by Liz Delesus
“Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out,” Ming tried to reassure her.
Bianca wished she could make Ming understand, but she didn’t have the patience at that moment.
“You wanna call your mom?” Bianca asked.
“Nah, I already told her I’d crash here.”
“Thanks.” Bianca did her best to smile.
“No problem. That’s what best friends are for.”
Ming went to her car and grabbed her overnight bag. Bianca remembered that they had an old black tarp at the bottom of the pantry from the last time they’d painted the living room. She grabbed a roll of duct-tape and together they taped the old paint spattered tarp to the broken window. Bianca double-checked the doors and windows to make sure everything was locked. It was something her mother did every night before she went to bed. Bianca took some comfort in keeping that routine alive.
Bianca threw herself on the couch and took a moment to catch her breath. She thought about where the book could be. Where should she start looking? What did it even look like? These thoughts plagued her mind.
What if I don’t find the book? What happens then? What if Mom dies because I failed? I’ll be an orphan. I’ll be all alone. What will happen then?
The thought of being an orphan terrified her. Losing her father had been awful, but it was bearable because at least she still had her mother. Her mind was plagued with questions, worries, and other random thoughts.
Eventually…sleep found her. She didn’t even realize it had happened. Her face slumped on the armrest. Her black hair fanned across her eyes like a makeshift mask. That night she dreamt of dying animals, a tangle of spider webs, and Lenore’s cruel laughter.
Chapter Seven
Bianca woke with a start. She looked around…confused. She had a cranberry red blanket draped over her. It slid off her body as she sat up and rubbed her eyes. She glanced out the window and saw that it was still dark out. The neon green numbers on the DVD player told her that it was five o’clock in the morning. Ming had made herself at home. Her best friend had fallen asleep right next to her. Bianca smiled when she noticed that Ming was using her pink Hello Kitty sleeping bag. She groaned, unable to believe that she had let herself fall asleep when they had so much work to do. Bianca rolled her neck and shoulders, doing her best to get rid of the kinks from having fallen asleep at such an odd angle.
“Ming,” she whispered.
“Hmm?”
“Ming, wake up.”
“Five more minutes,” Ming muttered and then turned to her side.
“Fine. Five more minutes and then we need to start looking for that book.”
“Okeydokey.”
While Ming slept for a few more moments, Bianca went into her mother’s bedroom and did a quick search for the book in there. But the more she thought about it, the less likely it seemed that the book would be in her house.
What would Mom do?
“Hmm.”
If I had my daughter in my house, I would do everything possible to keep her safe. So I would keep the book as far away from here as humanly possible.
And that was when she knew that the book was at the museum. It was the only other place it could be.
As soon as the sun rose, Bianca and Ming went to the museum. Bianca figured it would be best to keep the museum open at least part time since it was their only source of income. For the first time in fifty years, there was no story time. Bianca waited until everyone arrived and gathered in the Princess Room to make the announcement.
“Good morning, everyone,” Bianca said.
“Good morning,” everyone replied.
“Where’s Miss Rose?” a little girl in the crowd asked.
“Umm, she’s not coming today,” Bianca replied nervously.
“Oh? What happened?” one of the moms asked.
“My grandmother is sick. My mom had to go away for a while and take care of her until she gets better,” Bianca lied. She had practiced telling the lie until it felt natural and almost true. Ming had even coached her while they’d driven to the museum that morning. Still…she could feel her cheeks burning as the lie slipped out of her mouth.
“Anyway…if you need anything, I’ll be in the gift shop.” Bianca then ran away as fast as she could before anyone could ask her any more questions.
She hid behind the counter and groaned.
“You okay?” Ming asked. She was perched on the stool, reading a magazine.
“This is a disaster. It feels so wrong to lie,” Bianca whispered to Ming, who was happy to be behind the counter of the gift shop. Ming had wasted no time exploring every inch of the museum, especially now that Rose wasn’t around to tell her not to touch anything.
“Well, what are you going to do? Tell the truth?” Ming closed the magazine and tucked it between the cash register and the wall.
“Yeah…like that’s gonna happen any time this century. I may as well take myself to the psych ward.”
“Do you want me to read the kids a story? How hard can it be?”
“Ming, have you ever had my mother tell you a story?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Trust me. They won’t want anyone but her.”
“Why?” Ming asked, confused.
“I don’t even know how to describe how she does it. All I know is that she has a way of bringing stories to life. Almost as if she were playing a movie inside your head. She takes these fairy tales and adds more to them somehow. You can smell the river, see every leaf twitching in the wind, see the characters, and for a moment, it’s almost as though you can feel what they are feeling.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to describe what it’s like to be on the receiving end of that.”
“I bet.”
Bianca grabbed the phone book. It had a thin layer of dust over it. “Ew,” she muttered as she picked up a rag and wiped the dust off.
“Whatcha lookin’ for?” Ming asked.
“A repairman, I need to have the front window of my house fixed,” Bianca replied as she flipped through the pages of the phonebook. Eventually, she came across an ad that looked somewhat professional. She grabbed the phone on the wall and dialed the number.
“Moore Repairs. If it’s broken, we can fix it. This is Bill. How can I help you?”
“Yes…hi…I need to have the front window in my house repaired,” Bianca said.
He asked several questions, and after a few minutes of talking back and forth, they settled on a day and the price to have her window fixed.
“Cool. Thank you so much,” Bianca said politely.
“No problem. We’ll send someone over tomorrow morning,” Bill replied.
Bianca thanked him once more and then hung up.
“How are you going to pay for the window?”
“I know where Mom keeps her credit card. I’m authorized to use it, only if it’s an emergency. I think this counts as an emergency.”
A woman approached the counter and purchased a few items from the gift shop. Ming smiled, hopped off the stool, and scanned her items. Bianca was going to be sure to tell Rose about Ming helping her out in the museum. Maybe she would break her rule and let her work here.
“What did the witch want again? I forgot,” Ming asked when she was finished taking care of the customer.
“A spell book.”
“Why?”
“It belonged to Queen Mirabel,” Bianca explained.
“The one from Snow White…right?”
“Yep.”
“Okay. Do you know where it is?”
“Nope.”
“Then we have nothing else to bargain with,” Ming said.
“Well, there are other things in the museum that belonged to the queen, but she specifically asked for the spell book,” Bianca explained.
“Is there an attic or a basement in this place?” Ming asked.
“Yeah, an attic and a basement.”
“Do you think it’s hidden somewhere in the
museum?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it were in here somewhere. Doesn’t hurt to look around and see if we find something,” Bianca said.
Ming’s chocolate brown eyes widened as a thought occurred to her. “Ooh, maybe there are clues to follow, like in The DaVinci Code.”
“Except without Tom Hanks’ weird hair.”
“Yeah…no bad hair allowed.” They both nodded in agreement.
“Okay, do we split up?” Bianca asked.
“Hell, no! I’ve seen enough horror movies to know that’s a bad, BAD idea. We stick together the entire time.”
“Fair enough. I’m going to check in Mom’s office and see if I find anything there. It should be safe enough with you here and the museum being full of normal people.”
“Don’t you have walkie-talkies or anything like that just in case you see anything suspicious?”
“Umm…we have cell phones. They should be good enough for now.”
“As long as you’re okay with that,” Ming said.
“All right. I’m gonna take a look around and if I don’t find anything, we’ll go to the attic together when I close the museum.”
“Okeydokey. Oooh, look a wand! I’m totally buying this,” Ming said as she picked up a pink, sparkly, plastic wand.
Bianca sighed. It was going to be a long day.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, they closed the doors of the museum, a couple of hours earlier than usual. Thankfully no one complained. Bianca locked the doors, counted the money in the cash register, and locked it in the safe underneath Rose’s desk. Unfortunately, she hadn’t found anything in her mother’s office or in any other room in the museum, at least nothing that seemed like an obvious place to hide a really old spell book.
“Done?” Ming asked as soon as Bianca stepped out of Rose’s office.
“Almost. I have to set the alarm before we leave here tonight,” Bianca said.
“Okay. I’ll try to remind you,” Ming promised.
Bianca went to the utility closet and grabbed two flashlights. She handed one to Ming and lead the way up to the attic. She thought about the last time she was in that room. Rose and Bianca had explored one of the trunks and had found a treasure trove. She could only hope that she would find what she was desperately searching for.
“So what does this book look like? Any idea?” Ming asked.
“I have no idea what it looks like.” Bianca took a deep breath and added sarcastically, “This should be fun.”
“Well…I’m sure it’s not going to say Evil Queen’s Spell Book on the cover of it. Right?”
“Right.”
Bianca wondered why no one recognized that Queen Mirabel was evil sooner. How it was that she could hide her true nature for so many years. Most of the time people can sense when there’s something wrong with a person. Yet…Queen Mirabel was able to hide her intentions very well. The only one who saw right through the charade was Snow White.
Maybe that’s why she hated Snow White so much. Maybe it had nothing to do with Mirabel’s jealousy of her beauty and everything to do with the fact that Snow White saw right through her.
“Right!” Bianca shouted.
“What?” Ming asked with a frown.
“It’s not going to some big creepy book. She was a queen. She needed to hide what she really was from her husband, the king, and everyone else. It has to be in a book that looks harmless and possibly even…boring.”
“Boring, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Ye Olde Knitting Book?” Ming joked.
Bianca giggled. “Probably something along those lines.”
“Ye Olde Cooking Book?” Ming suggested.
“Ye Olde Cleaning Book.”
They made more jokes that involved “Ye Olde” as they looked in the boxes in the attic.
After an hour of searching, Ming suddenly let out a blood curdling scream. Bianca tripped over her shoelaces, scrambled up to her feet and ran to Ming, expecting to see the worst.
“What? What is it?”
“Spider,” Ming squeaked. A tiny spider crawled underneath a box that Ming had been searching through.
“A spider? You screamed as though someone were trying to kill you.” Bianca took off her shoe and killed the spider with a single stroke.
“Next time you feel like screaming, save it for when the bad guys show up,” Bianca said as she put her shoe back on.
Ming stuck her tongue out at Bianca, and they resumed their search for the spell book.
“I don’t think it’s up here, B,” Ming said.
Bianca sighed, disappointed. They looked in every box and trunk in the attic and still…nothing.
“Yeah, I’m not finding anything either.”
“Basement?”
“Yeah.”
So off to the basement they went. This time they didn’t need flashlights because there was electricity in the basement, and they were able to turn on some lights. There were boxes everywhere, twice as many than what was in the attic.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find it. Stop looking as though someone just ran over your puppy,” Ming said.
“I wish,” Bianca muttered. She was worried that they would never find the book in that mess. Nothing was labeled. It would take all night to look through all the stuff in the basement.
“If you were an evil spell book, where would you be?” Ming wondered aloud.
“In my hands so we could get my mom back,” Bianca replied.
“Well, it’s not in your hands yet, and we’re not going to find it by standing around looking depressed.”
“You’re right.”
“Of course, I’m right. Come on, you take that half and I’ll take this one,” Ming said as she went to the left side of the room.
Bianca took a deep breath and continued her search for the spell book.
It was several hours before either of them realized what time it was. They had missed dinner and were getting more and more frustrated as time crawled by. Bianca took a quick break and stretched her back. It was beginning to cramp from all the time she had spent hunched over the boxes on the floor. She wiped the sweat off her forehead when she noticed a loose brick on the wall. Bianca squinted as she tried to figure out what it was.
Ming noticed her squinting and gently chided her, “Put your glasses on, Bianca.”
“I don’t like them,” Bianca complained. She had been nearsighted her whole life. It wasn’t until she was eight years old that her mother had realized she couldn’t see things very well. The doctor had called it “low congenital myopia;” Bianca, however, liked to call it “a pain in the butt.”
“Then wear contacts,” Ming argued.
“Yeah, not gonna happen. Can’t see the point of poking myself in the eye…on purpose…with glass.” Bianca shuddered as she thought of wearing contact lenses. She made a point to leave her glasses at home whenever she could. She hated wearing them; she thought it made her look nerdy. Of course, Rose always carried a spare pair of glasses with her in case Bianca “forgot” them.
“You’re hopeless.” Ming rolled her eyes.
“Enough about me, come here and take a look at this.” Bianca pointed at the brick on the wall.
The brick was the exact same color as the others. The only difference was that it was slightly loose. She could tell that it was separated from the others because there was no cement around the edges.
She pulled on the brick until it came out and found a letter resting in the empty space.
Dearest Bianca:
I’m afraid if you’ve found this letter, then the worst has happened. I wish we had more time together and more time to prepare you for what’s to come. If you find my journals, they may offer you some advice and further insight to what you may face in the future. They are in the small trunk under my bed.
As for the spell book…you can’t let Lenore have it, no matter what she says or threats she throws at you. She’s a vicious woman and will stop at nothing to ge
t what she wants.
I can’t tell you exactly where it is in case this letter falls into the wrong hands, but I will leave you with a clue so that you know where it is for future generations to come. This is all I can give you right now. Remember that I love you. You are and always will be the greatest joy of my life.
Love,
Mom
The letter shook in her hands. Her vision blurred as tears pooled in her eyes. A single teardrop splashed onto the letter. The black ink swam inside the little tear as Bianca reread the letter a few more times.
She carefully folded the letter and put it in her back pocket. She wasn’t going to show it to Ming. It was something that was too private to share with anyone…even if she was her best friend.
On a separate piece of paper, there was this sentence.
“Black veins are hidden under the First Frost,” Bianca whispered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ming asked as she stood behind Bianca and looked over her shoulder.
“I don’t know. That’s why we have to figure it out,” she replied.
They went back upstairs to the museum and searched through the Wicked Wing. Bianca looked behind the magic mirror. For a moment, she had thought this was where the spell book would be, mostly because of the frame that decorated the mirror. It was made of ebony with vines, thorns, and withered roses carved into the ancient wood.
“Anything?” Ming’s hands trembled slightly.
“No…nothing.” Bianca’s disappointment was evident in her voice.
“This room is creepy at night.”
“I know.” Bianca gently put the mirror back in its place.
“Stupid spell book. Where else do you want to look?” Ming asked.
Bianca opened her mouth to reply, but instead of her response to the question, all that came out was a deep male voice that said:
“That which you seek,
Hides beneath
Red lips that can
No longer speak.”
Ming shrieked. Bianca let out a string of curse words that her mother would frown upon, probably ground her for a week too, and stepped away from the mirror. Ming pointed to the mirror, but all they could see were their own reflections. Bianca frowned and took a tentative step toward the mirror. She put her hand on the looking glass and waited for something to happen. After a moment of waiting…nothing happened.