Magic Man
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Trick #1: Mouths that Can Talk
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nothern england
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Lulu came skidding to a stop at a large oak tree at the edge of the forest, her purple and black mesh dress flying around her ankles. Her younger brother, Verne, came flying in behind her. "I beat you Verne, now you have to let me marry Jeremy!"
"No I don't," Verne replied hastily, cleaning an invisable dirt smudge from his over-sized glasses. "You didn't touch the tree at all. So you never beat me."
"I did so!"
Verne snapped his head around, squinting through the trees. "I heard a snap."
"Not even!" Lulu cried out, "Stop trying to change the subject, Verne. You lost the race."
"Yeh, yeh, whatever..." Verne, as if in a trance, took a step towards the trees. "I think there's someone in there."
"Verne are you okay?"
"I heard... something..."
Grabbing Verne by the arm and pulling him back, Lulu's eyes grew wide. "What's tha---"
There was a twisting and a bit of a shriek and a dark thing came bursting out of the forest.
"Badger?"
"Sorry, I must be interrupting!" the badger sqwacked, and then turned away and disappeared into the trees.
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They arrived on horseback, late after midday just before the thunderstorm hit. With weather-beaten cloaks and tired-looking faces, the pair looked about as grim as their name. The Mayor was out on respectable tours through Southern England at the moment, and his overtly perky son was there to greet them.
"Hello lads," said the man, who was probably a bit younger than those he was addressing. "You must be the Grimm Brothers? Indeed. You look a frightful pair, don't you? Now, my name is Vincent Polloway. My father is the Mayor, but he's out of town at the moment. This way, this way---" Vincent took the horses by their leads as the brothers dismounted and passed them off to the stable boy who stood eagerly waiting to tend to the horses of the famous Brothers Grimm. "---Mrs. Georgia has a room all set up for you. She wanted me to give you her regards in the sense that she only had one room available. Touring season and that, you know."
They approached a homely building, not a lot larger that the other buildings on the dirt street. A lone lamppost stood at the side of the street, illuminating the various shades of green and brown surrounding the area. The smell of camomile wafted through the air.
"This'll do fine," Wilhelm Grimm stated, his voice stalling in the muggy air. "Right Jake?"
Jakob Grimm looked on, taking a second to push his glasses up from his nose and tightened his grip on his pack. He nodded.
Vincent's face lit up. "I'm glad. Don't make too much noise though, or you'll wake up the other guests, alright?" Several large droplets of rain hit the ground and Vince ran a hand through his thick, short dark hair. "Your rooms are on the second floor, the first door on the left. I'll see to it that breakfast finds it's way to you in the morning. Goodnight."
Vincent turned on his heel, then paused, looking back at them over his shoulder. His hair was quite soaked and his face paling with the wet. "I'm the small place at the end of the street, nearest to the forest!" Then he turned and ran as his thin white shirt was soaked all the way through.
"Shall we go in then?" Will called to Jakob over the rain. And then, without waiting for an answer, he started forward. Jake, obediantly, followed.
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"What was the story again, Jake?" Will asked, seated on a bed in their room, stripping a pair of sweat-drenched socks off of his feet.
Jake calmly wiped the rain droplets from his eyeglasses. "A curse. The general idea goes that there was a man who lived here a hundred years ago and he had the ability to use the forest to terrorize the townsfolk."
Will brushed wet hair out of his eyes. "Use the forest? What do you mean, use the forest?"
"Oh you know---" Jake settled the glasses back on his face, only to have them fall back off again as he sneezed. "---use it. Like, he can move trees and roots, and control the forest animals. That sort of thing."
"Hogwash." Will spat the word out his mouth, as if he had just tasted one of the socks he had tossed down to the floor. "So nothing more than magic beans."
Jake frowned, pulling off his sweater, revealing a sleeveless white shirt beneath. "I wouldn't go that far," he mumbled futily, flopping himself to his back onto his bed. Pulling his book from his pack, he slipped it underneath of his pillow in such a way that it was hidden secret from his older brother.
Will rolled his eyes at his brother. "Let's get some rest then, we need to get up early tommorrow and inspect the town."
'To see where we can set up our tricks.' Jake bitterly finished the line in his mind. Tricks, thieves with tricks. That's all Jakob saw them as, more or less. 'It'll be alright,' Jake thought to himself, 'When we find a real live fairytale, it'll make up for everything.'
Jake slept at that thought, Will staring at the little smile on his brother's face all the while.
"Probably dreaming of dancing beans,' he thought with a scowl. And he too fell to sleep with that thought.
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