Snow White Sorrow (The Grimm Diaries) Read online

  Snow White Sorrow

  The Grimm Diaries

  by

  Cameron Jace

  edited by Melody Benton

  Cover Art by Shujun Wong

  Copyright © 2013 Akmal Eldin Farouk Ali Shebl

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All historical facts about the Brothers Grimm, vampires, and timelines are true. Of course, The interpretations and fantasy elements aren’t. They are the author’s imagination.

  Acknowledgement

  It’s safe to say that this book wouldn’t have been possible without the awesome readers and fans who have supported me every step of the way. I actually tried to make a list of their names, and it filled out more than ten pages. So although I can’t thank you by name, you know who you are and what you mean to me. I am more than lucky to have you.

  However, I ought to thank three supporters who weren’t only supportive but have worked hard helping me out, even before this book came out. I’d start with my great friend and editor, Danielle Littig who believed in the stories from first glance and did her best to make them better. Also, Susan Hocking, a writer, editor, and first reviewer ever. She believed in the stories when they were still ripe and confusing and never gave up. Last but not least, my current editor Melody Benton who worked on the book as if it was hers. She’s been awake many sleepless nights, not only editing but loving the story and picking up wrong timelines and plots then helping me make them better. Thank you.

  ‘I guess you think you know this story.

  You don't. The real one's much more gory.

  The phony one, the one you know

  Was cooked up years and years ago

  And made to sound all soft and sappy

  Just to keep the children happy’

  -Ronald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes

  ‘She'll sting you one day, Oh, ever so gently, so you hardly ever feel it. 'Til you fall dead.’

  ― Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm

  ‘Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it?

  It makes you so vulnerable’

  -Neil Gaiman

  Table of Contents

  1 The Boy Who Is A Shadow

  2 Deadly Ever After

  3 A Town Called Snoring

  4 Babushka’s Alicorn

  5 The Train of Consequences

  6 Rumpelstein High

  7 Candy House

  8 Buried Moon Cemetery

  9 The Swamp of Sorrow

  10 Scariest of Them All

  11 Bedtime Stoories

  12 The Brothers Grimm

  13 The Glass Coffin

  14 Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

  15 Birthday Bloody Birthday

  16 Baby Tears

  17 The Boogeyman

  18 Spooky Woogy Boo!

  19 Follow Your Bliss

  20 A Prison of Pearls

  21 She Who Must Be Obeyed

  22 Angel & Carmilla

  23 A Kingdom of Sorrow

  24 The Pale Princess

  25 The Queen of Sorrow

  26 What Dreams May Come

  27 Blood Apples

  28 The Dreamhunter

  Glossary

  Author’s Notes:

  Oh, One More Thing…

  1

  The Boy Who is a Shadow

  The children of the town of Hamlin loved Charmwill Glimmer, famously known for being the greatest storyteller in the world. Unlike Santa Claus, Charmwill didn’t walk around with a sack full of gifts and wonders. Instead, he arrived with a parrot on his shoulder. The children giggled because they knew that it wasn’t an ordinary parrot. It was an enchanted book, which carried almost every fairy tale ever told.

  Before Charmwill began reading, the parrot’s green wings magically transformed into the book’s cover, the yellow feathers turned into pages the color of old treasure maps, its backbone into the book’s spine, and its claws laced together into an obsidian lock that guarded the tales between the pages.

  Charmwill unlocked the book by knocking on the parrot’s beak, which now stuck out of the middle of the book’s front cover like a doorknob. He knocked five consecutive times on it: tic-to-tic-tac-toc!

  Once opened, Charmwill rested the book on his lap. Then he pulled out a golden comb and smoothed his long silver hair and beard with his hand. The children enjoyed playing with his beard, pulling it slightly and feeling its cottony texture. Charmwill didn’t mind. He joked that if he ever shaved it, he’d turn it into a marvelous pillow they could rest their heads upon while listening to his bedtime stories.

  When the children had enough playing, Charmwill read them the most wonderful tales from his enchanted book, which he called the Book of Beautiful Lies.

  The children’s eyes gleamed and widened, listening to his stern yet sweet voice. Charmwill’s wondrous tales had everything they were looking for: castles, dragons, villains, evil stepmothers, witches, enchanted frogs, unicorns, godmothers, pumpkins, coaches, candy, forests, mermaids, giants, dwarves, elves, breadcrumbs, princesses, princes, and of course true love kisses, which were Charmwill’s favorite part.

  But the tales also had other elements the children liked. They told of scary things like vampires, werewolves, demons, monsters, shape shifters, boogeymen, secret societies, and forbidden powers which they had never heard of in fairy tales before. It was what made Charmwill’s stories fantastic, fabulous, and their favorite.

  Between chapters, Charmwill Glimmer smoked his pipe. It was a special pipe, filled with Dragonbreath, which gave him certain powers. Like wizards had their own powers to face their enemies, the world of storytellers was the same, if not more interesting and adventurous. There were dark forces that didn’t want the world to know the truth about the fairy tales in Charmwill’s book. These evil forces were looking for him so they could steal it, but the man was smart and hard to find. He’d even called it The Book of Beautiful Lies to elude them, for in reality, the book didn’t tell lies, but only the untold truth about fairy tales.

  “I love your fairy tales, Mr. Charmwill,” a little boy said. “They’re unlike the stories my grandma told me.”

  “That’s because your grandma leaves out the scary parts,” Charmwill took a drag from his pipe, “which are the awesome parts.”

  The children giggled.

  “Your stories are so much fun,” a little girl said while sitting among the other kids around the fire. “They’re like poisoned apples. Once you taste them, you will never think of fairy tales the same way again.”

  Sometimes, Charmwill picked one of the parrot’s feathers and used it as a quill for writing in the book. He used a peculiar ink, which looked like blood. When the children asked him why the stories he collected were written in blood, Charmwill said it was an ancient tradition to remind the storyteller that fairy tale characters weren’t fictional. In fact, they were real enough they could bleed.

  “So why can’t we meet them?” a boy asked, resting his head on his bent knees.

  “Because they aren’t awake yet,” Charmwill said.

  “How long will they stay asleep?” one of the kids asked.

  “That’s a long story. All you need to know is that the fairy tale characters were cursed into an eternal sleep centuries ago. They can only wake up for a little time every one hundred years, and that’s when
you can meet them.”

  “You mean the way Sleeping Beauty was cursed to sleep for a hundred years?” a girl asked.

  “Yes, indeed,” Charmwill chuckled. He loved smart children for they usually figured out things much faster than the adults. “It’s called the Sleeping Death,” Charmwill whispered, drawing a serious face.

  “The Sleeping Death?” the children chimed in unison, exchanging worried looks.

  Charmwill nodded.

  “So how soon until they wake up again?” another boy asked.

  “It’s just about time they do,” Charmwill glanced at his pocket watch, which showed a sun and a moon inside “In about a year from now, they will all wake up again in our world. Not all of them will remember who they are, though.”

  “Can’t we remind them?” a girl suggested.

  “I wouldn’t recommend that,” Charmwill said. “There is a big war going on in the fairytale world. Besides, many of them have become wicked and dangerous. We might not want to wake those characters up.”

  “Like the Wicked Stepmother?” a girl said.

  “Or the witch from Hansel and Gretel?” a boy asked.

  “And many more,” Charmwill said. He looked as if he remembered something that happened long ago but couldn’t forget. “Actually, some of the fairy tales we think of as the loveliest have become the scariest, and the other way around.”

  After Charmwill finished reading, he locked the book and threw it in the air, watching the pages flutter like a bird’s wings then transform into a parrot again. The children clapped their hands as if he were a magician showing them his latest trick.

  Charmwill called his parrot Pickwick. It was mute.

  The children were sad that Charmwill and Pickwick had to leave for another town to tell more tales.

  “Do you really have to go, Mr. Charmwill?” a little girl asked him, pulling on his cloak.

  “Yes, I have to,” he said. “Old Charmwill Glimmer has to take care of other kids, too. I also have to seek and collect more tales so I can read them for you next Christmas.”

  “So you’re going to visit us the same time Santa Claus does?” a girl with a lisp, asked. Charmwill liked the sound of the words Thanta Clauth on her lips.

  “Maybe,” Charmwill tilted his head. “I’d really like to talk to him about sneaking into people’s houses without permission.”

  Some of the children snickered.

  “We like you better,” said a girl with a missing front tooth. “We never get to meet Santa in person, but you, we can see and talk to, which is much better.”

  “Can’t you at least tell us where you’re going? We could sneak out of this awful town and visit you wherever you are,” a boy suggested.

  Sighing, Charmwill tucked his hand-held reading glasses in his pocket, rubbed his puffy eyes, stood up using his cane, and lit his Dragonbreath pipe again. “I’m afraid you can’t come with me because I am going to sail to a faraway place.”

  “Does it have an address?” the kids asked.

  “But of course, it does. It’s located East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” Charmwill explained.

  “East of the Sun, West of the Moon?” the children wondered. “How can we get there? You have a map?”

  “It’s really hard to find, and no map can get you there. Only a few special people, like fairy tale characters, know about it.”

  “Wow!” the children’s eyes widened. “Are there other children like us there?”

  “Yes, only a little older,” Charmwill nodded. “I am going to look for a very special boy there.”

  “A boy?” they asked.

  “Yes, the Boy Who is a Shadow,” he whispered to the children. “But don’t tell anyone, not even Santa. It’s our secret.”

  The children cupped their hands over their mouths as if it was the only way they could keep such a secret. No one had ever shared secrets with them before, and they weren’t sure they could keep one.

  “Why is this boy so thpethial?” asked the lisping girl.

  “Because he might be able to save the Fairyworld,” Charmwill said.

  “From whom?” they asked.

  “From her, I prefer not to say her name,” Charmwill puffed his pipe then coughed. He’d never been fond of talking about her, and it always got colder when her name came up. Even though he hadn’t revealed her name, the children felt a sudden chill fill the air. A crow cawed somewhere while the trees rustled around them. The Children took a step away from Charmwill as if they’d sensed her vicious presence on his breath.

  “Is she a witch?” asked the girl with the missing tooth. She was the bravest girl in the pack, standing in the front line, spreading her protective arms on both sides.

  “I’m afraid if I talk more about her, you’d have nightmares,” Charmwill said. “She has her way with dreams, feeding on the nightmares of the young sometimes.”

  “Then will you tell us about The Boy Who is a Shadow before you go?” asked the lisping girl, “Pleath?”

  “I can’t, because the boy’s story hasn’t been written yet,” Charmwill patted the child as she took a step back toward him. “The Boy Who is a Shadow is the only one who can write his story, depending on the choices he will make and the destiny he will choose.”

  “Choices?” the missing-tooth girl wondered.

  “Destiny?” another boy scratched his head.

  The children questioned each other to see if anyone knew about what ‘choices’ or ‘destiny’ meant. They were new words to them. In the town of Hamlin where they lived, they weren’t allowed to ask their parents too many questions or oppose their way of thinking.

  “Is this boy going to be famous? A hero, maybe?” a girl asked.

  “Hmm…” Charmwill fiddled with his beard then coughed. Smoking Dragonbreath wasn’t easy. “It’s prophesized that the boy should be a hero, but it’s up to him to choose. Prophecies don’t come true unless we make them.”

  Before Charmwill left, he gave the children enchanted candy that would turn their dreams into fairy tales until he visited again. He also gave each one a Book of Sand, which was a small book that carried a single fairy tale. Once a child read a page, it dissolved into sand. Once they finished it the covers of the book turned to dust.

  With Pickwick on his shoulder, Charmwill walked to the river Weser, climbed inside his small canoe—which sometimes transformed into a swan—and rowed toward the North Sea.

  Charmwill watched Pickwick flutter freely in the skies above. It reminded him why he had created the book enchantment for the parrot long ago. If anything bad ever happened to Charmwill, Pickwick was the world’s savior of true fairy tales; he’d be fluttering high in the sky, and as long as the tales were kept from being altered, they’d eventually find the children somehow so they could read them and retell them. Pickwick didn’t realize that he carried the most treasured scripture known to mankind.

  While rowing in the North Sea, a thick fog floated upon the water in the distance. Charmwill stopped smoking and tapped his pipe twice, then watched it turn into a magic willow pipe, which produced a sound like chirping birds that only Pickwick could hear. The parrot responded to the call and landed back on Charmwill’s shoulder, sharing his stare at the fog that was spreading an eerie feeling over the sea like a dense layer of wavy ghosts. Pickwick looked worried.

  “It’s alright. Don’t fear the fog, Pickwick,” Charmwill tapped Pickwick’s toenails gently then continued rowing into the fog. “I know this place. It’s safe. It’s only another dimension, not known to the people in the Ordinary World.”

  A big tide struck but Charmwill managed to ride it easily with his magical canoe. When it passed, Pickwick saw a black fish with two golden bottle caps for eyes, floating on the water. It had a signpost on its back which read:

  Welcome to the Missing Mile

  East of the Sun, West of the Moon

  Charmwill pulled out his compass, which didn’t point to directions known in the Ordinary World. It pointed to the unseen rea
lm of fairy tales, which was hidden from humans. Charmwill liked to call it the Fairyworld.

  Finally, the fog subsided and only then could they make out that the blue sea was filled with enormous dragons that people rode instead of ships. Others rowed in smaller swans and used them like Charmwill used his canoe—which had turned into a swan once they’d crossed.

  There were also floating houses in the Missing Mile; they were small whales. When the residents entered the whale through its mouth, its jaws closed behind them. All whales sank deep into the water for privacy at night. Pickwick smiled when he heard the password for opening a whale’s mouth was knocking on it five times: tic-to-tic-to-toc.

  Pickwick had never seen such a place before. He wondered why Charmwill hadn’t talked about it earlier, and why he decided to visit it today. Was it because he wanted to meet The Boy Who is a Shadow?

  “The Missing Mile is a bit vacant now,” Charmwill educated Pickwick. “It’s because the fairy tale characters are still asleep. The few of them who are awake, are either lost or dealing with their own problems. You have no idea, Pickwick, how important this place is. It only comes alive for a small period of time every one hundred years.”

  Pickwick saw a train emerging out of the fog behind them. It seemed like it was coming from the Ordinary World. It was a huge train that ran on rails that floated on the water, passing through the Missing Mile without stopping, until it reached an island in the distance.

  Pickwick saw that the island rested on the back of a huge whale that seemed forever asleep. The train disappeared into the island, and Pickwick saw turrets rising high out of a castle in the middle of it. The island itself was exactly in the middle of the Missing Mile, surrounded by water.

  “Ah,” Charmwill announced. “I see you’re looking at the Island of Sorrow. Don’t worry, the whale it rests on rarely wakes up.”