The Forest Grimm by Kathryn Purdie EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Kathryn Purdie
- Language: English
- Genre: Dark Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
SEVEN YEARS LATER
I am haunted by my mother. I hear her voice ringing on the wind that chases
the ravens from our sheep pasture, her stifled cries in the creaking of the
pulley over our dry well. Her laughter glances off jagged flickers of dry
lightning. Her rage gathers in low peals of rolling thunder.
The storms are only mockery. Their rainfall scarcely touches the earth
anymore, and when it does, all I hear in its patter are my mother’s footsteps
treading away from me, beckoning me to follow.
I am haunted by my mother … if hauntings weren’t a mystery of the
dead, but rather an echo of the living. And she must be living. I will her to
be. She isn’t dead, only missing—lost within the Forest Grimm. Three years
have passed since she embarked on a journey there, soon after the magic of
the forest had turned on our village, and she never returned.
Strips of fabric and ribbon in every color dangle from a large hazel at
the edge of the forest. The Tree of the Lost. Mother wasn’t the only villager
to go missing.
Sixty-six others—the Lost Ones, as we call them—were also
never seen nor heard from again after venturing into the forest. Each had
their own reasons for wandering away since the onset of the curse, though
most of those motives remain a mystery. The only known link between
them is the state of despair they were in before leaving Grimm’s Hollow.
As for Mother, she should have known she wouldn’t return home. The
Midnight Forest card had warned her long ago not to make a forbidden
choice. But she left in search of Father, and she didn’t know he wasn’t Lost,
not in that way. She entered the Forest Grimm soon after his disappearance,
and she became the first Lost One.
The tokens on the hazel quiver in the summer breeze, stirring the ends
of my sable hair. Mother’s hair is the same warm shade of darkest brown,
but her cloth strip has been dyed rose red. Grandmère chose that color
because it’s Mother’s favorite, and I spun the yarn myself from our flock’s
finest wool.
I lift my hand to touch it, squinting against the morning sunlight that
pierces the tight weave. Three years have passed since I first knotted it to
this tree, and in that time the elements have frayed its edges and worn the
cloth threadbare.
What if Mother is also this ragged and bone-thin?
I will come for you, I promise. Soon.
And by soon I mean today.
“Ten minutes until the lottery!” the village clockmaker calls.
My heart lurches like a cuckoo bird springing on the hour. I hitch my
skirt to my calves and dart through the gathering crowd in the meadow.
Monthly Devotion Day always draws out villagers like myself who haven’t
given up hope that our Lost Ones are still alive. It also attracts those who
enjoy the spectacle of the lottery and the danger that follows it. The focus of
Devotion Day has always been the lottery and its culmination.
For More Read Download This Book
EPUB