The Worst Grimoire in the Woods of Wonders

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Autumn’s steps echoed in the cliffside wing of Acornsfield Library. She was patrolling the area and examining the grimoires resting on their shelves as her heart sang like a bird in the early morning, the ones who enjoyed waking people up before the sound of their alarm spell bounced off their walls.

Autumn despised waking up early in the morning even more than being spoiled the ending of a good book, yet she never had trouble getting out of bed at dawn because being a grimsguard gave her life a purpose that never ceased to energize her.

Autumn loved her job.

She was just a child when she decided wanting to protect grimoires, and she never regretted her choice. The truth was, it never really was a choice. She was born to become a grimsguard, and she never considered being anything else.

All aspects of her job excited her, from taking attendance to browsing a grimoire’s spells, and nothing was more gratifying than a grimoire trusting her enough to share a memory of their past with her.

The problem wasn’t that she spent more time with her grimoires than with her friends—which she did have, she swore—but that she was one mistake away from being fired from Acornsfield Library. And after the crisis that unfolded at her previous workplace, if she were to lose her job, she’d have to change career. But what else could she be? A book clerk?

Frogs, she hoped not.

Autumn whistled a song as she dived into an aisle flanked by two rows of sturdy bookshelves made of craftwood, fart noises followed by fits of giggles drowning her cheerful melody.

To everyone’s greatest relief, grimoires couldn’t talk. Yet, they always found a clever way to express themselves, whether by using magic, by rustling their pages, or by imprinting their thoughts, memories, or emotions into someone’s mind.

Autumn enjoyed communicating with grimoires as much as discovering their new spells, but sometimes, they got overly zealous and kept sending her the same foolish memories, like the one about the wizard scratching his buttocks in a hidden corner of the wing. This memory neither impressed her the first time it flashed within her mind nor did it amuse her the other hundred times the grimoire showed it to her.

People would assume that old magical beings were nothing but wise and helpful. People could not be more wrong. Grimoires acted like a bunch of naughty children who loved playing tricks on everyone.

And with powerful magic at their disposal, they usually succeeded.

Autumn tickled the grimoire responsible for the fanfare of flatulence as she walked past the culprit’s shelf. She progressed towards the end of the aisle and halted her steps beside a grimoire sunbathing under the sunrays that filtered through the large windows, Acornsfield Town looming in the distance like Autumn’s boss looming over her shoulders whenever she committed a mistake.

While Autumn cherished the view of quaint cottages, she couldn’t say the same about the librarian. Not that Autumn hated her boss. In fact, she admired and respected Master Thornbush, but she’d appreciate her more if she wasn’t threatening Autumn with an imminent termination.

Autumn couldn’t blame her, though.

Ever since Autumn joined Acornsfield Library eight months ago, she’d been making mistake after mistake. Most of her mistakes weren’t catastrophic, but the fact she got arrested two days prior to start working at the library didn’t help her case. This mistake wasn’t totally hers as some of the blame fell on Ethan Hawthorn, the town’s striker chief. Still, she was the only one who dropped in the librarian’s esteem.

After her arrest, Autumn had attempted to win back the librarian’s respect, but she’d only managed to aggravate the situation.

When Autumn had wished to surprise the librarian by cleaning up her wing, she’d ended up knocking all the bookshelves down. Granted, Master Thornbush had been surprised, but not for the same reason for which Autumn was aiming.

Or when Autumn had wanted to check the wards securing the wing but had messed them up instead, allowing a bunch of grimoires to flock down to the second floor and annoy unaware guests. That time, Master Thornbush had been as unimpressed by her lack of awareness as her inability to gather wayward grimoires.

In the end, Autumn had never stopped stumbling at work until she teetered on the verge of a layoff.

One mistake.

It was all it took for Autumn to lose the job that made her feel whole and complete.

Autumn took a deep breath, basking in the magnificent view of Acornsfield Town when a grimoire whizzed past her and slammed into a window, the thudding noise disturbing the quietness of the wing. The grimoire glided slowly on the glass, a screeching sound grating on Autumn’s ears, before he tumbled against the glossy floor in a cloud of dust.

Autumn sighed, shaking her head in admonishment. “How many times do I have to tell you, Happy-Go-Lucky?” She grabbed the grimoire and rubbed the dirt off his cover. “Stop flying too fast or you’ll hurt yourself.”

Happy-Go-Lucky chuckled before darting towards the ceiling and bumping into other grimoires currently flapping their pages around the wing. The cloud of magic dust trailing in his wake vanished in a heartbeat, unlike the magic grimoires hurled at people, which could last forever if someone ended up on their bad side. But grimoires weren’t bad. They were playful and mischievous, and even if they enjoyed teasing people until they broke into tears, they showed no malicious intents.

Grimoires were a handful, no surprises here.

Then why did wicks even bother to protect them? Simple. Grimoires were the ones creating all the spells people cast every day to simplify their lives. And if something bad were to happen to a grimoire, the spells written between their pages could get damaged and stop working. Forever.

And wicks, they loved their spells way too much to risk losing even one of them.

To make sure no grimoires fell into the wrong hands, the Magic Kingdom had distributed all grimoires to different libraries in the Woods of Wonder and had appointed the grimsguards to protect them at all costs, even when the costs meant Autumn would lose her patience alongside the few trinkets she brought to the cliffside wing.

Autumn sank into another aisle as she tightened the hair band that kept her brown hair into a messy bun and gave her a playful look. Combined with her sparkling green eyes and the freckles dotting her cheeks, Autumn appeared to be flickers away from pulling a prank. But at the age of twenty-three, Autumn had stopped pulling pranks, unless someone truly deserved her mischief like Ethan Hawthorn.

Then, that was another story. One filled with revenge and bad endings.

Autumn reached the middle of the aisle when she tripped over her logbook, the same one that should be resting against her desk and not discarded on the ground like a pair of stinking socks.

A small groan slipped from Autumn’s lips. She grabbed the voluminous book and resumed her patrol, the scent of old parchment floating in the air alongside the sweet aroma of coffee that originated from her pop’cup of milkee nesting on her desk, which made her yearn for a sip the same way she was yearning for her boss’s approval.

Whereas one desire stood a mere roots away, the other was simply impossible to achieve.

Autumn might have stopped trying to get the librarian’s approval, but she still did anything in her power to keep her job, including changing aspects of her personality in order to accomplish her tasks without issues.

She became stricter and more professional, all while decreasing the time she spent playing with her grimoires who enjoyed this change as much as Autumn enjoyed casting duds inside her cottagestack that unleashed thunder clouds.

In other words, they detested it.

But Autumn couldn’t take any risk. Even if she hated not playing hide and seek with her grimoires or not performing plays with magical effects, she continued on this path in the hopes her luck would turn in a near future.

So far, it hadn’t.

She reached the center of the wing where rows of study tables blocked her path. No one was browsing the pages of a grimoire this morning, not even a spell scribe, and only Lovey-Dovey lounged split-open on one of the tables, rustling his pages with sheer boredom.

People usually didn’t bother with grimoires. If they wished to learn a spell, they consulted a spellbook written by a spell scribe who had memorized it from a grimoire prior to transcribing it onto a sheet of parchment since grimoires were equipped with anti-theft wards, preventing people from copying their spells. Even if such wards didn’t exist, Autumn was certain the grimoires would still not allow people to directly transcribe their spells, too proud of their creations to just share them with hasty folks.

Autumn used to be proud of herself, too, but after the events that transpired at Dragonsburg Library, she started to feel ashamed of the person she’d become.

As Autumn’s gaze swept the room, her eyes landed on the beautiful painting coloring the ceiling in rich colors, which depicted a scene of old times when wicks battled jinxes alongside grimoires. Nowadays, grimoires preferred slumping against a shelf and playing tricks on wicks rather than assisting them in saving the Woods of Wonders.

Things had definitely changed. And not necessarily for the better.

This morning, though, things were looking good. No grimoires had prompted the two armchairs in front of the fireplace to wrestle each other, and no grimoires had incited the chandeliers to emit a loud scream every time someone walked underneath them.

It was calm and peaceful, and a perfect way to end her work week. And if she were lucky, she wouldn’t have to discipline anyone today.

Grimoires enjoyed playing tricks on people, but they usually stopped after being scolded for their disruptive behaviors. Sometimes, they couldn’t care less about listening to reason. When that time came, grimsguards had to cut their flow of magic by dropping them in spelltraps or by slipping a charmed book harness between their pages.

Autumn hated preventing grimoires to access their magic, feeling as if she was erasing a piece of themselves just to solve her problems. Autumn always preferred to reach an agreement with them instead of using magical force.

And her method usually worked. Even with the troublemakers.

Autumn pivoted towards the back of the wing, planning to return the logbook on her desk when a tingling sensation crept over her scalp. She scratched her head as her hair began to grow and grow until it gathered into a heap at her feet like a pile of leaves into which she used to jump for fun when she was a child.

But right now, Autumn wasn’t having fun.

“Not again,” she whined, dropping the logbook on a nearby table and scooping up her hair, only to trip over her locks and to stumble on a chair.

A groan rumbled through her throat as she knocked her forehead against the table.

“Whims!” she shouted, her voice muffled by her position. “Lift your spell this instant.”

Autumn raised her head. Whims soared in her field of vision, appearing confused about her request as the gash he wore on his brown-leather cover flared like a battle scar. He was most definitely the worst grimoire in the Woods of Wonders, and coming from someone who grew up alongside three obnoxious grimoires as her best friends, Autumn’s stance added weight to the statement.

“Don’t play dumb, Whims. I know you’re the one who cast this hair-growth spell.”

Perhaps Autumn was rocking her uniform, which granted her a fearsome look thanks to a set of brown-leather pants, armguards, and book harness that criss-crossed her chest and waist like a cluster of belts. Yet, her fierce appearance never scared Whims into submission.

Nothing ever did.

She also wore a pair of knee-high boots and a sleeveless beige turtleneck that revealed her non-existent muscles. But Autumn didn’t need strong muscles to protect her grimoires, only quick wandwork and wits sharper than a grimoire’s sense of humor.

Whims conjured an arrow made of sparkles, which he aimed at Lovey-Dovey who kept rustling his pages, unaware of being accused of mischief. Typical Whims. Blaming others for his own mistakes unlike Autumn who owned up to hers with pride, unless those mistakes were caused by a certain striker chief. One who failed to introduce himself properly during their first meeting.

In that case, the mistakes weren’t hers to rectify. Not at all.

Autumn shot Whims an unimpressed look. “Are you seriously blaming Lovey-Dovey?”

Whims swiveled in Lovey-Dovey’s direction before shifting his focus back on Autumn. He nodded.

Autumn crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re a little imp, you know that?”

Whims straightened his spine, pleased by Autumn’s comparison that was nothing if not an insult, taking it as a compliment. In his opinion, being an imp was an honor he always enjoyed upholding.

Autumn didn’t share his views on the matter.

Whims was more annoying than a bunch of brats on a sugar high, yet he’d won over Autumn’s heart in mere flickers. And even when he was irritating her to heights greater than her ex-heartwick’s self-esteem, she still loved him.

“I don’t want to spend the entire morning braiding my hair,” chastised Autumn, throwing her hands in the air. “Lift. The. Spell.”

Autumn would rather spend her entire morning accomplishing all of her tasks instead of giving Master Thornbush a reason to terminate her. If she wasted her time braiding her hair, she wouldn’t be able to write her report, check the wards, and take attendance before leaving on her lunch break.

And Autumn, she couldn’t skip a meal.

If she did, she’d end up being as grumpy as Ethan Hawthorn and start wreaking havoc alongside her grimoires, and she doubted the librarian would appreciate the ensuing chaos.

Whims’s sparkling arrow spun towards a grimoire snoring on her shelf.

Autumn rolled her eyes. “Stop blaming other grimoires. I know it’s you who cast the spell. Do you want to know why?”

The arrow morphed into an interrogation mark.

“It’s because you’ve been casting the same spell at me every month since I arrived here. Your pranks are getting quite unoriginal, you know? That’s what happens when you keep using magic instead of growing more blank pages. You can’t create new spells!”

Whims whirled in the air, amused by his own limitations. The Grimoire of Whimsical Fantasies and Unknown Consequences might be a small grimoire, but all of his spells were quite powerful. And he knew it.

Irritation crawled up Autumn’s spine at Whims’s disregard of her order like a villain crawling behind unaware people to commit evil acts. Even if Whims could make Autumn lose her composure in an efficient way, he was nothing compared to a villain.

His soul was too pure and innocent to willingly hurt people.

Pure soul or not, Whims never resisted the temptation to tease people until they broke into tears. But the only tears pooling in Autumn’s eyes were triggered by the weight of her hair currently pulling at her scalp.

“Whims!” she barked, smashing her fists against the table. “Lift the spell or I’ll put you in a spelltrap.”

Whims froze on the spot, anger spilling off his body. He scrunched the edges of his book into a scowl before blowing a raspberry at Autumn with his pages and darting out of sight without lifting his spell.

“Whims,” hissed Autumn, her words of warning slithering through her clenched teeth.

The moment Autumn’s hair shrank back to its normal length, she rose from the chair and collected her hair band that got thrown on the floor. She fashioned her hair into another messy bun before seizing the logbook and returning to her desk where she flopped in her chair, dejection hitting her like one of Whims’s spells. But this time, her feeling of misery was caused by her guilty conscience and not by Whims’s magic.

The truth was, Autumn considered Whims as an adorable, yet annoying little brother, and she hated punishing him for being himself. But since she’d gotten countless reprimands from her boss because of Whims, she had to restrain his appetite for mischief. If Autumn lost her job, there would be no one left to care about him, and that possibility broke her heart as much as her last conversation with Ethan Hawthorn.

Autumn never told Whims about her job’s situation because it gave her the impression she’d be complaining about life’s injustice with a six-year-old. It just felt wrong. But if she explained the situation to him, maybe he’d understand.

And maybe, he’d go easy on her.

Autumn tossed the logbook on her desk and knocked at the same time her pop’cup of apple-tart milkee, which tumbled on the floor and spilled its content the same way all of her hopes for a better future were spilling out of her life. Although she could spellcraft the stain away, she couldn’t do the same with her problems.

“Why?” she whined, slanting back into her seat, her head tilted upwards as her arms hung loosely at her sides.

Skylight 9 hadn’t even begun, and Autumn already needed a break.

Autumn used to have enough energy to get through her days of guarding grimoires without needing a breather. Lately, however, she felt as if an important piece of herself was missing, a piece that she’d lost at Dragonsburg Library.

One she feared to never recover.

Autumn didn’t always appear quite pathetic. Back at Grim’s Academy, she actually was the best student of her cohort. She dominated all of her classes and graduated with honors, which allowed her to choose the library where she wanted to serve her two years of apprenticeship.

The choice hadn’t been difficult. Since she was a child, she knew at which library she wanted to work.

She was ten years old when she visited Dragonsburg Library for the first time. She was accompanying her father, a spell scribe, during one of his quests to find the perfect spells, and she fell in love with both the town and the library. Dragonsburg Library wasn’t the biggest library in the Woods of Wonders, perhaps, but it was located in its biggest town, one that was as vibrant as the colors of the fall season.

In this moment, she understood her future belonged between these walls.

After Autumn completed her apprenticeship and earned her title, she received countless job offers from other libraries, alongside a few love letters from admirers. Although she felt honored by all the attention, she disregarded both the offers and the love letters, choosing to remain at Dragonsburg Library—and to keep her current heartwick.

And the first time she walked the endless aisles of Dragonsburg Library as a full-fledged grimsguard, her future had appeared brighter than the smile she wore on designation day. From this moment, she was anticipating a life brimming with happiness and successes.

Little did she know that things would go sideways and that her smile would become more fake as the days went by.

She rose from her seat and threw her pop’cup into a trash bucket where it crumbled into dirt. If only she could toss all of her problems into a trash bucket, she’d have enough dirt to grow gardens as large as her ex-heartwick’s ego.

She summoned her wand from her NeverSpace, a magical space that existed in another dimension and served as a storage area, and pressed her eyes closed in order to imagine the fantasy shaping the Spell that Cleans Up Spills Off a Floor in a Jiffy, the one transcribed by Billie Bramblebush.

She took a deep breath and focused her attention on the series of steps required by the fantasy to avoid casting a dud. Duds emerged when a wick failed to imagine the proper fantasy, and they manifested in the most unexpected ways, sparking chaos and disrupting lives upon release.

And casting a dud in the cliffside wing would be worse than allowing the grimoires to unleash their creativity.

Autumn was kneeling on the floor of her quaint cottage, her front door cracked open.

Autumn wished she owned a cottage, but she chased the thought away by fear of messing up her spell.

A nice summer morning greeted her from the other side of the door as a breeze, still damp from the previous night of rain, swept through the kitchen. In the distance, water puddles marked the dirt paths sinking into a lush forest where birds chirped sweet melodies.

She soaked one of her cloths inside the bucket standing next to her, the soapy water warming her fingers, and she plopped the wet cloth against the floor before washing the dirt off its cracks while a cozy fire crackled in the hearth hugging the wall.

Twigs of herbs hung from the beams in the ceiling, and their aroma tickled her nostrils.

The morning reflected nothing but calm and quietness, up until a rowdy squirrel dashed inside the cottage from the open door and skittered all over the clean floor with its muddy feet and an acorn held in its grip.

The fantasy made Autumn recall last week’s encounter with a squirrel, but she quickly cleared her mind of the rodent she shooed out of her cottagestack with a spell.

This was a terrible time to ponder such matter.

Indignation coursed through Autumn’s veins. She jumped to her feet and shooed the squirrel away. The squirrel barked at her while throwing a fist in the air, its acorn still secured in its other arm.

The squirrel’s behavior infuriated Autumn whose blood boiled like water in a hot cauldron.

She snapped her wet cloth at the squirrel the same way she’d crack a whip, hoping to scare it out of her cottage, but the rodent chose to retaliate by hurling its acorn at her. The acorn bumped against Autumn’s foot and rolled on the floor before she kicked it and hit the squirrel in the belly.

Or was it on the head? It didn’t matter. She couldn’t change her fantasy, anyways.

The squirrel grunted before snatching the acorn and rushing out the door.

A satisfied smile flashed on Autumn’s face as she claimed victory, pride buzzing through her body. She tossed the wet cloth into the bucket with enthusiasm and water splashed all around her, including in her face.

But as she noticed the state of the floor, her shoulders sagged while a groan escaped through her mouth like the squirrel escaping her cottage. Her floor had become dirtier than when she started cleaning its planks, but she refused to allow frustration to bring her down.

An unsolicited image of a squirrel returning to exact its revenge blazed through her mind, but she banished it.

Autumn tightened the handkerchief sitting on top of her head and grabbed the two pieces of cloth floating inside the bucket. She twisted them one after the other, the excess water dripping into the bucket, and she dropped the wet cloths on the ground. She straightened up and stomped one foot against each cloth before washing the floor with her feet.

In no time, the entire floor sparkled and a feeling of contentment washed over her the same way she’d wiped the ground clean.

“That’s what I call a job well done,” she cheered, brushing dust off her hands.

Once she completed the fantasy, she blinked her eyes open. Her wand was glowing like a star in the night sky that illuminated people’s paths, especially when they were too drunk to cast a lighting spell… which never happened to Autumn.

Never.

She flicked her wrist and the glow vanished. Golden sparkles appeared around the stain before coalescing and vanishing in a puff.

Autumn’s spell was a success, unlike her career that she was slowly ruining with her inability to do anything right. At least, she could still cast a spell without creating a dud, and that reality delighted her—well, just enough for her to not sink into a depression over the fact she’d become the worst grimsguard in the Woods of Wonders.

She flopped back into her chair and exchanged her wand with her emergency apple-tart milkee she’d stored inside her NeverSpace in addition to a cinnamon roll and a chocolate-chip cookie. People were obligated to stash food inside their NeverSpace in case a Woodshift hit the Woods of Wonders when they were roaming the wilds. Granted, the Leaf Kingdom suggested yumroots rather than sweets, but Autumn’s life was slowly getting grim enough that her only joy came from the sugar she ingested. From some reasons that felt like magic, eating sweets always cheered her up.

She took a sip of her hot milkee and released a satisfied sigh.

Milkees, too, had a knack for lifting her spirits. As a hint of apple, cinnamon, and utter bliss caressed her tongue, a rush of caffeine entered her bloodstream and re-energized her as much as a pat on the back and words of encouragement.

After settling her pop’cup on the desk, Autumn flipped open the logbook as her mood shifted towards positivity.

For a moment, she was back to her old self and she felt unstoppable.

The sides of the logbook thumped against the desk, making the pile of books she borrowed from the library wobble like a wick who drank one too many mugs of apple cider—which might be her if she didn’t get her life back in order soon. She grabbed an inkstick from the holder stuck between a pile of blank parchments and a lantern, and she scribbled today’s date in the logbook, which was the Twelfth Day of the Month when Powerful Wicks Shrank All Woodlanders by Mistake and Forced them to Live in a Giant World for Weeks, also known as Shrinking Month 4.

As she wrote the first words of her report, someone halted in front of her desk and cleared their throat. Autumn glanced up at the newcomer, her heart skipping a beat at the view. Master Thornbush was glaring at her, a stern expression etched onto her features.

And just like that, all of Autumn’s blood drained from her face like ink spilling out of her inkstick.

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