The Problem Child (The Sisters Grimm, Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

earliest entries, Sabrina could see it hadn't been an easy voyage.
    * * *
    July 17th,
    I'm contemplating turning back. The voyage is already fraught with disasters. Crossing the Atlantic with a shipful of fairy-tale creatures is a difficult enough task, but situations became unruly today when the Jabberwockies ran amok. I curse myself for putting so much stock in the Queen of Hearts's demands. She insisted the beasts might someday be domesticated. The woman is a fool but she has tremendous support amongst the passengers and crew. Fifteen leagues out the trouble began. The Jabberwockies broke loose from their cages. There were ten and together they killed a dozen human seamen before Lancelot and Robin Hood drove them into the hull of the ship. The Black Knight went down with the Vorpal blade and finished the monsters off. Then the rest of us tossed their bodies overboard. Let the sharks have their foul remains.
    What's the Vorpal blade?
    Sabrina wondered, but Wilhelm never mentioned it again. Sabrina searched the other journals and found no other references to the Jabberwockies or the blade, except in two entries by her great-great-great-grandfather Spaulding Grimm.
    * * *
    March 9th,
    When the Lilliputians came to me with the news, I hoped it was just more of their usual mischief, but they were right -- a Jabberwocky is roaming the forest. From what father told me, the monsters had all been killed during the voyage from Europe. Could one of the monsters have attached itself to the bottom of the ship and survived the rest of the trip? The magic mirror has informed me that the beasts hibernate for great periods of time, so it could have hidden in the woods without any of us finding it. It's also possible that someone brought another one over from Wonderland, but who? Like my grandfather, I have turned to the Black Knight. I gave him the Vorpal blade and my prayers. March 10th, 1909 The Black Knight has betrayed me. Instead of hunting the Jabberwocky, he used the Vorpal blade in a way I never thought possible. He cut a hole in the magical barrier that surrounds the town! He's escaped into the world of humans. I blame myself for trusting the knight; his history is filled with double dealings. But there were no other volunteers. I found the sword lying nearby and have it again in my possession, though it will do me little good. There's no one brave enough in this town to go after the monster, and no one I trust with the blade. Baba Yaga has offered her help. She claims she can entrap the monster with the same spell she and my grandfather cast on the town. Once the beast is captured, I'll find a way to destroy the blade. If the rest of the Everafters were to find out that it can cut through the barrier, there would be chaos in the streets. Perhaps the Blue Fairy can be of some assistance.
    * * *
    Sabrina closed the journal and looked over at the clock on the wall. She'd been working for nearly three hours and sleep was finally creeping up on her. The only other thing she had discovered was strange but unhelpful--some of the pages in her father's journals had been ripped out, a great many of them in fact, at the end of his writings.
    Her eyes fluttered. She wondered if closing them for a moment or two might help.
    No sooner had she rested her head on the dining room table and closed her eyes when someone said, "Time to wake up." Sabrina bolted upright in her chair and glanced around the dining room. Sitting at the end of the table was the girl in the red cloak. The Jabberwocky was seated next to her, breathing so heavily Sabrina could feel his breath from across the room. The two intruders were hovering over a filthy tea set laid out on the table. The little girl poured a thick, stringy substance into two cups and set one in front of the monster. Its teeth gnashed and a rope of drool fell out of its mouth.
    "Have some tea," the little girl said to Sabrina. She poured a third cup and slid it across the table. Whatever was in it was