Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales (5 page)

Chapter 7

“That was certainly awkward,” Myrtle said. She slipped the wand back up her sleeve.

“Sister,” Poplar said irritably. “Your temper!”

“Oh pish-tosh,” Myrtle replied. “They'll be back to their revolting selves in short order—and none the wiser.”

The knight nodded as he strode to the closet door. “She's right.
Squelch
never recall real magical acts. And besides, dillywig magic doesn't hold for long where the squelch live.”

Myrtle's face dropped like a Shar Pei. “We do not refer to
commons
as
squelch
. With language like that, one might wonder about your allegiances.”

The knight laughed. “Oh Myrtle, squelch don't care what we call them.” He winked at Briar and smiled broadly like he'd just told a great joke. “Besides, she isn't squelch, is she? She's one of us.”

Briar stood with her back leveled against wall with eyes fixed upon the strange intruders. “Mrs. Poplar, what—what's going on here? This is definitely the weirdest social worker visit I've ever had.”

Poplar came to Briar's side and took her cold, pale hand. “I know it's a bit much to take in,” she said. Then she ogled Briar with her telescopic monocle.

“Poor thing's never seen an alteration,” Myrtle said to the knight who just nodded. “But you did get my message on your device, did you not? And Ash—he told you that it was no longer safe, did he not?”

Ash, the knight, was busy fitting the closet door into its frame. “I told her,” he said. “It still isn't safe—not yet—nor ever, I would guess.” He pointed his sword at the door. The sword glowed and the hinges reattached with a red-hot sizzle. “But, I told you that people just shut down when I show up in that
damned ball-gown.”

“No!” Myrtle cried. “Not the one with the diamond shoes and the tiara again?”

He nodded.

“Your favorite, Poplar,” she said. “And you missed it.”

Ash shook his head. “That was a fine way to meet Briar for the first time.”

Poplar shrugged. “Still, it's better than if you had arrived as the geisha—”

Briar shook her head. “I'm sorry, I'm not following any of this. I stopped following once phones started flying, a big blue tornado spun through my room, and people started popping in and out of my closet like it was a freakin' carnival fun house.”

Poplar took Briar by the elbow. “Come sit down, Briar, you're overwrought.” Then Poplar told Myrtle, “It's her first time seeing an alteration.”

“So I've heard.” Myrtle seemed unamused.

“Let go of me,” Briar snapped. She backed away from Poplar and edged toward the closet. “Yeah, and it's safe to say it's my first time with weirdo home-invading kidnappers. Good call, Poplar—or whatever the hell your real name is.”

“I blame myself for this ignorance,” Myrtle said. “Look at the poor thing. From the Blackwood clan and she doesn't even know how a proper door works.” She looked away with glistening eyes.

“You see? This is what happens when you leave commons to raise a child like Briar,” Ash said. He pounded with his steel boots over to the hole in the split baseboard, bent down on his shrill knee-plates, and searched for the Saulks. “They better get out of there before they change back, or this could get messy.”

Myrtle pursed her lips. “I don't recall forcing them into the wall. Besides, I presume that's where most vermin live. I suppose they were only living out their deeper nature.” She looked away with her chin aloft.

Briar shook her head. “Excuse me. I'm still trying to catch up here. Just how did any of you get in here through that closet?”

Poplar smiled. “I walked mostly. Although, I may have tip-toed once I got closer to the door.”

“Hey, Straightjacket, you can't just walk through walls. We're in a basement—you know, like, underground,” Briar said. She opened the closet door and peered in.

“Oh yes, underground, close to the roots of that magnificent apple tree in the front yard.” Poplar clapped the fingertips of her lace gloves together. “She was quite fortunate in that regard.” She nodded with Myrtle.

Briar began shouting. “You're full of shit. Now stop lying and give me some answers.”

Just then the fox fur around Myrtle's neck lifted its head and spoke. “This is absurd. Miss Ingrate is ignorant, insulting, and has quite the potty-mouth.”

Briar screamed. “What the hell?”

The fox hopped off Myrtle's shoulders, scurried to Briar and squinted at her with one eye. After a few moments he said, “Nope. She isn't the right one, anyway. Now come on. Let's all get out of here before Orpion's spies find us.”

“Don't pay any attention to Sherman,” Poplar said to Briar. “Just show him the key and he'll know what's what.”

“The key?” Briar was staring at the talking fox, and could barely process what was happening.

“Yes, dear, the one around your neck. Show Sherman so he'll shut that chicken-poaching trap of his,” Poplar said.

Briar followed Poplar's request, reached for the chain and pulled the key up from the front of her dress. She regarded it, tracing the black iron curls and floral design at its head with her gaze, turning its smooth barrel between her thumb and forefinger. Poplar had often told her that it was the last remnant of her birth mother, whose whereabouts were unknown. Briar went nowhere without it.

“That's not the key,” the fox said. “It's supposed to be gold. I remember these things.”

Briar felt as though the walls were closing in on her.
This shit is off-the-chain crazy
. And yet, there was something disturbingly familiar about it all. She started to back away from them, and inadvertently stepped through the closet doorway. Once that happened, she disappeared.

Myrtle raised her eyebrows. “Well how do you like that?” she said. “The child left without as much as a goodbye.”

Briar suddenly found herself in a dim, red-carpeted hallway lit by flickering candles set in dusty gold brackets. “What the—?” she whispered. She turned around looking for the door through which she passed, and her heart paused.

Though the light was dim and unsteady, she saw that she stood within an impossibly long corridor lined with white doors of all shapes and sizes. Thousands of lustrous doors with gleaming brass knobs crowded the walls and even the ceiling. Some doors were small and round. Perhaps only a thimble could fit through them. Others were tall and square, and they reached as high as the ceiling would allow. The doors were stacked atop one another and jammed together tightly, making a ladder necessary to reach the highest of them.

She could be lost forever in these halls with bisecting corridors, all of which seemed to infinitely stretch out.

“Hello?” she called out. But the corridor was hushed, except for a tick-tock sound coming from somewhere nearby.

She tiptoed toward the first intersection not far from where she stood. Her every footstep creaked on the warped old floor-boards beneath the carpet. Once she arrived, she only found another hall crammed with doors on either side and above her.

This hallway, however, was shorter, maybe the length of several parked cars, she estimated. A tall grandfather clock was wedged into the end of the hall. Not that Briar had much experience with old clocks, but this was unlike any she had ever
seen. To begin with, it was at least two times the height of a full-grown man. Then, instead of the normal faceplate, from what she could see, the thing had three concentric dials crisscrossed with sixteen strange markings. She wanted a better look, so she stepped into the second, bisecting hall.

This one was tighter than the first. If she were to walk straight on, her shoulders would brush both walls. And, in fact she brushed a shoulder along an ancient tapestry she hadn't noticed hanging above a row of knee-high doors. It was probably a trick of the light, but it seemed to her that the faintly stitched roses in the graying background bowed aside.

Briar stood back as far as she could and studied the entire length of the weaving. It was stitched with crosshatched illustrations from a children's storybook, with images of cottages, creatures, and faded landscapes. Gnarled oaks and oversized flowers loomed over a yellow two-story dwelling with ginger-bread trim. It looked just like the Saulks' home. Her heart dipped and she felt a fog of confusion rolling through her mind.

Toward the top of the musty old hanging was a red-cloaked figure that held a mirror in its hands. And a spinning wheel, with drips of red stitched in as though it were dripping blood from its spindle, was positioned near a gloomy palace. A dark cloud was carefully woven in the distance and was shaped like an ominous hooded figure that seemed to hold the whole tapestry between its clawed hands.

Hidden along the border of the decaying mural, amid scrollwork of vines and leaves, were short wiry creatures with pointed caps and sharp claws. Each one clamped a colorful jewel between its teeth. There were other images as well, hideous, monstrous things, or so it seemed to Briar. But they were too worn by time for her to fully make them out. She smoothed her fingertips along the stitching of a jewel-eating creature. The fabric felt brittle and easily torn. She felt her muscles seize when the woven creature suddenly recoiled from her hand and
skittered across the tapestry to hide inside a distant cave.

Briar stumbled backward against the opposing wall, a doorknob jammed into her spine. Not taking her eyes off the moving cross-stitched images, she side-shuffled a few steps until she bumped into the clock. Its pendulum suddenly developed a panicked tempo and it click-clacked madly from side to side. Its various chimes then clamored together as though screaming at her. Then she saw clearly that instead of two hands, like a normal clock, this one had many hands pointing in every direction. One of the hands stood straight out, pointing directly at Briar as though accusing her of some unknown crime.

She covered her mouth with a gasp and barreled back to the other end of the dark hall. She began grabbing feverishly at doorknobs, but they all held fast. Briar's throat tightened and her knees could have crumbled like ruined sandcastles. The whole scene was so bizarre that she wasn't certain that any of this was really happening.

She closed her eyes and held them shut for a moment. Things might change, just as they would in a dream—if indeed this were one. She shook her head vigorously with her eyes still shut. Then she blinked and looked again down the corridor, expecting the vision to be different now. But every detail remained in its exact, vivid, inexplicable form.

She looked to her right, and in the dancing candle shadows, she noticed clear light seeping around the edges of another closed, paint-crackled door. She took a couple of hushed-toe steps toward what she hoped might be a way out, when another door opened. From it burst Ash, Poplar and Myrtle.

“Stay where you are!” Poplar shouted.

The sight of the three coming down the corridor toward her was enough to send Briar on a sprint to the door framed in light.

“Where is she going?” Poplar asked. Her face was screwed up into a question mark.

“Child, stay away from that room,” Myrtle commanded.

Briar twisted the doorknob and, salvation, it was unlocked. She swerved herself around the door, slammed it shut, and pressed her body up against it. She felt a key in the door's lock. She twisted it until it clicked, and then she tested the door, making sure it could hold up against rat-eating crazed weirdos.

Just above her shoulder something struck the door with such fury that it left a hand-sized gouge. She whirled around toward her attacker, only to face a fluffy brown sparrow the size of a grizzly bear. The bird cheeped loudly and stabbed again with its pointy brown beak.

Briar moved her torso just in time and the bird pecked into the door again. Wood chips and splinters flew in all directions and the door rattled on its hinges. The bird hopped closer toward her on its spindly talons and cocked its head to get a better look. It chirped shrilly, and Briar covered her ears. The bird hopped backward, preparing to strike once more.

Chapter 8

“Sing to it,” Poplar yelled from the other side of the door.

Briar reached for the key in the door, but the sparrow made another deafening chirp and bore down on her hand with its snapping beak. Briar jerked her hand away as fast as she could, but the bird was faster, snapped at her sweatshirt sleeve, and snipped it cleanly through. Briar fell backward and landed on her backside.

Myrtle pounded on the door and shouted to Briar, “Child, listen to me. You must sing to the bird! Do it now.”

Briar kept her eye on the sparrow while stretching her hand once more for the protruding key. The bird struck again, but this time it clipped the key in its beak. With a speedy head movement, it tossed the key over its back. It landed with a metallic chime at a distant spot on the floor.

Briar scrambled on hands and knees away from the creature. It did not attack again but inspected her movements keenly with its jewel black eyes. This gave Briar a second or two to notice her surroundings. The room was of unfinished wood; nails the size of telephone poles were stuck through the walls into the room at various points. In a far corner, behind the sparrow, stood a downy collection of feathers, strings and twigs, all fashioned into a colossal nest. Next to the nest was a gaping hole in the far wall. It looked like a perfectly engineered round hollow, large enough to walk though. She didn't want to rile the bird any further by wandering close to the nest, but she could see the glimmer of starlight just outside the round cut out.

Then she heard voices again. “I don't think she can hear us,” Poplar said fretfully from the other side of the door.

“Are you singing?” Myrtle asked. She sounded like a doting nana monitoring her charge's toileting. “If so, you're awfully quiet about it.”

Briar crawled slowly toward the key, trying not to provoke the bird. “No, I am not singing. I'm a little busy at the moment.”

“What does she mean, busy?” Myrtle burbled with a frown in her voice. “Child, do not busy yourself much. You need to get away from the bird.”

“Really? You think?” Briar said.

Briar finally reached the key, snapped it up in her hand and crawled at a careful, creeping pace back to the door. Once she was within beak-striking distance, she sat below the bird's-eye level, and scooted toward the lock. She reached up with the key, maintaining eye contact with the sparrow, and she felt for the keyhole. The bird puffed its feathers, smoothed them again, then hopped forward like a wind-up tin toy. It towered over Briar, chirped and twisted its head to one side so that it see where on her body it should strike next.

Without warning, the knight's sword bored through the door above Briar's head, showering her with paint chips and wood splinters. It missed the bird, which then hopped back and cheeped so loudly it threatened to pierce Briar's eardrums. Suddenly the door swung open, and Myrtle and Poplar rushed past the armed knight to stand face-to-beak with the sparrow.

“Peeps! You naughty imp!” Poplar exclaimed.

Myrtle weighed in. “We've told you before. No eating the guests!” She made a shooing gesture with her hands. Then with an elegant flourish, breadcrumbs appeared in Myrtle's palm.

The sparrow cheeped, making them all cover their ears. “I told you, Poplar, we should have kept her as an
outdoor
bird. If we must share our residence, then she must at minimum follow the rules.” Myrtle tossed the breadcrumbs toward the stack of twig and string in the far corner. Then, claws scratching the floor, Peeps bounded over to nibble and poke at her snack.

Briar sat, eyes like moons, fingering the clean hole snipped through her sweatshirt, trying to fathom everything that had occurred. Poplar and Myrtle hurried and helped her to stand
while Ash jiggled and labored to free the sword.

“Poor dear,” Poplar said. “You have to understand, it's Peeps' first time as an expectant mother.” She fussed over the splinters and oddments on Briar's hoodie. Once Briar got her bearings, she looked across to Peeps' rough-hewn snuggery. She could see the domes of three brown and white speckled eggs peeking out from the top of the nest. Peeps finished her crumbs, then fluttered atop her eggs. The windblast from her wings filled the air with particles of straw and loose, soft down.

“Come now, Briar,” Myrtle said. She raised her chin with an air of propriety. “We've spent enough time with diversions. You have much to learn and little time to learn it. If you would please follow me to the parlor.”

Myrtle stepped to the door that Ash had closed to get leverage enough to pull his sword free. He stepped aside and when Myrtle opened it again, the hallway on the other side was gone. In its place was a timeworn parlor.

Briar could not formulate words coherently enough to express her complete bewilderment, so she stood, immovable.

Poplar took Briar by the arm and escorted her into the room. “Look at the poor darling,” she said to Myrtle. “Probably can't make heads or tails of the diddles and daddles around here.”

“What happened to the hallway,” Briar asked. “Where did it go?”

“One door, one use,” Myrtle said. “That's the first thing you'll need to remember.” She smiled primly and stroked the fox clasped around her shoulders. It started to snore. “Well that wasn't so hard now was it?” she said. “Only about seventy thousand more things to learn and we'll be on our way.”

Myrtle sat on an oversized couch covered in tapestry cloth, with her bony ankles crossed. She pulled the gold wand from her sleeve and twitched her wrist; the wand extended, climbing in zigs and zags and pings and twangs until it reached her face. The last arm of the wand then opened to a pair of spectacles that
magnified her eyes to several times their normal size.

The room was busily decorated with an unplanned collection of strange antique objects, and faded, yet opulent furniture with wood framing that curved in luxurious, rhythmic art nouveau tangles at the arms and feet. She saw several crystal spheres on three-legged claws grouped together on a Spanish shawl-draped table. They had books of every sort with strange markings upon their crusted and disintegrating bindings stacked in piles upon floors and tables. On top of the book stacks, as well as scattered about in every stray nook, were potted plants of the strangest, most unidentifiable variety.

Long, woody roots and herb bundles lay tied with crudely made string on chopping boards wreathed with beeswax candles. It looked to Briar that the chopping boards had deep red stains engrained in them: like remnants of blood that they had unsuccessfully tried to scrub away. The room smelt like both a musty library and brewing herbal tea.

Poplar brought Briar to sit in a wooden chair carved with winged creatures as the chair's arms, and bird's talons for feet.

Sherman snorted awake and spat out a fur ball. “What is
she
doing here?” he asked. He lifted his head and didn't bother moving from where he lay. “I told you, this fatuous buffoon is not the one!”

Poplar's expression became dark and she walked toward Sherman with a hungry look. “I've already dined on a rat today, Sherman,” she said. “And a fox seems to me very much like a plumper rat. So don't tempt me…”

The fox bounced down to Myrtle's knee and sat with its pointed ears tucked back and its tail curled. His eyes were fixed and wide. “You wouldn't dare,” he said. But he didn't sound convinced. Rather than fight, he curled up into a ball of red fluff at the center of Myrtle's lap and flicked his tail at Poplar.

Poplar turned to Briar. “I apologize, dear, for the state of our home. Still, it's better than living in an old shoe. That is, unless
you had so many children, you didn't know what to do…”

Briar looked like someone who had been zapped a few times with a stun gun. She wasn't following conversations or conventions any longer. “Can someone explain what the hell is going on?”

Ash marched into the room from a swinging door to the side of the parlor. He was now clad in a long, shabby gray-fur overcoat, knitted scarf, and snowshoes that looked like oversized tennis rackets. Briar could see his face fully now. He had ruddy cheeks, and around his eyes and his brow he showed the lines of his years. His salt and pepper hair was a curly shoulder length and it matched well his short-cropped beard.

He paraded awkwardly across the room, snowshoes sounding against the wood floor. Then he plopped heavily down on the couch setting a small flurry of snowflakes airborne. “First thing we need to do is fix that salt-mouth of hers,” he said. He nudged Myrtle mischievously, but she was not amused.

“I don't think any of us were prepared for this—this virtual fount of vulgarity,” she agreed. She pruned her lips, looking like she was swallowing a tack.

“Indeed not,” Sherman added, though muffled by his tail fur.

“Who
are
you people?” Briar asked.

“You people?!” Poplar exclaimed. “Oh Myrtle, she doesn't even recognize us!”

“Well, how could she?” Myrtle snapped back.

“That's true.” Poplar smiled. “She was only a babe in our arms. Look how she's grown! Except for her blackened cheeks, lips, hair, clothes, and metal thrust through her face, she is the Goose's image of her mother!”

“Is that so?” Myrtle asked. “We shall have to see about that.”

“How do you know anything about my mother?” Briar asked.

Poplar sidled up to Briar and snatched her by the elbow, entwining their arms together.
“Knew
, dear. We
knew
your mother, once upon a time. You were just a wee thing. But she's
been gone for a very long time.” She shook her head and her eyes filled with tears.

“What do you mean—gone?” Briar asked. She stood from her seat and her throat almost choked out the final words.

“Please sit, dear,” said Poplar. “This must be a shock. Why don't you drink a cup of my special tea? It'll calm your nerves.”

Briar sat stiffly on the edge of the chair. “No, I don't want— What? Are you out of your mind, lady? I'm not stupid enough to touch your voodoo-witchcraft crap! The next thing I know, I'll be lying in a bathtub filled with ice, hand-stitched with dental floss across my back, while you're selling one of my kidneys on the internet. No thanks.”

“Oh,” Poplar said. “Well, my first choice was chamomile.”

Briar looked around the room at the collection of oddballs. “If you know something about my mother, then I want you to tell me.”

Myrtle shot Poplar a look of warning. Poplar tightened her lips and tried to dab her eyes inconspicuously with a lace hankie she had tucked into her bosom for just such an occasion. She snuffled a little and said, “Yes, well, dear, perhaps later.”

“No,” Briar drawled, shaking her head. “There won't be any later. This is just as I thought. You don't know anything about my mother. You're just a bunch of lunatics who get their jollies tricking and kidnapping kids.” Briar felt a wave of defiance build within her, gathering the strength of an intensifying fire. She stood up and shouted, “You fucking freak-asses better let me leave or I'll—!” Briar felt like there would be some consequence—as delusional as it may have seemed. She couldn't fill in the final blank because she wasn't sure just what exactly would occur. But somehow, at the very bottom of her reasoning, without ever having thought out a plan, she knew she was right. Something would happen. Something big.

Myrtle's eyes widened during the uncomfortable silence that followed. She raised her spectacles again and this time inspected
Briar like a laboratory specimen. “Oh dear,” she said. Sherman popped up to her shoulders and sat ogling her. “Do you see what I mean?” Sherman asked. After letting off steam, Briar felt a little stupid. She sat back down.

Then Myrtle said to Poplar, “Indeed. We may have made a mistake with
this one
, but we must be certain.”

“But she has the key,” Poplar said. “I've followed her every move for almost sixteen years now—just like you wanted me to do. However can you believe that this is the wrong girl?”

“The omens,” Myrtle said. She sat back down. “The damned old seers have muddled things before. Rapunzel hasn't predicted anything accurately with that old cracked mirror of hers for centuries now.”

“Well, seeing isn't an exact science…” Poplar said. She came close to Briar, as though inspecting her face. “Besides, the child's eyes—are they not familiar to you?”

“Oh my God, you psychos really are nuts. You're gonna kill me—and then take my eyes to sell. Just let me go and I promise I won't tell anyone,” Briar pleaded.

Myrtle flicked her wrist and the spectacles turned into a solid wand again. With it, she made several quick angular gestures and suddenly Briar's chair came to life. The clawed arms of the chair sprang free and wrapped around Briar, forcing her to sit. Briar screamed and struggled, but to no end.

“Kill you!” Myrtle had a dangerous chuckle. “You have not yet even come near to the taste of death, child.” Myrtle's face morphed; it became darker and sallow. Her eyes looked sunken and from the dark pits, there glowed a silvery blue light. Her teeth became sharp, jagged razors, like a shark's teeth. “Believe me,” Myrtle continued, “you will know it when the Great Conclusion is truly upon you, sucking the last wisp of air from your lungs, bathing you in the darkness from which none return.”

Briar stopped struggling in the grip of the chair and caught
her breath. Even Sherman bounced away from of Myrtle's shoulder, tail tucked and backing into a far corner. Myrtle suddenly realized that she had lost composure and she cut her words short. She shifted her demeanor and her old prim looks returned. She gave a curt, unnatural smile, probably the first Briar had seen. She stiffened and turned away. “You will be glad to know that this is not that moment.”

Briar bit down on the idea that she had seen too much, tasting it bitterly. She dared say nothing, but it seemed clear that they might never really let her go.