The Witch's Glass

by Holly Grant

  All the places Calixto Swift had traveled to via his mysterious glass doors.

  She slowed her pace as a riot of snowflakes began to churn in the nearest globe, her gaze telescoping upon a little design tattooing the glass—CW with a star. Celestina Wata had made these globes; Anastasia was now sure of it. But the glass smith had crafted the blizzardy spheres not for Queen Wiggy but for the original owner of Cavepearl Palace—Calixto Swift. No wonder Celestina had frozen up when Anastasia mentioned magical snow globes in the castle! Each and every globe was a piece of evidence linking the glass smith to the dastardly warlock!

  “Anastasia,” Ollie called from the dining hall. “There are eight cinnamon rolls. That makes two for each of us. Should I just bring the whole platter?”

  Mesmerized by the frosty flakes swirling and twinkling within the globe, Anastasia didn’t even hear him. She cradled the cool glass curves betwixt her bare palms, and she whispered:

  “Through this doorway clear and crystal

  Whisk me on a whirlwind trip!

  Take me where your whirlwind twinkles

  Make me a globe-trotting witch.”

  “Anastasia?” Ollie clumped into the corridor, hugging a domed cake platter heaped with gooey rolls to his chest. “Is it okay if—hey! Where did you go? Anastasia? Peeps?”

  But Anastasia and Pippistrella were no longer in the Hall of Snow Globes. Nor, for that matter, were they anywhere in the Cavelands.

  Snowflakes kissed Anastasia’s cheeks.

  Her eyelids stuttered, and her breath caught in her throat. Her hand darted to the ball of fluff shivering on her collar. “Peeps! Where are we?”

  Pippistrella let out a frightened squeak.

  Anastasia goggled. Tall pine trees surrounded them, chorusing with birdcalls; a moon-white quilt of snow spread underfoot in every direction. Anastasia took a few wobbly steps, her head reeling.

  “The snow globe…,” she croaked.

  Once she had uttered the final word in Calixto’s little rhyme, a tremendous pressure had suctioned her hand to the snow globe, as though the glass were fusing to her palm. The glass had pulled her; pulled her so hard she felt as though she were being turned inside out, as though the snow globe were a black hole inhaling her. It had been very intense, but it had lasted only a nanosecond.

  “Are we—inside the snow globe?” she asked Pippistrella.

  “Squeak…” Pippistrella was just as discombobulated.

  Anastasia tilted her gaze up, half-expecting to see a glass curve where the sky should have been, and perhaps Ollie’s face, enormous, staring down at her. But she only saw pale, snow-clouded sky.

  “Where are we?” she asked again. Her heart, still jozzled from the whirlwind journey, skidded against her ribs. Then she noticed the snow globe sitting in a cushion of snow by her feet. She picked it up and peered inside at the little village. It resembled Dinkledorf. Were they near Dinkledorf ? Really, they could be in any snowy forest! They might be in Switzerland, but they might be in Germany, or Russia, or China! They could even be in some snowy, storybook fourth dimension! Panic welled in Anastasia’s throat. How could she have been so foolish? How many times had well-intentioned, far-wiser-than-she-was souls warned her of the dangers of magic?

  Then she heard singing.

  It came from somewhere far away, but the ululating carried clear and lovely on the cold winter air. Anastasia turned toward the voices and started walking. Crunch, crunch, crunch, her galoshes mumbled with each snowy step. The pretty warbling grew louder, and louder, and louder, until it echoed around her: Odelay—odelay—odelay—hee-hoo!

  Hope thrilled Anastasia’s soul. “Peeps!” she exclaimed. “That’s yodeling!” She yanked her galoshes into a run, and she ran through the snow until she crested a hill and saw, spread out in a valley below, a cluster of gingerbready houses with smoke trickling from their chimneys. Yodeling reverberated around the valley’s snow-crusted sides. Odelay-hee! Odelay-hee!

  Anastasia sagged in relief. All she had to do was hike to the Merry Mouse and slip down its secret stairwell to the Cavelands.

  Crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch crunch. She stumbled past another clump of pines and there, lo and behold, was Dinkledorf’s funicular. The little train was even at the top of the tracks, just as though it were waiting for Anastasia. She climbed inside and pulled the lever, and the funicular began its slow and perilous slide down Mount Dinkle. Anastasia hugged the snow globe, shivering. As they neared the bottom of the incline, she could see people tromping around town.

  “Peeps,” she said, “get under my collar. We don’t want to attract attention.”

  Pippistrella burrowed along Anastasia’s backbone.

  Of course, her blue velvet Pettifog Academy uniform would stand out among parkas and sweaters and jeans. But as Anastasia ventured forth from the funicular, she saw that nobody was wearing parkas and sweaters and jeans. Pink-cheeked, lederhosen-clad Dinkledorfers tromped through the narrow streets, cheering and laughing and letting out joyful little yodels.

  “Is there some kind of yodel festival today?” Anastasia whispered.

  “Prrrp!” Pippistrella replied.

  Clearly, some kind of celebration was underfoot. Anastasia jostled through the crowds into the main square. Two men were squishing tunes from wheezy accordions, and three ladies raised their voices in a fast, complicated melody. Anastasia only paused to watch them for a few seconds before following her nose to Zucker Weg, and thence made her way to the Merry Mouse. She cringed as a bell jangled on the door to announce her arrival in the shop, but festivalgoers crowded the cheesemonger’s. Gisela, busy helping a band of cheese connoisseurs sniff samples of Stinking Bishop, didn’t even glance Anastasia’s way. The Morfling swerved through the aisles to the door at the back of the shop, and down she crept to the secret stone stairwell leading to Nowhere Special.

  There was, of course, no gondolier waiting in Gruyère Gutter to meet her.

  The canal stretched into a dark tunnel. Anastasia couldn’t very well swim to the palace; the water brimmed with electric eels. Should she send Pippistrella to fetch Belfry? But then she would have to explain how she had gotten all the way to Gruyère Gutter.

  Anastasia carefully stashed the snow globe in a niche in the cave wall. Perhaps she and the boys could “borrow” a palace gondola and return to fetch it. Or maybe Quentin and Ollie could beg their gondolier uncle for a ride to Gruyère Gutter. She closed her eyes and tightened her muscles and concentrated. She thought happy thoughts. She thought about fuzzy kittens, and the soft chime of sleigh bells, and her father’s waffles. She imagined herself as a bat. She imagined so hard that her brain began to sizzle, and the heat spread through her body and tingled all the way into the tippity-tips of her fingers and toes. And then her feet slipped from her galoshes, and her body came loose from her school uniform, and she was midair. After a few dizzy moments of flurrying her arms, Anastasia’s wings opened like two sails, and she glided. She was flying! She was flying, and oh my goodness, was it exhilarating!

  Anastasia chirped aloud in sheer delight, and then she followed Pippistrella’s voice through the tunnels, all the way home. She zigzagged through the corridors like a stunt plane. She did loop-the-loops and barrel rolls and climbing spins and lazy eights. And then she adjourned to her chambers and morphed back into a brave young girl and put on a pair of knickerbockers suitable for exploration. It was all entirely dignified.

  No, it was better than dignified; it was marvelous.

  An entire new realm, brimful with bright possibility, now opened up. Calixto’s snow globes were, indeed, doors to the world: in the course of that whirlwind Saturday morning, the Dreadfuls traveled to no fewer than four countries on four separate continents. To return to the Cavelands, they simply used the little snow globe encapsulating the replica of Cavepearl Palace, which Anastasia carefully tucked into her satchel on every trip.

  They whisked to Japan, where pale pink cherry blossoms flurried onto their heads beside
a Shinto shrine as shiny red as lacquered licorice.

  They found themselves in a dazzling Moroccan bazaar, surrounded by panels of billowing silk and stacks of gleaming copper pots and pans.

  They watched the sun rise over prickly pear cacti somewhere in the American Southwest.

  They wandered up and down the narrow streets of Penzance, searching for the tattoo parlor Nicodemus and Calixto had visited.

  “That was over two hundred years ago!” Ollie said. “Even if the shop’s still there, whoever tattooed your grandpa will be long gone.”

  “Not if he was a Morfo,” Anastasia reasoned. “He could still be alive, and he might remember Calixto. Maybe Calixto mentioned something that could help us find Stinking Crumpet.”

  But no tattoo parlors peppered the hilly lanes. There were, however, a number of fish ’n’ chips joints opening their doors, sending delectable lunchtime smells into the lanes. Ollie dragged his feet to a standstill in front of the Cheery Chippie. “I’m starving! Can we please get something to eat?”

  “We don’t have any money,” Gus pointed out.

  “I have my allowance—four quartzes and a queenlie,” Ollie persisted.

  “An English chip shop isn’t going to take Cavelands currency!”

  “Right.” Ollie sighed.

  “What about the money I gave you to buy Yodel Fest tickets?” Quentin asked. “I gave you twenty Swiss francs the morning of your field trip, remember? You were supposed to buy fest passes at the Yodeling Museum.”

  Ollie’s eyes rounded. “Crikey! I completely forgot!” He scrounged in his jacket pockets, his fist finally emerging with a crumpled, cookie-crumb-dusted franc note. “Sorry, Q! When’s the fest?”

  Quentin rolled his eyes. “Today. But Mom and Dad wouldn’t let us go up to Dinkledorf now, anyhow. And besides”—he grinned—“I’d rather be globe-trotting.”

  Ollie huzzahed, waving the note. “We can exchange this at the bank two streets over. I’m positive I saw one—it was by a cake shop.”

  Twenty minutes later, the Dreadfuls sat on a rocky bluff overlooking the sea, munching greasy cod and french fries from newspaper cones.

  “Where shall we go next?” Quentin asked. “One of the globes has a couple of pyramids on a green hill. Where do you think that is?”

  “Maybe Peru?” Gus suggested. “Machu Picchu?”

  “There’s a globe with little kangaroos inside,” Ollie said. “We could go to Australia.”

  Anastasia fell into thought, staring at the faraway boats scudding along the horizon. Her notion of the world was rapidly expanding—and, in inverse proportion, the prospect of finding Nicodemus and her father seemed to be dwindling to a mere speck. Calixto Swift had traveled perhaps more than any other person alive in the eighteenth century. Propelled by magic, the sorcerer had explored the world’s far-flung nooks and crannies. The Silver Chest could be anywhere. And now Anastasia realized just how vast anywhere was.

  “You’re awfully quiet, Anastasia,” Ollie said.

  “Traveling through the snow globes is fun,” she said, “but we aren’t any closer to knowing where Stinking Crumpet is. Maybe Calixto talks about it in one of his journals. Maybe he mentions visiting a palace or museum or some kind of landmark that would help us figure out which one of his snow globes leads there.” She crumpled up her newspaper packet. “And we still need to figure out how to open the glass cabinet and get the Hammer.”

  Gus munched a french fry, pensive. “We’d better get back to Calixto’s study,” he mused. “But how? We can’t even show our faces backstage while the Pettifog Art Club is helping with the sets, and they’ll be doing that up till opening night of Dance of the Sugarplum Bat.”

  Anastasia frowned. “Then we’ll have to wait,” she said. “We’ll wait and watch, and when the opportunity comes up—we’ll snatch it.”

  HOWEVER, NO HAPPY opportunity presented itself for the snatching in the month to follow. The Dreadfuls dutifully did their schoolwork and practiced their fencing. Twice per week they churned their oars to explore the canals during Pettifog rowing sessions, but no Applied Navigation assignment ferried them anywhere near Rising Star Lagoon. Time passed, as time always does. But it passed very slowly.

  The evening in which we rejoin Anastasia, however, promised to be different.

  Anastasia glared at the nearest of Baldy’s library cuckoos. Ticktock ticktock tick…tock…tick…tick…tock. Was it her imagination, or had the second hand actually juddered backward ? Impatience jiggled her knees and fingertips. Dance of the Sugarplum Bat premiered at seven-thirty, and Anastasia longed to get into the Cavepearl Theater. This was not, as you might think, because she couldn’t wait to observe Saskia’s Triumphant Debut as Vespertina, the twinkle-toed bat. She craved another visit to Calixto’s study.

  Fortunately, Miss Ramachandra had given the Dreadfuls permission to watch the ballet from the wings, along with the other Pettifog art-clubbers. “Even if you’ve missed a few sessions, you helped this ballet happen!” the kindly lady had reassured them. “Just don’t tell Marm Pettifog—she hasn’t yet lifted your art club suspension.”

  “Oh dear.” Penny rustled the evening newspaper, a fretful line creasing her forehead.

  “What is it now, Penny?” Baldwin grumped. “What tidings of doom does the Echo bring us tonight?”

  “There was a brawl in Dark-o’-the-Moon Common today,” Penny said. “Almost a dozen Morfolk got into a fistfight, arguing over the Militia Bill.”

  Baldwin slumped back in his chair with a groan. “Even if this bill passes, half our citizenry is going to be mighty miffed.”

  “Let them be miffed.”

  The queen stood in the doorway, her face hard. “I’m not running a popularity contest,” she said. “ ’Tis better to be feared than loved. I would rather the witches fear me than the public love me. We must do what’s best for the Cavelands, regardless of the whims of certain fools.”

  Even though she was now centuries older, Wiggy looked just as fierce and resolute as her portrait hanging in the palace art gallery. “That little Cummerbund boy is still missing,” she said. “I think about him every day; I think of him frightened and hurt—or worse. And if we fail to defend ourselves against witches and CRUD, more Morfolk shall suffer. We all shall.”

  “Both the Senators Cummerbund have pledged to vote in our favor,” Penny said. “The bill will pass, your Mommyness.”

  “So it must.” Wiggy sighed. “But I came here not to discuss politics. I wonder whether any of you has seen my opal ring? I can’t find it anywhere.”

  Panic grabbled Anastasia’s heart. The witchy gem was still tucked in her satchel; she had forgotten to leave it out for a servant to spy.

  “Perhaps you left it with the jeweler?” Penny suggested.

  “No,” Wiggy replied. “I last saw it—”

  “Your Mommyness!” Ludowiga shrilled, stamping into the library. “Dance of the Sugarplum Bat starts in less than an hour!” She glared at her siblings and niece. “Why are you lumps sitting around this blasted book nook like you’ve nowhere to be? Get off your derrieres and get a move on—we can’t be late for Saskia’s Triumphant Debut!”

  “Curtain in one,” the stage manager bellowed amidst the backstage commotion of scurrying stagehands and costumiers and makeup artists and ballerinas.

  “Ouch!” Anastasia yelped as a dashing Twinkle Toe stamped her galosh.

  “Anastasia, dear, are you all right?” Miss Ramachandra asked.

  Anastasia jittered from foot to foot. “I’m okay—”

  “Oh no!” Miss Ramachandra cried. “Is that dratted candelabrum shedding glitter again? Signor Mezzaluna will be so upset.” She hurried off as zithers and tootles droned up from the orchestra pit.

  “This is it,” Gus muttered into Anastasia’s ear. “Our big opportunity. When should we sneak to Calixto’s study?”

  Ollie dodged a catapulting powder puff. “How about the—”

  “Trees!” Madame Pamplemousse
barked at a corps of ballerinas dressed as saplings. “Trees onstage! Vite! Vite! Vespertina, you’re on in ten…nine…eight…”

  Saskia pranced over, every inch the ballerina princess in her sequined white tutu. She smirked and leaned close to Anastasia.

  “Looks like you’ve finally learned your proper place—offstage, out of sight and out of mind,” she whispered. “And do try to keep it that way. I don’t want you to ruin my Triumphant Debut with one of your shifting disasters.”

  Anastasia opened her mouth to retort, but Madame Pamplemousse gave Saskia a little push. “Two…one! Vespertina, onstage!”

  The harpist strummed a twinkly melody, and Saskia tiptoed forth. She leapt! She pirouetted! As the nimble ballerina drew gasps of admiration from the audience, Anastasia found herself hoping that Saskia would fall flat on her nose.

  The Loondorfer princess didn’t, of course. Every spin and twist and hop was perfect.

  “Exquisite!” Miss Ramachandra murmured behind her. “But—do the tree costumes look different to you?”

  Anastasia shifted her gaze to the corps of ballerinas dressed as trees, and her eyes widened. Tiny pinpricks of glow glittered, like fairy lights, among the silk leaves. Did the theater have a twinkle beetle infestation?

  A murmur rumbled through the audience.

  “Look at the trees!”

  “They’re growing!”

  Sure enough, each tree dancer’s canopy swelled and spread, unfurling leaf upon leaf. The dancers’ arms trembled beneath the expanding foliage. What in caves was happening? The twinkly lights brightened. Anastasia realized the twinkles were little buds, and these buds bloomed into great, luminous flowers, just like flora in a time-lapse video.

  “Magnificent!”

  “Sublime!”

  “Phantasmagorical!”