The Grimm Diaries Prequels Volume 11- 14: Children of Hamlin, Jar of Hearts, Tooth & Nail & Fairy Tale, Ember in the Wind, Welcome to Sorrow, and Happy Valentine's Slay. (10 page)

“What did you do that for?” mouth stuffed, face smeared, Hansel jumbled.

“So you will go wash your stupid face,” Wendy sneered. She was older and taller than both, and she was a nutcase. Everyone knew that. “Maybe then you’ll get a bit smarter,” she narrowed her thumb to her forefinger. “Just a little bit.”

“Stop scaring my brother,” Gretel tapped her foot, almost losing grip of her book.

“And what will you do if I don’t, little wicked witch?” Wendy craned her head at her with hands on her waist.

All Gretel could do was avert her eyes from Wendy’s. Hansel was occupied with cleaning the candy on his eyelids so he could open them. He looked like a boy who’d just came out of the shower with soap in his eyes.

“That’s what I thought,” Wendy said. “Now let’s think of a way to escape this situation,” she almost talked to herself.

“How are we supposed to that?” Gretel asked. “We’re all being punished for having bad teeth, or interrupting in class. It’s the school’s rules. The other girl is in the dentist’s office, and once the doctor finishes with her, we’ll be next, or we’ll be expelled.”

“I’m not going to go inside,” Hansel said, licking candy from his face, now that he could see. “I’m afraid of his guy called the dentist.”

“Since when is there such a profession?” Wendy folded her hands in front of her. “I bet we’re the only kingdom in the world who has a crazy dentist check your teeth. This is so preposterous.”

“I heard he’s the devil,” Hansel whispered with big eyes.

“The devil?” Wendy smirked, interested. “How so?”

“You know the devil is scary and evil, right? This man inside is just as scary. Supposedly, he plays with his wicked looking instruments and tortures you first, before he pulls your teeth out. I can’t think of something scarier than that. The dentist is definitely the devil.”

“He is not the dev—“ Gretel said.

“Shut your mouth, sorceress,” Wendy waved her hand at her. “Tell me more, stupid boy.”

“I also heard that the reason he tortures us with his dental instruments is so that we beg him to spare us,” Hansel continued. He didn’t seem upset being called stupid as long as someone actually listened to his rant. “For a price,” he cupped his hand to his mouth.

“A price?” Wendy rubbed her chin, mustering a curious face. I knew she was messing with Hansel but he didn’t get it.

“He will spare those who sell their souls to him,” Hansel explained.

“A soul for a tooth?” Wendy played along, still shushing frustrated Gretel with her hand. “That’s some price.”

“I have a friend who has real bad teeth, Curdie Nutcracker. He goes to school with us. You must know about him.”

Wendy nodded. Gretel knew that the last thing Wendy cared about was other people, so it was a slim chance she’d recognize this Nutcracker boy if she saw him—that was if she didn’t make fun of his name.

“No teacher ever complained that Curdie Nutcracker has bad teeth, he is never sent to detention, and hasn’t ever had anyone inspect his teeth,” Hansel went along. “Because everyone knows he’s sold his soul to the dentist, which is the devil. They both start with D. Can you see what’s going on?”

Of course, I didn’t buy into Hansel’s crazy imagination—years later I met the devil, played cards with him and won, then stole one of his
hairies
with the help of his mother. Did I ever tell you how awesome I was?

I assumed Hansel, Gretel, and Wendy were being punished for having bad teeth, if I understood correctly. That was some strange school rule, if you asked me, but what didn’t make sense was that I didn’t think Wendy had bad teeth—I wasn’t sure about Gretel. I had to take a closer look.

Wendy had promising looks that suggested she’d become one of the school’s queen bees soon. She wasn’t beautiful but she was a sly girl with a tempting attitude when it came to good looking boys. The rest of the world, she treated like bad apples. It wasn’t a secret that there was something wicked about her soul, the way she loved chaos more than anything. She also had quite a following of mean girls in school. What always puzzled me about her was where she came from. There was no sign of her ancestors; she was raised by a middle-class family who loved to spoil her, not because they loved her but because they feared her. If you visited their house, you’d feel the absence of love in the family immediately. There was something wrong going on there, and the fact that I couldn’t trace who her real parents were bothered me. I hadn’t known my parents and it drove me crazy, leaving me lost and undone. I could relate to her madness and love of chaos, but there was something else about her that I only understood years later.

“You know who is really a Nutcracker?” Wendy slapped Hansel on the head. “It’s you,
candyeater
.”

“Can I talk now?” Gretel puffed.

“If you say something reasonable,” Wendy was having extreme fun controlling the siblings. I wondered if it was only them and the poor girl in the dentist’s office in the school now.

“The dentist isn’t the devil,” Gretel said.

“Really?” Wendy grinned. “At least one of you has brains.”

“His name is Sweeny Todd,” Gretel said proudly.

“Enlighten me,
bookeater
. Do you ever do anything but read?” Wendy pursed her lips.

“He was a barber in London,” Gretel said. “I hope you know where London is?” it was Gretel’s way to take a shot at Wendy.

Surprisingly, Wendy knew about London. She even mentioned how passionate she was about visiting it because she was curious about English gentlemen. For a twelve year old, she had a grown up mind.

“Sweeny Todd isn’t actually a dentist,” Gretel said. “I don’t know why he’s called that in our school, but he’s a barber.”

“Barber?” Hansel laughed.

“Shut up,” Wendy said. “She’s probably right. And?” she asked Gretel.

“They call him a Barber Surgeon in London, Gretel explained. “Barbers take care of people’s teeth there, and the Queen of Sorrow sent for him to check on the children’s teeth here.”

“Why him?” Wendy asked.

“Hmm…” Gretel hesitated. “I’m not sure about that but I heard he knows about the demon worm.”

“The demon worm?”

“It’s a tiny enchanted demon that lives inside the teeth of children,” Gretel lowered her voice so Sweeny Todd wouldn’t hear from his office room. “This is actually said to be a witch’s work, an evil witch who lives inside a cottage in the Black Forest, somewhere beyond the Avalon Tree. She lulled kids into her house, which was made of candy and gingerbread.”

“Is there a house like that?” Hansel wondered. “Like really, a house, a whole house?”

“Stop thinking with your stomach for a moment,” Gretel gritted her teeth, still whispering. “It’s said that she lets children eat her enchanted candies which has the demon worm inside.”

“How big is that demon worm, and what does it look like?” Wendy was interested, raking her teeth over with her tongue. I guess she was worried she had it.

“It’s said it looks like an eel.”

“Yuck!” Hansel snapped then noticed that he should be whispering so he said, ‘Yuck.’ in a much lower tone.

“Some say it’s a possessing maggot that lives in the teeth,” Gretel. “If not dealt with quickly, it eats the tooth. If it eats more than three teeth it could posses your soul.”

Hansel shrugged helplessly. He looked like he wanted to puke the candy he’d just eaten, which wouldn’t have been bad. He needed to learn how to ease up on the sweets. A couple years later, he got his sister in great trouble nibbling on a witch’s candy house.

“I actually heard about this before,” Wendy said. “my foster mother had that demon worm bore a hole through her tooth,  stubbornly hiding beneath the surface,” I couldn’t really tell if Wendy was messing with them again or if her story was true. “It caused her a horrible toothache. Sometimes, the pain was so unbearable she screamed like a mad woman in the middle of the night. My foster father brought her chewing sticks from Dame Gothel which were said to cast the demon away by chewing them on a full moon.”

What can I say? It was a time when toothpaste worming its way out of a tube could have been thought of as an evil snake.

“Did it work,” Hansel had his hand on his cheek, having an ache for a pain that wasn’t even there.

“Nah,” Wendy said. “It caused some of her other teeth to break.”

Gretel laughed, “Of course. Who chews sticks? Your adopted mother is…” she stopped, realizing that it wasn’t a good idea offending Wendy, although she doubted Wendy cared the least about her foster parents.

“A nutcracker. She is a nutcracker, real one,” Wendy laughed. “I hate my foster parents.”

Gretel laughed, too. Oh boy, she had that cute thing about her again. She was one of the few girls that made me want to have kids that’d look like her when I grew up. I’d love to have a weird, bookish, cute wanna-be witch kid like her—but I knew I was never going to get married. Fall in love, yes, but not married, and I had my reasons.

“If she was such a loony nutcracker, she should have
cracked
that demon worm already,” Hansel said.

None of the girls commented on his dimwit, misunderstanding of the concept of humor.

“What happened then?” Gretel asked.

“They hosted a Séance in the house to cast that demon worm away,” Wendy rolled her eyes. “The plan was to commune with an even greater demon to fight it back.”

“I don’t want to have to do a Séance,” Hansel commented, already imagining he had a demon worm.

“Did it work?” Gretel asked. It was as if Hansel didn’t exist anymore. Whatever he said was like a bird chirping nearby. Let it sing.

“Of course, not,” Wendy said. “The Séance conjured a bigger demon, though. It was called the Boogeyman.”

Gretel shrieked. I assumed she must have read about Boogeymen, and they scared the pigtails out of her.

“They managed to trap it in the closet and burn it eventually,” Wendy said.

“And the demon worm?” Hansel scratched his head.

“The demon worm was stronger. It was still there, eating my foster mother alive,” Wendy said happily. “Sadly, she managed to take it out later.”

“What did she do?”

“First, a physician advised her to use magic sticks,” Wendy said. “Unlike chewing sticks, you stick them in your mouth and probe the fillers between the teeth until you get the demon out and poke it to death”

“I would love to poke the demon worm to death with a short and small stick,” Gretel said. “Looks really fun.”

“The problem was that it hurt like hell, so my foster father had to ask around for a better solution.”

“Rip your foster mother’s jaw out?” Gretel said, and I had a feeling that she wasn’t joking. Although she was nice, wanting to be a witch seemed to have messed with her head a bit.

“I wish,” Wendy said. It was the first moment the two seemed to get along. “One day my foster father came home with an expensive looking box with weird engravings on it. I don’t know how he got it, but he said that what was in the box existed only in the Queen’s personal chamber, a special gift from other-wordly places.”

“And how did he get his hands on it?” Hansel wondered. “Your foster father isn’t a thief, or?”

This part was the most interesting to me, because I was curious about if her foster father was a thief. I knew I hadn’t stolen such an instrument—I was young and hadn’t learned about stealing from the Queen’s castle. Actually, I should credit this incident for suggesting the idea.

“How should I know?” Wendy answered annoyingly. “I hope they both burn in the wicked witch’s oven for all I care. The point is that the thing inside the box was something I had never seen before,” Wendy craned her head closer to Gretel and whispered, “They called it a toothbroom.”

“A toothbroom?” Gretel rose one eyebrow, wondering how it was possible that Wendy knew about something she didn’t know about. Gretel had been reading day and night to out knowledge others.

“It’s like a witch’s broom, but way smaller, as tall a pencil, with a brush on its end,” Wendy explained. “It’s also called a toothbrush.”

“Don’t tell me; it brushes the demon worm away,” Hansel suggested.

“Actually it does,” Wendy said. “She had to use it three times a day, exorcising the demon away until it left her mouth the way ghosts finally are cast away from a haunted house.”

“So that’s what exorcising is?” Gretel’s eyes widened. “I have been reading about it, but didn’t understand what it was. I bet she wet the brush with holy water first.”

“Beware of the evil tooth worm that roots itself in the deep, dark cavities of your being,” Hansel joked, posing like a Zombie. “The teeth-chilling, bloodcurdling, mouth possessing monster; once it gets under you gums, your teeth will never be the same again. Muahaha.”

“Thank you for your smart observations,” Gretel said to him. “So do you know how we could get this toothbrush, Wendy?”

“Hell, no?” Wendy said. “I’m not even doing this. I’m getting out of here, once I can open the door.”

In your dreams, I thought. I had tried to open that door and there was no way they could do it. The thought made me look back toward the window I came from. I saw the snow outside was getting heavier, and I worried it would thicken and block the windows, too.

While looking out the window, I saw a couple of goblins roaming around the school. Damn, they hadn’t given up on me. Wendy, Gretel, and Hansel weren’t going to leave now, even if they succeeded in opening the door. Those goblins would eat them alive.

“Since fat-boy here suggested Sweeny Todd was the devil,” I heard Wendy say. “And you, little witch, brought up the demon worm thing, I’ll to tell you my theory about why the Queen has Sweeny check students’ teeth.”

“You mean the demon worm doesn’t exist?” Hansel wondered.

“It does, but that doesn’t mean they are checking our teeth for it,” Wendy explained. “I heard it’s something entirely different,” Wendy’s eyes flashed briefly. I wondered if I only imagined it, even though I wanted it to be, so it would prove my suspicions about her; that she wasn’t just an obnoxious school girl.

“Something,” Hansel shrugged. “Scary?” If the boy had hidden qualities, then one of them was being a demon-sensor. He’d certainly seen Wendy’s eyes flash red, too.