Rescue Princesses #3: The Moonlight Mystery

by Paula Harrison

  They all stared at the last set of paw prints, half-hidden by the grass. Even Ally shook her head.

  “Poor cubs! At least there’s no sign they were hurt,” said Clarabel.

  “But how did they just vanish?” cried Emily. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Lulu scanned the horizon, tears pricking her eyes. Giraffes were nibbling leaves from the treetops. An elephant stood by the water hole. But there were no lion cubs.

  “I hope we can find them,” said Clarabel.

  “We will find them!” said Lulu fiercely. “Rescue Princesses never, ever give up.”

  Climbing back into the truck, Ally and the princesses used a map of the grasslands to plan out where to search. Then, hot, tired, and covered in red dust, they drove back to the palace. Lulu was having her first lesson with her new etiquette teacher after lunch, and Ally insisted she shouldn’t be late.

  Lulu frowned as she changed out of her comfortable dress and put on the one she was supposed to wear for the lesson. It was a wide-skirted ball gown that hung down to her ankles. She stared at its frilly edges in the mirror. She liked shorter dresses better. This one would be totally useless for somersaulting.

  The lesson began downstairs in a room next to the palace courtyard. Madame Rez was a skinny, gray-haired lady who looked Lulu up and down through little round glasses. Then she made Lulu practice standing up and sitting down over and over, telling her each time what she was doing wrong.

  “To be really ladylike, you must have good manners. Hold your skirt like this,” said Madame Rez, lifting one corner of her long gown. “Then place one leg behind the other as you carefully lower yourself to a seated position.”

  Lulu sighed, grabbed her dress, and plonked herself down on the chair.

  “No, no, no!” Madame Rez clutched her face in horror. “Those are not the manners of a princess! Keep your back straight and lift the skirt delicately, like this.”

  Lulu grimaced and pulled her tiara down over her forehead. She knew she should try harder, but it seemed like such a waste of time. She longed to get back outside and continue the search for the lions. She sat down on the chair, swinging her legs and looking out the window.

  “Next we will practice how to sit still on a chair,” declared Madame Rez.

  Lulu groaned.

  By the end of an hour, she still hadn’t managed to sit down and stay still in a way that made Madame Rez happy. She felt frustrated and hot and just about ready to leap out of the window.

  “Let us try standing straight by balancing a book on the head,” said Madame Rez. “There is so much I must teach you to make you ladylike!”

  Lulu’s mouth dropped open. She’d already lasted an hour. Surely it was time to stop! She had to find a way to make Madame Rez let her go.

  Just then, there was a faint scratching at the window that looked out over the courtyard.

  “What was that?” asked Madame Rez sharply. “We cannot have any interruptions.”

  The scratching grew louder, and a deep purring made the window pane rattle.

  Lulu turned around to catch a glimpse of big brown eyes and silky whiskers pressed up against the glass. Then the creature’s mouth opened to reveal two rows of large, pointed teeth.

  “A wild beast!” shrieked Madame Rez. “There’s a wild beast outside!” She scurried out of the door in a surprisingly unladylike manner.

  Lulu giggled. She ran over to the window and opened it to look for Tufty. She spotted Clarabel, who was holding the wriggling cub in her arms.

  “It’s all right, she’s gone now!” hissed Lulu. “You can come out.”

  Emily and Jaminta, who had been hiding around the corner, came over to join Clarabel.

  “Sorry, Lulu!” said Jaminta. “Tufty slipped out of the bedroom when we opened the door.”

  “We had to chase him around the palace,” added Clarabel. “Luckily no one saw us.”

  “Sorry to ruin your lesson!” Emily grinned.

  Lulu rolled her eyes. “It was terrible! I felt about as ladylike as a giraffe! Now let’s get out of here before someone spots Tufty.”

  Lulu slipped out of the door and beckoned them to follow her. Just as they were about to hurry away, they heard footsteps coming toward them.

  “Where should we put Tufty?” whispered Clarabel.

  Lulu looked around, but there was nothing in the hallway that would hide a wiggly lion cub. Then an idea struck her.

  “Pass him to me,” she said, taking Tufty from Clarabel’s arms. Quick as a flash, she put him down on the floor and swung her skirts over him so that he was hidden underneath. Luckily, her long, frilly dress reached right down to the ground. She dropped her skirts just as Lady Malika swept around the corner.

  “What are you all doing?” she asked, looking at the girls with narrowed eyes.

  “Nothing,” said Lulu.

  “Really, nothing at all,” added Emily.

  Tufty gave a little meow beneath Lulu’s dress, which Jaminta tried to drown out with a loud cough.

  “It’s nice to see you in a proper dress for a change, Lulu,” said Lady Malika.

  Lulu’s skirts shook as Tufty bounced around underneath, trying to find a way out. “Er … thank you, Aunt,” she said.

  Lady Malika frowned for a moment. Then she gave them one of her half smiles and walked away down the corridor.

  “That was close!” whispered Emily.

  Picking up Tufty, Lulu raced away, with the others following close behind.

  After taking the little lion cub back to Lulu’s bedroom, the princesses hurried out in the truck with Ally to search the grasslands again. To their disappointment, there was still no sign of the lioness or the missing cubs.

  As the sun began to set, they returned to the palace to eat dinner with the grown-ups and Prince Olaf. Afterward, they gathered in Lulu’s room, wearing pajamas. Their jeweled rings glimmered on their fingers. It was a hot night, and the windows were flung wide open to try to catch any faint breeze.

  “If only we’d found some kind of clue.” Lulu sighed, folding up the map of the grasslands.

  “Let’s try again tomorrow,” said Clarabel. “We’ll find them somehow.”

  There was a knock at the door, and Ally entered carrying a tray of sugared marzipan shaped into little flowers and stars. The girls settled down on Lulu’s bed to eat the candies. After his afternoon of mischief, Tufty had fallen fast asleep.

  Ally crossed to the window to close the curtain, but stopped and gasped when the full moon came out from behind a cloud. As shafts of moonlight hit the mountain, its enormous black shape began to shine, until the whole peak transformed into glittering silver.

  “What’s wrong, Ally?” Lulu leaned forward. In the moonlight she could see that Ally was very pale.

  Ally stared at the mountain. “So that’s why it’s called Shimmer Rock! I’m sorry, Your Majesties,” she smiled weakly. “It made me think of something from long ago.”

  “Why does Shimmer Rock sparkle like that, Lulu?” asked Jaminta.

  “Well, the stories say that there’s magic in the mountain,” said Lulu. “But if you go right up to it and look closely, you can see millions of tiny crystals inside the stone. The moonlight makes the crystals shine.”

  “What is it, Ally? You look so strange!” Emily peered at her.

  Ally hesitated. “I’ve heard about this mountain before,” she said slowly. “Although I didn’t know then that it was called Shimmer Rock. It all happened when I was working as an undercover agent searching for the missing Onica Heart Crystals.”

  “I remember you telling us about them before,” said Emily. “You said they’re the most famous missing jewels in the world!”

  “They were the most prized treasure in my kingdom, a long time ago,” added Jaminta, who came from Onica.

  “That’s right. They were very famous and highly prized jewels,” agreed Ally. “I was told that they’d been crafted out of gems that came from a ‘land of lions,’ but it

was a secret exactly where that was. Now I think that maybe it was here.”

  “Those Heart Crystals must be very beautiful,” said Clarabel.

  “Maybe jewels could help us find the missing lions.” said Lulu excitedly. “How about your pearl, Clarabel? Remember how you used it to find the dolphin last time? Maybe you could use it to find the lions.”

  Clarabel shook her head. “It’s an ocean gem, so it only works for ocean creatures. Are there any other jewels that we could use, Jaminta?”

  The princesses all looked hopefully at Jaminta. She had great skill at shaping gems to give them a special power, something she had learned from a master gem maker at home in the kingdom of Onica.

  Jaminta pulled a velvet bag from her pocket, opened it, and poured a handful of glistening jewels onto the bed. “I can’t think of anything that would help us. Here’s the amethyst Clarabel chose from the treasure chest on Ampali Island. All I’ve done is polish it so far.” She picked up the purple jewel and then yawned widely. “But looking at it always seems to make me sleepy.”

  The other three girls looked at the sparkling purple jewel and yawned, too.

  “How strange that a jewel would make us so sleepy!” Emily said, rubbing her eyes.

  Ally took one last look at Shimmer Rock and closed the curtain. “Maybe you’ll have some new ideas in the morning, Your Majesties. For now, I think you should get some sleep.” She went to pick up the tray of marzipan but accidentally knocked it onto the floor with a clatter.

  The noise woke Tufty, who jumped up in the air, landed on the floor, and scrambled under Lulu’s frilly ball gown, which was lying in a heap. The dress rippled as he disappeared underneath it.

  “Don’t worry, Tufty. Everything’s all right,” said Lulu with a grin.

  At the sound of her voice, Tufty stuck his whiskery nose out of an armhole, making the princesses burst out laughing.

  Lulu scooped him up and kissed him. “Come on, little one. It’s time for bed.”

  Lulu couldn’t get to sleep that night. Through the open window came the buzz of insects and the distant yowl of a leopard. She kept thinking about the lion tracks and the empty hollow where the little cubs had lived. She shut her eyes tight, but sleep didn’t come. It didn’t help when Tufty jumped up on her bed and started nuzzling her cheek and purring deeply into her ear.

  “Tufty!” she laughed, pushing him off. “Are you trying to tell me you’re hungry again?”

  Tufty padded up and down the blanket, still purring. So, with a wide yawn, Lulu threw off the covers and climbed out of bed. She crept down the dark stairs and felt her way toward the kitchen. Everyone was in bed and all the rooms lay in quiet shadow.

  Lulu filled the baby bottle up with milk from the refrigerator and fastened the lid back on. She smiled. This would stop Tufty from feeling hungry for a while. Turning to hurry back upstairs, she caught a glimpse of light through the window. It was round and yellow in the darkness.

  Running to the window, Lulu looked out into the blackness.

  A full moon turned the garden a shadowy silver. Beyond the high palace wall, Shimmer Rock glittered brightly.

  Lulu stared at where the light had been. She saw it again, right over by the old gray wall next to the gardener’s shed.

  Suddenly, she realized that she’d seen a light in the same place from her bedroom window two nights ago. What could it be? Was it someone with a flashlight? Nobody should be out there in the garden. The palace guards always stayed by the gate, and everyone else was asleep.

  She set the bottle of milk down on the kitchen table, her heart beating like an Undalan drum. Something strange was happening out there in the darkness. She dashed toward the stairs. It was time to wake the Rescue Princesses and find out exactly what was going on!

  The princesses slipped into light cotton dresses and plain silver tiaras, and crept silently down the corridor. A loud snoring came from Olaf’s bedroom. Lulu looked at her friends and, trying hard not to giggle, they sneaked down the stairs and out into the dark courtyard.

  “Where are we going?” whispered Emily.

  “This way,” hissed Lulu, leading them through an archway at the far end of the courtyard. Beyond the orange trees was the vegetable patch, and behind that was the high wall that surrounded the palace grounds.

  “It really is such an amazing mountain!” said Clarabel, gazing at Shimmer Rock as it sparkled.

  But Lulu had seen the mountain like that a thousand times, and hurried them on toward the shed. “The light came from right over here,” she said.

  Jaminta tried the shed door, but it was locked. “There’s nothing here, Lulu. Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

  “Totally sure!” Lulu walked right up to the shed. “There used to be a huge pile of things here.” She pointed at the ground on one side of the shed. “There were wheelbarrows, shovels, and sacks of dirt. But everything’s been moved.”

  She stepped forward and her foot made a dull thud against the ground. She stopped, surprised.

  “What was that?” said Clarabel nervously.

  Lulu moved her other foot, which made a thudding noise, too.

  “That’s strange. It sounds really hollow,” said Emily.

  Kneeling down, Lulu swept her hand across the ground and found that the loose earth moved aside easily beneath her fingers. She continued brushing it away until she reached a solid rectangle of wood set into the ground.

  “I didn’t know there was anything under here,” she cried. “It’s always been covered up with gardening tools before.”

  “Not so loud,” breathed Clarabel. “You’ll wake the palace.”

  Jaminta knelt down beside her and tapped gently on the wooden rectangle. “It’s like a door lying in the ground.” She brushed more earth aside to reveal a ring-shaped handle made of metal and a small hole for a key. “Look! Here’s the door handle and the lock.”

  “If it is a door, then let’s open it,” exclaimed Lulu.

  “Shouldn’t we figure out what it is first?” asked Clarabel.

  Lulu was already yanking on the handle. The door gave a huge creak but held firmly shut.

  “Let’s all try pulling together!” said Emily.

  So all the princesses grabbed the handle and heaved as hard as they could. But the door still wouldn’t budge.

  “We need the key,” said Lulu. “But who would have it? No one knows this door is here.”

  “Someone must know,” replied Jaminta. “I bet the person with the key is the same person you saw with a light.”

  Lulu looked around the garden. There was no sign of the light anymore. “I don’t know who that could be. No one’s ever talked about this.”

  She broke off suddenly. A strange noise came from below the wooden rectangle, making them jump.

  “What was that?” said Emily.

  Lulu crouched down and put her ear against the door. The other princesses did the same.

  They waited for a moment, silent in the darkness. Then the noise came again from deep down, making the door shake.

  The princesses jumped to their feet.

  “There’s an animal down there!” Clarabel gasped.

  “It’s a lion,” said Lulu, her eyes wide. “That’s the sound of a lion’s roar.”

  The princesses looked at one another excitedly.

  “Maybe it’s our missing lions!” cried Emily. “But why would they be underground?”

  “We’ll have to go down there and find out!” Lulu tugged on the handle again, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “I know something we can use to unlock it,” said Jaminta. “Come on!”

  The four girls raced back through the moonlit courtyard into the palace. Jaminta stopped in the kitchen, searching through the silverware drawer. “It looks like an old lock. Maybe we can open it with a long piece of metal without needing the right key.” She pulled out a fork with wide prongs. “This might do it.”

  The other princesses crowded around to look.

  With a sudden click, the light went on, dazzling their eyes. They turned around in shock to find Prince Olaf standing in the kitchen doorway. He was wearing striped pajamas that were so big the sleeves hung over his hands.

  “Hello,” he said, beaming. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s a … it’s a …” stuttered Emily.

  “It’s a midnight feast,” snapped Lulu.

  “Yummy!” said Olaf, sitting down at the kitchen table. “Can I join you?”

  Lulu watched him in horror. There, right in front of him, was the baby bottle with milk in it for Tufty. She’d left it there when she went out in the garden to search for the strange light.

  Olaf picked it up. “What’s this?”

  The princesses exchanged glances.

  “It’s mine!” said Lulu defiantly. “I still like to drink milk like that.” To prove it, she grabbed the baby bottle and took a huge slurp.

  “Really? From a baby bottle?” said Olaf, looking puzzled.

  “That’s right,” said Lulu, taking another drink. The bottle made a glugging sound. Emily gave a snort and turned away to hide her laughter.

  With Olaf waiting expectantly for the midnight feast to begin, the girls began to look for some food. Clarabel found leftover pudding and spooned it into dishes. Lulu added some chocolate. They gulped theirs down, and then watched impatiently as Olaf ate his incredibly slowly.

  Suddenly, footsteps sounded in the hallway. The princesses froze, listening as the steps came closer. They exchanged worried looks, but it was too late to clear everything away. The door swung open and Lady Malika walked into the room. “Princesses!” She raised her dark eyebrows in surprise. “What’s going on, and why are you all dressed?”

  “We’re having a midnight feast,” said the princesses, all at exactly the same time.

  Lady Malika’s eyebrows rose even higher. “Is everything all right, Lulu? I thought I heard a strange noise coming from your room, a sort of scratching sound. Is there something in there?”

  “It was probably just a lizard walking on the roof,” said Lulu quickly. “We should go upstairs and get some sleep now.”

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