The Forgotten Fairytales (28 page)

With one steady pull, the latch creaked open, exposing what I assumed was a staircase; though, I saw nothing but darkness. Bitter, stale, impenetrable darkness. Darkness we had to walk into.

“You sure you’re ready for this?” he asked once more, as if the sight scared me away.

“Of course.”

I took the flashlight from his hand and shined it on the wooden stairs.
Here goes nothing
, I stepped forward, placing my foot on the first step, praying the wood wouldn’t cave under my weight. I let out a breath when both of my feet were planted.

The dim light only pushed a step or two in front of me. Suddenly I regretted going first. Damn my need to be brave. I cringed at every creak the old warped stairs made, especially after Wolf joined me. Yeah, if it was going to collapse, it definitely would with his solid body. He was like a rock.

A shadow flickered in the corner of my vision and I froze, my hand gripping the banister. A shiver cascaded down my backbone, curling through the fine hairs on my neck. Wolf’s hand pressed against the small of my back, egging me forward.

I hesitated for only a second. There was no real reason to be afraid, and if something did happen, I could totally kick ass.
Breathe, Norah, just breathe.

I took the stairs slowly, ignoring the way they swayed with each step, ignoring the fact that I couldn’t see exactly how far down we had to go or what was beneath us. But after what seemed like centuries, we reached the bottom. The bottom wasn’t solid ground, as I hoped, but wood. Great. What happened to sturdy old cement?

Wolf jumped in front of me, leading the way, and I couldn’t help but grab his hand as he did so. Touching him, holding on to him felt instinctual. His strong fingers latched onto mine as we walked through the hollow halls, still unable to see anything further than a few steps.

We paused before a dark tunnel, like a mine shaft. Across the top, in script so old it was barely legible, it said:
Die Höhle der verlorenen Märchen
. Granted, I didn’t speak German, but I knew what die meant in English.

“Come on.”

Wolf dragged me further, inside a tunnel. Rough rock walls encased us, hanging so low Wolf hunched forward. The beam of light bounced off the walls, showing us nothing but darkness. This was a mistake. This was my idea, but I was suddenly overwhelmed with an unfamiliar fear. My hands tightened over his, no doubt drawing blood with my nails. He didn’t flinch or ask questions, thank god. I was certain if he did I’d chicken out. A woody scent lingered in the air, along with the harsh, bitter smell of burning rubber. Where the hell were we?

Wooden lanterns hung at the end of the walkway. We stopped in front of what looked like an old miner’s cart and the beginning of tracks. Where were the seven dwarfs when we needed them?

“Please tell me we aren’t riding in
that
.”

“Finding the lost stories isn’t supposed to be easy, Norah. If it was, they wouldn’t be lost.”

Damn him!
Point for Wolf.

The cart was old and dirty and infested with God only knew how many diseases. But I thought of April and Kate and James and anyone else Danielle planned on destroying. Maybe finding her lost tale would help right the wrongs and save the people I loved.

“If we live through this...” I latched onto the cart and hurled one leg inside. “I’m so going to kill you.”

The box rattled as Wolf grinned and sank behind me, barely fitting in the leftover space. “You might want to hold on.”

I opened my mouth and the cart lurched backward, then forward, and back again before flinging forward as if we were released from a sling shot. And then we fell.

Fell.

Fell.

Fell.

The scream surging through me was hard to contain as we twisted and turned on a track I could only see every few seconds when the light of an enchanted candle burnt bright enough.

Wolf’s thick arms grabbed a hold of the cart, keeping him firm as I latched onto him, burying my head into his chest, willing myself not to scream as we went up and down like a freaking rollercoaster. I hated rollercoasters. The feeling of losing all sense of gravity was unnerving. My stomach inched into my brain.

Moisture swarmed my eyes, if I lived, I’d find a different way out, any way but this way. My nails dug so hard into his chest I almost felt bad, if it were any other guy I would have, but he was like a stone wall unable to break no matter what.

And then, we stopped, so hard Wolf and I slammed back against the cart. Untangling from each other, I sat up and struggled to find balance as I gazed at the sight before me.

The stone ceiling arched so high into the air I wondered how deep we were. Scribbled on the walls were images, much like the ones throughout the castle, but these lacked color and vibrance. Words scrolled along the wall, telling stories in unfamiliar languages.

With little effort, Wolf hopped out of the cart and reached his hand out to help, I took it willingly and froze when I saw the room. Soot and slivers of gravel masked the hard floor, snapping under my feet as I walked forward. On the wall to our left was a lantern. Wolf ripped it off with a loud
craacckk
. I cringed, thinking the sound would alert someone, until I remembered we were alone. Utterly alone.

“No one guards the stories?”

Wolf shrugged. “I don’t see anyone, do you?”

Nope. Not a soul. I was in no place to question, after all, he got me here. Somehow I doubted he really knew where we were going, but I was wrong. Wolf never ceased to amaze me.

We stepped over the threshold and into the vacant dark space. The once unlit lanterns illuminated and book shelves emerged like an illusion from the bitter darkness. Dust sputtered into the air and I held back a cough.

Volumes crammed the shelves, the oldest on the top, their spines burnt and charred, age rippling through them. On top of each row, in barely visible script, spelled out different words. The first one read:
Märchenhaft
, the second:
Folklore
, the third:
Mythologie
and so on and so on. Yet again, I found myself wishing I remembered a lick of German.

“This one.” Wolf meandered toward the one that read
Märchenhaft
. I followed close behind, soaking in every ounce of the room. On the other side was a narrow corridor, blocked almost entirely by crumbled bricks.

“How are we supposed to find her?” I whispered.

“Alphabetically?” he guessed.

“C would be at the top then. Great.” The shelf had to be at least twelve feet high and thirty feet across.

Wolf shook his head. “No, you’re thinking of the modern tale. The original stories had different names.”

I stared at him in amazement. “How do you know so much about this?”

He shrugged, his eyes focusing in on the books. “My grandpa. Now, come on, we only have two hours till dawn.”

Wolf took one end, I took the other. Surprisingly, I recognized many of the titles. Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, The Princess and the Pea, Beauty and the Beast. Those were familiar. But it was stories like The Goat-faced Girl, Snow-White and Rose-Red, and The Ill-Fated Princess that threw me for a loop.

Somewhere between the many meshing titles, one book with a cracked turquoise spine stuck out to me. In gold script, as faint as a breath, it read THE PRINCESS OF THE TEMPLE. My heart raced faster than it had since jumping out of the miner’s cart. Finn spoke of the story, one I hadn’t heard of. Yet now I found myself drawn to it like a siren’s song. Using the bottom shelf as a stair, I stepped on it and reached. The book fell into my palms. The gold script brightened, outlining each letter.

The cover opened and the pages rustled, flipping by without me so much as touching them until it settled on a picture of a girl. Dressed in a long, pale Grecian gown, she stood on the edge of the mountain overlooking the bay. Her face was shielded by her hand, but her skin and hair were kissed by the sun. Her eyes were shut, but there was something familiar there. Something about her face that I recognized. My finger trailed over the picture, then to the passage beside.

Despite her love for another, the princess was forced into marriage with the prince of Land and Sea. She reigned by his side for many years, drowning in unhappiness and sorrow. A relationship lacking love and full of misery, the princess revolted against the prince and ran away, into the arms of the peasant man she loved. The prince gave her one last option to join his side. When she refused he sentenced her to be hung, alongside the thief. Together they died, holding the hand of the other, knowing death would be better than being apart.

The story was nothing like Finn had described. Not one bit. True life wasn’t like fairy tales. To the world, the story ended at ‘I do,’ skipping over the lost love and the heartache.

“Norah. What are you doing?”

My head jerked up and I realized I’d been breathing heavy. Too heavy. I swallowed hard and looked at him. Soot darkened one side of his face, but his eyes were clear as day, shining into me like a beacon of hope. Wait. His eyes weren’t shining, the book was. Glittering around me like a gold bubble. I gasped and the book fell from my hands. The halo of light disappeared like particles of dust.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“Nothing. I saw the book and grabbed it. Then it opened and I read.” I stared at the ground, then back at him. “What do you know about The Princess of the Temple?”

Wolf shrugged and ran a hand through his shaggy hair. “It’s an extension of the original Little Mermaid.”

My throat tightened. “How does that end?”

“The mermaid dies after the prince falls in love with someone else.”

Taking long soothing breaths, I tried to calm the shaking in my hands. Finn was destined for Pearl. At least according to the new story. But this story, was different. The prince fell in love with someone besides the mermaid and the mermaid died.

Finn liked me. I liked Wolf.

Did that make me the princess of the temple? Ohmigosh.
Breathe, Norah. Breathe.
This can’t be true. If I were the princess, the quill would have categorized me as the princess. Unless.
No, no unless. You are not her.
I had no story, no pre-determined fate. I was a hybrid, the author of my life and there was no way in hell I’d marry a pompous asshole I didn’t love.

Pushing the thought from my head I grabbed the book and put it back in the shelf and turned to Wolf. A book as thick as a bible sat in his hand.

“You found it?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.” He grinned.

The small print on the front read,
The Little Glass Slipper.

A breath caught in my throat. This was it. What I’d been searching for. He dusted the particles off the front and cracked open the spine, exposing a lovely painting of a girl dressed in rags near the fireplace. Her cheeks glistened with sweat and ash, and in the middle of the fire was a small fairy dressed in a pink gown, a pointed hat and a long silver wand.

The following page listed every version of the story, the different languages, and the different authors. And then, on the very bottom, scribbled in ink, not typed like the rest, it said: THE TRUTH.

Wolf and I exchanged a glance, only for a moment, before he flipped to the back. The pages weren’t in print, but hand-written.

While the stories say she was cursed with an evil stepmother and wicked stepsisters, the truth is not so. Dearest Cindy plotted her misfortune long before the sisters were in the picture. Unhappy with her title as a peasant, she prayed and prayed over her dead mother’s grave for a miracle, promising she’d do anything to become titled. One day, a small bird dropped a pearl beside her, and from that pearl a woman appeared, one promising she could make all Cindy’s dreams come true.

“I’ll do anything, anything,” Cindy pleaded.

The woman predicted her father would marry, giving Cindy stepsisters and a stepmother so cruel, life would hold little meaning, but in a few short years, the prince would take a wife, and Cindy would be that wife. A princess and future queen.

The woman explained the relationship between her and the prince would be strained and full of unhappiness and infidelity. She’d never bear children or give him an heir, but she would be queen. The future of being a queen was enough to make Cindy do whatever the woman asked. Even killing her father, the only person she had left in the world.

So the day after her father married, she prepared a celebratory dinner for just the two of them, without the new mother and sisters. Knowing her father was deathly allergic to pumpkin, she served him pumpkin soup, and watched as he died a painful death.

The story continued, but I stopped.

“Holy shit.” Wolf muttered.

My breathing jarred as I stared at the pages, wondering their truth. Did she
really
kill her father just to be royal, though she’d never truly be happy? I wiped my hands on my pants, trying to steady their shakiness.