October 14
My name is Sabrina Grimm and this is my journal. My family has been bugging me to write in it for a while. I tried a few times, but to be honest I thought it was stupid. I never wanted to get involved. I wanted to be a girl who lived on the Upper East Side of New York City. I wanted to go to school and make friends and buy bagel sandwiches at the deli on York and 88th Street every morning. But that's not what happened.
If you're reading this, you're either Puck (stop snooping, stink-face!) or you're one of my descendants. If you're a descendant, then maybe you're like me and you kind of got dumped into this life where everything is upside down and nothing makes sense. Well, I need to fill you in on a few things, and you might want to sit down for this.
You know those bedtime stories your parents read to you at night? You know, the ones filled with fairies, giants, witches, monsters, mad tea parties, princes on white stallions, sleeping princesses, jungle boys, cowardly lions, and guys with straw for brains? They're not stories. They're history. They're based on actual events and actual people who are as real as you and me. They call themselves Everafters-real-life fairy-tale characters-and that's where our family comes in. We're Grimms, descendants of one-half of the Brothers Grimm, and we keep an eye on the Everafter community-which is no picnic. OK, I know you're probably thinking I've been sitting too close to the microwave, but I'm telling the truth.
Let me start at the beginning. Two years ago my parents, Henry and Veronica Grimm, disappeared. My sister, Daphne, and I were tossed into an orphanage and bounced around the foster care system for a while. For a long time we thought we had been abandoned, but it turned out Mom and Dad were kidnapped (long story). Enter Granny Relda, our long-lost and believed dead grandmother (another long story). Once she tracked us down, she brought us to live with her in a little town called Ferryport Landing. That's where a lot of the Everafters live.
You've probably never heard of Ferryport Landing. As I write this, the town is being destroyed. There's an angry mob of ogres, trolls, talking animals, and assorted creeps running down its streets, terrorizing everyone. Anyone with any sense has left or gone into hiding-but not us. Oh no! Our family has no sense to lose, which means we're knee-deep in trouble and things don't look like they're going to get any better.
But you still need to know about Ferryport Landing and what happened here. Which gets me to another of the Grimm family responsibilities. According to tradition it's our job to keep a journal of everything we see and hear that involves Everafters. The journals might just help you out, and your journals might help out the Grimms that come after you. So, take it from me: just bite the bullet and do it. I can't count how many times the journals have saved my sister and me.
Of course, there may not be any more Grimms after me. I might die and then no one will be reading this. Like I said, things are pretty bleak.
But that's enough backstory for today. I'll write more when I can. For now I have to go save the world.
Sabrina snapped her journal shut and tucked it into the folds of her sleeping bag for safekeeping. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, then got to her feet, stretching the stiffness from her aching body. Sleeping on the cold, marble floor of her bedroom was no fun.
Not that where she and her little sister, Daphne, were sleeping could actually be called a "bedroom." A bedroom had a bed. A bedroom had a window. A bedroom had a place to put your clothes, a closet, a rug, and other things to make it comfy and homey. What the girls had was an empty space with walls of stone and an unforgivingly hard floor. Sabrina hoped the living situation was temporary, but to make sure, she knew she had to get to work.
Next to her sleeping bag she kept a rusty cowbell and a drumstick. She scooped them up and padded over to where her sister lay, still slumbering. First she called out to the little girl. She even gave her a few shakes, but Daphne could sleep through a tornado and rousing her meant Sabrina had to take drastic measures. She found that the most effective of those tactics was a cowbell ring to her sister's ear.
DONK! The cowbell clanged as the drumstick smacked its side.
Daphne did not stir.
DONK! DONK! DONK!
Nothing.
"Wake up! We're under attack. Monsters and lunatics and weird dudes with pitchforks! They'll be here any second!"
Still nothing.
DONK! DONK! DONK! DONK! DONK! DONK!
Finally, Daphne poked her head out from underneath the flap of her sleeping bag, as did the humongous brown snout of Elvis, the family's two-hundred-pound Great Dane. Both of them eyed Sabrina sourly.
"You are a terrible human being," Daphne croaked.
"Woof!" the dog agreed.
"C'mon. Get up. We've got to get to work," Sabrina said.
Daphne scowled but did as she was told. When she and Elvis were on their feet, they stretched and yawned in unison. Sabrina noticed a huge book hiding in the folds of her sister's sleeping bag, and she frowned. It was called the Book of Everafter, and it was a collection of magical fairy tales. A person could do more than read it, though. They could actually go inside and visit the stories they loved. It gave people powers, too-dark powers, like the ability to rewrite the past and entrap people in its literary prison.
"You shouldn't leave that lying around," Sabrina said. "I told you when we took it out of its room that you had to be careful with it. Haven't we had enough trouble without that thing falling into the wrong hands?"
Daphne snatched it up in her arms. "Sorry."
"Have you found anything in all those stories we can use to fight Mirror?"
The little girl shook her head. "There's a lot of stories-like thousands! I'm still reading."
"Let's see if anyone else is having any luck," Sabrina said, then led Daphne and the big dog into a huge hallway known as the Hall of Wonders.
Massive columns held up a ceiling as high as the sky. Beneath it were hundreds-maybe even thousands-of doors. No one knew for sure. Each opened into its own unique room, and even after many months, the closed doors still sparked the curiosity of Sabrina's inner detective. The Hall of Wonders was a magical place. She could spend a lifetime exploring it, but now there were more important concerns at hand.
The sisters stopped at a door that opened into a room not much bigger than their own, but its contents were quite a bit more unusual. Mounted on every wall were a number of beautifully ornate, full-length mirrors-twenty-five of them, to be exact. Of the twenty-five, only five were intact. The rest were broken, only their frames remaining, but Sabrina had collected their shards and carefully glued them onto the walls of a room much closer to the Hall's exit than the original Room of Reflections. When the light hit the fragments just right, it created a dazzling play for the eyes, full of twisted reflections.
Moving the mirrors from their home at the far end of Hall had another advantage: other members of Sabrina's group could keep an eye on them. At the moment, two people watched the mirrors. The first was an elderly man resting in a chair. He had hair like a lightning strike-white and untamed. His suit was several sizes too big for his thin frame, and his arthritic hands trembled in his lap. His name was Mr. Canis. The second figure was almost his opposite. She was no older than Daphne, with amber curls that spilled down to her shoulders. She wore a red sweatshirt and hand-me-down jeans, and her face was full of possibility and hope. Everyone called her Red.
"You two look tired," Sabrina said.
"We're all tired," Canis said without taking his eyes off the mirrors. He was an old man, and recently his age had been catching up with him fast. He was prone to coughing fits and seemed to wince when he walked. Sabrina was very worried about him.
Red turned to the girls and smiled. "He won't sleep. He's been up for days."
"I will sleep when Mrs. Grimm is safe and sound," Canis growled, then turned his attention to Daphne. "You two should really lock that book up where it belongs."
"Geez, the walk to its room is like three hours long. I won't let anything happen to it. See anything new?" Daphne asked.
"As a matter of fact, yes," Canis said, gesturing to the five intact mirrors. Instead of reflecting back Sabrina's image, they revealed a bird's-eye view of Ferryport Landing. Ugly purple and ebony clouds hovered in the sky-the same clouds that had appeared two days earlier, and now sat over the town, blasting lightning and ear-splitting claps of thunder. "We have found your grandmother. Mirrors, tell them."
The five mirrors suddenly glowed with otherworldly light. They shimmered and rippled like the surface of a wishing well recovering from a tossed penny, and when they calmed again, Ferryport Landing was gone and four strange faces materialized. In one mirror, a brutal barbarian named Titan appeared; the second showed a seventies-era nightclub owner who went by the name Donovan; the third was a West African with long dreadlocks named Reggie; and the fourth was Fanny, a roller-skating waitress with hair as alarmingly red as a fire engine. The fifth mirror remained empty but continued to glow.
"One of the reasons we couldn't find her is we were looking in the wrong places. She's still in Ferryport Landing," Fanny said. She stood in what looked like an old-fashioned ice-cream shop, complete with red counters and matching stools. Behind her, a milk-shake machine hummed and a jukebox waited for a nickel. Fanny chomped on chewing gum-she never seemed to run out-and could be very sweet, but she had a tendency to spin around on her roller skates from time to time, which made Sabrina dizzy.
"What? How?" Sabrina asked.
"He hasn't broken through the barrier," Canis said.
"But-why not? Mirror is in Granny's human body now. That was his whole plan," Sabrina said.
"Who cares?" Fanny cheered. "Let's just be happy Mirror is stuck here in Ferryport Landing with the rest of us."
"He can't be thrilled about that," Daphne said.
"You said it, kiddo. The light show outside isn't a storm. It's a temper tantrum," Reggie said. When he spoke, his long, thick dreadlocks shimmied like streamers at a New Year's Eve party. "He's as stuck as ever, and quite salty, if the storm's any indication."
Daphne slipped her hand into Sabrina's and gave it a squeeze. Sabrina knew her sister must be just as relieved as she was. Since Mirror hijacked their grandmother's body two days prior, Sabrina had feared his plan to escape the town had worked. If Mirror had gotten free, he could have gone anywhere, unleashing his magic on an unsuspecting and unprepared world and taking their grandmother with him. But now…
"Serves him right!" Titan roared, and Sabrina spun to face his mirror. He was a rugged man with long rust-colored hair and a scraggy beard. Everything he said came out in a blustery rage, turning his face the shade of his mane. He appeared in front of a medieval torture chamber filled with spiked weapons and boiling oils. Despite his fearsome appearance and strange living quarters, Sabrina could see his heart was in the right place. Now he cried, "If only I were a living, breathing man, I would put a painful end to our brother's atrocity!"
"He's no brother of mine," Reggie grumbled in his thick Caribbean accent. "The First is a scoundrel of the worst kind."
"The First?" Sabrina asked.
"That's what we've been calling him, sister. He was the first magic mirror the Wicked Queen ever made-you know, the prototype," Donovan explained.
"Anything is better than his other name," Red said. "'The Master' is-"
"Creep-tastic?" Daphne asked, pretending to shudder.
Sabrina didn't have to pretend. Every time anyone mentioned Mirror her blood cells flash-froze inside her veins. How could she have ever called him friend? How could she have confided all of her hopes and fears to him? He had played her like a child's toy, betraying her and her entire family, and now he had her grandmother, manipulating the old woman like a helpless marionette in his twisted puppet show.
"Whatever his name, our brother will pay! He has stained the honor of magic mirrors everywhere!" Titan roared.
"You mean, all four of us?" Donovan said. "We're all that's left of the original twenty-five."
Titan snarled. "All the more reason to respect our heritage."
"Calm down, sugar." Fanny applied another layer of ruby-red lipstick as she spun around like a top. "You'll get your blood pressure up again. Now that we know where our brother is, it's time to focus our energies on how to catch him and free Relda Grimm from his control."
"Please tell me you have some ideas," Sabrina said. Her plea was met with heartbreaking silence.
"What about you?" Daphne said to the fifth undamaged mirror. Its surface appeared empty. Was its guardian in there…listening? Daphne softly caressed its frame as if coaxing a shy puppy out from under the bed. "What do you think?"
"You're wasting your time," Canis said. "I haven't heard so much as a peep from that one."
Daphne turned from the empty mirror with a sigh. "Have you spotted Uncle Jake yet?" she asked.
Donovan shook his head. "He's harder to find than your granny. It's like he disappeared off the map. We can sense his presence but can't pinpoint it. Wherever he is, he doesn't want to be found, and I suspect he's using magic to make sure he stays that way."
"What about these broken pieces? Any sign of him in here?" Sabrina examined the shards. Most people would sweep a broken mirror into a dustpan and toss it in the trash, but these pieces were far too special to throw away. Though their guardians were long gone, these pieces retained powerful magic. One look and a person could peek through the reflections of ordinary mirrors all over the world. Now Sabrina glimpsed a man putting on a necktie in a department store, a woman washing the makeup off her face, and a high school student practicing a speech in a bathroom mirror. In other shards she saw people closer to home. One showed Sheriff Nottingham struggling to tie Mayor Heart's corset. His boot was planted squarely on her back for leverage as he tugged and tugged. In another, an ogre smashed through the bicycle store on Main Street. In yet another, dwarfs looted the local grocery.
Canis shook his head in disgust. "Nothing."
"Well, Uncle Jake can take care of himself," Sabrina said. "We need to focus on Granny. Now that we know where she is we can go rescue-"
"You and your sister are sitting this one out," a voice said from behind her. Sabrina spun around to find her father and mother along with her baby brother, Basil, standing in the doorway. Henry was a good-looking man dressed in a heavy jacket and hiking boots. Like Canis, he looked tired. "I can't put you girls into that kind of danger."
"But danger is my middle name," Daphne said.
"Your middle name is Delilah, young lady," Veronica said. Sabrina's mother was a true knockout, but her face also showed signs of weariness. "Some jobs are just for grown-ups. Besides, I could use your help with Basil."
"Babysitting!" Sabrina cried.
"He's having trouble adjusting," Henry said. "He won't eat or sleep. I'm worried."
As if to prove Henry's point, the boy fussed and struggled, his little fists pounding on Veronica's chest, and tears running down his face.
When Basil was just a newborn, Mirror had kidnapped him with plans to steal the young boy's body as a vessel for his corrupt soul. Poor Red had become entangled in the plot as well, and was forced by a manipulative Mirror to act as Basil's babysitter while struggling with her own demons.
"I'll take him, Mrs. Grimm. He knows me," Red said.
Veronica looked pained. Sabrina could tell her mother did not want to let the boy go, but Basil needed sleep like everyone else, and Red had a knack with him. Despite the sad circumstances of their life with Mirror, Red and the little boy had a bond that no one could break. Veronica reluctantly surrendered the little boy into Red's arms and his tears transformed into giggles.
"I'll get him something to eat," Red said.
Veronica watched them exit the room. The moment they were gone, tears fell from her eyes. She looked as if she might collapse, but Henry swept her into his arms and held her fast.
"It will take time, 'Roni. He doesn't know us yet. But he will," he assured her.
Veronica clung to him like he was a lifeboat in a stormy sea, but Sabrina could see her father's despair as well. If people could break in two from grief, Henry and Veronica were very close to cracking up. It frightened Sabrina to realize her parents were so fragile.
"So you have a plan to save your mother?" Canis asked Henry. Henry shook his head. "No. But it can't hurt to take a look. That storm has been hovering over the southern end of town, so I assume he's near the rail station, probably on Route 9. I'm going to sneak over there and see what's what. Maybe I'll see something that can help us."
"I'll get my things," Canis said, and snatched the white cane that leaned against his chair. He struggled to his feet, using what looked like every ounce of his strength. The cane itself skittered across the floor, desperate to find purchase. Poor Mr. Canis looked like an old tree struggling to stay rooted in the face a hurricane.
"Mr. Canis, it would be best for you to stay here and keep an eye on things," Henry said.
Canis looked into Henry's face. "You have several babysitters already, Henry, and your mother and I shared important tasks and worked as partners. I was not her assistant and I certainly wasn't her wet nurse."
"I don't need you for babysitting. I need someone to help get things ready. What if I go down there and find a way to rescue Mom? She's going to be exhausted, maybe even hurt. We need to get a room ready for her if that happens," Henry said quickly, almost sheepishly. "Veronica's got her hands full with Basil, and I can't trust the kids to do it the right way. You're needed here."
Canis frowned. "Babysitting."
Sabrina braced for an argument. Staying put and preparing bedrooms was not what Mr. Canis was accustomed to doing. Once he had been the family's fiercest and most intimidating ally. He sent tremors of fear into the wickedest of villains, wielding the full barely controlled savagery of the Big Bad Wolf. Leaping into action was more his nature, and Henry's request seemed to hit the old man like a sucker punch. But no fight came. Instead, Canis turned and exited the room.
"He wants to feel useful," Veronica said.
"He'll slow me down. If something happens, I don't want to have to worry about getting him back here," Henry said, though Sabrina could see he immediately regretted his choice of words. "Not that anything will happen, of course."
"I'd feel better if Jake was going with you," Veronica said.
"I would too," Henry said as he buttoned his hunting jacket. "But Briar's death is still fresh, and Jake always took loss very hard."
Losing Uncle Jake's girlfriend Briar Rose was a shock to everyone, but for Jake it set off an emotional typhoon. She was the second person he had lost to violence, after his father had been killed by a mindless monster known as the Jabberwocky fifteen years ago. Now the love of his life was dead. Briar was killed by a dragon controlled by some of Mirror's goons-members of a group called the Scarlet Hand.
Sabrina heard a fluttering of wings and then a voice above their heads. "Who needs Jake when you have the Trickster King?" Something wet and sticky landed on Sabrina. It dripped down into her ears and collected under her chin, smelling like the livestock tent at a state fair. Sabrina looked up, even though she didn't need to. She knew the slime bomb was from Puck, and sure enough his pink fairy wings beat furiously to keep him aloft. He held another balloon with funky green ooze sloshing around inside.
"What was in that balloon?" Sabrina growled as she tried to wipe the muck off her face.
"You know…I don't have a clue. I found it collecting in a pool near the sewage treatment plant. It was just sitting there-free for the taking! Can you imagine? Who would just leave this stuff around?" He tossed the second balloon and it hit her in the shoulder, splattering all over her face and neck. "This is Grade A filth-top of the line."
Sabrina clenched her fists.
Puck looked genuinely shocked. "Don't tell me you're angry! You should be honored. When I found this slop, you were the first person that popped into my head. How could I test it on anyone else? I didn't want to offend you. And now, because of you, I can go into battle confident that my crud bombs bring the right amount of stomach-lurching awesomeness. I couldn't have done it without you!"
Before Sabrina could snatch his leg out of the air her father called Puck's name, and the boy darted down the hall after Henry, toward the portal to the outside.
"You're really leaving us here?" Daphne cried, chasing them into the hallway. Sabrina and her mother followed.
"We are," Henry said.
"You can't keep us locked up in this mirror," Sabrina shouted, but Henry didn't hear. His body vanished as he stepped through a magical portal that led outside to the real world.
"Smell you later," Puck said, and flew after Henry.
"I just got put back at the kids' table," Sabrina said.
"I never left the kids' table," Daphne grumbled.
Veronica patted them each on the shoulder. "There's plenty to do around here. Go find Pinocchio and get him to help Canis with that room. It would be good for him to lend a hand. We are feeding him, after all."
Sabrina stalked away. "Fine!"
When the girls were out of earshot of their mother, the complaining began.
"They treat us like we're babies!" Sabrina said.
"Yeah, why not put us in diapers?" Daphne said.
"We've been in dangerous situations before."
"Very dangerous!"
"We've fought dragons and Jabberwockies and creepy guidance counselors covered in fur!"
"Ugh. He was creepy."
"I killed a giant once!"
"I ate 'fish surprise' in the orphanage cafeteria!" Daphne shouted.
The two stomped on until they came to Pinocchio's room. The odd little boy was largely responsible for the family's uncomfortable living situation. He had opened the doors in the Hall of Wonders and released the magical creatures that were locked inside. The chaos that followed destroyed the Grimms' home, so Sabrina was stunned when her father invited Pinocchio to stay with them. In her opinion he should have been locked away-or even better, sent out to live in the wilderness, possibly to be eaten by coyotes and rabid beavers…or whatever lived in the wilderness. But Henry wanted to give him a chance to prove himself. So far he had proved himself to be rude and lazy.
"He's going to laugh in our faces," Daphne said.
"I hope he does," Sabrina said, channeling all her anger at her father toward the little snot. She pounded on his door harder than she needed to.
"Whoever it is, please go away. I'm having some 'me' time!" the boy shouted from behind the door, his voice a high-pitched whine.
"Get out here! You know I have keys to this room," Sabrina shouted back. "Open the door or I will open it myself and kick your puppet behind!"
"I was not a puppet! I was a marionette!"
Sabrina growled and reached into her pocket for her set of keys. She sorted through them to find one that fit the lock and threw the door open so hard the force almost knocked it off its hinges. The girls stomped into the room and found Pinocchio lying on a king-size brass bed, flipping through an architectural magazine.
"Hey! This is private! You're invading my…what on earth is all over you? Oh, that smell! You are putrid!"
"What does putrid mean?" Daphne said.
Before Sabrina could answer, Pinocchio spoke. "It refers to something that is in a state of foul decay. You children have always lacked a sense of personal pride when it came to cleanliness, but your current state is a new low."
"He's saying I stink," Sabrina said.
"Actually, I'm saying you both stink," Pinocchio said.
Sabrina examined his room in astonishment. In addition to the luxurious bed, he had a dresser, armoire, table lamp, Oriental rugs, an overstuffed chair, and a box of chocolate bon-bons. "Where did you get this stuff?"
"I discovered them in some of the other rooms." Pinocchio huffed. "Hey, you're getting that slop all over my things. Some of these pieces are antiques!"
Sabrina grabbed the boy by the collar and dragged him off the bed. He flailed and kicked and eventually freed himself from her grip.
"Did you ever think for a moment in that tiny little brain of yours that there might be other people who needed this furniture? Mr. Canis? My mother and father? My baby brother?"
"Not to mention me. Hello!" Daphne said as she stretched a cramp out of her back.
"We're all sleeping on the floor! You owe your lousy life to this family and this is how you repay us?"
"It's every man for himself now, Grimms," Pinocchio said, shooing them away like pesky flies.
Sabrina fought the urge to strangle him and nearly lost. Instead, she grabbed him, spun him around, and kicked him in the behind so hard he went flying through the doorway and into the hall. "Get out!"
"You're evicting me? You wouldn't!" Pinocchio said, straightening his clothes.
"I can and I will. We have a million major emergencies going on right now: a maniac is possessing my grandmother's body, my uncle's girlfriend was just killed, we're homeless, there are wild things running loose, and I have a worthless sack of nonsense hogging beds and being lazy. Which of those problems is the easiest to solve, puppet boy?"
"I WAS NOT A PUPPET!" Pinocchio shouted, and shoved his sharp little nose into her face. "Fine! What do you require?"
"Go back to wherever you found all this furniture and bring back whatever you find-if you spot a crib, take it to my parents' room pronto! Then get your stuff out of here. This is going to be my grandmother's room when we rescue her."
"I will not be ordered to do manual labor!" the boy said. "That kind of work is done by the uneducated classes."
"Get moving or when I'm done with you my foot is going to be filled with splinters!"
"I haven't been made out of wood in centuries," he grumbled.
"You better change that attitude, pal," Daphne called after him. "Next time we say jump, you better be in the air when you say 'how high?'"
Sabrina watched the boy disappear down the hall.
"Did that sound tough?" Daphne asked. "I felt tough."
"Get your jacket," Sabrina said.
"Oh, boy! I know that look. You haven't had that look since we were in the orphanage," Daphne said, grinning. "You're thinking about shenanigans!"
"Shenanigans?"
"It's my new word. It means 'fun troublemaking,'" Daphne explained.
Sabrina nodded. "We don't belong at the kids' table. We're going to help Dad rescue Granny Relda."
"Right after you take a shower," Daphne said.
Sabrina sniffed her glop-covered shirt. "Yes, right after I take a shower."
