Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales Read online

  “Oh no. This is it!” Briar shouted.

  Another silver comet from the same unseen source sailed up to the car like a firework shot from a cannon, striking it from behind and causing it to lurch. The engine turned over and purred. Briar clomped her foot down on the gas pedal again and the car sped away. The wolf bayed angrily and charged down the street behind them. Briar turned around in time to see a third comet strike the wolf in the middle of its back. It arched and then fell to the asphalt. Then it too dissolved into a cloud of black smoke that dissipated every which way into the shadows of the neighborhood—beneath trees and under cars. It fled wherever it could find a scrap of darkness.

  Briar looked in every direction, trying to understand whatever it was that happened. She felt numb and detached.

  “You are a lot of fun. I never knew that about you,” Leon said.

  “Yeah,” Briar said, looking around for any more creatures. “Fun.” But nothing came after that.

  “How did you do all of those stunts?” he asked.

  “I—really don’t know,” Briar said. She had never acted before with such speed and conviction. “Can you just take me home now?”

  Chapter 4

  Leon rumbled up to the Saulks, Briar’s foster home, with its yellowing, antiqued details. It was truly a paint-chipped disaster with its shutters hanging at a tilt on broken hinges and cracked flowerpots on the door stoop full of ruined stems. Still it had remnants of grand old architecture with its cornices and a spire atop a conical central roof that spiked high into the cloudy sky.

  The neighborhood was filled with other turn-of-the-century homes featuring dirt-and-weed lawns, strewn with abandoned shopping carts, jammed between rusty cars on broken weedy curbs. It all stood in stark contrast to the neat rows of scrubbed and clipped prefabs that Leon noticed just across the cement wash.

  “Nice…uh…” Leon mumbled. But he stopped himself and tried to change the subject. He gazed up at the low hanging thunderheads. “Looks like a storm coming.”

  She didn’t hear him at all. She stared out the passenger window replaying the danger that Leon couldn’t seem to see. It sent her into a spiral of self-doubt. She touched her legs to test if she was dreaming. It wasn’t enough, so she grasped Leon’s hand, and felt its strength and the soft hair at his wrist.

  Leon responded by smiling his crooked, handsome smile. That snapped Briar back to the moment, to the front seat of the rumbly car, to the dreamy guy in her reach. And, as if suddenly realizing everything, Briar inhaled sharply, but could find nothing to say. She had imagined this very moment so many times before, but it was never under such bizarre circumstances. What do you say after being chased by werewolves?

  “So, I’d really like to see you again. That is, if it’s okay with you,” he said. He gave Briar a glance that she read as “smoldering.” But since she thought she recently saw werewolves, she wasn’t sure what she could trust.

  “Huh?” she asked. There was no question that she wanted to see him. But she flashed back to the wolves, their fierce amber eyes and snapping jaws, the danger that they just faced—or the delusion she just dreamed up. Either way it caused Briar to turn away in a dark withdrawal, surveying the area for more of them.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She turned to look out the window at her house, glancing up at Megan and Marnie’s second story bedroom windows. This was all a bad idea, she realized. Spending even a few moments in Leon’s car parked in front of their house, maybe even seeing him again, it had trouble written all over it. “I kind of thought you were into Megan. I mean, she’s so pretty.” Briar could feel herself biting on her last words.

  Leon laughed. “Of course I’m into Megan. I mean, who wouldn’t be, right?”

  Briar turned back to face him, but her stomach lurched and she felt her eyes begin to well up at his confession. The strange adventure they just shared made her feel as though they had somehow connected. But just like the werewolves, it seemed that there was nothing really there. She should have known that anything she imagined to be between them was little more than a moment of pity for the weird girl and a sympathy ride home.

  “Oh—oh. Right,” Briar said. She looked down at the floor mats. “Of course. I’m so stupid.” Briar felt a flush of heat in her face. “You’re into Megan,” she said. Then, for the first time, she effortlessly smiled at Leon. “Well, thanks for the ride home.” She opened the door and swung her boots out.

  “Hey, I didn’t know if you knew it, but I auditioned for the play too,” he said. He smiled. And in spite of herself, Briar smiled back. “Anyway,” he said, “I was thinking that if we both get cast, we could hang out and practice our lines together.”

  Briar nodded as casually as she could but felt as though a fifty-pound weight had landed on her. She was such an idiot. Of course he was into Megan. Of course he was into featherheaded Lucky Girls. Of course Briar never had a chance with a boy like Leon, except in her fevered imagination. “Yeah, sure. That sounds cool,” she lied.

  Briar ducked out of the car, fitted on her old deadpan like armor, and forced indifference. She stood holding the car door open, silently facing the Saulks’ home. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that the upstairs curtain in Megan’s room stirred and a shadow moved away from the window. Her heart skipped a beat and her breathing halted. She wasn’t sure it would ever return. Freak on a stick! Did one of them see me?

  “Check you later,” Leon said.

  She turned to face him with a feeling of such heaviness that she wouldn’t have been able to explain it. She wanted him to stay, even if that meant the werewolves would come back. Especially if they came back. She knew that once she closed that car door, he wouldn’t be there anymore. She knew that it was all polite and mannered, but he didn’t really mean what he was saying. He wouldn’t see her again. It was over. Briar felt it. And then she closed the door.

  As he drove away, she hoped this would all be forgotten. She would have to lay low for a while, try to blend in at school, get lost among the shuffle so that she would never have to come face to face with him again. Okay, well, maybe that’s a little melodramatic, Briar admitted. But the whole episode was better put behind her. She walked up to the front door, planning her next move: sneaking into the house without being noticed.

  Very carefully Briar opened the front door, taking care not to open it so far that it would hit the familiar squeaky spots. She took off her boots and padded down the hall to the second door. The Saulks had fixed up a bed, a table, and a small dresser for Briar in their basement so that they could keep all of their discarded belongings in one spot.

  Briar never said a word about anything—and neither did her over-worked social worker, Mrs. Poplar. Bouncing from one home to another took an emotional toll, and Briar decided that she’d trade the risks for quasi-stability, even if it came at a cost. She knew better than to invite trouble, although, in truth, her very existence in this house—including living among the basement of forgotten things—was always a hair’s width away from trouble.

  So what were Briar’s options except to learn how to live with the damp, the cold, the spiders, and the rats? She learned how to keep her mouth shut, move quietly in the dark, come up only when no one was there, and live as invisibly as she could.

  It was always strange to Briar that existing in this way didn’t seem to bother her as much as she thought it might. The perpetual basement darkness, the musty odor, the silence, the soft rustling of rodents all became a source of solace and familiarity. At least she was away from the Saulks, and that’s all that really mattered.

  Briar eased onto her mattress and listened carefully for footsteps. Even when the Saulks tried to sneak up on her, to entangle her in one of their paranoid schemes, the basement steps, warped and rotting, complained as soon as someone stepped foot on them. So they made a nice early warning device.

  Briar also developed a series of moves that made coming and going from her basement world possible. Holding the drippy wal
l moldings, stepping on the far left or right of each stair, and finally swinging off an exposed pipe to miss the last several steps altogether, she was as silent as a midnight ghost.

  She listened, holding her breath for a moment. Once she was certain that no one was coming, she fished around for a cell phone she hid between some of the exposed wall insolation near the head of her bed. There was simply no way she’d be able to make it through the night without sharing with Dax what had happened. Although Briar was outnumbered in this house, she still had Mrs. Poplar watching out for her the best she could without jeopardizing the situation. She was the one who bought Briar the cell phone some time ago, providing that she keep it hidden from Megan, Marnie, and Matilda. And Briar fiercely protected the secret, as it was one of her few lifelines to sanity.

  Briar dialed and almost immediately she heard the muffled sound of a ring tone from under her bed. She lifted the ragged brown-stained coverlet that hung past the bed frame. There below, amid the crowd of dirty socks and jumbled books, was Dax smiling his goofy I-know-you’ve-got-a-secret-so-spill-it grin.

  “Hey…sorry to scare you like that,” Dax said. He squirmed from beneath the bed, and wiped dust clumps off his clingy khakis. “Hoo boy, you really need to sweep under there. One of those dust bunnies had babies right in front of me.”

  “Dax, what are you doing?”

  “What?! Are you kidding me? You hitch a ride with Leon Squire and you think you’re not giving me details?” He sauntered over to the chair just below the high window that opened out to the scrubby bushes and crumbled, winter-fallen leaves. He climbed on top and then shut it. “By the way, did you know that most robberies are due to windows being left open and unattended?”

  “Nice—” Briar said.

  “Hey, what were my choices? Get smothered by Megan and Marnie’s pom-poms? Have their little Christ-Brigade burn me at the stake? No thanks.”

  Briar was only half listening—really bursting inside about the wolves. She had to say something, but wasn’t sure how to broach the subject without looking like the cheese in her taco had finally slipped.

  Dax flopped backward onto Briar’s squeaky mattress. “By the way—do you realize that they called you back for the part of the fairy queen? That’s one of the leads! You’re gonna have some hallway cred now—well, until they see you in wings and body glitter. Then all bets are off.”

  “Dax, listen,” Briar said. “On the way home, I saw something I can’t explain, but I don’t want you to think that I’ve totally come unhinged.”

  “Oh you poor little mixed up thing,” Dax said. He stroked Briar’s raven hair. “It’s called a penis.”

  “No! Stop it. I’m being serious.” Briar pulled away and sat up. “I’m not talking about Leon, fool. But what I’m about to tell you—you have to swear that you’ll just listen and won’t jump to conclusions.”

  “Okay, I swear.” Dax held up a hand as though on a witness stand.

  “Because the temptation to judge will be there—”

  Dax sat up. “I am trying so hard not to submerge your head in a toilet right now. Just spit it out.”

  “I saw wolves,” Briar said.

  “Okay…” Dax raised one eyebrow. “Is that what you kids are calling it now?”

  “No, Dax, you don’t understand,” Briar said. She started pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed. “I saw wolves—or something like wolves. They walked on their hind legs, like humans and they tried to attack us in Leon’s car.”

  Dax had a ridiculous smile on his face. “And what did Leon think…of the wolves?” He burst into laughter and got up from the bed. “What a load of bull crap!” He jumped up and continued to the window. “You will do anything to avoid telling me what happened between you two. Fine. Keep your tawdry tales of vehicular seduction to yourself.”

  Then he checked his cell phone. “Oh, my parents are gonna kill me. I was supposed to be home hours ago.” He hopped up onto the chair stationed below the window. He opened it up, clambered outside and then stuck his head back in. “Oh my God, there’s wolves out here.” He shook the bushes. “Down boy! Briar, I need a dog-biscuit, stat!”

  “Yeah, you got me!” Briar laughed feebly. But it felt like her lungs collapsed. Dax was the only person she could trust, and even he couldn’t believe her.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said. Then he scraped by the low, dry branches. “And next time, bring a chew toy for your friends.”

  “Yeah, see you,” Briar said.

  Chapter 5

  It was midnight and Briar still hadn’t changed from her cinched-up gown. But there she lay in bed, eyes fixed on the brown-ringed ceiling. It was crazy. There were no such thing as walking wolves, and she knew it. But she couldn’t erase the image of those fierce amber eyes, and those sharp teeth like ivory knives coming for her. How could they exist? Simple. They don’t.

  But then she remembered the weird podcast with the gaunt elderly woman. It’s dangerous, she said. She called Briar by name. Dangerous? Briar wondered but only for a second. It was just too crazy. Neither of these things existed; they were evidence of her runaway imagination.

  As she lay there, straining to doze, the dark muffled silence of the basement was disrupted by noises of shuffling shoes and kicked boxes. They seemed to come from the closet. What? Briar sat up, and she froze. Her mind became clear and taut, as sharp as the silence that now saturated the bedroom.

  What noise? There was no noise. There were no wolves or any other creatures. There was no podcast calling her name. And totally no noise. Her gut twisted and told a different story. It was one that she wasn’t sure would end well.

  She was about to ease back onto her squeaky mattress, when the entire closet door thumped heavily. For shit’s sake, now that was a noise. Briar caught her breath and heard heart throbs in her ears. “Dax?” she whispered, but no one answered. “Dax, you little creep. Very funny.”

  Briar wasn’t sure which was worse, a response, or none. She clenched the edge of the mattress and eased herself off. She kept her eyes on the closet door as it slowly groaned open on ruined hinges.

  “Dax?”

  Nothing. The very air was dead. Her breathing stopped.

  A white-gloved hand appeared from behind the door and gripped its edge.

  Briar rolled her eyes. “By the way, your little ghost in the closet routine isn’t really working—but the gloves are very Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Still, whoever it was didn’t respond. Briar began to feel sick with fear.

  She bounded off the bed, sprinted to a far wall and snapped on the light. She grabbed a baseball bat propped up on a wall. “I see you,” she shouted, “get out of there.”

  Like a coiled spring, a tall man leapt out from the closet. He was tall, thin and had a short, cropped beard. He wore a shimmering bustled ball-gown that glittered in the harsh overhead light. The strapless dress left his dark wooly chest rather exposed. “Briar Blackwood—is it really you? Am I dreaming?” the man asked. He straightened up and then stared at her.

  Seemingly unaware of his height, he nearly grazed the crown of his vertical powdered wig against the low paint-peeled ceiling. He had a curious look in his stare. His eyes beamed clear and bright. But there was another world behind that clarity. It was a world of secrets, mysteries and things that wished to remain unseen.

  Briar could feel the rise of the familiar, strange, burning sensation in the pit of her stomach. She gripped the bat tightly and cocked it back.

  “Oh dear,” the man said. His voice had the deep tone of a stringed bass. “A ball gown, yet again” he said. He looked down at his outfit, but seemed rather blasé about it. “That makes thrice this week.” He sighed heavily and reached up to discover the powdered wig. He scowled darkly. “This is absolutely ridiculous. Glamorous, yes, but ridiculous.”

  Briar swooshed the bat to warn him. “Get back. I mean it.”

  “I know how this must seem. But try to stay calm.” He tapered his voice to a whisper, but his res
onance still hummed in her chest. He put a white-gloved finger to his lips. She opened her mouth to shout. But before she could issue a single sound, he speedily drew shapes—all geometric forms—in the air with his hand, finishing with a finger pointed toward her throat. That was when Briar felt something inside tighten. She grabbed at her neck with one hand and tried to shriek, but nothing came.

  Her screams silenced, the man took a casual step toward her. But having little practice walking in high heels, he tilted to one side and steadied himself on a nearby table. “I’m so terribly sorry,” he said. “If anyone knew that I used mute-magic on Briar of the Black Woods…You won’t mention this, will you?”

  She stared with her mouth open, still trying to speak, and the baseball bat to which she clung drooped toward the floor.

  “Well, of course you can’t say anything just yet. But when you can, please don’t.”

  Briar tried to force another sound, but her face just reddened and her neck tightened further. It felt like a Chinese finger trap for her voice.

  “Straining makes things worse,” he said. “Now come with me. Spies are everywhere, and they’ve finally found you.”

  He tottered across the basement toward Briar. She flattened herself like a board against the wall, taking a stranglehold on the bat again. “I’m sorry,” said the man, “but didn’t you get our message? We saw you watching through your device.”

  As soon as he walked close enough, she raised the bat and swung at him. But he made another quick gesture with his white satin hand, and the baseball bat exploded into a flurry of white streamers and confetti that fluttered against his lacey ruffles like the first flakes of winter.

  “Briar, please. Weren’t the wolves enough for you?” he said. He brushed the mess away. Briar stood agog at the explosion of confetti all around her, but the word “wolves” seemed to penetrate her stupefaction. Briar mouthed something. And the man, exasperated, touched her throat. “Only if you promise not to scream.” She nodded. He flicked his finger, as though he was turning on a light switch, and suddenly she could speak.