CHAPTER FIVE

CRIES FROM THE CASTLE

Had someone told Bree Campbell two weeks ago that she would soon be flying above another continent on a World War II plane with three distant relatives, she would have laughed. Ironically, that’s exactly where Bree was, and she wanted to cry. She had always considered herself a person of good judgment and respectability, but as she bounced around the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress thirteen thousand feet in the air, somewhere between France and Germany, Bree suddenly felt like the lead character in a cautionary tale.

“Can you believe I haven’t flown one of these since the sixties?” Cornelia called from the captain’s seat. The old woman’s hands clutched the controls, but from the way they jerked her back and forth, it looked like the plane was controlling her more than she was controlling it.

Bree, Wanda, and Frenda were strapped into their seats and holding on for dear life. They had been flying for nine hours straight, and thanks to Cornelia’s questionable piloting skills, it had been the bumpiest flight of Bree’s life. And from the way things were going, it might be her last.

“Aunt Cornelia, are you sure you don’t need a hand up there?” Wanda asked.

“I’m fine, thank you, dear,” Cornelia said. “It’s just like riding a bike!”

“Yeah, off a cliff,” Frenda said.

When Bree first met the Sisters Grimm and heard about their lives’ work monitoring portals between the Otherworld and the fairy-tale world, she thought they were the most capable group of women she had ever known. However, she was learning the hard way that that capability did not include flying a plane.

“Cornelia, remind me again where you went to piloting school?” Bree asked.

“Well, technically I never went to school for it,” Cornelia said. “My father was a pilot during the war—this was his plane. He taught me how to fly when I was about your age, Bree. He flew this baby to Germany many times. Thank goodness we’re going under different circumstances.”

“Your father fought in World War II?” Bree asked. “That must have been difficult with so much family in Germany.”

“Most of our family left long before the war,” Cornelia said. “Would you like a flying lesson, Bree?”

Bree wasn’t convinced Cornelia knew how to fly, let alone give a flying lesson. She looked to Wanda and Frenda, and they motioned for her to go.

“You can’t be any worse than her!” Frenda said.

“Learn everything she knows and save us!” Wanda said.

Bree was scared to unbuckle her seat belt, but she quickly unfastened it and dashed to the co-pilot seat beside Cornelia. There was an overwhelming number of buttons, switches, and levers before her.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Bree said.

“If you can operate that phone of yours so well, this will be a walk in the park,” Cornelia said. “Besides, the co-pilot’s job is the easiest.”

“Wait a second,” Bree said. “There should be two pilots flying this plane?”

“Traditionally,” Cornelia said. “But it always takes two men to do what a woman can do on her own.”

Bree would never have gotten on the plane if she’d thought it would lead to this. She was making the trip to save a friend, but who was going to save her?

As soon as she learned Emmerich had been kidnapped, Bree had a strong feeling it wasn’t a normal Otherworld abduction. She had no evidence to support the suspicion, but she felt it with every fiber of her being and couldn’t shake it no matter how hard she tried. Bree had pestered Frau Himmelsbach for more information about the incident, but Emmerich’s mother grew tired of the questions and eventually ignored her calls. Bree had shared her hunch with the Sisters Grimm, and they agreed the circumstances were fishy.

“It is curious he was kidnapped so soon after being in the fairy-tale world,” Cornelia said.

“If he was taken by someone from the fairy-tale world, we have tools that can prove it,” Wanda told Bree.

“What kind of tools?” Bree asked.

“Cross-dimensional emission-tracking devices,” Frenda said. “Whenever someone or something travels between worlds, the portal leaves a radiation-like scent on them. We have machines that can detect it.”

“Awesome,” Bree said. “All we need now is a way to get to Germany.”

Cornelia had been cooped up in their Connecticut home for so long, she was looking for any excuse to get out of the house. She generously offered Bree a ride to Germany on their family plane. Bree was so desperate to find Emmerich, she didn’t hesitate to take her up on the offer.

There was only one thing standing in her way: Bree had technically run away from home to find the Sisters Grimm. If she was now going to Europe, she needed a really good excuse so her parents wouldn’t call the police. Luckily, Cornelia supplied that as well.

“Is this Little Eddy?” Cornelia had said to Bree’s father over the phone. “It’s your cousin Cornelia.… I know, it has been a very long time.… Darling, I’m calling to sincerely apologize to you and your wife. You see, Bree recently called me with questions about our family heritage. She was so interested, I invited her to come stay with me so I could tell her more.… Well, I just found out she never ran it by you.… My thoughts exactly—inexcusable! I’m sure you were both scared to death.… My intention was to send her home immediately, but I unfortunately had a bad fall this morning and injured my hip.… No, I’m not in any pain.… Yes, there is something you can do.… Would it be terrible if Bree stayed with me until the end of the week? I’m useless on my own.… Just until Wanda gets back into town, then we’ll put her on the train home.… She’s been such help.… You bet, absolutely no privileges whatsoever.… Thank you so much, dear!”

The next thing Bree knew, she and the Sisters Grimm were on their way to a small private airport. However, Bree, Wanda, and Frenda all thought Cornelia had hired a pilot to take them to Germany. They didn’t realize Cornelia was planning to fly the plane herself until she switched on the propellers and launched them into takeoff.

Now, at just fifteen years old, Bree was sitting next to the old woman, being taught to fly the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. If Bree lived long enough to become an old woman herself, she wasn’t sure her grandchildren would even believe the story she was currently living.

“Taking off is the easy part,” Cornelia instructed. “You simply start the propellers with the blue dial, turn the red gear to Steering Mode to get the plane onto the runway, push down the green lever, and pull up on the controls.”

Bree gulped. “Blue dial, red gear, green lever, controls,” she repeated.

“Perfect,” Cornelia said. “To fly, all you do is pull up on the green lever, turn the red gear to Flight Mode, adjust the altitude with the brown handle, and steer with the controls. Here, give it a go!”

Cornelia flipped a switch and the whole plane turned off. They entered a rapid descent toward the earth! Bree watched in panic as the numbers on the altitude monitor dropped hundreds of feet per second. Wanda and Frenda were screaming so loudly, she could barely focus.

“Green lever, red gear, brown handle, controls!” Bree said, mimicking everything Cornelia had just instructed.

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress stopped plunging toward the ground and glided smoothly through the clouds. In fact, it was flying much more easily with Bree at the controls.

“You’re a natural flier!” Cornelia said. “It’s in our DNA.”

Bree thought there might be some truth to this. Since the magic in their family’s blood came from Mother Goose, she wondered if a few of Mother Goose’s flying genes had been transferred, too. There was actually a lot about Cornelia that reminded Bree of Mother Goose. They both had the same twinkle in their eye when they put others in danger.

“How much longer until we’re on the ground?” Wanda asked. “Safely on the ground!”

“We’ve already begun our descent,” Cornelia said. “We’ll land shortly after we pass over Füssen.”

Bree recalled that the area didn’t have many large cities. “Does Füssen have an airport?” she asked.

“We don’t need an airport to land,” Cornelia said. “To quote Coco Chanel, ‘The world is your runway’!”

“Mother, she was talking about fashion!” Frenda yelled.

“Everyone stop worrying! This baby is built for combat,” Cornelia said.

They didn’t care what it was built for; landing a plane anywhere but at an airport sounded like a crash landing to them! Bree, Wanda, and Frenda tightened their seat belts until there was no slack left. Soon the small Bavarian city of Füssen came into view and Cornelia searched the ground for a smooth surface to land.

“That field should do,” she said.

Cornelia jerked the controls and the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress curved through the air, lowering toward a grassy field below. As the plane turned, Bree caught a glimpse of Neuschwanstein Castle peeking through the hills in the distance. It was as if she were seeing an old friend. The castle was just as majestic as it was the first time she saw it with Conner on Mary’s Bridge.

“All right, time for your landing lesson,” Cornelia said. “You start by turning the red gear to Landing Mode, pull up on the green lever, turn the black knob to put down the wheels, and pull up on the controls so we’re parallel to the ground.”

“Red gear, green lever, black knob, controls—got it,” Bree said.

“Splendid,” Cornelia said. “Now land us.”

Bree, Frenda, and Wanda were horrified. It was like Cornelia had a death wish or something!

“What? But I’ve never landed a plane before!” Bree said.

The plane was getting closer and closer to the ground—someone had to land it before it was too late! Cornelia looked over her glasses at Bree with total faith in her eyes.

“Sometimes, if we enter situations that scare us with both hands on the wheel, they don’t seem as frightening,” she said as calmly as ever. “Or in this case, with both hands on the controls.”

Bree couldn’t believe Cornelia was making her do this. She could feel her heart beating in the back of her throat. One wrong move and they would all be dead!

Carefully and quickly, Bree turned the red gear to Landing Mode, pulled up on the green lever, turned the black knob to put the wheels down, and held up the controls to make the plane parallel to the ground.

“We’re gonna crash!” Wanda yelled, and vigorously crossed her chest.

“Wanda, you’re not Catholic!” Frenda said.

“I know, but we’re gonna need all the help we can get!”

The wheels slammed into the grassy field and the plane landed like a rock skipping across a lake. It tore up large strips of earth, as if leaving a long message in Morse code. Finally, the plane decelerated and rolled into a shaky, sudden stop.

“Oh my God,” Bree said in disbelief. “I just landed a plane!”

“Mother, how could you let a fifteen-year-old land a plane!” Frenda said.

Cornelia burst into a fit of giggles. “You’re all so gullible,” she said. “I had the autopilot on the entire time!”

The others didn’t find this funny at all.

“You mean, all that was for nothing?” Bree asked with an angry scowl.

“No, no—you did quite well,” Cornelia said. “Had the autopilot failed, we would have had a successful landing. My father did the same thing to me on my first flight. The best lessons are learned when it’s sink or swim, and you’re quite the swimmer!”

Once their hearts settled to a normal pace, Bree and the Sisters Grimm locked up the plane and headed for Emmerich’s house. Bree thought leaving the plane unattended in a field was a strange thing to do, but Cornelia assured her that planes were very difficult to steal.

Bree led the women through the outskirts of Füssen and into the little village just below Neuschwanstein Castle called Hohenschwangau. Since Cornelia walked with a cane, Bree was worried the journey would be too much for her, but the old woman hobbled along, excited to be on another Sisters Grimm adventure. They walked past all the souvenir shops, restaurants, and inns dedicated to the castle, and found the Himmelsbachs’ tiny home on the edge of town.

“There it is,” Bree said, and pointed to the front steps. “That’s where Conner and I met him.”

The sight made Bree feel remarkably nostalgic. It seemed like just yesterday that she and Conner had told Emmerich they were secret agents so he’d take them into the castle after visiting hours. They hadn’t been friends for long, but Bree and Emmerich had shared such an incredible once-in-a-lifetime adventure, she couldn’t believe there was a time when the little German boy was a stranger. She just hoped they could bring him home, wherever he was.

“Here goes nothing,” Bree said. “I hope Frau Himmelsbach is better at answering her door than she is her phone.”

They walked up the front steps and rang the doorbell. They waited, but no one answered. Bree rang the doorbell again, holding it down longer. A moment later, Frau Himmelsbach answered the door.

“Kann ich Dir helfen?” she asked.

If Bree hadn’t recognized her voice from the phone, she wouldn’t have thought it was Emmerich’s mother. The woman had brown hair and olive skin, very different from her son’s pale skin and rosy complexion. She had puffy eyes and sunken cheeks, like she had been crying and not eating much. She wore a big black robe over a nightgown and probably hadn’t changed clothes in days.

The woman wasn’t what Bree was expecting, but she definitely looked like the mother of a missing child.

“Frau Himmelsbach, I’m sorry to disturb you,” Bree said. “I’m Bree Campbell, your son’s friend from the United States.”

Emmerich’s mother was not happy to see her, and especially not happy to see she had brought friends with her.

“What is wrong with you, child?” the Frau said. “I told you to stop calling me and now you’ve come to my home?”

“I’m sorry,” Bree said. “I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I couldn’t stay away. These are my cousins, Cornelia, Frenda, and Wanda. We’ve traveled all this way because we want to help you find your son.”

Frau Himmelsbach crossed her arms and shook her head. She wasn’t easy to convince.

“You Americans and your egos,” she said. “What can you do that the Bavarian police cannot?”

Bree looked to the Sisters Grimm, hoping one of them would have an answer.

“We’re private investigators who specialize in child abduction,” Cornelia said. “We’ve brought special equipment along with us that may point us in the direction of whoever took your child.”

“The police searched every inch of my home,” the Frau said. “They didn’t find a single clue.”

“With all due respect, ma’am,” Wanda said, “the Bavarian police can’t find clues like we can. Please, may we come inside?”

The distressed mother looked back and forth among the women and tried to think of a reason not to let them, but she couldn’t.

“Fine,” she said. “I apologize, my house is a mess.”

Frau Himmelsbach escorted Bree and the Sisters Grimm inside her home. The Frau offered them a seat in the sitting room and Cornelia and Bree happily accepted. From the sofa they could see into Emmerich’s bedroom through an open door in the hall. The walls were covered in posters of superheroes. Bree remembered him saying he wanted to visit the United States because that’s where all the superheroes lived. The memory made her miss him even more.

“May we have a look around?” Frenda asked.

“As you wish,” the Frau said.

Frenda and Wanda went to work right away. They each removed a cross-dimensional emission-tracking device from their purse; the device looked like a long microphone connected to an old radio. They waved the microphone parts around the house and the radio parts beeped as they went.

They searched the sitting room and kitchen, but didn’t find anything. The search continued in Emmerich’s bedroom, and when they scanned the area by his window, the machines beeped like crazy. Wanda looked to Bree and Cornelia and with one nod she said a thousand words—someone from the fairy-tale world had definitely been there. Bree’s hunch was right.

“Was Emmerich taken through the window?” Frenda asked.

“Yes,” Frau Himmelsbach said, surprised they knew. “The night it happened, Emmerich was sleeping in his bedroom while I was in here reading. I heard a noise, so I checked on him. His window was open and in the distance I saw someone in a black cloak running away with Emmerich over their shoulder.”

She broke into tears recalling the terrifying sight and Cornelia offered her a handkerchief.

“I chased them, but they disappeared into the night,” the Frau said. “I called the police and they came to the house every day for a week. They never found anything, not even a fingerprint. How did you know he was taken from the window?”

If they were going to tell the Frau the truth, Bree figured it was best to start at the beginning.

“Shortly before Emmerich was taken, he and I made a crazy discovery,” Bree said. “We did this thing, like a blood test, and it proved he and I are actually related. Our blood matches DNA from the Brothers Grimm.”

“The Brothers Grimm?” the Frau asked.

“Yes,” Bree continued. “Which means Cornelia, Frenda, Wanda, and myself are either related to you or to Emmerich’s father.”

The Frau was very confused. “I wouldn’t know either way,” she said. “Emmerich isn’t my biological son—he was adopted.”

“Adopted?” Bree said in shock. “He never mentioned that.”

“That’s because I never told him,” Frau Himmelsbach said. “He was abandoned when he was a baby. I didn’t want him living life thinking he was unwanted.”

Everything Bree thought she knew suddenly changed. She quickly abandoned her plan to tell the Frau about the fairy-tale world—clearly she didn’t have all the facts straight.

“Where was he found?” Bree asked.

“Neuschwanstein Castle,” she said. “My father used to work nights there as a security guard. One night, as he was patrolling the halls, he heard crying. He followed the cries to the Singers’ Hall and found Emmerich wrapped up in a blanket in the middle of the floor. Someone must have left him during a tour earlier in the day. It was very strange, because my father swore he had checked the room multiple times earlier that night and never saw the baby.”

Bree and the Sisters Grimm were all thinking the same thing: Emmerich wasn’t related to the Brothers Grimm after all—he was from the fairy-tale world! Someone must have crossed through the portal in the Singers’ Hall and left him in the castle!

The Frau’s eyes suddenly grew wide and she covered her mouth fearfully.

“Wait a moment,” she said. “That reminds me of something I completely forgot! There was a note pinned to his blanket the night he was found. Let me see if I can find it.”

Emmerich’s mom went down the hall to her bedroom. They heard her searching madly through all her drawers and belongings. A few minutes later, she returned with a piece of parchment. Her hands were shaking, as if she were holding a ransom note. She handed it to Bree, and the Sisters Grimm gathered around her to read the note.

It appeared that Bree and the Sisters Grimm had helped the Frau uncover a suspect in her son’s disappearance—Emmerich’s biological father!

“It was so many years ago, I forgot the note existed,” Frau Himmelsbach confessed. “Even then, I didn’t take it seriously. I never thought they would find him.”

“Should we take this to the police?” Wanda asked.

“No, we can’t!” the Frau exclaimed. “You see, I never legally adopted Emmerich. I fell in love with him the minute my father brought him home. At the time, we were very poor. I was afraid he would be taken away if we called the police, so we kept it a secret. If they found out now, I would never see him again.”

Bree had so many questions, she could barely see straight. She always loved a good mystery novel, but she never thought her life would turn into one.

“If you’re related to him, do you have any idea who Emmerich’s parents are?” Frau Himmelsbach asked. “Do you know where they might have taken him?”

“I’m afraid not,” Bree said. “But I know someone who might.”