by Holly Grant
The Dreadfuls exchanged furtive glances. Despite Marm Pettifog’s threats, wandering away from the group topped their list of things to do in Dinkledorf. They planned to wander all the way to Celestina Wata’s workshop, where they would try to ferret out whether the artisan knew the secrets of Calixto’s glass cabinet and magic doors. But if they got caught sneaking off, they’d ruin the field trip for everyone.
“ ‘Remember: do not talk about Nowhere Special,’ ” Miss Ramachandra continued. “ ‘Do not mention Morfolk, or witches, or the Cavelands. Many of the Dinkledorfers are Morfolk, but many are not, and we mustn’t draw attention to ourselves. If you defy these orders, my wrath shall be great and nasty and extremely scary. P.S.: Poormina, don’t you dare let those rotten little gluttons try to talk you into letting them buy chocolate at the candy shop’—oh dear!” Miss Ramachandra stopped, flustered. “I don’t think I was supposed to read that postscript out loud.”
“It’s all right, Miss Ramachandra,” Jasper said cheerfully. “We already know Marm Pettifog thinks we’re rotten.”
“Well, you aren’t,” Miss Ramachandra said. “I try not to contradict Marm Pettifog, but I certainly disagree with her on that point. She is right, however, that we need to be on our best behavior.” She paused. “Including me. I don’t want detention again.” With a little shudder, she pushed open the door leading to Die Zuckerhutte.
The chocolate shop was a blur of bonbons and truffles; dutiful Miss Ramachandra ushered the students out without so much as a nibble.
“But, Miss Ramachandra, I’m hungry,” wailed Parveen.
“We’ll get lunch after the museum, dear,” Miss Ramachandra promised. “You only need to wait until eleven-thirty.”
As they tumbled outside and into the snow of Dinkledorf, Ollie clasped his mitten over his face.
“Cold?” Anastasia asked.
Ollie shook his head. “No. I’m trying to bottle up the good smell.”
“Clouds!” Gus’s gaze was riveted to the heavens. Anastasia grabbed his hand and tugged him after the Pettifog group.
“Watch your feet!” she cautioned. “It’s icy.”
“What’s that sound?” Gus asked.
“That,” Ollie muttered, “is the Yodeling Museum.”
Perhaps, Reader, you have visited a fanciful museum in your hometown or upon a family holiday. Perhaps you have visited enormous institutions chock-full of magnificent displays of fabulous Egyptian artifacts, or entire dinosaur skeletons, or rare works of art. The Yodeling Museum was no such sleek and sprawling treasure hold. Like the other shops and houses of Dinkledorf, the museum resembled an overgrown dollhouse. Carved gingerbread frilled its snowcapped eaves, and pretty pink shutters flanked its windows. A wooden figure of a man in green lederhosen stood sentry by the museum’s front door, its lower jaw jabbering and juddering like the maw on a Christmas nutcracker. Yodels tootled from his wooden windpipe.
“Isn’t that charming!” Miss Ramachandra said.
The school group shuffled into the museum, stamping snow from their boots.
“Odelay-hee-hoo!” cried the woman behind the ticket counter. “Welcome to the world-famous Dinkledorf Yodeling Museum!”
“Is this place really world-famous?” Anastasia whispered to Ollie.
He shook his head. “How could it be? Hardly anyone’s even heard of Dinkledorf!”
Miss Ramachandra clapped her hands. “Children! Go on ahead into the museum. Explore! Discover! We’ll meet in the Singing Gallery at ten-thirty for the yodeling demonstration.” She rustled in her purse, spilling a flood of purple tickets onto the floor, and the museum greeter bent to help the art teacher pick them up. Amidst the chaos of flurrying tickets and stampeding Pettifoggers, another band of backpacked children—presumably visiting from a nearby Swiss school—arrived. Anastasia brightened. The more crowded the museum, the better the Dreadfuls’ chances of slinking away unnoticed.
As they headed toward the exhibits, Ollie nudged Anastasia and pointed down a hallway. Past the bathrooms lay a wooden door, its glass window revealing Dinkledorf beyond.
“That’ll be our escape route,” Ollie whispered. Anastasia nodded.
The first gallery contained a number of displays under dusty glass cases. Ollie heaved an enormous sigh. “This place is so boring.”
“Well, at least pretend to be interested,” Gus muttered. “Once Miss Ramachandra goes into the next room, we can make a run for it.”
“Fine.” Ollie turned his gaze to the nearest vitrine. “What’s this?”
Gus glanced at the card below. “The lederhosen worn by Zelig Immergluck at the Dinkledorf Yodeling Championship in 1850.”
“Fascinating.” Ollie removed a lump of taffy from his jacket and began champing it.
“ ‘Yodeling began in the Alps as a form of communication hollered, peak to peak, by chatty cowherds,’ ” Anastasia read aloud from another placard. She lowered her voice. “Has Miss Ramachandra wandered off yet?”
Gus’s gaze darted from a display of alpenhorns and into the next gallery. “Yup, and it looks like she’s trying to get gum out of Jasper’s hair.”
“That’ll keep her busy for a while,” Ollie predicted.
“Let’s go,” Anastasia urged.
They slipped from the room to sidle down the empty hallway. Hinges creaked as they pushed open the door, but a volley of yodeling between museum docents camouflaged the noise. Once they were standing outside, Ollie swung the door so it was almost shut, and then he removed the taffy from his mouth. This he squished between door and jamb. “Now it won’t lock us out.”
“Smart,” Gus complimented him.
“Are you sure you know the way to Celestina’s shop?” Anastasia fretted as their steps took them farther and farther from the museum and deeper and deeper into the maze of winding Dinkledorfian lanes.
“It’ll be easy to find,” Ollie said. “Piece of cake—literally! Der Glasforst is at the end of Sugar Way.”
Anastasia frowned. “I wish we had a map.”
“We don’t need a map.” Ollie grinned. “I have this.” He tapped his nose, and then he inhaled deeply. “Hmm.” He darted down a side alley. Sniff! Sniff! “This way!”
“I can’t smell anything,” Gus protested.
“You will soon,” Ollie promised. Sniff! “Let’s go down here….”
“Mmmm!” Anastasia murmured. “I smell cake!”
“Me too!” Gus said.
“See?” Ollie pointed to a sign bolted to the side of a lopsided bakery. “Zucker Weg.”
The lovely perfume of hundreds of cakes wafted from the lane to greet their nostrils. “Do you think we could stop in for a nibble?” Ollie begged. “Just one tiny little nibble of one teeny, tiny crumb? Look at that Bundt!”
“We don’t have time for sweets,” Anastasia said.
“That, Anastasia, is the most depressing thing you have ever said.” Ollie scowled.
“Oh, Ollie! We only have about an hour before the yodeling demonstration is over,” Anastasia said. “Miss Ramachandra told Parveen that we’re eating lunch at eleven-thirty.”
They drifted down Sugar Way, through the warm and fragrant air, betwixt shop windows fogged with sugary steam and crammed with luscious confections, until at the very end of their snowy, cookie-scented trek Ollie pulled them around a corner. There, cushioned by deep snowdrifts, hunkered a cabin with a sign reading DER GLASFORST.
“Ready?” Ollie asked.
“I guess,” Gus grumbled. “But we’re wasting our time. I know Aunt Teeny isn’t mixed up in the Dastardly Deed. She’s not a witch-sympathizer—she’s sweet. She takes me for ice cream every year on my birthday, and she’s always sending me funny cards.” His gaze dropped, but not before Anastasia glimpsed the doubt swimming in his eyes. He thinks Celestina is the Glass Lady, too, she realized. He just won’t admit it, because he’s worried.
Anastasia’s conscience prickled like a hedgehog, but she had to talk to Celestina. Her family’s fa
te could very well hang upon whatever secrets the glass smith hoarded. “Well,” she said softly, “whoever the Glass Lady is, I don’t blame her for what happened to my grandpa. Not one little bit.”
As the Dreadfuls neared the window, they beheld an entire magical world of delicate glass: glass ballerinas and ice skaters and swans and polar bears perched on the minute lake of a frosted mirror. Glass deer and foxes and unicorns wandered a forest of miniature glass trees. Glass snowflakes dangled from clouds of lovely, lacy spun glass.
“Beautiful!” she breathed.
The depths of Der Glasforst proved just as enchanting as the shop window. Illuminated shelves lined the walls, and shining on those shelves were hundreds of magnificent snow globes. Anastasia leaned close to peer at the maker’s mark tattooed near the base of one: CW with a star.
A tiny woman rounded a display of glass unicorns. “Gus! What on earth are you doing here?”
“Hi, Aunt Teeny,” Gus mumbled.
“Where’s Mercurio? Does he know you’re aboveca—” Celestina cut herself off, glancing around the shop. They were alone. “Abovecaves?”
“We’re on a field trip,” Gus said quickly.
Celestina gawped. “Mercurio actually let you go on a field trip?”
“Not exactly,” Gus admitted. “But I’m tired of staying behind at school every year.”
“So you sneaked up, did you?” Celestina laughed. “Don’t worry. Your secret is safe with me.” She winked. “I do love a good secret.”
Ollie jabbed Anastasia’s ribs.
“Where are your classmates?” Celestina asked.
“Back at the Yodeling Museum,” Gus said. “I just—I really wanted to come visit you. I’ve never seen your shop, you know.”
Celestina’s face softened. “I know.” She pulled Gus into a hug and then patted his lumpy woolen hat. An irritated hiss sounded beneath the pompon. “Be careful to keep these fellows hidden, eh?”
Gus nodded and tugged the edges of his hat down around his ears.
“My goodness,” Celestina said. “I knew this was an important day when I woke up—I could feel it deep inside my bones. Something strange and special will happen today, I thought to myself, and so it has! My nephew’s first visit to my shop!” She danced to the front window and flipped the OPEN/CLOSED sign so the CLOSED side would face out to the street. “There! We’ll have the place all for ourselves.”
Gus beamed.
“Now, who are these other field trip fugitives?” Celestina asked, grinning.
“Ollie and Anastasia,” Gus answered.
“Princess Anastasia,” Ollie emphasized, and Anastasia blushed.
“Oh my!” Celestina said. “That’s right. Mercurio mentioned in one of his letters that you arrived in the Cavelands several months ago. How do you like it here? You live in the palace, don’t you?”
Anastasia nodded. “Yes. My grandmother has a collection of your snow globes, you know.”
“Your grandmother? The queen?” Celestina puzzled. “She must have received them as gifts. Queen Wiggy has never commissioned globes from me.”
“How do you make them snow?” Anastasia asked.
“Just as you would with any snow globe—you shake it!”
Anastasia shook her head. “No. Sometimes the snow whirls around all on its own.”
Celestina frowned. “You must have imagined it, dear. Perhaps you bumped into the globe?”
“I didn’t,” Anastasia said. “And it isn’t just one globe. Wiggy has an entire hallway of snow globes, and they all snow at once.”
Something flickered over Celestina’s face. It was only there a moment. If Anastasia had blinked, she would have missed it. But she didn’t blink, and she recognized the expression at once: fear. For some reason, the glass smith was afraid.
“I don’t know anything about automatic snow globes,” Celestina said with a brittle smile. “The queen must have gotten them from a different workshop. But I have something else that might interest you….”
She steered the Dreadfuls, and the conversation, over to a case in the corner. “I just finished this glass cello yesterday. Listen—it really works.” She plucked up a bow and swiped it across the cello’s breast, dredging forth a glassine sigh.
“Quentin would love that!” Ollie marveled.
“What other sorts of things do you make?” Anastasia asked in her best I Am Very Innocent and Not Digging for Information voice. “Do you make furniture?”
“I once made a set of little glass chairs for a duchess’s dollhouse,” Celestina said. “Spun glass; very nice.”
“What about a glass cabinet? Did you ever make a glass cabinet without doors?” Anastasia quizzed.
CRASH! Tinkle! The crystalline cello bow smashed on the floor, splintering into smithereens. Eyes saucer-round, Celestina stared at Anastasia. “A cabinet without doors?” she echoed hoarsely. “No! I’ve never made anything like that. Never!”
“Aunt Teeny—” Gus faltered, touching her arm.
“Why would you ask me that, Princess?” Celestina demanded. “Did you see something like that in the palace?”
“N-no,” Anastasia stammered.
“Aunt Teeny, you’re stepping on broken glass!” Gus said.
Celestina stiffened and looked down. “Oh. Oh dear. I’d better clean that up.”
“I’ll help you,” Gus offered hastily. “Where’s your broom?”
“No, dear. It’s time for you to run along.” Celestina ushered the trio toward the shop entrance. “Thanks so much for visiting, children. Gus, I’ll see you at your parents’ anniversary party next month.”
And with a hug and three shoves, the Dreadfuls were back out in the snowy lane.
“Odelay-hee…odelay-hay…odelay-HEE-HOO!”
The yodeler finished with a flourish, and the museumgoers launched into polite applause right as the Dreadfuls sidled into the Singing Gallery.
“Bravo! Bravo!” Miss Ramachandra cheered. “That was marvelous! All right, children. Let’s head over to the Fondue Haus and get your lunch.”
As the school group tromped through the snowy Dinkle-dorfian lanes, the Dreadfuls huddled close and whispered about their secret visit.
“Celestina practically threw us out on our noses!” Ollie said.
“She did act a little strange,” Gus admitted. “But she probably—um—just had to get back to work.”
“As soon as we mentioned glass cabinets, she got nutty as a fruitcake!” Ollie pressed. “Obviously she knows about Calixto’s chest. She’s the Glass Lady, Gus—I’m sure of it!”
“Me too,” Anastasia said quietly.
Gus heaved a sigh and tilted his gaze toward the sky. “Hey! Look at that cloud!”
“Don’t change the subject, Gus,” Ollie said. “You know your aunt—”
“Look!” Gus had stopped in his tracks, and his mouth was ajar. “My gosh, that cumulus looks just like a ballerina!”
Anastasia wheeled her eyes skyward. “Oh, it’s pretty!”
“Do clouds always make pictures?” Gus puzzled.
“Well—sometimes they resemble things—bunnies or rabbits or lambs—but I’ve never seen one quite like that,” Anastasia said. “It looks almost—er—sculpted.”
A few of their schoolmates were now staring at the wild white yonder. “Look! Miss Ramachandra, look!”
Now the entire class studied the cloud ballerina. She moved, as clouds buffeted by high winds do. However, instead of lumping into another shape or stretching like cloud taffy into cirrus clouds or fizzling out altogether, the ballerina cloud danced. She raised her arms and lifted her legs into a leap. She brought her heels back together into first position. From the swirls of a nearby cloud the shape of another ballerina formed. Then another. Standing in a row, the ballerina clouds danced in tandem. They moved slowly, as though they danced underwater, but they danced.
“Magical!” Miss Ramachandra thrilled.
“Magic?” cried Taffline. “Do you think it is,
Miss Ramachandra?”
“I—oh no, dear, I didn’t mean—you see, clouds often resemble—”
“Do you think there’s a witch nearby?” asked Parveen, whirling her gaze around the charming buildings of Dinkledorf.
“Parveen!” hissed Tommy. “Shut up! We aren’t supposed to talk about the W-word up here, remember?”
“Miss Ramachandra! Tommy told me to shut up!”
“Now, Tommy, that isn’t nice—”
“I’ve seen plenty of clouds before, and none of them act like that.” Saskia’s voice trembled. “It must be witchcraft.”
“They certainly are strange,” Miss Ramachandra said. “Perhaps we should go back to school, children.”
One or two protests punctuated the air, but most of the Pettifoggers nodded in frightened agreement. Miss Ramachandra pulled out her map, peered at it in utter befuddlement, and rotated it 180 degrees. “How do we get back to the chocolate shop?”
“Miss Ramachandra—” piped up Rupert.
“Just a moment, Rupert.” Miss Ramachandra swiveled the map again. “I’m trying to sort out this map—it seems to have been printed upside down!”
“But, Miss Ramachandra—”
“Hold on, dear.”
“But, Miss Ramachandra!” Rupert shrilled, now tugging her arm. “Where’s Jasper?”
As it turned out, none of the students could spot Jasper Cummerbund. Nor could the panic-stricken Miss Ramachandra. The class-turned-search-party roved the snowy lanes and checked the museum lavatories and peered into every bakery on Zucker Weg and asked at every toy shop and even at a shoe store and an insurance agency. A sweep of gray clouds upholstered the sky, blotting out the ballerinas and shivering snowflakes down to Dinkledorf, and nowhere, nowhere was the boy to be found.
Jasper Cummerbund was gone.
CRUD WATCHERS HAD snatched Jasper. Or maybe witches took him! Or might he have wandered off into the woods and the clutches of a hungry bear?