Mary Mary Quite Contrary ( A Grimm Diaries Prequel #5 ) (4 page)

“What are these words you’re saying, and why do you talk like
that?” I wondered.

“Never mind,” Rumpelstiltskin said. “People will talk like that in
the future.”

“How do you know about the future?”

“Didn’t I explain that I spend a lot of time with ancient wizards
whenever I am between jobs of kidnapping children?”

“So to kill Mary, I will have to trap her in a mirror?” I asked.

“Yes. But the problems is that we’re in the sixteenth century. All
mirrors are made of obsidian and copper. The real glass mirrors will not be
invented before 1835 by a man called
Justus
von Liebig.”

“Justus
von Liebig. Hmm. Why do I sense grand evil in his name?” I wondered. “Why don’t
I have a cool name like that. Instead of Lucifer and Beelzebub. I mean,
seriously, Beelzebub? It sounds
like the name of
a brothel or a low life bar. Why can’t I be Lu Von Cipher? Sounds good, right?”

“Or
Count De Vellio,”
Rumpelstiltskin suggested in an
Italian accent. “But you’re already called the Prince of Darkness. I like that.
So anyways, Mary has to be trapped in a new kind of mirror.  A glass mirror
which will not be invented until 1835.”

“1835?” I almost shrieked. “That’s thirty nine years after Snow
White’s expected birth!”

“That’s true,” Rumpelstiltskin nodded, lowering his head.

“You know what evil this little brat will bestow on us? On the
world? Didn’t you read the prophecy?”

“I did.” Rumpelstiltskin mused. “But we can’t change that in the
real world.”

“Still, we can change it in the Dreamworld,” I lowered my head
with a smug look
on my face.

“You mean…”

“Yes. Absolutely. You know all real magic can be done in the
Dreamworld.”

“But the Dreamworld is still ripe and new. You get lost in it and
you might drown in it.”

“Trust me – I don’t say that word often by the way – I know a
lot.”

“So are you
saying you can wake
Justus von Liebig
in the
Dreamworld? He isn’t born yet.”

“But I can do it. I know a Dreamhunter who can.”

“But Dreamhunters despise us. They are angels.”

“I’m an angel too. Did you forget that,” I said. “I’m just a
fallen angel. And some angels are falling from Heaven
these days.”

“Hmm,” Rumpelstiltskin considered. “So you’re plan is to wake
Justus von Liebig
,
actually give him life
in the Dreamworld before he is even there in the real
world, and let him design you a glass mirror that you can bury Mary in?”

“Forever!” I said with happy reddened eyes.

I don’t have the time to tell you
the
details about how we got in the Dreamworld and how we woke the unborn
Justus von Liebig
to
design us a mirror, because this story in itself needs a couple of diaries. I
am sure you will meet
Justus von Liebig
and
Mary too many times in the real diaries.

The journey into the Dreamworld took over two
hundred years. We were trapped, cursed, and hunted, but we
succeeded in the end and came back to the real world with a glass mirror that
was one of its kind at the time. One that even Mary hadn’t heard about so she
did not know how to oppose its powers.

When we came back to the real world it was the year 1801. Given
that Justus was about to design the real mirror in 1835, we didn’t really
accomplish much. But it was still good enough to finish the job before the year
1812 where it was prophesized that Snow White’s evil would
truly spread in the world. If I was destined to die by her evil, I
preferred to kill Mary first. Who knows, maybe then I could outlive Snow White.

In those two hundred years Mary’s legend had been spreading
everywhere in the world. She’d
been super
active, hiding in king’s and queen’s mirrors, and insinuated evil in their
hearts all over the world. Mary was avenging herself. I was told as long as
Mary spread evil thoughts through the mirrors, her mother’s pain increased in
her grave.

Mary was everywhere: in your mirror, in your reflection in the
water, but you just didn’t know it. And she killed and tortured humans in the
world with the power of the splinter in her eye just to make her mother suffer
more and more.

But for amusement, and to ease her own pain, Mary played with the
teens all over the world through the folklore of her songs and mirrors. If a
teen said her name three times in the mirror she would come out and hurt them.
She hid in mirrors all her life.

She slept there, as mirrors were her vehicle that allowed her to
travel from Paris to Venice in a blink of an eye.

Then one day I managed to trap her in my special mirror where she
could never get out again. She didn’t know how to deal with glass mirrors
because she had never seen one. It was easy, I let my Scholomance boys and
girls down to earth, fooling her to play
her Bloody Mary
game, saying her name three times in a row. When she came out from her mirror
to hurt them, we pushed her in my mirror, which we had set aside. Mary was
stuck inside, screaming, cursing and yelling. But that was her end. I had her
trapped for eternity.

But even though I had her trapped, having kept the mirror in my
house in Europe – I was fed up with Hell at the time, and decided I was
going to live on earth –, she kept making noises and screaming at
night.

I had to get rid of the mirror, but I couldn’t break it or it
would’ve  set Mary free. I had to send the mirror away, across the Oceans, far
away from Europe. But where? What was a safe place and land where someone could
keep this mirror without breaking it and releasing the evil inside? And shouldn’t
I have made use of this instrument of evil I had? Mary was trapped but it
didn’t mean she couldn’t insinuate evil in those who used the mirror.

Thinking day after day, a grand idea hit me. I could not tell you
enough how this idea had become my infamous best endeavor ever. Why hadn’t I
thought of that before?

In the morning, I packed the mirror and embarked it on a pirate
ship – dear friends of mine. They were crossing over to the far away kingdoms
beyond the oceans.

I lit a cigar, sat by the fireplace in my mansion, and watched the
ship sailing for days and nights through a crystal ball. The ship arrived at
the desired kingdom and the mirror was sent to a king.

I watched with a smirk
on my face.

The king was a very important man, and his wife was such a marvelous
and enchanting beauty like none of us in Europe had ever seen before – well,
her ancestors were from Europe but she never knew. As much as I
liked the dark, the sunrise in her presence through my crystal
ball made me want to repent and go live by her feet in some otherworldly
Heaven. The queen was what the Brothers Grimm later described as a Godmother –
although if I were you, I wouldn’t rely on everything they say, those two
suckers.

Whenever I saw the queen smiling with her heart-shaped lips, I couldn’t
help but smile myself. When she talked, I thought she was singing and the music
made me imagine myself a handsome young prince when looking in the mirror. When
she sang, the bird sang with her. When she padded barefoot in the forest, the
gazelles
gathered, and the river ran in peace.
The trees bowed down to reach for her and pat her on her apple-red cheeks. The
flowers bloomed, crickets stopped making silly noises, and the squirrels
gathered around her long white dress. The queen’s eyes were two full moons all
year, the color of the blue ocean separating her kingdom from mine. She didn’t
really belong to earth as much as she should have been up there in Heaven with
all the pure-hearted happy people. She had a touch that could heal, and her
hands could nourish cute babies. She had a face that complemented jewelry and a
body that enchanted dresses. Her name was so sweet on the tongue that I felt
quenched when I pronounced it. With all the good people in the world that I
hated, she was the only one I cherished and loved. 

Then one day the lovely queen went back to her room, combing her
wavy golden hair in front of the mirror her husband had just bought her from
overseas as a gift for their ninth anniversary. The mirror sparkled and
magnified the queen’s beauty. And out of sheer cuteness and innocence, the
queen, alone in her room, asked the mirror:

Mirror Mirror on the wall, who’s
the fairest of them all?

It wasn’t vanity or insecurity. The queen knew she was beautiful
but her husband was mostly away in his conquests and she just loved to talk to
a silent mirror while combing her hair.

Except this time, the mirror answered:

You, my queen, are the fairest of them all.

The queen’s face tightened and she fell back from her chair.
A
mirror that talked?

“But your beauty won’t last my queen,” The girl in the mirror
said. “There is another that will not only surpass your beauty, but you will
get uglier as long as she lives. And if you let her live, she will eventually kill
you.”

Appalled, the queen didn’t know what to say. Still on the floor,
she could feel the invisible demonic waves from the mirror run through her
pores.

“Mirror Mirror on the wall…” The queen pleaded.

“It’s
Mary Mary
on the wall, my queen,” Mary’s ugly face
showed to the queen from inside, blurry and bloody with red eyes splintered
with sparkling mirror shards. “And from now on, you’re not just a silly lovable
queen. With my powers and help, you’re going to be the Queen of Sorrow.”

End of Grimm Prequels 5

Author’s notes:

The following explanations
show a little info about how this world was constructed.

I didn’t want to write
these notes because I wanted the story itself to be the main attraction. The
little things that hide between the lines are usually the author’s way to
strengthen the background of the story. Not all readers need to be aware of
these secrets though. In my opinion, a story should be just story that can be
easily told from mouth to mouth like in the old days.

But upon reader’s
suggestions, I thought why not? In Mary Mary Quite Contrary you might be
interested to know the following facts:

1) The beginning
incident of the story is a reference to
Hans Christian Anderson’s
The Snow Queen, but now told from the devil's
point of view. Hans is one of the few writers who mentioned the devil
repeatedly in his fairy tales. The story of the splintered mirrors is a
recurring idea in the tales.

2) Pippi Longstocking and
Peter Pan always struck me as mischievous kids, not necessarily bad but with a
strong rebellious identity. The fact that came from hell is pure imagination of
my unstable brain.

3) The Mary Mary Quite Contrary
has been interpreted in so many ways, but it’s interesting how most of the
nursery rhymes are originally darker in nature, just like fairy tales. The
series is full of such nursery rhymes and riddles.

4) Elizabeth Bathory's
story differs from many resources, but historians almost agree on one certain
thing: that she tortured young girls with freshly invented instruments. There
is no defining evidence that she swam in blood of young girls, but the legend
is so strong and has lived for centuries that it sounds like it did really happen.

Why did I intertwine Elizabeth’s
story in the fairy tale worlds? The motives and resemblance she shares with the
Evil queen of wanting to stay young forever can’t be ignored. Sometimes I think
the Evil Queen could be based on Elizabeth. There is more of both characters in
the main series.

5) The way the
instruments in the real Mary Mary Quite Contrary rhyme are interpreted in
schools make no sense to me. I like my interpretation better, which isn’t fully
mine but inspired from readings and other historian’s interpretations
J

6) I’ve always wondered
who
Rumpelstiltskin
worked for. I guess now
we know.

7) All mentioned facts
about mirrors are true.

8) Scholomance is the
devil's school mentioned in the original script of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Which
hints to a further connection to Peter Pan dug up Dracula in Beauty Never Dies.

9) Bloody Mary's origins
differ from resource to another. It's almost impossible to know where the
legend really started, but like Elizabeth Bathory, it's so powerful you might
believe in it. I don't know many people who dare say her name in a dark room
with a mirror. There are two reasons why Mary is going to be a main villain in
the series: