Magic is the reason the crimson wolf exists
🌕 The Brothers Grimm and the Hunt for the White Mist Chapter 2
Jacob and Wilhelm trudged along the worn cobblestone road that ran past their farm. Their boots scraped the loose stones with each step. The night was thick, like the moon had drawn a heavy blanket over the village. It was nearly midnight, and Semsei Mountain Village was quiet except for the occasional rustle of wind between the crooked rooftops.
The village sat in the shadow of a great mountain that towered like a giant’s hand. A deep, jagged crack ran along the side, reaching up to the starlit sky. The houses, made of weathered stone and timber, were sparsely dotted along the winding paths in the mountain’s shadow. Every window was dark and closed. There wasn’t any smoke billowing from the chimneys like usual, and the warm glow of hearth fires had long since faded.
Above the village on the mountain’s steep slopes sat a golden manor house. Its once-proud walls were now faded, abandoned by the lord who had once overseen the village. It gleamed faintly in the moonlight against the dark backdrop of the mountain.
Further up the glass-like slopes stood the grand, imposing castle of Pfriem Brakel, where the ruler of Hesse and his family lived. The castle seemed to rise right out of the mountain with its jagged spires piercing the clouds. The pointed turrets stretched high while a labyrinth of balconies, windows, and statues of lions dotted the weathered stone walls.
Jacob turned his attention from the luxurious castle back to the simple village. He had lived there all his life and knew the town well. The narrow streets, lined with the homes of villagers, felt emptier than usual. Even though it was night, he had still expected to see people walking around. But wooden carts stood still near cracked wells, and stables stood dark and silent. A smell of damp earth and wet stone was all that lingered in the summer night air. The only movement was the occasional flutter of a shutter in the wind, along with the rustling pine trees of the Rhön Forest circling the outskirts of the village.
Jacob halted at the foot of the church steps. The silhouette of the bell tower loomed above him. Its spire sliced through the thick, velvety darkness. A strange hush blanketed the village, pressing against his ears like a held breath.
“Wilhelm, does something seem off to you?”
Wilhelm kicked a pebble. “Maybe it’s the fact that we’re starting our journey to find this magic when it’s almost midnight. Why didn’t we wait until it was light out?”
“No, I mean the village.” Jacob pointed to the empty streets. “It’s never this empty. I don’t even see any of the Imperial troops out tonight, and they’re always around. Something’s up.” The rustling of straw pricked his ears. He turned to see a flock of geese standing like eerie statues beneath the pale moonlight. “Even that annoying Goose-Girl’s geese are being less annoying than usual. What in the world is wrong with Semsei Mountain Village?” A prickling feeling crept up his neck. “Do you feel that?”
Wilhelm ran his hand along the back of his own neck, which meant he must have felt it, too. “It feels like someone’s watching us—unless it’s you watching me and me watching you.”
Jacob spun sharply. For a fleeting second, he saw a pair of what looked like glowing red eyes, just like the ones he had thought he had seen in his dreams. But as he blinked, they vanished, leaving behind the flickering scarlet glow of a lantern outside the village tavern. He let out a slow breath, trying to get his pulse to settle down.
A few empty tankards littered the tavern’s front doorstep, but there were definitely people inside. Jacob heard people arguing. Without waiting for Wilhelm, who was throwing pebbles at the geese, he shuffled across the street to the tavern. He peered through a crack in the door and saw two men just behind it. They looked almost identical with shoulder-length blonde hair. Jacob figured they were brothers since they were arguing just like he and Wilhelm tended to do.
“Forget about it,” one of the brothers said.
“How can I forget about gold?” the other hissed.
“I’m not going to tell you how to get in. Just forget about it and help me sell our corn. We need the money—”
“But if you tell me how to get in, we won’t have to sell corn for money. We’ll have gold! We’ll be rich beyond our wildest dreams! Tell me, brother! Now!”
The first brother sighed deeply. “Fine. Just go up to it and say, ‘Semsei Mountain, Semsei Mountain, open.’ That’s it.”
Jacob figured that was the perfect opening for them to open the door for him. He rapped his knuckles against the wood, expecting the brothers to open it. Instead, the voices inside fell abruptly silent.
“Hello?” Jacob called out. “Did you not hear me knocking? This door is made out of wood. It carries sound pretty well.” He peered through the crack again, but instead of the brothers, he saw a gray eye staring back at him. He yelped and stumbled back.
The door burst open. An elderly man lurched into the frame. He had a balding head and a winding, gray beard that almost touched the floor. His eyes gleamed, not with surprise, but with unfiltered fury.
“What are you doing out here?” the man snapped. Saliva spewed from his lips. “You can’t be outside by yourself.”
“I’m with my brother,” Jacob said as if that would make a difference.
The man’s eyes widened even more as Wilhelm joined Jacob. “Why are you two wandering the roads at night? Please, hurry! Come in!” He grabbed them both by the wrists and yanked them inside. He slammed the door shut behind them and snapped a heavy metal bolt into place. “Don’t you two know it’s not safe to be outside at night?”
“Now we do,” Wilhelm said, shrugging. “Why not?”
The man leaned into Wilhelm’s face. Their noses almost touched. “You never know what might be lurking right outside the light of your lantern, boy.”
Wilhelm recoiled at the man’s breath, which smelled like stale ale. “We didn’t have a lantern—”
“Even worse!”
Jacob grabbed Wilhelm’s sleeve and pulled him back. “Sir, if you don’t want us here, we can just leave.”
“You can’t leave!” the man practically screamed. He grabbed Jacob and Wilhelm’s wrists again and sat them at a table. “I’ll get you some drinks. Just don’t leave!”
Jacob watched the man retreat, his hunched shoulders tight with unease. His hurried steps clattered against the sticky floorboards as he tried to keep from tripping over his beard. Jacob couldn’t shake the feeling that something had spooked him. He looked around the tavern but didn’t see those two arguing brothers anywhere.
The empty tavern was a dim, smoky place. The air was thick with the scent of spilled ale, roasted meat, and damp wood. Heavy beams crisscrossed the low ceiling, darkened with age and soot from the great stone hearth at the far end of the room. A low fire crackled lazily and cast dancing shadows across the long wooden tables. Scars covered them from years of tankards being slammed down and knives idly carving patterns into the grain. Iron lanterns hung from the beams, and the floor was made out of wooden planks that were sticky from old ale spills.
The man had disappeared behind a long, polished counter with rows of earthenware jugs and green glass bottles. As he poured some water into two jugs that were probably no cleaner than the floor or his beard, his eyes flicked toward Jacob with quiet suspicion.
With a resounding thunk, the man slammed the jugs onto the table. “Well? Why were you two boys out there, huh?”
Wilhelm snatched up a jug and downed its contents in two greedy gulps. A second later, his cheeks ballooned, and his face turned a sickly green. He swallowed hard, then gagged, clearly realizing how contaminated the water was.
The man dropped onto the bench beside him. He flung his beard over his shoulder to keep it out of the way. “You can’t be out at night. Thought everyone knew that by now. It’s not safe. My name’s Rinkrak, by the way. Just old Rinkrak. Who are you two?”
“I’m Jacob Grimm, and this is my brother, Wilhelm.”
“Don’t tell him our names,” Wilhelm whispered. “I don’t trust him.” He looked at Rinkrak, who had clearly heard him. The man stared at him suspiciously like he had thought Wilhelm looked familiar. “No offense,” Wilhelm added.
“Offense taken.”
“Well, I take offense to you taking offense—”
“Wilhelm, shut up,” Jacob snapped. “Rinkrak, why can’t we be out at night? We grew up in this village. Our rye farm is right down the road. We’ve been out at night plenty of times before.”
Rinkrak snatched Wilhelm’s empty jug, spat inside, and then wiped the rim with the tip of his beard. “Sure you’ve been out plenty of times at night, but nothing’s happened until a week ago.”
“What happened?”
“Something sinister.”
Jacob sighed. “Wanna tell us?”
“You shouldn’t travel at night,” Rinkrak repeated. “It isn’t safe!”
“Then tell us why!”
Rinkrak slammed the jug onto the table. His gnarled fingers gripped the handle like he was trying to strangle it. “You know how this village sits on the very edge of the Rhön Forest. If you stray beyond the familiar path, the forest turns dark. You’ll find strange creatures in there and people who don’t want to be found. Do you have any idea what’s out there?”
Wilhelm shrugged. “Quail? Hedgehogs?”
Rinkrak clutched his beard as if he might faint. “The wolf!”
“Wolf?” Jacob and Wilhelm echoed.
Rinkrak nodded as the firelight crept over his eyes. “A cursed wolf with blood-red fur lurks in the darkest, untrodden corners of that cursed forest.” He jabbed a bony finger at one of the closed windows, but Jacob didn’t need to look to know the treetops of the Rhön Forest swayed just behind it.
“We did feel like we were being watched earlier,” Wilhelm whispered, clutching his jacket.
Rinkrak let out a low chuckle. “That was the wolf watching you. I don’t know what it would want with fellows like you, though. The creature only has an appetite for young maidens.”
Jacob’s stomach twisted. “An appetite for young maidens? What does that mean?”
“It means the wolf kills and eats young girls,” Rinkrak snapped. “What’s not to understand about that? It howls whenever it kills one. It even killed my daughter, the Fair Katrinelje.”
Wilhelm’s chair scraped against the uneven floor as he leaned forward. “Your daughter was killed? That sounds awful.”
Rinkrak’s eyes burned. “Oh, does it now? Of course it sounds awful, and it was!”
Jacob wasn’t convinced. The villagers were notorious for their superstitions. He remembered how two years ago, a young girl had convinced half the village that her chicken laid eggs that predicted the apocalypse. It turned out she had been scrawling messages onto the shells and stuffing them back inside the poor hen. He was already wondering if this wolf legend was just another well-spun tale.
“But why would this supposed cursed wolf only kill young maidens?” Jacob asked.
“That is because,” Rinkrak said, folding his arms, “the creature was once the town’s broom-maker named Pif-Paf-Poltrie. But something happened to him after he proposed to my daughter. I was there that night. He stood before Katrinelje, professing his everlasting love, and do you know what she did? She laughed in his face. She told him she’d rather marry her fortune-telling chicken than someone who made brooms.”
Jacob blinked. “That was your daughter?”
Wilhelm stifled a snort, but Rinkrak’s withering glare silenced him.
“A few days later,” Rinkrak continued in a heavy voice, “I found my Katrinelje dead in the chicken coup. By then, rumors of Pif-Paf-Poltrie’s disappearance had begun to spread. And then… the wolf was sighted. It doesn’t take a genius to piece it together.”
“So, it’s more like a werewolf,” Wilhelm gulped.
“Not quite. Werewolves only come out during the full moon. This cursed wolf has been stalking our streets the entire past week, even though the moon has only been half full. The next full moon isn’t for two nights.”
“How did that broom-maker turn into a cursed wolf?” Jacob asked. “I mean, if there even is a cursed wolf.”
“Ah, but that’s the question, isn’t it?” Rinkrak breathed, standing up. “No one knows how he transformed. But it’s believed he kills and eats young maidens out of a twisted rage for Katrinelje’s rejection.”
“That’s so mean,” Wilhelm said. “And a bit extreme.”
Rinkrak crossed his arms. “Is that all I get from you? No ‘I’m sorry for your loss?’”
Wilhelm gasped. “Oh! Sorry about your daughter getting killed and eaten by a vengeful cursed wolf.”
Jacob, still unconvinced, leaned back. “Do you really believe this story, Rinkrak?”
“Of course I do,” Rinkrak said. “There’s literally no other logical explanation for my daughter’s death.”
Jacob was pretty sure there was. “So, you believe in cursed wolves…” He looked sideways at Wilhelm, thinking. “Rinkrak, do you believe in magic?”
Rinkrak turned to face him with a calm expression. “Magic is the reason the crimson wolf exists.”
“Do you know about Alba Nebula Magicae?” Wilhelm asked, holding his breath.
Rinkrak frowned as he stroked his beard. “It does not sound familiar. I think I know who might have heard about it, though. This morning, I returned from the neighboring village after buying some more malted barley for my ale. I passed an abandoned hut just inside the Rhön Forest. However, it wasn’t abandoned like usual. I wanted to sell some of my ale to whoever lived there, so I introduced myself.” He shivered. “She was very strange, let me tell you, which I just did. She could have been a hag for all I knew. She was covered in dirt and had potion ingredients everywhere. She was muttering some weird words under her breath. They sort of sounded like spells or incantations.”
“Spells and incantations are the same thing,” Jacob pointed out.
“I’m sure she would know of your magic,” Rinkrak finished. “Her name is Maid Maleen. Just follow the path into the forest. You should be able to easily find her hut along it. But you can’t leave right now!” Rinkrak threw a jug at the locked door. “It isn’t safe to go outside at night!”
“So we’ve heard,” Jacob sighed. At least now they had a lead. If this Maid Maleen knew about magic, maybe she could help them find Alba Nebula Magicae. And if she couldn’t, perhaps she knew enough about herbs and medicine to save Mother.
“There’s another thing about Maid Maleen you should probably know about,” Rinkrak said, tapping his finger against the tabletop. “You need to be careful around her. She’s a witch.”
Next Up in 2 Wednesdays: The Maid with the Nettle Leaves
Wilhelm nudged Jacob. “That must be Maid Maleen.”
“Yes, I—” The girl blinked. “Wait. Maid? Who said I was a maid? I’m not a housekeeper. It’s just Maleen.”
Wilhelm pointed an accusing finger at her. “That’s definitely Maid Maleen. Jacob, she’s a girl wearing trousers. She has ‘witch’ written all over her! Witchy trousers!”
Maid Maleen rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Wow. Really? Keep up with the times, please. This is the 19th century, after all. We’re basically in the future. Girls can wear trousers.”
“Yeah, if they’re witches!” Wilhelm hollered.
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