Chapter Nineteen

Over, All Over

"Will!"

In horror, Jakob dropped the weapon in his hand, staring at his crimson palm as though it had betrayed him. This couldn't be happening. Not again. He staggered backward, glass cracking under his boots, until he collapsed against the empty frame of the mirror.

The heart, the heart he had just stabbed had not been the queen's. It was Wilhelm's. Everything that Wilhelm had tried to tell him, about the queen stealing his heart and using it to control him, it had all been true. And now because Jakob hadn't believed him, his brother had died.

For the second time in his life, in the same place as before, Jakob Grimm had stabbed his brother in the heart.

"No!" This scream had not come from Jakob, who was by now too stunned to move, let alone speak. Lorita, still fighting with the wailing queen, had realized what had happened and it was her voice that had risen. The faerie stared at Wilhelm's prone figure, feeling as though her own heart had been run through. He had lied to her; he had known it was his own heart. He had given her the hint to kill him. Knowing what the queen planned for him, Wilhelm had chosen death and had found a way to freedom. And it was all the queen's fault.

"You horrible hag!" Lorita growled, turning her attention back to the shrieking woman who was struggling desperately to free herself. It was an unfair fight, as Lorita was so much smaller than her and still bound hand and foot, but there was a rage and purpose fuelling the little faerie woman now. With an angry scream, Lorita seized up the knife that Wilhelm had dropped and plunged it into the queen's chest.

The scream that the mirror queen let out was so strong and terrible that it sent Lorita scrambling away, her arms pressed protectively over her ears. The queen thrashed and her hands clawed at her face. Her hand yanked the blade from her bosom and when she spotted the blood dripping from it her screams rose once again in pitch. Her skin turned ashen and slowly began to rot from her bones, the hair fell from her head and laid in heaps of white cobwebs where they cradled her skull. With a final, ground-shaking scream that echoed long after it had been emitted, the corpse stilled and left only a dusty skeleton in a wrapping of dirty cloth.

"Aurora," Jakob breathed instantly and he heaved himself up to rush to the table. The child's face was still unmoved but she was breathing. Jakob scooped her up and almost sobbed in relief as he heard her groan sleepily. Aurora curled herself in his arms and her hands gripped the front of his tunic. "Oh Aurora," he sighed and held her tightly to his chest.

Lorita's gasp brought Jakob's gaze up from his daughter's face. She had crawled past the skeleton and was crouched at Wilhelm's side, her hands, still bound together, touching his face. The elder Grimm was sprawled on his back, one hand resting over the spot of his chest where the maroon was darkest. His body was still in death but there was the slightest trace of a smile still on his lips.

"No, Wilhelm." The faerie's words were a sigh as she grasped one of his hands in both of her smaller ones. Jakob came to kneel opposite her, Aurora still cradled against his body, and the true grief began to finally wash over him. Tears shook his body and as he gazed down at Wilhelm's frozen face in despair.

Wilhelm was gone. The still bright stains in the tunic betrayed that beneath its surface the Grimm's life blood was seeping out of him. Stabbed in the heart, just like the last time. By the same hand. Jakob had killed his brother.

Lorita was crying as fiercely as Jakob and with a choked breath she let her head fall onto Wilhelm's chest. Jakob freed one hand and lifted Wilhelm's from over his heart, gripping the scarlet palm tightly as though he would never release it again. Too many times had Jakob seen his brother die and the most painful thing of this was knowing that this time there was no escape. Forever gone was the invincible Wilhelm Grimm.

"No, it cannot be!" Lorita's sudden exclamation made Jakob jump. She had sat up and was pushing her hair away from her blood-stained face. Looking around frantically, her eyes locked on the dagger hilt protruding from Jakob's boot and she lunged forward and drew it. She sawed the ropes away from her wrists and when they fell she dragged herself closer to Wilhelm's body. The dagger disappeared beneath the collar of Wilhelm's tunic and with a ripping sound she cut the fabric away from his body.

The sight of the flesh beneath it was gruesome. It was almost entirely red, the blood still gleaming in the candlelight. The old wound that had decorated Wilhelm's stomach, although smaller than the last time Jakob had seen it, was filled with a pool of blood. And now there was a deep chasm in his chest to match with it.

Seeming to be completely blind to this, Lorita had placed the dagger on her palm and pulled it swiftly across before Jakob could protest. The tissue split and her own blood ran a soft golden-green. Then, with a look of set determination on her face, she pressed her bleeding hand on the wound in Wilhelm's chest.

Almost instantly her body began trembling, the muscles visibly flexed. A pale light surrounded her form as well as Wilhelm's, and heat rolled off them so heavily that Jakob had to drop his brother's hand as his skin began to blister. Seconds later a wave of heat pushed him harder and sent him sliding backward into the table.

Jolted by the motion, Aurora groaned and blinked around sleepily. Her bright eyes fixed on the two other figures, ensconced in their soft glow, and she asked, "Papa, what?"

Jakob shook his head. "I don't know."

To his eyes, it suddenly seemed that Lorita was growing larger. Her skin shifted from pale white to a sunny gold in the light and her skirts lifted from her ankles to her knees. The features of her face changed, becoming more angular and losing a great deal of their rounded smoothness. Now looking like an entirely different person, she leaned forward and placed her lips to Wilhelm's pale ones.

The explosion of light that filled the room burned Jakob's eyes even after he had closed them. Aurora let out a squeal and Jakob buried her face in his chest tightly. It seemed forever that there was nothing but light and when it finally faded Jakob could perceive nothing but dark. There were scuffles, the faint motions of fabric against stone, but no voices that he could hear. Gradually, shapes began to materialize in the darkness and he could make out a blurred form that he guessed was Lorita, still bent over a prone figure.

A voice whispered, "What?" and was promptly cut off by a "shhh," in a voice that Jakob couldn't place. "Slowly," the second voice spoke up again. The motions were more audible now and after blinking several times the scene finally came into focus.

Standing directly in front of him was a young woman he had never seen before. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, with long golden hair and eyes bright with youthfulness despite their knowledge and maturity. However the oddity of her offered him no distraction from the second figure. She was helping the man to his feet and although he looked incredibly disoriented, there was no mistaking him.

"Will?" Jakob gasped, not daring to believe it possible. Aurora extracted herself from her father's grip and, on seeing Wilhelm, her face lit up.

"Onkel Will!" she screamed and ran into his arms. He lifted her and held her to his chest, smiling with tears in his eyes. She pulled back to examine his face and traced her fingers over him. "Onkel Will, you're all better." She pressed her ear to his chest and then looked back up at him. "Your heart works 'gain."

"Yes, I know," he agreed in a voice unladen with the pain and stress that years had formerly given it. He hugged Aurora again and as he did his gaze moved past her to Jakob. The brothers met eyes and there was an identical look of shock and incredulity on both of their faces.

Jakob stood up slowly at the same moment that Wilhelm lowered Aurora to the floor. The brothers stared at each other in silence for a long time and then simultaneously they moved together and embraced. Tears escaped them both as they clung to each other.

After several stretched, emotional minutes, they finally pulled apart and Jakob surveyed his brother in awe. His bare chest was smooth and flawless, no traces of the wounds or scars. The colour had returned to him and his eyes were bright with life. He looked ten years younger. But most importantly he was alive.

"I know," Wilhelm said and he sounded just as surprised as anyone else. "The darkness was everywhere and it was pushing me away. I was going to let it take me, because I was afraid of what the queen might try to make me do if I lived. But then I heard a voice in the dark speaking to me. She called me back, brought me back into the light. And then I was alive again and she was there." He turned to look at the woman next to him with a smile, taking her hand in his. "Thank you, Lorita."

"Lorita?" Jakob asked in shock. He stared at the woman for a long time and eventually began to find the similarities in this alien face. "Mein Gott, it is you. But you are no longer a child."

The woman laughed. "I finally look my age," she said, "because I no longer possess my faerie life. I've given it to Wilhelm." She smiled shyly and drew herself against the elder Grimm's side. "The magic of the faeries' was in my blood. I heard Wilhelm breathe as I laid my head on his chest and sensed that there was still life in him. So I gave a share of my life and youth to him."

For a long time Jakob could only stare. This was just a little too much magic for even his fantastical mind to comprehend right now. Finally Wilhelm grinned and put a hand on his brother's shoulder.

"Don't worry, Jake, I don't get it either," he said. "All that matters is that we're still alive and this is all over."

"Over," Jakob echoed, his eyes panning over the dead piper and the skeleton. It really was over; this was the end of the nightmare. He met his brother's gaze and his relief was mirrored there. "Let's go home."

Jakob lifted Aurora onto his hip, Wilhelm wrapped an arm around Lorita's waist, and the four of them left the cursed place for the last time.