The Sisters Grim- Menna Van Praag Page 0,164

on the wind, his touch in the falling leaves, his voice in the rush of the river. I imagine he sits beside me. I talk to him, I ask him to tell me secrets. And sometimes, when the rain falls hard, when the clouds part and the sliver of moon illuminates the silver birch trees, he will.

Communication

Where Bea’s soul has seeped into the soil, a single rose grows: blood red, velvet soft. A splash of colour on a white canvas. Her spirit, though, is in the air. She falls with the cascading leaves, floats on the mists, and drifts in with the rolling fog. She glides with the winds, flying through the forests, brushing the tips of birds’ wings. She soars above it all, among the stars, pure moonlight and air.

Bea watches her sisters. Sometimes she sends them messages: a blackbird feather dropped in Ana’s path, an image in Goldie’s dreams, a shadow at the edge of Scarlet’s eye line. Now that Bea has access to humanity in its every shade and hue, she marvels at the extraordinary capacity humans have for good and evil, for love and hate, the contradictory nature within them all. It’s a source of astonishment, even now.

She still misses Vali, still regrets that night, still thinks of him every day. She wonders where his spirit is and wishes he were here with her. Occasionally, Bea feels a twinge of jealousy that her sisters are together. Not that they are alive but that they have one another. Then Bea shifts from being the air beneath the birds’ wings, transforming into a raven herself to soar above Everwhere, black feathers glistening in the moonlight, swooping under the stars.

Solitary, strong, free.

Future

We visit Everwhere together. We find our remaining sisters under the first-quarter moon. We show them who they are and what they can do. We teach our young apprentices how powerful they can be. We show them that here they are bound by nothing, not even the laws of gravity, only the limits of their own imagination. We watch them ignite sticks and create waves and make tendrils of ivy dance.

We remind them, over and again, of their limitless potential, so they won’t forget. For, even though they’ll no longer have to fight the Devil when they turn eighteen, the potential danger of the stray soldiers remains, and there’ll be many battles in their lives that’ll require great strength.

We warn them of what’s to come in their teenage years, that they will be tethered to Earth, their ankles tied by ropes of doubt and fear. We tell them to write letters and take photographs (stored in fireproof boxes), and the night before their thirteenth birthdays, we offer to tattoo their wrists. Most get a symbol of their particular power: a flame, a drop of water, a feather, a leaf. Underneath we inscribe these words:

Validior es quam videris, fortior quam sentis, sapientior quam credis.

You are stronger than you seem, braver than you feel,

wiser than you believe.

We tell them to seek the other Grimms, their sisters scattered throughout the world. There’ll be no more born now, so we must find the family we have left. And they do. They spread the word. They talk of hidden magic, of whispers that speak of unknown things, of signs that point in unseen directions to unimagined possibilities.

I hope they’ll find you soon, so you won’t have to live any longer without realizing who you truly are.

Goldilocks

Once upon a time there was a little girl as good as she was pretty. She had big blue eyes, long golden hair, and a smile so lovely that it brought joy to everyone she met. The girl reared baby birds fallen from their nests, rescued worms that’d veered onto paths, enticed wilting flowers back into bloom. She gave food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless, and her most treasured possessions to the poor.

The girl was so good that she soon became famed throughout the lands. Parents, hoping to redeem their children, told bedtime stories of her deeds, and those lucky enough to meet her swore that she was so saintly her hair glowed golden as a halo.

The girl’s father was so proud of his daughter that he gave her the name Goldilocks. Every night he sat Goldilocks on his knee and asked her to tell him of all the good deeds she’d done that day.

“Today I sold my silver necklace,” she said, “and bought a cow for a farmer who’d just lost his to a sickness.”

“Very good,” her father would say. “You’re a blessing and example to us all.”

Every day Goldilocks alleviated suffering and brought joy. And every night, she fell asleep imagining all the things she might do tomorrow to make the world a little happier than it had been today. And when she saw the smiles on people’s faces, and the approval in her father’s eyes, she was content.

Yet, as she grew, Goldilocks noticed that she no longer always felt the desire to be good, nor always felt joy when she was. She found that people often asked for more than she wanted to give and, sometimes, she gave away not only her precious possessions but herself as well. Gradually, Goldilocks fell into a deep sadness. Still, she did her best to keep smiling and being kind, since she didn’t know what else to do or how else to be.

One day, her baby brother was born.

At first, Goldilocks loved and doted upon him as tenderly as she did every other living thing. But, despite her best efforts, she watched him grow into a boy as wickedly wild as he was handsome. Urso, named for the fact that he liked to roam the village roaring like a bear and scaring dairy maids into spilling their pails of milk, spent his days behaving brutishly.

Shocked as she was by her brother’s behaviour, what shocked Goldilocks most of all was that Urso didn’t mind when their father shouted or the villagers hurled stones and curses at him. He simply continued on in his wild ways regardless, laughing into the long shadows of their scorn.

Seeing how much fun her brother was having, free from coveting the good opinion of others, Goldilocks started secretly following his example. She stopped simply being good and started being a little bit bad. Sometimes she stole and sometimes she lied and sometimes she wasn’t very nice at all. On moonless nights Goldilocks wore Urso’s bearskin and they enacted shamanic rituals, evoking their ancestral spirits who emboldened her further still. Goldilocks chopped off her halo of golden curls and stopped rouging her lips and cast off her frilly dresses, so people no longer thought her pretty. She laughed too loudly and spoke too soon and no longer did what she didn’t want to do.

“You won’t be famed for your goodness anymore,” her father warned. “People won’t love you as they once did.”

Goldilocks discovered that this was true. Villagers who’d previously deified her now shunned her, whispering harsh words behind her back. Saddened by this, Goldilocks tried to return to her old ways, to always smile and be kind. But she found that she could not. Now that she was free she could not willingly step back into a cage.

So, instead of spending her days seeking loving smiles and approving looks, she sought other satisfactions. She dressed exotically and sang badly and danced wildly. She pleased herself in every way and, for the first time in her life, knew pure happiness and true joy.

One day, discovering she had a talent for growing things, Goldilocks began creating gardens so beautiful that visitors came from all around to see how she charmed reluctant shoots from the soil and coaxed the brightest flowers into bloom. Soon Goldilocks was travelling far and wide to every kingdom, sculpting public gardens into spectacles of unparalleled wonderment. Until, one day, Goldilocks was famed throughout the lands not for goodness but greatness.

And she learned that, while she still laughed too loudly and spoke too soon and did exactly as she wished, some people, most of all Urso, loved her no matter what. As for the rest, Goldie found that she no longer cared.