The Grimm Prequels Book 5: (Prequels 19-24) Read online

  The

  Grimm

  Prequels

  19-24

  CAMERON JACE

  WWW.CAMERONJACE.COM

  Copyright © 2016 Cameron Jace

  “This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, except only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.”

  ~ Neil Gaiman

  Edited by:

  C.L. Bush (www.clbush.com),

  Matt Cope, & Greetje Wijnstok

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  Prequel Reminder – Once Beauty Twice Beast

  Prequel #19 – Friday the Thirteenth

  Prequel #20 – The Fisherman’s Son

  Prequel #21 – Lady Bluebeard

  Prequel #22 – Thirteen Years of Snow

  Prequel #23 – Sun, Moon, & Sorrow

  Prequel #24 – Spindle, Spindle Little Star

  Other Books By Cameron Jace

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  FOREWORD FROM THE AUTHOR

  Important. Please Read.

  I’ll keep it short.

  The Grimm Prequels, no longer called the Grimm Diaries, or being an essential read before the main Grimm Diaries series, is the kind of story that exists because of you, the reader. I’m just the hands and brains that makes it happen.

  Three or more years ago they were supposed to be an appetizer for the main series. Then low and behold, the short snappy stories took on a life of their own and turned out to be more popular than the main series – and an instant bestseller.

  They are unusual diaries, addictive – even in writing – and turn everything you ever knew about fairy tales on its head.

  But that’s not just it.

  The prequels aren’t just my way of chronicling the history of fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and urban legends into a massive volume of entertaining stories. Not anymore. Now that most characters have been fleshed out in the process, it’s a character-based series with tons of them being the reader’s favorite.

  This aims for an almost never-ending set of prequels. Imagine how many fairy tales can be tackled.

  Some of the most loved characters haven’t even been touched upon yet; consider Ladle Rat, Wolfy, Jack, & Marmalade or even Bloody Mary, to name a few.

  But I don’t know how long the Grimm Prequels will be released. As long as it takes, I suppose. The best part is that we’re in this process together. As long as you need to know about certain characters and plot points is how long I’m happily obliged to write them.

  Again, it’s basically your series, not mine.

  This set of prequels, diaries 19-24, is the longest ever. They’re over 300 pages, and there is a reason for it. I wanted to cement the idea in your head: this is a series of its own now, neither you nor I can change that.

  Accompanying this release are the Grimm Prequels 1-18, all in one volume. That’s the first four books of prequels all in one. We’ll call the boxset: The Grimm Prequels Books 1-4, which makes this newer collection of prequels 19 to 2 The Grimm Prequels Book 5.

  Now the most important part of this foreword!

  It’s essential that you understand that the format of the series has slightly changed. The Prequels are now read by the Beast. Remember him, the boy from the Once Beauty Twice Beast?

  In that story he had discovered a mysterious library with an endless supply of Books of Sand. These Books of Sand are the Grimm Prequels you’re reading now.

  Being a prisoner of the castle, the Beast could only kill time by reading the prequels, not Sandman Grimm.

  This makes the notes at the end of each prequel the Beast’s Notes, not mine. We call them just ‘My Notes’ now.

  And since the Beast has an endless supply of books in the library, he can easily confirm the facts of each prequel and relate them to historical events.

  The Beast will slowly discover how he is connected to all of this and why fate led him to be a prisoner of the castle. You’ll understand about his emotion through the ‘My Notes’ he writes. You and him are basically two curious individual, trying to interpret the prequels.

  In the end, it will tie up into a major conclusion – but not in this set of prequels, of course.

  Don’t be confused. As a devoted Grimm Prequels fan, you will get the feel of it as you read on. It will actually enrich the stories and tie up a lot of loose ends.

  I’ve added the prequel Once Beauty Twice Beast to this set to catch you up on the Beast, in case you don’t remember it and would like to reread it.

  If not, just skip it to the first new prequel in this set: Prequel #19: Friday the Thirteenth.

  Stay fabulous,

  Cam, the Storykiller.

  ONCE BEAUTY TWICE BEAST

  as told by Beauty (also known as Beast)

  Dear Diary,

  Once upon a time, time wasn’t on my side…

  With a racing heart, I was expecting my visitor to come knocking on my castle’s door. The large raven-shaped clock hadn’t struck midnight yet, but I knew time was the greatest murderer in history. It always arrived wherever you were, not a tick too soon, and not a tock too late.

  I expected my visitor the way you’d anticipate an inevitable kiss… of death.

  Beads of sweat had exposed the fears I was hoping to conceal. Damn those sweet fears. How dare I think of them as sweet? They sent chills down my spine, conspiring to stop my hands from writing this entry in my diary.

  However, my hands were bound to tell the truth of a tale we all thought we knew so well. Hands are like tongues; acting against our better judgment, screaming out the secrets once kept in the deepest closets of our minds.

  “Things must be loved before they are lovely,” I mumbled to myself, my voice intense, echoing in the room. I repeated the phrase religiously, like a priest reciting a hymn that would save a sinner. Things must be loved before they’re lovely.

  I was breathing heavily, watching waves of moist air shimmering in the candlelight before me.

  “Stars must be cherished before they glitter. The moon must be loved before it’s full. And the sun must be remembered, even when it’s dark,” I said, staring at the clock on the wall, ticking; tick tock, tick tock, the footsteps of time hunting me down. Each passing moment, every breath I took, I was worried I’d hear a tick, but not live long enough to hear its tock.

  Looking away from the clock, a canvas hung on the wall in my chamber of solitude. It was Persian. I tried my best not to look at it. It had the same phrase sewn with golden threads into its fabric: things must be loved before they’re lovely.

  “Stop it!” I yelled out, as if talking to ghosts – or the loved ones who I should have been with now, but knew I lost forever.

  The phrase on the canvas was killing me. I had to write down my story before my visitor arrived. I had to. There wasn’t enough time left to tell the truth about who the real Beauty was, and who was truly the Beast.

  People deserved to know the truth.

  What makes one evil and what makes one good? I wrote, tightening my grip on the pencil, as if it opposed my will to express my
self.

  The question on the paper lulled in my head. There were so many questions I wanted to ask, so little time for getting the right answers. Sometimes, I wondered if I was the only one who questioned the origin of tales. Why was it that people didn’t care about origins, or where stories really came from?

  Who are we to say who is good and who is evil? Who, and what, is beauty and who is beast? I wrote, carving the letters on paper as I closed my eyes, hoping the words would disappear when I opened them again.

  They didn’t. The words were still there, daring me to answer the question I had just asked.

  I looked away from the diary in my hand. Most people would call it a ‘diary’ when in reality it was a Book of Sand; a binding of unusual pages that dissolved into golden, sparkling grains of sand, once read.

  Each book could only be read once, then its contents would be gone, only recognized by the one who read it – and whomever had written it earlier.

  But that would only last for another hundred years, when the sand returned into book form again, awaiting a new reader who may, or may not, use its secrets wisely – if not entirely lie about its content.

  Had I never met her, I wouldn’t have been exposed to such magic. But I’ll come to that later.

  I’ve always wondered about books, stories in particular. Folktales I read from every corner of the world. Tales like the Beauty and the Beast, recurring in different formats and interpretation from a book to book. I couldn’t help but notice the inconsistencies of the story, the lack of logic, and different versions of the same tale. My guess was that someone had told someone who had told someone who told someone else… until the story lost its origins.

  But I knew the origins of the story. I knew what really happened a long time ago.

  Still skeptic, wondering why you should believe me?

  That’s the easiest part to answer: because I was the beast—or the beauty. It all depends on how you will perceive me by the end of this diary.

  Things must be loved before they are lovely.

  I took a deep breath, staring at the at canvass again, imagining the clock didn’t tick, and wished I could finish my story before my visitor came. I started writing…

  It all started the day I was born. My parents said it was the happiest day in their lives. I was their seventh child, the only boy following the birth of six girls—I know you expected Beauty to be a girl, but that wasn’t the case.

  In my time, girls were sent off to get married at the age of seventeen, while boys had to grow up into courageous men. My father, the king of the land, always wanted a boy who would soon become a prince and join him in his endless voyages at sea.

  Unlike our neighbors in the Kingdom of Sorrow, we lived in peace, and our royal family’s main interest was exploring the world. My father was a descendant of Christopher Columbus, who had discovered many regions of the world, including the Kingdom of Sorrow.

  For personal reasons, I shall not name my kingdom: my family’s, or mine. I don’t know who might read this diary, and I can’t risk it ending up in the hands of those who have learned the dark arts and know about the power of real names.

  Unfortunate for my father, I wasn’t interested in traveling like he had hoped. I had no interest in the sea or my father’s voyages, because I had an infatuation with books. My father didn’t like that, because his voyages weren’t only explorations. Our kingdom benefited immensely from the trades and the goods his ships brought to it. He was worried that if I didn’t develop a liking for the sea, he couldn’t pass his sailing skills onto me. I didn’t understand at that time that I would be my kingdom’s only hope if my father died.

  “Don’t you want to join your father in his voyages? Don’t you want to be like the great Christopher Columbus?” my lovely mother asked me, while I was yawning next to a pile of vellums I had bought at expensive prices. I collected books that were only written once, and were never copied, thinking that I could gain exclusive knowledge that no one else had. I wanted to learn how to turn copper into gold, and about magic, which was forbidden in our kingdom.

  “I hate the sea,” I said. “Why should it be of any interest to me? Is it because I am the only boy?”

  “Well, your interests are rather strange, my son,” my mother said. “Boys don’t usually become bookworms. If it was one of your sisters, I would have accepted it.”

  Ironically, none of my sisters read a single book. They had one thing on their minds: to get married before they reached the age of twenty-one, probably to another prince, and it would’ve been a bonus if he were charming.

  “The things I can learn from these books are much better than my father’s voyages across the ocean, risking his life to make money,” I explained to her. “I could make gold, Mother. Gold! And we’d never have to sail ships across the oceans to make a fortune again.”

  “Gold? How?” she asked. “People dig and find gold, my son. No one makes it.”

  I knew that she wouldn’t understand, and I didn’t want her to know that I was into alchemy, which was prohibited, the same way as rolling a dice. It was thought of as a work of the devil.

  “As you wish, my son.” She shook her head and limped away, out of the room. My mother had been ill for years with one leg slightly shorter than the other. My grandmother told me that my mother was darkly enchanted by someone who hated her. I was eleven when my grandmother divulged this information to me. No one else ever told me how it happened, and I wasn’t allowed to ask.

  One of the reasons my father loved to sail was that he wished to find a cure for her somewhere far away. Funny how we always look for the cures of our sorrows in distant places, while the pain is right here where we stand.

  I could heal you, Mother. I could heal you. Forget about my father’s old-fashioned ways, crossing the oceans with his ships to find what isn’t there. With alchemy, I could heal you within seconds. If I could only find the Forbidden Rose, a red flower that heals everything. It’s written here in my books.

  “And shouldn’t you go out and mingle with others your age?” my mother asked with caring eyes. “You’re sixteen now. Shouldn’t you look for a girl, and make her your wife many years from now? You’re a beautiful young man.”

  I had always heard this phrase, and it was true. I was a beautiful boy; so beautiful that other families begged my father to have me marry their daughters. One of the girls cut her fingers accidentally one day when she was peeling an apple while looking at me. I was more beautiful than my sisters were. I didn’t know what that meant, other than having a number of male enemies, and endless female admirers. Thanks to my mother, I had her fabulous genes. She was the most beautiful of all, if only her leg wasn’t causing her pain and embarrassment. The one who had enchanted my mother must have envied her beauty.

  Days passed and my interest in girls never peaked. It was books, books, and more books, trying to find the cure for my mother. Alchemy was the key, and I wasn’t into those frauds like Nicolas Flammel and their kind. I was collecting books from the source, from where alchemy started: from Persia. That was when I asked my father to shower me with books when he visited Persia, but he rarely did.

  I didn’t care about Romans, Greeks, or Egyptians. I only wanted the secrets found in the Persian books. The secrets that could make me rich without having to travel or work hard like my father, and the secrets that could end my mother’s pain and truly make her the most beautiful in the land. Beauty had to be perfect. A beautiful face wasn’t enough. I had to heal her leg.

  “Your father’s late,” my mother told me several months later. “He’s been to Transylvania, and he usually gets back within two months. It’s been three now.”

  I didn’t know what to do or say, hating how she looked when she was worried. How strange was it that a beautiful face turned into an ugly one by only moving a few muscles? How thin was the line between beautiful and ugly, between a beauty and a beast?

  A week later, the sad news came knocking on our door. My father’s
ship, the Demeter, had sunk in the sea. Although my mother and sisters cried and whined, I listened to the details and facts about the incident. It was rumored that there was a coffin on the ship, one that held the corpse of a Count Dracula. For some reason, this coffin was of great importance, and would’ve made us richer if it hadn’t sunk with the ship’s crew. It was said that the corpse of Count Dracula came alive and killed everyone on the ship, before it sank. It was a myth the sailors kept reciting for years after the incident.

  The aftermath of my father’s death was that we were about to become a poorer kingdom. There was no one who could do my father’s job properly. And his crew, whom he had trained, died with him at the sea.

  I had to step up, bury my alchemy dreams, and grow up into a man and sail away to save the day.

  I was told that there was one last voyage I had to make on my father’s behalf—a first voyage for me. My father had planned the voyage before his death, and wrote about it in his own diary that he kept in the safety of my mother’s hands. I followed the instructions and had the ship built he had designed in the diary. Then I sought after the best sailors left to decipher the map I had found with the diary, explaining our destination. The map pointed to a place that was considered a myth. Sailors loved to call it Neverland because no one ever found it. It was a region only my father knew about, or at least believed in. In his diary, he said that I could save my family, and the kingdom, if I brought the finest food and merchandise from Neverland, and traded it with neighboring kingdoms. I was supposed to look for a boy called Peter Pan once I arrived.

  I packed all my books, brought them aboard, and sailed with a newly trained crew. The sea wasn’t an easy place to be. I got sick every other day, and I couldn’t read my books. It wasn’t too bad, though. I just had to be strong until I reached our destination.