“Sing to it,” Poplar yelled from the other side of the door.
Briar reached for the key in the door, but the sparrow made another deafening chirp and bore down on her hand with its snapping beak. Briar jerked her hand away as fast as she could, but the bird was faster, snapped at her sweatshirt sleeve, and snipped it cleanly through. Briar fell backward and landed on her backside.
Myrtle pounded on the door and shouted to Briar, “Child, listen to me. You must sing to the bird! Do it now.”
Briar kept her eye on the sparrow while stretching her hand once more for the protruding key. The bird struck again, but this time it clipped the key in its beak. With a speedy head movement, it tossed the key over its back. It landed with a metallic chime at a distant spot on the floor.
Briar scrambled on hands and knees away from the creature. It did not attack again but inspected her movements keenly with its jewel black eyes. This gave Briar a second or two to notice her surroundings. The room was of unfinished wood; nails the size of telephone poles were stuck through the walls into the room at various points. In a far corner, behind the sparrow, stood a downy collection of feathers, strings and twigs, all fashioned into a colossal nest. Next to the nest was a gaping hole in the far wall. It looked like a perfectly engineered round hollow, large enough to walk though. She didn’t want to rile the bird any further by wandering close to the nest, but she could see the glimmer of starlight just outside the round cut out.
Then she heard voices again. “I don’t think she can hear us,” Poplar said fretfully from the other side of the door.
“Are you singing?” Myrtle asked. She sounded like a doting nana monitoring her charge’s toileting. “If so, you’re awfully quiet about it.”
Briar crawled slowly toward the key, trying not to provoke the bird. “No, I am not singing. I’m a little busy at the moment.”
“What does she mean, busy?” Myrtle burbled with a frown in her voice. “Child, do not busy yourself much. You need to get away from the bird.”
“Really? You think?” Briar said.
Briar finally reached the key, snapped it up in her hand and crawled at a careful, creeping pace back to the door. Once she was within beak-striking distance, she sat below the bird’s-eye level, and scooted toward the lock. She reached up with the key, maintaining eye contact with the sparrow, and she felt for the keyhole. The bird puffed its feathers, smoothed them again, then hopped forward like a wind-up tin toy. It towered over Briar, chirped and twisted its head to one side so that it see where on her body it should strike next.
Without warning, the knight’s sword bored through the door above Briar’s head, showering her with paint chips and wood splinters. It missed the bird, which then hopped back and cheeped so loudly it threatened to pierce Briar’s eardrums. Suddenly the door swung open, and Myrtle and Poplar rushed past the armed knight to stand face-to-beak with the sparrow.
“Peeps! You naughty imp!” Poplar exclaimed.
Myrtle weighed in. “We’ve told you before. No eating the guests!” She made a shooing gesture with her hands. Then with an elegant flourish, breadcrumbs appeared in Myrtle’s palm.
The sparrow cheeped, making them all cover their ears. “I told you, Poplar, we should have kept her as an outdoor bird. If we must share our residence, then she must at minimum follow the rules.” Myrtle tossed the breadcrumbs toward the stack of twig and string in the far corner. Then, claws scratching the floor, Peeps bounded over to nibble and poke at her snack.
Briar sat, eyes like moons, fingering the clean hole snipped through her sweatshirt, trying to fathom everything that had occurred. Poplar and Myrtle hurried and helped her to stand while Ash jiggled and labored to free the sword.
“Poor dear,” Poplar said. “You have to understand, it’s Peeps’ first time as an expectant mother.” She fussed over the splinters and oddments on Briar’s hoodie. Once Briar got her bearings, she looked across to Peeps’ rough-hewn snuggery. She could see the domes of three brown and white speckled eggs peeking out from the top of the nest. Peeps finished her crumbs, then fluttered atop her eggs. The windblast from her wings filled the air with particles of straw and loose, soft down.
“Come now, Briar,” Myrtle said. She raised her chin with an air of propriety. “We’ve spent enough time with diversions. You have much to learn and little time to learn it. If you would please follow me to the parlor.”
Myrtle stepped to the door that Ash had closed to get leverage enough to pull his sword free. He stepped aside and when Myrtle opened it again, the hallway on the other side was gone. In its place was a timeworn parlor.
Briar could not formulate words coherently enough to express her complete bewilderment, so she stood, immovable.
Poplar took Briar by the arm and escorted her into the room. “Look at the poor darling,” she said to Myrtle. “Probably can’t make heads or tails of the diddles and daddles around here.”
“What happened to the hallway,” Briar asked. “Where did it go?”
“One door, one use,” Myrtle said. “That’s the first thing you’ll need to remember.” She smiled primly and stroked the fox clasped around her shoulders. It started to snore. “Well that wasn’t so hard now was it?” she said. “Only about seventy thousand more things to learn and we’ll be on our way.”
Myrtle sat on an oversized couch covered in tapestry cloth, with her bony ankles crossed. She pulled the gold wand from her sleeve and twitched her wrist; the wand extended, climbing in zigs and zags and pings and twangs until it reached her face. The last arm of the wand then opened to a pair of spectacles that magnified her eyes to several times their normal size.
The room was busily decorated with an unplanned collection of strange antique objects, and faded, yet opulent furniture with wood framing that curved in luxurious, rhythmic art nouveau tangles at the arms and feet. She saw several crystal spheres on three-legged claws grouped together on a Spanish shawl-draped table. They had books of every sort with strange markings upon their crusted and disintegrating bindings stacked in piles upon floors and tables. On top of the book stacks, as well as scattered about in every stray nook, were potted plants of the strangest, most unidentifiable variety.
Long, woody roots and herb bundles lay tied with crudely made string on chopping boards wreathed with beeswax candles. It looked to Briar that the chopping boards had deep red stains engrained in them: like remnants of blood that they had unsuccessfully tried to scrub away. The room smelt like both a musty library and brewing herbal tea.
Poplar brought Briar to sit in a wooden chair carved with winged creatures as the chair’s arms, and bird’s talons for feet.
Sherman snorted awake and spat out a fur ball. “What is she doing here?” he asked. He lifted his head and didn’t bother moving from where he lay. “I told you, this fatuous buffoon is not the one!”
Poplar’s expression became dark and she walked toward Sherman with a hungry look. “I’ve already dined on a rat today, Sherman,” she said. “And a fox seems to me very much like a plumper rat. So don’t tempt me…”
The fox bounced down to Myrtle’s knee and sat with its pointed ears tucked back and its tail curled. His eyes were fixed and wide. “You wouldn’t dare,” he said. But he didn’t sound convinced. Rather than fight, he curled up into a ball of red fluff at the center of Myrtle’s lap and flicked his tail at Poplar.
Poplar turned to Briar. “I apologize, dear, for the state of our home. Still, it’s better than living in an old shoe. That is, unless you had so many children, you didn’t know what to do…”
Briar looked like someone who had been zapped a few times with a stun gun. She wasn’t following conversations or conventions any longer. “Can someone explain what the hell is going on?”
Ash marched into the room from a swinging door to the side of the parlor. He was now clad in a long, shabby gray-fur overcoat, knitted scarf, and snowshoes that looked like oversized tennis rackets. Briar could see his face fully now. He had ruddy cheeks, and around his eyes and his brow he showed the lines of his years. His salt and pepper hair was a curly shoulder length and it matched well his short-cropped beard.
He paraded awkwardly across the room, snowshoes sounding against the wood floor. Then he plopped heavily down on the couch setting a small flurry of snowflakes airborne. “First thing we need to do is fix that salt-mouth of hers,” he said. He nudged Myrtle mischievously, but she was not amused.
“I don’t think any of us were prepared for this—this virtual fount of vulgarity,” she agreed. She pruned her lips, looking like she was swallowing a tack.
“Indeed not,” Sherman added, though muffled by his tail fur.
“Who are you people?” Briar asked.
“You people?!” Poplar exclaimed. “Oh Myrtle, she doesn’t even recognize us!”
“Well, how could she?” Myrtle snapped back.
“That’s true.” Poplar smiled. “She was only a babe in our arms. Look how she’s grown! Except for her blackened cheeks, lips, hair, clothes, and metal thrust through her face, she is the Goose’s image of her mother!”
“Is that so?” Myrtle asked. “We shall have to see about that.”
“How do you know anything about my mother?” Briar asked.
Poplar sidled up to Briar and snatched her by the elbow, entwining their arms together. “Knew, dear. We knew your mother, once upon a time. You were just a wee thing. But she’s been gone for a very long time.” She shook her head and her eyes filled with tears.
“What do you mean—gone?” Briar asked. She stood from her seat and her throat almost choked out the final words.
“Please sit, dear,” said Poplar. “This must be a shock. Why don’t you drink a cup of my special tea? It’ll calm your nerves.”
Briar sat stiffly on the edge of the chair. “No, I don’t want— What? Are you out of your mind, lady? I’m not stupid enough to touch your voodoo-witchcraft crap! The next thing I know, I’ll be lying in a bathtub filled with ice, hand-stitched with dental floss across my back, while you’re selling one of my kidneys on the internet. No thanks.”
“Oh,” Poplar said. “Well, my first choice was chamomile.”
Briar looked around the room at the collection of oddballs. “If you know something about my mother, then I want you to tell me.”
Myrtle shot Poplar a look of warning. Poplar tightened her lips and tried to dab her eyes inconspicuously with a lace hankie she had tucked into her bosom for just such an occasion. She snuffled a little and said, “Yes, well, dear, perhaps later.”
“No,” Briar drawled, shaking her head. “There won’t be any later. This is just as I thought. You don’t know anything about my mother. You’re just a bunch of lunatics who get their jollies tricking and kidnapping kids.” Briar felt a wave of defiance build within her, gathering the strength of an intensifying fire. She stood up and shouted, “You fucking freak-asses better let me leave or I’ll—!” Briar felt like there would be some consequence—as delusional as it may have seemed. She couldn’t fill in the final blank because she wasn’t sure just what exactly would occur. But somehow, at the very bottom of her reasoning, without ever having thought out a plan, she knew she was right. Something would happen. Something big.
Myrtle’s eyes widened during the uncomfortable silence that followed. She raised her spectacles again and this time inspected Briar like a laboratory specimen. “Oh dear,” she said. Sherman popped up to her shoulders and sat ogling her. “Do you see what I mean?” Sherman asked. After letting off steam, Briar felt a little stupid. She sat back down.
Then Myrtle said to Poplar, “Indeed. We may have made a mistake with this one, but we must be certain.”
“But she has the key,” Poplar said. “I’ve followed her every move for almost sixteen years now—just like you wanted me to do. However can you believe that this is the wrong girl?”
“The omens,” Myrtle said. She sat back down. “The damned old seers have muddled things before. Rapunzel hasn’t predicted anything accurately with that old cracked mirror of hers for centuries now.”
“Well, seeing isn’t an exact science…” Poplar said. She came close to Briar, as though inspecting her face. “Besides, the child’s eyes—are they not familiar to you?”
“Oh my God, you psychos really are nuts. You’re gonna kill me—and then take my eyes to sell. Just let me go and I promise I won’t tell anyone,” Briar pleaded.
Myrtle flicked her wrist and the spectacles turned into a solid wand again. With it, she made several quick angular gestures and suddenly Briar’s chair came to life. The clawed arms of the chair sprang free and wrapped around Briar, forcing her to sit. Briar screamed and struggled, but to no end.
“Kill you!” Myrtle had a dangerous chuckle. “You have not yet even come near to the taste of death, child.” Myrtle’s face morphed; it became darker and sallow. Her eyes looked sunken and from the dark pits, there glowed a silvery blue light. Her teeth became sharp, jagged razors, like a shark’s teeth. “Believe me,” Myrtle continued, “you will know it when the Great Conclusion is truly upon you, sucking the last wisp of air from your lungs, bathing you in the darkness from which none return.”
Briar stopped struggling in the grip of the chair and caught her breath. Even Sherman bounced away from of Myrtle’s shoulder, tail tucked and backing into a far corner. Myrtle suddenly realized that she had lost composure and she cut her words short. She shifted her demeanor and her old prim looks returned. She gave a curt, unnatural smile, probably the first Briar had seen. She stiffened and turned away. “You will be glad to know that this is not that moment.”
Briar bit down on the idea that she had seen too much, tasting it bitterly. She dared say nothing, but it seemed clear that they might never really let her go.
“If she must turn back, she must choose it now,” Poplar said. But she sounded like a child who was required to return a puppy to the pound.
“Indeed,” Myrtle said. She walked to a window and looked out into the night. The chair that held Briar changed back to its old form. Its arms and legs freeing her. She stood up, rubbing her sore arms, and backed toward the door.
Myrtle was still turned away from Briar when she spoke— now slowly, calmly, as if there was nothing left to lose. “Yes we knew your mother. She came from a humble birth, but she had a high and noble rebirth.”
“Oh yes,” Poplar said. “Quite the noble rebirth. It happened spontaneously—well, like they all do—when she turned sixteen. You know, one day you’re shoveling the fireplace ashes, the next you’re riding in a coach to the king’s ball.”
Briar held the key in her fingers and found courage again to speak. “This. What does it open?”
Myrtle shrugged. “How should we know? All we can tell you is that it was once your mother’s.” She turned back around to face Briar. “And now it is yours.”
Poplar scurried close to Briar and fussed with her hair. “Oh, my dear, your mother was such a beautiful woman; a woman of high rank and influence, and beloved—she was so beloved. You came along sometime after she was already well into her power, which is why the seers all believe that your mother’s same power may have, well, transferred to you.”
Myrtle then spoke, her words like icicles. “Sister, say no more. She must choose by her own wit and her own knowing. You’ll only confuse the situation. And time has run out.”
“Don’t be so certain, Myrtle,” Ash said. His voice was deep and resonant, sudden and halting. The words carried weight. “After all, she knows nothing of us—of our world. I’d wager that a girl plucked from her home would more likely choose from fear than she would because of some humbug omen that she’s never even heard about. We hadn’t thought this through before we barged into her life. And now, though I’ll admit her eyes are familiar, it seems that nothing less than a test would be in order before we could know with certainty.”
“A test!” Poplar seemed to perk up now. She patted Briar’s hands and Briar pulled away.
“No. I’m not doing any tests,” Briar said. She backed up toward the parlor door. “I’m outta here.”
She bolted through the door and clomped down the narrow hallway past the towering clock, which practically went into tick-tock convulsions. The stitched flowers in the tapestry bowed in her wake. She grabbed indiscriminately at doorknobs as she rushed down the hall, but each was locked.
Finally one miraculously swung open. Not caring if there was another giant bird, or a singing crocodile on the other side, she flung herself through and slammed the door shut.