Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales by Timothy Roderick Page A

it in this very chamber against great odds and at great peril.”
    â€œLook, I don’t want—wait, what I mean is that I
never
wanted any part of this—whatever all of this is with your trinkets and spinning wheels and freaked-out wolves—”
    â€œI know that this may all be difficult to believe, raised by commons as you were. But to ignore or to believe that this is some sort of delusion is a dangerous mistake.” He looked at the floor, tipping up the brim of his cowboy hat with a leather-gloved hand.
    For the first time, Briar had no response.
    â€œTerrible things, unspeakable things will happen to innocent lives should you pretend that this world does not exist. Very real beings, as real as your mother, are at stake.”
    â€œWhat do you know about my mother—?”
    â€œI know that my people—no,
your
people—die every day at the hands of a dangerous tyrant.”
    Briar had sensed it from an early age. Her mother was never missing, as she had been led to believe. As hard as it was for Briar to hear this said aloud, she had known it all along in her heart. Briar couldn’t remember anything about her mother. Not her face, her smell, her touch. Nothing. And for Ash—this peculiar man who felt more like a dream than anything else—to confirm what she suspected seemed cruel and unfair.
    â€œWhat?” Briar’s voice was almost a whisper, but she shookshaking her reddening face. “How dare you drag my mother into this! You don’t know anything about her!”
    Ash looked down again and waited for Briar’s pain, her fury, to subside before he spoke. “I know that she loved you very much, and she would have wanted you to do what was right.”
    â€œHow do you know that?” Briar fought back tears. “Anyway, I can’t. This is too much for me. I’m just some random high school kid. I’m not whoever it is you think I am. It’s just a big mistake,” Briar said. She hoped that she was right.
    â€œYes. A mistake,” Ash said. He nodded sadly. “Have you looked in the bassinet?” he asked her. He tipped his head to one side, gesturing toward the cradle.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œBeneath cobwebs, the headboard. Have you seen it?” Ash looked up from the floor and nodded toward the bassinet.
    Briar’s heart thumped louder and harder than it ever had before. “No,” she said. She felt like something was stabbing her in the gut. Then she stood and paced the stone floor to the dust-covered crib. She pierced the thick webbing, pulling it apart. And there, chiseled into the headboard below the dragon carving, painted with crumbling blood-red paint, was her name.
    Briar reeled back and covered her mouth with a hand. “How can this be?” she asked, but not to Ash. “I was raised by my—my foster mother, Matilda.” Briar finally backed up to the wall and slid down to a crouch. She covered her face with her hands.
    Ash approached and lightly placed a hand on her shoulder. “We hid you where the Lady Orpion would never find you. It was our only hope to save you, to save the people of our Realms.”
    â€œDon’t lay this on me,” Briar snapped. She shook off his hand.
“My people
are at home. My foster mother, her girls, my friend— and for the first time ever I have a boy that just might be interested in me. Those are
my people—not
a bunch of weirdos doing fantasy role-playing games. Don’t you have some kind ofconvention to get to?”
    Ash stood watching her, but didn’t move. Briar looked up and he locked his crystal blue eyes with hers. “I understand,” he said. “You do not know this world or its people. And I should know that hoping and waiting are fools’ games.” He looked down at the floor. “As are holding fast to the tongue-waggings of old wives and soothsayers.”
    He leaned against the stone wall next to