The Grimm Legacy

I walked for what seemed like hours. A strength of purpose flooded up through me from my sneakers. Andre fell asleep in my arms, hugging the kuduo. He felt as light as a paper doll. The stars seemed to be falling around us, like glittery specks of dust.

After a while I found I was walking through trees with dim, bare branches. The air began to take on a tinge of pink, and the specks of dust in the air grew rosy. They rested on my shoulders and Andre’s hair, like flower petals. They were big for dust, soft like petals, and lightly cupped; when I looked closer, I saw they were, in fact, petals.

The tree branches took on a greenish tinge. Little leaves sprouted. I heard the sound of running water on our left—or was it our right?—and went to meet it. Dragonflies darted. A deer flashed its tail and soared out of sight. Andre woke up and yawned. “Where are we?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think we’re Nowhere anymore, but I don’t know where we are.”

Ahead of us a fountain tossed water in the air. Leaning against the fountain, looking bored, sat Aaron. Nearby, Jaya was doing a headstand.

“Elizabeth! There you are!” she shouted, flopping over and sitting up. “What took you so long? We’ve been waiting here forever!” 

Andre scrambled down and ran over to her. “Look, it’s Jaya!” he said. 

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Where are we? How did you get here?” 

“We used the Golden Key, of course.” 

“On what?” 

“The door. It’s a gate, on this side.” 

“Hello, Elizabeth,” said Aaron. “I was starting to worry you’d never show up. You have petals in your hair.” 

“Where are we? What is Jaya talking about?” 

“We’re in the Garden of Seasons.” 

“This is the Garden of Seasons?” 

He nodded. “The mirror said that’s where we would find you. So we used the Golden Key to open the door— you know, down in the Dungeon, near the elevator. From that side it’s just like all the other doors in the repository, but from this side it looks like an iron gate in a stone wall. How did you get in?” Aaron continued. “You don’t have the key. Is there some other way in?” 

“We didn’t come through any walls or gates; we came straight from Nowhere,” I said. I looked around for a wall, but I didn’t see any. I had a weird sense of familiarity, as if I’d spent hours and hours here, although I knew I’d never set foot in the Garden of Seasons before. 

The fountain filled the air with the scent of water. Water and autumn leaves. Water and autumn leaves and lilies of the valley. And earth. And snow . . . Suddenly I recognized this place: the scenes from the Tiffany windows! I stood up straight and spun around slowly, looking. The frost-rimed rocks to the north, the blossoming trees to the east, the thick, bird-spangled greenwood to the south, the sunset-red forest to the west. 

“You came straight from where?” said Jaya. 

“Nowhere—that’s where we wound up when I ran away from Mr. Stone. The homeless woman who hangs out in the Main Exam Room lives there. Grace.” 

Andre plopped down next to me and started playing with twigs and pebbles, making them walk around and talk to each other. “It’s sparkly in Nowhere,” he said, looking up. “I made a sun.” 

“Where’s Mr. Stone?” asked Jaya. “Is he still chasing you?” 

I shook my head. “I left him in Nowhere. I think he’s stuck there for good.” 

“I made a sun,” insisted Andre. 

“Yes, you did!” I said. “And the stars turned into flowers, and now it’s summer and it’s daytime too. Did you do all that?” 

“Yeah,” said Andre proudly. 

I mussed his hair, which had a few leaves and petals in it. “You’re a pretty powerful young man, then, Andre,” I said. But maybe he was right—maybe he did do all that. I couldn’t say for sure that he hadn’t. 

“So where’s the flower, then?” asked Jaya. 

“What flower?” 

“The one the mirror said would be here when we met you. The one that’s going to disenchant Dr. Rust.” 

“What are you talking about?” I said. 

“The mirror said we’d find you here with a flower.” 

“What? Back up. What happened after I left?” 

“The enormous dog flew off somewhere,” said Jaya. “I don’t know where he went. The gigantic bird was in pretty bad shape. Doc was still stuck in the crystal ball, and it made a blinding light whenever we touched it, and that made the bird screech, so I shut my eyes and put the ball in the bottomless box. Then we went back to Aaron’s and asked the Snow White mirror what to do.” 

“What did it say?” 

“It told us to meet you in the Garden of Seasons. It said we needed a flower to break the enchantment. Meet Betty in the magic bower and break the prison with a flower. We figured it meant here.” 

“Betty? My name’s Elizabeth! Someday I’m really going to smash that wretched thing.” 

“Sorry. I’m just telling you what it said.” 

“I wonder what flower it’s talking about. Could it be the one from ‘Jorinda and Joringel,’ in Grimm?” I said. 

“Remind me,” said Aaron. 

“It’s the one where a witch turns Jorinda into a bird, and Joringel finds a magic flower. When he touches Jorinda with it, she turns back into a girl.” 

“That sounds useful,” said Aaron. “Maybe we could use it on Anjali and Marc. Where is it?” 

“I have no idea,” I said. 

“It must be here somewhere,” said Aaron. “The mirror never quite lies. We just have to find it.” 

“What does it look like, then?” 

Aaron shrugged. 

“Is this it?” asked Jaya helpfully. She plucked a dandelion from the lawn. 

“Of course not, that’s a dandelion,” said Aaron. 

“How do you know it’s not a magic dandelion?” 

“What makes you think it would be?” 

“What makes you think it wouldn’t? Anything could be magic here,” she said. 

“Okay, fine,” he said. “Test it. Get the globe with Doc in it out of the bottomless box.” 

Jaya opened the box and stuck her arm in up to the shoulder—which looked strange, since the box was only three or four inches tall—and fished around. “Hey, this feels like Anjali.” She hung her from her strings on a bush and tapped her with the dandelion. Nothing happened. 

“Just find Doc,” said Aaron impatiently. 

Jaya went back to fishing in the box. “I’m looking—there’s a ton of stuff in here. Wait, I think this is Merritt . . . No, here he is,” said Jaya. She pulled out the brass figure of Marc beating a gong. 

“It’s my butter!” shouted Andre, dropping his leaves and pebbles. He grabbed the figurine from Jaya and kissed it again and again. “You found him!” 

Jaya went back to fishing around in the box.

“Please get on with it, Jaya,” said Aaron. “We need Doc.” 

“Calm down! It’s not so easy. There’s a lot of stuff in here and it’s all tangled up,” said Jaya. “Okay, here we go. I think.” 

A blast of white light, like concentrated moonlight, shot upward from the box as she lifted out the globe. Dimly through the light I could see what looked like Doc, still in the globe. 

I heard a screech overhead and something huge came plummeting down from the heavens and fell heavily at our feet.