Fairest (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale 2)

Stunned, Mina fingered the small packet under the table and kept running her fingers over the gold character. She wanted to ask Mei Wong about it, or even her mother, but that wasn’t what the Chinese woman probably had in mind, when she purposely gave it to her without her mother’s knowledge. For all she knew it could be poison, but then again, the Wong’s have never shown anything but good will toward the Grime family.

When Mina was sure that Mrs. Wong wasn’t going to change her mind and walk in on them again, she decided it was time to tell her mother about her incident at school.

“Mom, it’s starting again.” Mina tried to sound very nonchalant as she stirred her hot bowl of soup.

“What is, dear?” Sara asked. She opened up a container of Lo Mein noodles and scooped out a portion to an eagerly awaiting Charlie.

Mina stabbed up a piece of orange chicken with her fork and blew on it. “Oh, you know, stuff, with a capital ‘S’.” She took a bite of her rice.

Sara’s hand froze mid-air. Her inner turmoil was evident on her face and her shaking hands, but both of the Grime women were experts at hiding their emotions from Charlie. Sara swallowed nervously, but continued to portion the rest of the food.

“Ah, I see.”

“Yeah, my um, biology class was interesting. And let’s just say that not everyone agreed with the stuff in the specimen jars. Let’s just say they were very…animated.” Mina let the words hang in the air.

She watched Charlie sit in his chair wearing his normal plethora of super hero costume pieces, which included a Hulk shirt, with a Batman utility belt, and cape. His small feet wearing his favorite rain boots kicked back and forth happily. He made overly loud slurping noises while sucking up the noodles, and when he was finished, he grinned at Mina.

In no way was Charlie dumb, but there were certain things Sara never wanted to discuss with Charlie in the room, for fear of worrying him. Mina had convinced her mother that they couldn’t run anymore, that she needed to take her place as a Grimm and do her part to break the curse on her family by completing the quests. Reluctantly, Sara agreed, but she had conditions. One of those conditions was never to alarm Charlie if possible.

Sara patted Charlie’s head affectionately. “Anything I should be overly concerned with?” Her brown eyes began to fill with tears, but she hid them well by getting up to get a gallon of milk out of the fridge. Mina could see her mother furiously wipe at them with her apron before approaching the table. When she sat down, Sara was solemn with only a hint of red rimmed eyes.

“Nope. It was just a small problem. Nothing bigger has presented itself.” Mina tried to hide her words. One time she had entered a pet store and all of the animals began to behave erratically: trying to get out of cages, birds speaking terrible warnings to her. Other times, she would be followed by geese as if she was the original storybook goose girl.

“I was hoping for more time between…and then since we never found the Grimoire...” Sara trailed off. She sat at the table silently for the next few minutes watching her children eat before picking up her uneaten bowl of egg drop soup and putting it in the sink.

Mina knew better than to say anything else, so she waited and watched as her mother furiously cleaned up her own dishes, put the leftovers away, and then retired to her room, complaining of a headache.

Charlie immediately jumped up from the table and ran over to the small living room, flipped on the TV, and engrossed himself with the Justice League of America cartoons.

Left sitting alone, Mina looked into her bowl of soup and found herself unable to eat anything else. Leaving her bowl on the table, she awkwardly got up and hopped to her small bedroom.

Even though Sara cleaned houses for a living, she never dared to enter Mina’s domain and clean her teenage daughter’s disaster zone. There were piles of clean laundry, dirty laundry, and magazines all over the floor. Mina tried to navigate the maze of mess that was her bedroom with a crutch, and she secretly wished she had cleaned her room.

She wheeled out her chair and sat at her garage sale desk, which was badly in need of a new coat of stain, but she never got around to painting it. She opened the vellum envelope and was surprised when it contained nothing more than a single tea bag. Mina pulled out the tea bag and studied it carefully, trying to identify the components of the leaves, but nothing struck her as out of the ordinary. Since everything looked the same, she flipped the switch on her hotpot and waited for the water to boil.

The hotpot was one of the greatest inventions since the toaster and Pop Tarts, and Mina used hers almost daily. She found a cup that looked clean, wiped it out, carefully poured the hot water into the ceramic mug, and slowly added the teabag, stirring it around. Mina expected the water to turn a slight green or brown color from the color of the leaves; it didn’t. Gold seeped out of the tea bag, floating and shimmering across the top of the water reflecting the evening light.

Mina was scared to breathe, and watched as the flecks spun and twirled around the cup before slowly sinking to disappear under the water. The ceramic cup suddenly became too hot to hold. She almost dropped it but recovered quickly and put the cup down on her desk, rubbing her slightly burned palms on her jeans. The tea bag continued to steep, but the steam from the cup dissipated rapidly to be replaced by frost that slowly spread up the outside of the cup.

Mina pushed herself away from the desk and the cursed tea in shock. Her wheeled chair only made it a few feet before tangling in a pile of dirty clothes and tipping over, throwing her to the floor. She looked up, breathing heavily, and continued to half scoot, half crawl away from the aberrant phenomenon. When she reached her bed, she pulled her knees up to her chest and watched the cup warily. She was positive that at any moment it would shatter into a million pieces. When minutes passed and the cup continued to sit there unchanged, she decided to inspect it further.

She untangled the wheels of the chair from her jeans, damaging a favorite pair in the process, and sat back at the desk. Slowly she scooted forward, inch by inch, to inspect the cup. The frost was gone! Maybe she had imagined it. She grabbed a plastic spoon and stuck it into the cup, half expecting it to be melted into nothingness when she pulled it out. The spoon was fine. Confused, she sniffed the cup, and it smelled like normal Earl Grey tea.

A slight breeze made the papers on her desk shuffle, and Mina glanced at her bedroom window next to the desk and realized it was open. She reached over and shut the window. Maybe it was the sudden chill of wind on the hot tea that made condensation appear on the outside of the cup. Maybe it wasn’t frost at all; it very well could just be her overactive imagination.

Gathering her courage, she dipped one finger into the tea and brought it to her mouth to taste. The tea was slightly sweet with a hint of spice that lingered, odd because she hadn’t even added sugar or honey. After a moment of hesitation, she threw caution to the wind and decided to drink the tea. After all, Mrs. Wong would never ever give her something that would harm her. Maybe it was a quaint Asian home remedy or something.

The tea made Mina’s body relax; her eyelids became heavy. Yawning, she crawled onto her bed, being sure to put an extra pillow under her swollen ankle to keep it raised. She was hoping that she could take the air cast off soon, but the doctor had told her at least a week. It was only seven o’clock, but Mina couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. She lost the fight and fell asleep.

***

“Mina, where are the crutches?” Nan asked as she put her purse and Chap Stick back into her locker. It was between school periods, and they had about two minutes to head to their next class.

“I woke up this morning and my ankle felt great. I saw no reason to try and get around anymore with those horrible crutches. In fact, I felt so great; I even rode my bike to school.” Mina grinned in triumph.

It was true. She woke up and there was zero swelling, and her ankle felt as good as new. She had even tested it by jumping, stretching, and running up and down the stairs to their apartment. It was a small miracle and blessing at once. Sara had tried to convince Mina to use the crutches per Dr. Martin’s orders, but she wouldn’t have it. Mina raced outside onto her red Schwinn bike and made it to school in record time. Even Mrs. Porter, her homeroom teacher, wouldn’t be able to give her a tardy slip today.