by Holly Grant
Of course, the only thing Anastasia had recently embroidered was this excuse to get inside Wiggy’s caverns. However, the trusting hags bought it hook, line, and sinker.
“What a thoughtful girl!” Oona exclaimed. “Why, of course we’ll help with that.”
The hags set down their teacups and creaked from their chairs to rummage through the bottles swimming in the water flooding their floor. Anastasia wondered how the hags could tell the vials apart. The bottles were labeled, but the hags, as you know, had no eyes with which to read them. “Mandrake root…mandrake root…now, where can that mandrake be?” Twyla muttered.
“It’s in your hair, dearie,” Maude said.
“Oh yes.” Twyla fumbled a vial of mandrake from her long tangles. “Do you have the mermaid’s locks?”
“Hmm. I can’t find it.”
“I think it might be on one of the spice racks,” Oona said. “Princess, would you mind taking a peeksy? Look for a bottle labeled MERMAID’S LOCKS.”
“Mermaid’s locks?” Anastasia nudged Borg off her lap and trudged across the parlor. Hundreds of bottles cluttered the hags’ floor-to-ceiling spice racks: bottles brimming with inky black sludge and golden glimmers and cloudy wisps, and bottles rattly full of glowing little pebbles, and bottles crammed with withered violets and forget-me-nots. An entire row of bottles bore glowering skulls and crossbones.
“Are some of these things poisonous?” Anastasia called to the hags.
“Yes indeed, my dear.” Maude chuckled. “Our wishes often call for rather potent ingredients.”
CYANIDE. ARSENIC. DEADLY NIGHTSHADE. SHADOW TEARS. Anastasia’s gaze latched to a canister encasing a lock of faded green hair tied with a pink ribbon. “Did this really come from a mermaid?”
“Yes, and it’s very rare,” Oona said. “So please be careful handling that bottle.”
“Mermaids are real?”
“They were. They’re extinct now, I’m afraid.”
After adding a single green strand to their brew, the hags chanted and murmured and crooned. Anastasia poked around the poison bottles. She wondered whether she should tell Penny and Baldwin that Caesar Dellacava had visited the hags. Obviously his wish had involved the Merrymoon Militia Bill.
“All done!” the hags chorused.
Anastasia turned. Oona held between her thumb and forefinger a slender vial of thick green ooze. “This will give you seven minutes in the queen’s chambers—plenty of time to stuff a pillow into your embroidered case! When you want to visit, just crush the bottle,” she said. “The goop will evaporate immediately, so don’t worry about stains.”
“Oh, I never worry about stains,” Anastasia assured her, accepting the potion. “Thank you.”
“It’s our pleasure!” Maude beamed. “We do hope the queen likes her pillowcase!”
“We wish we could chat all afternoon, but unfortunately we need to tend to our work,” Oona said. “A Wish Hag’s work is never done!”
Twyla crushed Anastasia in a farewell hug. “Please do come again soon!”
“Shall we send some cookies home with you, too, dear?” Maude asked.
“Oh no,” Anastasia said hastily. “I’m full.”
“Too full for cookies?” Maude giggled. “My goodness, you are a strange child!”
BACK IN HER bedchamber that evening, Anastasia carried her candle into the loo and regarded her reflection in the gloomy mirror. She took a deep breath.
“Aisatsana, I need your help. Remember how you told me you visit other places in the mirror-realm when you aren’t reflecting me?”
Aisatsana stared back, mum. She couldn’t reply from an ordinary looking glass, of course. Only through the Glimmerglass could the girls carry on a proper two-way conversation.
“I need you to go to Celestina Wata’s glass shop and bring her reflection to the Glimmerglass tomorrow morning,” Anastasia continued. “It’s really important. She might be able to help me find my dad. You see and hear everything I do, so you know I’m looking for him. You know he’s been missing for months.”
Anastasia leaned close to the glass, searching her mirror-twin’s face for a response. Aisatsana simply mimed Anastasia, crinkling her forehead and squinting. It was like a maddening game of follow-the-leader.
“Isn’t my dad’s reflection—Derf, I guess—your father?” Anastasia asked. “Derf’s been cooking waffles for you and hugging you and telling you bedtime stories all this time, right? And if something happens to my dad—if he’s hurt or…or killed—wouldn’t that happen to Derf, too? Would Derf just disappear?”
Aisatsana’s eyes glittered, but they were just reflecting Anastasia’s tears.
“I’m going to come visit you tomorrow morning after Wiggy leaves for the Senate Cave. And if you can convince Celestina’s reflection—” Her words snagged against her tonsils as an idea dazzled her cranium. “Wait! Have you seen Derf ? Would Derf know where my dad is?”
Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Derf could tell them where Fred Merrymoon was!
“Aisatsana, please, please try to find Derf. If you can help me find my dad, I’ll do anything you want. I’ll have Ollie bake more peanut butter s’mores cupcakes, and you can eat the reflections. Or I’ll wear whatever you want to wear. Even if it’s really uncomfortable.”
Anastasia reached out and touched the mirror-girl’s shoulder, just for a second. “Please, Aisatsana.”
Then she turned her back to the looking glass, reluctant to let her silvery twin watch her cry any longer.
Entry to Wiggy’s chamber was forbidden to anyone lacking a royal summons, and Anastasia didn’t have a royal summons. She did, however, possess a nice little vial of fresh wish-goop. Sometimes, Anastasia thought, wishes were better than a queen’s decree.
The elder Merrymoons were off screaming about the Militia Bill at a special Saturday Senate meeting, so Anastasia knew she could pop into Wiggy’s private caverns without any danger of running into the queen. She just hoped a helpful chambermaid wasn’t busy fluffing the queen’s pillows.
“I’ll be back in seven minutes, Peeps,” she informed Pippistrella, and then she threw the vial on the floor. Tinkle! The bottle smashed, the wish came true, and Anastasia was in the queen’s quartz-crusted cavern.
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” piped a voice from the far end of the chamber.
Woozy on wish-goop, heart swollen with hope, Anastasia reeled toward the splotchy mirror crowning the queen’s vanity table. “Did you find Derf ? Did you look?”
Aisatsana scowled, hugging herself as though she had a tummy ache. “Of course I looked! I’ve been looking for months! I knew our dads were missing before you did.”
“Really?” Anastasia yelped.
“Really.” Aisatsana smirked. “Maybe you believed those silly lies Prim and Prude told you about Fred and your sickly stepmom dying in a freak vacuum accident, but I didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I could visit the reflection of our old house, couldn’t I?” Aisatsana said. “And I saw dear old Trixie lying around swigging cough syrup. Straight from the bottle,” she added.
Anastasia’s eyebrows crinkled. “So you’ve been hunting for Derf all this time, and you haven’t found him?”
“As a matter of fact, I have,” Aisatsana said. “I found him last night.” The mirror-girl reached into her jacket and pulled out a fluffy brown guinea pig.
Anastasia gawped. It was the first time she had seen her father in guinea pig form. Of course, it wasn’t her father, exactly.
“That’s Derf ?”
“Yep.” Aisatsana scratched Derf’s head. “And you can see he’s very much alive, which means Fred is, too.”
Anastasia’s heart cartwheeled with joy, and she gave a little whoop. “Does Derf know where my dad is?”
“I’m sure he does,” Aisatsana said. “Unfortunately, he can’t tell us. He can only squeak, and I don’t speak guinea pig.”
“Can’t he shift back into
a man?” Anastasia demanded.
“Not until Fred does.” Aisatsana swallowed. “Derf once told me Fred went pig whenever he was frightened. So your dad is scared, wherever he is.”
Anastasia bit her lip, toying anxiously with the jewelry scattered on Wiggy’s vanity. It was awful to imagine her father holed up somewhere as a small, hapless rodent. Surely he wouldn’t have morphed into a guinea pig to look for her. Did that mean he was in CRUD’s dastardly clutches? If so, why was he still alive?
Cradling Derf in one arm, Aisatsana dug in her jacket pocket. “I hope you remembered to wind our watch today? Hmm, five past ten. I wonder if Anitselec is coming.”
“So you invited her?” Anastasia asked. “Were you—um—polite?”
“I can be very polite when I want to be,” Aisatsana sniffed. “See? Here she comes now.”
Celestina Wata’s mirror image edged onto the looking glass. “The queen’s bedchamber!” she cried. “Just look at it! So fancy! Wait’ll I tell the girls about this!” She peered at Anastasia. “And you’re the princess. I saw you when you visited Celestina’s shop, of course. Speaking of royalty, my friend Elle once saw Marie Antoinette! Imagine! Not nearly so pretty as her portraits, Elle said. And—”
“I need to ask you something about Celestina,” Anastasia interrupted. “Did you ever see her make a glass cabinet?”
“Indeed I did,” Anitselec said, unruffled by this abrupt change in topic. “A cabinet without a door. She gave it to that warlock, Calixto Swift! Imagine! Of course, they were good friends. He was always hanging around.”
Anastasia sucked in a breath. Just as she’d suspected! “Do you know how to open it?”
“The cabinet? I’m afraid not, dear.” The mirror-woman clucked her tongue. “Celestina never found out. Believe me, she asked Calixto about it! But he’d only answer in riddles. That man could drive you crazy with all his puzzles—he was such a jokester. Personally, I’ve never cared for puzzles, not even the crossword. Why would anyone—”
“Riddles?” Anastasia asked. “Do you remember what he said?”
“Oh, let’s see.” Anitselec tilted her head, thinking. “I’ll never breathe that secret, Celestina, except to the cabinet itself. Those were his exact words. I have an excellent memory, you know. Why, I still remember the dress Celestina wore to her third birthday party—”
“He told his secret to the cabinet?” Anastasia demanded.
“I guess so.” Anitselec shrugged. “But really, who knows? Maybe Calixto was just pulling Celestina’s leg. Like I said, that witch could drive you crazy with his tricks. Just between us, I was glad when he stopped coming around to yammer about cabinets and mess around with snow globes.”
“Snow globes?” Anastasia echoed.
“Very bossy, I thought,” Anitselec said. “He wanted to blow the glass himself ! As if Celestina couldn’t do it well enough. Now, what did he say? Something about a witch’s breath….It holds all kinds of power. Something like that. Well, every spell a witch mutters is one part sound and one part breath. And that breath was brewing deep in a witch’s lungs. La-di-da! Thought rather highly of himself, didn’t he?” Anitselec chortled. “So Celestina prepared the tools for him, but Calixto was the one who actually blew the glass. And you know, it was the funniest thing, but I swear he actually breathed fr—”
But Anastasia didn’t hear the rest of Anitselec’s gossip, because she was suddenly back in her own chamber. The wish-goop had worn off! She balled her fists in frustration. What “funny thing” had Anitselec noticed about Calixto? Was it important? And Anastasia hadn’t gotten a chance to try the warlock’s twinkle-whirlwind spell on the Glimmerglass!
She hadn’t even gotten a final glimpse of Derf’s furry face. Derf wasn’t her father—not really—but he was the closest thing to Fred Merrymoon that Anastasia had.
“Cheep!” Pippistrella greeted her. “Prrp-squeak?”
“I don’t know where Dad is,” Anastasia said, “but he’s alive, Pippistrella! He’s alive.” She flopped to her bed, and Pippistrella snugged against her shoulder in a batty hug.
Anastasia realized she was still clutching one of the queen’s geegaws. She uncurled her fingers, and she stared. It was Wiggy’s favorite ring. The opal in this ring was gobstopper-big, girded along its circumference with golden filigree. Anastasia admired the lustrous gem for a minute, twisting it round and round and watching pale rainbows flare across its milky skin. And that, dear Reader, is how she came to spot the monogram.
Two letters twined together on the underbelly of the opal’s golden mount: CS.
Calixto Swift.
The ring had belonged to Calixto! Anastasia goggled. Why would Wiggy wear the warlock’s ring? Had she found it among the clutter of Cavepearl Palace when the Merrymoons moved in, after the Dastardly Deed? Or had someone plucked the ring from Calixto’s mitt as he lay dying in Dark-o’-the-Moon Common?
Misgivings wriggled into Anastasia’s thinker. Up until that moment, she had considered it natural enough that the royal family bunked in Cavepearl Palace—Wiggy was a queen, and queens lived in castles. It was sort of spooky that Wiggy’s castle had originally housed a witch, but this fact had been, to Anastasia, one more peculiarity in a peculiar place full of peculiar people.
Now, however, Anastasia envisioned Wiggy’s first rambles through the palace: deciding which furniture to keep, choosing the best cavern for her bedchamber. Sliding a murdered man’s ring onto her hand.
Anastasia shook her head, trying to dispel these dark fancies. Queens and kings fought wars; they claimed castles and seized treasure. That was the way of the world.
A wave of panic leapt up the back of her throat. How could she replace the ring before Wiggy noticed its absence? She didn’t have another bottle of wish-goop, and she couldn’t very well tell Wiggy she had been sneaking into her chamber again!
Anastasia pondered. She would have to hide the ring for now—she shoved it deep into her satchel—and later she could leave it somewhere in the palace for a servant to find. Wiggy would, she hoped, simply think it had slipped off her queenly finger and rolled beneath a chair.
Before quitting her room, Anastasia dashed into the loo and tapped the mirror. “Thank you, Aisatsana. Thank you for helping me.”
Perhaps Aisatsana was Anastasia’s opposite in most respects, but they were similar in one very important way: they both loved their dads, and both of their dads were in danger.
YOU MAY HAVE heard the old expression, sapient Reader, that knowledge is power. With this in mind, the Dreadfuls were set to descend upon Cavepearl Library that morning with a Great Plan to Find Stinking Crumpet. Of all the Cavelands’ book nooks and hallowed halls of learning, Cavepearl Library offered the best resources to a league intent on hunting down a mysterious locale. There were enormous globes labeled in the eighteenth century with the names of cities long forgotten by modern cartographers. Rolled-up antique maps furled within several brass umbrella stands, their secrets waiting to be discovered. And Penny had curated an astonishing collection of geography tomes, including half a dozen original journals written by great Morfo explorers.
Before they plundered Penny’s charts and encyclopedias, however, Anastasia told her fellow Dreadfuls about seeing Derf.
“Thank Bundt cake!” Ollie huzzahed. “Your dad is okay!”
“Grand!” Quentin cried. “Simply grand!”
“That’s great news, Anastasia!” Gus exclaimed.
“Squeak!” Pippistrella agreed.
Anastasia’s grin wobbled into a frown. “But wherever he is, he’s a scared little guinea pig.”
“Scared but alive.” Gus squeezed her hand. “And we’ll find him.”
Anastasia squeezed back, biting her lip. “Aisatsana brought someone else to meet me, too,” she admitted. And she filled them in on the rest of her Glimmerglass chitchat.
“So Celestina is the Glass Lady.” Gus’s shoulders slumped. “If the queen finds out…”
“Don’t worry,�
� Anastasia said. “Nobody would think your aunt is a witch-sympathizer. And besides, I won’t tell Wiggy.”
“Right,” Ollie chimed in. “The Beastly Dreadfuls know all about the art of keeping secrets.”
Gus smiled, his eyes shining a thank-you.
Quentin clapped his hands once and rubbed his palms together. “Now, let’s find Stinking Crumpet! Where’s the geography section, Anastasia?”
Within a half hour, the Dreadfuls were up to their armpits in books and charts.
“I didn’t know Kalamazoo was a real place,” Ollie said, flipping through a massive atlas.
“Yep. It’s in the United States,” Gus murmured, peering at a crumbly yellow map of the Bohemian Empire.
“This memoir by Mortimer Meriweather is galvanizing,” Quentin reported. “He joined a pirate crew in 1712 and drank nothing but limeade for two years!”
“I like limeade, but not that much,” Ollie said.
“Nobody likes limeade that much, Pudding,” Quentin said. “The pirates guzzled it so they wouldn’t get scurvy. They ate heaps of banana cream pie, too.” He returned Mortimer’s life story, and Ollie went back to scanning the atlas.
Anastasia tried to focus on Ye Olde Compleat History of New World Witch Settlements, but Anitselec’s gossipy voice stuck in her mind like taffy, tugging her thoughts to Calixto and glass and magic.
“I’ll be back in a second,” she said, shoving the witch settlement tome off her lap and jumping to her feet.
Ollie perked up. “Are you going for a snack? All that talk about Mortimer’s pirate goodies made me hungry.”
“There might be a few cinnamon buns left over from breakfast,” Anastasia said. “And I’m headed toward the dining hall anyway.”
Anastasia and the Shadowboy zigzagged through the clammy palace passages, winding up in the corridor lined with Wiggy’s snow globes. Ollie beelined to the dining hall beyond, but Anastasia lingered to study the glass rondures. She darted from globe to globe, peering at the Lilliputian world within. A cherry tree by a Shinto shrine! The turnip-shaped domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow! A miniature of the Great Sphinx of Giza!