"Yes, but what else? What is surrounding the house?"
Sabrina focused her attention on the rubble. What was so unusual about it? Nothing, really, except maybe for the large area of sunken ground that surrounded it. "The earth is mashed around it," she said.
"And what could cause something like that to happen?"
"I don't know. What do you think?" Sabrina said, after running through the possibilities.
"I think a giant stepped on it," Mrs. Grimm answered. "Find a giant beanstalk leaf and you'll probably find a giant."
Daphne began to laugh but Sabrina was horrified. The old woman was getting crazier by the second.
"Well, I better go down and have a second look," the old woman said as she climbed to her feet. She walked back down the hill and joined Mr. Canis at the pile.
"She's funny." Daphne giggled.
Funny in the head, Sabrina thought.
"I want to ride on the tractor!" Daphne cried.
She jumped up and pulled her sister over to it. Sabrina lifted the little girl onto the seat, who then grabbed the wheel and turned it, making vroom vroom sounds as she pretended to drive.
"Look at me, I'm a farmer," she said in a goofy voice. Sabrina looked up at her sister and laughed. Daphne was the funniest person she had ever met.
"What kind of food do you grow on this here farm, Farmer Grimm?" the older girl played along.
"Why, I grow candy on this here farm." Daphne laughed. "Bushels and bushels of candy. Just sent my crop to market last week. Got me a pretty penny, I did."
Sabrina smiled, but then a shadow covered her heart. Why did the old lady have to lie about who she was? Why did she have to make up crazy stories? Why couldn't she be normal? Her house was warm and comfortable and as long as Sabrina kept an eye on Mr. Canis they might just be OK. If the old woman wasn't a lunatic she'd make a perfect grandmother.
"Sabrina, look at the house," Daphne whispered. She had stopped playing and was staring at the pile below.
Sabrina looked down at the clearing but saw nothing new.
"Do you see what I see?" Daphne cried, pointing.
"What? What do you see?"
"Come up here, you have to see it from up here."
Sabrina crawled up onto the tractor and stood high on its hood.
Do you see it:
And then Sabrina saw what her sister was so excited about and her heart leaped into her throat. The indentation surrounding the broken-down house had a shape.
"It's a footprint," she gasped.
Chapter 3
rs. Grimm and Mr. Canis were pulling a prank on them. It explained why Mrs. Grimm talked to the house and served her crazy food and why Mr. Canis said so little and acted so weird. They were trying to make the girls look stupid, which made Sabrina furious. And worse, the joke didn't seem to end. They spent the rest of the day traipsing over the field for more "clues," until Mrs. Grimm looked at her wristwatch and said they'd better get home for dinner.
At the house, Mrs. Grimm prepared a huge plate of meatballs for the girls, complete with purple gravy, the recipe for which she claimed she'd gotten from a Tibetan monk. Too hungry to resist, Sabrina cut a meatball in half to make sure there weren't any poison pills inside and, finding none, took a bite. It tasted like pizza. She devoured the plateful and was working on seconds when Mrs. Grimm joined them, placing a weathered old book on the table.
"So, we've got a mystery on our hands, lieblings. We should do some research. A good detective always does her research. Let's see. Giants. What do we know about them? Oh, here's one, 'The Tailor and the Giant,'" she said as she flipped through the pages.
"OK, you've had your fun," Sabrina said fiercely. "Don't you think we're a little old to fall for your joke?"
Mrs. Grimm looked up from her book in astonishment.
"You can't really think it was a giant!" Sabrina cried.
"Well, of course I do," the old woman replied without blinking.
"Granny, there's no such thing as giants," Daphne said between bites of meatball.
"Oh dear, I knew your father wanted to distance himself, but I never imagined he wouldn't have at least taught you the basics," the old woman said. "No wonder you two have been looking at me like I'm crazy."
"What are you talking about?" Sabrina cried.
"I'm talking about this," Mrs. Grimm said as she flipped the book to its first page.
"Grimms' Fairy Tales," Daphne read aloud.
The old woman flipped to the next page. On it were portraits of two very ugly men. "Do you know who these men are?" she asked. The girls looked at the portraits but said nothing. They didn't look familiar to Sabrina. "These men were Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, also known as the Brothers Grimm. Wilhelm was your great-great-great-great grandfather," said the old woman as she pointed to the portrait of a thin man with a large nose, tiny eyes, and long hair.
"Grimms' Fairy Tales! The fairy-tale guys?" Daphne cried.