Jesse let out a startled yelp and dropped the stuffed ocelot.
"Ouch!" the toy exclaimed, this time in a much higher-pitched voice. Jesse recognized it- it was the voice that had Lukas's had occasionally cracked into, back in the Nether.
Lukas let out a shaky breath and reached out, taking ahold of the toy, which started vibrating when he took ahold of it but said nothing about it, even though it was vibrating so much that it was actually starting to blur. Jesse was confused as to why– was it like a massage toy or something?– and then she saw that Lukas's hands seemed to be trembling.
His hands were shaking.
Badly.
Why was he shaking so much?
"Uhh, Lukas?" Olivia asked, her voice growing a little high pitched as she stared at the plushie ocelot in his hands. "What is that thing exactly?"
"You can ask me directly, y'know," the toy squeaked, now in a high-pitched voice.
Lukas let out a sigh and reached up, pinching the toy ocelot's face with two fingers and making it squeak in protest as he slowly set it on his shoulder, muffling its voice. "I... guess there's not much point in trying to hide it anymore, huh?"
"Hide what?" Axel's voice, unfortunately, wasn't even the slightest bit welcoming. His face was set in an angry expression, and his burly arms were crossed in an almost threatening way. That probably didn't help the fact that Lukas was flushed, his eyes were downcast, and even in the dimness of the flames, he was clearly about to cry.
Lukas let out a tired sigh, running a hand through his blonde hair and mussing it up even more than usual. Slowly, he raised his eyes to meet everyone else's, face filled with a strange sort of fear. "I... I have the Fairytale Curse."
There was absolute silence in response to that. Lukas slowly lowered his eyes back to the ground, staring at the fire as if it were the most mesmerizing thing in the world. The ocelot plushie on his shoulder shifted a little and nudged Lukas with its little bead nose, in an almost encouraging way.
"You... what?" Olivia asked slowly.
Jesse was glad Olivia had said it and not her. Knowing her, she would've just said it in the rudest way possible and offended him or hurt his feelings.
"I, um... I have the Fairytale Curse. It's the Little Mermaid strain," Lukas said quietly, still staring at the fire intently. "I... I can't... talk."
"Dude, what are you talking about?" Axel at least no longer sounded hostile. Just completely confused. "You're talking to us right now."
Something clicked in Jesse's mind suddenly. It was a bit of a sudden realization, but the ocelot sitting on his shoulder confirmed it.
She pointed at him. "That's what's been off about you for a while!" she exclaimed, a bit loudly because, okay, can I just say this, the ocelot plushie talking in Lukas's voice was a little weird and she was just so startled.
Olivia started at the sudden exclamation, while Axel looked at Jesse in slight confusion when she just randomly blurted it out. Jesse felt her face turn pink as she realized that everyone was staring at her, but pressed on anyways. "Your voice hasn't been coming from your mouth or your chest for a while. It's been coming from your left jacket pocket!"
Lukas blinked at Jesse, before a tired sort of smile crossed his face. "Um... yeah."
He took a deep breath, his shoulders rising and then falling as he inhaled and then slowly exhaled, lifting his head and leaning back against the dirt wall. His face was set with determination. "I think you guys deserve to know this. After..." His eyes flicked to Jesse automatically. "... last year..."
Jesse winced as the reminder of the danger of fire crept back into her mind. But she didn't see what that had to do with right now, this instant.
"And after the whole fiasco earlier..." Lukas trailed off, as if he wasn't sure how to continue. "Well... I think you guys deserve to know," he finally repeated, the blonde's eyes flicking around the entire group nervously.
There was a full minute of silence, the only sound in the dirt hut of fire crackling and of zombies and spiders making their respective sounds outside.
Lukas finally picked back up. "Like I said, I have the Little Mermaid curse. The Little Mermaid curse... well, it prevents the victim from speaking. I can move my mouth, but... I don't know, the voice is just gone. That's... why I have Sebby."
He reached up and gently touched the ocelot plush on his shoulder. "Sebby– or, uh, I guess his full name is technically Sebastian, but I'm used to calling him Sebby by now– Sebby was given to me by the witch who cursed me. As long as Sebby's within... I think 4 feet of me, he can talk for me, and sometimes to me." A tiny ghost of smile flitted across his face. "Any further and he's just a plush toy."
Jesse had to wonder why the witch had given him the plush if she'd cursed him in the first place. Logically, if she'd cursed him, she was pissed at him and didn't want him to have an easier time at all.
"Yeah, Lukas talks to me a lot," the ocelot plushie, or, well, Sebby squeaked, cheerfully. "He tells me lotsa secrets, too. Like, he was talking about last year, with your–" The ocelot plushie looked in Jesse's direction, so he was definitely addressing her. "– accident, and–"
Lukas made a little sound of alarm and reached up, pinching the ocelot's face. It let out an indignant squeak, but Jesse had already heard the comment. Swallowing back a lump in her throat– after all, being reminded of imminent death is never very fun– she said, in a falsely mild voice, "How's that a secret? Everyone knows about it. Aiden even started calling me Coal after that."
Everyone in the immediate vicinity flinched at that as well.
"Well, no, the accident itself isn't the secret," Olivia suddenly spoke up, making Jesse swivel her head to look at her dark-skinned best friend in surprise.
Olivia shrugged at the panicked and almost betrayed look on Lukas's face when she spotted it. "It's not that big of a deal, Lukas. I'm honestly not sure why you made it out to be such a big deal in the first place."
"What's not a big deal? What are you guys talking about?" Jesse asked, completely bewildered.
This was beginning to remind her of the one time that she'd gotten a huge burn mark on the stomach of her overalls by over-ironing it and she hadn't known about it until Olivia had finally met up with her and pointed it out. People whispering, asking her if she was okay, talking about the mark as if Jesse wasn't there. Basically, she'd been completely out of the loop.
She hadn't much liked it then, and she didn't like it very much right now.
Lukas sighed, running a hand through his hair. "It's nothing." With that, he shot Olivia such a sharp look that the dark-haired girl subsided, giving him an uncertain look.
"Doesn't sound like nothing," Jesse said, looking at Olivia for backup. But now Olivia's mouth was clamped shut, too, so Jesse looked over at Axel. The burly boy looked a bit uncomfortable at Jesse's searching gaze, averting his eyes to the floor.
With that, Jesse decided to change the subject. "Well, why'd you get cursed, anyway? I thought witches only cursed people if they didn't like them, or to punish them for bad behavior or whatever."
Lukas kept his eyes fixed on the fire, his mouth clamped tightly shut.
"Oh for pity's sake. Well, you know your accident?" Sebby asked, now that Lukas was no longer actively pinching the plush's face, speaking quickly. "Well, you fell in a campfire and nearly burned to death–"
Jesse winced at that.
"And then you were saved by–" Sebby was once again rather rudely cut off as Lukas frantically flung his hand up and pinched Sebby's face again, making the ocelot plush squeak indignantly under the pressure of Lukas's fingers.
"Axel and Olivia. I know that already," Jesse replied, slightly bewildered by the plush bringing it up. "What does that have to do with Lukas getting cursed?"
"Well..." Axel, to Jesse's slight surprise, was the one to speak up now, scratching the back of his neck as he considered his words carefully. "Actually, we... weren't actually the ones to get you out of there. I mean, we helped, but..."
Olivia picked up the end of that sentence, looking at Jesse strangely. "We weren't the ones who directly pulled you out of the fire."
Jesse stood very still for a moment, blinking in confusion. Ivor's book of fairytales was still in her hand, dangling loosely at her side as she stared blankly at her two friends, her best friends, two people that she trusted with her life, even without that... incident last year.
Two people who were now telling her that they hadn't been the ones to save her.
"Wait... you're not?" Jesse felt like a little kid again.
She felt the way she had when she'd overheard Aiden– who she'd actually used to be decent friends with, though you wouldn't be able to tell from the way they treated each other now– telling his new friends that he only hung out with her because he felt sorry for her. Because his parents made him, made him play with the little girl who sat around in her backyard reading fairytales when everyone knew that they were scary, that they could be twisted into a curse.
A little betrayed. Scared. But mostly confused.
Definitely confused.
In response to Jesse's almost hollow question, her two best friends gave a single, almost lonely shake of their heads.
No.
"Then, who...?"
Strange looks whenever she mentioned it.
'Saves someone, but they don't know.'
A blonde boy sitting in the hospital room without a word, even though his friends hated her guts.
'Thinks someone else saved them.'
Jesse slowly turned her head. She didn't feel like she was the one moving. For all she knew, someone else was currently steering her and positioning her like a doll, and she wouldn't have even noticed.
Lukas lifted his eyes from the fire and gave her a weak smile.
"Lukas?" Jesse's voice didn't come out as normal as she would've hoped it would. It came out as a whisper, a soft, hushed sound that was almost inaudible over the crackling of the fire and the deafening silence in the room, muffling everything, stifling everything, smothering everything until all Jesse could hear were the confused whispers in her ears.
"... yeah."
"... oh."
Jesse looked at the ground for a moment, trying to collect herself, confusion still running so rampant in her mind that she actually kind of wanted to knock herself out– at least this growing headache would stop forming if she did.
But all she could think of was Lukas's fairytale, the fairytale that connected directly to his curse. Snatches and bits and pieces that floated around in her memory, that she knew was going to be in the book if she read the story again.
His wedding morning would bring death to her, and she would change into the foam of the sea.
"See, it is a sharp knife."
"Before the sun rises you must plunge it into the heart of the prince; when the warm blood falls upon your feet they will grow together again, and form into a fish's tail, and you will be once more a mermaid, and you will not die."
And the little mermaid leaped into the waves far below and dissolved into sea foam.
'The person they love/save falls in love with someone else.'
Jesse frowned. "You're not going to die, are you?" she asked abruptly, looking up at the blonde. His blonde hair reflected the firelight slightly.
He blinked, seemingly confused. "No. Why?"
"Because in the original story, the little mermaid dies. She changes to sea foam at the end. So you won't... you won't die, right?" Jesse asked, slowly, tasting each word carefully as they formed in her mouth and tumbled from her lips. They tasted bitter. Frightening.
Lukas met her eyes for a solid minute, some weird emotion flickering in his eyes– it wasn't the one she'd seen before, it was a different one– before averting his eyes to the fire again. "No. It should be different."
Olivia frowned. "I dunno... from what I've heard, Fairytale Curses stick pretty close to the story they're based on."
Jesse's glass heart picked up the beat again, practically begging for Jesse's curse to be found out.
Olivia continued, crossing her arms and adjusting the goggles on her green beanie thoughtfully. "So if the little mermaid dies in the original story, then..."
Lukas sighed, still staring at the fire. "No; the witch who cursed me said it was different."
"... well, I guess that makes sense," Jesse said at last, scratching her cheek. "I mean, in the original fairytale, the little mermaid loved the prince, but you don't love me or anything. So I guess it makes sense that it'd be different."
Lukas inhaled a bit– his breath catching in his throat– before exhaling, giving a slight shrug. "Yeah, I figured that was why it was different."
"Ah. Okay."
Wow. Paragon of eloquence. Good job, Jesse.
She still wasn't sure what him saving her had to do with him being cursed... but with the information overload she'd just received, she was a little wary about continuing to ask. She was pretty sure her head would explode if she asked, and Lukas was keeping his mouth safely clamped shut, so it was probably safe to assume that he wasn't going to be willingly divulging that information.
The black-haired girl looked at the book in her hand when the silence in the room grew to the point where it was deafening and almost smothering. Her thumb was still keeping the pages of The Little Mermaid open, so she lifted the book and flipped back to the pages of the Table of Contents.
She didn't really know what she was doing; she just didn't want the silence to keep growing and growing until the point where it was smothering everything, even the air she was breathing and the way Lukas was staring at the fire intently.
Without really thinking about it, she flipped to Goldilocks and the Three Bears– she'd always liked that story, and it had a pretty cute moral and ending.
There were notes in the margins but she decided to ignore it, focusing her eyes on the dark text of the story.
"Once upon a time, there lived three bears in a cottage in the forest," Jesse started reading, drawing all eyes to her. "These three bears were in a family. There was Papa Bear, who was the grouchiest bear in the group. Then there was Mama Bear, who was kind and sweet and just like a mother should be. And then there was Baby Bear, who just liked to play all day."
The only sound in the hut was the sound of Jesse reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears, her eyes occasionally straying to the notes in the margins. There were surprisingly few of them– and most of them ended in question marks.
Now that Jesse thought about it, she was quite certain she'd heard almost no cases of that strain of the curse reported. Maybe there just wasn't enough information about it.
Several minutes passed, and Jesse eventually realized she had moved back into a sitting position, a safe distance from the fire, while Axel leaned against a wall, Olivia and Lukas sat closer to the fire, and Reuben and nosed his way into her lap. She wasn't sure how that had happened, but she didn't stop in reading the story.
"Goldilocks jumped up from the bed, and ran out of the house and into the forest, and all the way back home. And the three bears never saw her again. The end," Jesse announced at last, looking up from the book and meeting everyone's eyes.
There were a few moments of silence, only punctuated by the crackling of the fire. A moment later, some thunder rumbled, and the sound of rain drumming on the dirt roof hit Jesse's ears. For the most part, the dirt absorbed the rain, although there was a little that dripped through the roof.
Finally, Axel spoke up, breaking the silence.
"Can you read another one?"
"And they lived happily ever after." Jesse looked up from the book– and let out a soft laugh at the sight of all her friends being asleep.
Axel was lying on his back and snoring softly, while Olivia was lying on her side, facing the fire with her eyes shut. Her pigtails were drooping slightly in the dirt, and Jesse could see bits of redstone that hadn't washed off the last time in the wash glinting in the flickering firelight.
Lukas was hugging Sebby tightly, like you usually did with plush toys, his eyes shut as he breathed deeply. His blonde hair was... still in much the same state it had been in earlier, while Sebby just sat still from where Lukas was practically squishing him. It was actually kind of cute how he was curled up on the opposite side of the fire from Olivia.
Jesse watched them all sleep with a small grin, before it faded and she looked back down at the book.
Carefully, she reached out and flipped through the pages, the whisper of paper through her fingers soft enough that she didn't worry about waking anyone up. Finally, she found the page she was looking for.
The Steadfast Tin Soldier - del. curse.
Cursed because - ?
Way to break curse - ?
Jesse slowly let out a sigh. Looks like even Ivor didn't have an idea on how to break the curse.
Jesse slowly shut the fairytale book and put it back in her inventory, being careful not to just clap it shut and possibly wake them up. Then she lay down where she was, scooting away from the fire just a little more.
Reuben snorted slightly and pressed his nose into her cheek when she lay down, allowing her to pull him to her in a tight hug like he was a plush toy and not a living pig. Usually when Jesse went to bed, he just curled up next to her and refused to let her hug him– sometimes she would roll around in her sleep and one time she'd squashed him so hard that he'd squealed and she'd fallen off the bed.
But he seemed to sense that she needed some emotional support right now. With the Witherstorm, Ivor's strange behavior, that niggling feeling that something was off about him, Lukas's revelation... she was exhausted.
"Thanks, buddy," she said softly, being careful to keep her voice low.
Reuben oinked softly and nudged her cheek again.
Jesse fell asleep to the sound of rain drumming on the top of the dirt roof and an undertone of fire crackling in the background.
A/N: Blah, why does this chapter bother me so much xD
Welp, I updated! We have finally established Lukas's curse, had a somewhat fluffy ending, and... basically explained some stuff!
Ah, so, I figure you guys should know, I have put up an Ask Blog for The Fairytale Curse! You can ask pretty much any of the characters stuff (though they will very rarely give you a straight answer unless there's little spoilers involved, so don't expect to know the plotline by asking), even the ones that haven't shown up yet! You can find it on tumblr by searching 'mcsmaskthecursed' (that's the url, too).
Responses to reviews!
LittleAngelbun: Hello! And I'm glad you like it so far; I love writing it x3
Toni42: (pats) / I'm glad you liked it, Tonibear :3 / I also love switching stuff around a little bit. That is certainly going to have a very large role a bit later in the story, haha. xD Love you~ / Indeed, much drama went down. xD
LunarTheMooncake: Well, now it's blatantly obvious xD / Also, I love fairytales so much, it's a bit funny xD
homeworkoverload: (laughs) / Nah, I got the first bit, just not the second. The reason I changed the name is because I'm planning something for it that would make it a bit strange if I named it Phantasmagoria. / Ah, that sucks. / It's on Netflix, you can't just watch it by yourself? / Oh... really? I thought I made it too obvious, honestly xD / (pats) / (pats again) / Nah, it's fine! Don't worry about it.
CamronXTheXGamer: (points up)
Dawn3546: (grins sheepishly) Well, don't worry, there'll be lots of curses. / That's correct, actually, but he says it's 'different'... / (snorts)
EllieRose27: Here is the next chapter! / Le gasp xD / (points up)
TheAmberShadow: That was the idea xD / Nope. He's got nothing either. / (giggles) Now THAT would've been interesting. / It's really not. I think of it like a Beanie Baby. xD / (squints) Never read DC Comics.
J.M.M.: Nope it's real
x.X. A.L. X.x
