The Forest Grimm by Kathryn Purdie

Author:Kathryn Purdie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER 21

There is no clock in this meadow, but Ella must hear its ticking the same way I do, the way we’ve both heard it tick for so long—me in my haste to save my mother, and her in her lost patience to wed the boy who was almost hers last summer.

“So many white feathers,” I murmur, watching Axel and Ella sweep across the meadow in a new waltz, only now the forest’s music is out of time. Ella is leading Axel faster than its tempo.

“White feathers?” Henni asks, coming to stand beside me.

“His clothes. Her dress.”

“But Ella is in a golden dress.” Henni stares at her sister with eyes that are glossy and wide, her pupils dilated just like Axel’s and Ella’s and also mine, I’m sure.

“Is that how you see her?” I wobble on my feet. Axel and Ella flip-flop in my vision. Where they were moving left to right, they’re now moving right to left.

Henni says something, but the words sound strangely muffled. Then she repeats herself, her voice suddenly amplified like it’s bouncing through a rocky canyon. “It’s almost midnight! Gather round for the lottery!”

I startle. “Is it Devotion Day? Why didn’t you tell me?”

I turn to Henni, but my friend’s sweet face is gone. It’s now the village clockmaker who stands beside me. He checks the hour on his pocket watch and clicks it shut. “How many times did you enter your name?” He cocks a thick brow at me.

Oh no. “You found out about that?” All the scraps of paper hidden inside my apron pocket?

His smile pierces through all my defenses. But it’s Axel’s smile now, not the clockmaker’s. Axel is standing beside me, while another Axel dances with Ella. And there’s a third Axel in the meadow—my Axel?—only this meadow is another meadow, the one on the outskirts of the Forest Grimm. The sun shines on his tanned skin. He’s chewing on a piece of straw, and he pulls it from his mouth as he leans his head closer to mine. “Hurry. If we’re quick, we can fix this.”

“Fix what?”

“All those extra names. They have to come out of the amber goblet.”

“But wait … I never put them in the goblet.” Or did I?

The Axel beside me disappears, and a replica of myself takes his place. “You’re hallucinating, Clara,” the second me says. She’s wearing my old faded dress and the cape dyed with red rampion. “It isn’t Devotion Day.”

“You’re wrong. I’ll show you.” I crouch and try to slide off my left slipper, the one made of amber glass. I need to make sure seven papers are still inside it. I didn’t count them when they fell in earlier. “I have to hurry,” I tell me as I tug on the slipper. Why won’t it come off? I fumble with a pair of laces I don’t see, but I can feel. They shouldn’t be there. My slippers have no laces. “I can’t wait for another time to be chosen. Axel needs me.”

“Don’t you mean Mother needs you?”

“I…” Isn’t that what I said? “Yes, of course.

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