but she didn’t live in Grimm’s Hollow when she was sixteen. She came here in her twenty-third year, and two years afterward she claimed her moment. Although she had the ability to foretell the future, that didn’t prevent her from wanting what the book could also offer, as it did for each villager. Grandmère made a wish to change her fate.
Clara never discovered what that wish was. The old woman would never speak of it. Like every wise villager before her, Grandmère kept her wish sacred and secret. If she revealed it, the spell would be reversed.
“Non.” Grandmère shook her head, denying Clara’s request for a card reading. “We have played this game before, and I cannot give you false hope again.”
It wasn’t like her grandmother to call fortune-telling a game, but Clara had wearied her with dozens of requests over the past few months. The five times Grandmère had relented, the reading—or the “story” as she called it—had failed to present Clara with a future that didn’t spell an ill-timed death.
The little girl sucked her lower lip between her teeth. “But what if—?”
“My cards never lie, child.” With a heavy exhale, Grandmère tucked an errant lock of hair back into Clara’s crown braid and patted her cheek. “I am sorry, but fate does not change its mind.”
Until yesterday, Clara might have believed such words. But last night a farmer’s wife had come to their cottage for a reading, and that evening had proved exceptional.
It wasn’t the visit itself that was novel. Villagers often implored Grandmère to reveal their fates. Most had already made their one wish on the Book of Fortunes, and they still yearned to find ways to influence new seasons of their lives—or at the very least, prepare for success or failure in the future.
Would their crops grow or die? Would romantic love flourish or fade? Would a wound heal or fester? Grandmère’s cards revealed the clues.
Last night, the farmer’s wife had come to find out if the babe in her womb would thrive or wither, and, nervous to learn the answer, she delayed Grandmère’s reading by asking about each of her thirty-six cards.
“This is the Red Card,” Grandmère had replied when the clock cuckooed an hour past Clara’s bedtime.
From where she overheard their conversation, out of sight in the narrow hallway, Clara pictured that card. The other fortune-telling cards in the deck bore intricate and mysterious images, but the Red Card was simply painted crimson, and none of its edges were worn.
“Such an ordinary name,” the farmer’s wife remarked. “Such an ordinary card.”
“And yet it is extraordinary,” Grandmère replied. “Its true name is ‘Changer of Fate,’ you see, and I have never drawn it before in a reading.”
Clara didn’t hear any more after that. Her ears started to buzz, and she placed a hand on the wood-paneled wall to steady herself. She’d never known what the Red Card had meant until that moment, and now she understood it was the one card that could save her.
Although the Red Card couldn’t tell her how to change her fate, like the Book of Fortunes did in magic ink when a person made a wish, it did something even more reassuring: it foretold that she would change fate.
If Grandmère drew the Red Card for Clara, could Clara’s story finally end differently?
That night Clara dreamed in red, and when she tended to her chores the next day, all she saw was red. The wattle under the rooster’s neck. The whortleberries in the thicket past the sheep pasture. The ladybugs climbing the fennel in the herb garden.
Now standing by the hearth at twilight, Clara set her small hand on top of her grandmother’s and whispered, “S’il te plaît.” She only knew a few words in Grandmère’s native tongue, and these were the ones that meant “please.”
Perhaps it was hearing the language of her faraway home beyond the forested mountain range that moved Grandmère. Perhaps it was gazing into her granddaughter’s large and earnest emerald eyes. Perhaps it was a shared secret wish that one more reading might indeed change Clara’s terrible fate. Whatever the reason, Grandmère nodded and fanned the deck of cards facedown on the table.
In haste, Clara retrieved the fortune-telling veil, and when the old woman drew it over her eyes, Clara rested her hand over hers once more. With painstaking care, Grandmère blindly drew the cards.
Clara had witnessed readings that revealed as many as seven cards for a person, although three was much more common. Clara’s readings, however, had always been stunted to two cards. With any luck, this time would be different.
Grandmère turned over the first card: the Midnight Forest. It represented that which was forbidden.
She drew the second card: the Fanged Creature.
Clara’s heart sank. The Fanged Creature was the worst and most dreaded card, the card that foretold an untimely death.
It was hopeless. Her story had remained unchanged. A forbidden choice would cut her life short. Unless …
Grandmère’s hand stilled over the only card on the table with crisp, unworn edges. Clara’s breath caught deep in her chest. Ever so gently, she nudged her grandmother’s weathered fingers toward that hiding red paint.
But Grandmère never turned the Red Card over. Indeed, she never touched it. She unveiled her face, looked down at the two cards drawn, and hung her head low. “That is all,” she said. “Your blood has stopped singing to me.”
Clara blinked back tears and managed a fleeting smile. “That’s all right. Don’t feel bad, Mémère.” She called Grandmère by the name she had used when she was a much smaller child. “It isn’t your fault.”
The front door swung open. In walked a full-grown copy of Clara with near-black hair, a milky complexion, and radiant green eyes. The woman set down a pail of well water and placed her hand on her hip. “What’s all this?” she asked, taking in the two somber faces of her mother and daughter, and though her question was pointed, it wasn’t sharp. Rosamund Thurn was a frank woman, but rarely enraged.
Neither Grandmère nor Clara answered, for the answer was as plain as a sheep in need of shearing. All Rosamund had to do was glance at the two upturned cards.
She lifted a brow, removed her apron, and hung it on a peg by the door. Walking to a high shelf in the corner, she removed something from a canister and slipped it into her dress pocket. Turning to her daughter, the only child she had ever been able to conceive, she extended a hand. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
Without question, Clara laced her fingers through her mother’s, and they walked outside past the garden, the sheep pasture, the fence woven with twigs and reeds, and finally the stream that divided their farmland from the Forest Grimm.
“Did you know I once had my cards read by Grandmère?” her mother said as they approached a large oak tree. The moon brightened and chased away the twilight, limning the scalloped leaves with shimmering silver.
“Truly?” Clara stared up at her. Her mother had never seemed interested in Grandmère’s fortune-telling, though that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious about her own fate. Clara knew as much since her mother had already used her one wish on Sortes Fortunae to make her secret desire come true. Clara’s father had done the same.
“I was a year younger than you are now.”
Clara tried to guess which cards Grandmère had drawn for her mother. The Lady with the Lily for untarnished beauty. The Stone Castle for a long life. The Nine-Strand Knot for an unbreakable family bond. “What story did the cards tell you?” she asked as they walked beneath the tree.
Under the dark of the oak, her mother’s face and form dimmed and blurred, looking more shadowy than solid. “I was told your story.”
Clara didn’t understand. “Did Grandmère draw the Dappled Fawn for you?” That card foretold birth and children.
“No.” Her mother’s voice hitched like she either held back a laugh or stifled a sob. Perhaps she did both. “You and I share the same story. We were given the same reading. Grandmère also drew the Midnight Forest and the Fanged Creature for me.”
Clara shifted backward, unnerved by her mother’s newly ghostly appearance. “But … you’re still alive.”
“Yes.” Her mother walked around the trunk of the tree and traced its girth with her hand. “Oh, how I begged Mother to read the cards for me, but once she did, I cried for days. Father finally consoled me by helping me plant this oak. It was just a sapling back then, and look at it now. This is no short-lived tree.”
Clara tipped her head back and gazed at the branches above her. The highest ones had to be even taller than the pitched roof of their cottage. “Can’t oaks live hundreds of years?”
“That’s exactly my meaning,” her mother replied. “They’re almost eternal.”
But Clara had thought of a different meaning: this oak, as large as it was, had only lived a tiny measure of the years it still deserved.
A flood of hot emotions swelled within her, and she flung her arms around her mother’s waist. She no longer had a care for her own life. She only worried for her mother’s. She couldn’t bear the thought of her dying before her time.
Startled, her mother fell silent. With the backs of her fingers, she combed the loose hair at Clara’s nape, which had fallen from her crown braid. “Do not fret, dear heart.” Her voice was soft as lambswool. “Look in my pocket. I’ve brought something special.”
Clara unfurled herself from her mother and did as she bid her, withdrawing a small, round object. She couldn’t see it in the darkness, but her thumb brushed its smooth shell and rough cup hat. An acorn.
“I collected it last autumn,” her mother said. “Did you know Grimm oaks take twenty years to produce acorns? This is the first one I found growing on this tree.” Pressing a kiss to Clara’s brow, she added, “I want you to have it.”
“Why?” Clara frowned. She didn’t want to own something that represented her mother’s life. What if she mishandled it or lost it? “Shouldn’t you keep it?”
“Whatever for?” Her mother gave a gentle laugh. “This autumn I’ll have barrels full.”
But how many autumns after that?
As soon as Clara had the thought, another struck her, jarring her mind like a wagon wheel against a stone.
I don’t need to fear for my mother. I can save her.
She didn’t need the Red Card to change her fate. All she needed was a wish.
A wish Clara could claim from the Book of Fortunes when she came of age at sixteen.
She squeezed the acorn tightly. She would live another seven years to see her mother’s story changed. After that, it didn’t matter how Clara’s own story ended. She would gladly die so her mother could live.
“Thank you, Mama.” She tucked herself into her mother’s warm embrace. “I’ll keep it.”
CHAPTER 1
SEVEN YEARS LATER
I am haunted by my mother. I hear her voice ringing on the wind that chases the ravens from our sheep pasture, her stifled cries in the creaking of the pulley over our dry well. Her laughter glances off jagged flickers of dry lightning. Her rage gathers in low peals of rolling thunder.
The storms are only mockery. Their rainfall scarcely touches the earth anymore, and when it does, all I hear in its patter are my mother’s footsteps treading away from me, beckoning me to follow.
I am haunted by my mother … if hauntings weren’t a mystery of the dead, but rather an echo of the living. And she must be living. I will her to be. She isn’t dead, only missing—lost within the Forest Grimm. Three years have passed since she embarked on a journey there, soon after the magic of the forest had turned on our village, and she never returned.
Strips of fabric and ribbon in every color dangle from a large hazel at the edge of the forest. The Tree of the Lost. Mother wasn’t the only villager to go missing. Sixty-six others—the Lost Ones, as we call them—were also never seen nor heard from again after venturing into the forest. Each had their own reasons for wandering away since the onset of the curse, though most of those motives remain a mystery. The only known link between them is the state of despair they were in before leaving Grimm’s Hollow.
As for Mother, she should have known she wouldn’t return home. The Midnight Forest card had warned her long ago not to make a forbidden choice. But she left in search of Father, and she didn’t know he wasn’t Lost, not in that way. She entered the Forest Grimm soon after his disappearance, and she became the first Lost One.
The tokens on the hazel quiver in the summer breeze, stirring the ends of my sable hair. Mother’s hair is the same warm shade of darkest brown, but her cloth strip has been dyed rose red. Grandmère chose that color because it’s Mother’s favorite, and I spun the yarn myself from our flock’s finest wool.
I lift my hand to touch it, squinting against the morning sunlight that pierces the tight weave. Three years have passed since I first knotted it to this tree, and in that time the elements have frayed its edges and worn the cloth threadbare.
What if Mother is also this ragged and bone-thin?
I will come for you, I promise. Soon.
And by soon I mean today.
“Ten minutes until the lottery!” the village clockmaker calls.
My heart lurches like a cuckoo bird springing on the hour. I hitch my skirt to my calves and dart through the gathering crowd in the meadow. Monthly Devotion Day always draws out villagers like myself who haven’t given up hope that our Lost Ones are still alive. It also attracts those who enjoy the spectacle of the lottery and the danger that follows it. The focus of Devotion Day has always been the lottery and its culmination.
I reach the lottery table, where two glass-blown goblets perch side by side, one amber and the other moss green. Each holds scraps of folded paper with names of villagers scrawled upon them.
Today is the day I’ll be chosen—finally permitted—to enter the forest to search for the Lost Ones. Again. Again, because my name is in the moss-green goblet, discarded with others that were already chosen this year, plucked from the amber goblet on previous Devotion Days. My turn came several months ago, when I was finally old enough to take part in the lottery after coming of age at sixteen.
Claiming my chance to enter the forest through the sanction of the lottery was all I could do to save Mother from her foretold early death. It still remains my only hope. Despite the resolution I made seven years ago to make a wish on the Book of Fortunes, that choice has been taken from me.
Two years before I turned sixteen, the Forest Grimm cursed the village, and the book went missing. And soon we discovered why: someone had committed murder, and to complicate matters, they’d used their one wish on Sortes Fortunae to make it happen.
