A Grimm Warning (The Land of Stories, #3)(30)

“This must be a very important story if it was tied with a different ribbon from the rest,” Sofia said. She opened the scroll. “The last story is called ‘The Secret Castle.’ ”

Conner slumped a few inches with relief. He definitely had never heard or written a story about a secret castle. With any luck, the third story would be so good Bree would forget about the first two. He looked at his feet, wanting this whole event to end as soon as possible.

Sofia cleared her throat again and began reading.


Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, there lived two brothers who liked to tell stories. Everyone in their village loved to hear their stories and thought the brothers were very creative, but the brothers had a secret. The stories they shared with their village didn’t come from them, but from someone else.



Conner’s eyes shot straight up toward Sofia. There was something very familiar about this story—something too familiar.


Every day the brothers traveled into the forest where they would meet a beautiful fairy. Each time they met, the fairy gave the brothers a new story to share with the people in their village. The fairy lived in a Secret Castle far away from anywhere man had ever been, and her stories were usually about one of the many magical creatures that lived with her in the castle. The brothers were very grateful to the fairy and never told a soul that she and her castle were real.



Conner could feel his heart beating in the back of his throat. He was listening so intently he forgot about everyone in the crowd around him. Many troubling thoughts filled his head as the story became more familiar. Had the Brothers Grimm staged this whole event to come clean about the origin of their stories? Were they about to admit to the world that the Fairy Godmother was real and had supplied them with their greatest work?


One day the king got word of the brothers’ stories. The king was very smart and had a hunch that there was truth to their tales. He had his soldiers follow the brothers into the forest the next time they met the fairy, and their secret was unveiled. The king ordered the brothers to come to see him at his palace and demanded that they take him and his army to the Secret Castle where the fairy lived so they could conquer it.

The brothers pleaded with the king, and told him they didn’t know where the Secret Castle was. The king showed them no mercy and said that if they didn’t supply him with directions to the Secret Castle he would have everyone in their village killed.

Not wanting to trouble the fairy who had been so kind to them, the brothers asked a great magical bird that also lived at the Secret Castle for help. The magical bird gave the brothers a map to give the king, showing a way to the Secret Castle. But what the king didn’t know was that this map was of an enchanted path; it would take him and his army of thousands two hundred years to reach the Secret Castle.

The magical bird assured the brothers that by the time the king and his army arrived at the Secret Castle, it would be prepared to face them. The brothers gave the map to the king and he and his army immediately began their quest to find the Secret Castle.

With the king and his army gone, the brothers’ village was saved from the greedy king’s wrath. However, the brothers never saw the magical bird or the fairy again. As time went by, the brothers worried that the magical bird, being old and careless, would forget to warn the other magical creatures in the Secret Castle that the army was coming. So the brothers decided to write their last known story themselves and they knew it would be the most important one they would ever tell.

The brothers wrote a story similar to their own lives, about a Secret Castle and magical creatures and a greedy king who wanted to conquer it all. They spread the story across the land, from one generation to the next, hoping the tale would eventually reach someone who would recognize it for what it really was—not a fairy tale, but a warning in disguise.



There was a long pause before the crowd realized the story was over. Their applause was as confused as their expressions—it seemed like such an odd, unfinished story.

“That is all there is, I’m afraid,” Sofia said. “I certainly hope the Secret Castle was warned of the approaching army. Perhaps the Brothers Grimm purposely left their last story unfinished, so that we would all finish it ourselves in our own imaginations. Now I will read the story in French.…”

Conner felt light-headed and sick to his stomach. His mind was racing with so many questions he couldn’t focus. He didn’t even hear Sofia read the story in French or German; everything was white noise around him. He replayed the story again and again in his head—everything the Brothers Grimm had written in the third story was so obvious and so carefully planned. They were the brothers in their own story, the fairy was Conner’s grandmother, the magical bird must be Mother Goose or one of the other fairies, and the Secret Castle was the Land of Stories. And just like in the story, the story wasn’t actually a story—it was a warning.

The Brothers Grimm were trying to warn someone that something was on its way to the Land of Stories. And since they had so carefully planned for the story to be heard two hundred years later, whatever was approaching the Land of Stories must be arriving soon.

It was all so blatant; Conner looked around the crowd hoping to see someone else who had interpreted the story for what it was, but there was no one who had interpreted it like he had. The fairy-tale world was in great danger and he was the only one in the Otherworld who realized it.