The Grimm Prequels Book 5: (Prequels 19-24) Page 7

  “Why? I’m the reason why people fear it. You don’t make any sense.”

  Ladle smiled one last time at me and walked away, waving her scythe as if she were dancing with it, leaving me undone. I wondered why she didn’t answer my last question. Then, I think I understood.

  I understood why I was the prank itself. Because of me the world was doomed to fear a certain day, but it was actually the same date of my death in my future.

  Even I wasn’t immune to Friday the thirteenth. A day that would scare the hell out of me more than anyone else in the world for the rest of my life.

  End of Diary

  MY NOTES

  Written by the Beast

  Having just read the Sleeping Swan, I sympathized with Wendy – though she does scare me sometimes. I wanted to know more about her, and frankly, this prequel wasn’t nearly satisfying enough.

  I did enjoy the history behind the Friday the thirteenth and its connection to the prequels, but I want to know more. I guess I’ll have to wait for the right prequel to fall into my hands.

  I’m still a prisoner of this castle, foolishly waiting for the one I love to come visit me. I am a hapless romantic. She isn’t coming back, I suppose. She, who had once been the Beast, now turned to Beauty, would not want to have anything to do with me.

  I’m paying for my ignorance. Things must be loved before they are lovely, I remind myself.

  Maybe I should think of a plan to get her back. But how, when I am confined to this castle?

  In truth, I think I’m a prisoner of the library more than anything else. I rarely leave it, unless for food and a bath. I even sleep here, right beside the endless amount of Book of Sands, afraid if I leave they’d disappear and I will never be able to read them again.

  A prequel can be read only once every one hundred years, I remind myself again.

  It makes me wonder why the universe has chosen me to read the prequels. I mean it’s a great burden to have this knowledge about these characters, to holding onto it for a hundred years – if I ever live that long.

  But again, I think I’m immortal. I think I’m one of the Lost Seven – which is really driving me insane.

  Previous prequels have mentioned the Beast. They talked about me. It must be me, right? There is this particular prequel, Jawigi, when the Queen of Sorrow asked Cassandra about who the Lost Seven are. I remember clearly, she said the Beast is one of them.

  If I am one of the Lost Seven, then I must have met with the rest of them before? Do they know about me, trapped in this castle?

  If so – I know I keep asking myself this – how come I don’t remember?

  Since I’m left with no answers, I better read the next prequel. This one is about the Fisherman’s Son. I wonder who that is.

  Grimm Prequel #20

  THE FISHERMAN’S SON

  as told by the Fisherman’s Son

  Dear Diary,

  My name is…

  Oh…

  Wait…

  I better not let you know. There is a reason why. The only way to know is if you read on.

  There is a reason why. You'll soon understand.

  I want to tell you a story about a boy. An important boy. Why this boy? Because he is larger than life. He knows a lot. Things that most people in the Kingdom of Sorrow don’t know. Things that happened even before the kingdom came into existence. Things made of mysteries. About the origins of how everyone came to be.

  You need to listen carefully though, or you’ll miss the beauty of the ending of my diary. Even the middle of my diary is an art of storytelling. I hate it when people don’t pay attention. It’s the number one reason why they don’t fully comprehend the meaning of some of the greatest stories in life.

  And because I want you to inhale each and every word, because I want you to pay attention, let’s start with your favorite cliché...

  Once upon a time there was a boy who loved his mother so much he was willing to die for her. The boy was thirteen-years-old. He and his mother lived on a far away island, farther than most sailors could reach on the Seven Seas.

  It was a small island, filled with palm trees, so tall he thought they were the Earth’s hands reaching out for the sky. But that had been earlier, when he was about ten. Growing up he learned that the island rested on the back of a whale. A small one that had been silent for years. Everyone on the island prayed the whale stayed forever asleep, or it would be the end of them.

  Years later, the boy was told that the whale had no intentions of turning sides or letting out gas, not before the boy grew up to become a man and sailed away on the quest he was destined to embark upon.

  The boy always wondered about this quest. Was he really destined for greatness? Would he ever sail away from here? What about his mother? He couldn't just leave her behind.

  Days passed, and the boy grew curiouser about the sea and the mysterious quest.

  Some of the few sailors who made it to the island told the boy stories about the world beyond the seas. He liked to hear them, more than anything in the world. Stories brightened his mind and opened up doors to his insatiable imagination.

  Stories were life.

  The sailors told him about other islands on the Seven Seas. Islands he’d never heard of before. From Murano Island in Italy where magical mirrors were made, to the famous Treasure Island where the most precious pearls in the world were kept. They said that each island on the Seven Seas had a purpose. One which very few people knew of. And once each island fulfilled that purpose, it was destined to sink deep into the abyss of the sea.

  How? The whales. Their purpose was to eventually flip over the islands, so no one would ever find them. One of those islands had once been called Atlantis. A famous one that the Greek philosopher Plato wrote about. What Plato didn't know was that Atlantis was where mermaids first came from.

  “Mermaids?” the boy wondered. “What’s a mermaid?”

  “Stop talking to strangers,” his mother interrupted. “And go finish your work.”

  Sometimes his mother didn’t want him to talk to the sailors. Strangers, she called them. Sometimes she deliberately didn’t want him to know about the world outside, and he hardly questioned why.

  But the boy listened to his mother and went back to work in the only inn on the island, which he and his mother inherited from his deceased father.

  The boy’s mother took care of him, and the inn. She was an honorable and hardworking woman. She loved her son and her job. She fed the birds on the tower next to the inn whenever she had time.

  She worked in the inn by day, and prayed for her boy to become the best boy in the world by night. In between, she prayed the angels would protect him from the darkness and temptations of the Seven Seas.

  The boy’s father had been a fisherman, killed on a fishing trip, while optimistically — some would say foolishly — searching for a precious faerie inside a fish in the Seven Seas. A faerie that knew the whereabouts of a treasure everyone was looking for.

  It had been a known story on the Seven Seas that some fish swam around with pearls inside their guts. The remnants of an immense treasure that had belonged to the gods themselves - the treasure which had been known to be buried on Treasure Island.

  One day, a vicious faerie killed all the fish, ripped their guts open, and took the precious pearls. And now, chased by forces of darkness, she hid inside one of the gutted fish in the Seven Seas. A fish of enchanting and never seen before colors.

  The boy had always believed in the story. Even more so after his father died on that quest. But the boy’s mother always digressed. She said that fairy tales were figments of the imaginations of children’s nightmares. Nothing more.

  Which upset the boy, because it meant his fisherman father had died for nothing.

  The boy never believed his father had died for nothing. So he had to ask around.

  Some sailors rumored the boy’s father was killed by a whale. One that wanted the faerie, and the pearls, more than anything. A
whale that swam fearlessly throughout the Seven Seas. A whale called Moby Dick.

  Other sailors said he was killed by Captain Hook, a terrible man with a long beard and a hook for a hand, who wandered the sea, delusional about believing he was Fate itself. Hook killed whomever he wanted and pardoned whomever he believed deserved to live.

  A third group of sailors said the boy’s father had been killed by the sirens, the vicious mermaids of the seas, the ones his mother didn’t want him to know about. The boy had once heard the sailors talk about the tempting songs the mermaids hymned. The kind of songs no man could resist. Once men weakened to the songs, mesmerized by the sirens’ beauty, the mermaids of the lost Atlantis ate them alive.

  Lastly, there was a group of sailors who claimed his father never went looking for the faerie inside the fish. But something else. Something larger than life.

  But the boy had no means of knowing for sure. How could he without sailing into the Seven Seas himself?

  The boy’s father was called Admiral Benbow. They had the inn named after him. A catchy name of a foolish sailor, once thought of as brave in the eyes of the islanders.

  Admiral Benbow. Remember that name.

  Like I said, sailors from all around the world were always tempted to stop their ships at the inn. Something about the small island — and inn — drew their sails close. None of the sailors knew why. Some claimed they were escaping the vicious songs of the mermaids in the sea. Others said they heard voices calling them from the island.

  They'd arrive and try to tell the boy more stories, but his mother wouldn't let him listen.

  So the boy's life went on as boring. The island had a poor education system, few residents, and one abandoned church. The boy would work and help his mother all day, doing his best to impress her and fill his father’s void. He cleaned the barns, the toilets, and fed the birds. He wasn’t fond of doing the dishes, unless he had a view out to the sea while he did. He slept in his father’s room, overlooking the wide and endless sea, and wondered about its endlessness.

  Did the Seven Seas really run forever, like the skies above? Was the ocean as endless as the rest of the universe?

  Each night the boy wondered what it would be like to sail the world. But even if the unlikely chance presented itself, he still couldn’t leave his mother. His father had told him to take care of her in a dream that felt more real than the air he breathed right now.

  Each night the boy hummed a little prayer — one he had invented, for the lack of a priest in the church who’d died in a thunder and lightning storm. The boy was grateful in his prayers, for the bread he ate, the mother he had, and even his father who’d died. It had been a tradition to be thankful for whatever the ocean sent them on that island. Regret, anger, and dissatisfaction were unforgiven sins.

  But at the end of the prayer, the boy asked for a fair opportunity to present itself. One where he could sail away, just for a few days, find his father’s fish and the faerie, and return home rich enough that his mother could stop working at the inn.

  Then the boy fell asleep.

  In his sleep, he dreamt about a place he liked to call the Dreamworld. He never knew why the name stuck with him. It just did. His mother, when he told her, would argue it was all in his head. But he knew better. The Dreamworld was real.

  In fact, the Dreamworld was huge, as endless as the ocean. There were a lot of people there. Kings and Queens, Princes and Princesses. Heroes and villains. Love and pain.

  But he didn’t know anyone there, and no one cared for him. He was just a lanky thirteen-year-old boy with freckles on his cheeks. He had no certain talents and owned nothing of importance, except a hand knife his father had given him to cut the fish and carve his name on trees.

  The boy was a stranger in this world of adults, even in his dreams.

  However, there was this girl he saw in the Dreamworld. She was pretty, and a bit feisty. He’d usually see her at a Swan Lake, combing her hair, but could hardly remember her face when he woke up to the sound of his mother, urging him to go fishing and help her at the inn for another day.

  The boy worked harder and harder, always looking out at the wide and endless sea. Until the day when everything changed. And this my friends, is where the real story began…

  One day, a sunburned sailor came to the island. He was singing, "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!”

  The sailor burst through the front door of the family’s establishment. He was a middle-aged man, dirty, unshaven, and tanned. The boy had seen many sunburned sailors before, but this one's tan was unusually dark.

  The sailor called himself a ‘captain’. He demanded a room. The boy told his mother he would like to personally take care of the guest’s needs. His mother was reluctant, but crammed with so much to do, she approved.

  As much as the boy was fascinated with the captain, he also thought of him as a strange man.

  After only a day’s stay at the Admiral Benbow Inn, the man began drinking tons of whiskey each night. The boy worried about the effect on the captain, as the captain had begun hallucinating things that made no sense. Then, he began telling the boy terrifying stories about life on the Seven Seas, about men who lived inside whales, and about the same beautiful mermaids that were incredibly evil.

  He told him about a place the boy had seen in the dreams. It was called the Kingdom of Sorrow.

  The man told the boy about seven teenagers who would change the world. About a princess who had split her heart among them to defeat her own mother. About wolves, forests, and a girl who was Death itself and wore a red cape.

  The stories whetted the boy’s appetite to sail the seas. He knew it would be full of wonders, if not a little bit scary as well. Each night, the boy spent more time in the drunk captain’s room, listening to the amazing stories of the sea.

  The captain seemed to like the boy, enough to ask his name instead of always calling him ‘young sailor’.

  “Hawkins,” the boy said eagerly. “Jim Hawkins!”

  “But your father was Admiral Benbow, wasn’t he?” the drunk captain said with a slurring tongue.

  “Benbow Hawkins,” Jim said. “And he was never an admiral,” Jim looked embarrassed. “What’s your name, sir?”

  “You talk too much.” The captain lost his temper suddenly, and showed Jim outside.

  The boy stood outside, confused. Why had the captain gotten angry all of a sudden?

  A few days later, when the autumn tides had relaxed a bit, another ship came. A smaller one. Another old man came into the inn asking about a ‘captain’.

  “Who should I tell him asked for him?” Jim said. The captain had taken a walk to the beach.

  “Black Dog,” the man said. He snickered, showing a silver tooth. Jim didn’t like Black Dog. He looked evil and stank of seaweed.

  “Is that your name, Black Dog?” Jim said. Never had he met someone with such a silly name.

  “You talk too much, boy,” Black Dog said.

  “I guess I do,” Jim rolled his eyes. “The captain said the same. Well, he just took a walk to the beach.”

  “I love the beach,” Black Dog growled, showing a row of silver teeth, and walked out.

  That night the captain came back late, blood staining his outfit. Jim’s mother was asleep, so she didn’t see it, but Jim began to worry.

  “Have you seen Black Dog?” Jim asked enthusiastically. “He was looking for you.”

  “I assumed you told him I was by the beach,” the captain’s face knotted. “Anyways, Black Dog took his boat and sailed away. You won’t be seeing him again.”

  “Such a short stay,” Jim said. “My mother would’ve been happier if he’d stayed the night. One more customer, more money.” Jim chuckled innocently.

  The captain said nothing, and continued climbing the stairs up to his room.

  “So no more stories tonight?” Jim was disappointed.

  “Later, Jim,” the captain said gruffly, and walked on.

  Jim spent the night
looking outside his window, looking out at the sea. The moon was full that night. It reflected peacefully upon the water. But then Jim saw something that worried him. Captain Black Dog’s small ship was still by the beach. He hadn’t left like the captain had told him.

  The next day the captain spent in his room. When Jim entered to see him, the captain had become ill with scarlet fever, a sickness that few people managed to survive at the time.

  Jim spent the day tending to the captain and taking care of him. He even brought him exotic plants from up the hill, which should have helped the captain survive the fever.

  But it only got worse.

  The captain started hallucinating and raving about his old life on the sea again. This time, he didn’t call himself a captain or sailor, but a pirate.

  Jim was taken aback. He had never met a pirate, but only heard about them from his mother. She'd told him how evil and immoral they were, stealing and killing.

  But the notion made Jim curious. Pirate or not, Jim had to help a sick man. He had to take care of his guest somehow.

  “Forget about the mermaids or the wonders of the sea,” the captain said, coughing and vomiting. “Forget about the whales and the fish,” he continued, while Jim wiped the man’s sweat from his brow. “There is only one thing you should fear if you ever sail the seas, Jim,” the man grabbed Jim on his sleeve. “One man!” he coughed in Jim’s face. Jim looked away so he wouldn’t catch the fever. “A man with one leg.”

  “One leg?” Jim’s eyes widened. “Why would I fear a helpless man with one leg?”

  “He has a substitute leg for it,” the captain said. “It’s made of whale bones. Don’t let his appearance ever fool you. With that one leg, he can run, hunt, and kill faster than anyone you have ever seen.”

  “Why are you telling me about him, Captain?” Jim felt uneasy.

  The pirate contemplated in silence, and then said, “My real name, Jim, isn’t Captain.”

  “Of course it isn’t,” Jim chuckled with closed eyes. “No one’s real name is Captain.” And probably no one’s real name is Black Dog.