2
"Everyone okay?" Sabrina asked, helping Daphne to her feet.
A muffled 'okay' was the reply as everyone got to their feet slowly.
"Where are we?" Veronica asked, standing up.
"Well, um, it appears as if we're in a cell," Sabrina said, trying to sound nonchalant and casual.
"What!" Uncle Jake and Daphne cried at the same time.
Mr. Canis grunted, but remained silent, eyeing the bars as if they reminded him of something deadly and dangerous in the past.
"I knew this was a bad idea!" Hank, Sabrina and Daphne's father, said in a scolding tone.
"Is there anyway out?" Veronica cried.
"Grimm, you are as stupid as you are ugly," Puck said.
Sabrina glared at him and for good measure punched him on the arm. She then turned her attention to the iron bars that caged them in. She tried shaking them in hopes that they would bend, she tried kicking them in hopes that they would fall, but whatever she did they wouldn't bend. She felt the tingle of magic race through her fingertips and hands, and eventually to her arms, like an electric shock as she touched the bars.
"It's no use, we're locked in here," Sabrina said, huffing.
"Well, Baba Yaga will have to come down here, eventually," Veronica said in a hopeful tone.
"It smells like she's never been down here. Who knows whether she'll come down ever!" Uncle Jake cut in. Veronica glared at him.
Sabrina sat down and the rest of her family joined her on the musty old floor. She closed her eyes and leaned back into the bars and within a few moments, she was sound asleep and dreaming.
She looked around. She couldn't remember where she was. She couldn't see Puck, or Daphne, or Uncle Jake, or her mother and father. She called out but the only sound she heard was her voice, echoing back to her.
She took a step forward and heard the crunching of leaves under her feet. She looked around once more and saw dead leaves on dead branches. She was in a clearing. Suddenly, a flash of blue electricity shocked all around her and hit a trunk of a huge, oak tree. It sizzled a moment, and fell to ashes. She jumped backwards in fright and looked around, hoping to see who or what had disintegrated the tree. A figure moved, concealed only by the branches. She gulped and prepared herself to fight the figure. She let a warrior cry escape her lips and she punched what she thought to be the figure but instead was a thick tree trunk. She cried out in pain, her hand throbbed and she realized it was broken. But she lunged again for the figure, missing again.
She was about to lunge once more when the figure stepped into the clearing and the moonlight lit up her face. She stepped backwards in shock.
"Granny?"
"Why, hello, Starfish!" the voice of Mirror bellowed from her grandmother's body and she cringed.
Sabrina woke up with a shock and she looked around. The memories of they're whereabouts flooded back. She looked around and saw that everyone was sound asleep. Uncle Jake, Daphne, and Hank were snoring peacefully. Puck was snoring like a buzz-saw. She realized she was leaning on someone. She sat up and saw that the person was Puck. She blushed and she sank back into her original position, leaning her head on Puck's shoulder. Subconsciously, Puck put his arms around Sabrina's shoulder, trapping her in a warm hug.
A loud, wooden screech that sounded like a thousand splinters echoed from behind Sabrina and she turned her head to see where the noise had come from. A figure came hobbling along the hallway lined with other cells that lead to the occupied cell. The figure was hard to make out, but Sabrina had a definite hunch as to who it was.
Sabrina shook Puck awake.
"Wha-" Puck mumbled sleepily. Sabrina slapped her hand over his mouth.
"Just shut up," Sabrina whispered, keeping both of her eyes on the approaching figure. Puck quickly realized that his arm was wrapped around Sabrina and he let her go, blushing furiously.
Baba Yaga was in a word ugly. That was putting it mildly. Her face was wrinkled and warped by the sands of time. She had three extremely prominent warts on her face, one on her chin, one on her cheek, and one on the very tip of her nose. Each had one protruding greasy hair. She had one milky eye that seemed to go a different direction from her other eye, which was a grotesque color in itself. Her nose was long and pointy and her lips were dried up. She was short and squat and wore clothes with a thousand holes in them, some patched up with worn out cloth. She wore leathern boots with a hole in the toe of the shoe. The leather was faded and caked with dirt and miscellaneous objects which Sabrina cared not to think about. Baba Yaga had put up her few strands of greasy hair into a bandana that was faded and worn.
Sabrina heard Baba Yaga cackle, her steps coming closer. She was carrying a box of matches and, once she reached the cell, she lit up a torch that was hanging on the wall and peered into the cage.
Sabrina cringed. The Grimm family and Baba Yaga didn't exactly see eye-to-eye.
"Grimms! What are you doing here?" Baba Yaga asked in a croaky voice, with her thick Russian accent.
"We came to tell you something. Something important. About the Scarlet Hand," Sabrina said.
Baba Yaga looked down at Sabrina suspiciously. She was not one to be made a fool of. She finally seemed to resolve something in her head. "Come," Baba Yaga beckoned Sabrina up, Puck automatically standing up beside her. Baba Yaga took out a keyring nearly as big as Granny Relda's. She flipped through the keys until she selected a huge, rusty brass key. It slid into the lock with ease and she turned it sideways, opened the door and beckoned Sabrina out. She shut the door in Puck's face and he glared at her, hatred seeping from his gaze.
Once again, Baba Yaga beckoned her over to an adjacent doorway. Baba Yaga opened it and artificial light seeped through it. A rickety staircase lead the way upstairs and into Baba Yaga's kitchen.
Sabrina looked around. The kitchen was in disarray. Apart from the jars of eyeballs, lizard tails, and toad tongues there were scattered books and papers. Wands and magical trinkets littered the floor. Sabrina felt herself tingle with magic and it took all of her might not to grab a wand and feel the essence of power that seeped.
Apart from that, there was a bucketload of dirty dishes looking as if they might teeter over at any moment. A mug that said WORLD'S GREATEST GRANDMOTHER in bold lettering was home to a few wands. A cheap calendar had been tacked up hastily on the wall. It was flipped open to the month of December. On December fourth it said GET LAUNDRY, MAKE EYEBALL STEW in hasty lettering. It was written in blood. This reminded her that it was almost Christmas. It would be her first Christmas with her parents in two years. But with Granny Relda gone Sabrina didn't feel any happier.
Sabrina took a seat at the table, which held an avalanche of paper and pens and a thick book filled with an ancient text. Baba Yaga took a seat across from her and coughed.
"Well, out with it, child!" Baba Yaga said hoarsely.
Sabrina began to ramble. She recapped her tale, starting from when she entered the book to their recent escape. She explained how Atticus was coming, and how Mirror had stolen Granny Relda's body. She told about the Editor and his Revisor's and the White Rabbit, who had escaped.
Baba Yaga said nothing. She quietly nodded her head, but apart from that she didn't even move.
Once Sabrina had finished telling her story she quietly sat, waiting for Baba Yaga to say something.
"I will help you, child. But my magic has a price. What do you have?"
"Um. . . we have books. Lots and lots of books," she said in a hopeful tone.
"I do not want books. I have knowledge enough of such things and the books I need I own. No, I will not take your books."
"Well, what do you want?" Sabrina asked.
Baba Yaga looked around. She looked at the floor, with the magical objects littering it. She then looked at the grimy walls. Then at the dishes. She turned once more to Sabrina. "Clean my house."
"What?" Sabrina cried. Baba Yaga's "house" looked like a nuclear waste zone. Filthy grime, most-likely a hundred years old, covered everything. It would take centuries to get it to look reasonably clean.
"You're services for my services," she stated plainly. "It may possibly be the only way to save the world."
Sabrina grumbled, grunted, and muttered. She closed her eyes for a few moments to think it through. Baba Yaga was right, it very well maybe the only way to world and save her grandmother. She had to save her grandmother and the world, no matter what the consequences. But, something about the magic that surrounded her made her think that she could save the world herself. She fought it, but the thought lingered on in the back of her mind.
"I'll do it," she said finally.
The rest of the day was, in a word, hell.
Baba Yaga treated the Grimms like they were her slaves. Sabrina had to stop her dish duty to massage Baba Yaga's feet more than once. Daphne nearly got eaten up by a book, because it's pages turned out to be razor sharp fangs, as she tried to put it on a shelf. Puck took a bite out of a sandwich that really did bite back. Veronica and Hank nearly passed out from the fumes of the expired foods that they were clearing out of Baba Yaga's refrigerator. And Uncle Jake almost sky-dived for the first time in his life out of Baba Yaga's attic window when an enchanted ironing board pushed him out.
Only Mr. Canis seemed capable of cleaning without bodily injuring himself or being scarred for life. He mopped, swept, polished, and dusted as if it were the most perfectly normal thing to be doing.
Sabrina was in the middle of cleaning a particularly smelly casserole dish when Puck walked in. Something yellowish was encrusted on the bottom of the dish and the stench coming off of it was incredibly pungent.
"Grimm, how long do we have to do this?" Puck asked. He was wearing an apron, rubber gloves, goggles, and a hospital mask, claiming he 'was allergic to cleaning products and work'.
"I don't know. Ask Baba Yaga," Sabrina said, scrubbing the dish with all of her might.
"No, if I even go near that hag she's going to ask me to rub her temples. I'm not doing that again!" Puck said. "And anyway, this isn't my problem, this is yours! I'm not even sure why I'm doing this!"
"This is the only way to get Granny back and save the world. . . she may be annoying and abusive, but she's the best ally we've got!"
Puck groaned but didn't say anything else.
"Puck, my temples need rubbing again!" Baba Yaga called out from the living room.
"I hate you," Puck said quickly before shuttering and walking into the room where Baba Yaga was laid out on the couch reading a People magazine.
"Ditto!" Sabrina shouted back before continuing her work on the casserole dish.
The clock on the wall read 11:02 p.m. Sabrina yawned and scrubbed once more before looking around her. The kitchen was transformed. Gone were the papers, piled high, the wands and magical trinkets that littered the floor, and the dirty dishes. The walls were scrubbed clean, as was the floor.
Sabrina walked into the dining room where it was transformed as well. In fact, the entire house was spick and span. Uncle Jake, Veronica, Hank, and Daphne were sitting down in the rickety chairs. Daphne yawned and rubbed her eyes. Everyone was worn out.
"The house is clean," Puck said, walking into the dining room and taking a seat. He took off his gloves, then his apron and his goggles, and lastly his hospital mask. Everyone blew a sigh of relief.
Baba Yaga came in. Sabrina had never seen her looking so happy. Her face was glowing a golden hew and she was smiling, actually smiling!
"Okay, Old Mother. We did what you want, now you do what we want," Uncle Jake said in a commanding tone.
Baba Yaga glared at him. A book zipped past Baba Yaga and fell onto the table. She flicked her hand and the book opened up to a page nearing the end. It was a thick book, and extremely old. It was filled with an ancient text. To Sabrina it looked like complete gibberish.
"Old Mother, this says that-" Uncle Jake started.
"Yes, I know."
"But-"
A/N- Ooh, a cliffy! What will happen next? I'm not exactly sure.
Anyway, I'd like to thank Secretive, Lara D, BrendanW, Booksonclouds, and SabrinaDaphne13 for reviewing! Sorry, this chapter was shorter and it's kind of a filler chapter. I needed them to do something for Baba Yaga to help them so this is what they had to do! Anyway, the next chapter will be up in a day or so depending on my schedule (I have a karate tournament this Saturday and I have to practice a LOT! My sensi said that category is really tough which is never a good sign!). Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter. The next chapter will most-likely have slight Puckabrina.
Cheers,
ManMenDude