Disclaimer: I do not own the Brothers Grimm fictional representations about whom this story is written. I also, of course, do not own the real Brothers Grimm, who have little-to-nothing to do with this story. :)
Summary: Many things happened the day that Lotte Grimm died. Pre-movie; speculative.
Please review, even if it's just 'love it' or 'hate it'. C'mon, school's starting; I'm depressed. Reviews make me happy.
It is interesting to note that my laptop accepts the spellings 'Genisis' and 'Genisus', but not 'Genesis'. WTF?
Genesis
Many things happened on the day that Lotte Grimm died. It was a little before sunrise when she coughed out her last breath, one hand in her mother's, her other in her brother Will's. She had been growing ever weaker all night, and sensing the inevitable, they had never ended their vigil at her side. Now the sun peaked over the tops of the dirty little houses, warming them even as the girl's skin grew cold. And the survivors realized that they were facing their first day without her- their daughter, their sister, their light.
Jake had watched his sister pass from the shadowy corners of the room, too scared to approach her, to stricken with fear to touch her frail body. Magic beans. That's what her life had become- its only worth. It was a metaphor not only for her but for him as well now, so intertwined were they. He had always been closer to their sister than Will had.
Jake spent the day throwing up on and off. Mrs. Grimm took pauses from her sobbing to fret over him, that he was catching Lotte's illness, but Will knew better. It was grief. It was guilt.
Will spent the day with his mother, sitting with her as she cleaned Lotte's face of blood speckles, patting her arm as she mourned the loss, holding her as the church mortician carted the body away. That day he became the head of the family. He was twelve years old.
That day in Will's hands, despite his best intentions, the family Grimm began to die. It had been slowly approaching the brink for years, first with Father's departure, then Lotte's sickness. And when her daughter had finally left, Mother had begun to move away as well. It would be three years before she would actually pass on. But she and the family were as good as gone that day.
That day was the first time in years that Will Grimm had cried. He had made it through the sunlit hours with perfect composure, but by nightfall it had been almost two days since he had slept, three since he had eaten, and a lifetime since he had been warm. He saw to Jake and Mother, tucking them away, watching them drift asleep, then he laid down by the fireplace, by where his sister had been, and wept, silently, into his arm for hours. He would not cry again for ten years. And he did not know that his little brother Jake was once again watching, unseen in the darkness, nor that he crept off to grieve in the only way he knew how: on paper.
That day a lifetime began. That day a book started to be written. Jake would admit years later, sheepishly, tearfully, that he had stayed awake all night writing that first story. Jack and the Beanstalk, he called it. And as Will read it, he recognized it for what it was: part escape, part confession, part penance. And part memorial.
The family Grimm died that day, losing a sister and a mother. The Brothers Grimm were born that day, the only true survivors of a broken family. Will would look back years later and see it clearly: as much beginning as end for them. As much birth as death for Jake. Jack and the Beanstalk. Jake and his Beans.
That day there was Genesis.
