The Witch's Glass

by Holly Grant

“An evil genius,” Ollie corrected. “Ooooh, do I have the collywobbles!”

  “How much time do we have to get back to school?” Gus asked.

  Anastasia took out her pocket watch. “Fifteen minutes.”

  “We’d better leave,” Quentin said. “I don’t fancy spending an afternoon mopping out the Pettifog loos.”

  “But we’re no closer to getting the Silver Hammer!” Anastasia protested.

  “Anastasia,” Gus said softly, “even if we could open the cabinet and grab the Hammer right this second, we wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. We have no idea where Calixto hid the Silver Chest.”

  “Right. We still have to figure that out!” Ollie complained. “Cripes! This Daring Search-and-Rescue Mission has ever so many steps!”

  “Maybe Calixto left some clues about the Chest’s hiding place in these journals.” Gus touched Anastasia’s arm. “Next time, we can read them more carefully.”

  “But when will there be a next time?” Anastasia asked. “We can’t come here during every navigation session.”

  “And we can’t pretend to follow Quentin to orchestra practice every day,” Gus said. “That fib worked last time, but our families will get suspicious if we use that excuse too much.”

  Quentin nodded. “I really can’t skip any more orchestra practices, anyway. Maestro Flootwit can be pretty strict. Last month he poured pudding down the tuba of a musician who hadn’t learned the coda to ‘Waltz of the Wayward Walrus.’ ” He cringed. “I’m anticipating a scalding this afternoon about yesterday’s absence.”

  “You mean a scolding?” Gus asked.

  “Believe me,” Quentin said darkly, “with the maestro, it’s a scalding.”

  “We’ll just have to find chances when they come up,” Ollie said.

  “But we’ll need to use the theater shortcut,” Gus said. “I checked a map of the Nowhere Special pedestrian routes earlier this week, and Sickle Alley doesn’t actually connect with any Cavelands passageways. It starts in a Dinkledorfian wine cellar and dead-ends not too far past our secret crawlway.”

  “That complicates matters,” Quentin brooded. “With Dance of the Sugarplum Bat coming up, Cavepearl Theater’s about to get really busy. It might be hard to find opportunities to sneak backstage when stagecraft really gets cracking on the sets.”

  Anastasia stared at the glass case in despair, imagining the weeks and months unfurling before them. How long might it take them to solve the twin puzzles of Calixto’s mysterious glass cabinet and the missing Silver Chest—that is, if they ever solved them at all? And in the meantime, her father was who knew where, and ditto for Grandpa Nicodemus!

  Gus seemed to be considering the same problems. “For now, let’s take a couple of these books. We can study them at home.” He stuffed Calixto’s codex into the inner pocket of his school jacket. Anastasia followed suit, selecting two books from the floating library and shoving them into her satchel.

  “No!” Ollie squeaked. “Witch stuff is strictly forbidden by rule of the queen! Do you know how much trouble you’ll get into if anyone catches you with those creepy witch books?”

  “If that happens, we’ll just say we didn’t even know they were witch books,” Gus reasoned.

  “Well,” Quentin cautioned, “find a good hiding place for them. Better than your pillowcase.” He winked at Ollie, then dived toward the trapdoor.

  As Anastasia turned to follow them, she cast one last, longing look at the Silver Hammer, safe behind the unbreakable glass wall.

  “We’ll come back soon,” Gus promised. “We’ll find a way.”

  Ollie nodded. “We always do, you know.”

  “FOUR MINUTES!” MARM Pettifog screeched from the academy pier. “Four minutes late!”

  “Late?” Anastasia grabbled for her pocket watch, letting out a groan upon glimpsing its face. “Crumbs! I forgot to wind my watch this morning. It’s stopped—”

  “Spare me your excuses, Merrymoon. Would a witch take mercy on you and your lousy timepiece?” Marm Pettifog demanded. “That’s detention for all of you! Assemble at the loos at three o’clock, sharp.”

  Horror curdled Anastasia’s soul. The students of Pettifog Academy avoided the loos as best they could, you understand. Most children tried to “hold it” through the school day. This was because the loos were in the academy basement, and the academy basement was sinister. It was dark and dank and potted with mud puddles, and sulfuric smog belched from the toilets and sogged the tunnels with a rotten-egg stench.

  “Jasper Cummerbund says Marm Pettifog has a torture chamber hidden down here,” Ollie divulged as the Dreadfuls descended to their punishment that afternoon.

  “Why?” Anastasia whispered back. “The entire academy is a torture chamber.”

  Marm Pettifog awaited them at the lavatory doorways. “There are buckets and scrub brushes in the girls’ loo. You may not leave until those stalagmites are spotless, understood?” She pointed at the rock formations spiking around the washbasins.

  “Ugh! They’re covered in slime!” Anastasia yawped. “What is that stuff ?”

  “Snottites,” Marm Pettifog said briskly. “Bacteria colonies. You’d know that if you paid better attention in biology, Princess.”

  “Marm Pettifog, I can’t go into the girls’ loo!” Ollie protested.

  “You can and you shall,” the schoolmistress retorted. “Don’t make me say it again, or I’ll triple your punishment.” And with that, she turned on her heel and departed.

  “Better get to work.” Quentin heaved one of the soapy buckets toward the sinks. “Pettifog isn’t bluffing. She’ll lock us down here overnight if those snottites aren’t gone by the time she leaves to go home.”

  Ollie edged cautiously into the lavatory. “Home? Where do you suppose Marm Pettifog lives?”

  “She probably lurks under a bridge somewhere,” Gus grumbled.

  “Like the troll in Three Billy Goats Gruff?”

  “Exactly.”

  Ollie harrumphed. “Did you know Miss Candytuft’s class gets to do a scavenger hunt for every Applied Navigation assignment? Miss Candytuft says learning should be fun.”

  “Miss Candytuft gives her students jelly beans for good effort,” Gus said.

  “And Miss Candytuft is taking her class ice-skating for their Dinkledorf field trip,” Ollie groused above the SWISH-SCROOSH-SCROOSH of the scrub brushes. “Why do we get stuck with the Yodeling Museum? It’s not fair!”

  “At least you get to go to Dinkledorf,” Gus mumbled. “My parents will never sign that permission slip. They’ll never let me go abovecaves, period.”

  “Why is your dad so twitchy about leaving Nowhere Special?” Quentin asked. “I understand why your mom can’t go abovecaves—she’s a gorgon—but your dad could pass for a human.”

  Gus sighed. “It’s because of what happened to my grandma.”

  “Your grandma?” Anastasia echoed.

  The corners of Gus’s mouth drooped. “She was burned at the stake.”

  “Like a witch?” Ollie squeaked.

  Gus nodded. “Back in the seventeenth century, my grandparents lived in Italy. Grandpa Baba taught astronomy with Galileo at the University of Padua.”

  “Galileo?” Anastasia exclaimed. “The famous astronomer?”

  “Yeah.” Gus paused, sitting back on his heels. “So, Grandpa Baba and Galileo made a telescope and went to demonstrate it in St. Mark’s bell tower in Venice. While my grandpa was peeking through the telescope, he turned it toward Padua and saw smoke rising above the rooftops….”

  “Your grandmother?” Quentin asked.

  Gus bit his lip. “Some snoopy townspeople spotted Grandma morphing into a bat, and they thought she was a witch. There wasn’t a trial or anything.”

  “Crumbs,” Anastasia whispered. “That’s horrible, Gus.”

  “Witches ruin everything!” Ollie said angrily.

  “The people who did this were humans,” Anastasia pointed out. “Not witches.”
/>
  “But if witches didn’t go splashing their bad magic around, maybe humans wouldn’t be so suspicious and afraid,” Ollie argued. “Maybe they wouldn’t panic the second they saw something strange.”

  “Maybe not,” Gus said. “Grandpa Baba and Galileo had already gotten into trouble for their ideas about stars, and that didn’t have anything to do with witchcraft—just science.” He leaned forward and swiped his scrubber against a dangly bit of ooze. “Anyway, my family came to Nowhere Special after all that.”

  “I guess I can understand why your dad is so protective,” Quentin murmured.

  Gus scowled. “I understand it, too. But I don’t want to live my entire life without seeing anything except Nowhere Special. I don’t want to hide forever because of something that happened four centuries ago.”

  “But it’s still happening,” Ollie said. “Humans are still hunting Morfolk! CRUD kidnapped Anastasia and Q and me just five months ago.”

  “You still want to go abovecaves, don’t you?” Gus pointed out with a huff.

  “Yes,” Ollie admitted. “Not to the Yodeling Museum, but I’m dying to go sledding.”

  “Oh!” Anastasia cried. “Baldwin and Aunt Penny promised to take me sledding tomorrow night. And you’re all invited!”

  “Smashing! Brilliant! Hoorah!” Quentin and Ollie chorused, but Gus’s frown deepened.

  “Couldn’t your dad make one little exception?” Anastasia asked. “Penny and Baldy are knights, you know. They fought in a lot of battles in the Perpetual War….We’d be safe with them.”

  Gus shook his head. “Dad thinks humans are barbarians. He’ll never let me go, no matter what I tell him.”

  “Well…” Ollie wrinkled his nose, peeling a snottite from the wall. “Then why tell him anything?”

  Gus crinkled his eyebrows. “Are you saying I should just go into Dinkledorf without telling my dad?”

  Ollie grinned. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Shh! Marm Pettifog’s coming. Look busy,” Anastasia hissed.

  But the footsteps clumping down the hallway proved to belong not to the academy schoolmistress but instead to its art teacher. Miss Ramachandra poked her face around the doorjamb and peered at the Dreadfuls. “Is this the right place for detention?”

  “Yep,” Ollie said. “Marm Pettifog is making us muck out these snottites.”

  “Well, I’m going to join you.” Miss Ramachandra held up a scrub brush and winced. “I’m afraid I have detention, too.”

  “But you’re a teacher!” Anastasia said.

  “I spilled paint all over Marm Pettifog’s favorite book on military strategy,” Miss Ramachandra confessed, plunking down beside them. “And you know how fond she is of history. My goodness—what is this stuff ? You wouldn’t find anything like this in London, except perhaps inside your nose.”

  “Aren’t you from Nowhere Special, Miss Ramachandra?” Anastasia asked.

  “No, dear. I just moved here a few months ago,” Miss Ramachandra said. “I was very happy to get a job teaching here. In fact”—she wriggled in delight—“I’m starting the first official Pettifog Academy Art Club! Would you like to join? The first session is after school next Monday, and we’ll explore the wonderful world of creative expression!”

  There, amidst the snottites and the sulfuric toilets, Anastasia’s spirits perked. Art club? She aspired to be a detective-veterinarian-artist when she grew up, just like Francie Dewdrop. On the other hand…the Dreadfuls’ Secret Mission of Life-and-Death Importance didn’t really leave Anastasia with much spare time. She needed to focus all her energy on plotting her next visit to Calixto’s study.

  “We’ll have ever so much fun,” Miss Ramachandra persisted. “Have you heard of Claudio Mezzaluna, the great painter? He’s designing the sets for Dance of the Sugarplum Bat, and he’s agreed to let the Pettifog art club help! It should be inspiring!”

  The boys eyed Miss Ramachandra doubtfully, but Anastasia’s thinker jerked into action. “Dance of the Sugarplum Bat?” she asked. “So will art club be meeting at the Cavepearl Theater?”

  “Indeed we will,” Miss Ramachandra thrilled. “Twice per week! Oh, I’ve always wanted a backstage glimpse of a world-class theater—”

  “We’ll join,” Anastasia interrupted.

  “We will?” Ollie squeaked. “But I’m not an artist!”

  “Ollie,” Anastasia urged, “haven’t you always wanted an—um—backstage glimpse of a world-class theater?”

  “Just think of all the—er—artsy secrets we’ll learn!” Gus chimed in, nudging Ollie’s side with his elbow. “The theater is the perfect place to study art.”

  “Oh!” Ollie said. “Right! I see what you mean. Okay, Miss Ramachandra. Count me in.”

  “Wonderful!” Miss Ramachandra beamed. The children beamed, too. I’m sure you, clever Reader, can guess the snoopy schemes already brewing in their Dreadful minds.

  “Why, Anastasia!” Miss Ramachandra blinked. “My goodness, dear, that’s quite a mustache! Did you morph today?”

  The grin faded from Anastasia’s face, and she twisted away, attacking the snottites with renewed vigor. “Not really.”

  “What shape did you take?” Miss Ramachandra asked. “Let me guess—you’re a wolf!”

  “No,” Anastasia mumbled. “A bat.”

  “A bat! How lovely!” Miss Ramachandra said. “And how did you like flying?”

  “I didn’t,” Anastasia muttered.

  “You didn’t like flying?” Ollie cried. “Did you crash?”

  “No.” Anastasia pulled her shoulders up around her ears, wishing to disappear completely. “I didn’t fly at all. I just lay on the floor and wiggled.”

  “Everyone’s first morph is awkward,” Quentin consoled her. “You’ll get it right next time.”

  “I don’t think I will.”

  “Anastasia, dear, you mustn’t say that!” Miss Ramachandra clucked. “Haven’t you read your Peter Pan? The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”

  “But I can’t fly! That’s the problem!” Anastasia said.

  “Oh, but you can!” Miss Ramachandra said. “You just don’t know it yet. But if you go on believing you can’t—well then, it could become true. That’s what happened to me.”

  “What do you mean?” Gus asked.

  Miss Ramachandra hesitated. “You see…I thought myself out of flying. In fact, I thought myself out of morphing entirely.”

  “Really?” Ollie said.

  “The first time I shifted, I flew into a car windshield and broke my arm,” Miss Ramachandra explained. “It took two months to heal, and during that time I brooded and worried and convinced myself not only that I would never fly again but I would never even shift. And you know what? I haven’t!” She shrugged sadly. “The doctors told me it’s a psychological block.”

  Anastasia lifted her face so she could better see Miss Ramachandra. The art teacher smiled and patted her hand. “Next time you morph, dear, just think happy thoughts.”

  “That’s from Peter Pan, too!” Ollie said.

  “Of course it is,” Miss Ramachandra said. “All the best advice comes from storybooks, don’t you think?”

  FROM KINDERGARTEN THROUGH fifth grade, Anastasia had known Penny merely as the school librarian at Mooselick Elementary. Only recently had she made the great switch from calling her Miss Apple to Aunt Penny. And Baldwin had entered Anastasia’s life just a few months earlier. Nonetheless, Anastasia felt as though they had been family for years and years. Now that she knew Penny and Baldwin as her aunt and uncle, she couldn’t imagine life without them.

  Anastasia’s grandmother Wiggy, however, was an entirely different ball of wax.

  Perhaps, Anastasia mused, it was that she rarely saw Wiggy. Her Majesty was usually busy attending to queenly activities like presiding over Congress and reviewing bills and traveling to blab with diplomats and politicians. Before she’d descended to the Cavelands, Anastasia
’s notions of a royal’s existence came straight from fairy tales: dancing at balls and wearing diamonds and sitting around munching tarts. Ludowiga and Saskia certainly lived up to those expectations, but Wiggy did not. Wiggy was pensive and preoccupied. Anastasia had never heard the queen laugh, and had seen her smile perhaps three times in as many months.

  Sitting now at the long glass table of the dining hall, Anastasia edged a glance at her grandmother. Might the queen’s solemnity stem from her husband’s and son’s absence from family fondue night?

  “I had a meeting with the Wish Hags today,” Wiggy announced.

  The Wish Hags were three eccentric old ladies skilled in the art of brewing wishes. That sounds like a rather witchy talent, but the hags were not in fact witches.

  “Did you make a wish?” Anastasia asked Wiggy.

  “Indeed I did. I asked them whether I might wish to know your father’s whereabouts.”

  Anastasia’s heart lurched. Why hadn’t she thought of it? It was so obvious! It was so simple! The Wish Hags could brew up a wish to find Fred!

  “Alas,” Wiggy went on, “that is not a viable solution.”

  “But why?”

  Wiggy sighed. “The hags informed me that ‘seeking’ wishes are generally ineffective. They take months to brew for something so simple as a missing sock or set of lost keys; for a person it takes ten years for the wish-goop to—er—steep properly. And even then, the wish only reveals where the subject was at the time the hags started mixing the goop. Imagine if someone tried to find you now based on your location ten years ago.”

  Anastasia slumped back in her seat.

  “Your Mommyness,” Baldwin said, “we should still make the wish. If Fred is being held captive somewhere—”

  “Then he might still be there by the time the wish comes true.” Wiggy nodded. “I already thought of that. And I did make the wish.” She turned her mirror-colored eyes back to Anastasia. “I hope my telling you this doesn’t rub salt in the wound, child. But I did want you to know that your father is very much on my mind, and I’m trying everything possible to find him.”

  Anastasia swallowed, staring at her plate.