The Witch's Glass

by Holly Grant

  Theories multiplied in Nowhere Special. Some of them were reasonable, and some of them were far-fetched, but they were all of them grim. One thing was certain: Jasper Cummerbund had vanished without a trace. None of the Morfo search parties sent up in the days following the disastrous Yodeling Museum excursion found a single clue as to Jasper’s whereabouts.

  “And some of those searchers are shifted wolves,” Ollie said glumly, slopping varnish on Signor Mezzaluna’s papier-mâché clouds. “If anyone could track down Jasper, it’s them.”

  Anastasia nodded. “Baldy’s spent every night this week sniffing around Dinkledorf. He says Jasper’s scent leads from the chocolate shop to the museum, and then it just ends—like he disappeared into thin air.”

  “Like magic,” Ollie breathed.

  Anastasia nibbled the end of one of her braids. “Speaking of magic, what do your parents think about those clouds?”

  The Echo had printed an account of the entire ill-fated field trip, from the Pettifoggers’ boat ride to Bumbershoot Square to Miss Ramachandra attempting to tweeze gum from Jasper’s head at the Yodeling Museum to the mysterious clouds gamboling above Dinkledorf. Opinion regarding the Cloud Phenomenon was divided: half of Nowhere Special feared witch magic had whipped the sky into a magical ballet, and half did not.

  The half that did marched outside the Senate Cave, waving signs reading MORE SOLDIERS, MORE SPIES, MORE SAFETY! SAY “YEA” TO THE MERRYMOON MILITIA BILL!

  Their opponents tacked up posters blazing KEEP OUR PURSES AND OUR PEOPLE SAFE…FROM ABSOLUTE MONARCHY! VOTE “HECK NO” ON MMB!

  “Mom and Dad don’t think it’s a coincidence that we saw those clouds right when Jasper went missing,” Gus said. “They say it’s witch-work, and they wrote a letter to Senator Dellacava telling him to vote yes on the Merrymoon Militia Bill. How about your folks, Ollie?”

  “Undecided.” Ollie hunched over the pot of varnish. “What does the royal family think?”

  “Ludowiga is screaming witches. Penny and Baldy think it was a CRUD snatching. And Wiggy—I’m not sure about Wiggy. She’s worried, though.” Anastasia bit her lip. She, Anastasia, was also worried. The threat of villains creeping about the sweet Swiss village, directly above Nowhere Special, sent flurries of fear swirling through her belly.

  “CRUD is bad, but witches would be worse,” Gus said.

  “They’re both awful,” Anastasia agreed.

  “You know what else is awful?” Ollie said. “Having Marm Pettifog back.”

  Once news of the snatching scandal had trickled to Marm Pettifog, the old dictator had struggled from her sickbed to return to her academy. She had exiled Miss Ramachandra back to the art cave. Three different students had caught the distraught art teacher weeping into glue pots that week, and she now sobbed noisily over the polka-dotted Dalmatians in the Cavepearl Theater backstage.

  “I feel sorry for Miss Ramachandra,” Anastasia said. “A lot of people are blaming her for Jasper’s disappearance, but it wasn’t her fault. Witches and Watchers are tricky. Whether it was CRUD or the witches, I don’t think Miss Ramachandra could have stopped them.”

  “If it was CRUD, why didn’t they snatch us?” Ollie wondered aloud.

  “What do you mean?” Gus asked.

  “Well, CRUD knows what Anastasia and I look like. They know we’re Morflings. And we were walking through the streets of Nowhere Special by ourselves. It would have been easy for someone to grab us.” Ollie shivered.

  “Duncan! You, there! Help me with this mirror for the ice waltz,” Mezzaluna shouted at a hapless stagehand.

  “Speaking of mirrors…” Gus leaned forward. “I’ve been thinking about Calixto’s glass doors, and we already know of at least one piece of witch glass in the palace.”

  “We do?” Ollie said.

  Anastasia gasped. “Yes, Ollie, we do—the Glimmerglass!”

  “That mirror is definitely magical,” Gus said. “Your reflection talked to you, for crumb’s sake. Aisatsana even argued with you.”

  Anastasia wrinkled her nose. Her mirror-twin, Aisatsana (Anastasia backward), had proved to be an extremely unpleasant little girl. Aisatsana was rude. She was sour and snooty. She was even, I am sorry to say, a bit of a blackmailer. Anastasia found it vexing indeed to know that Aisatsana spied upon her from any nearby polished spoon or limpid puddle or looking glass—just as your mirror-twin watches you, gentle Reader.

  Of course, our reflections do not speak to us from ordinary mirrors. They can’t. Aisatsana could only sass Anastasia from Calixto Swift’s enchanted Glimmerglass, stashed in Wiggy’s chambers.

  “Maybe the Glimmerglass is a magic door!” Ollie said. “Maybe it’s a portal to mirrors in other countries!”

  For one thrilling moment, Anastasia’s snoop instincts perked like a bloodhound scenting prey. Then she remembered a detail from her confabs with Aisatsana, and down again her instincts drooped. “Aisatsana told me I couldn’t step through the mirror.”

  Gus made an impatient noise. “She could have been lying. Aisatsana is a complete pill, remember?”

  “But I tried to reach inside, and my hand just bumped against the glass.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t have Calixto’s twinkly nursery rhyme spell!” Ollie said.

  “And even if the Glimmerglass isn’t a magical portal, Aisatsana might have heard something about glass doors from one of her reflection friends,” Gus mused. “Some of those old mirror folk have been around for hundreds of years! They’ve peeked into places all over the world, and they’ve been spying on everyone in the Cavelands for centuries. They probably know everyone’s secrets.”

  Anastasia’s breath snagged against her molars. “You know who would definitely know about Calixto’s glass doors? And probably the glass cabinet, too?”

  “Squeak?” Pippistrella demanded.

  “Celestina’s mirror-twin. Whenever Celestina works with glass, her reflection must show up, right? Glass is shiny.”

  Ollie let out a soft huzzah. “Anastasia, that’s brilliant!”

  Gus frowned. “Even if Celestina is the Glass Lady—”

  “She is,” Ollie interrupted. “Face facts, Gus.”

  “Even if she is, what makes you think her mirror-twin would tell you anything?” Gus demanded. “If Ani—er—Anitselec is anything like my aunt, she’ll clam right up as soon as you start asking questions about Calixto.”

  “But Anitselec won’t be like Celestina,” Anastasia said. “Aisatsana is the opposite of me, remember? I like mystery stories and Aisatsana hates them. I like floating in Mrs. Honeysop’s cavern, so Aisatsana doesn’t!”

  “Celestina is secretive, so Anit—Ani—good ol’ What’s-Her-Name will be a blabbermouth!” Ollie grinned. “Anastasia, you’ve got to visit Aisatsana right away!”

  A grim realization capsized Anastasia’s smile. “But I can’t get into Grandwiggy’s cavern. Remember the guard bat?”

  Ollie groaned. “If only the queen hadn’t taken away that photo of Mrs. Wata!”

  Photographs of lady gorgons were illegal, because a single glimpse would send the seer into a deep snooze. A lady gorgon’s picture was powerful indeed. It was stronger than sleeping pills. It was stronger than knockout gas. And, as an accessory for missions of stealth and trespass, a lady gorgon’s photograph was very, very handy.

  Armed with a gold locket loaded with Mrs. Wata’s potent photo, Anastasia had sleepified the guard bat stationed outside the queen’s private chambers, and past this snoring guard the Dreadfuls had tiptoed to discover the Glimmerglass and other forbidden wonders.

  “Do you have any other pictures of your mom, Gus?” Anastasia asked.

  “Nope.”

  “I wish you did,” Ollie said wistfully. “I wish—”

  “Krrrp-peepity squeak!” Pippistrella chirruped from beneath Anastasia’s braid.

  “Scrrr-prrp!”

  Perhaps Anastasia’s hard work in Echolalia class was finally yielding results, or perhaps metamorphosing had tune
d her eardrums to a finer frequency. Whatever the reason, she understood every peep and squeak of her bat-in-waiting’s suggestion.

  “Pippistrella, you batty little genius!” she exclaimed. “And we’re supposed to visit them after school tomorrow, anyway! We can—”

  “It’s almost four-thirty, children,” Miss Ramachandra interrupted, dabbing her eyes as she shuffled up. “You can go home, and I’ll finish those”—her voice cracked—“clouds.”

  “Miss Ramachandra, do you think those ballerina clouds in Dinkledorf were witch magic?” Ollie asked.

  The art teacher hesitated, folding and unfolding her tearstained handkerchief. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “But I’m frightened. Yes, I’m frightened. I moved to Nowhere Special because I thought I’d feel safe here, surrounded by Morfolk, but now…” She eyed the papier-mâché clouds. “Run along home, children, and stick close to your parents. It’s a dangerous world—even more dangerous than we dared imagine.”

  PA-RUM-PA-DUM! TWEET! TWEEEEEDLE! BLAAAAAT!

  Anastasia was not in the Pettifog orchestra, and she felt very glad about it. Watching her schoolmates pummel their drums and tootle their flutes and torture their tubas, she flashed back to a haunting episode from fourth grade. Here’s a little life lesson for you, prudent Reader: dinging the triangle in a junior marching band may seem all harmless fun and games, but it isn’t. It’s deadly dangerous. Anastasia learned this the hard way, after knocking over an entire line of cornet players. They had toppled, she remembered, like dominoes: thump-thump-thump-thud-HONK.

  Much, much better to observe performances from the safety of the audience—especially on the date of Superintendent Sternum’s long-awaited visit. Stationed in the front row, the ancient sage solemnly beheld the school concert through gold-rimmed pince-nez, which are fussy little spectacles that perch on the bridge of one’s nose.

  “Great Bundt cake, I’m bored!” Ollie mumbled into Anastasia’s ear, dusting her cheek with white powder. Here’s a second life lesson for your files: if you plan to sneak sweets into school, avoid messy treats like sugar-dusted donuts. Anastasia was surprised that a seasoned sneak like Ollie would breach this basic tenet of sugarplum-smuggling.

  Gus elbowed him. “How can you be bored, Ollie? Quentin is performing!”

  Ollie’s gaze flicked to the stage, where his brother wheedled a strange melody from his musical saw. “Oh, I hear Q play that thing day and night.”

  “And now,” announced the music teacher, “for the last piece of our performance, ‘Waltz of the One-Legged Flamingo.’ ”

  “Finally,” Ollie grumbled.

  Anastasia also yearned for the concert to end. She had a Great and Exciting Errand to run after school. Most errands, as you know, are not particularly exciting. They’re dull as ditchwater, and that’s why we invented the Fine Art of Putting Things Off. But Anastasia’s errand included no trek to the Laundromat, or the post office, or the pickle-monger. Our princess had plans to visit three very peculiar ladies, and from these ladies obtain—so she hoped—a way into Wiggy’s private caverns.

  “Why is that chair empty?” Gus asked, staring at a vacant seat in the middle of the brass section.

  “Jasper is second chair trumpet,” Ollie said sadly.

  Anastasia bit her lip, wondering what had happened to Jasper. As the attentive Reader will recall, Anastasia had suffered at the hands of two diabolical CRUD kidnappers. Had the same nasty fate befallen Jasper? Just thinking about Primrose and Prudence made Anastasia’s skin crawl. Or maybe the auditorium was stuffy; either way, sweat prickled her brow. She fanned herself with a program. The violins howled; the flutes shrilled. A cymbal clanged, the brassy crash detonating a nuclear headache inside Anastasia’s skull. She dropped the program and clapped her hands over her ears.

  “Don’t you like ‘Waltz of the One-Legged Flamingo’?” Ollie said beside her.

  “I—I don’t feel so good.” She swallowed. Her heart felt like a popcorn kernel on the verge of exploding.

  And then it happened.

  A great firework of pain, and her bones suddenly felt too big for her body, and a strange and horrifying sensation of being tossed into a trash compactor and sucked down a drain and thrown into a pitch-dark sack all at once. The world went black, and Anastasia screamed.

  “SQUEEEEEAK!”

  “Anastasia!” Ollie said. Anastasia’s eardrums rustled, and then bright light dazzled her eyeballs. She blinked.

  Ollie’s face loomed over her, an enormous round cloud. A grin swifted across his face. “Anastasia! You’ve turned into a bat!”

  He disentangled Anastasia from her rumpled school uniform. He held her cupped in his hands, and he gazed into her blinky little black eyes. Anastasia rattled her wings, peeping.

  “Calm down,” Gus urged. “Think happy thoughts!”

  But Anastasia’s addled bat brain couldn’t dredge up notions of whiskery kittens or rain-speckled roses. Panic drop-kicked her heart into a hypersonic jig, and every single molecule of her tiny new body blazed with the need to flee. So flee she did.

  She thrashed from the sugar-dusted cradle of Ollie’s palms and reeled up, up, into a lurching flight above the audience, somewhere over Ollie’s and Gus’s cries of dismay. This maiden voyage was no graceful sally into greatness. The princess-bat careened like a punch-drunk airplane, trailing commotion in her wake. Hoots and giggles percolated the auditorium as Anastasia torpedoed by. Marm Pettifog’s eyes snapped to the audience.

  “Who is that?” she sputtered, her gaze latching onto the wayward bat. “Metamorphosing at school is strictly forbidden! Land at once!”

  But Anastasia was, quite simply, out of control. The world rushed by in a crazy, dizzy, nauseating blur, and she flapped her wings even harder, knowing that if she stopped moving she would fall.

  “Oh no,” Gus groaned. “She just knocked off Super-intendent Sternum’s glasses!”

  “Egad! Egad, I say!” the superintendent bleated.

  “She’s flying into the orchestra!” Ollie exclaimed.

  Anastasia zigzagged between slashing violin bows like a skier hurtling through a terrifying slalom race. Sheet music twirled into the air as she whiffled through the woodwind section.

  “Keep playing!” Mr. Dirgecomb commanded, a brave general exhorting his troops in the face of grave adversity. “The show must go on!”

  But Anastasia’s wing grazed the edge of a rickety music stand, sending it crashing against the back of a bass player. “Hey!” He staggered, capsizing his enormous instrument. The melody dwindled as musicians hesitated and rubbernecked and dropped notes.

  Marm Pettifog let out a hoarse scream of undiluted rage. “STOP! STOP IT RIGHT THIS INSTANT!”

  And Anastasia did, but not because she chose to. She swerved into the side of a bass drum. Crash! Right through its side she tore, and then she sprawled in its curved belly, panting and dazed. Her ears were ringing—no, that was the tenacious xylophone player, still soldiering on with “Waltz of the One-Legged Flamingo.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, shut up!” Marm Pettifog snapped, and the final chimes died away.

  The auditorium was now silent; absolutely, utterly, breathlessly, ominously silent. Anastasia’s eyes were closed, but everyone else’s gaze was riveted to the headmistress. When Marm Pettifog was annoyed, she screamed. She stamped her tiny foot. But when Marm Pettifog was really angry, she went statue-still, with the exception of a twitch at the corner of her eye. Her eyelid was twitching now.

  And then Anastasia morphed back into her normal, freckled, girl-shaped self. If she had to be anywhere in the auditorium, she was glad indeed to be crunched inside the drum. She was in her birthday suit, you understand. She shifted to peek through the bat-size tear in the cylinder’s flank.

  “Anastasia Merrymoon,” Marm Pettifog rasped, “remove yourself from that drum immediately. That instrument is property of Pettifog Academy.”

  “I’m sorry, Marm Pettifog,” Anastasia faltered, “but I c
an’t. I don’t have any clothes.”

  Snickers erupted across the cavern.

  “Shocking!” Superintendent Sternum cried. “Absolutely shocking! Marm Pettifog, I am appalled by the lack of discipline at this institution. Students morphing during school hours? Children coming to classes without clothes? Why, your orchestra didn’t even have the discipline to finish a simple waltz!”

  “Pettifog Academy isn’t the problem,” Marm Pettifog retorted. “It’s that rotten little wretch! She’s nothing but trouble!”

  Superintendent Sternum creaked to his feet, fidgeting his pince-nez back to his nose. “Madam, the school board shall hear about this.” And he stormed from the auditorium.

  Ollie grabbed Anastasia’s discarded school uniform and stood, and he squished past the knees of ten fifth graders to make his way to the aisle. Marm Pettifog snatched the bundle from his arms with a swift, tigerlike movement. “This concert is over!”

  “What do you think will happen to Anastasia?” Ollie asked Gus as they shuffled into the lobby amidst dozens of buzzing Pettifog students.

  “I don’t know,” Gus said nervously, “but it’s not going to be good.”

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Ollie said. “She’s new at morphing.”

  “Do you think that makes any difference to Marm Pettifog?” Gus pointed out.

  Indeed, it did not. Sitting in Marm Pettifog’s office ten minutes later, Anastasia stared at her girl-again hands. Her entire body ached. Each and every one of her teeth buzzed with their own private misery. At least, she consoled herself, this metamorphosis hadn’t left her with bits of batty fluff clinging to her upper lip. Perhaps that was a sign of personal growth.

  “Your crimes,” Marm Pettifog said, “include the following: Transmogrifying in school. Disrupting a school performance. Destroying school property.”

  Anastasia cringed. She had ruined the bass drum upon exiting it; she had smashed through its side to collect her clothes from Marm Pettifog.

  “You’re no better than a common vandal,” the schoolmistress said.